A Garden of Earthly Delights by Joyce Carol Oates
Robert stomped off in disgust. Letting his rifle drag through the tall grasses. Not troubling to put on the safety lock, as Revere had instructed they must do. Swan put on his safety lock and followed his brother at a discreet distance. He could hear Robert muttering and cursing to himself like an adult man. Robert took no more heed of Swan in his wake than he'd take of a trotting dog.
Yet Swan smiled. It was over: he'd fired his rifle once, he hadn't killed any living thing, and he had not thrown up. That had not happened, at least.
In the lane behind the hay barn there came Jonathan on his horse O'Grady. Galloping the three-year-old chestnut gelding so the horse's sides and powerful chest gleamed with sweat. Swan moved to stand behind Robert. “He ain't s'posed to be fooling around like that,” Robert said. Yet you could hear the admiration in his voice. Both boys were wary of Jonathan these days; even when Revere was home, Jonathan could be unpredictable. And today, Revere wasn't home.
Robert waved. “Gimme a ride, Jon?”
“Like hell. Fatso.”
Jonathan tried to rein in O'Grady, who was a skittish young horse with ideas of his own. Not a horse to be ridden except by a skilled rider. Swan stared at the horse, always a horse is so much bigger than you expect. This horse's sides were shuddering with restless energy, impatience. None of the boys were supposed to overexcite or overheat the horses, especially on a hot dry day, but Jonathan imagined himself a horseman, with a natural touch. His sharp nervous eyes resembled O'Grady's eyes, showing a rim of white above the iris. As O'Grady hoofed the ground, Jonathan tried to keep him under control.
Robert said, “Hey there, O'Grady. Good boy—”
With a hot expulsion of breath O'Grady snapped at Robert as he reached up to stroke the horse's nose. Robert jumped back, and Jonathan laughed. “You don't fool around with O'Grady, kid. He's half-mustang.”
Jonathan read Deerslayer comics. The Huntsman, The Lone Ranger, Red Wolf Indian Tales, Scalphunter. He used to read books, but Swan believed he didn't any longer, much. There were ragged old copies of Scalphunter comics around the house that, if Revere discovered them, he tore into pieces and tossed onto the floor in contempt.
Swan wanted to duck away and return to the house, but Jonathan and O'Grady were blocking his way. And it seemed necessary for him to remain there, in the lane with Robert, something you would naturally do, brothers talking together. Jonathan was asking where they'd been hunting and if they'd shot anything and Robert said hesitantly they'd shot two chicken hawks, down by the creek. “Like hell you did,” Jonathan sneered. “Where are they, then? S'posed to nail them onto the barn. You,” he said, with particular emphasis, to Swan cowering behind Robert, “—you sure didn't shoot nothing. Don't give me that bullshit.”
Robert said, faltering, “We did O.K., Jon. We—”
Jonathan cut off Robert's weak whining voice. He was staring at Swan. “You, with a rifle. That's a laugh! A Springfield thirty-caliber, you. You'd need your ma to pull the trigger, you.”
Robert laughed, not looking at Swan.
O'Grady broke away from Jonathan, hoofing the ground with such violence, Swan cringed behind Robert. Jonathan cursed the horse and sawed at the reins. The horse's spittle flew. The horse's muscular haunches quivered, its long tail switched. In the hot dry sun there were horseflies, Swan brushed from his face. These flies were the size of bumblebees and their sting was nearly as painful as bees' stings.
Jonathan managed to bring O'Grady under control. Barely. He was sweaty, agitated. In an instant, he and O'Grady might have trampled the younger boys, yet Robert tried to hold his ground as if he wasn't afraid. Jonathan said to Swan, “Swan-Swan, think you could hit the side of a barn? Think you could hit a horse?”
Swan backed off, meaning to ignore him. He was holding his rifle against his shoulder, soldier-style. The safety lock was on. His face burned with shame. For Jonathan knew he hadn't shot any hawk, the lie was obvious.
