The 14th Day (23 page)

For a time Jory basks in this accidental freedom, a man lying in the sun in the middle of the day, someone without responsibilities. He squeezes the dirt in his hands and for a few beats of his heart the world swirls around him, he's nowhere. Then all at once he's looking into the eyes of the man he knocked down in the snow.
I killed him and now I have to pay
. The accusation moves through his entire body even as he begins to reconstruct the scene around him: the basketball arena, the work site, the spilled load. Feeling like a man who's been awakened from a shameful dream, he tries to spring upward but his ankle gives way and he falls back, catching himself with his open hand. He lets the skittering pain pass through him, then pulls himself carefully up to his knees. On all fours now, he rests for a moment. He smells the spilled dirt. Only now does he realize that Carl is yelling at him from above the incline. At last Jory pulls himself up. When he takes a tentative step he feels the throbbing in his ankle, though it can bear his weight. Carl makes his way clumsily down the incline, yelling at him all the while. “God damn it,” he shouts when he's standing beside Jory at last, “God damn it, they would give me you on this crew. You're the most useless son of a bitch …”

From above people are calling to Carl. “Hey. Wait. Don't.” A couple of men start scrambling down the hill toward them.

Jory swims out of his daze, trying by sheer concentration to put together the world before him: Carl, inches away from him, red-faced, a vein in his head prominent, other workers coming down the hill, their arms raised to give them balance, the overturned wheelbarrow, the spilled dirt. Like air currents, other thoughts move about him: I've stopped work, he realizes lightheadedly, I've given everybody a break. But his drifting is momentary and he can't keep from re-encountering Carl, who's furious, who looks ready to punch him. Jory feels a surge of sudden clarity.
Now,
the word buzzes in his head,
now
. Why not get things over with? He has one good hand. One fist to Carl's face would be worth whatever retribution the other man would exact. Jory's left hand curls into a fist, there's a metallic taste in his mouth he can remember from another time, in the cold country.

Then all at once he realizes Carl has stopped shouting. Things are very quiet and Carl's breathing has become measured, he addresses Jory in almost a whisper. “Listen, you prick,” he says, “I don't know exactly what it is you're hiding from but I know about you. And I'm going to find out. Don't you even dare go to sleep tonight thinking you're going to get away with anything.” Then the man turns away and the people coming down the hill stop. “Let's get back to work,” Carl says, as if Jory isn't even there. Dazedly, Jory watches them climb the hill. He runs the back of his hand across his lips, brushes the dirt off his clothes; but he can't brush away the memory of Carl's words.
What did he mean?
He takes another careful step: no problem. That sense of clarity and anticipation he experienced moments ago is gone, he keeps thinking about what Carl said. What did he mean, he was going to find out? About what? Could there be any way for him to know anything about what happened last winter? If not, what could he have been talking about?

What are you saying to me, Carl, what secrets of mine are you prying into? Are you asking why, when so many others stayed behind to fight and die; when some had to hide under a farmer's hay like Ila, or do whatever it was that Vaniok did back there, which has to have been something because it's marked him; are you asking why on a rainy morning I was permitted to accept a jar of soil from my uncle and step into his car so that Keslar, his driver, could take me to the border? Are you asking me what right I had to slip away so quietly, like a ghost? Or are you asking me to tell you whether even in the homeland, before the Thirteen Days, I was already a ghost? And do you think I can begin to answer your questions?

The overturned wheelbarrow is before him, at the end of a trail of spilled dirt. He looks at Carl's back. What do you know, he says to himself, what are you trying to tell me?

Vaniok comes into Royall's little office later that day. “You wanted to see me?”

Royall nods, he shuffles some papers without looking at them, then puts them down. Ever since their encounter after the basketball riot, Royall is uneasy around Vaniok. “You heard about that little incident between Carl and Jory today?” he asks.

“Yes.” The story has already made its way around. Hearing it, Vaniok's first thought had been: did they actually fight? Carl is a big man who could do a lot of damage to Jory. He's also an angry man. It wouldn't have taken him long to hurt Jory. “Nothing happened, I understand,” he says. “Just shouting.” They said Jory was pulled off the job for the rest of the day, sent back to the warehouse.

