Silent Retreats (24 page)

Janet looked over at Jerome. "She just died in bed. Do you believe it? What kind of luck is that? Very rare virus, the doctor said." Janet wiped the rim of her beer can with the elbow of her jacket. "Well, of course, Clay City had a theory that God was getting her for her sin. A sort of divine scarlet letter, only hardball." She gulped down some beer. "I'd think it myself, and I'm not Catholic, never been to church a day in my life. Anyway, she reacts by following some extreme religious guys, a bunch of movements and groups. She was up in Winnipeg for a while, following some wise man named Murray. Then she heard about Geneseo and it sounded a little broader in scope, but was still shelter. So she packed up the kid and came. Stay there 'til she dies, too."

Jerome stared up the highway.

"The community group is very logical for some people," she said.

"You didn't find that, though."

She gulped her beer. "Actually, I did for a while. But like Will says, 'Some folks don't fit nowhere.' I kinda stopped fitting."

They drove north and west. Sometimes they were quiet for a while, and it seemed to Jerome like Janet was averaging ten minutes per beer. A couple of more times she swerved, so he suggested they stop at a Burger Chef for coffee. They arrived about the same time as a chartered bus loaded with Illinois State University students. Feeling rowdy, Janet exchanged one-liners with some of the boys. While she went to the bathroom, Jerome carried their coffee to the car, splashing it on his hand and shirt. He decided he would do the driving unless she argued against it, and sat behind the wheel. He dabbed at the spilled coffee with napkins. Traveling with Janet made him feel married to her. Jerome's ex-wife, Erica, still lived in the city with their little boy, and for some reason now he was missing them both terribly. He wondered how anyone in his generation ever stayed married.

He watched Janet come across the Burger Chef driveway. She knew he was watching, and it changed something in how she held her shoulders, the expression at the corners of her mouth.

The warmth of the coffee seemed to refresh Jerome, but Janet leaned her head back against the headrest, looking out the window away from him. Finally, she was asleep. The day had become warmer with the last warm weather of the year. He tried to imagine what to expect when they arrived and to prepare for it. After a while she was awake again, but still they said nothing for nearly an hour. Then they were coming through the town of Joy. Hovering just above the town's business district was a large steel ball propped atop four legs—the water tower. "Joy" was painted on it in big black block-type letters which loomed over an IGA, post office, drugstore, and police station. They parked in front of a Rexall drugstore, and Janet ran inside for aspirin. Outside, leaning against the car, Jerome watched the pantomime of Janet in the drugstore through the front window.

When she came out, she wanted to drive. They pulled away from the curb and in a moment they were back in the country. "Will's a good person," she said after a while. "He'll let her come with us."

They turned onto a country road and white gravel dust flew up behind them. The land was now very hilly. They plunged into a parklike area, deep in beech trees and shade, with ravines first on one side of the road, then the other. They crossed ravines on old iron bridges. Old farmhouses were decaying in every hollow.

"There's your picnic table, from the map," she told him when they came into a picnic ground. "Geneseo community maintains this for the state. Pretty good job, eh?"

Soon they came up out of the trees. There was a gate and a simple handpainted sign: "Geneseo, Intentional Community, founded 1968." Several kids came running to the gate. Jerome was now leaning forward in his seat, watching. Two swung it open and the others clamored up around the car, smiling and shouting at Janet.

"Hi, Mick," Janet said to one of them. "Is Stephen here today?" The air felt so good coming in through Janet's window that Jerome rolled his own down. As he did so, he heard the gate swinging and craned his neck just in time to see it latch shut again behind them.

The little boy pointed toward several barns clustered in the distance, off to the right across the grassy field. "At the dairy barn," he said.

"Thank you. You're getting very big," she told him. "Where's Barbara?" she asked, and the boy gestured back in a different direction. "Thanks, Mick," she said to him.

