the bed. When she was very close, he moved. She stopped and called his name again.
He sat up on the bed and propped his chin in his hands, his elbows pressed into his thighs.
“You alright? You alright?” Clarice peered into his face. “Your eyes are red.” He closed his eyes. “This place is a mess, man. Where is the window? Delores, don’t just stand there, open the windows, eh?” Delores moved quickly to the window in the bathroom. She did not look at him. She stayed in the bathroom.
“I can’t believe you wouldn’ tell anybody where you were. What is wrong with you? Mama is very worried about you.” Clarice was moving around the room trying to create some semblance of order. After a while she gave up. “Hey? Hey? Talk to me. Are you alright?”
He stared into a corner of the room. He wanted them to leave. He began to smell the room properly now. The waft of air from the open window and the cracked door stirred up the latent musk. He chuckled to himself.
Clarice said: “Delores wants to talk to you. Now hear, she didn’t want to come so don’t get upset and start bawling her down, but I think this is pure foolishness so you better talk to her. I mean, you must be gone mad, man. She deserve better. It’s alright if you want to vex and confuse everybody else, but this woman hasn’t done anything to be made a fool of like that . . .”
“Clarice, please . . .” Delores said from the bathroom.
“You see? She is afraid of you. Anyway, right is right. Please. Explain yourself, sir.” Clarice stood in front of him. He stared at her feet. “My God. You haven’t even combed your hair!” She placed her hand on his head and raised it so he had to stare at her face. She had on makeup: pink lipstick—he hated that; she must have come straight from work. “You look bad, sah. Delores, come out of there. Come. Talk to him.”
He got up and stretched. Clarice stepped back. He got down on his knees and reached under the bed for his sneakers. He sat on the bed and slapped them on the floorboards. Then he pulled them on. He ignored the laces.
“You can’t just change your mind about a wedding, okay? There are other people involved, not to mention Delores. You can’t be so selfish, man. People will start calling you a madman.”
He got up and moved to the bathroom. Delores moved away from him as if he was a madman. She sensed something disquieting about his silence. She was afraid. He turned on the tap and splashed his face.
“Look, you better say something. The cake is still there, the food is spoiled, but we can work that out. Delores’s parents will sue if this thing doesn’t happen . . .”
“They won’t . . .” Delores’s voice trembled.
He turned to her and felt a deep pity. He could only see a shadow for her face but he could feel her fear and despair. She looked so small and vulnerable.
“They will,” Clarice said with emphasis. “Now, you better get your act together . . .” She stopped as he walked past her toward the door.
He turned around and looked at them, smiled slightly, shook his head, and then continued. Stuffing his hands deep into the pockets of his shorts, he trotted down the stairs. He stooped for a few seconds to regain his balance, then his shadow cut through the light and vanished into the dark.
“Come, Delores. He wants to go home now,” Clarice said. But when they did not hear the car door open they looked out and saw him walking toward the edge of the woodlot. Clarice shouted his name. He did not turn around. He continued walking steadily until the forest swallowed him.
He felt the wetness of the thicker grass in the bush. He could hear the two women talking to each other. He watched as Clarice ran to the car and started it up. Delores stayed at the door. Clarice maneuvered the car toward the spot where he’d disappeared. He stood behind a tree as the lights glowed through the bushes. She moved slowly, the car rocking on the tractor-tire marks. When the lights were off him, he moved farther away, though still at the edge of the bushes. She blew the horn and shouted his name. She did this for about ten minutes and then she stopped the car. The air of the lot was cut through by the din of crickets and frogs. After another five minutes, Clarice moved the car back to the shack. Delores stepped down to the ground and walked toward the car. Clarice stepped out and they stood beside each other staring directly at him in the forest. They remained in silence for another few minutes until it became clear that nothing would happen.
“Let’s go,” Delores said. “Let’s go.”
The car bumped through the woodlot toward the dirt road that led out to the brightly lit highway. He stepped out of the bushes and stood staring at the car. One of them must have seen him, because the car stopped. He stayed still. He saw Clarice’s shadow emerge from the car. Slowly, Delores’s shape emerged as well. He did not move.
“I thought you said you saw him. You see him?” Clarice asked.
“It was nothing. Just a shadow,” Delores said, moving back to the car. “He’s gone.”
He watched the taillights bump along the lot until they turned onto the paved road, and then all light was gone. He stood in the darkness listening to his heart pulsing. There was something complete about this whole thing. He knew that it would not be long before he walked out of this place, went back into the world. Delores understood what it all meant. In a peculiar way, he was sure she’d been expecting it to happen. He walked slowly back to the hut, his head bent down . . .
* * *
Back in town, to life, no one spoke to him—not really. The jilting of Delores was like a death best left ignored. He did not see her for almost a week, and then they met for lunch, and soon they were an item again. This time marriage was not mentioned. He had tried to explain to her what had happened several weeks later.
“I needed to escape, to get away . . . It was all coming down.” He spoke slowly.
“You needed space . . .” she said sarcastically.
It had been the gradual movement back into the mundane of a relationship without direction that assured Ferron that there was no future with Delores. They would get married, have children, but he was sure they would be divorced. The apparent reason would be his unfaithfulness, but the real reason would be sheer disinterest. He had known this for sure.
But then the rape had injected something emotional into the relationship. At least she expressed real anger. That she blamed him was clear. That she felt it was unfair to blame him was clear. But that she still, despite that, blamed him and felt great anger toward him was even clearer. It was hard for him to ask her what she’d wanted him to do, whether she’d wanted him to fight, get shot, even die for her, whether that is what she expected. It was hard for him to tell her that he, too, had been so scared, so petrified by everything, that the night had left with nightmares. He could not tell her that because in many ways, he did blame himself. His sense of relief at being alive after it was all over was something that filled him with guilt and left him incapable of even fighting with her. But the worst truth was something she never actually said, but that they both knew to be true. Before the rape, all affection had dried up between them. Now, after the rape, the absence of affection had to be filled with some other emotion because they were connected by this trauma. What he felt was resentment, even anger, at the idea of having to feel something, having to think of themselves as two people who needed to support each other. He felt her withdrawing from him, and he did not mind her doing that. He disliked himself for feeling incapable of giving her the affection and care she needed. He felt overwhelmed by deep anxiety
