Heart Fades to Black

Chapter 7: Mary's Letter

---

The challenges of Winter at Erehwon were confusingly different to me from the three seasons before - I didn't have enough work to keep me busy. No crops could grow in the snow-covered fields, and blowing off the construction of a greenhouse that would have nurtured all weather crops was another bit of slacking I'd done that I was then regretting. All there was to do was keep the chickens healthy and happy, and that was a piece of cake. Karen was handling that job like a pro anyhow. There were little repairs here and there that needed doing but it was pretty close to busywork. Only options I could see were either to go up to (what I called in my mind) Popuri's monster pond and do some serious mining, or else kick back for the season and do some serious lovin' and drinkin'.

Neither option looked attractive. On the one hand, I hated mining with a passion. That year, I'd gotten to liking vigorous physical labor - as long as it was out in the open. The air in Mineral Village was so pure I'd learned to recognize each type of crop plant - and some wild ones - by their smell alone. Those clean country smells, the open skies, the surrounding deep forests and hills, the occasional glimpse of a small critter - I loved it all. Mineral Village would actually have been an ideal place to live if it'd only been Karen, Cliff and I there.

Like I said, I hated mining. The physical effort wasn't much more than hoeing up the fields, but the surroundings! Dark and damp and dank, just like I'd always imagined being in a prison was like. If I have to work inside, give me a well-lit room, a comfortable chair, a spacious desk and a continually running coffee pot, thank you very much. The first three seasons, I had no choice but to dig up the ores needed to improve my tools because Saibara was too old and Grey was too lazy (or too stupid, or both) to mine them. But doing it just to keep busy and add a little bit to my already adequate savings didn't appeal to me at all.

On the other hand, I didn't want to be idle. It's not that I needed the money - I had over 200,000G saved up (God bless sweet potatoes!) and the profit from the eggs alone would have been enough to let me break even for the Winter if I didn't spend recklessly. It's that I'd gotten pretty damn strong over the course of the year and I didn't want to get out of shape again - remembering all too well what a bear early Spring had been with me clearing those trashed fields while being desk job 'girly man' weak. Besides, I had my little bit of vanity also. I figured I looked as buffed as any hardcore gym rat, only I'd gotten paid to get that way and I was going to keep myself up as well as I could.

Karen thought my physique was pretty good also, many were the times she'd just silently run her hands over my upper arms and chest with that eyes half-closed feral feline look on her face - a prelude of course to the usual acts and the usual results. Through practice and habit, we'd gotten where we were not too shabby together. I was strong and energetic, she was agile and enthusiastic and it worked out OK. I was used to her and it was relaxing to me.

What finally decided me towards mining was a little fantasy of mine. I kept imagining Karen dripping with fine jewelry while otherwise stark naked and the image was very appealing to me. But when I asked Zack about bringing in some items from the mainland, the extortionate prices he quoted shocked me. The guy already knew I was frugal, so he told me about the Orichalcum ore in the 'monster pond' mine that Saibara could work into all kind of elegant pieces for a quite reasonable price.

Yeah, in this world one way or another you have to pay for your pleasures. So the morning of Winter 1 saw me slaving away in the mine - loading up my backpack with Orichalcum and filling my basket with whatever salable ores I didn't want. That mine was as nasty as I'd expected but the ores were of substantially higher quality than the ones in the little mine behind the waterfall. I was quite pleasantly surprised to find Zack handing over 5500G for them at the end of the day, and I suppose my lust for gain is stronger than my love of pleasant surroundings 'cause I became a devoted miner after that settlement.

Earlier that day I'd also placed my order for jewelry with Saibara - he'd shown me drawings of so many beautiful pieces that I couldn't decide which to get first. Finally I had just closed my eyes and jabbed my finger at the catalog, choosing a necklace at random. Three days to create it, he'd said. I figured that Winter 4 would be a pleasant day for both Karen and I, and so it turned out.

We had what we already considered 'our dish' - truffle rice - for dinner. Karen had asked that I not make it too often, as it was very special to her, being a part of what she called 'our first real night together.' "I always want it to be magic to me; I never want it to become familiar like just another good meal." So when I did serve it that evening, she'd figured that I was up to something out of the ordinary and she was showing a little girlishly impatient anticipation in response.

Indeed I did have something special in mind - we went into the bedroom and I asked her to undress before the vanity mirror while I stood behind her watching. She did so with amusement - 'getting a little kinky are we?' - thinking it was just a prelude to our usual evening activities. Well, once she was bare I started nibbling on her ear to distract her while I reached in the drawer, retrieved the necklace and fastened it around her neck while she got all starry eyed watching the proceedings in the mirror.

I got starry eyed also - Saibara may have been a slave driver and a world-class grouch, but in his craft he was a freaking genius. He'd known of course that the necklace was for Karen and had polished and worked the stones so that they exactly complemented her skin - iridescent red against her delicate pink with the white gold links looking like little electric sparks.

She was almost speechless. "Jack. What's gotten into you? It's..."

