Quarrel with the Moon Page 11

  His black hair was wild and tangled as if it had been blown by the wind, or perhaps stirred by an amorous hand. It was longer than Josh's, and thicker. Although his eyes were partly shaded by his errant hair, Cresta saw that his gaze was fixed upon Josh. He seemed incapable of blinking. Orin's skin was bronzed, making his large, white teeth appear even larger. He moved forward on the balls of his feet, his pelvis thrust forward. Sexual arrogance radiated from him like electricity.

  He wore no shirt. His massive chest was covered by a snakeskin vest, and his pants were made of a soft, clinging leather. Circling his waist was a wide belt with a huge buckle of polished brass which caught the light and drew the eye to his crotch. Cresta suspected that it was meant to do so.

  He reminded her of a woodland deity, a god of the forest, a veritable grown-up faun. Had he appeared nude, wrapped in nothing but damp leaves, Cresta would not have been surprised.

  She knew that he embodied the darker side of her sexual fantasies. He was Josh the intellectual become Josh the brute. Cresta watched Orin as he scanned the congregation and knew the exact moment when he saw Josh. What was the emotion which altered his face? Anger? Shock? Curiosity? All those and something more. It was an expression of defiance. With visible effort, Orin rearranged his face into a pleasant smile of welcome and strode forward to meet his lookalike.

  Josh and Orin stood before each other without speaking for several minutes. Had they been separated by an empty frame, and had their clothes been the same, it might have appeared that one man was gazing at himself in a mirror.

  The musicians put down their instruments and the dancers stopped dancing. Slowly tension spread to fill the Community House. Cresta half-expected the men to circle and sniff one another like warring animals. Instead, they extended their hands to each other. Then, laughing, they embraced, parted and looked at one another once again. Then everybody laughed and the tension disappeared.

  Roma sidled up to Cresta. "My, my, seein' them together like that, I just don't know which one I like the best, do you?" Without waiting for an answer, she sashayed over to the musicians and made a request for a moderately slow two-step. The band began to play.

  Orin stepped in front of Cresta. "Would the lady from New York like to dance?" He grabbed her waist and swept her onto the floor.

  Orin's flesh was so warm that he felt like he'd been lying in the hot sun, and his scent was powerful - the smell of burning leaves in autumn. He pressed his body against hers. "Where is Josh?" she asked weakly. "I promised this dance to Josh."

  "Roma is entertainin' my cousin," Orin replied blandly. Then he swung her around, and she saw them. Roma had her arms around Josh's neck and he had his hands placed firmly upon her hips. Cresta pressed closer to Orin. She came to the realization that Orin danced exactly like Josh. He held her hand low and intertwined their fingers. His other hand stroked her waist to the rhythm of the music. Even the foot movements were the same. Orin, just like Josh, veered to the left.

  "How do you feel about having a lookalike?" she asked.

  "It's a surprise. A blow to the ego, perhaps. Two of myself, it's hard to imagine." Orin's voice, although colored by his accent, was similar in pattern and intonation to Josh's. Cresta looked at Orin's face. Except for the hair length and complexion they looked exactly the same ... and yet there was a difference. Orin's right eyebrow was slightly higher than the left. Josh had just the opposite. A small mole decorated Orin's left cheek. That same mole rested on Josh's right cheek. Their hair fell in the same manner. If Orin employed a part, he would have been forced by his hair's natural fall to part it on the left. Josh parted his on the right. They were exactly the same except that everything was the opposite. They were mirror images.

  "Is my cousin a good lover?" asked Orin.

  "Don't you think that's an impertinent question?"

  "No. Aren't you curious about me?"

  "Who should I ask?"

  "Any of the girls here, the fetching ones."

  "Roma included?"

  "Ask her first." He pulled her closer and moved the flat of his hand in a circular motion against the small of her back. Cresta started. It felt as if he had pressed hot coals against her flesh. Cresta's eyelids fluttered shut, the lashes casting tiny shadows across her cheeks. She had to part her lips in order to get enough air. She held onto Orin, inhaling his scent, tasting it. Orin began running his fingertips up and down the indentation made by her spine, and as he did, he ground his pelvis against her.

  "Don't," she murmured weakly. "Please don't."

