Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

“Time for the lights,” he said. He switched them on and they were in a tu

“Once I did that,” he said. “I turned the lights on like that and there was this porcupine. It was just sitting there in the middle of the road. It was sitting straight up kind of on its hind legs and looking right at me. Like some little old man. It was scared to death and it couldn’t move. I could see its little old teeth chattering.”

She thought, This is where he brings his girls.

“So what do I do? I tried beeping the horn and it still didn’t do nothing. I didn’t feel like getting out and chasing it. He was scared, but he still was a porcupine and he could let fly. So I just parked there. I had time. When I turned the lights on again he was gone.”

Now the branches really did reach close and brush against the door, but if there were flowers she could not see them.

“I am going to show you something,” he said. “I’m going to show you something like I bet you never seen before.”

If this was happening back in her old, normal life, it was possible that she might now begin to be frightened. If she was back in her old, normal life she would not be here at all.

“You’re going to show me a porcupine,” she said.

“Nope. Not that. Something there’s not even as many of as there is porcupines. Least as far as I know there’s not.”

Maybe half a mile farther on he turned off the lights.

“See the stars?” he said. “I told you. Stars.”

He stopped the van. Everywhere there was at first a deep silence. Then this silence was filled in, at the edges, by some kind of humming that could have been faraway traffic, and little noises that passed before you properly heard them, that could have been made by night-feeding animals or birds or bats.

“Come in here in the springtime,” he said, “you wouldn’t hear nothing but the frogs. You’d think you were going deaf with the frogs.”

He opened the door on his side.

“Now. Get out and walk a ways with me.”

She did as she was told. She walked in one of the wheel tracks, he in the other. The sky seemed to be lighter ahead and there was a different sound-something like mild and rhythmical conversation.

The road turned to wood and the trees on either side were gone.

“Walk out on it,” he said. “Go on.”

He came close and touched her waist as if he was guiding her. Then he took his hand away, left her to walk on these planks which were like the deck of a boat. Like the deck of a boat they rose and fell. But it wasn’t a movement of waves, it was their footsteps, his and hers, that caused this very slight rising and falling of the boards beneath them.

“Now do you know where you are?” he said.

“On a dock?” she said.

“On a bridge. This is a floating bridge.”

Now she could make it out-the plank roadway just a few inches above the still water. He drew her over to the side and they looked down. There were stars riding on the water.

“The water’s very dark,” she said. “I mean-it’s dark not just because it’s night?”

“It’s dark all the time,” he said proudly. “That’s because it’s a swamp. It’s got the same stuff in it tea has got and it looks like black tea.”

She could see the shoreline, and the reed beds. Water in the reeds, lapping water, was what was making that sound.

“Ta

The slight movement of the bridge made her imagine that all the trees and the reed beds were set on saucers of earth and the road was a floating ribbon of earth and underneath it all was water. And the water seemed so still, but it could not really be still because if you tried to keep your eye on one reflected star, you saw how it winked and changed shape and slid from sight. Then it was back again-but maybe not the same one.

It was not until this moment that she realized she didn’t have her hat. She not only didn’t have it on, she hadn’t had it with her in the car. She had not been wearing it when she got out of the car to pee and when she began to talk to Ricky. She had not been wearing it when she sat in the car with her head back against the seat and her eyes closed, when Matt was telling his joke. She must have dropped it in the cornfield, and in her panic left it there.

When she had been scared of seeing the mound of Matt’s navel with the purple shirt plastered over it, he had not minded looking at her bleak knob.

“It’s too bad the moon isn’t up yet,” Ricky said. “It’s really nice here when the moon is up.”

“It’s nice now, too.”

He slipped his arms around her as if there was no question at all about what he was doing and he could take all the time he wanted to do it. He kissed her mouth. It seemed to her that this was the first time ever that she had participated in a kiss that was an event in itself. The whole story, all by itself. A tender prologue, an efficient pressure, a wholehearted probing and receiving, a lingering thanks, and a drawing away satisfied.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh.”

He turned her around, and they walked back the way they had come.

“So was that the first you ever been on a floating bridge?”

She said yes it was.

“And now that’s what you’re going to get to drive over.”

He took her hand and swung it as if he would like to toss it.

“And that’s the first time ever I kissed a married woman.”

“You’ll probably kiss a lot more of them,” she said. “Before you’re done.”

He sighed. “Yeah,” he said. Amazed and sobered by the thought of what lay ahead of him. “Yeah, I probably will.”

Ji

No matter.

What she felt was a lighthearted sort of compassion, almost like laughter. A swish of tender hilarity, getting the better of all her sores and hollows, for the time given.

Family Furnishings

Alfrida. My father called her Freddie. The two of them were first cousins and lived for a while on adjoining farms. One day they were out in the fields of stubble playing with my father’s dog, whose name was Mack. That day the sun shone, but did not melt the ice in the furrows. They stomped on the ice and enjoyed its crackle underfoot.

How could she remember a thing like that? my father said. She made it up, he said.

“I did not,” she said.

“You did so.”

“I did not.”

All of a sudden they heard bells pealing, whistles blowing. The town bell and the church bells were ringing. The factory whistles were blowing in the town three miles away. The world had burst its seams for joy, and Mack tore out to the road, because he was sure a parade was coming. It was the end of the First World War.

Three times a week, we could read Alfrida’s name in the paper. Just her first name-Alfrida. It was printed as if written by hand, a flowing, fountain-pen signature. Round and About the Town, with Alfrida. The town mentioned was not the one close by, but the city to the south, where Alfrida lived, and which my family visited perhaps once every two or three years.

Now is the time for all you future June brides to start registering your preferences at the China Cabinet, and I must tell you that if I were a bride-to-be-which alas I am not-I might resist all the patterned di