The Runaway

Jim drove that night from Syracuse and returned to Goreville late.  His staff had already left for their own homes and the house was dusted and still, ready for the next day.  Sighing he walked into the front hall, loosened his tie and absently shuffled through that day’s letters.  There were three bills, a card from his mother, an invitation from the Mayor to Friday night’s celebration of the grape harvest.  He felt worn thin and a muscle twitch played on his upper lip.

In the dark library he ran his fingers along the leather spines of his books in his floor to ceiling bookshelf.  Plato, Chaucer, the Bible, the three volumes of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, he knew them all so well.  Men he admired had written them, men who knew how to command history with pen and paper.  He had none of that hold on truth.  He felt weak, terrified of death, useless.  A silly little girl, not even pretty, could just walk up to him and take it all away, make his world what it was now, alone and shameful, with the simple use of words, as these men had made their worlds with words.  The girl was the weak one, not him, but he knew no words of power.

He lit his desk lamp and poured himself a drink, not noticing how the new light illuminated the face of someone in the corner of the room.  Sitting down in his deep leather chair and leaning back he sipped small amounts of whiskey from his glass.  Only when she spoke did he realize she was there.

“Hello, Mr. Jim,” she said.  Spilling his drink Jim jumped up and whirled towards the sound of her voice.

“My God, Cecelia!  You look terrible,” he sputtered, annoyed by the sudden feeling of guilt her presence gave him, as if he were an intruder in his own home.  Wiping the whiskey from his pants he gazed at her.

Cecelia’s hair, black with shocks of gray was standing about her head in a weird kind of halo.  Grass and mud from Tekla’s burial streaked the loose work gown she wore, her face and hands, and she cradled a rusty shotgun in her arms.  Looking into her wild eyes Jim’s throat closed.  The outer layer of smooth honey that usually surrounded her form had been peeled off like the skin from a dark plum, revealing fire, a wilderness.  Her eyes didn’t seem to be seeing him and it occurred to Jim that she had somehow gone mad since the last time he saw her, that things she had been carrying within herself ever since he had known her, carrying with a sense of obedience and duty, were sparking away from her now with increasing speed, that she was cracking open before him, hungry for something that she was naming as him.  A stink of death emanated from her that in Jim’s despair he longed to submerge himself into with a sudden almost erotic passion, a longing that filled his flesh so that he felt giddy with it.  He didn’t move, he only watched her.

She rose and hoisted the shotgun up, squeezing the trigger.  The kick pulled her back a step but she regained her position quickly.  The shotgun had been vibrating so violently in her shaking hands that she had missed him completely.  Yet he did not try to get away.  He stood before her, waiting.  She could hardly see his form for the sweat that ran down her face into her eyes, for the rage behind her eyes, rage at giving so much of her life to this one whom she had always known held the lust to hurt others, how she had helped him, how everything in her life had set her up to do that, to be a good girl, to keep the big house working smoothly no matter what the consequences, and she would do it no more.  “I’ve seen it, Mr. Jim,” she murmured.  “I’ve seen it a thousand times.  Visions from the devil, so I didn’t--I didn’t pay heed.”  The explosion sounded a second time.

Cecelia left the man not yet dead, still moving slightly, but she did not know this for she turned away from him swiftly as he fell, feeling a deep self loathing that kept her from thinking more about him.  She desperately needed to get home and be small and quiet for just a moment.  She walked out of the house with the shotgun clutched in her hand.

Outside she mounted the mare and rode for home.  She did not push the horse hard but kept it at a measured pace until they reached her beloved birch tree grove that she sensed she would never see again after this night.  Inside the house she shook Daniel awake.

“Daniel,” she said.  “Daniel.”

“What is it, Celie?” he asked sleepily, taking her in his arms.  “Where were you?  Is Tekla hurt?”

“Daniel,” she said again.  “I’ve done a terrible thing.  We have to leave.  I’m so sorry.  We have to leave.”