The Fall of Alice K. (30 page)

Lydia was guessing that Alice's relationship with Nickson was progressing nicely, which indeed it was. She would ask indirect questions, like “Did you know that Nickson is taking advanced calc and is at the top
of his class?” and “Nickson looks more and more at home at Midwest all the time, don't you think?”

Alice usually changed the subject. For some reason, her relationship with Nickson was not something that she wanted to discuss with Lydia. Not yet, anyhow. She was afraid that Lydia would start asking the tough questions, like “Do you really think this thing with Nickson can go anywhere?”

Alice kept her focus on efficient planning so that she could get together with Nickson almost every night. She saved money by skipping school lunches and eating her supper leftovers. She alternated between using the Taurus and the 150 and used her lunch money for gas—one or two dollars at a time so no one would notice a suspicious change on the gas gauges.

The farmland around Dutch Center became the setting for their private hours. They had the radio and the starlit sky, they had the concealing curtains of abandoned barns and corncribs, and they had the sight, smell, and warm touch of each other.

They started taking items of clothing off and exploring each other's flesh. Each night brought a cautious advancement of intimacy, and one night's restraint led to the excitement of the next. She held his hardness in her hand. He kissed her breasts. They knew where this was leading and never talked about stopping it. It felt right. It was meant to be. He said when they found the right time and place, he would bring condoms so she would not have to worry about that. Instead of frightening her, his preparations deepened her trust. She could not feel guilt for what was happening. She did not pray for God's blessing on what they were doing, but she felt Nickson's and her love for each had something to do with God's love for everyone.

Lydia's magic medication was showing no signs of improving Alice's face, but Nickson told her that she didn't have to worry about the acne. She didn't even have to put on makeup if she didn't want to.

“There isn't a blemish in the world that could hide your beauty,” he said. “And everything about you is beautiful, not just your lovely face.”

On an evening when she wore no makeup and on which she felt totally free to be her natural self, she and Nickson made love for the first time. It was in an alfalfa field, behind a grove, under the stars, and it did not
feel like a big change from what they had been doing for several nights of exploring each other's naked bodies. The final step was a natural step, not just to join their bodies but to join their bodies with the cool green plants of the earth against them. To make love while being connected to the earth itself. Earth and sky around them and the cool breeze on their flesh, his easy caution with a condom, the ease and then the intense pleasure of coming together. Everything was in harmony. It was Paradise before the Fall. They took turns positioning themselves, first one getting to stare into the star-filled heavens and then the other. Sometimes she felt they were doing things to and for each other that no other lovers had ever thought of.

One night as she drove him home, he cruised the radio stations and stopped on the classic western radio station. They listened to “Heaven's Just a Sin Away.” When the chorus came around the second time, they sang it together.

“Do you like country western?” he asked.

“Not until now,” she said.

“I really like country western,” he said, “but I can't play it when Mai is around. She thinks it's corny.”

Alice had always thought of herself as a planner, but she never planned for this adventure of love. She had not planned on meeting the most incredible human being on the face of the earth during her senior year in high school. Now that the unplanned had happened, she was determined to make plans inside this new unplanned world. It was like a game with its own rules and problems. One of her favorite challenges was determining when and where. She was constantly watching for new and private places. New love nests. Low-maintenance dirt roads were good, but too often other young lovers would be there too, and she'd have to drive elsewhere. She liked fields that were hidden behind groves on abandoned farms, ones that had little private dirt farm roads leading up to them and that she could drive down with the lights turned off. They did not return to Ludson, though she never asked Nickson after that if he had his gun with him, but since he always had his backpack, she assumed he did. He said he would never carry it loaded, and she would make sure he would never be tempted to use it. She now knew that he loaded the gun by slipping the clip of bullets into the handle grip. He said there was one more step before he could fire the gun. She didn't ask what that was. She trusted him.

One night of lovemaking, Nickson introduced another new element into her life. He had a little tube the size of a cigarette. She thought it
was
a cigarette.

“What's that?”

“A little one-hitter,” he said. “Want to try it?” He had a small green bag of what looked like alfalfa leaves. “This is very mellow,” he said.

“Is that marijuana?”

“This is marijuana,” he said. “You don't have to try it, but do you mind if I do?”

“Marijuana is not addictive,” she said with an authority that she had not earned.

“Of course not,” he said.

“Sure, I'll try a little,” she said, “but I don't know how to inhale.”

They both took only one puff from his one-hitter. She inhaled only a little bit and didn't think she felt anything. She just felt like talking, and then like touching his face, first with her fingers, and then her lips, and then she wanted to make love—but she had wanted that before the marijuana.

After that, the one-hitter was a regular partner. On a night when Alice took the 150, they decided to use the cargo bed. All they had was an old blanket, but they still had the moon and stars above, and she parked in a spot where the only smells were of mulching leaves and drying cornstalks.

Alice lay naked on her back in the cargo bed, staring up into the dark and glittering universe. Nickson's warm lips and hands roamed warmly across her body, touching gently, kissing as he explored. His face stopped between her opened legs, kissing her, but then his lips stopped and he inhaled her intimate scents. Am I clean? she wondered but did not tense up. He lifted his face in the starlight. “If there is a heaven,” he said, “every flower will smell like that.”

The suspension system of the 150 adjusted quietly to their presence. The hard-ridged cargo bed felt cushioned. The springs of the 150 did not squeak.

Another time they went out into a cow pasture, found a place where the cows had not defecated, and spread out a blanket on the short grass. Some cows gathered around them curiously but offered only sighs of
mild approval. When it rained, she took the Taurus and pulled off into a private place and they stayed in the car, put the front seats back against the backseats and adjusted to the various humps and slopes.

