Forever Never Ends (20 page)

"Well, yes," he said, after he jump-started his tongue. "But it's not just that. There was something else I wanted to tell you.

"Confession is good for the soul."

"We've been going out for a while now. And I've enjoyed every minute we've spent together. But I'm afraid I better tell you something before you waste much more time on me.”

Bill watched her wilt. Her eyelids dropped, her dark, delicate eyelashes flickered like the butterflies that were cutting patterns over the grass. She bowed like one of those long-ago English queens, readying herself for execution. She nodded gently, as if praying that the ax-blow be swift and sure.

"I've been married before,” he said, in a rush, wanting it over with. “And I got a divorce. I've sinned in the eyes of the Lord, Nettie."

She blinked twice. "Is that your deep, dark secret?"

Bill braced himself for her counterattack, the cruel feminine laughter that would slice like a saber. It didn't come.

"Bill, everybody makes mistakes," she said. "And God's heart is bigger than the sky. There's plenty of room up there for forgiveness. That's one of the best things about His love."

Bill looked up at the high ceiling of the sky with its thin stucco of clouds.

He wiped the sweat from his palms onto the blanket. "I was afraid you'd think less of me, like I was a hypocrite or something, the way I promote the church and stuff. While I'm eaten up on the inside with black sin."

And now Nettie
was
laughing, but it was a laugh of relief instead of ridicule. "Bill, I've got deep, dark secrets that would put that one to shame. And someday, I might tell you about them. Now, let's eat before the ants figure out we're here."

The tension that Bill had sensed from the moment they arrived seemed to lift into the March breeze, as if God had waved a soothing hand overhead.

"Too late to fool the ants," Bill said, blowing one off the back of his hand. It landed in the spilled mashed potatoes. Nettie laughed again, an airy music that was as natural to the meadow as the song of sparrows. Bill grinned at her and lifted the plate of fried chicken. His grin froze as Nettie pulled a bottle of wine from the basket. He looked into her deep, shining, curious, tempting eyes.

"I hope you don't disapprove." She twisted a corkscrew in with a firm hand. Her face clenched with effort as she popped the cork. "One of
my
dark secrets."

Bill's smile tried to shrink like drying plywood, but he kept it nailed into place. She was pouring the blood of Christ into two clear plastic tumblers.

No, this is white wine. The blood of nothing but dead grapes. Do you mind, Jesus? Of course, You used to drink it. But what if it makes me weak, prone to the devil's whispers? Or is this a test of faith?

But then he was taking the cup from Nettie and bumping it to her raised cup in a toast, and he was swimming in her beautiful eyes and the wine was on his lips and in his throat and then warming a small spot in his belly. He sipped again, nervously, and the warmth spread.

They ate chicken, she a breast, he two legs and a thigh. They had scratch biscuits that were as good as Bill's grandmother used to make, back before she bought her first microwave. Bill's plate was emptied of the mashed potatoes that Nettie had covered with thin gravy that was good even cold. The buttersweet taste of the raspberry tarts clung to his lips, and he wondered if his smile were as red as Nettie's.

They lay face to face, leaning on their elbows, and talked under the warm fingers of the sun, sharing their third cup of wine. Bill pointed to a sycamore branch and a flutter of bright red.

"Male cardinal," he said. "Watch for a second."

A small brown bird flitted from the growth of a spruce and the cardinal gave chase.

“Going after a piece of tail feather," Nettie said.

Bill was stunned. The Nettie he had known and dated and studied scriptures with must be back in Windshake, and this Jezebel had been sent by the devil to draw Bill back into the hellish fold. She giggled behind her hand and her eyes were alight with amusement.

And his lips were mildly numb and now the warmth had spread all over his body and he was laughing, too. Then he was laughing so hard that he fell toward her and then their eyes met and their lips met and they shared laughing breath and raspberry saliva and Chardonnay tongue and then the devil was on Bill's shoulder, whispering in his ear. But the Lord was on the other shoulder, drowning out the Prince of Lies with an orchestra of blinding sunburst heartbeats—

***

—and Nettie couldn't believe this was finally happening. Her heart had almost stopped when Bill said he had something to tell her "before she wasted much more time."

