Emmetsburg:Sixty

Emily drew the waist of the dress into her hands and hesitated a moment. She lifted away the dress and let it fall to a small bush behind her. John looked at her. Not with lust, but with admiration. Starlight fell across her breasts, shone upon the smooth slope of her belly to where it lost in the tangled triangle of dark pubic hair. She swam nd luxuriated in his gaze.
“Married.” she said, almost as a disappointed sigh.

“Matter?”

“Just if you’re running from…”

“Just as soon leave it be,” he said, then tempered the words. “If that’s all right.”

“Don’t mean to pry.”

“Just wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Fair enough.”

“And you?”

Emily sort of laughed darkly to herself. She played with her hair a moment before tying it back. “Wouldn’t have called it a marriage. At least not in the biblical sense.”

“Where is he now?”

In hell, if there is any justice in the world, she thought to say. Instead she shrugged and sat and leaned back on her elbows, as if she and John had been lovers forever. The conversation stirred memories Emily would just as soon have buried for good.

Was there any real justice in the world, she wondered, or were such things illusions for gullible hearts that still clung to ideas like god and fate and love? She wasn’t enough of a hypocrite to abandon such things. No still beating heart rightly could. But she didn’t entertain those thoughts either.

As for love, she saw it not as a goal or a treasure to be cherished. Rather it was more a weakness, a flaw of the heart that allowed the unscrupulous to delude the needing heart against the stubborn human mind that it was capable of anything purer. Still, in quieter moments Emily understood that her hypocrisy was complete. The conflicting thoughts brought a sudden wave of emotion. Tears threatened her eyes.

“I love looking at the stars,” she said, hoping to divert her thoughts. Something in their eternity settled her a bit.

“That so?” he replied. He was thinking of Anna. It tore at his heart what she must be thinking at this moment, wondering where he had gone off to

“Makes the problems in the world seem so small.”

“I reckon.”

“Ask you a question?”

“Might cost you,” John smiled.

“Take wooden nickels?” she teased.

The rising moon scattered across the flowing waters. Her gaze fixed upon that scattered light, as if some wisdom could be gleaned from its study, or that it might wrestle free deeper thoughts she was incapable of reaching on her own. John was thinking the same thing.


“What do you figure this is all about?” he asked.

“Ain’t a proper question,” she answered.

“Don’t follow.”

“I ain’t seeing the world through your eyes, and you can’t see through mine.”

He nodded at her reply, a bit disappointed he couldn’t come to it himself. It only seemed to confirm the words.

“That’s a curse, I suppose.”

“Don’t know,” she said. Her voice was almost lost to the crickets and the river. She looked away. There were campfires among a bank of trees a ways off. “Works out about the same either way.”

“Think?”

“Maybe. Who knows?”

“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully. She didn't hear. Didn't seem like there was much else to say. The moment fell away from them to hang heavy in the growing humidity. There were bigger thoughts here that neither was in the mood to pursue much, at least not with someone else. Emily chuckled, breaking the moment.

“Didn't figure on pondering the heavens when I came down here with you, John.”

John smiled a little sadly. Not quite meeting her eyes, but more looking past her. “Hot night.”

Emily stood without replying and pondered the river. She went to the edge. Her toes sank in the cool silky mud. The water rushed in around her feet chasing the heat of the night from her body. John closed his eyes.

“You asked what this all means,” Emily swept a foot through the water before her.

“Uh huh.”

“I'm looking at this here river,” she said. Her voice felt distant, even to her. “Been running forever. Be running after I'm dead and gone.”

Doesn't frighten you?”

“The word or forever?”

“Take your pick.”

The answer was simple. It was perfect. Emily swept a foot back and forth in the water.

“Think I'll go for that swim,” she said.

John nodded in a nondescript manner. Emily took a long cleansing breath and released it. She waded into the river waist deep. John watched as she slid forward and pushed gently into the dark river. Caught by the current she slipped from view and was gone.

John stood and walked slowly up to the truck, pausing to study the contours of a leaf for a moment. Emily's mom and pop were seated precisely where he had found them earlier. John gave a polite nod. The old man looked away and spat into the dust. His wife remained a statue to the injustices of her life. She was a lifetime away, playing at the world the little girl in her dreamed once.