Admittedly this was not 1860. But as far off the main line as we all lived, respectable girls seldom got much farther than the front or back steps with an unmarried man who was not close kin --blood kin with a certified reputation. Having brothers all my life, I was hard to shock. Still it set me back a good many seconds, hearing Miss Olivia and Palmer cook my future between them--and my own brother watching with no word to slow them.

Ferny was doing nothing by then but helping the major rise and leading him out for his nap.

When I looked back at Palmer, his eyes were waiting for me, all but certainly kind. He said "It's nothing that could harm a crippled flea --the site of an old gold mine in the woods about three miles off by a beautiful plain."

Miss Olivia faced me and said "You'll be back in good time to help me with supper. Meanwhile you'll wear a pair of Palmer's old trousers, won't you? The sidesaddle's ruined, out there in the stable." She pointed toward the back of the house, the way people still do to objects that are dead or sorely missed. You might have thought her ruined sidesaddle would repair itself and float in to meet her in the next ten seconds.

I said that I guessed I could make do somehow. Then as I watched Miss Olivia's face, it gathered with what seemed the start of dread. I asked could I bring her some spirits of ammonia or an aspirin maybe--she often had headaches that she forged past like boulders in the road.

Miss Olivia said "No, it's just that you're leaving now we've all learned to love you."

n.o.body in my life, except in those few brief hours with Larkin two weeks before, had said a more welcome set of words to me. Awkward as I was, all hands and feet, I had the sense to thank the great lady I knew her to be. And as

I left her and climbed upstairs to wait in my room till she brought me the trousers, I knew the very words themselves would likely form another link in whatever chain fate was hammering out for me and mine before my eyes.

The trousers swallowed me. I was the first white woman for miles who'd wear men's pants till Katharine Hepburn started in movies nearly twenty years later and slacks were invented. Anyhow the comic picture I made eased Palmer and me into his odd and apparently sudden plan for the trip. His horse was Alec (p.r.o.nounced Ellik), a well-made chestnut gelding. Mine was a sweet old plug named Arabel that I'd already met in pasture walks.

I've mentioned not being on any kind of horse in recent years--five years at least. But one of my uncles had kept riding horses when I was a girl, and I'd gone through a normal girl's spell of being in love with the whole idea of sitting atop the world of a gentle mare's broad back and surveying things from that safe distance. I'd never once been thrown or run away with by any horse; so with Palmer beside me, I set out with no substantial fears. If there was a slight dread, it was dread of all I didn't know about Palmer Slade.

And that was everything except his height, his being a little older than Larkin and the steady strength he managed to keep at a smokeless burn somewhere deep in him. It didn't surprise me that he scarcely spoke in the first three miles. We stayed on the dirt road--all roads were dirt but some were impa.s.sable--for most of the way. And Palmer chose to ride ahead of me, saying Arabel liked to follow his horse. That was fine by me. The sky was nearer gray than blue with a cool nip in the easy wind. And in under a mile, my mind had reclaimed its old enjoyment of an elevated seat and the clean contagious rea.s.surance of even as worn a nag as mine.

Then not looking back Palmer held up a flat hand and stopped his Alec on the sandy shoulder just in my path.

Arabel stopped right up against him. Alec was her son. I pulled back on her but she wouldn't budge.

So Palmer laughed with no explanation and then said "The hard part starts just into these woods."

I said "You told me there was no big danger."

He waited what felt like at least ten minutes, then said "I may very well have told you a lie."

"Miss Olivia agreed--"

"I'm her favorite, Anna. She works for me, on my behalf anyhow."

But nothing in his face was alarming, and those were days when you didn't expect every man you met to rape you or batter your face to pulp if you wound up alone together ten seconds. So I said "Lead on whenever you're ready." I did have a slight suspicion Palmer had more plans than he'd told me. But again--being who I was, where and when --my mind offered me no scary prospects.

It turned out the hard part was as easy as falling. What Palmer had meant was a stretch of thicket and deep fallen leaves that concealed a few holes and traps in the ground. Arabel watched her son closely though and we never stumbled. After what felt like more than a mile, Palmer and Alec stopped again a few yards short of the sheer side of a fairly tall hill. It looked like a miniature stone cliff from far off. I'd never seen its like except in books, though it looked real enough. Palmer got down and came to help me. But I beat him to it, a little dazed to be back on the Earth again and thus so very much shorter than he--my eye level fell in the midst of his chest.

