Finally she said, “He’s cold now” and had wrapped him in the paper and put him in the back of the seat again and said, “Thank you for letting me keep him when I wanted him so much.” Roger had kissed her while he drove and she had said, “Oh Roger we’re so happy and we always will be won’t we?” That was just around this next slanting turn the road makes up ahead. The sun was down to the top of the treetops now. But they had not seen the birds.
“You won’t miss them so much you won’t be able to love me will you?”
“No. Truly.”
“I understand it making you sad. But you were going to be away from them anyway weren’t you?”
“Sure. Please don’t worry, daughter.”
“I like it when you say daughter. Say it again.”
“It comes at the end of a sentence,” he said. “Daughter.”
“Maybe it’s because I’m younger,” she said. “I love the kids. I love them all three, hard, and I think they’re wonderful. I didn’t know there were kids like that. But Andy’s too young for me to marry and I love you. So I forget about them and just am as happy as I can be to be with you.”
“You’re good.”
“I’m not really. I’m awfully difficult. But I do know when I love someone and I’ve loved you ever since I can remember. So I’m going to try to be good.”
“You’re being wonderful.”
“Oh I can be much better than this.”
“Don’t try.”
“I’m not going to for a while. Roger I’m so happy. We’ll be happy won’t we?”
“Yes, daughter.”
“And we can be happy for always can’t we? I know it sounds silly me being Mother’s daughter and you with everyone. But I believe in it and it’s possible. I know it’s possible. I’ve loved you all my life and if that’s possible it’s possible to be happy isn’t it? Say it is anyway.”
“I think it is.”
He’d always said it was. Not in this car though. In other cars in other countries. But he had said it enough in this country too and he had believed it. It would have been possible too. Everything was possible once. It was possible on this road on that stretch that now lay ahead where the canal ran clear and flowing by the right-hand side of the road where the Indian poled his dugout. There was no Indian there now. That was before. When it was possible.
Before the birds were gone. That was the other year before the turkey. That year before the big rattlesnake was the year they saw the Indian poling the dugout and the buck in the bow of the dugout with his white throat and chest, his slender legs with the delicate shaped hoofs, shaped like a broken heart, drawn up and his head with the beautiful miniature horns looking toward the Indian. They had stopped the car and spoken to the Indian but he did not understand English and grinned and the small buck lay there dead with his eyes open looking straight at the Indian. It was possible then and for five years after. But what was possible now?
Nothing was possible now unless he himself was and he must say the things if there was ever to be a chance of them being true. Even if it were wrong to say them he must say them. They never could be true unless he said them. He had to say them and then perhaps he could feel them and then perhaps he could believe them. And then perhaps they would be true. Perhaps is an ugly word, he thought, but it is even worse on the end of your cigar.
“Have you got cigarettes?” he asked the girl. “I don’t know whether that lighter works.”
“I haven’t tried it. I haven’t smoked. I’ve felt so unnervous.”
“You don’t just smoke when you’re nervous do you?”
“I think so. Mostly.”
“Try the lighter.”
“All right.”
“Who was the guy you married?”
“Oh let’s not talk about him.”
“No. I just meant who was he?”
“No one you know.”
“Don’t you really want to tell me about him?”
“No, Roger. No.”
“All right.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “He was English.”
“Was?”
“Is. But I like was better. Besides you said was.”
“Was is a good word,” he said. “It’s a hell of a lot better word than perhaps.”
“All right. I don’t understand it at all but I believe you. Roger?”
“Yes, daughter.”
“Do you feel any better?”
“Much. I’m fine.”
“All right. I’ll tell you about him. He turned out to be gay. That was it. He hadn’t said anything about it and he didn’t act that way at all. Not at all. Truly. You probably think I’m stupid. But he didn’t in any way. He was absolutely beautiful. You know how they can be. And then I found out about it. Right away of course. The same night actually. Now is it all right not to talk about it?”
“Poor Helena.”
“Don’t call me Helena. Call me daughter.”
“My poor daughter. My darling.”
“That’s a nice word too. You mustn’t mix it with daughter though. It’s no good that way. Mummy knew him. I thought she might have said something. She just said she’d never noticed and when I said, ‘You might have noticed,’ she said, ‘I though you knew what you were doing and I had no call to interfere.’ I said, ‘Couldn’t you just have said something or couldn’t somebody just have said something?’ and she said, ‘Darling, everyone thought you knew what you were doing. Everyone. Everyone knows you don’t care anything about it yourself and I had every right to think you knew the facts of life in this right little tight little island.’”
She was sitting stiff and straight beside him now and she had no tone in her voice at all. She didn’t mimic. She simply used the exact words or as exactly as she remembered them. Roger thought they sounded quite exact.
“Mummy was a great comfort,” she said. “She said a lot of things to me that day.”
“Look,” Roger said. “We’ll throw it all away. All of it. We’ll throw it all away now right here beside the road. Any of it you want to get rid of you can always tell me. But we’ve thrown it all away now and we’ve really thrown it away.”
“I want it to be like that,” she said. “That’s how I started out. And you know I said at the start we’d give it a miss.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But I’m glad really because now we have thrown it away.”
“It’s nice of you. But you don’t have to make incantations or exorcisions or any of that. I can swim without water wings. And he was damned beautiful.”
“Spit it out. If that’s the way you want it.”
“Don’t be like that. You’re so damned superior you don’t have to be superior. Roger?”
“Yes, Bratchen.”
“I love you very much and we don’t have to do this any more do we?”
“No. Truly.”
“I’m so glad. Now will we be jolly?”
“Sure we will. Look,” he said. “There are the birds. The first of them.”
They showed white in the cypress hammock that rose like an island of trees out of the swamp on their left the sun shining on them in the dark foliage and as the sun lowered more came flying across the sky, flying white and slow, their long legs stretched behind them.
“They’re coming in for the night. They’ve been feeding out in the marsh. Watch the way they brake with their wings and the long legs slant forward to land.”
“Will we see the ibises too?”
“There they are.”
He had stopped the car and across the darkening swamp they could see the wood ibis crossing the sky with their pulsing flight to wheel and light in another island of trees.
“They used to roost much closer.”
“Maybe we will see them in the morning,” she said. “Do you want me to make a drink while we’ve stopped?”
“We can make it while we drive. The mosquitoes will get to us here.”
As he started the car there were a few mosquitoes in it, the big black Everglades type, but the rush of the wind took them out when he opened the door and slapped them out with his hand and the girl found two enameled cups in the packages they had brought and the carton that held a bottle of White Horse. She wiped the cups out with a paper napkin, poured in Scotch, the bottle still in the carton, put in lumps of ice from the thermos jug and poured soda into them.
“Here’s to us,” she said and gave him the cold enameled cup and he held it drinking slowly and driving on, holding the wheel with his left hand, driving along into the road that was dusky now. He put on the lights a little later and soon they cut far ahead into the dark and the two of them drank the whisky and it was what they needed and made them feel much better. There is always a chance, Roger thought, when a drink can still do what it is supposed to do. This drink had done exactly what it should do.
“It tastes sort of slimy and slippery in a cup.”
“Enameled,” Roger said.
“That was pretty easy,” she said. “Doesn’t it taste wonderfully?”
“It’s the first drink we’ve had all day. Except that resin wine at lunch. It’s our good friend,” he said. “The old giant killer.”
“That’s a nice name for it. Did you always call it that?”
“Since the war. That’s when we first used it for that.”
“This forest would be a bad place for giants.”
“I think