  The body heat he generated poured into her until it seemed that her veins flowed with liquid fire. Beads of perspiration broke out on her temples, merged and trickled down her neck. Cresta was afraid that she was falling under his spell and would be lost forever. She was becoming dizzy. She had to open her eyes, had to make sure that she was on a country dance floor and not drowning in a lake of liquid sensuality.

  Her eyes snapped open. Orin was staring directly into them. For a moment she felt as if she were going to faint. His lips parted and she felt his breath burn against her face. She inhaled, sucking his breath into her mouth.

  "I want you," he said. The words frightened her. They were neither a question nor a compliment. They were a command.

  "No!"

  Cresta broke away from Orin's grasp and hurried to Josh, who was standing with Roma near the refreshment table. Defiantly, Roma handed Cresta a brimming cup of punch. Cresta emptied it into the galvanized tub and said, "Josh, I want to go."

  To her surprise, Josh agreed. They said goodbye to those who were nearest, and Josh made Avarilla promise to join them in the camper for breakfast. On the way out, Josh waved to Orin, who did the same with a grin.

  ***

  Orin took Roma's hand and pulled her to the center of the dance floor. They looked at one another and smiled. Then Orin raised his arm and signaled the musicians. The older men left the platform; their young pupils took over. Gathering close together, faces creased with concentration, they began to play.

  Avarilla nudged Reuben. He quickly poured another bottle of his brew into the nearly empty punchbowl. Avarilla added spices and apple cider. She tested it and pronounced "Right perky." Then she returned to her seat to watch the young people dance.

  The ensuing music was intense, pulsating, almost savage in its liberation. It filled the night with primitive vibrancy.

  11

  Sissy's glazed eyes were fixed on the intricate patterns overhead. Random moonlight spilling into her room covered the ceiling with patches of yellow mold. Sissy grunted and pushed her body upwards. She tossed her head from side to side until her hair was sodden with perspiration. Her cries of pain reverberated around the room; now the patches seemed to be moving.

  She was lying in the center of her bed, her feet drawn up to her buttocks; her hands gripped the headboard. The nightshift she wore was so twisted it looked as if it had been wrung out with Sissy still in it.

  She let go of the headboard, ran her hands over her stomach and stroked the taut flesh. She could feel them inside her, each struggling to be the first one out. Throwing her head back, she cried out in agony and relief. The pains were coming quicker now and she remembered: that was the way it had been before, so many years ago.

  "Ahhhhh, God in Heaven!" Sissy wailed. "Soon. Make it soon!" The room seemed to be panting along with her, urging her on, giving her support. A cool breeze had entered through the window and chilled the sweat-soaked sheets. Sissy began shivering. "Sweet Jesus, please make it happen now, please!" She kicked her swollen legs out flat and drew them up again, banging the calloused heels of her feet against her writhing buttocks. Sissy ground her teeth together and pushed hard, so hard that she could feel her sphincter contract and begin to throb.

  "Help me! Help me!"

  Sissy began squeezing her belly. The pain returned, so intensely that her entire body was lifted several inches from the bed. "Please - stop - the - pain!" she gasped.

  Sissy w
as having difficulty breathing. How soon would it happen? Why weren't they coming out? Her stomach muscles tightened into a spastic knot. She dug her fingers into her abdomen and squeezed until her self-inflicted pain was greater than the labor. Suddenly she knew they were starting to be born.

  ***

  The camper, white and glowing in the moonlight, appeared to float among the waves of foliage which surrounded it like a dark green ocean. A mist of fog swirled over the tops of the trees; on higher ground fireflies flashing signals resembled the lights of a distant harbor.

  Cresta lay on the bed, watching Josh as he undressed. She was feeling passionate, but dared not admit to herself the reason. Josh's movements were slow. Cresta knew him well enough to realize that he had consumed just the right amount of alcohol to make him sleepy.

  "Would you like a cup of coffee, Josh?"

  "No thanks, love, it will keep me up."

  He sat down on the bed and struggled out of his jeans. Cresta pressed her cheek against his back and stroked his smooth shoulder.

  "Cresta, please. We have to be up in a few hours."

  Cresta drew back. "All right, but would you refuse the mountain girl, I wonder?"

  "No more than you'd refuse my cousin," replied Josh tersely. Then he got under the light blanket and turned so that he was facing the wall.

