PARTISAN REVIEW
365
THAT weekend, the three of them got into the car and drove
to their cabin at Lake Geneva. No one spoke on the way up. A gray
sky and the whine of tires on pavement. Instead of standing on the
high ridge in the center of the car and leaning
his
elbows on the
front seat, as he usually did, so he could see the passing countryside,
Owen sat alone in the back, watching telephone wires sweep slowly
up in a rhythm as regular as
his
breath and then drop, as though
gone, only to start climbing upward once again until a treetop, ex–
ploding into view, broke the sequence. In the resort town, Owen's
father and mother went into a grocery store and came out with sup–
plies. They put them in the back seat with Owen. When they arrived
at 'the cabin, they discovered that a dead limb had blown down
from a tree and broken out two windows. Owen's father predicted
that the fishing equipment and kitchen utensils would be gone, but
nothing inside had been touched.
It was a cold fall day, evening was coming on, and since there
was no hope of getting the windows repaired until the next day,
Owen's mother hung bath towels over them. 'Iiley had owned the
cabin for less than a year, and had used
it
just in the summer. Owen's
father had to clean old beer cans and trash out of the firebox be–
fore he could light the stove - a low oil burner that sat in the main
room of the cabin. A small bedroom led off this room, and there was
also a kitchen with enough space for dining.
As
soon as dinner was
over they went to bed, exhausted, Owen's parents in the bedroom
and Owen on a couch close
to
the stove.
What followed was fragmented and vague in Owen's mind.
He woke outside on the
grass,
on his stomach, his nostrils filled with
an acid, sewery smell, and something was on top of him, crushing
him, being lifted off for a second, then crushing him again. From
a great height a voice he'd never heard was repeating, "Answer me.
Answer me." Owen took a deep breath and as he released it realized
he was screaming. He felt he'd drawn fire into his lungs. He started
coughing and the coughing increased the pain. Then he was vomit–
ing, and hands lifted
him
by the rib cage and held
him
away fram
the grass. Next he was in somebody's arm, he felt the person striding,
he heard the person murmuring words of comfort, and then Owen
