A Hidden Place

Chapter Nine

Creath Burack, dressing for the tent revival, regarded himself in the bathroom mirror and thought, she is gone.

The mirror was cracked where Travis Fisher had broken it in their scuffle. Weeks had passed, but Creath had not been able to summon the energy to make repairs. A sliver of glass, stiletto-shaped, had fallen away from the backing; a black fissure divided his reflection.

She was gone. He could not erase that single terrible thought from his mind.

It should not matter. He had told himself so. If anything, things had improved. Liza was bustling in the bedroom, singing to herself… and when had he last heard her sing? A year ago, two, three? And he knew—it was impossible not to know—that it was Anna’s absence that had lifted the cloud from her. That was good—wasn’t it?

But he thought, She is gone. Sweating, he moved the shaving brush in its cup and methodically lathered his jaw.

Well, he told himself firmly, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Not Anna Blaise and not his humiliation at the hands of Travis Fisher. Flesh is flesh, he thought; she was a woman, she was gone. It happened.

But in some strange way it was not the sex he missed. Pausing, his eyes on his own eyes in the broken mirror, he allowed himself to remember.

With her, everything had been different.

There was a sweetness in her, Creath thought, remembering the touch of her body impossibly smooth against his own. It had made him cry out against his will, sobbing with the sweetness of it. It was a pleasure that cut deep, that stirred him in secret places and made him aware of all the things he had lost. Not just the failing of the ice business or the disappointments of his marriage, but a broader loss: in her arms he felt, too keenly, the narrowing of life itself. You start out, Creath thought, you are a river in full flood; but life meets you with its dams and deadfalls and all its interminable arid places. You lose speed, depth, urgency, desire. You become a trickle in a desert.

He had been borrowing against the wellspring of her, he realized now: stealing back a facsimile of his youth; reveling, in those clumsy bedroom moments, in all the things he might have been and wasn’t.

Now there was nothing left in him but the loss. Only that painful awareness.

He loved her. He hated her. He—but it was a thought he suppressed, grinding his teeth together— God forgive him, he wanted her back.

Liza tapped at the door. “Don’t want to be late!” she called out.

He had allowed Liza to talk him into driving her to the tent revival. There was not the strength in him to resist her anymore. And, in truth, he was not strongly opposed to the idea. These last few weeks memories had seemed to shake loose like autumn leaves inside him, and one memory that came often was of the revivals he had ridden to as a child in his father’s horse-drawn wagon, excited at first by the bustle of it and then, in the hot cavern of the tent, caught up in some itinerant preacher’s evocation of the afterlife, intoxicated by the choral voices, until he imagined he could see that golden city glittering in front of him, until it shone in his dreams, benevolent and full of solace. But the solace, like the dreams, faded,- and then there had been only real life, grindingly ordinary, powerful and familiar. The dreams were a cheat, and he had taught himself to despise them.

Now, in some essential way alone, he longed for that consolation.

“In a minute,” Creath called through the door. “I’m shaving.”

“I’ll wait in the truck,” Liza said.

He made his mind blank, shaved himself thoroughly and rinsed his face, and then turned away from the fractured mirror with an unspeakable sense of relief.

They parked in the meadow and walked to the tent at dusk, Liza beaming and nodding hellos. Tent revivals always made her think of heaven.

Everything was just the way she imagined heaven would be: the glad greetings, the tremor of excitement, the sweet voices raised in song. Lantern light suffused the high spaces of the tent, and the mingled smell of canvas and naphtha rose up like incense. She arranged herself on a bench with Creath beside her in his red-checked coat.

She was still astonished that he had agreed to come. Ordinarily, he displayed a vulgar disdain for spiritual matters. He was religious, she had observed, only among the Rotarians, and that only perfunctorily: the Christ-the-businessman school of doctrine. And even that had lapsed with the demoralization of the ice business. For years Liza had tried to lead him into something deeper, but until now she had not succeeded.

But maybe his presence here was not so shocking. Since the fight with Travis and the departure of Anna Blaise, he had been in many ways a new man. Slower, she thought, yes, as if he had lost his sense of direction. But slower to anger, too, and more humble. The anger was still there, of course, buried in his sullen silences; but with the anger a confusion, an uncertainty.

She was shed of Anna Blaise and was shed, as well, (though this was not a Christian thought) of her sister’s boy. And now Creath was with her at a tent revival. Now, she thought, why, now, anything is possible.

The song leader conducted them through “The Old Rugged Cross,” leaning on the beats so that the music swayed with a ponderous grace, like a sailing ship moving in a gentle swell. Liza, singing, seemed to rise and spread out. Creath only mumbled the verses, dutiful and uncertain, but Liza rang them out clear and high, each word a tolling bell.

Two benches ahead, Faye Wilcox turned and cast a furtive glance backward. Liza pretended to ignore her, stretching out an amen sonorously. Faye looked distracted, she thought, even disheveled. Not to mention jealous.

But that was logical. The Baptist Women’s executive committee was holding its elections next week, and for the first time in years, Liza had been nominated for the post of chairwoman. The nomination had been seconded; she had already begun preparing a speech. She was a new woman. Her life had begun again.

The other candidate was Faye Wilcox.

Liza sat with her arm entwined with Creath’s. The music faded. Briefly, the only sound was the autumn wind whipping the canvas suspensions. Then the preacher entered: a tall, somber, hawk-faced man bent aggressively at the waist. He gazed at the crowd, a Bible poised in the crook of his left arm, rimless eyeglasses glittering in the lantern light. His theme, the paper handouts said, was “What Have You Done For Jesus Lately?”—and when he spoke his words lashed out like lightning.