  Resigned, Cresta went into the bathroom. Her nerves were taut, and she knew that she would have trouble sleeping unless she had a little help. She opened the medicine cabinet and found the Valium. She took two, feeling guilty. She had vowed at the beginning of the trip that she would stop putting anything artificial in her body.

  After checking that the doors were locked, she turned out the lights and returned to the bedroom. She was tempted to lie close to Josh but knew that that would only frustrate her more. She ached to press her lips against his marble-smooth back and wrap her arms around him.

  Cresta tried to think of soothing things, but images of Orin kept invading her mind. She closed her eyes tightly and with all her willpower tried to force the thoughts away. She was not successful. Orin's scent, Orin's flesh, Orin's overpowering sexual presence possessed her. She imagined his weight on hers. Would it be the same as it was with Josh, or would it be different? Did Orin embody that forbidden fantasy that many women harbor? That of being ravished by a brutal, coarse and bestial man?

  Cresta shuddered and turned to Josh. She touched him, but he didn't stir. She pressed her cheek against his back, trying to regulate her breathing to his. Within ten minutes she was matching Josh's slow, easy pattern. The Valium began to take effect. Cresta's eyes fluttered shut and she, too, slept.

  ***

  At the Community House, Reuben leaned against the post where Cresta had stood. He gazed dully at the dancers, unmoved by the twangy rhythms of the music. He did not tap his feet; he did not clap his hands. To a casual observer, Reuben might have been deaf and blind.

  But he was reacting to what he saw. Each time Orin and Roma rounded the dance floor, Reuben blinked his eyes, and when he did, Orin changed to Josh and then back again. Damn it, which one was it? Why were they playing tricks on him? He narrowed his eyes to slits and tried to get a clear image, but they continued switching back and forth. Orin, Josh, Orin, Josh, Orin, Josh. He willed his eyes closed. The sweet scent of Cresta's hair still clung to the post. He sniffed the rough wood and pressed his open lips against its surface. A thin ribbon of drool ran down his chin. He didn't dare look back at the dance floor, or else he would be lost forever to a memory that he could not allow to return.

  Reuben heard a moan and thought how odd that it had come from his own lips. He shaded his eyes with his hand, stumbled to the back door and never looked back. The astringent night air made him feel better. He had started back to the Thicket and his soft bed of hay when he remembered that he had brought all his bottles to the social. He would have to make his way through the darkness to his still. He started to go back and collect his lantern, but he didn't want to return to the Community House. The clouds suddenly parted and the moon, high and bright, cast strange yellow shadows across the landscape. The moon would show him the way.

  ***

  Avarilla scanned the Community House, searching for Reuben. She asked Faye and Jewell if they had seen him. They looked at one another uneasily and shook their heads. Sophie interrupted. "I saw him, Avarilla, uh huh, I saw him. He left just a little bit ago. Looked like he needed to get some fresh air."

  Avarilla frowned. It was the unspoken code of the hills not to acknowledge the frailties of one's relatives. Sophie bubbled on. "Looks like you'll need company going home, Avarilla. I'll be glad to walk with you."

  "Nonsense," Avarilla replied, knowing that it was Sophie who wanted the company, not her. "I'm not a schoolgirl." Then, without preamble, Avarilla picked up her cup of punch and hurried to the other side of the building.

  Sophie, realizing that she had angered Avarilla, became flustered. She turned to the two granny women and said, "Goodness, here I am a'lolly-gaggin', and I came to lend a hand."

  "Got plenty of hands," Faye replied tersely, and Jewell nodded in agreement.

  Sophie forced a smile and looked away from the two women to see Marinda clutching her sides and laughing. Laughing at her. Sophie backed away from the table. "Well ...," she murmured and ducked behind a partition made from stored sacks of feed. She opened her drawstring bag and retrieved a cardboard fan. It came from a funeral parlor in Jericho Falls and featured a hand-tinted portrait of Jesus Christ. She bit down on her lower lip. She wasn't going to cry. She wasn't.

  Sophie sat down on a sack of corn. It was time to go. Who would walk home with her? She hated the nighttime in the mountains - the noisy blackness, the dark cries, the sounds with no names. Perhaps she'd ask Orin. Of all the people on the Ridge, he was the most polite and thoughtful. Yes, that was it. Orin would walk her home, even if that Roma Underwood didn't like it.