“Yeah, that's right. It isn't any big deal.” Though he's trying to make it sound trivial, Royall's face sags—he's a man with more woes than he wants. Vaniok knows his supervisor regrets having been abrupt with him the other day when, like the rest of the men, he was worried about the rumored cutbacks. He knows Royall is basically decent. But he also knows that their relationship has changed. Now Royall clears his throat and asks, “I wonder, though, if you'd kind of talk to Jory and try to make sure he sees it that way.”

Vaniok can appreciate Royall's anxiety about trouble on the job but can he really believe that lecturing Jory will have any effect? “Carl doesn't like Jory,” he says. He feels strangely detached from the problem.

Royall looks down at his papers. “People have a right to like who they like. You can't make them like each other.”

Vaniok nods. I don't like Jory very much, he thinks.

Royall looks at Vaniok steadily. “What I'm saying, though, is these are tough times.” He makes a gesture with his hand. “You hear the stories going around.” The initial tension about the cutbacks has eased off after the president announced recently that nothing is likely to be done for a few months. Royall pauses a moment. When he resumes it's in almost a pleading tone. “Well, Carl's life isn't easy,” he says. “His sister's real sick. He's kind of looking for someone to blame.”

“So he's blaming Jory.”

Royall sighs. “All I'm saying is that everybody has to have some understanding. The best way we'll get through these tough times is if we try to make allowances.”

“Yes,” Vaniok answers. But I know Carl isn't just upset about his sister's being sick, he says to himself; I know he's trying to find out something about Jory. It's been a couple of weeks since that evening in the Barn and God knows what he might have uncovered. The hair on Vaniok's arms bristles.

“Will you talk to him then?” Royall asks.

“Sure,” Vaniok agrees. “No problem.” He'd be interested in hearing Jory's side of the story.

After he leaves Royall, Vaniok manages to search out his countryman. “I understand you had some trouble with Carl,” he says.

Jory scowls. “He's an animal.” It's already clear he isn't going to want to talk about this.

“Carl has problems,” Vaniok adds halfheartedly.

“We all have problems.” Jory looks away.

Vaniok recognizes again Jory's way of making it very hard for people to help him. Still, he feels a formal obligation to tell Jory to be careful. As if I'm trying to give myself an alibi, he thinks. “Carl has many unattractive qualities,” he says, “but don't just write him off as a fool. He's persistent.” He pauses, then adds, “He won't back off, you know.”

When Jory turns toward him, his look of bravado is undercut by something else: what Vaniok sees in his eyes is what he saw when the policeman stopped them on their Constitution Day trip.
He's afraid of something,
Vaniok recognizes. “What exactly did he say to you?” he asks.

Jory hesitates before answering. At last he waves the question away. “Nothing,” he says. “Just a lot of nonsense.”

Now is the time for me to tell him what Carl told me, Vaniok thinks; but he holds back. He feels a kind of shameful excitement as he tries to put together the pieces of this story: he doesn't know what Jory's done that caused him to falsify his papers, though he knows it's something that can make him afraid; he knows that Carl is pursuing Jory without knowing what he's looking for; and he knows that Jory doesn't realize that Carl is pursuing him. At least that was the situation before today. But did Carl say something during their argument, something about looking into Jory's past? Could that account for the fear Vaniok saw in his eyes? “Look,” he says. “I'd be careful. Give Carl room. It would be very easy to antagonize him too much. Who knows what kind of trouble he could cause?” Jory, of course, dismisses the advice.

All right, he thinks after his countryman has left, have it your way. But you're in trouble, Jory. He feels a kind of abstract sympathy for him but it's strangely distant. At the same time he experiences a rush of strength: whatever happens here, Vaniok knows he can survive it. If he loses this job, he'll get another. He can make choices: he can stay in this town if he wants to. Cutbacks or no cutbacks. Meanwhile, Jory the all-powerful can hardly be as smug as he once was, preaching about their return to the homeland. As Vaniok guessed long ago, Jory isn't somebody destined to stay here very long. Regardless of what happens with Carl, it's only a matter of time before something happens to turn Jory's stay here sour. All Vaniok has to do is to wait and this irritant, this shadow-stealer, will be gone.