“Think you could shoot a horse? Betcha can't shoot a horse from ten feet.”
What happened next was confused. Swan would not recall the sequence of events. He'd turned to walk away intending to cross through a pasture, to get to the house, but somebody was pulling at his arm—it was Robert. Telling him, “Come on”—meaning that Swan and he would continue along the lane, and not be bullied by Jonathan. Except Swan did not want to follow Robert, with Jonathan and O'Grady so close. Swan knew how dangerous horses could be, even the seemingly tamed ones; even mares, and foals. Their hooves, their big yellow teeth, their terrible weight. Still, Swan followed after Robert, skirting O'Grady. Swan could feel the horse's hot shuddering breath on the side of his face. Then he was past, and half-running. He heard the horse behind him, urged on by Jonathan who was laughing. “Hey little Swan-Swan! Mamma's Swan-Swan! Afraid to fire a gun without your ma? Bas-tid.”
Bas-tid was uttered in a high-pitched yodeling way. Just the sound, hilarious.
Swan grimaced, not looking back. He heard the horse's hooves close behind him. He was bathed in sweat: Jonathan was going to run the horse over him and there was nothing he could do about it. Worse than dying would be to be crippled. Revere had warned them of being thrown by a horse, kicked in the head. What can happen if you're kicked in the head, a living vegetable in an iron lung. But Jonathan and O'Grady galloped past the younger boys, Jonathan hooting with laughter. They stood in the lane watching horse and rider in their raggedy gallop along the lane. As if in that instant Jonathan had forgotten them, as no longer worthy of his attention.
Disgusted, Robert muttered to Swan, “Don't be so scared, dummy. He was only kidding.”
Swan wiped at his face that was slick with sweat. A horsefly was circling his head, darting and swooping with manic intent.
Robert was walking away from Swan, approaching the pasture fence. This was a barbed-wire fence of about four feet in height, with three taut strips of barbed wire; the boys would cut through the pasture instead of going the long way around, to the house. At the far end of the pasture a small herd of dairy cows were grazing. The pasture at this end was spiky with crudely mowed grass and thistles; it hurt Swan's ankles, where his sneakers didn't protect them. This wasn't a way Swan wanted to go. But it was the way Robert was going, and damned if Swan would not accompany him. He was walking doggedly now, his eyes on Robert's back. He saw how Robert was dragging his rifle, as Revere had told the boys never to do. At the fence, Swan had no choice but to catch up with Robert. Unbidden the words came from him—“Why does Jon hate me?”
These were words you did not say. These were words of shame, and beyond shame.
“Jesus Christ.” Robert rolled his eyes. “Forget it.”
“Why do you all hate me, Robert?”
“Nobody hates you! Shut up.”
“And call me names, why do you call me names?” Swan was speaking calmly, he believed. Yet something hot and stinging moved up into his throat. “I'm not a ‘bastard.' Nobody's going to call me that.”
“I said shut up.”
In the confusion of the moment it seemed to Swan that he and his brother were still hunting. Yet, as soon as Robert climbed the fence, and trotted across the field, they would be home; they would be within sight of the farmhands in the barns, almost in sight of the house, and of Clara's garden behind the house. Clumsily then, not knowing what he meant to do, he struck Robert between his shoulders with the butt of the Springfield rifle; it wasn't a hard blow, but it was unexpected, and Robert, climbing the fence, lost his balance on the barbed wire, and fell, and his rifle went off. This crack! was so close and so deafening, Swan scarcely heard it. And he could scarcely see.
Then he saw: Robert thrashing against the barbed wire, the way the vulture had thrashed in the underbrush. There was an ugly bleeding hole in the underside of his jaw, in his throat. Robert was trying to scream, but could not. Sound issued from him in a high thin shriek that faded almost immediately while Swan stood paralyzed staring at him in a sun-drenched vacuum he could not comprehend.