Nickson was always very careful with his protection. One night they used four condoms, and she started worrying about the expense.

“I should be helping pay for those,” she said.

“No way,” he said.

“Where do you buy them?”

“I don't buy them,” he said. “Mai buys them for me.”

“What? So she knows what we are doing and how often we're doing it?”

“I guess,” he said.

“Doesn't she ask any questions?”

“Of course not,” he said, “she's my sister.”

Alice decided that other people should not be an issue, but the November nights were getting colder, and outdoor loving could soon be a problem. Although the barn had changed in ways she did not like, the haymow was still intact the way it was in the old days when they still had cows. Taking Nickson to the haymow would combine her childhood love of the barn with her new and larger love of Nickson. With her parents sleeping soundly, there was no reason why they couldn't drive back to the farm. She could park the car and they could quietly walk to the barn. They could move around the steers and climb up into the haymow that held all the sweet memories of her childhood.

Sometimes Alice did wonder what it would be like to make love in a bed with box springs and a soft, level mattress. Would the soft convenience of everything make the pleasure greater? She couldn't imagine how or why. It was true that having a door you could close and curtains you could pull down would give privacy, but she would miss the sight of the moon and stars and the fresh air on their skin. She would miss the smell of alfalfa or grass. She would miss the sounds of night birds and the smell of animals. Did the people who made love in beds with closed doors even know what they were missing? She wondered if Lydia had ever known this kind of pleasure with a man. She wondered but hesitated to talk to her about it. She was afraid that Lydia would make sex seem like something that was much less magnificent than it really was.

31

Of all the buildings on the Krayenbraak farm, the big gambrel-roofed red barn was still Alice's favorite, in spite of all the changes it had gone through. It was over a hundred years old, but it did not have the tired swayback look of some aging barns in the neighborhood, the ones with flaking skin and creaking joints. The Krayenbraak barn had kept its luster over the years. Its windows were free from cataracts of caked dust, and the rooster weather vane on top of the metal cupola still spun like a ballerina in the wind.

To Alice, the old barn had more character than their house—and it had more pleasant memories. When she was ten, she had thought of it as her private refuge. When she was troubled, she would leave the confusing energy of the house and go to the barn to see the animals, and often to talk to them. She would think of all the animals that must have been born here: not just the calves but all of the birds—pigeons, sparrows, swallows—some of them appearing without warning after migrating hundreds of miles and choosing to build their nests here. What guided them? she wondered. What strange forces of nature sent out a welcoming signal in the sky, saying, “Here here here, this is the place for you to find your home?” At ten, Alice thought that the new birds arrived and stayed because they knew she was waiting for them, but, at ten, she also thought that the swaying trees caused the wind. That magical year—and even now the barn felt like a guardian of that old magic.

Some things were terribly different now that the ground floor had been turned into one large open space for the feeder cattle, but the haymow had not changed. It still held its old magic for her, and she still found it to be a place of peace. No other place on the farm gave so much space and privacy at the same time, with open space rising up thirty feet
and the walls separated by forty feet—and yet the silence, the safety, the privacy. In the haymow she could sit and listen to the hushed whispering of the wind and the choir of pigeons and sparrows. Sometimes she thought the cupola was like a steeple with its spinning weather vane pointing to heaven.

The haymow offered food for her spirit and hay for the animals. Almost all the hay that was stored in the haymow was fed to the animals every year—but never all of it. The haymow was like a big cauldron that would have more added to it before the original ingredients were gone, so it was never totally empty. Some of the hay dust could have been from the days of her grandfather and great-grandfather, when Dutch would have been the only human language spoken here in the presence of the varied songs of sparrows and pigeons and starlings and swallows—and the rare and beautiful barn owls.

Her ancestors must have loved this haymow as much as she did. Some of them would have made love here. It was impossible that they would not have. The smells of the alfalfa hay were sweet and musky. Alfalfa that was matted when wet and then dried out had this rich and lusty smell. She imagined that in the good years her parents might have made love in the haymow. In the years before Aldah. In the years before they both lost their dreams to expense columns and balance sheets. And her great-grandfather—the one who thought a radio show called
Father Knows Best
was a blasphemy because only the Heavenly Father knew best—him with his handlebar moustache and hawk eyes, he must have had his way with his lady in this haymow. Alice could forgive her ancestors for their hardnosed Calvinism when she imagined them making love here. She could love them for loving here.

There were hay bales now instead of the old loose hay, but the haymow still had the lush smells and the privacy. If there was anything else on earth that she would want to share with Nickson, it was this space—and immediately her mind started working on how she might make that possible. It was such a grand desire that she could hardly believe how simple it would be to make the wish come true. She would simply pick him up as usual and come back to the farm and to this very haymow while her parents slept. If she picked Nickson up at their usual time, they could be together in the haymow for at least an hour and she'd still have
the 150 back home before nine, giving it plenty of time to cool down before her father drove it to work.

When she told Nickson of her desire to take him back to the farm and to the haymow, he looked worried, but when she told him how simple and safe it would be, he agreed. When she drove up that night, Nickson came out of the Vang house without his backpack. There would be no gun. This was the perfect beginning to a beautiful evening. She turned off the headlights as she came onto the farmyard and let the 150 swoop slowly toward the barn. She went in first and coaxed the cattle outside. Then she took Nickson's hand and led him to the ladder up into the haymow and to the spot where she had hidden a blanket under a bale of hay. She scattered loose alfalfa over a raised platform of bales on a spot where the moonlight came through a haymow window and gave them a rectangle of light. She put the blanket over the loose hay and patted their mattress.