All the buildings seemed scaled down. There was something new about most of them. They were made of rough sawn wood on the outside, stained dark, with decorative detail that seemed almost nineteenth century in style. Janet was driving across the large field toward the barns on a two-rutted grass path, grasshoppers jumping on the hood and butterflies scattering. The grass was brushing hard underneath the car. It was nearly noon and the sun was warm, the sky blue as crystal. For a distance the children chased along behind them, laughing loudly. Jerome could hear a bell ringing, like the yard bells they used to have on farms.

Presently Janet pulled up to one of the barns and stopped the car. She stared at the big double doors, closed, and took a deep breath. "He's in there," she said. "I'll be back in a minute."

She climbed out, disappeared into the cool, abrupt shade of the building. The sunlight on the windshield and dash was so bright Jerome couldn't look toward the barn. He stared off to his right, to a stand of trees in the distance.

After a few moments, a tall clean-shaven man came out with Janet. He seemed very friendly to her, chatting as they walked toward the car, laughing warmly at one point, his hand on her shoulder, her arm around his waist. He came to Jerome's side of the car and leaned down.

"Hi. I'm Stephen. Brought Janet back to us, looks like." They shook hands. Jerome didn't say anything, but smiled cordially at him. "Maybe you'd like to come in and get some water or something, look around? We've got to head over and find Barbara and her dad."

"I'd like him to come along," Janet said.

"Look," Stephen said to Janet, speaking over the roof of the car, "this is a family thing. There's no problem with Barbara leaving, far as I can see. But it's Will—we should be sensitive to how he feels about this."

For a moment everyone was still, saying nothing and not moving. Then Stephen opened Jerome's door, and Jerome found himself almost automatically climbing out of the car, Stephen sliding in. He looked up at Jerome. "Half an hour, give us. We won't be long."

Over the top of the car, Janet told Jerome, "I'll be right back." He was looking for some signal from her. Nothing came. She was absorbed now.

He stood outside the barn. Stephen looked large in the passenger seat, next to a very thin and frail Janet. He leaned back, his arm reaching all the way behind her on the back of the seat. The white Camaro slowly turned around in deep grass and headed off the way it had come, the exhaust rising up out of the grass behind it.

Jerome went into the barn. Inside were several cows, and on the other side it was open to a large pasture where many more dairy cattle were grazing. There was a pump and a tin cup like he hadn't seen for years. He pumped himself a drink of cold water, then a second one, washing away the sour taste of the morning beer and coffee. The cows watched him as he looked around. After a while he went outside. The south side of the barn had a painting of John Lennon on it, painted in dots like a Lichtenstein, only in black and white. "In Memoriam" was printed at the lower edge. Each dot was the size of a silver dollar. Jerome needed to get off a ways in order to really see the picture. He decided to head toward the clump of trees. The sun was warm on his back as he walked. Erica, his ex-wife, came into his mind. If they had lived in a situation like this, maybe they'd have survived. No, he thought, she depended on the city, and, really, so had he back then. Judging from the amount of work he was getting done these days, maybe he still did. He thought of the painting he had going right now, felt a wave of discouragement about it. Right now it felt a little irrelevant.

At the edge of the clump of trees he looked back at the Lennon painting on the barn. It was a close-up of the last Lennon we knew, gaunt, amazed at being forty, wire rims on the long bony nose, singing into the microphone, eyes half shut.

Looking into the woods, Jerome spotted a small pond among the trees and a house on the other side. The house seemed large and peculiarly modern, but sunken in among the foliage as though it too had grown there from roots. He sat in tall grass at the edge of the pond, in a large square of sun light blazing down, high noon. He watched the house and occasionally looked back toward the barn, half a mile behind him, to see if the car had returned. He thought about little Barbara. This was what she knew, had always known. It was sad to be a part of showing her the larger world. It was bound to disappoint.

Presently Jerome heard the bell again, ringing off beyond the barns, and soon after that two men came out of the house and hurried along a path that led right toward him. He couldn't tell whether they had seen him or not. His heart sped up, and he bent farther down until he thought he might be completely obscured by the tan grass. The two men passed him, heading out across the field. They seemed like monks, their hair short, their work clothes ill-fitting. And there was something about their silence as they walked fast, side by side, first among the tall trees, then out into the sunlight, crossing the field toward the distant rise.