He was going to tell her that, while she was a nice girl, he didn't think they should see each other anymore. He would be too kind to say the truth, which was that she was homely and independent and not the picturesque queen he envisioned at his side.

He would just say that even though her company was pleasant, their relationship wasn't going anywhere because the tinder just wasn't taking the spark. And they should remain friends and continue the Lord's work together at the church and not have any ill feelings toward one another because the Bible said to turn the other cheek.

But he didn’t say those things, only some ridiculous thing about being divorced, but marriage wasn't as sacred as love, so why should he worry about it? But Bill was sweet to consider her feelings, even if his solemnity almost made her laugh. Some people took the covenant of marriage more seriously than others, and she respected Bill's tenets. Her own relief had gushed through her body so forcefully that she was afraid it was going to burst through her skin.

And Bill had not frowned on the wine. Well, perhaps briefly, but he had taken a cup, and then more, and she could feel his awkwardness fall away into laughter and now into this kiss, which was making her head expand, this kiss which was drowning her in a pool of light, this kiss, which was a moist dew, this kiss, which was a free fall, this kiss, which was tangling their limbs in liquid knots, this kiss, which was one long heartbeat, this kiss that was a pillow cloud that was her body that was fighting out of the blouse and cotton dress and winding inside Bill's shirt and trousers and skin and now the kiss spread over their entire flesh as the hot white honey wax arms of heaven embraced them and swept them aloft on a cream silk fire breeze and dropped them into a milk sky sun ocean and then they were racing together toward a frozen forever only now they were exploding like golden flowers and she was melting and flowing and arriving and disappearing only to find herself back in Bill's arms where her journey had always led.

***

Junior stumbled through the laurels along the riverbank, ignoring the sharp branches that gouged his skin, not caring that the flesh peeled from his bones like shucks from an ear of yellow corn. Because it wasn't his skin, it was the parent’s, and
shu-shaaa
had no awareness of pain or decay. There was no death, only change. Only a joining into the life that must become
shu-shaaa
so the journey could continue.

Junior heard the life in the trees and under the thickets and behind the shrubs and in the meadow and he stepped into the sunlight and saw the life that was like his own used to be.

A memory of being human, of a time before
shu-shaaa
Mull, swam in the swampy mist inside his head. He was about to cross the green earth skin to reach the writhing human lives so that he could touch their hearts with the hand of the parent. Because they sang with light and stole the sun that fed the life and their animal cries filled
shu-shaaa's
air.

But another force pulled him away, tugged at him like vines and creepers and kudzu, and compelled him to cross the river and ascend the mountain that rose from the earth to return him to a bed of memories. A place from his human past, a place of roots. An old human who deserved to share the glory, a human whose name was Mull, only its own name had once been Mull, but that didn't matter since they would soon all be one.

Fording the river, something fell from his pocket and rode downstream on the current, glistening in the sunlight. Another memory waded into his altered consciousness, a recollection of pleasure and smoke followed by a sharp prick of sorrow at things long gone. But the human thoughts were fleeting and quickly suffocated by the verdant rhapsody that was
shu-shaaa
.

He flowed toward the Mull farm, biting trees along the way.

***

Tamara pulled her car onto the shoulder of the road, trembling. She was lucky that no cars had been approaching, because she had veered into the other lane and back again, tires squealing in complaint. The creature that had dashed in front of the Toyota had the fuzzy, arched tail of a squirrel, but its eyes were bright wet specks and its head was as slick as that of an otter.

The animal’s sudden appearance hadn’t startled her. It was the way those radiant eyes had peered through the windshield and flashed with the same secret light that Tamara had seen on the mountaintop. The oozing gash of mouth had opened, and the word
shu-shaaa
filled her brain and numbed her fingers, and if she hadn’t half believed that such a creature could speak, she might have lost it completely and run the Toyota into the ditch.