He took the reins of both horses and silently led them on toward the cliff. I a.s.sumed I was meant to follow and did. It was not till he'd tied both of them to saplings and walked on closer still to the cliff that I saw an opening surrounded by a wilderness of dead tangled vines.

In another few steps Palmer stood beside it and turned back to me.

I had to ask "Is this Montezuma?"

He nodded Yes.

"Where's all the gold then?" I meant to be funny. Miss Olivia had said that the mine was long abandoned.

But Palmer stood there thinking it through as if we faced a serious mystery. At last he said like a boy reciting in geography cla.s.s "Every mineral known to science has been found in the state of North Carolina. That's a fact you can count

on."

I told him I would (turned out he was right when I checked years later). Then it was I who had to say "Can we go inside?"

"You want to?"

I had to say "Isn't that part of the trip?" And for the first time since the day we met, Palmer blushed furiously as if I'd thrown berry juice all down him. Seeing a grown giant that abashed, I broke down laughing in a way I hadn't enjoyed for months.

Palmer didn't join me but waited till I finished. Then he made a stiff gesture toward the opening and said "I think I can almost get you through safely." As I stepped forward he took the b.u.t.t of a candle from his pocket and lit it to flame.

I didn't sufficiently note his word through. I thought we were dealing with a dead-end shaft. So when we'd walked a completely uneventful fifty yards through near full dark, half-stooped and with rock walls pressing close in on us and occasional wood piers and falling-down beams, I said "Maybe now's a good point to turn back." My face was covered with spider webbing, and my left hand was holding the back of Palmer's belt. He'd suggested that as the best arrangement for leading me. Then when he didn't stop, I came to rest against him and his arm came around me. That will sound like a silent movie from those same ceremonious years. It was silent all right. Neither one of us spoke.

And Palmer's arm was the only thing that moved. I could sense his breathing near to my face, but we didn't touch elsewhere than at our covered waists.

He finally said "Is Larkin truly dead?" I knew what he meant. Knowing my grammar was wrong, I still said "Not now nor never."

Palmer said "I know that."

I said "All right." And that appeared to be all he needed or at least enough to live withfor now.

He held in place another few seconds. Then his arm went down. And he turned to lead onward, not back toward the entrance.

For all I knew we were bound for h.e.l.l or a billion dollars--it was a gold mine, however deserted. The path was downhill steeply from there

on and seemed to get darker despite the candle. It may have been trust or mere desperation --who else could help me?--but for whatever reason I followed Palmer with no further question. And if there were doubts, I don't recall them. I wonder still--was I that trusting a youthful soul or just the local idiot?

After thirty more steps (i was counting anyhow), I began to feel light seeping in ahead. I felt the light before I saw it. The weight of it on my forehead helped calm me. For all I knew we'd exit on the place where Larkin waited, gilded and winged. I clearly recall I thought of that chance. Maybe this is where Palmer had been the past two weeks, hunting the way to the brother he loved. Or did he truly love him? The thoughts weren't entirely childish but almost --a final lunge by my fond hopes.

No, nothing that fanciful. Nothing that happy. But once my eyes were steadied, I could see we stood on a low rock ledge maybe eight or ten feet above a plain as flat as your hand so far as I could see with only a few low spindly pine trees at lonely intervals and pale scrub bushes. It had to be the plain that Palmer had mentioned. I'll never know why but what I said was the first thing I thought. Strange as it was it flooded my mind. I said--in fact I all but shouted in some kind of joy--"Oh Palmer, the sea! Thank G.o.d, the sea."

I'd never even called the ocean the sea before as I well remember. To the best of my belief that instant, we were looking eastward at the roaring sea. But the sea--the Atlantic Ocean anyhow --was more than a hundred miles off, due east. Someway, undistinguished though the actual view here was for beauty or strangeness, I had this overwhelming sense of the actual ocean, which I'd never seen except in dreams and occasional pictures.

Palmer's eyes narrowed as he studied the view. He grinned at some thought he didn't express. But when he finally looked down to me, he said "Shall we dive on out there then?"

To the day he died a lifetime later, I never asked him all that meant--diving into what and heading where? I doubt he could have told me, though I still think he meant it.

