Still, she thought, skating the tips of her fingers over this photograph as she had over the one of their wedding-dance, you must have known you'd have to go there at least once before I married you, like it or not. You had something to tell me, didn't you? The story that would back up your one nonnegotiable condition. You must have been looking for the right spot for weeks. And when you saw that tree, that willow so drooped over with snow it made a grotto inside, you knew you'd found it and you couldn't put it off any longer. How nervous were you, I wonder? How afraid that I'd hear you out and then tell you I didn't want to marry you after all?

Lisey thought he'd been nervous, all right. She could remember his silence in the car. Hadn't she thought even then that something was on his mind? Yes, because Scott was usually so talkative.

"But you must have known me well enough by then..." she began, then trailed off. The nice thing about talking to yourself was that mostly you didn't have to finish what you were saying. By October of 1979 he must have known her well enough to believe she'd stick. h.e.l.l, when she didn't tell him to take a hike after he cut his hand to ribbons on a pane of Parks Greenhouse gla.s.s, he must have believed she was in for the long haul. But had he been nervous about exposing those old memories, touching those ancient live wires? She guessed about that he'd been more than nervous. She guessed about that he'd been scared to smucking death.

All the same he had taken her gloved hand in one of his, pointed, and said, "Let's eat there, Lisey-let's go under that 6."Let's eat under that willow," he says, and Lisey is more than willing to fall in with this plan. For one thing, she's hugely hungry. For another, her legs-especially her calves-are aching from the unaccustomed exercise involved in using the snowshoes: lift, twist, and shake...lift, twist, and shake. Mostly, though, she wants a rest from looking at the ceaselessly falling snow. The walk has been every bit as gorgeous as the innkeeper promised, and the quiet is something she thinks she'll remember for the rest of her life, the only sounds the crunch of their snowshoes, the sound of their breathing, and the restless tackhammer of a far-offwoodp.e.c.k.e.r. Yet the steady downpour (there is really no other word) of huge flakes has started to freak her out. It's coming so thick and fast that it's messed up her ability to focus, and that's making her feel disoriented and a little dizzy. The willow sits on the edge of a clearing, its still-green fronds weighted down with thick white frosting.

Do you call them fronds? Lisey wonders, and thinks she will ask Scott over lunch. Scott will know. She never asks. Other matters intervene.

Scott approaches the willow and Lisey follows, lifting her feet and twisting them to shake off the snowshoes, walking in her fiance's tracks. When he reaches the tree, Scott parts the snow-covered-fronds, branches, whatever they are-like a curtain, and peers inside. His blue-jeaned b.u.t.t is sticking out invitingly in her direction.

"Lisey!" he says. "This is pretty neat! Wait 'til you s-"

She raises Snowshoe A and applies it to Blue-Jeaned b.u.t.t B. Fiance C promptly disappears into Snow-Covered Willow D (with a surprised curse). It's amusing, quite amusing indeed, and Lisey begins to giggle as she stands in the pouring snow. She is coated with it; even her eyelashes are heavy.

"Lisey?" From inside the drooping white umbrella.

"Yes, Scott?"

"Can you see me?"

"Nope," she says.

"Come a little closer, then."

She does, stepping in his tracks, knowing what to expect, but when his arm shoots out through the snow-covered curtain and his hand seizes her wrist, it's still a surprise and she shrieks with laughter because she's a bit more than startled; she's actually a little frightened. He pulls her forward and cold whiteness dashes across her face, blinding her for a moment. The hood of her parka is back and snow slides down her neck, freezing on her warm skin. Her earm.u.f.fs are pulled askew. She hears a m.u.f.fled flump as heavy clots of snow fall off the tree behind her.

"Scott!" she gasps. "Scott, you scared m-" But here she stops.

He's on his knees before her, the hood of his own parka pushed back to reveal a spill of dark hair that's almost as long as hers. He's wearing his earm.u.f.fs around his neck like headphones. The pack is beside him, leaning against the treetrunk. He's looking at her, smiling, waiting for her to dig it. And Lisey does. She digs it bigtime. Anybody would, she thinks.

It's a little like being allowed in the clubhouse where her big sister Manda and her friends played at being girl pirates- But no. It's better than that, because it doesn't smell of ancient wood and damp magazines and moldy old mouses.h.i.t. It's as if he's taken her into an entirely different world, pulled her into a secret circle, a white-roofed dome that belongs to n.o.body but them. It's about twenty feet across. In the center is the trunk of the willow. The gra.s.s growing out from it is still the perfect green of summer.