"It's you, dearest. You were born to wear this - and many others like it. I'm going to be a rich man soon - stick with me and I'll cover you from head to toe in finery. Now, out in the village you can wear this whenever and however you like. But here at home this is exactly how I want to see you - you and jewels and nothing else. You're so beautiful."

"Jack, 'thank you' doesn't even begin to cover it. I just love you so much."

The rest of that evening was especially sweet - probably our sweetest time together. Having her close like that was just so good and right that for the first time I was feeling that holding a torch for Popuri was pure foolishness and that being with Karen for the rest of my life was the way to go.

Unfortunately, the clock had run out on us. It was a good thing that the evening of Winter 4 was so fine that I still remember it like yesterday. The next morning, things started falling apart hard.

---

Winter 5 is without question my least favorite day of the year. For years and years my habit has been to take that day off from whatever responsibilities I have, lock myself alone into wherever I'm living, put all communications systems on 'message mode' and stay stinking drunk from dawn to dark - unless I pass out first. I started doing this after Winter 5 of my year in Mineral Village and I know exactly why I act this way. It's a day of mourning. Two people close to me died that day - and one of them was the old me. The increasingly fragile balance of my life on the farm was shattered that day, and from the wreckage emerged the man I've been for nearly 30 years now. The other 119 days of the year I'm just fine with myself - in so many ways I live a good life. But on Winter 5, I mourn for the old Jack - that sweet, open, optimistic and oh so naïve boy. I mourn for her too. She was part of that boy - had a lot to do with making him what he was - and he didn't even know it until it was far too late.

It was a pretty cold day but late morning found me working outside anyways, dinking with the boundary fence that had seen too much weather and not enough attention over the years. I saw her first - running down the town path towards Erehwon with her grace forgotten, all hurried gangly panic, her long brown hair flying every which way. As she got closer I could see her face - I never in my life want to see someone looking like that again - was filled with horror. She screamed to me as she approached the gate, "Jack! Oh Jack, please help me! Jack!" Well, I ran towards her and we caught up to each other in front of Saibara's, her throwing herself crying into my arms.

"Karen, what happened?"

She looked up at me with a hopelessly lost look. "It's Mary...Jack, she's dead!"

"What?! What happened?"

Her eyes were haunted. "It was by her own hand. They found her hanging in her room this morning. Oh no. No. No."

And I held her tight as her sobs wracked her thin body so hard I thought it would break apart.

She was completely out of it, and I led her back to my house and put her to bed, where she curled herself into a ball crying and making incoherent sounds for the whole afternoon. I somehow managed to get some blue grass tea and broth into her - no wine though, that was the last thing either of us needed - and sat on the bed watching over her. She faded in and out of lucidity, sometimes talking to herself in a childish voice:

"Ya know I'm gonna marry Rick when we're grown up, so who are you gonna marry? C'mon Mar, you can tell me. Just our secret, OK?"

"Look at me daaance! Better'n Joanna and Aja at the festival, right?"

"Euuuww! Get it off me, Mar! I hate caterpillars!"

and sometimes just hugging herself and shivering.

As it got towards evening, I was getting worried enough that I was considering calling the doctor in. Karen was nothing if not a strong woman however, and about six she pretty much came back to herself. Well, a 'herself' blank of face, dull of eyes and lacking affect. She joined me at the table for some more tea and vegetable stew, us exchanging talk so small and empty that we hardly saw the point in answering each other. Finally, she decided to go home for the evening - she'd declined my offers both to sleep over and for me to walk her home.

I watched her going out the gate and shuffling along the path into town rather selfishly wondering what this was going to do to our affair. As it turned out, she never spent another night at Erehwon. From that day on - well, it would be too much to call her a broken woman, but some center, some stabilizing factor within her was gone. If you think that simple and childish people like Popuri cause trouble when they act erratically - it's nothing compared to what a mature, worldly type can do when they take a header off the deep end. As I was to find out soon enough.

---

A little later that evening I went into town to get the news about Mary. At the Inn there were a bunch of people glumly sitting around drinking in silence. Doug was in a pretty subdued mood also, but told me what little he knew.

That lady - so called - from student services must have taken a special course in insensitivity. Ann had picked up the phone only to be told matter of factly that Mary was dead and would her parents 'please call this number back at their convenience.' At least Ann had had the sense to get Basil out of his house and away from Anna before telling him. Not that it'd mattered that much - Basil was devastated but Anna had broken down completely and was in the clinic under observation and heavy sedation. He and Thomas had been on the phone a good part of the day following the progress of the investigation and arraigning the return of Mary's body (he'd not wanted to go there himself with Anna in such a bad way.)

