The Gravedigger’S Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates Read Free Book Online Page A

turned away, walked away not looking back.
    “He isn’t there. Not Tignor, and now not him.”
     
    No one saw: she made sure.
    Looking for pieces of Hendricks’s card she’d ripped up. On the towpath she found a few very small scraps. Not certain what they were. Whatever was printed on them was blurred, lost.
    “Just as well. I don’t want to know.”
    This time, disgusted with herself, she squeezed the pieces into a pellet and tossed it out onto the canal where it bobbed and floated on the dark water like a water bug.
     
    Sunday passed, and Tignor did not call.
     
    To distract the restless child she began telling him the story of the man-on-the-canal-towpath. The man-with-the-panama-hat.
    “Niley, this man, this strange man, followed me along the towpath, and guess what he said to me?”
    The Mommy-voice was bright, vibrant. If you were to color it in crayons it was a bold sunny yellow tinged with red.
    Niley listened eagerly, uncertain if he should smile: if this was a happy story, or a story to make him worry.
    “Mommy, what man?”
    “Just a man, Niley. Nobody we know: a stranger. But�”
    “‘Stang-er’�”
    “‘Stranger.’ Meaning somebody we don’t know, see? A man we don’t know.”
    Niley glanced anxiously about the room. (His cubbyhole of a bedroom with a slanted ceiling, that opened onto her bedroom.) He was blinking rapidly peering at the window. It was night, the single window reflected only the blurred undersea interior of the room.
    “He isn’t here now, Niley. Don’t be afraid. He’s gone. I’m telling you about a nice kind man, I think. A friendly man. My friend, he wants to be. Our friend. He had a special message for me.”
    But Niley was still anxious, glancing about. To capture his attention Mommy had to grip his little shoulders and hold him still.
    A squirmy little eel, he was. She wanted to shake him. She wanted to hug him tight, and protect him.
    “Mommy? Where ?”
    “On the canal towpath, honey. When I was coming home from work, coming to get you at Mrs. Meltzer’s.”
    “Today, Mommy?”
    “Not today, Niley. The other day.”
    It was later than usual, the child hadn’t yet gone to bed. Ten o’clock and she’d only just managed to get him into his pajamas by making a game of it. Tugging off his clothes, his shoes, as he lay passive and not-quite-resisting. It had been a difficult day, Edna Meltzer had complained to Rebecca. At the delicate juncture of bones at the child’s forehead Rebecca saw a nerve pulsing.
    She kissed the nerve. She resumed her story. She was very tired.
    The three-year-old had been too cranky to be bathed in the big tub, Mommy had had to struggle to wash him with a washcloth, and then not very well. He was too cranky to be read to. Only the radio would comfort him, that damned radio Rebecca would have liked to toss out the window.
    “A man, a very nice man. A man in a panama hat�”
    “Mommy, what? A banana hat?”
    Niley laughed in disbelief. Rebecca laughed, too.
    Why the hell had she begun telling this story, she couldn’t imagine. To impress a three-year-old? Out of the crayon box she selected a black crayon to draw a stick-man and on the stick-man’s silly round head with the yellow crayon she drew a banana hat. The banana was disproportionately large for the stick-man’s head, and upright. Niley giggled and kicked and squirmed with pleasure. He grabbed at the crayons to draw his own stick-man with a tilted-over banana hat.
    “For Dad- dy . Banana hat.”
    “Daddy doesn’t wear a hat, sweetie.”
    “Why not? Why doesn’t Daddy wear a hat?”
    “Well, we can get Daddy a hat. A banana hat. We can make a banana hat for Daddy…”
    They laughed together, planning Daddy’s banana hat. Rebecca gave in to childish nonsense, she supposed it must be harmless. The things that child imagines!�Mrs. Meltzer shook her head, you could not determine if she was amused, or alarmed. Rebecca smiled, Rebecca shook her head, too. She worried