"Oh, Scott," she says, and no vapor comes out of her mouth. It's warm in here, she realizes. The snow caught on the drooping branches has insulated the s.p.a.ce beneath. She unzips her jacket.

"Neat, isn't it? Now listen to the quiet."

He falls silent. So does she. At first she thinks there's no sound at all, but that's not quite right. There's one. She can hear a slow drum m.u.f.fled in velvet. It's her heart. He reaches out, strips off her gloves, takes her hands. He kisses each palm, deep in the center of the cup. For a moment neither of them says anything. It's Lisey who breaks the silence; her stomach rumbles. Scott bursts into laughter, falling back against the trunk of the tree and pointing at her.

"Me too," he says. "I wanted to skin you out of those snowpants and screw in here, Lisey-it's warm enough-but after all that exercise, I'm too hungry."

"Maybe later," she says. Knowing that later she'll almost certainly be too full for s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, but that's okay; if the snow keeps up, they'll almost certainly be spending another night here at The Antlers, and that's fine with her.

She opens the pack and lays out lunch. There are two thick chicken sandwiches (lots of mayo), salad, and two hefty slices of what proves to be raisin pie. "Yum," he says as she hands him one of the paper plates.

"Of course yum," she says. "We're under the yum-yum tree."

He laughs. "Under the yum-yum tree. I like it." Then his smile fades and he looks at her solemnly. "It's nice here, isn't it?"

"Yes, Scott. Very nice."

He leans over the food; she leans to meet him; they kiss above the salad. "I love you, little Lisey."

"I love you, too." And at that moment, hidden away from the world in this green and secret circle of silence, she has never loved him more. This is now.

7.

Despite his profession of hunger, Scott eats only half his sandwich and a few bites of salad. The raisin pie he doesn't touch at all, but he drinks more than his share of the wine. Lisey eats with better appet.i.te, but not quite as heartily as she thought she would. There's a worm of unease gnawing at her. Whatever has been on Scott's mind, the telling will be hard for him and maybe even harder for her. What makes her most uneasy is that she can't think what it might be. Some kind of trouble with the law back in the rural western Pennsylvania town where he grew up? Did he perhaps father a child? Was there maybe even some kind of teenage marriage, a quickie job that ended in a divorce or an annulment two months later? Is it Paul, the brother who died? Whatever it is, it's coming now. Sure as rain follows thunder, Good Ma would have said. He looks at his slice of pie, seems to think about taking a bite, then pulls out his cigarettes instead. She remembers his saying Families suck and thinks, It's the bools. He brought me here to tell me about the bools. She isn't surprised to find the thought scares her badly.

"Lisey," he says. "There's something I have to explain. And if it changes your mind about marrying m-"

"Scott, I'm not sure I want to hear-"

His grin is both weary and frightened. "I bet you're not. And I know I don't want to tell. But it's like getting a shot at the doctor's office...no, worse, like getting a cyst opened up or a carbuncle lanced. But some things just have to be done." His brilliant hazel eyes are fixed on hers. "Lisey, if we get married, we can't have kids. That's flat. I don't know how badly you want them right now, but you come from a big family and I guess it'd be natural for you to want to fill up a big house with a big family of your own someday. You need to know that if you're with me, that can't happen. And I don't want you to be facing me across a room somewhere five or ten years down the line and screaming 'You never told me this was part of the deal.'"

He draws on his cigarette and jets smoke from his nostrils. It rises in a blue-gray fume. He turns back to her. His face is very pale, his eyes enormous. Like jewels, she thinks, fascinated. For the first and only time she sees him not as handsome (which he is not, although in the right light he can be striking) but as beautiful, the way some women are beautiful. This fascinates her, and for some reason horrifies her.

"I love you too much to lie to you, Lisey. I love you with all that pa.s.ses for my heart. I suspect that kind of all-out love becomes a burden to a woman in time, but it's the only kind I have to give. I think we're going to be quite a wealthy couple in terms of money, but I'll almost certainly be an emotional pauper all my life. I've got the money coming, but as for the rest I've got just enough for you, and I won't ever dirty it or dilute it with lies. Not with the words I say, not with the ones I hold back." He sighs-a long, shuddering sound-and places the heel of the hand holding the cigarette against the center of his brow, as if his head hurts. Then he takes it away and looks at her again. "No kids, Lisey. We can't. I can't."

"Scott, are you...did a doctor..."

