The River of No Return

Heart.
    Owner and tenant stood side by side, watching as an old white BMW E21, streaked and spotted and marbled with rust, turned into the farmyard.
    * * *
    It was the feeling of it—as if Nick’s saber were an extension of his own body. As if it were his own hand he was thrusting into the young man’s neck, as if it were his nails ripping through the soft flesh, catching on the tendons, pulling, then slicing through. The man’s eyes, staring with a sort of blank surprise as red blood spilled richly over his blue uniform. Black eyes and red blood. The saber withdrawing, as if it were Nick’s own arm he was pulling back, pulling away—and now he was flying away, backward, into a tunnel of smoke . . . he was being sucked away at hideous speed, and at the distant end of the tunnel the splash of red and the young man’s face fixing in death. . . .
    Nick’s eyes flew open, but it was a while before he fully realized that he had been dreaming. In the dream, it had been a smoky dusk, punctuated by the flash of cannon. But as always the dream had altered his senses. The cannon, the men and horses, the gunfire and shouting had gone silent. He heard only the sound of his own breathing and the slow, funereal drumbeat of his heart.
    He took a deep breath. He was miles and years away from that battlefield. “Miles and years,” he whispered, and then started playing with rhyme, as he did sometimes to calm himself down. “Tiles and beers. Piles and jeers. Niles and tears.” Niles and tears was a good one, he thought. It captured the weariness of the distances he’d marched and the sorrow of the years he’d lost. “Niles and tears,” he whispered again, and yet again, letting the sound of his own voice drown out the sound of his heart. The woman next to him was curled into an S, sleeping quietly. “Niles and tears,” Nick said more loudly, perfectly aware that he wanted her to wake up and keep him company.
    But she slept on and now he was wide awake. He sat up, letting the down comforter fall away from his bare chest. The cold against his skin reassured him; he never turned up the heat, even on the bitterest nights. He kept the thermostat just high enough to stop the pipes from freezing. Just high enough to feel like an English wintertime of long ago.
    The night was dark; there was no moon. He could see the showy splash of the Milky Way through the wrinkled old window glass. He savored the feeling of the cold air in his lungs and the sweet smell of the wood fire they had enjoyed after a first frenzied tumble on the couch, their thick winter sweaters still on.
    The pond on the other side of the driveway was frozen over. The frogs of summertime were sleeping under the ice, the crickets gone to wherever they went. Cricket Valhalla? He seemed to remember from some nature show that crickets hibernate. He wished they’d wake up. There was no sound except his shallow breathing, and his heartbeat, beginning to boom again. “Niles and tears . . .” He squeezed his eyes shut. The panic was winning. Nick gave up the rhyming game. It clearly wasn’t going to work tonight.
    So he reached, in his mind, for her. And she was there. As she always was. She stepped into his consciousness with a certain lightness of tread, as if she were walking over wet ground. The dark-eyed girl. Nick’s thoughts cleared; his breathing slowed. She was standing at the shadowy edge of a summer wood. Her eyes were candid, friendly. She watched him until he felt his heart begin to mend. Then she faded.
    His bedfellow shifted in her sleep, uncurling toward him, her face turning into the starlight. “Get over here,” she said in a bossy, sleepy tone. She reached for him and, realizing that he was sitting up, murmured grumpily and flounced over onto her other side, soon to be lost deep in sleep again.
    He liked her better asleep than awake. She was the kind of person who took life by the scruff of the neck and made it dance to her tune. It was an admirable trait, but experience had taught Nick that such people were best admired from a safe distance. And he was right. But now here he was.
    In bed with the new cheese inspector.
    Yesterday she had scrutinized every corner of the farm’s operations. When she’d passed the garbage can full of cheese and hay she had stopped and snuffed the air like a bloodhound. Then she’d turned and fixed Nick with a long stare. “You own this farm?”
    He’d seen her take in his pristine wax jacket.