They talked of inconsequential things – there was no hurry. For the first time since he had come out of it, Johnny felt that time was not his enemy. Time had provided them with this little air pocket in exchange for the main flow of which they had been robbed, and it would be here for as long as they needed it. They talked about people who had been married, about a girl from Cleaves Mills who had won a Merit scholarship, about Maine’s independent governor. Sarah said he looked like Lurch on the old Addams Family show and thought like Herbert Hoover, and they both laughed over that.
‘Look at him,’ Sarah said, nodding toward Denny.
He was sitting on the grass by Vera Smith’s ivy trellis, his thumb in his mouth, looking at them sleepily.
She got his car-bed out of the Pinto’s back seat.
‘Will he be okay on the porch?’ she asked Johnny. ‘It’s so mild, I’d like to have him nap in the fresh air.’
‘He’ll be fine on the porch,’ Johnny said.
She Set the bed in the shade, popped him into it, and pulled the two blankets up to his chin. ‘Sleep, baby,’ Sarah said.
He smiled at her and promptly closed his eyes.
‘Just like that?’ Johnny asked.
‘Just like that,’ she agreed. She stepped close to him and put her arms around his neck.
Quite clearly he could hear the faint rustle of her slip beneath her dress. ‘I’d like you to kiss me,’ she said calmly. ‘I’ve waited five years for you to kiss me again, Johnny.’
He put his arms around her waist and kissed her gently. Her lips parted.
‘Oh, Johnny,’ she said against his neck. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too, Sarah.’
‘Where do we go?’ she asked, stepping away from him. Her eyes were as dear and dark as emeralds now. ‘Where?’
4.
He spread the faded army blanket, which was old but clean, on the straw of the second loft. The smell was fragrant and sweet. High above them there was the mysterious coo and flutter of the barn swallows, and then they settled down again. There was a small, dusty window which looked down on the house and porch. Sarah wiped a clean place on the glass and looked down at Denny.
‘It’s okay?’ Johnny asked.
‘Yes. Better here than in the house. That would have been like…’ She shrugged.
‘Making my dad a part of it?’
‘Yes. This is between us.’
‘Our business.’
‘Our business,’ she agreed. She lay on her stomach, her face turned to one side on the faded blanket, her legs bent at the knee. She pushed her shoes off, one by one. ‘Unzip me, Johnny.’
He knelt beside her and pulled the zipper down. The sound was loud in the stillness. Her back was the color of coffee with cream against the whiteness of her slip. He kissed her between the shoulder blades and she shivered.
‘Sarah,’ he murmured.
‘What?’
‘I have to tell you something.’
‘What?’
‘The doctor made a mistake during one of those operations and gelded me.’
She punched him on the shoulder. ‘Same old Johnny,’ she said. ‘And you had a friend once who broke his neck on the crack-the-whip at Topsham Fair.’
‘Sure,’ he said.
Her hand touched him like silk, moving gently up and down.
‘It doesn’t feel like they did anything terminal to you,’ she said. Her luminous eyes searched his. ‘Not at all. Shall we look and see?’
There was the sweet smell of the hay. Time spun out. There was the rough feel of the army blanket, the smooth feel of her flesh, the naked reality of her. Sinking into her was like sinking into an old dream that had never been quite forgotten.
‘Oh, Johnny, my dear …’ Her voice in rising excitement. Her hips moving in a quickening tempo. Her voice was far away. The touch of her hair was like fire on his shoulder and chest. He plunged his face deeply into it, losing himself in that dark-blonde darkness.
Time spinning out in the sweet smell of hay. The rough-textured blanket. The sound of the old barn creaking gently, like a ship, in the October wind. Mild white light coming in through the roof chinks, catching motes of chaff in half a hundred pencil-thin sunbeams.