Stone Lake: part 36

A Star Tribune serialized novel by Richard Horberg

Chapter 12 continues

The story so far: A serious letter arrives from Mary Zane.

They walked in silence, past dark houses and pointed fir trees, snow heaped at the edge of the sidewalk. Looking up at the sky, he pointed out Sirius and Betelgeuse and Cassiopeia to her. "Aren't they brilliant?" he said. "They look ice cold, don't they. Actually they're blazing hot."

She nodded. "Sometimes I think they're really not there at all," she said. "Sometimes I think there's a projector inside of us and when we look up and open our eyes, we see them."

"Do we all see them the same way?"

"Maybe we're coded to do that."

Stone Lake 58, Nordstrom 32.

A very cold night. She wore a stocking cap now with a tassel on top and a scarf tied securely at her throat. He wore nothing on his head, never did, even in the coldest weather, though he had a pair of ear-muffs in his pocket. He pulled his collar well up over the back of his head instead and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

Under the streetlights he saw puffs of frost rising from their mouths and told himself that they were the vapors of two souls mingling in the night, their existential voices rising to the void, their disembodied spirits. At her side he felt like a voyager from a different galaxy, a different dimension, come down to earth to walk with a mysterious creature whose chemistry somehow was compatible with his own: they were the same blood type, had the same pulse count, identical fingerprints.

With such thoughts in mind, he talked to her about the metaphysical poets, John Donne and Henry King, neither of whom was in their anthology, names never before mentioned, he was certain, on these streets or under these stars. He told her about John Donne's rough-edged masculinity, his fascination with death, his skepticism about religion (despite being a bishop), his long conceits, his cynicism toward women (despite loving them), his clever puns.

"In one of his poems," he told her, "he makes a list of his sins for the reader. At the end of each stanza he says he is not yet finished:

For I have more."

"He was really a bishop?"

"Yes. In the Anglican church."

"But how can a bishop have sins?"

"How can he not?"

Accept, thou shrine of my dead saint,

Instead of dirges, this complaint;

And for sweet flowers to crown thy hearse,

Receive a strew of weeping verse

From thy grieved friend, whom thou might'st see

"It brings tears to my eyes," she said.

"Me too."

"But — how can you remember all those lines?"

"I guess I have a facility for it. I'm an English teacher, remember?"

"You should be an actor."

"Neither could I."

"You've never tried out for the class plays?"

"Never."

"But maybe the set crew this spring?"

"Maybe."

"Thanks for the education," she said.

"I didn't mean it that way."

"How did you mean it?"

Who was to say?

The moon shone brightly, so bright, Allen thought, that its craters were almost visible to the naked eye. What creatures walked there, invisible, remote?

"Did you have Mr. Kingston for English last year? I've heard some things about him."

"Oh, no," she said. "I didn't have Mr. Kingston. My brother did. He said Mr. Kingston was terrible. He never came to class. He gave his students assignments for the week and then never showed up. He claimed they were so bad he couldn't do anything for them anyway."

"What did Mr. Magnuson think?"

"The way I heard it, he kept threatening to fire him."

"But he didn't?"

She told him that not only did Mr. Kingston have a bad reputation in the school, but in the town as well. "I think there were lots of people who hated him," she said. "The way I heard it he demanded credit in the stores and then never paid his bills. He thought he was so superior to all of them that he didn't have to. At least that's what my father says."

"In the old days they'd have run him out of town."

"He did worse things too," she said.

"Like what?"

She hesitated. "I don't like to talk about it."

A light snow fell. They walked through it, their steps as light as the flakes. When she asked him if he knew more poems, he quoted Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love." He quoted Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress." He quoted Robert Burns.

She asked him if he ever wrote poems himself. He said he tried. He said he tried to write short stories, too, but wasn't very good at it.

When they reached her house, he watched her walk away toward the front porch, a solitary figure in the night, snowflakes falling on her shoulders — fragile and lovely as a sonnet. He crossed the street and waited there a moment until he saw a light go on in a second story window.

Turning toward the house where he lived, he wondered what it would be like to walk with her in spring, with songbirds in the air and trees beginning to bud. Or in summer, warm evenings with front yard flower gardens in full bloom and the shouts of children in the distance. Or in autumn, best of all, through crisp leaves, an orange moon hovering on the horizon.

Then he realized that they could hope for no more than winter, with its cover of early darkness.