Nor could I have told him what I intended by saying "Yes" to his calm gray eyes,

earnest as any dying child's.

He took it for what it appeared to say. Not then and there on the edge of the plain but not long after. First we sat on the ledge beneath us, and Palmer began to talk more freely than he'd done in my presence. In many ways I felt I was back in my first and only day with Larkin, Larkin and I alone by the river before the others came out for the picnic. Like his younger brother, Palmer told me his whole life story. In general it seemed as uneventful as Lark's or my own--a few more hunting trips and sc.r.a.pes in the deep woods than I'd yet managed.

Palmer plainly had a craving for nature and wild things that Lark hadn't mentioned, but in those days that was not strange at all for a boy from the country. And Palmer gave me no hint at all, not then, of being trapped in the kind of starved body that Lark had complained ofwith so much longing. Neither did he offer a word to explain the places he went to, or whom he visited, in all his hours alone in the sticks.

I returned his confidence with my own recollections. My story was a good deal shorter than his, not because I was slightly younger but because back then I had absolutely no sense at all that anything I'd ever thought or done was of the slightest interest to the world, even my loved ones.

Palmer took it all in, though, as if it were actual shining ore from the dead mine behind us. He'd already told me the mine was abandoned when the Civil War ended. The dumb old Confederates mined it out to the last small nugget for all the good it did them in the late starving days. And when I'd brought Palmer more or less to the present by saying "And here I sit, twenty whole years old and knowing less about running a life than when I was ten," Palmer said "Don't let that slow you a bit. Somebody else can run it for you. Happens all the time under every roof." Again he faced me with those big eyes and held on as if he could sit in silence and stare at me till the sea really did rush into our plain and leave us on beachfront property, effortless, holding the deed.

By then my mind or my heart anyhow was leaning his way. Not leaning exactly, no way he could feel, but starting to burn with a heat I could feel as new and welcome.

Two more things that mattered took place before I went home the following morning. First at supper that night with everybody listening and old Coy beyond us, Palmer talked at the table--a surprise to all, I could see at a glance. And they listened to him like G.o.d at Judgment. He described our ride in the kind of detail I'd seldom heard --peculiar rocks he'd seen in the road, strange galls on tree trunks, a clutch of wild turkeys, none of which I'd seen and he hadn't bothered to mention.

He described our every step through the mine, stressing a fact he'd never told me--how dangerous the shaft was now, how likely a cave-in was any day on some luckless prowler or loving couple (he used those words). And then he told them what I'd said the moment we broke out of the mine onto daylight and my first view of the plain. When he'd mimicked my voice near perfectly, he quoted the actual words I said. Then he looked to his mother and said "You tell her, Livvie." He was all but smiling.

Miss Olivia said "Palm, you may call me Livvie if we meet in Heaven but not before."

Major Slade laughed again, an event as new as anything yet on a day of novelties. By the look on his face, laughter still pained him. But he went on and gave in to it at length.

That clearly pleased Ferny.

Then Miss Olivia turned to me. "You didn't climb down and examine the ground at the foot of your ledge?"

"No ma'm, we didn't."

"You'd have found sea sh.e.l.ls and black sharks' teeth as big as the palm of your right hand ten zillion years old at least."

The major and Fern were nodding as if this were well known to all.

I said something vacant like "It surely was lovely--"

Miss Olivia tapped the table hard with a finger as if I'd slid off to sleep in school. "The point is, Anna, you had a real vision. Where Palmer took you, from the foot of that ledge for thousands of miles on eastward toward sunrise, there once stretched an ocean in prehistoric days. Unimagined monsters swam those deeps where black snakes crawl today and red ants." She paused and studied my eyes as slowly as if

she'd never seen me till now.

Then before she stood to start clearing plates, she made her curious gesture of sweeping webs from her own eyes; and she said "I thought you had special powers from the moment I met you, girl. I was right." The fact, if it was any kind of fact, didn't seem to please or disturb her though. Her face stayed calm as she left the room, and the set of her shoulders was still strong enough to bear whole planets if the need arose.