The whole thing was something of a mystery to the university authorities. Mary had been doing well enough in school - not stellar, but that wasn't expected of home-schooled people until they'd had a semester or two to adjust to university life. She hadn't been withdrawn and brooding alone - she'd had the usual round of acquaintances and a couple of girls who called her 'friend.' None of them had noticed anything bad wrong with her - the furthest they would go was to say that she got moody sometimes, but everyone dismissed it as homesickness. She hadn't had any romantic attachments that anyone knew of to depress her, and she wasn't involved with drink or drugs - the coroner had checked for those with null results. She'd left a brief and rather matter of fact note, apologizing for any pain she'd caused her folks but she'd thought life too meaningless and absurd to continue with. Almost a boilerplate suicide note it was - it could have been lifted from any existentialist novel.

The village was in mourning the next couple of days waiting for the authorities to release her body and ship it back for the funeral. I was surprised at the depth of feeling for her. Of course her family and Karen were desolate, but everyone else was dragging around in their daily routine also. I'd always figured that Mary, as nice and as bright as she was, was an unimportant person in the village's life. She'd said it herself - a librarian in a small town where nobody reads. She'd not seemed to take much part in social life - she'd show up at the major festivals and that was about it. But talking to people about her gave me the oddest feeling that she had been at the heart of the village's spirit. They were full of reminiscences about her and Karen's youthful antics, her deep love of the mountain, her regular habits, and her general calm good nature (which I was regretting I'd not seen more of.) Ellen gave the best voice to that, "Knowing Mary was sitting at her desk scribbling away at her stories was like knowing the sun came up in the morning. How are we all going to keep our heads about us without her?"

If the reason for her death was a mystery to most people - well, Karen and I had our dark suspicions. Karen refused to sleep with me those nights, partly out of mourning but partly out of guilt also. "Jack, I'd feel like she was lying between us. I just couldn't bear it. Give me some time to adjust, OK?" I was feeling guilty also. Had she been so obsessed with me and so brokenhearted about my first being with Popuri and then being with Karen that it'd driven her to do that thing?

Finally, I worked on myself to shake off the guilt and take a hard-boiled attitude about her. How did I know that she did it because of me? And anyways, I wasn't really responsible for it, was I? I'd never led her on or tantalized her with the possibility of us being a couple, had I? If she'd fallen hopelessly in love with me and couldn't get over it, well that really wasn't my doing, was it? After all let's face it, lots of people get their hearts broken at some time in their lives, and they're miserable for awhile but then they get over it and move on. I'd just been through that myself. Only weaklings kill themselves because they can't have the one they want, right? It wasn't my fault, it was a failing in her - so I told myself over and over until I kind of believed it. Heartless? Call it that if you wish. I view it as a matter of survival. How could anyone live with the belief that they'd been the cause of death of such a nice and inoffensive person as Mary? That would irreparably blast a life and make it not worth living. And I wasn't about to let that happen to me - she was gone and nothing I could do could change it. I was still alive and I was going to survive and prosper! I was a survivor, dammit!

---

The Capitol City police finally closed their investigation with the stock phrase, 'took her own life while of unsound mind' and shipped her remains back to Mineral Village. I stayed on Erehwon the morning the casket arrived - Basil and Anna were the last people I wanted to see then and I'm sure the feeling was mutual. I was puttering around the outside of the house looking for busywork (an exercise in futility - Gotz's construction had already withstood two snowstorms with no apparent ill effects) when Harris came dragging in the gate - even though he was at least 10 years older than her, I'd suspected he'd had secret feelings for Mary. He wordlessly handed me the usual bundle of letters and headed back out as I idly sorted through the usual missives from friends, rejection notices from companies, a letter posted from the University...in Mary's distinctive writing. In fact, it was postmarked the morning of her death. I opened it - with shaking hands I must admit - and sat right down on the snowy ground to read:

I suppose that most men receiving such a letter would have destroyed it out of horror and guilt. I seem to be made of sterner stuff as I've kept it all these years - I have it in front of me right now. After all, it's the only remembrance of her I have. And also - well let's face it, isn't the ultimate trophy of male vanity knowing that a woman died out of love for you?

---

I couldn't really tell you what I did for the rest of that morning. I suppose I was just wandering around the farm in a daze with Mary's bitter words echoing in my head. About noon, Karen came in the gate and we just wordlessly held onto each other for dear life and cried our hearts out - both of us, I'm not too proud to say. After we'd calmed down some, Karen again gave me that horrified look.

"Jack...did Mary send you a letter written the night...the night she did it?"

I nodded yes.

"I got one also. I suppose you don't want to tell me what she said to you?"

I shook no.

"Me neither."

We never did tell each other.

We were still holding onto each other when Pastor Carter walked in the gate. He was the last person I'd wanted to see just then and I'm afraid I wasn't the least bit neighborly to him.

"Now pastor, if you've come here to give us any more of your garbage you can just turn right around and march yourself off my farm! I've had it up to here..."

The sadness in his face was more than the professional 'burying face' preachers learn to assume.

"No, I came to deliver a message. I'm glad you're here Karen, it's for the both of you. I don't know how to say this diplomatically." He visibly steeled himself and went on. "Basil has asked me - begged me actually - to ask the two of you not to attend the funeral. He didn't give any reasons but I suppose he doesn't have to."

