East is East

And then, at the end of the week—he couldn’t put it off any longer, didn’t want to—he had to make another collecting trip, this one in the hope of getting his project off the ground. He was going to collect the fish—the rare, almost legendary fish—that would make him his fortune—or rather, carve him his niche in the annals of the great aquarists: fortune he already had. Ruth didn’t want to come with him. Not this time. She was working too well, going with the flow, and she couldn’t risk it. She’d miss him—even if he’d only be gone overnight—and she’d come along with him next time. She promised.

He spent a full blazing bug-infested afternoon and the succeeding morning on the Okefenokee, casting nets, drawing seines, setting minnow traps, and he came up with a writhing grab bag of fascinating things—pirate perch, golden top minnow, needle-nosed gar, swamp darter and brook silverside—but not what he was looking for. It was a disappointment, but not a crushing one—certainly not a defeat. He’d hoped to get lucky, yes, but knew realistically that he might have to comb the swamp a hundred times before he scored. After all, Ahab hadn’t found the white whale in a day, either. Still, he enjoyed the drive, enjoyed the day out in the wilderness, even enjoyed his solitary night in a motel in Ciceroville, where he watched the Atlanta Braves on a color TV bolted to the wall. At noon on the second day he brought his rented boat in and dumped his catch over the side. (He was tempted, especially by the shimmering silver gar, to bring something back for the lifeless aquarium, but he resisted; he didn’t want his little world defiled by just any tawdry thing that happened to catch his eye.) Then he headed back for Tupelo Island, hoping to make the afternoon ferry and cocktail hour.

It was early evening when he rounded the bend of the long sweeping drive and the big house came into view. There was movement on the south lawn, and Saxby saw that the colonists had gathered there for a picnic supper, the women’s white summer dresses and men’s light jackets like so many pale flowers in a field of saturate green. He caught a glimpse of his mother, straw bonnet with a chiffon veil, erect and regal in a wooden lawnchair, and he waved. Ruth would be there somewhere, and he slowed the pickup ever so briefly, but didn’t see her, and then he was rumbling into the garage, a faint pink cloud of dust catching up with him as he killed the engine and swung open the driver’s door.

He hadn’t had a chance to clean up—his hands stank of perch and darter and of the rich fecal muck of the Okefenokee, and the thighs and backside of his jeans were stiff with the residue of his fish-handling—and Ruth took him by surprise. No sooner had he swung open the door and set his feet on the ground, than she was there, rushing into his arms in a strapless cocktail dress that showed off the flashing lines and tawny hollows of her throat and shoulders. “Sax,” she moaned, holding him, kissing him, fish-stink and all, “I’m so glad you’re back.”

He held her, pressed her to him, hot already, hot instantly, a gas grill gone from pilot to high at the merest touch, and he wondered if he should gently push her away, for the sake of her dress, and he was embarrassed and he didn’t know what to say. She didn’t speak either—just held him—and that was odd: she was never at a loss for words. And then he felt it, a tremor running through her, seismic, an emotional quake: she was crying. “What?” he said. “What is it?”

She wouldn’t lift her face.

“Is something wrong? Did something happen while I was away? What is it, babe?”

Her voice was buried, it was doleful and hoarse. “Oh, Sax,” she said, and she paused, and she squeezed him and he squeezed her back. “You’ve got to talk to your mother, you’ve got to—for me.”

Talk to his mother?

“It’s Jane Shine,” she said. She looked up at him now—lifted her head from his shoulder and showed him the tears on her face and the cold fierce glare in her eyes. “She can’t come here. She can’t. She’s a bitch. A snob. She’s—all her talent’s between her legs, Sax, that’s all. She’s not worth it, she isn’t.”

He said something, anything, a rumble of disconnected words to comfort her, but she wouldn’t be comforted.

Her hands tightened on his biceps and her eyes were hard. “No, Sax, I mean it,” she said. “She can’t come here.”

There was a sudden shout of laughter from across the lawn and Ruth didn’t flinch, didn’t hear it, didn’t care. “It would ruin everything,” she said.

Rusu