When he tried to wake her and she would not get up, Wiley shrugged his shoulders, slipped into the old clothes of the missing man, and shin-nied down the ladder from the loft, following his nose to the source of its enchantment: bacon and eggs and coffee on the stove. The old woman and her strange granddaughter had already risen, dressed, and set the table for a feast: sliced bananas and poached pears ripe and juicy in porcelain bowls, a column of toasted homemade bread next to a perfect stick of butter, brimming jam jars, and a honeypot in the shape of a beehive. His mind wandered back across the room and up the ladder to his sleeping beauty, but let her rest, he decided. She had been through a lot in the past few days and seemed distressed by some malady he could not name. Let her sleep, and maybe she would awaken in a better mood, and besides, he did not want to wait to eat a minute longer. His hostesses did not trouble to ask but invited him instead to have a seat, get comfy, do you take sugar, Sugar?
Breakfasting at the rough pine table with the old woman and her granddaughter, Wiley imagined himself as a hero among the plain people. Mao dining with the proles, Che among the Cuban peasants in hiding from the Batistas, Lenin in his Siberian exile plotting what is to be done over borscht and glasses of strong, hot tea. The Gavins could not take their eyes off him, clearly admired him, and he felt a current pass among them. He was dangerous, valiant, a man of true principles, and these poor people looked upon him as savior, champion, destined for history.
Morning sunlight shone through the windows and altered the aspect of the room. What had been foreboding at night and in the gloom of rain now appeared merely old and forlorn, as tired as the fading year. The stuffed menagerie became a piebald zoo, the animals moth-chewed and dusty, their glass eyes clouded without the dancing reflections from the fire. The great wooden globe was cracked and fissured, the paper peeling, a bare white patch where Greenland once lay, a curling lip off the coast of Chile. A cherry bureau which doubled as a desk was topped by a silvered mirror, which mangled one's impression in brushstrokes of clouds and obscurity. But the breakfast table shone with wax and groaned with food, which Wiley ate with guiltless pleasure. Erica did not wake all through second helpings, through the casually peeled orange, through the third freshening of the hot black coffee. She slept through scrubbing up; through his indifferent tour of the library, through his perusal of the vibrant color plates in Birds of Appalachia. Tired of the yellow warblers and pileated woodpeckers, tired of waiting for Erica to get out of bed, he found his jacket on a hook by the side door and went out into the late morning to find their car and see what could be done with a new day's patience.
She had been dreaming that the rain had stopped and the sun was shining, that when the shot rang out, she took off with the flock, their wings beating, voices crying in one great rush, and she rose above, could envision Wiley on the banks of the lake, gun in hand, and as he fired again, the cook exploded as the bullet hit his chest, saw him falling and the money erupt from the hole, saw the bills float in the air like oak leaves caught in a swirling breeze against the sun burning above. And then the pop and the flash as he fired again into her father and the money burst into air, burst into flames, and the body—Daddy—drifting in the dead man's float on the water, of no more consequence than a discarded sail, and she could not move from overhead as the birds scattered in panic.
When she could finally summon the strength to lift her eyelids Erica did not know where she was. The wooden beams in the rafters looked like timber from a cross in a church, then the upside-down ribs of a boat above her head. Disoriented, she closed her eyes, tried to remember, and then came the voice of the girl. “Miss Nancy, wake up,” she was saying. Who was Nancy? Wrestling an invisible weight upon her, she turned her head to the side and searched for the child. She wanted someone—her father, her mother—to come rescue her from this strange bed but could not find the words to cry out. Pebbles lined her throat, and paste caked at the corners of her eyes.
“Wake up, Miss Nancy.” Una stood by the headboard, a full glass in her hand as an offertory. Erica sipped once, then fell back on the pillow and closed her eyes, sighing at the mattress's tender embrace. “You have to get up, Miss Nancy. The morning is well spent, and Mr. Wiley left without you. C'mon, we'll fix you a queen's breakfast. It's past tin.”
Tin, ten, Tinnissee, her memory came back to her, worthless and ragged. “I'm sick,” she said. “The world has fallen on top of me.”
“Try.” Her thin arms strung with exertion, Una lifted her to a sitting position.
The bed pitched wildly on a storm-spun ocean, and Erica fought to right her balance and steady the whirling room. The child clung to her, and after a few deep breaths, Erica could focus and tempt her body to pull back the blankets, lift her knees, and swing her hips. When her feet hit the bare floor, she stopped to rest. “What do you mean?” she asked. “He left without me?”
“Gone to get your car, he says. Told me to tell you he'd be back as soon as he could get her started.” She giggled at the word “her.”
Erica rocked to steady herself and try to stand. “I don't think I can make it down that ladder. Too wobbly. I don't know what's wrong with me.”