What was there to say to that? Karen and I just nodded at him, he nodded back and left. It took us a moment to collect ourselves.

"Well Karen, that really stinks!"

"Can you blame them? Really, can you?"

"I suppose not. Is it true that Basil's taking Anna to a rest home after this is over?" She nodded and I went on forcefully. "OK, so they don't want to see our faces anymore, but dammit! I feel I owe her a good-bye and I bet you want to say good-bye also."

Then I got a really wild idea. "Karen, you want to pay your last respects to her, right? So do I. Well, that's just what we're going to do! Why don't you meet me at the chapel at midnight tonight and we do it together."

"Jack, he locks the church at night."

"Pah! I've seen that lock. It's like a 'please come in' sign to a guy like me."

She looked uneasy. "Breaking and entering?"

"Not gonna break anything, just jimmy the lock is all."

She was still uncomfortable with the idea, but seeing as it was the only chance she'd get to say farewell to Mary, she agreed to our meeting there and then.

---

Funny how reality can mirror the most hackneyed devices of fiction. I mean, full moon at midnight, darkened church with the corpse of a suicide within, secret mourners without - how stock a scene is that? Karen came up to me as I stood in the shadows by the church door - she was wearing a black dress of mourning which was also good nighttime camouflage - and I started right in on the lock.

I hadn't thought she was superstitious, but she was frankly jumpy and she tried to cover it with mundane concerns. "You're going to wake the pastor up with that noise." "What if Harris comes by now?" Which I answered with grunted, "Pastor sleeps sounder than I do." "Harris is nursing a bottle in Gotz's woods now."

The lock was a little tougher - a lot older and rustier - than I'd thought, but finally I sprung it and opened the door with (of course!) an eerie creaking. We went in together - actually I had her by the arm and had to pull just a smidge to get her moving - to see (of course!) an open casket illuminated by the rays of the moon filtered blue by the stained glass windows. It was resting in the same place before the altar as my grandfather's had been - village tradition, apparently. We looked at each other for a bit before I got practical again.

"OK. How do we do this? Together? You first? Me first?"

"Jack, why don't I go first?"

"Right. I'll wait for you in the confessional, then. Take your time."

So she went up to the casket and crossed herself as I went into the tiny booth. All I would have needed was to have run into the pastor catching some z's in there, but the place was empty. After all, he was just joking when he said he was just joking about sleeping in the basement. In fact, he did so at every opportunity. Guy was darn near a narcoleptic.

I wasn't (and am not now) superstitious either, but once I was all alone in that pitch-black booth with no practical concerns to distract me, I got a little antsy too. In the old days (or even now in the case of families like Popuri's,) people got their heads filled with morbid tales by their elders. In our days, the never ending parade of bad supernatural videos provide us with our dark fancies. But wherever the spooks in our heads come from, it was situations like I was in then that bring them out to the front of our minds.

Well, my imagined spooks were running around in my head all right and I was jumpy. Every little creak and scurry - just the normal sounds of an old building - had me anxiously expecting...well, to see Mary's specter come out of the walls to chastise me. I quickly got into such a state that I was anxiously mumbling mixed-up prayers, apologies to Mary, oh, all kind of stuff. A few minutes of that and I'd worked myself up so bad that I nearly screamed when the door did open. It was just Karen, of course. She gave me a concerned glance as I hurried past her on my way out of the confessional.

"Jack, are you all right?"

"Yeah. Now. But I'd advise you not to wait in there. Unless you've got no imagination at all."

"OK. I'll go sit in one of the back pews."

Actually, I could see from her face that she really wanted to get out of that place, but as proud as she was of being a strong woman, she damn well wasn't going to run for it in front of me.

By that time, I wasn't so sure I wanted to go through with that thing, but if Karen was going to force herself to be brave, I sure as hell wasn't going to be a sniveling coward. I took a deep breath and went right up to that casket.

The top was open to reveal her face, well illuminated by the moon's rays. Like the cliché goes, she looked as if she was sleeping. They'd removed her glasses, but kept her long hair braided. She wasn't wearing the blue jumper over white blouse I was accustomed to seeing her in; they'd kept her in her school clothes - a bluish nanofiber suit that was the fashionable thing at the time for conservative young women. Somebody had wrapped a clashing scarf around her neck - a hasty afterthought to hide the rope burns. She was actually quite attractive that way.

You know, about the most useless thing in the world you can do is talk to a dead person. But when you're faced with one you still have unfinished business with, you're not thinking too straight. Take it from me. Looking at her lying there, remembering our childhood love and knowing I'd helped put her in that box, I couldn't help myself.

"Mary, did I really do this thing to you? My dearheart, please forgive me."