He would say I'm sorry, I didn't mean. Robert I'm sorry. I didn't mean. But he could not draw breath to speak.
Robert had fallen to the ground, and his rifle fell with him, useless now. Swan saw blood streaming out from the terrible hole torn in Robert's throat and running into the prickly grass where it floated lifting chaff with it. Swan was gripping his own rifle, his fingers so frozen onto it they would have to be pried off. He was thinking If it had not happened yet. Someone was shouting. Jonathan was on foot now, running toward them. And there came Clara and a man— it must have been Judd—more hesitantly along the lane. Swan was thinking before he lost consciousness that his mother and Judd now calling to him were losing time coming that way, the way adults would come, along the lane when they might have cut through the pasture.
5
“You didn't, did you? Shoot Robert.”
This question, calm and determined, Clara would put to Swan only when they were alone together. Sometimes she came to him, to stroke his hair or his hot throbbing face; sometimes she merely looked at him, unsmiling, alert and curious as you might observe a creature whose behavior is unpredictable.
Swan shook his head. Not meeting Clara's eyes.
“Did you?”
No. No he had not shot his brother. It could not be a serious question, it was Robert's rifle that had gone off when he'd slipped on the barbed wire.
Still, Clara asked. Her new manner with Swan was brooding, no longer playful. She had lost the baby it was said. Not in Swan's presence and not in response to any question of Swan's yet still he knew that Clara had lost the baby that was to have been a little girl, a sister of his. And that he was to blame for this death, too.
Though blameless, Swan was to blame.
Robert had bled to death in the car, Clara's car. Jonathan was driving, and Clara was with Robert in the backseat where they'd laid him, and he'd died not five minutes from the doctor's office in Tintern; Judd had stayed behind, and called the doctor to prepare him for the emergency. But no country doctor with an office in Tintern could have saved Robert. Nothing could have saved Robert. He'd bled to death within minutes, an artery in his throat torn to pieces.
Afterward Clara insisted that Revere get rid of the car. It was no good to replace the backseat, the floor. She hated that car!
No, she could not bear thinking about it. That day, what had happened that day.
“That poor boy. Oh, God.”
And she would say, “Robert—he was the sweetest one. He loved me, too.”
The little girl Clara lost, she had given no name. Not an actual baby but a thing so small, Clara wished not to think about it. Some things are not meant to be, Clara believed.
It was her time they'd said about—who? Pearl. A long time ago.
So with the baby-not-yet-born, the little sister Swan would not have, you could say It was her time.
Robert had bled to death. And Clara, beginning to hemorrhage several hours later, had almost bled to death, too.
For years Clara would speak of that desperate drive to Tintern that had failed. For years, in Swan's hearing, Clara would speak of it in a way that puzzled him: for Clara's fury seemed to be directed toward Judd, who hadn't responded adequately to the emergency. He'd been a “coward”—a “big sissy.” He'd been paralyzed with fear, evidently.
Just Jonathan and Clara, driving to Tintern with Robert. That wild drive. “It was hopeless. We knew, but we had to try.”
With Swan, Clara showed no anger. This too was strange to him, a fearful thing.
If she had slapped him, screamed into his face …
Instead he saw her watching him, from a distance. Where in the past Clara would have winked and smiled at him, maybe come to him to fluff his hair or kiss him, now she simply gazed at him as if she were observing him through one-way glass. When she smiled, her smile was slow, tentative.
Finally she said, “Whatever you did to him, keep your mouth shut about it. You understand me?”
She embraced him at last, stiffly. So that they need not see each other's face.
6
He understood her. For a long time he thought of what had happened to Robert continually, as if the crack! of the rifle were still reverberating, echoing in his skull. Then by degrees it began to fade. In the years that stretched out between his brother's death and his own, the memory was to return to him unpredictably, often in that twilit dimension between wakefulness and sleep, but sometimes in the presence of others. The crack! of the rifle and Robert's desperate struggle not to die, at Swan's feet.
