A lantern shone in the shed behind the barn, and there came a sound of hammering. Joseph went to the door and saw Thomas working on the box, and entered. “It hardly looks large enough,” he said.
Thomas did not look up. “I measured. It will be right.”
“I saw a lion, Thomas; saw it kill a wild pig. Some time soon you’d better take some dogs and kill it. The calves will suffer, else.” He hurried on, “Tom, we talked when Benjy died. We said it takes graves to make a place one’s own. That is a true thing. That makes us a part of the place. There’s some enormous truth in this.”
Thomas nodded over his work. “I know. Jose and Manuel will dig in the morning. I don’t want to dig for our own dead.”
Joseph turned away, trying to leave the shed. “You are sure it’s big enough?”
“Sure, I measured.”
“And, Tom, don’t put a little fence around. I want it to sink and be lost as soon as it can.” He went, then, quickly. In the yard he heard the warned children whispering.
“There he goes,” and Martha, “You’re not to say anything to him.”
He went to his own dark house and lighted the lamps and set fire in the stove. The clock wound by Elizabeth still ticked, storing in its spring the pressure of her hand, and the wool socks she had hung to dry over the stove screen were still damp. These were vital parts of Elizabeth that were not dead yet. Joseph pondered slowly over it—Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life. While there remains even a plaintive memory, a person cannot be cut off, dead. And he thought, “It’s a long slow process for a human to die. We kill a cow, and it is dead as soon as the meat is eaten, but a man’s life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness.” He leaned back in his chair and turned the lamp wick down until only a little blue light came from it. And then he sat relaxed and tried to shepherd his thoughts again, but they had spread out, feeding in a hundred different places, so that his attention was lost. And he thought in tones, in currents of movement, in color, and in a slow plodding rhythm. He looked down at his slouched body, at his curved arms and hands resting in his lap.
Size changed.
A mountain range extended in a long curve and on its end were five little ranges, stretching out with narrow valleys between them. If one looked carefully, there seemed to be towns in the valleys. The long curved range was clad in black sage, and the valleys ended on a flat of dark tillable earth, miles in length, which dropped off at last to an abyss. Good fields were there, and the houses and the people were so small they could be seen only a little. High up on a tremendous peak, towering over the ranges and the valleys, the brain of the world was set, and the eyes that looked down on the earth’s body. The brain could not understand the life on its body. It lay inert, knowing vaguely that it could shake off the life, the towns, the little houses of the fields with earthquake fury. But the brain was drowsed and the mountains lay still, and the fields were peaceful on their rounded cliff that went down to the abyss. And thus it stood a million years, unchanging and quiet, and the world-brain in its peak lay close to sleep. The world-brain sorrowed a little, for it knew that some time it would have to move, and then the life would be shaken and destroyed and the long work of tillage would be gone, and the houses in the valleys would crumble. The brain was sorry, but it could change nothing. It thought, “I will endure even a little discomfort to preserve this order which has come to exist by accident. It will be a shame to destroy this order.” But the towering earth was tired of sitting in one position. It moved, suddenly, and the houses crumbled, the mountains heaved horribly, and all the work of a million years was lost.
And size changed, and time changed.
There were light footsteps on the porch. The door opened and Rama came in, her dark eyes wide and glittering with sorrow. “You are sitting in the dark, almost, Joseph,” she said.
His hands rose to stroke his black beard. “I turned down the lamp.”
She stepped over and turned up the wick a little. “It is a hard time, Joseph I want to see how you look at this time. Yes,” she said. “There is no change That makes me strong again. I was afraid there might have been a break. Are you thinking about Elizabeth?”
He wondered how to answer. There was an impulse in him to tell the thing as truly as he could. “Yes, somewhat,” be said slowly and uncertainly, “of Elizabeth and of all the things that die. Everything seems to work with a recurring rhythm except life. There is only one birth and only one death. Nothing else is like that.”
Rama moved close and sat down beside him. “You loved Elizabeth.”
“Yes,” he said, “I did.”
“But you didn’t know her as a person. You never have known a person. You aren’t aware of persons, Joseph; only people. You can’t see units, Joseph, only the whole.” She shrugged her shoulders and sat up straight. “You aren’t even listening to me. I came over to see if you had had anything to eat.”
“I don’t want to eat,” he said.
“Well, I can understand that. I have the baby, you know. Do you want me to keep it over at my house?”
“I’ll get someone to take care of it as soon as I can,” he said.
She stood up, preparing to go. “You are tired, Joseph. Go to bed and get some sleep if you can. And if you can’t, at least lie down. In the morning you’ll be hungry, and then you can come to breakfast.”
“Yes,” he said absently, “in the morning I’ll be hungry.”
“And you’ll go to bed now?”
He agreed, hardly knowing what she had said. “Yes, I’ll go to bed.” And when she went out he obeyed her automatically. He took off his clothes and stood in front of the stove, looking down at his lean hard stomach and legs. Rama’s voice kept repeating in his head, “You must lie down and rest.” He took the lamp from its hanging ring and walked into the bedroom and got into bed, leaving the light on the table. Since he had entered the house his senses had been boxed up in his thoughts, but now, as his body stretched and relaxed, sounds of the night became available to his ears, so that he heard the murmuring of the wind and the harsh whisper of the dry leaves in the dead oak tree. And he heard the far-off moaning of a cow. Life flowed back into the land, and the movement that had been deadened by thought started up again. He considered turning off the lamp, but his reluctant body refused the task.
A furtive step sounded on the porch. He heard the front door open quietly. A rustling sound came from the sitting-room. Joseph lay still and listened, and wondered icily who was there, but he did not call out. And then the bedroom door opened, and he turned his head to look. Rama stood naked in the doorway, and the lamplight fell upon her. Joseph saw the full breasts, ending in dark hard nipples, and the broad round belly and the powerful legs, and the triangle of crisp black hair. Rama’s breath came panting, as though she had been running.
“This is a need,” she whispered hoarsely.
In Joseph’s throat and chest a grinding started, like hot gravel, and it moved downward.
Rama blew out the light and flung herself into the bed. Their bodies met furiously, thighs pounding and beating, her thewed legs clenched over him. Their breath sobbed in their throats. Joseph could feel the hard nipples against his breast; then Rama groaned harshly, and her broad hips drummed against him, and her body quivered until the pressure of her straining arms crushed the breath from his chest, and her hungry limbs drew irresistibly the agonizing seed of his body.
She relaxed, breathing heavily. The strong muscles grew soft, they lay together in exhaustion.
“It was a need to you,” she whispered. “It was a hunger in me, but a need to you. The long deep river of sorrow is diverted and sucked into me, and the sorrow which is only a warm wan pleasure is drawn out in a moment. Do you think that, Joseph?”