When I started writing this, I know I'd resolved to be brutally honest in recounting those times without sparing myself anything. But I just can't bring myself to write down some of the things I'd said while standing over her. Suffice it to say that I was repeating all the childish but very heartfelt endearments we'd exchanged that glorious summer so long before. That summer when we were young enough so the world in front us still looked enchanted and we thought - or rather felt without words - that we had all the time in the world and that of course we'd spend our lives together loving each other. After all, I'd promised her.

I finally finished up by bending over her and kissing her long and full on her cold lips. It was our first - and last - full kiss.

"Mary, I love you too."

And I turned and went back to Karen, who by that time had her rosary beads out while kneeling at the back. I knelt beside her, we finished the decade together, then left the church. We walked back to the General Store in silence, exchanged a brief kiss before she went in and I went back to Erehwon alone.

Such were the consequences of my choices.

---

Mary came to me in a dream that night. I was hardly surprised as emotional turmoil usually induces me to dream strange things. But it's still hard to account for the contents of that dream - to this day I can't see where it just came from my own brain steam seeing that the contents diverged somewhat from what I believed at the time.

We were once again together on the summit of Mother's Hill - the time of day indeterminate, the sky luminous. You'd have thought I'd dream her as wearing something like an angelically flowing robe, right? Actually, she appeared to me in a simple white ankle-length summer dress. Her long black hair was unbraided and flowed freely and she no longer wore her glasses either. She looked like a young woman going on a cruise vacation, but her face was as that of a joyful child looking forward to an endlessly wondrous future.

"Mary, I'm sorry for whatever part I played in this. I didn't realize the nature of the bond between us until it was far too late. I just thought..."

"That I was a homely, ingrown and unwanted young woman who had conceived an unbalanced obsession for you? I can't blame you for feeling that way. We didn't really show each other our best sides, did we? But none of that matters now.

"Jack, it appears that I was wrong about an afterlife. It's a pleasant surprise. Of course, I'm going to have to do a penitence for killing myself. It would appear that the Catholics have some insight into this plane of being with their talk of purgatory. But it will not be a difficult time. It's a matter of learning the effects my actions had on those left behind. It will purify me. I'm actually looking forward to it."

"Just what is it like on the other side, Mary? Have you seen God?"

"I've felt Him - Jesus also. He's very real, Jack. The divines writing of Him as a brother who walks with us - that doesn't even begin to describe it! But as for you wanting to know the details...well, that's prying on your part. After all, you'll know all about it in your own good time. Anyway, it's hard to describe this state in terms that make any earthly sense.

"But I can tell you one wonderful thing about this state, Jack - it's a state of liberation. I'm free from all earthly cares and concerns. I'm free from all the things in that life that frightened and constrained me until I turned ingrown and closed off in defense. I'm free from that stifling village with everyone pretending to be so friendly and concerned with each other while all the while mercilessly backbiting and scheming to outdo each other at every opportunity. I'm free from that musty, moldy library! Those stacks of dusty books which I read and reread until I could recite them from heart - teasing me, nay, tormenting me with visions of marvels and beauties that I would never experience. I'm free from my well meaning but oh so constraining parents who were so very pleased to have a smart cute little daughter who was going to stay a prepubescent girl forever. I'm free from Karen, from going along with her ideas of what were the elegant ways to walk and talk and act and reshape everyone's lives in her elegant image - not to mention having to feign interest and sympathy while listening to her endless monologue about Mr. Marvellous Rick.

"And most of all, Jack, I'm free of you. They say love makes life worth living. I couldn't say of my own experience. I can only say that unrequited love makes for a life in chains. For sixteen years, I waited for you to come up beside me, take my hand, give me that radiant smile of yours and say, 'I'm back!' You never did. You had your reasons, I suppose, but that's no longer my concern. I'm free of that obsessive and unhealthy attraction to you. I can go on to other things now - the cosmos is full of wonders, and I shall partake fully of them. Free from you. Free! I'm free!"

And I was astonished to watch her as she skipped and twirled off towards the distance - so joyous and graceful as to make Karen at her best look like a stumble bum in chains.

"Goodbye Jack. I'm free! Free!"

It was just a dream, of course. I didn't believe then and I don't believe now that the deceased can talk to us. I never held with all that spiritism guff - death is a one-way trip where God takes you in to heaven or casts you out into hell. Or possibly the materialists are right and you're just not there anymore. Whichever way, you don't look back at the living. It all had to be just my imagination, right?

---

After the funeral, Karen stayed depressed. Her behavior wasn't so alarming as to force those who cared for her to take drastic action, but it was obvious that she'd lost her zest for life. I'd come to know her well enough to recognize the symptoms. She'd go through the day mechanically doing her chores at home and her work at the store - and she still came out to Erehwon in the morning to tend the flock. But she allowed herself no extras. Amazingly, she drank much less than before. According to Cliff, she hardly came into the Inn at all. And she wasn't coming over in the evening to share a few bottles with me before sharing my bed. She'd lost all interest in sex - I'd collect an almost sisterly kiss from her when she stopped by in the morning and that was it. It seemed that most of her spare time she spent alone in her room.

