Lisey's Story(110)

Lying on her widow's bed with the spade clamped in her hands, a much older Lisey cried out in joy for what was remembered and grief for what was gone. Her heart was mended even as it was broken again. Cords stood out on her neck. Her swollen lips drew down and broke open, exposing her teeth and spilling fresh blood into the gutters of her gums. Tears ran from the corners of her eyes and slipped down her cheeks to her ears, where they hung like exotic jewelry. And the only clear thought in her mind was Oh Scott, we were never made for such beauty, we were never made for such beauty, we should have died then, oh my dear, we should have, naked and in each other's arms, like lovers in a story.

"But we didn't," Lisey murmured. "He held me and said we couldn't stay long because it was getting dark and it wasn't safe after dark, even most of the sweetheart trees turned bad then. But he said there was something he wanted

4

"There's something I want to show you before we go back," he says, and pulls her to her feet.

"Oh, Scott," she hears herself saying, very faint and weak. "Oh, Scott." It seems to be the only thing she can manage. In a way this reminds her of the first time she felt an orgasm approaching, only this is drawn out and drawn out and drawn out, it's like all coming and no arrival.

He's leading her someplace. She feels high grass whispering against her thighs. Then it's gone and she realizes they're on a well-worn path cutting through the drifts of lupin. It leads into what Scott calls the sweetheart trees, and she wonders if there are people here. If there are, how do they stand it? Lisey wonders. She wants to look again at that ascending goblin moon, but doesn't dare.

"Be quiet under the trees," Scott says. "We should be okay a little longer, but better safe than sorry is a good rule to follow even on the edge of the Fairy Forest."

Lisey doesn't think she could talk much above a whisper even if he demanded it. She's doing well to manage Oh, Scott.

He's standing under one of the sweetheart trees now. It looks like a palm, only its trunk is shaggy, green with what looks like fur rather than moss. "God, I hope nothing's knocked it over," he says. "It was okay the last time I was here, the night you were so mad and I put my hand through that dumb greenhouse - ah, okay, there!" He pulls her off the path to the right. And near one of two outlying trees that seem to guard the place where the path slips into the woods, she sees a simple cross made of two boards. To Lisey they look like nothing more than crate-slats. There's no burial mound - if anything, the ground here is slightly sunken - but the cross is enough to tell her it's a grave. On the marker's horizontal arm is one carefully printed word: PAUL.

"The first time I did it in pencil," he says. His voice is clear, but it seems to be coming from far away. "Then I tried a ballpoint, but of course it didn't work, not on rough wood like that. Magic Marker was better, but it faded. Finally I did it in black paint, from one of Paul's old paint-by-thenumbers kits."

She looks at the cross in the strange mixed light of the dying day and the rising night, thinking (as much as she is able to think), All of it's true. What seemed to happen when we came out from under the yum-yum tree really did happen. It's happening now, only longer and clearer.

"Lisey!" He's hectic with joy, and why the hell not? He hasn't been able to share this place with anyone since Paul's death. The few times he's come here, he's had to come alone. To mourn alone. "There's something else - let me show you!"

Somewhere a bell rings, very faint - a bell that sounds familiar. "Scott?"

"What?" He's kneeling in the grass. "What, babyluv?"

"Did you hear...?" But it's stopped. And surely that was her imagination. "Nothing. What were you going to show me?" Thinking, As if you haven't shown me enough. He's sweeping his hands through the high grass near the foot of the cross, but there seems to be nothing there and slowly his goofy, happy smile begins to fade. "Maybe something took i - " he begins, then breaks off. His face tightens in a momentary wince, then relaxes, and he lets loose a half-hysterical laugh. "Here it is, and damn if I didn't think I pricked myself on it, that'd be a joke on me, all right - after all these years! - but the cap's still on! Look, Lisey!"

She would have said nothing could divert her from the wonder of where she is - the red-orange sky in the east and west deepening to a weird greenish-blue overhead, the exotic mixed odors, and somewhere, yes, another faint chime of some lost bell - but what Scott is holding up to the last fading daylight does the trick. It's the hypodermic needle his father gave him, the one Scott was supposed to stick Paul with once the boys were over here. There are little speckles of rust on the sleeve of metal at its base, but otherwise it looks brand new.

"It was all I had to leave," Scott says. "I didn't have a picture. The kids who went to Donkey School used to get pictures, at least."

"You dug the grave...Scott, you dug it with your bare hands?"

"I tried. And I did scoop out a little hollow - the ground here is soft - but the grass...

pulling out the grass slowed me down...tough old weeds, boy...and then it started getting dark and the laughers started..."

"The laughers?"

"Like hyenas, I think, only mean. They live in the Fairy Forest."

"The Fairy Forest - did Paul name it that?"