Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [120]
Sitting on the bus toward home, she tried to lean into the love she felt for Walton, and the love he said he felt for her, but instead of solid ground and rock just underneath the soil, and rock cliffs that composed a wall where a human being could prop herself and stand, there was nothing: stone gave way to sand, and sand gave way to water, and the water drained away into darkness and emptiness. Into this emptiness, violence, like an ever-flowing stream, was poured—the violence of the kea, Walton’s violence, Gleinya Roberts’s violence, and finally her own. She traced every inch of her consciousness for a place on which she might set her foot against doubt, and she could not find it. Inside her was the impulse, as clear as blue sky on a fine summer morning, to acquire a pistol and shoot Gleinya Roberts through the heart. Her mind raced through the maze, back and forth, trying to find an exit.
Gleinya Roberts had lied to her. She was sure of that.
But it didn’t matter. She was in fear of being struck. Although she had never been beaten by anyone, ever, in her life, the prospect frightened her so deeply that she felt parts of her psyche and her soul turning to stone. Other women might not be frightened. Other women would fight back, or were beaten and survived. But she was not them. She was herself, a woman mortally afraid of being violated.
Three blocks away from her apartment, she bought, in a drugstore, a radio with a cassette player in it, and she took it with her upstairs; and in the living room she placed it on the coffee table, next to Walton’s latest found treasures: a pleasantly shaped rock with streaks of red, probably jasper; a squirt gun; and a little ring through which was placed a ballpoint pen.
She dropped the predator tape Gleinya Roberts had given her into the machine, and she pushed the PLAY button.
From the speaker came the scream of a rabbit. Whoever had made this tape had probably snapped the serrated metal jaws of a trap on the rabbit’s leg and then turned on the recorder. It wasn’t a tape loop: the rabbit’s screams were varied, no two alike. Although the screams had a certain sameness, the clarifying monotony of terror, there existed, as in a row of corn, a range of distinctive external variety. Terror gave way to pain, pain made room for terror. The soul of the animal was audibly ripped apart, and out of its mouth came this shrieking. Jodie felt herself getting sick and dizzy. The screams continued. They went on and on. In the forests of the night these screams rose with predictable regularity once darkness fell. Though wordless, they had supreme eloquence and a huge claim upon truth. Jodie was weeping now, the heels of her hands dug into her cheekbones. The screams did not cease. They rose in frequency and intensity. The tape almost academically laid out at disarming length the necessity of terror. All things innocent and forsaken had their moment of expression, as the strong, following their nature, crushed themselves into their prey. Still it went on, this bloody fluting. Apparently it was not to be stopped.
Jodie reached out and pressed the PAUSE button. She was shaking now, shivering. She felt herself falling into shock, and when she looked up, she saw Walton standing near the door—he had a key by now—with Einstein wagging her tail next to him, and he was carrying his daily gift, this time a birdhouse, and he said, “She found you, didn’t she? That miserable, crazy woman.”
He puts down the birdhouse and squats near her. From this position, he drops to his knees. Kneeling thus before her, he tries to smile, and his eyes have that pleasant fool quality they have always had. This man may never make a fortune. He may never amount to much. That would be fine. His dog pants behind him, like a backup singer emphasizing the vocal line and giving it a harmony. Walton’s