The Wounded Land Read Free Page B

stairs gave her a sense of abandonment, as if she had been left to carry alone a burden that she would never be able to understand.
    Foreboding nagged at her, but she ignored it. She had no acceptable alternatives. She sat where she was for a moment, glaring around the blind yellow walls, then went to take a shower.
    After she had washed away as much of the blackness as she could reach with soap and water, she donned a dull gray dress that had the effect of minimizing her femininity, then spent a few minutes checking the contents of her medical bag. They always seemed insufficient—there were so many things she might conceivably need which she could not carry with her—and now they appeared to be a particularly improvident arsenal against the unknown. But she knew from experience that she would have felt naked without her bag. With a sigh of fatigue, she locked the apartment and went down the stairs to her car.
    Driving slowly to give herself time to learn landmarks, she followed Dr. Berenford’s directions and soon found herself moving through the center of town.
    The late afternoon sun and the thickness of the air made the buildings look as if they were sweating. The businesses seemed to lean away from the hot sidewalks, as if they had forgotten the enthusiasm, even the accessibility, that they needed to survive; and the courthouse, with its dull white marble and its roof supported by stone giant heads atop ersatz Greek columns, looked altogether unequal to its responsibilities.
    The sidewalks were relatively busy—people were going home from work—but one small group in front of the courthouse caught Linden’s eye. A faded woman with three small children stood on the steps. She wore a shapeless shift which appeared to have been made from burlap; and the children were dressed in gunny sacks. Her face was gray and blank, as if she were inured by poverty and weariness to the emaciation of her children. All four of them held short wooden sticks bearing crude signs.
    The signs were marked with red triangles. Inside each triangle was written one word: REPENT.
    The woman and her children ignored the passersby. They stood dumbly on the steps as if they were engaged in a penance which stupefied them. Linden’s heart ached uselessly at the sight of their moral and physical penury. There was nothing she could do for such people.
    Three minutes later, she was outside the municipal limits.
    There the road began to run through tilled valleys, between wooded hills. Beyond the town, the unseasonable heat and humidity were kinder to what they touched; they made the air lambent, so that it lay like immanence across the new crops, up the tangled weed-and-grass hillsides, among the budding trees; and her mood lifted at the way the landscape glowed in the approach of evening. She had spent so much ofher life in cities. She continued to drive slowly; she wanted to savor the faint hope that she had found something she would be able to enjoy.
    After a couple of miles, she came to a wide field on her right, thickly overgrown with milkweed and wild mustard. Across the field, a quarter of a mile away against a wall of trees, stood a white frame house. Two or three other houses bordered the field, closer to the highway; but the white one drew her attention as if it were the only habitable structure in the area.
    A dirt road ran into the field. Branches went to the other houses, but the main track led straight to the white one.
    Beside the entrance stood a wooden sign. Despite faded paint and several old splintered holes like bullet scars, the lettering was still legible: Haven Farm.
    Gripping her courage, Linden turned onto the dirt road.
    Without warning, the periphery of her gaze caught a flick of ochre. A robed figure stood beside the sign.
    What—?
    He stood there as if he had just appeared out of the air. An instant ago, she had seen nothing except the sign.
    Taken by surprise, she instinctively twitched the wheel, trying to evade a