After several days of that, I was getting actively concerned about her state. And yes, to be perfectly honest, I was missing my old playmate also. Everything I tried with her earned me no more that polite tolerance. Offers of her favorite dinners, dancing, sharing better than average wine were all quietly but firmly declined. Even the couple of new pieces of jewelry I gave her - almost still hot off of Saibara's forge - elicited just a brief flash of pleasure before her face froze up again into that closed off disinterest in her surroundings.

The thing was weighing on me so heavily that when I went into the General Store one afternoon, I forgot that Jeff regarded me as being lower than toilet scum and blurted out to him, "She's not snapping out of it. I'm getting really worried about her."

Which just earned me a scornful, "Don't give me that garbage, Jack. Since when did you start concerning yourself with her wellbeing?"

It was the first time he'd ever said anything to me about Karen and I being together. Before, when I'd tried to talk about it to him, he just turned away in silence until I left. I seized the opening he'd made.

"Jeff, I've always cared for her and helped her best I could..."

He cut me off sneeringly. "Funny way you city punks have of showing you care! Dragging her name through the mud, destroying her reputation." He had the same angry squint Karen sometimes showed. "You've exploited her loneliness and treated her like she was lowest type of trash. You care for her? Bull!"

My protest of 'that's not fair!' caught in my throat. It was fair. I had treated her most shamefully. As angry as I'd gotten at the rest of the villagers for throwing muck at me for being with Karen, I couldn't get angry at him. He had the right to.

I sighed. "Look, Jeff, this isn't the way I like to...to be close to someone. I didn't intend for it to be this way. It was just a matter of one thing leading to another and...well, here we are."

"Weak lame excuses! You chose to do it - every bit of it and you're responsible for what's happened to her."

"But look, we do love each other..."

His sneer intensified. "Love? Maybe she loves you - thought she was more sensible than that, but you never really know what's in people's hearts. But I don't believe for a second you love her. Love grows and builds good things together. You know it by its fruits. What have you made except pain and misery for her and everyone around her?"

I protested, "But I do love her!"

"You'd have to prove it by me."

"Now how could I do that?"

"One of two ways. First, you could end it and let her try and get her pride back."

"I couldn't rightly do that. She means too much to me, and that's the plain truth."

"Well then, there's the second way." He ducked under the counter and came back up holding an hinged oak box. I watched as he wordlessly placed it on the counter, opened it and drew back the black silk cloth inside to reveal the most handsome blue feather I'd ever seen.

"I'd been saving this one for Rick and her, but I guess he's never going to claim it. So what about you, Jack? You got any real man in you?"

And we just stood there in silence - him looking levelly at me and me glancing back and forth between his face and the feather.

My mind was going a million kilometers an hour. For the second time that year, I was looking a marriage decision right in the face. And it was more complex than deciding to marry pregnant Popuri. I didn't have to marry Karen. I had to make a real choice.

I toted up the pluses and minuses real quick. In favor of marrying Karen - we would likely be a pretty good match. We did get along real well - apart from the love we had for each other, we just plain liked the hell out of each other. We were both serious and mature people and would probably work well together in making a good life. Our occasional troubles came and went, usually by our talking through things and making allowances for each other.

And there was a big practical consideration - our being legally a couple would possibly put an end to the downwards spiral I (and she) were making in village society. There's one good thing about conservative rural folks, you see. They just love a repentant sinner - it validates their beliefs and ways of life for a wrongdoer to admit they were wrong and beg to be readmitted to the fold. I mean, I saw it right in front of me - Jeff, who hated what I was doing with his daughter was eager for me to give it up and marry her.

On the minus side - I'd have to give up any chance of getting Popuri back. The physical attraction of my life - a fatal attraction, true - would be over forever. It was the only thing she had over Karen, but for a 20-something guy, it was a biggie. As much as I loved Karen in every other way, when it came to the pleasures of the flesh she was no more - and likely never would be anything more - than a pleasant bedmate to me. And I'd probably never see our child, either.

On the plus side - maybe, just maybe, I could still get back on track to being a big man in Mineral Village. I'd already proven to them I could be as productive on Erehwon as any of my family had been. So if Karen and I did tie the knot - and perhaps if I did some public apologizing to boot - well, I could see myself once again becoming the village's rising star like I'd been that summer. Likely it'd just take some...

And at that point, I got completely disgusted with myself. For Pete's sake! The question was whether or not to marry Karen - Karen, who loved me with the finest love I'd ever known - and there I was standing there calculating and war gaming my options and considering my gonads. All the stuff, I saw in a moment of brutal self-honesty, that had gone into making my life there hell in the first place.

And at that moment, I centered myself. Told that critical, calculating Jack to go put a sock in it and I asked myself - what did I really want more than anything else? And the answer came right back. 'Follow your heart, Jack. It's the one thing you have that makes this life worth living. Go to her. Hold her as tight as you can. Never let her go.'

And that was that.