  From the other side of the feed sacks came Jewell's voice, made harsher by alcohol. "Orin's second cousin, my foot! They're alike as two peas in a pod."

  "Shhhh, Jewell. Not so loud," admonished Faye.

  "It made my blood run cold, seein' the two of them together, made me remember what we both should have forgotten a long time ago."

  Sophie leaned around the wall of sacks as far as she dared. Their voices rose and fell in crackling tones, like an old-time radio program. At first Sophie eavesdropped out of sheer curiosity; then, as their words began to take on darker meanings, she listened in earnest.

  After a time Sophie fled from the Community House, more afraid of what she was hearing than the night.

  ***

  Arm in arm, Jewell and Faye approached the covered bridge. Faye's house lay off to their right, down a narrow path by the cornfields. Jewell lived further down the road, opposite the Thicket.

  "After all, Jewell," Faye was saying, "Rev'rend Hooper tol' us hisself that the deformed baby died. Praise be to God! He swore that him an' Aunt Avvie buried it somewheres on the grounds."

  Jewell was still worried. "Maybe so, Faye. But ever since night, so much has changed. Everythin' is different."

  "The times have changed, Jewell. The young people think different than us, just as we grew up to think different from our folks."

  "Not that different," muttered Jewell.

  "It sometimes happens. You remember the Jutes from over Cheat Holler? All of 'em looked exactly alike - snub noses, pig eyes, big fat butts. Why I could tell a Jute if I ran into one in Hawaii."

  "You've never been to Hawaii," giggled Jewell.

  "Well, if I was an' ran into someone with a snub nose, pig eyes an' a big, fat butt I sure as shootin' would know they was a Jute."

  "Remember that oldest Jute girl? I don't remember her name, but everyone called her Petunia - Petunia Pig." Jewell laughed. "Don't know what ever happened to the Jutes. We used to see 'em every year at the Spring Picnic. 'Member, it was at one of them Spring Picnics that Sissy got that wasp in her ear."
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  "I remember," replied Faye, "and she never was right after that. Aunt Avvie's sure got her cross to bear - an idiot for a daughter, and that Reuben. His brain is plum pickled from alcohol - just never know how she manages to stay the same sweet angel from God."

  "She certainly is. Remember how she attended us in our grief when our husbands was killed?"

  "I do," replied Faye. She looked at her friend. "Who do you suppose fathered those twins of Sissy's?"

  "I always thought it was Sophie Balock's husband."

  "I did, too. He always had a hot eye on Sissy."

  "Well, here's your path," said Jewell. "Now, you sure you don't want me to walk you, Faye?"

  "'Course not. Why I know this old path so well that if I was struck blind I could find my way home." The two women kissed one another on the cheek.

  Faye hiccupped. "I started to say, I'll see you at church in the morning. I wish things hadn't changed so. I miss it."

  "I do, too," Jewell replied. Then she began to sing, "I'm gonna see my Jesus, when I get home."

  Faye, getting into the spirit of the moment, joined her, and the two women began harmonizing. "I'm gonna see my Jesus, when I get home. I'm gonna see my Jesus, I'm gonna see my Jesus, I'm gonna see my Jesus, when I get home."

  Still singing, the two women parted and eventually Faye could hear only her own high, thin voice in the night. "... Gonna see my Jesus...."

  The kerosene lantern divided the dark as Faye made her way. She sang to the heavens. The sky had become frosted with stars, and a sudden falling star caused her to gasp with delight. She made a quick secret wish and hurried on, anxious to put her weary body to bed.

  "... See my Jesus, when I get home. I'm gonna...."

  Suddenly Faye's pudgy feet flew out from under her and she went sprawling. The lantern fell on its side and went out. She lay on the ground for a full minute before recovering her breath. Then she felt for her lantern, found it, but couldn't relight it because she hadn't brought matches with her. Exploring with her hands, Faye examined the pathway to find out what had caused her fall. She grasped a small, hard, round object and then found several more. What were they? Marbles? She held them close to her face and sniffed. The round objects smelled of citrus. "Sourballs," she muttered with surprise. "One of the youngsters must have dropped them." Groaning, Faye got back on her feet. Her heavy body ached from the fall, and she feared she'd have to stay in bed the following morning nursing the bruises. Still, nothing was broken.