• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 877 0

other. It’s too late even for the skateboard rats to do their practicing, their beautifully risky and ankle-busting curb jumping at this corner. No one driving by seems to have the slightest interest in me. They don’t even bother looking in my direction as they whiz by on their errands. I have the sensation that I’ve become invisible. It’s very quiet. All the voices have died out in my head. I’ve been emptied out.

Before I turn to walk toward the woods, I check the eastern horizon, where I detect the faintest glimmerings of dawn. My glimmerlessness has abated, it seems, at least for the moment.

I enter the Pioneer High School Woods, bordering our house. It’s darker here than before, because the gypsy moths have not come back this year. The forest was sprayed with moth-attacking bacteria. I no longer remember the Latin phrase for it. I’m too tired for that and no longer moth-crazy. The trees have consequently leafed out and now block whatever moonlight might have filtered down to the path. But the path is exactly where it has always been, of course. The mental map, a phrase that psychologists use to refer to the means by which we conceptualize the home territories with which we’re familiar, also applies to my imaginings. My mental map will get me through these woods and get me home. It’s dark, almost pitch dark in here, but I can see.

A pleasant weariness overtakes me. It’s a moment of drowsi-ness that promises a few hours of sleep. Birds — which one is that? I don’t recognize the two-note song — are calling above and be-hind me.

AT THE OTHER SIDE of the woods, coming out onto the street, I walk past the vacant lot, on which no one will ever build a house because of the drainage problems.

I enter the house soundlessly. The dog does not wake or bark at me. I pass by the mirror that is so old that it can’t reflect anything anymore, and I head up the stairs. How tired I am, how quiet these sentences have become, drifting slowly out of me, outward and away. The cogs are turning together, synchronized at last in the dark. I am dazed with sleepiness. Our time here is short. I can hardly stay awake. In the bedroom I take off my clothes and lie down under the sheet and the summer blanket, and she puts her hand on my back and says, “Where were you?” but already I am drifting off to sleep and cannot formulate the words in time to name aloud those places where I have been.

In loving memory of my brother

THOMAS HOOKER BAXTER

(1939–1998)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Earlier versions of three of the chapters in this book appeared in Boulevard, Ploughshares, and TriQuarterly. Thanks to the editors of these publications. Grateful thanks also go to Mark Ricciardi, William Wiser, Dick Bausch, L. M. Daniel for his dragon, Eileen Pollack, Carol Houck Smith, and Dan Frank. Martha H. and Daniel J. saw it through and deserve more than a mention. The title and the summer solstice party in Chapter Twenty-seven were suggested by Virgil Thomson’s translation and musical setting of the anonymous second- or fourth-century A.D. poem the Pervigilium Veneris.

CHARLES BAXTER

THE FEAST OF LOVE

Charles Baxter lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and teaches at the University of Michigan. He is the author of six previous works of fiction, including Believers, Harmony of the World, and Through the Safety Net. The Feast of Love was a finalist for the National Book Award.

ALSO BY

CHARLES BAXTER

FICTION

Believers

Shadow Play

A Relative Stranger

First Light

Through the Safety Net

Harmony of the World

POETRY

Imaginary Paintings

ESSAYS

Burning Down the House

Table of Contents

THE FEAST OF LOVE

CONTENTS

BEGINNINGS

PRELUDES

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

MIDDLES

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

ENDS

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

POSTLUDES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHARLES BAXTER