I came out of my concentration seeing that Jeff was still looking coolly at me - but I could detect just a wee touch of anticipation also. Guy wanted me to do the right thing. I finally spoke up - almost whispered in fact - "Jeff...would you really want me in your family after all of what's happened - check - after all of what I've done?"

"You'd be on probation, that's for sure. But it'd be better than the way things are now."

I looked at him awhile longer, started to reach for the feather and stopped.

"But what if she doesn't want to?"

"You never know until you ask."

I reached out, took the feather and looked at it for a bit. It was a beautiful thing - one fit for a princess. More importantly, it was fit for her. I put it in my backpack.

"How much do I owe you?"

"Consider it a wedding present."

---

With Jeff's permission, I went in their house and knocked on Karen's door. For some reason she wouldn't tell, she'd never let me into her room and didn't then. We talked briefly through the door.

"Karen, could we have dinner together tonight at Erehwon?"

"Jack, I really don't feel up to it tonight."

"It's not monkey business - I've got something really important to discuss with you. Please."

I wheedled her for a bit and she finally agreed to come over 'for a quick bite and a chat - nothing more, please.'

She came over at seven. She was trying real hard to put on a good face and I even got her chuckling a bit telling her stories about some of the weirdos I'd gone to school with. Again, we had mountain salad and truffle rice - but fruit juice instead of wine. She insisted on it, 'I don't need to be drinking just right now - maybe one cup before I go home.' I was actually grateful to her for that; I figured that we both needed to be dead sober for such an important decision. After we'd finished dinner, we sat around the table sipping tomato juice while I started us moving slowly towards the evening's business.

"Karen, tell me the truth. How are you doing now? You know, we're all really concerned about you."

"I know you are. Especially you - I see it in your face all the time, you sweet silly farmer boy." She pursed her lips. "Well, it's no mystery, is it? I'm still feeling guilty about Mary. You know that it was us together that..."

And as she started to scrunch up her face, I took hold of her shoulders.

"Karen, stop it. I know you feel terrible about her - hell, I feel pretty lousy myself - but you know, beating ourselves up over it won't help her one little bit now. Karen, I've always thought that the love and loyalty you have for your friends is one of the most beautiful things about you. But you can't let it turn morbid. You can't let it ruin your life. You've got so much to live for."

"I know, Jack. I know. Look, not to worry - I'm not going to kill myself. I'm not the type. I'm sure I'll come out of it soon, just bear with me, OK?" She gave me an affectionate gaze. "Actually you are bearing with me, aren't you? Poor Jack, I bet you miss your hot sheets romps, don't you?" She reached up and playfully mussed my hair a bit. "You've been patient with me and I appreciate it. It's just that I can't help but think about our thing and the effects it's had on people."

"I've been thinking along the same lines. Especially, I've been thinking about the effects it's had on you. Karen, I'm really and truly sorry about all the trouble I've caused you..."

She interrupted with the slightest touch of annoyance. "Jack, I keep telling you that I knew more or less what would happen and took it on myself anyways. You've nothing to feel guilty about."

"Actually I do. You may have offered yourself to me with full foreknowledge and acceptance of the consequences - but I didn't have to take you up on it. That I took you as my lover was my choice and the consequences are my responsibility also. And the way I see it, we have guilt for a reason. It's to spur us on to turn away from the wrongs we do and to go do the right thing instead. Well Karen, I've treated you badly and I want to put it right here and now."

She forced that defensively blank face she showed under pressure. "So that's what this evening is all about, huh? You're wanting to break it off, then. Well, I can't blame you, I've certainly been no kind of companion for you and..."

"Karen, please listen to me!" I looked right into her eyes - they were troubled even if her face was void. "You know why I've kept you hanging on using you, right?"

She nodded. "Popuri. You still love her and hope she'll come back to you, right?"

"Wrong. I was hoping she'd come back, all right. But I don't love her. Now that I've finally been honest with myself, I see that it wasn't love at all. It was lust - pure and simple. And that's no basis for making a life together. I learned that negatively from her leaving me. And now, you've taught me that positively by showing me real love. Love like she never could show.

"Karen, I'm over her now. I've got you to thank for that. You've shown me what love really is with good heart of yours. And I may be ten different types of fool, but I'm not fool enough to turn my back on a beautiful soul like you.

"Break off with you? Karen, I love you so much that I couldn't imagine not having you at my side. I want you with me now and forever." And her eyes went wide as I drew out the blue feather and presented it to her.

"Karen, will you marry me? I just know we'll make a wonderful life together, you and I. I'll put things right with you, and we'll make a good, decent family. I think your folks will accept us, and then perhaps the whole village. We'll make it together, you and I - you and I forever. I'll give you everything I've got - all my love, all my devotion, all my support, all my loyalty. Please come with me and let us share this life's journey together. What do you say?"

Strong as she was, she still got, well, a little teary at being on the receiving end of some serious caring.

"God...Jack...this I was not expecting! Now what am I supposed to say to all that?"