The next day Ila asks to see Vaniok and when they get together at the coffee shop the first thing she wants to know about is what happened to Jory at work. “A disagreement,” he tells her. “This man Carl is a hothead. It's no surprise.” Though this is true enough he's aware he's not telling the whole truth.

Ila is silent a long time. “I worry about Jory,” she says. Vaniok listens carefully to the way she's talking about him. Something in her voice reminds him of his earlier guess that things are not destined to go well between her and Jory.

“And you want me to help him?” he smiles. “Why would he listen to me?”

Ila says nothing for a few seconds. She's actually asking me for help, Vaniok thinks. He's not sure how this makes him feel. “Oh, Vaniok,” she says at last, “I sometimes wish we could turn the clock back. Yes, even I have thoughts like that sometimes.”

There are few people in the coffee shop. From across the room they can hear a spoon striking china. For the moment Vaniok forgets about Jory. A future looms before them, vast and uncertain. “What about you?” he asks. “Are you worried about those cutbacks everyone is talking about?”

“No,” she says. “I don't think anything is going to happen at the inn.” In the silence that follows they can hear the muted sounds of another conversation in the almost empty coffee shop and for a time Vaniok listens, trying to make out what the speakers are saying, until his attention is broken by Ila's telling him with an air of defiance, as though someone has challenged her, “I don't intend to stay at the inn forever.”

“Oh?” Vaniok is curious, he's intrigued by her shift of mood.

She looks into the distance. “I'm going to sign up for a course in real estate,” she says. Then after a pause she continues, “There are places in this country where you can make a success in that business.”

He looks at her, his heart suddenly heavy though at the same time he's thinking,
She's going to leave him
. How did Jory react to the news about the real estate course, he wonders, and then checks himself: what if she hasn't told Jory yet? He contemplates the fascinating possibility, attentive now, elated at the realization that his cousin has chosen to tell this much to him. At the same time he can't find any happiness in the possibility of Ila's leaving this town. But still, she felt free to confide in him: he and Ila are close again. His heart full of emotion, he smiles. “You're going to be a millionaire someday, Ila,” he says.

She cocks her head. “I might surprise you.” They listen for a moment to the sounds in the coffee shop: no one is speaking, there's no clatter of cups, of spoons. The two of them could be alone in the universe. Then she asks, “What about you? What if the things people are talking about turn out to be true?”

“I'm staying here, whatever happens at the university,” he says decisively. The declaration surprises him. He's never really put it to himself this way before but, having said it, he realizes that it's what he believes. “Yes,” he says. “That much I've decided.”

She nods, her green eyes full of understanding. “This place seems to agree with you.” She reaches across the table and takes his hand.

So she's told Vaniok what she hasn't told yet to Jory, to anyone, something she had no idea she was going to say before she said it. Still, she's glad it turned out that way. Ila walks toward her car as if, now that the word is out, she has to get home right away and phone Zita to tell her she's going to sign up for that real estate class. But she can't do that yet. There are certain things she has to settle first and she's going to have to do them the right way. Having told Vaniok, she has to tell Jory, and soon. Really, what she says shouldn't surprise him, it can't—Jory is no fool; but he's a man whose feelings run deep and she has to be careful about how she delivers the news, she doesn't want to hurt him. I've done it now, she acknowledges, I've started it; now I have to deal with the consequences.

The university's gardens are out of her way but she makes a detour and enters the densely green acreage bounded by a low stone wall. Lion-colored, Jory called it, and he's exactly right. One of the things she's especially loved about him is the way he can make her look at the world differently, and seeing that tawny wall saddens her. The gardens enclosed by the lion-colored stone are green this evening; the blossoms are long gone and the foliage gives off the smell of summer.
Why did I tell Vaniok first, how much did I communicate to him about what's happening between Jory and me?
She and her cousin used to come to this place before Jory arrived, to look at the flowers, to talk, to marvel that they'd turned up here. That seems like a simpler, more peaceful time but Ila knows that even as she strolled slowly along the dirt paths with Vaniok, she was feeling the need for something to happen, she couldn't keep walking those paths forever.