He's shaking his head. "It's not physical. Listen, babyluv. It's here." He taps his forehead, between the eyes. "Lunacy and the Landons go together like peaches and cream, and I'm not talking about an Edgar Allan Poe story or any genteel Victorian we-keep-auntie-in-the-attic ladies' novel; I'm talking about the real-world dangerous kind that runs in the blood."

"Scott, you're not crazy-" But she's thinking about his walking out of the dark and holding the bleeding ruins of his hand out to her, his voice full of jubilation and relief. Crazy relief. She's remembering her own thought as she wrapped that ruin in her blouse: that he might be in love with her, but he was also half in love with death.

"I am," he says softly. "I am crazy. I have delusions and visions. I write them down, that's all. I write them down and people pay me to read them."

For a moment she's too stunned by this (or maybe it's the memory of his mangled hand, which she has deliberately put away from her, that has stunned her) to reply. He is speaking of his craft-that is always how he refers to it in his lectures, never as his art but as his craft-as delusion. And that is madness.

"Scott," she says at last, "writing's your job."

"You think you understand that," he says, "but you don't understand the gone part. I hope you stay lucky that way, little Lisey. And I'm not going to sit here under this tree and give you the history of the Landons, because I only know a little. I went back three generations, got scared of all the blood I was finding on the walls, and quit. I saw enough blood-some of it my own-when I was a kid. Took my Daddy's word for the rest. When I was a kid, Daddy said that the Landons- and the Landreaus before them-split into two types: gomers and bad-gunky. Bad-gunky was better, because you could let it out by cutting. You had to cut, if you didn't want to spend your life in the bughouse or the jailhouse. He said it was the only way."

"Are you talking about self-mutilation, Scott?"

He shrugs, as if unsure. She is unsure, as well. She has seen him naked, after all. He has a few scars, but only a few.

"Blood-bools?" she asks.

This time he's more positive. "Blood-bools, yeah."

"That night when you stuck your hand through the greenhouse gla.s.s, were you letting out the bad-gunky?"

"I suppose. Sure. In a way." He stubs his cigarette in the gra.s.s. He takes a long time, and doesn't look at her while he does it. "It's complicated. You have to remember how terrible I felt that night, a lot of things had been piling up-"

"I should never have-"

"No," he says, "let me finish. I can only say this once."

She stills.

"I was drunk, I was feeling terrible, and I hadn't let it out- it-in a long time. I hadn't had to. Mostly because of you, Lisey."

Lisey has a sister who went through an alarming bout of selfmutilation in her early twenties. Amanda's past all that now- thank G.o.d-but she bears the scars, mostly high on her inner arms and thighs. "Scott, if you've been cutting yourself, shouldn't you have scars-"

It's as if he hasn't heard her. "Then last spring, long after I thought he'd shut up for good, I be good-G.o.ddam if he didn't start up talking to me again. 'It runs in you, Scoot,' I'd hear him say. 'It runs in your blood just like a sweetmother. Don't it?'"

"Who, Scott? Who started talking to you?" Knowing it's either Paul or his father, and probably not Paul.

"Daddy. He says, 'Scooter, if you want to be righteous, you better let that bad-gunky out. Get after it, now, don't smuckin wait.' So I did. Little...little..." He makes small cutting gestures-one on his cheek, one on his arm-to ill.u.s.trate. "Then that night, when you were mad..." He shrugs. "I got after the rest. Over and done with. Over and out. And we 'us fine. We 'us fine. Tell you one thing, I'd bleed myself dry like a hog on a chain before I'd hurt you. Before I'd ever hurt you." His face draws down in an expression of contempt she has never seen before. "I ain't never yet been like him. My Daddy." And then, almost spitting it: "f.u.c.kin Mister Sparky."

She doesn't speak. She doesn't dare. Isn't sure she could, anyway. For the first time in months she wonders how he could cut his hand so badly and have so little scarring. Surely it isn't possible. She thinks: His hand wasn't just cut; his hand was mangled.

Scott, meanwhile, has lit another Herbert Tareyton with hands that are shaking just the smallest bit. "I'll tell you a story," he says. "Just one story, and let it stand for all the stories of a certain man's childhood. Because stories are what I do." He looks at the rising cigarette smoke. "I net them from the pool. I've told you about the pool, right?"

"Yes, Scott. Where we all go down to drink."

"Yep. And cast our nets. Sometimes the really brave fisherfolk-the Austens, the Dostoevskys, the Faulkners-even launch boats and go out to where the big ones swim, but that pool is tricky. It's bigger than it looks, it's deeper than any man can tell, and it changes its aspect, especially after dark."