“You don't need to touch that gun ever again.” Revere's hand was heavy on Swan's shoulder, Swan had to resist the impulse to shrug it off. He knew it hadn't been his gun but Robert's gun that had killed his brother, yet that made no difference. Revere himself had a repugnance for firearms now, and kept his rifles and shotguns locked away; he would allow no hunting on his property of many acres, not even by men whose fathers and grandfathers had hunted on the Revere property for decades. Robert's rifle, as well as Swan's, Revere locked away with the others. Clark and Jonathan no longer hunted, nor even fished. There was no talk of guns in Revere's presence at any time. “No more. No more. Enough.”
Revere had a habit of murmuring to himself even in the presence of others. Sometimes at meals he drifted off in the middle of a remark, and forgot completely that he was speaking. Clark and Jonathan were mostly silent in his company. Swan was uneasy, yet tried to speak whenever Revere addressed him, like an alert, dutiful son. They were aware of the way Revere fell to watching Clara with his strange, heavy stare, with an air of possession that excluded any actual interest or even awareness of what Clara was saying.
On Sunday evenings, Revere began reading the Bible to them. He told them that his own father had done this, when Revere was a boy.
In the winters those evenings were long and uncomfortably warm, because Revere insisted upon his family sitting by the fire-place in the parlor. This was a massive fireplace made of stone that had been dug up on the property, great chunks of fieldstone in the interstices of which spiders dwelled, that species of spider that spins funnels and not cobwebs, like cotton candy. Dreamily Swan watched these spiders dart about, frantic to escape from the fire. Revere favored birch fires, which required careful preparation and stoking at the outset; Clark usually volunteered. Often if wind descended the chimney sparks leapt out onto the rug and Clara had an excuse to jump up and rub a smoldering spot with her foot, muttering, “God!” under her breath. At such times Swan saw in his mother's eyes the trapped glistening look of a desperate creature.
Revere sat hunched by a hurricane lamp, glasses on his nose. He had resisted bifocal glasses for years. Now he read from the Bible in a halting yet authoritative voice, and the rest of the family sat and listened, or held their heads in an attitude of listening, until it was their turn to read.
Except Clara. Clara was “exempted.”
No one asked why. Swan supposed it was because Clara had refused, out of a dread of stumbling over words. And Revere would never force Clara to do anything against her will.
Swan, who was a good reader, always a bright, forceful student at school, did not mind the Bible evenings. He would far rather have read his own books but the Bible was an adventure book, of a kind. The Old Testament especially. Nothing made much sense in that long-ago time and things were yet to be decided and defined. At the outset of the Bible evenings, Swan had dared to ask Revere if there might have been dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden, and Revere had stared at him for a long moment before saying, simply, and humbly, that he did not know. “If it was millions of years ago,” Swan said. “Before asteroids hit the Earth.” Revere nodded as if this remark made perfect sense to him, and continued with his slow halting ponderous reading. The story of Moses and the Chosen People and the Promised Land. The story of plagues, and curses, and terrible punishments meted upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. When Revere read of the wrath of God the Father, his voice thickened; he seemed
Swan knew that the New Testament awaited them, as they made their plodding way through the sandy terrain of the Old, but he was in no hurry for the New Testament: the Gospels. When Jesus came along things were different. It wasn't a comic book exactly. If you were not saved it was your own fault. It was your own choice.
When they were alone Swan asked Clara, “Did you ever talk to God or see Him or anything?”
Clara laughed.
“How come he cares so much about it then?”
Revere was he to Clara and Swan now, as well as to Swan's brothers; an impersonal pronoun that remained impersonal. It was true that Revere spoke more of religion now, and his “church-going” was more serious. The boys were embarrassed to hear their father utter the word “God”—even “Jesus”—in the way he might be speaking of weather or a neighbor's behavior. Clara simply shut her face up like a fist at such times and made no comment.
Swan asked, “But why do people take time to believe it?”
“They just do. They always have.”