He picked up the brown leather glove from a holly bush where it had caught in falling. The leather was soft as a woman’s breast, and when he lifted it to his face, he knew that its scent was Sarah Kendrick’s. He stood so for a minute watching her disappear. Then he got back onto his horse and rode home in a fury. Finding Geraldine in the back yard hanging washed clothes on a line, he grabbed her by the wrist and took her into the house and to his bedroom, where he threw her onto his bed and fucked her without removing a stitch of his or her clothes. When he had come, he despised her and drew out of her and sat on the side of the bed. When, still in a sort of confusion, she swung her body to sit on the other side of the bed, they were silent with their backs to each other, until he said, “Get out You stink. Your body stinks. Get out of here.”

5

The boundaries between Oaks and the Anderson Place were not ruler-straight, but followed topographical variations, and a certain narrow spear of Oaks property was all but surrounded by that of its neighbor. It was woodland just there, scrub and trees making no distinction of lines set down in the records at the county seat. The Oaks land was a glade with a brook cutting through slate and rock. In summer with the trees full-foliaged it was cool and almost dark even with a noon sun overhead. In winter there were enough evergreens to keep the secret look and feeling of the place. Driscoll Proctor had discovered it on a solitary walk his first autumn at Oaks, and when he and Roman became friends, they used it as a meeting place. It was not necessary to meet secretly, but sometimes they did so for privacy.

To get there Roman crossed a piece of the Anderson Place, but since it was wooded and he was wary, he believed he had never been observed. Both men had finished teaching for the day when they met one warm midafternoon in February. Proctor had been there a little while, leaning against a rock that caught a spotlight of sun beside the brook, his hat off, his eyes closed against the glare.

“A very pensive, poetic picture you make,” Roman said, stepping out of the darker woods. Proctor smiled before opening his eyes, but they did not shake hands or touch each other in any other way of greeting. “There should be a ruin with vines, and maybe an owl flapping blindly overhead. What were you thinking about, or was your mind dreaming?”

“You.”

“Good!”

“How was the school today?” Proctor asked.