She says nothing to this. His hand slips around her neck. At some point it steals inside her unzipped parka to cup her breast. Not out of l.u.s.t, she's quite sure; for comfort.

"All right," he says. "Story-time. Close your eyes, little Lisey."

She closes them. For a moment all is dark as well as silent under the yum-yum tree, but she isn't afraid; there's the smell of him and the bulk of him beside her; there's the feel of his hand, currently resting on the rod of her collarbone. He could choke her easily with that hand, but she doesn't need him to tell her he'd never hurt her, at least not physically; this is just a thing Lisey knows. He will cause her pain, yes, but mostly with his mouth. His everlasting mouth.

"All right," says the man she will marry in less than a month. "This story might have four parts. Part One is called 'Scooter on the Bench.'

"Once upon a time there was a boy, a skinny little frightened boy named Scott, only when his Daddy got in the bad-gunky and cutting himself wasn't enough to let it out, his Daddy called him Scooter. And one day-one bad, mad day-the little boy stood up on a high place, looking down at a polished wooden plain far below, and watching as his brother's blood 8.

runs slowly along the crack between two boards.

-Jump, his father tells him. Not for the first time, either.- Jump, you little b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you sweetmother chickenkike, jump right now!

-Daddy, I'm afraid! It's too high!

-It's not and I don't give a s.h.i.t if you're afraid or not, you smucking jump or I'll make you sorry and your buddy sorrier, now paratroops over the side!

Daddy pauses a moment, looking around, eyeb.a.l.l.s shifting the way they do when he gets in the bad-gunky, almost ticking from side to side, then he looks back at the three-year-old who stands trembling on the long bench in the front hall of the big old dilapidated farmhouse with its million puffing drafts. Stands there with his back pressed against the stenciled leaves on the pink wall of this farmhouse far out in the country where people mind their own business.

-You can say Geronimo if you want to, Scoot. They say sometimes that helps. If you scream it real loud when you jump out of the plane.

So Scott does, he will take any help he can get, he screams GEROMINO!-which isn't quite right and doesn't help anyway because he still can't jump off the bench to the polished wooden floor-plain so far below.

-Ahhhh, sweet-smockin chicken-kikin Christ.

Daddy yanks Paul forward. Paul is six now, six going on seven, he is tall and his hair is a darkish blond, long in front and on the sides, he needs a haircut, needs to go see Mr. Baumer at the barbershop in Martensburg, Mr. Baumer with the elk's head on his wall and the faded decal in his window that shows a Merican flag and says I SERVED, but it will be awhile before they go near Martensburg and Scott knows it. They don't go to town when Daddy is in the bad-gunky and Daddy won't even go to work for awhile because this is his vacation from U.S. Gyppum.

Paul has blue eyes and Scott loves him more than anyone, more than he loves himself. This morning Paul's arms are covered with blood, crisscrossed with cuts, and now Daddy goes to his pocketknife again, the hateful pocketknife that has drunk so much of their blood, and raises it up to catch the morning sun. Daddy came downstairs yelling for them, yelling-Bool! Bool! Get in here, you two! If the bool's on Paul he cuts Scott and if the bool's on Scott he cuts Paul. Even in the bad-gunky Daddy understands love.

-You gonna jump you coward or am I gonna have to cut him again?

-Don't, Daddy! Scott shrieks.-Please don't cut 'im no more, I'll jump!

-Then do so! Daddy's top lip rolls back to show his teeth. His eyes roll in their sockets, they roll roll roll like he's looking for folks in the corners, and maybe he is, prolly he is, because sometimes they hear him talking to folks who ain't there. Sometimes Scott and his brother call them the Bad-Gunky Folks and sometimes the b.l.o.o.d.y Bool People.

-You do it, Scooter! You do it, you ole Scoot! Yell Geronimo and then paratroops over the side! No cowardy kikes in this family! Right now!

-GEROMINO! he yells, and although his feet tremble and his legs jerk, he still can't make himself jump. Cowardy legs, cowardy kike legs. Daddy doesn't give him another chance. Daddy cuts deep into Paul's arm and the blood falls down in a sheet. Some goes on Paul's shorts and some goes on his sneaks and most goes on the floor. Paul grimaces but doesn't cry out. His eyes beg Scott to make it stop, but his mouth stays shut. His mouth will not beg.

