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By Root 2966 0

was before. When it was possible. Before the birds were gone. That was the other year before the turkey. That year before the big rattlesnake was the year they saw the Indian poling the dugout and the buck in the bow of the dugout with his white throat and chest, his slender legs with the delicate shaped hoofs, shaped like a broken heart, drawn up and his head with the beautiful miniature horns looking toward the Indian. They had stopped the car and spoken to the Indian but he did not understand English and grinned and the small buck lay there dead with his eyes open looking straight at the Indian. It was possible then and for five years after. But what was possible now? Nothing was possible now unless he himself was and he must say the things if there was ever to be a chance of them being true. Even if it were wrong to say them he must say them. They never could be true unless he said them. He had to say them and then perhaps he could feel them and then perhaps he could believe them. And then perhaps they would be true. Perhaps is an ugly word, he thought, but it is even worse on the end of your cigar.

“Have you got cigarettes?” he asked the girl. “I don’t know whether that lighter works.”

“I haven’t tried it. I haven’t smoked. I’ve felt so unnervous.”

“You don’t just smoke when you’re nervous do you?”

“I think so. Mostly.”

“Try the lighter.”

“All right.”

“Who was the guy you married?”

“Oh let’s not talk about him.”

“No. I just meant who was he?”

“No one you know.”

“Don’t you really want to tell me about him?”

“No, Roger. No.”

“All right.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “He was English.”

“Was?”

“Is. But I like was better. Besides you said was.”

“Was is a good word,” he said. “It’s a hell of a lot better word than perhaps.”

“All right. I don’t understand it at all but I believe you. Roger?”

“Yes, daughter.”

“Do you feel any better?”

“Much. I’m fine.”

“All right. I’ll tell you about him. He turned out to be gay. That was it. He hadn’t said anything about it and he didn’t act that way at all. Not at all. Truly. You probably think I’m stupid. But he didn’t in any way. He was absolutely beautiful. You know how they can be. And then I found out about it. Right away of course. The same night actually. Now is it all right not to talk about it?”

“Poor Helena.”

“Don’t call me Helena. Call me daughter.”

“My poor daughter. My darling.”

“That’s a nice word too. You mustn’t mix it with daughter though. It’s no good that way. Mummy knew him. I thought she might have said something. She just said she’d never noticed and when I said, ‘You might have noticed,’ she said, ‘I though you knew what you were doing and I had no call to interfere.’ I said, ‘Couldn’t you just have said something or couldn’t somebody just have said something?’ and she said, ‘Darling, everyone thought you knew what you were doing. Everyone. Everyone knows you don’t care anything about it yourself and I had every right to think you knew the facts of life in this right little tight little island.’”

She was sitting stiff and straight beside him now and she had no tone in her voice at all. She didn’t mimic. She simply used the exact words or as exactly as she remembered them. Roger thought they sounded quite exact.

“Mummy was a great comfort,” she said. “She said a lot of things to me that day.”

“Look,” Roger said. “We’ll throw it all away. All of it. We’ll throw it all away now right here beside the road. Any of it you want to get rid of you can always tell me. But we’ve thrown it all away now and we’ve really thrown it away.”

“I want it to be like that,” she said. “That’s how I started out. And you know I said at the start we’d give it a miss.”

“I know. I’m sorry. But I’m glad really because now we have thrown it away.”

“It’s nice of you. But you don’t have to make incantations or exorcisions or any of that. I can swim without water wings. And he was damned beautiful.”

“Spit it out. If that’s the way you want it.”

“Don’t be like that. You’re so damned superior you don’t have to be superior. Roger?”

“Yes, Bratchen.”

“I love you very much and