She sat with the engine idling, her forehead against the steering wheel. When her breathing steadied, she looked in the rearview mirror. No creature there, though a thin trail of liquid marked its crossing of the road. Tamara got out of the car and went to the trail. Two black curves of thin rubber showed where the car’s tires had skidded.

“I’m not listening to you,” she said. She looked in the weeds on the far side of the road. A stretch of barbed wire bounded a hay field. Though the growth was low, the creature could easily get lost in the grass. Maybe it had been infected with rabies.

She’d heard of the “thousand-yard stare” that rabid animals had, the way they’d look at you as if you were a hated thing. At the same time, they were gazing at a point miles away. But Tamara had never heard of a disease that made a creature leak mucus the way a car with a busted pan leaked oil. And she’d definitely never heard of a disease that caused an animal to bombard you with a telepathic message.

She knelt and studied the glistening trail, which had already dried on the sun-warmed asphalt. She was about to touch the flaking material, then decided against it. If the animal had been infected, then its saliva or droppings were best left alone. As she watched, the flakes grew smaller and more transparent, then lifted on the breeze in a cluster of pale motes.

A truck approached and the driver slowed. He rolled down his window and stuck his head out, his face red from an early seasonal sunburn. The back of the truck was piled with worn furniture, a boxy television, rugs, and stuffed garbage bags.

“You broke down, lady?”

“No, I’m fine. I just thought I saw something.”

The man looked at her with narrowed, sick-looking eyes. “Was it something that was there or something that
wasn’t
there?”

“What do you mean?”

He gazed at the sky. “Been seeing birds, myself. Except they can’t keep up with their own shadows. And green rain. Seen some green rain that wasn’t there.”

Tamara eased closer to the Toyota, wondering if she should make a run for it.

“It’s up on Bear Claw,” he said. He turned on his windshield wipers, though the sky was nearly clear.

“I have to go,” Tamara said.

“What’s your name?”

Tamara regained her composure. Maybe the man was mildly schizophrenic and his medicine wasn’t working today. She, of all people, should know that brain chemistry could go out of balance through no fault of the brain’s host. Suffering a mental illness was no cause to treat the man like an ax murderer.

“Tamara,” she said, peering into the cab just in case the man happened to be carrying an ax.

“Tamara,” he echoed. “That’s what I figured.”

“Why is that?” Seven miles from nowhere in every direction and she had no way to protect herself. She eased two steps away from the truck.

“Didn’t you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“You ought to listen better.”

She looked around. No vehicles were approaching. She was about to ask if the man had seen any other strange animals when he waved toward the forest that climbed the slope of the mountain.

“The
trees,
” he said. “They’re saying things that ain’t right.”

“Excuse me?”

“They’re liars.”

He rolled up his window and headed down the road, the truck’s exhaust lingering in her nostrils. Tamara looked up the face of Bear Claw, wondering what sort of “it” the man had imagined there.

***

The alien aspirated, drawing air through the plants it had converted, and absorbing the energy of the animals that had become part of its own flesh. As it expanded and its roots probed deeper, more symbols collected in the heart-brain center. The symbols brought pain, but pain was necessary, because pain was survival. If the creature was going to become part of this planet, the planet must join in return, a symbiosis that was thicker than blood and sap.

The symbol pierced its fungal walls and lodged in its center, where the other symbols were stirred in the confused soup of sleep.

Tah-mah-raa
.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Jimmy had rounded up Peggy’s first official customer.

Howard Pennifield entered the trailer behind Jimmy, his shoulders sloped like a gorilla's. He blinked stupidly and looked around at the clutter, trying not to stare at Peggy sitting splay legged on the couch with a drink in her hand. She eyed him, trying to size him up. She knew him from Little League, because his kid was on Little Mack's baseball team. She wondered if Howard could wield a bat better than his slow-witted kid could.

Peggy had spent almost an hour deciding how to dress. She wasn't sure if she should go for the sophisticated look, with fake fur and that kind of stuff, or just act naturally. She didn’t think men wanted to pay for "natural," they could get "natural" from their wives, bruised-looking eyes and hair in curlers and wrinkles backfilled with foundation.