At U.S. Gypsum (which the boys call U.S. Gyppum because it's what their Daddy calls it) the men call Andrew Landon Sparky or sometimes Mister Sparks. Now his face looms over Paul's shoulder and his fluff of whitening hair stands up as if all the lectricity he works with has gotten inside of him and his crooked teeth show in a Halloween grin and his eyes are empty because Daddy is gone, he's a goner, there's nothing in his shoes but the bad-gunky, he's no longer a man or a daddy but just a blood-bool with eyes.

-Stay up there this time and I'll cut off his ear, says the thing with their Daddy's lectric hair, the thing standing up in their Daddy's shoes.-Stay up there next time and I'll cut his mothersmuckin throat, I don't give a s.h.i.t. Up to you, Scooter Scooter you ole Scoot. You say you love him but you don't love him enough to stop me cutting him, do you? When all you have to do is jump off a sweetmother three-foot bench! What do you think of that, Paul? What have you got to say to your chickenkike little brother now?

But Paul says nothing, only looks at his brother, dark blue eyes locked on hazel ones, and this h.e.l.l will go on for another twenty-five hundred days; seven endless years. Do what you can and let the rest go is what Paul's eyes say to Scott and it breaks his heart and when he jumps from the bench at last (to what part of him is firmly convinced will be his death) it isn't because of their father's threats but because his brother's eyes have given him permission to stay right where he is if in the end he's just too scared to do it.

To stay on the bench even if it gets Paul Landon killed.

He lands and falls on his knees in the blood on the boards and begins crying, shocked to find he is still alive, and then his father's arm is around him, his father's strong arm is lifting him up, now in love rather than in anger. His father's lips are first on his cheek and then pressed firmly against the corner of his mouth.

-See, Scooter old Scooter you old Scoot? I knew you could do it.

Then Daddy is saying it's over, the blood-bool is over and Scott can take care of his brother. His father tells him he's brave, one brave little sumb.i.t.c.h, his father says he loves him and in that moment of victory Scott doesn't even mind the blood on the floor, he loves his father too, he loves his crazy blood-bool Daddy for letting it be over this time even though he knows, even at three he knows that next time will come.

9.Scott stops, looks around, spies the wine. He doesn't bother with the gla.s.s but drinks straight from the bottle. "It really wasn't much of a jump," he says, and shrugs. "Looked like a lot to a three-year-old, though."

"Scott, my G.o.d," Lisey says. "How often was he like that?"

"Often enough. A lot of the times I've blocked out. That time on the bench, though, that one's stone clear. And like I said, it can stand for the rest."

"Was it...was he drunk?"

"No. He almost never drank. Are you ready for Part Two of the story, Lisey?"

"If it's like Part One, I'm not sure I am."

"Don't worry. Part Two is 'Paul and the Good Bool.' No, I take that back, it's 'Paul and the Best Bool,' and it was only a few days after the old man made me jump off the bench. He got called in to work, and as soon as his truck was out of sight, Paul told me to be good while he went down to Mulie's." He stops, laughs, and shakes his head as people do when they realize they're being silly. "Mueller's. That's what it really was. I told you about going back to Martensburg when the bank auctioned off the home place, right? Just before I met you?"

"No, Scott."

He looks puzzled-for a moment almost frighteningly vague. "No?"

"No." This isn't the time to tell him he's told her next to nothing about his childhood- Next to nothing? Nothing at all. Until today, under the yumyum tree.

"Well," he says (a little doubtfully), "I got a letter from Daddy's bank-First Rural of Pennsylvania...you know, like there was a Second Rural out there somewhere...and they said it was out of court after all these years and I was set for a piece of the proceeds. So I said what the smuck and went back. First time in seven years. I graduated Martensburg Township High when I was sixteen. Took a lot of tests, got a papal dispensation. Surely I told you that."

"No, Scott."

He laughs uneasily. "Well, I did. Go, you Ravens, peck em and deck em." He makes a cawing sound, laughs more uneasily still, then takes a big glug of wine. It's almost gone. "The home place ended up going for seventy grand, something like that, of which I got thirty-two hundred, big smogging deal, huh? But anyway, I took a ride around our part of Martensburg before the auction and the store was still there, a mile down the road from the home place, and if you'd told me when I was a kid it was only a mile I would have said you were full of s.h.i.t up to your tick-tock. It was empty, all boarded up, FOR SALE sign in front but so faded you could hardly read it. The sign on the roof was actually in better shape, and that one said MUELLER'S GENERAL STORE. Only we always called it Mulie's, see, because that 'us what Daddy called it. Like he called U.S. Steel U.S. Beg Borrow and Steal...and he'd call The Burg Pittsburgh s.h.i.tty...and...oh dammit, Lisey, am I crying?"