57: Raskol said nothing.
Little Follies, “Life on the Bolotomy,” Chapter 12 concludes
Raskol said nothing. He was moving his lips noiselessly, as if he were saying grace.
“Maybe you’d rather have the spaghetti tonight,” I said. I got the cardboard bucket that held the spaghetti out of the duffle bag that I used for carrying the food. The rain and the tomato sauce had softened the bucket so that it no longer held its shape well. I pried the lid off and looked inside. At once, I saw what I was holding as if through Raskol’s eyes. It looked a lot like a poor dumb woodland creature that had been dead for a while. Scavengers might have been picking at it, tearing away at its flesh and exposing its tangled innards. Since I had nothing else to offer in place of the Spam, I held the bucket out toward Raskol. Tentatively, he looked inside. He meant to say something about the spaghetti, I think, for he opened his mouth and emitted a small sound, but at that moment both of us were distracted by the sound of snapping twigs, coming from somewhere near us.
“Somebody’s coming!” I whispered.
“Yeah,” said Raskol, swallowing hard. “I hope it’s somebody with food.”
The sound came nearer and nearer. It was certainly someone walking through the woods, approaching our tent. A light played across the canvas.
“A flashlight,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Raskol.
The footsteps stopped. My heart was pounding. In the stillness I could hear Raskol’s stomach growling. Then a voice called out, “Do you mind if I come in out of the rain?” It was May Castle.
“May!” I cried.
“Hello, Peter,” she said, smiling devilishly. “How goes the adventure so far?”
“Great!” I said. I glanced at Raskol. “Well, pretty good,” I said.
May squeezed into the tent and settled herself on the checkered tablecloth. She had with her a large picnic hamper, covered with a slicker. She set it down and gave me a big hug and a sweet, sticky, lipstick kiss. Then she turned to Raskol and introduced herself.
“I’m May Castle,” she said. “I am a very good friend of Peter’s grandparents, on both sides, and I think I’m a pretty good friend of Peter’s too.” She turned toward me again and asked, “What do you say? Am I a pretty good friend of yours?”
“Yes,” I said, and for some reason I blushed.
“Well,” she said, turning to Raskol again. “And I hope I’ll be a pretty good friend of yours, too. You’re this Raskolnikov, aren’t you? But your name is Rodney. Now why don’t you use Rodney? I think that’s a perfectly dashing name, Rodney. Did I know a Rodney? No, I think not. I think I knew a Roderick. Or Broderick. But Rodney is just fine, I think. Sounds like a name for a good horseman, Rodney.”
Raskol wasn’t smiling.
“No Rodney, eh?” said May. “All right, then, Raskolnikov it is.”
She chucked him under the chin, and he didn’t wince. He grinned. “What have you got with you?” he asked.
“Dinner!” she said. She threw off the slicker and began removing dishes from the basket. She had an enormous dinner with her: turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, gravy, apple pie, and more. The aromas rose from the basket and filled the tent at once. She brought out a cocktail shaker, a glass cocktail shaker with a red plastic top. The top was in three parts. The lowest of these was threaded and screwed onto the glass shaker. The topmost part was a cap that slipped onto the middle part and was removed for pouring. The middle part was attached to the bottom part by an axle, so that it could be rotated freely. Through a window in the middle part, recipes for drinks, which were embossed on the bottom part, showed. I can see the cocktail shaker through the haze of memory with the odd vividness that a small detail from the past sometimes assumes, so sharply and clearly that I can read the recipe showing through the window in the top. It was for a drink called “Between the Sheets.” To make this drink, one was instructed to combine equal parts of rum, brandy, triple sec, and lemon juice. May next brought out a stemmed glass, with a band of red and a gold rim, and a little bottle of cherries, with stems. From the cocktail shaker she poured herself a Manhattan. While she drank one or two or three of these, Raskol and I ate.
“May,” said Raskol when we had finished, “how did you get this food here without having it get cold?”
“I drove,” she said.
“You drove?” I asked. “Do you have a Jeep?”
“A Jeep?” she asked, laughing. “Do I look like a woman who has a Jeep? Certainly not. I drove my Chrysler.”
“Through the woods?” I asked.
“No, not through the woods,” she said, leaning over and squeezing my cheek, as if she were going to add, “you cute little fool, you.”
“Where are we?” asked Raskol.
“You’re right near Route 13,” she said. “If the rain weren’t so loud, you’d be able to hear the traffic.”
“How did you guess that we’d be here?” asked Raskol. He was smiling at May with admiration.
“I didn’t have to guess,” she said. “I knew. This is as far as I got on the first day of the trip up the Bolotomy when I made it, quite a few years ago, with a little friend of mine. Of course, Route 13 was just called Hargrove Road at that time.”
“Was your little friend a boy or a girl?” asked Raskol.
May laughed and poured from the cocktail shaker again.
“Hmmmmm. A boy or a girl. I think that I won’t answer that,” she said. She smiled, took a sip, and went on. “It was a summer night, much like this, but without rain, thank God. We were able to lie on the riverbank on our backs and look up at the stars. You know—well, I’m sure you don’t know, but one day you will—a memory will blur with time until only the most general outlines of things remain, like the unidentifiable people in a fuzzy photograph, and yet, off to one side, some tiny detail will stand out crisp and clear and sharp, as if a single ray of light had caught it just right and burned it onto the film. Years from now, some detail may remain from tonight, if you’re lucky.”
“I’ll bet there’s some sharp detail that shines in the memory of your night here,” said Raskol. His voice startled me. He sounded like an adult.
“Yes,” said May, very softly, “there is.”
“What?” asked Raskol.
May sighed and lit a cigarette. I wanted very much to hear what hard, bright detail remained of May’s trip up the Bolotomy, but I had been nodding for a while, and before she spoke I was asleep.
[to be continued on Monday, August 2, 2021]
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