Joyce Carol Oates - Sourland: Stories

I n late March thered been a sleet storm through north central New Jersey. Her husband had died several days before. There was no connection, she knew. Except since that time shed begun to notice at twilight a curious glisten to the air. Often she found herself in the doorway of her house, or outsidenot remembering how shed gotten there. For long minutes she stared seeing how, as colors faded, the glassy light emerged from both the sky and from the Scotch pines surrounding the house. It did not seem to her a natural light and in weak moments she thought This is the crossing-over time. She stared not certain what she might be seeing. She felt aroused, vigilant. She felt apprehension. She wondered if the strange glisten to the air had always been there but in her previous, protected life she hadnt noticed it.

This October evening, before the sun had entirely set, headlights turned into the driveway, some distance away at the road. She was startled into wakefulnessat first not sure where she was. Then she realized, Anton Kruppe was dropping by to see her at about this time.

Dropping by hed said. Or maybe shed said Why dont you drop by.

She couldnt see his face distinctly. He did appear to be driving a pickup truck with indistinct white letters on its side. Out of the drivers seat in the high cab of the truck he climbed down and lurched toward her on the shadowy patha tall male scarecrow figure with a misshapen Halloween pumpkin for a head.

What a shock! Hadley backed away, not knowing what she was seeing.

The grinning pumpkin-head on a mans shoulders, its leering cutout eyes not lighted from within, like a jack-o-lantern, but dark, glassy. And the voice issuing through the grinning slash-mouth in heavily accented English:

Maam? Is correct address? You arelady of the house?

She laughed, nervously. She supposed she was meant to laugh.

With grating mock-gravity the voice persevered: You areresident here, maam? I amwelcome here? Yes?

It was a joke. One of Anton Kruppes awkward jokes. Hed succeeded in frightening Hadley though probably that hadnt been his intention, probably hed just meant to make her laugh. It was embarrassing that shed been genuinely frightened for she had known perfectly well that Anton was coming of course. And who else but Anton Kruppe would show up like this, with a Halloween pumpkin for a head?

Hadley scarcely knew the man. She felt a stab of dismay, that shed invited him to drop by. Impulsively shed invited him and of course hed said yes .

At the co-op, Anton was the most eager and courteous of workers. He was the one to joke with customers, and to laugh at his own jokes; he was boyish, vulnerable and touching; his awkward speech was itself a kind of laughter, not fully intelligible yet contagious. For all his clumsiness you could tell that he was an exceptionally intelligent man. Hadley could see that hed gone to painstaking trouble carving the Halloween pumpkin-head: it was large, bulbous, weirdly veined and striated, twice the size of a normal mans head, with triangular eyes, triangular nose, grinning mouth studded with fang-teeth. Somehow, hed managed to force the thing over his headHadley couldnt quite see how.

How ingenious, Anton! Did youcarve it yourself?

This was the sort of inane question you asked Anton Kruppe. For you had to say something, to alleviate the strain of the mans aggressive-doggy eagerness to please, to impress, to make you laugh. Hadley recalled the previous time Anton had dropped by the house to see her, which had been the first time, the previous week; the forced and protracted conversation between them when Anton hadnt seemed to know how to depart, after Hadley had served him coffee and little sandwiches made of multigrain bread; his lurching over her, his spasm of a handshake and his clumsy wet kiss on her cheek that had seemed to sting her, and to thrill her, like the brush of a bats wings.

Yes maam . You thinkyou will buy ?

That depends, Anton. How much

For you, maam no charge!

This forced joke, how long would it be kept up, Hadley wondered in exasperation. In middle school, boys like Anton Kruppe were snubbed by their classmates Ha ha very funny! but once you were an adult, how could you discourage such humor without being rude? Anton was considerably younger than Hadley, as much as ten or twelve years, though looking older than his age, as Hadley looked younger than her age; hed been born in what was now called Bosnia, brought to the United States by a surviving grandparent, hed gone to American schools including MIT yet had not become convincingly American in all those years.

Trying too hard, Hadley thought. The sign of the foreign-born.

In a kind of anxious triumph, sensing his hostesss exasperation yet determined not to acknowledge it, Anton swung the lurid pumpkin-head down from his shoulders, in his chafed-looking big-knuckled hands. Now Hadley could see that the pumpkin wasnt whole but only two-thirds of a shellit had been gutted and carved and its back part cut awaythe back of what would be, in a human skull, the cranium. So the uncanny pumpkin-head was only a kind of pumpkin-mask set on Antons shoulders and held in place by hand. Yet so lifelikeas the scarecrow-figure lurched up the walk in her direction the face had appeared alive.

Could have sworn, the eye-sockets had glared merrily at her .

Is good? Issurprise? Happy Halloweenis right?

Was it Halloween? Hadley was sure it was not. October thirty-first wasnt for another several days.

Is for youHedley. To set here.

Flush-faced now and smiling in his shyly aggressive manner that was a plea for her, the rich American woman, to laugh at him, and with him; to laugh in the spontaneous way in which Americans laughed together, mysteriously bonded in their crude American humor. On his angular face and in his stiff-wiry hair that receded sharply from his forehead were bits of pumpkin-flesh and seeds at which Anton wiped, surreptitiously, like a boy whose nose is running, wiping at his nose. Hadley thought If he kisses me he will smell of pumpkin.

Her husband had died and abandoned her. Now, other men would drop by the house.

Anton presented Hadley with the misshapen pumpkin. The damned thing must have weighed fifteen pounds. Almost, it slipped from her hands. Hadley thought it would have served Anton Kruppe right if shed dropped the pumpkin and it smashed on the brick. No doubt, hed have offered to clean it up, then.

Anton, thank you! This is very

Their hands brushed together. Anton was standing close beside her. He was several inches taller than Hadley though his posture was slouched, his back prematurely rounded. Perhaps there was something wrong with his spine. And he breathed quickly, audiblyas if hed been running. As if he were about to declare somethingthen thought better of it.

At the organic food and gardening co-op where Hadley had once shopped frequently, when shed prepared elaborate meals for herself and her husband, and now only shopped from time to time, tall lanky Anton Kruppe had appeared perhaps a year ago. Hed always been alert and attentive to herthe co-op manager addressed her as Mrs. Schelle. Since late March in her trance of self-absorption that was like a narcotic to herin fact, to get through the worst of her insomniac nights Hadley had to take sleeping pills which left her dazed and groggy through much of the dayshed scarcely been aware of Anton Kruppe except as a helpful and persistent presence, a worker who seemed always to be waiting on her. It was just recently that hed dared to be more direct: asking if he might see her. Asking if he might drop by her house after the co-op closed one evening, to bring her several bags of peat moss that were too heavy and cumbersome for Hadley to remove from the trunk of her car by herself. Hed offered to spread the peat moss wherever she wanted it spread.