He walked closer to the house. It was a large cottage, older than the other buildings. As he approached, a woman came out. Right away he thought he might know who she was. She was wearing an old dress that was long.

"Hello," Jerome said, going to meet her. "I'm here with Janet."

"I know," the woman said. "I can see the gate from the other side of the lodge. Her famous white car." A smile. The two of them were standing under gray beeches, oaks red and brown. Jerome could sense their branches arching high above him.

"Am I trespassing? That bell rang and I thought . . ."

"The bell is how we put out word if someone is needed," she said. "You aren't trespassing. I love the sound of it, don't you? You can hear it for miles. Stephen got it from a school that was being torn down in Rockford. It was made in the Netherlands. The new school probably uses buzzers." She looked at him. "Did you find Stephen?" Maybe there was some tension in the question.

A woman appeared in shadows on the steps of the cottage, another at the window. Jerome felt as though he'd come into a herd of deer. Any sudden move might cause them to leap away.

"Well . . ." He gestured back toward the dairy barn. "Stephen and Janet went off that way somewhere, to find Janet's husband, I think. Stephen was at the barn—they went off that way." Jerome pointed again. "They wanted me to wait."

"We all know to find Stephen at the dairy barn if it's a workday," she said.

"Why's that?"

"It's just true. The cattle are his project. Will's not well, I assume they told you." She extended her hand to him. "My name is Madeline Eisley. I'm called Clay City here." She smiled. "It's so your old boyfriends won't ever find you. That's what we always say among ourselves."

"Like Sister Mary Fatima?"

"Exactly," she said. She looked around. She gestured toward the other women, watching from the cottage. "We almost never get visitors. Can you tell?" She tried to wave them out into the yard, but they wouldn't come. "Janet's name here was Geneseo. Somehow it fit. You get used to things."

In the awkward pauses, Jerome looked out over the pond. Clay City looked back toward the cottage, where her friends continued to watch.

"We know you're here for Barbara," she said. "Is that right?"

Jerome nodded. "Yes."

"It took Janet longer to come for her than we thought it would."

"Yes," Jerome said. "She misses you all."

"She was unhappy here. What's your name?" This directness was much like the assuming way Stephen Boyce had taken Jerome's seat in Janet's car. When Jerome paused a beat too long, she went on. "I don't know what all Janet's told you . . ."

"I'm Jerome. She's talked about her daughter—and, of course, her husband. She talks a lot about the old days, this place. She misses this life, I think."

Clay City looked over her shoulder to the women watching. She stared out at the pond.

"Don't let me keep you from anything," Jerome said. "Maybe I'll walk back to the barn. I'd have stayed but the cows made me self-conscious. Those big brown eyes." They both laughed.

"Will's been having trouble lately. I don't know how much you know."

There was no telling what this lady meant or what she was assuming. Jerome watched her eyes, and what he saw was that she was watching his. After a while he pointed out over the pond, down a long slope to a cluster of rough shacks. "What's that?" The ground around the shacks had been bulldozed.

"We've been doing some clearing down there," she said. "When visitors come—or 'temporaries,' we call them, somebody who might want to join—they stay there. Might end up down there several weeks before they're allowed to come up and stay in the lodge." She indicated the house. "That's the lodge. A lot of kinds of people used to think they wanted to live here . . ." She smiled again. "And we, of course, would never know if we wanted them. Now nobody's coming at all," she added after a moment. "Mostly, we're losing people." She avoided his eyes. "Some of them, when they leave it's in the middle of the night. Like they feel they've failed." The pond whipped up a little in an afternoon breeze. She led him down to the edge of the water, where there was a sort of log bench. "Mostly we would get the young ones. They would always be disappointed that certain things here were about the same as in the world."

"Such as?"

"Such as the raggedy ways people relate."

The woods were very quiet except for the gentle wind. He checked back toward the barn.

"You go through times when this life out here is all you need." She shyly laughed at herself.

"I can understand why someone might want to come here to live," he said.