The Hollow Man

EYES I DARE

The sun is rising.

Jeremy’s eyes flutter open, he stares into the distant brilliance, and he closes his eyes again before the fact fully registers.

The sun is rising.

Jeremy jerks awake and sits up, blinking at the sunrise. He is lying on grass. A prairie of soft, knee-high grass expands to the horizon in all directions. The sky is a deep violet fading to blue as the sun climbs clear of the horizon. Jeremy sits up and his shadow leaps across grasses stirring softly in the morning breeze. The air is filled with scents: grass, moist earth, sun-warmed soil, and the hint of his own skin scent touched by the breeze.

Jeremy goes to one knee, plucks a strand of the tall grass, strips it, and sucks on the sweet marrow. It reminds him of childhood afternoons spent playing in grassy fields. He begins walking toward the sunrise.

The breeze is warm against his bare skin. It stirs up the grass and sets up a soft sighing that helps ease the headache that throbs behind his eyes. The simple act of walking pleases him. He is content with the feel of grass bending under his bare feet and the play of sunlight on his body.

By the time the sun is far enough beyond the zenith to suggest early afternoon, he realizes that he is walking toward a smudge on the horizon. By late afternoon the smudge has resolved itself into a line of trees. He enters the edge of the forest just before sunset.

The trees here are the stately elms and oaks of Jeremy’s Pennsylvania boyhood. He pauses just inside the woods and looks out at the gently rolling plain he has just left; the evening sunlight is burnishing the rippling grass with gold and igniting coronas around the countless tassels atop the stalks. Jeremy’s shadow leaps ahead of him as he turns and moves deeper into the forest.

For the first time fatigue and thirst begin to work on him now. Jeremy’s tongue is thick and swollen with dryness. He stumbles leadenly along through lengthening shadows, dreaming of tall glasses of water and checking the visible patches of sky for any sign of clouds. It is while he is looking up for a glimpse of the darkening sky that he almost stumbles into the pond.

The circle of water lies within a low ring of weeds and reeds. A cluster of cherry trees on the higher banks sends roots down to the water. Jeremy takes the last few steps toward the pond with the agonizing conviction that he is viewing a mirage in the dim light, that the water will disappear even as he throws himself forward into it.

It is waist-deep and as cold as ice.

She comes just after sunrise the next morning.

Jeremy has breakfasted on cherries and cold water and is just in the process of stepping out into a clearing to the east of the pond when he spots the movement. Not believing, he stands perfectly still, just another shadow in the shade of the tree line.

She moves hesitantly, placing her feet amid the high grass and low stones with the tentative step of the meek or the barefoot. The tasseled saw grass of the clearing brushes at her bare thighs. Jeremy observes her with a clarity amplified by the rich, horizontal sweep of morning light. Her body seems to glow, to radiate rather than absorb that light. Her breasts, the left ever so slightly fuller than the right, bob gently with each high step. Her dark hair is cut short and stirs when the breeze touches it.

She pauses in the center of the clearing and then comes forward again. Jeremy’s gaze drops to her strong thighs as she walks, and he watches as they part and close with the heart-stopping intimacy of the unobserved. She is much closer now, and Jeremy can make out the delicate shadows along her fine rib cage, the pale, pink circles of areolae, and the faded old appendix scar along the lower cusp of her belly.

Jeremy steps out into the light. She stops, arms rising across her upper body in a motion of instinctive modesty, and then she moves quickly toward him. She opens her arms and he steps into their closing circle, setting his face against her neck and being almost overcome by the clean scent of her hair and skin. His hands move across muscle and the familiar terrain of vertebrae. Each of them is touching and kissing the other almost frantically. Both are sobbing.

Jeremy feels the strength go out of his legs and he goes to one knee. She bends slightly and cradles his face between her breasts. Not for a second do they relax the pressure binding them together.

“Why did you leave me?” he whispers against her skin, unable to stop the tears. “Why did you go away?”

Gail says nothing. Her cheek is against his hair as her hands tighten against his back. Wordlessly, she kneels with him in the high grass.