"Yes or no." I smiled a little. "I'm afraid that we won't have the traditional one week engagement. Getting detached from her will take a little more time than that, I think. But not too much more. Tomorrow morning, I'll get right on the phone to my family's old lawyer in Capitol City and have her get the divorce going. Somehow, I don't think even Popuri would have the gall to cause any problems. But to be honest with you, I'm not going to kick about paying any reasonable amount of child support. I want to."

"Quite rightly. It's not the child's fault."

"Yes. Who knows, maybe we could even win custody - the courts are starting to get reasonable about such things." Karen looked uneasy at that and I backtracked quickly. "But I don't insist on it - it's certainly not a condition! After all, we'll have our own soon enough."

She still looked uncertain. "That's right, you always have wanted a large family, haven't you? Now there's something for an only child like me to chew on."

"Again, nothing I'm going to demand against your will. But tell me we wouldn't have the most beautiful and graceful children in the county. Oh, and I guess the smartest, also. House full of dancing rocket scientist songbirds who can plow a straight row. How's that grab you?"

She giggled and I started feeling a little more confident about the outcome. But then she got serious again.

"Please excuse me, you've got me all aflutter here. You certainly know how to spring a surprise on a poor unsuspecting girl!

"Jack, I hate to do this to you..." and my stomach sank into the ground "...you know, if you had asked me a week ago, I would have jumped it at. And I know I should now." She looked at me with affection. "I know I couldn't do any better than to have you as my husband. It'd surprise everyone to hear me say it, but Jack, you're such a good man. If you've done some...well, unwise things, it's a matter of all the bad breaks you've had.

"But now, with all that's happened...I'm so confused, I don't know what to think. I don't know what I feel." She looked me straight in the eye. "Dearest Jack, I'm not saying yes and I'm not saying no. I need some time to decide."

And I was feeling better about it. I figured time was on my side. "Certainly. Take all the time you need." I grinned at her. "After all, I'm not going anywhere."

"You're not? I've heard some rumors to the contrary."

"Is that part of what's got you undecided? It's true, when I didn't see any way out of being the town bum, I started sniffing around out there for somewhere to run to. But with you at my side, I'll stick it out here. If you want, that is. On the other hand, if you do want to split this burg together - well, getting a job might be a bear, but I do have a nice chunk of change squirreled away now. We could live off of it for some time."

She sniffed. "I'm glad something good came out of those damned sweet potatoes. Last fall, I felt like they were your real mistress and I was playing second fiddle."

I chuckled at that. "Be glad I'm not still doing space work, then. You'd hardly see me at all. We had a slogan about that, 'married to the program.' Not just a joke, either - I heard the divorce rate among us guys - and gals - was over 70 percent."

"Then I'm very glad you got it out of your system as a bachelor! Well, I know the romantic thing to say would be, 'Living with you anywhere would be pure bliss.' But seriously, I'd rather stay here if possible. I know I've talked big about going out into the world and showing them what I've got - but you want the truth? It scares me. This place - oppressive as it sometimes gets - is my home. I don't know anything else."

"Then we'll tough it out here together. And we'll get freaking rich in the process. This farm is a goldmine, you know. And now I know how to work it. Figure I'll net a cool half-million next year."

Love is a wonderful thing, but waving some solid prosperity around never hurts in winning a fair lady either. Her eyes gleamed a little at the prospect. "Are you sure about that? Your grandfather never made that much."

"Don't want to say anything against him, God rest his good soul. But he was just working this place the way my folks always have - uncritically following their ways. Me - I've been putting a little science and modern project management into this farming thing. The sweet potatoes you loved so much? I was getting 19 percent better yield on them than anyone here ever got. Few little tricks about water distribution and pest control I figured out."

She smirked at me. "Science, huh? Well, don't break your arm patting yourself on the back!" She teased, "Actually, I thought you were using astrology to decide when to plant."

I laughed back. "Nah, I'll use that to decide the best time to plant our little ones." And she laughed with me and I started feeling real good about how her decision would come out.

"Jack - one of the best things about you is you know how to make me laugh. You and I go real easy together, don't we? Most of the time. Look, I'm not going to keep you hanging one second longer than I have to. Believe me, I'm going to be thinking of nothing else until I know." She looked apologetic. "And I hate to do this to you on top of the uncertainty, but I really think it best if I don't spend tonight with you. I don't want that coloring my decision."

"Very well. I'll be saving it for you then. Have been all week, actually."

She glanced downwards and mock sternly observed, "So I see."

"Yeah. So you'd better be ready for our wedding night because little girl, I'm going to put you through some serious changes."

She smirked. "Well, get you! We'll just see who cries 'enough' first, church boy!"

And on that note, we exchanged a much warmer than brotherly/sisterly kiss and wished each other good night as she headed back into town. I downed just one cup of wine, said a few prayers that Karen would accept my proposal, and hit the sack. I lay there for while rehashing the evening trying to figure out her true feelings and fell asleep figuring the thing was about 3 to 1 in my favor.

Well, I never was a very good handicapper.