The second thing waited till deep in the night. Father had said he'd come to get me at seven in the morning so he could get back to open the store. That was no trouble since, like any country family, the Slades were always up and busy before daybreak. Their early rising had meant I seldom got enough sleep for a young idle person, and I'd been trying to turn in by nine. In the two weeks I'd been there, I'd slept in that low narrow cubicle up in the eaves. It was normally Palmer's bedroom, as far off and private as he could get. But his mother had made him sleep with Ferny in the separate Office out in the yard while I was visiting.

The bed was narrow and the ceiling low. Even I could sit upright on the mattress, a deep feather mattress, and touch the downward slope of the roof. Of course I had a kerosene lamp to help me go to bed or rise without fumbling, and Miss Olivia had given me an ancient child's night light (a single candle with a porous white porcelain screen that showed the Good Shepherd guarding his dazed silly flock). But I used neither one of them much, being scared of setting the bone-dry pine walls and ceiling on fire and killing everybody. As a rule at bedtime I undressed in the dark and fell straight to sleep. That was never hard to do in the cold pure blackness.

So when my eyes came open in the night, in the midst of a thoroughly peaceful dream, and saw the Good Shepherd shining gently beside me, I knew right off that something had happened not of my making. I wasn't scared though. Being in this house, I thought first thing that Major had died or had another stroke. My head raised up off the pillow and looked round all the s.p.a.ce that the Good Shepherd reached. Nothing, n.o.body to the best of my knowledge.

But somebody had to have lit the candle; and it must have

been recently--no Jesus anyhow, not this time, not revealing himself nor any other raised soul. I could still smell sulfur from the match that was struck. Was Ferny playing some joke on me by way of farewell? No. Fern was no longer staying in the Office but had lately been sleeping in Major's room at the foot of Major's mattress on a trundle bed, and Fern was still too sad to think of a joke.

I propped myself up higher on an elbow and blinked my eyes to search again. By then they must have opened enough to the chilly dark to see a shape just past the light, apparently kneeling at the foot of my bed. Susceptible as I've always been to what seem like brief meetings with the dead (in my mind, understand--not ghosts in chains), I thought it might be Larkin again. That truly warmed me. Better Lark's ghost than nothing at all for nevermore. I meant to set him at earthly ease, so I said "You managing all right where you are?"

He said "I was hoping you'd ask me nearer." It was not quite Larkin's voice but close.

Recalling the night just after the drowning and Ferny's coming to me in the dark with a sound like Lark, I thought again it had to be Fern. Honest to G.o.d, I didn't think of Palmer. And I don't know why--I was generally sore in my back and legs from the afternoon's ride. I must have been unusually confused. Anyhow I said "Come as near as you need to."

In the gap between my words and his moving, I must have lain back and dozed on off. I'm still a deep sleeper, old as I am.

When I woke the Good Shepherd light was dark, and I could feel the close heat of a body. So I rolled to my left side and reached out an arm. It touched the warm flesh of a big hand and wrist. Only then did I think I understood.

I said "Is it Palmer?"

He waited. "Is Palmer who you want it to be?" He was whispering but clearly.

I took a long moment to run through the possible harm we could do. By then I knew that, whatever came, nothing would prove to be more discouraging than turning my back on a maybe last chance. I rolled to my right side, slid over to the far-wall edge of the bed and lowered the covers. Then I said "I think I want it to be you, Palmer--yes, thank you."

So it proved to be. He entered the warm s.p.a.ce where I'd been with a silent neatness almost as if he had no body but was all mind and heart.

When he'd settled, though, I could guess he was lying on his left side facing me. I was likewise almost sure he was bare from the waist up anyhow. Still I was not scared and, to my surprise then and there, not excited. After all I'd spent many nights in the same bed with near-grown boys-- my brothers whenever we'd have extra company and beds ran short. The main difference now was that I felt as if something which had been coming at me from very far off, the whole length of my life, was finally arriving. No drums or trumpets, no rose-colored fountains or phosphorus flares.

Yet nothing in my pitiful training nor all my highest expectations of grace and blessing nor any rumors that I'd heard prepared me for what to do or say the next moment. So I said something true that Palmer would nonetheless laugh about forever, just between him and me. I told him I was sore as a bad thumb from Arabel's trot. We'd trotted a good part of the way back this afternoon.

Palmer said "Well I'm told this might hurt the healthiest body on Earth if it's her first time. You want me to leave?"

I told him I didn't.