Liza let the sermon flow over her. What mattered, she thought, was not the sense of the words but the sound of them, that diving and leaping of aimed syllables, arrows of God. It was the way, when she was a child, she had perceived her father’s gruff commands: incomprehensible but so authoritative. The thunder of wisdom. She closed her eyes.

She lost track of time over the course of the sermon. The larger cadences of it were like breaking waves, sin and redemption, heaven and hell, echoed in the sighs and moans of the congregation. Stirring at last, surfeited, she glanced at Creath, expecting to see the animal passivity that had so marked him these recent days. Instead, he was sweating, though the tent was still autumn-cool. His lip and forehead were covered with bright pinpricks of moisture. His eyes were large. Liza felt a stirring of alarm… was he ill? The doctor had said something about blood pressure… But there was an unmistakable attentiveness about him, too. He was listening. He leaned forward on the bench, intercepting the words with his body. It was the call to salvation, the sermon burning itself out in a fiery rush: “So many of you are enslaved,” the preacher shouted, “enslaved to drink, enslaved to lust, enslaved to every sin imaginable to man!”

She saw Creath mumble, “Yes”—and then watched, stunned, as he stood and ambled bearlike down the crowded aisle.

The revival emptied out soon after, the crowd streaming away into the autumn night. Those with cars had parked in the big meadow behind the train station. Liza instructed Creath to meet her at the truck and hurried ahead. She did not want Faye Wilcox to get away unbloodied. “Faye!”

The Wilcox woman turned, her face constricted and flushed in the torchlight. She held her handbag in a two-fisted grip. Her knuckles were white.

“Liza,” she said.

“It was all so fine,” Liza said, “don’t you think?” “Yes.”

“The choir, the singing—” “Yes.”

“—the sermon—” “Yes. It was fine.” “Creath was very moved.” “I saw him, Liza.”

“Well, you must have. But what about Nancy?” The killing blow. “Is she ill? One hears such terrible stories—not that I give them any credence—”

But the Wilcox woman only turned and stalked away.

Liza felt a perverse flourish of pleasure. Let her go, she thought. It doesn’t matter. Let her go.

Anything is possible, Liza thought blissfully.

The switchman’s shack was a good quarter mile away, but if she listened closely Nancy could make out the murmur of voices from the tent revival. She reached for the door, and the beat of her pulse drowned out the singing.

“You came,” Anna Blaise said.

Nancy sighed, the sound of it closed up in the darkness of the shack. Travis’s words echoed through her mind. Not human. It made no sense… though there was, yes, that indefinable quality about her, a kind of ethereal lightness, a not-thereness. And that quality had grown more intense over the last week. She was paler than ever. A strong light, Nancy thought, might shine right through her. “It wasn’t easy getting away.”

“Your mother?”

“There’s a tent revival in town. You know about tent revivals?” “I’ve heard.”

Her eyes, Nancy thought. The stillness and wideness of them. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. She wanted me to go with her. It was important to her. If I don’t go it makes her look bad. She begged. And threatened.”

“She could hurt you?”

“Not physically. Not anymore. I guess she could kick me out of the house. Might—if it comes to that.”

Anna said, her voice softly musical in the darkness of the shack, “I’m sorry to have brought this on you.”

“I would have gone with her tonight. But you said it was important.”

“It is.”

The silence stretched out. Nancy said, “I saw Travis, too.” “I’m sorry about Travis.” “He asked for an explanation. I couldn’t give him one.” “I know.”

“He said—” She licked her lips. “He said you weren’t human.” “Nancy—?” “Yes?” “I’m not.”

The shack was very dark indeed. Only a faint beam of moonlight played through the gaps in the wallboards. From far away Nancy heard the sweet massed voices of the revival choir. She said carefully, “I don’t understand.” Fear had uncoiled like a spring inside her.

“Travis saw too much too soon … he didn’t understand either. But now you must. I’ll need your help tonight.”

“I don’t know what you mean!”

“Shh.” The voice was soothing now. Motherly. Nancy’s heart beat in her chest… but she stayed. She did not run.

Anna explained. It was like listening to a bedtime story.

“I am,” she said, her voice cadenced and singing, “a long, long way from home. …”

After dark Travis worked his way along the river-bank to the switchman’s shack.

He was not sure what had brought him. A restlessness. An unease. A need to once more see—like the tongue’s need to probe an aching tooth. The night was cold, and the stars arched overhead in a cruelly vacant sky.

She is a witch. A monster. Not human.

He thought of Creath sneaking up the stairs, seduced by her femaleness.

She was that debased thing his mother had become, he thought, tainted by her sex, but worse, a hundred times worse…

Mama, I’ll protect you, said the six-year-old in him.

His head had become a cacophony of voices. But this one does not need protection, Travis thought.

The door of the shack gaped open then, and Travis hid himself among the fragile ruins of the summer’s pussy willows. Two figures in the moonlight. He recognized Nancy at once. The shape leaning against her could only be Anna. But an Anna changed… luminous with faint blue fire, which was strange enough, but changed in other ways, too… her bones more defined within that frail body, her eyes very wide, her arms elongated.

It was true, then. What he had seen a week ago was not an hallucination. She was changing. She was not human.

But surely Nancy must be able to see that?

They were squatting at the riverside now, Nancy sponging the Anna-thing’s forehead with river water, and where the water touched her skin the feverish blue light seemed to fade. Far off, there was the sound of motors revving as the tent revival ended.

Changing, Travis thought. Though not precisely the way he had expected.

He squinted at the faint figure of Anna at the riverbank, and ancient fears rose up in him.

If this goes on, he thought dazedly, then soon, soon, there would be nothing left of Anna Blaise at all.