Francesca

Deep autumn was birthday time for Francesca, and cold rain beat against her house in the south Iowa countryside. She watched the rain, thinking of Richard. He had died on a day like this, eight years ago, from something with a name she would rather not remember. But Francesca thought of him now and his kindness, his steady ways^[84], and the life he had given her.

The children had called. Neither of them could come home again this year for her birthday, though it was her sixty-seventh. She understood, as she always did. Always had. Always would. They were both in midcareer, running hard^[85], managing a hospital, teaching students, Michael starting his second marriage, Carolyn struggling with her first. Secretly she was glad they never seemed to arrange a visit on her birthday; she had her own ceremonies reserved for that day.

This morning her friends from Winterset^[86] had stopped by with a birthday cake. Francesca made coffee, while the talk ran to grandchildren and the town, to Thanksgiving^[87] and what to get for Christmas for whom. The quiet laughter and the rise and fall of conversation from the living room were comforting and reminded Francesca of one small reason why she had stayed here after Richard's death.

Michael had touted Florida, Carolyn New England. But she had remained in the hills of south Iowa, on the land, keeping her old address for a special reason, and she was glad she had done that.

Francesca had watched her friends leave at lunchtime. They drove their Buicks and Fords^[88] down the lane, turned onto the paved county road, and headed toward Winterset, wiper blades^[89] pushing aside the rain. They were good friends, though they would never understand what lay inside of her, would not understand even if she told them.

Her husband had said she would find good friends, when he brought her here after the war, from Naples^[90]. He said, “Iowans have their faults, but one of them is not lack of caring^[91].” And that was true, is true.

She had been twenty-five when they met – out of the university for three years, teaching at a private school for girls, wondering about her life. Most of the young Italian men were dead or injured or in POW^[92] camps. Her affair with Niccolo, a professor of art at the university, who painted all day and took her on wild, reckless tours of the underside of Naples at night, had been over for a year, by the strong disapproval of her traditional parents.

She wore ribbons in her black hair and had her sweet dreams. But no handsome sailors were looking for her, no voices came up to her window from the streets below. Finally, she recognized that her choices were limited. Richard offered a reasonable alternative: kindness and the sweet promise of America.

She had studied him in his soldier's uniform as they sat in a cafe in the Mediterranean sunlight, saw him looking earnestly at her in his way, and came to Iowa with him. Came to have his children, to watch Michael play football on cold October nights, to take Carolyn to Des Moines for her prom dresses. She exchanged letters with her sister in Naples several times each year and had returned there twice, when each of her parents had died. But Madison County was home now, and she had no wish to go back again.

The rain stopped in mid-afternoon, then resumed its ways just before evening. In the twilight, Francesca poured a small glass of brandy and opened the bottom drawer of Richard's desk. She took out a manila envelope^[93] and brushed her hand across it slowly, as she did each year on this day.

The postmark read “Seattle, WA^[94], Sep 12 '65.” She always looked at the postmark first. That was part of the ritual. Then to the address written in longhand^[95]: “Francesca Johnson, RR 2, Winterset, Iowa.” Next the return address, carelessly scrabbled in the upper left: “Box 642, Bellingham, Washington.” She sat in a chair by the window, looked at the addresses which contained the movement of his hands, and she wanted to bring back the feel of those hands on her twenty-two years ago.

When she could feel his hands touching her, she opened the envelope, carefully removed three letters, two photographs, and a complete issue of National Geographic along with clippings from other issues of the magazine. There, in gray light, she sipped her brandy, looking over the rim of her glass to the handwritten note clipped on one of the letters. The letter was on his stationery, that said only “Robert Kincaid, Writer-Photographer” at the top.

September 10, 1965

Dear Francesca,

Enclosed are two photographs. One is the shot I took of you in the pasture at sunrise. I hope you like it as much as I do. The other is of Roseman Bridge before I removed your note tacked to it.

I sit here recalling every detail, every moment, of our time together. I ask myself over and over, “ What happened to me in Madison County, Iowa?” And I struggle to bring it together.

I look down the barrel of a lens^[96], and you're at the end of it. I begin work on an article, and I'm writing about you. I'm not even sure how I got back herefrom Iowa. Somehow the old truck brought me home, yet I barely remember the miles going by.

A few weeks ago, I felt self-contained^[97], reasonably content. Maybe not really happy, maybe a little lonely, but at least content. All of that has changed.

It's clear to me now that I have been moving toward you and you toward me for a long time. Though neither of us was aware of the other before we met, there was a kind of mindless certainty^[98] that we would come together. Like two solitary birds flying the great prairies, all of these years and lifetimes we have been moving toward one another.

The road is a strange place. Driving along, I looked up and you were there walking across the grass toward my truck on an August day. In retrospect, it seems inevitable – it could not have been any other way – a case of what I call the high probability of the improbable^[99].

So here I am walking around with another person inside of me. And I am stalked now by that other entity^[100].

Somehow, we must see each other again. Anyplace, anytime^[101].

Call me if you ever need anything or simply want to see me. I'll be there, pronto^[102]. Let me know if you can come out here sometime – anytime. I can arrange plane fare, if that's a problem. I'm off to southeast India next week, but I'll be back in late October.

I Love You,

Robert

P. S. The photo project in Madison County turned out fine. Look for it in NG^[103] next year. Or tell me if you want me to send a copy of the issue when it's published.

Francesca Johnson set her brandy glass on the wide oak windowsill and stared at an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph of herself. Sometimes it was hard for her to remember how she had looked then, twenty-two years ago. In tight fadedjeans, sandals, and a white T-shirt, her hair blowing in the morning wind as she leaned against a fence post^[104].

Through the rain, from her place by the window, she could see the post where the old fence still went around the pasture. When she rented out the land, after Richard died, she insisted that the pasture must be kept intact, left untouched, even though it was empty now and had turned to meadow grass.

The first serious lines were just beginning to show on her face in the photograph. His camera had found them. Still, she was pleased with what she saw. Her hair was black, and her body was full and warm, filling out the jeans just about right. Yet it was her face at which she stared. It was the face of a woman in love with the man taking the picture.

She could see him clearly also, down the flow of her memory. Each year she ran all of the images through her mind, remembering everything, forgetting nothing. He was tall and thin and hard, and he moved like the grass itself, without effort, gracefully. His silver-gray hair hung well below his ears and nearly always looked disheveled, as if he had just come in from a long sea voyage through a stiff wind and had tried to brush it into place with his hands.

His narrow face, high cheekbones, and hair falling over his forehead set off light blue eyes that seemed never to stop looking for the next photograph. He had smiled at her, saying how fine and warm she looked in early light, asked her to lean against the post, and then moved around her in a wide arc, shooting from knee level, then standing, then lying on his back with the camera pointed up at her.

She had been slightly embarrassed at the amount of film he used but pleased by the amount of attention he paid to her. She hoped none of the neighbors were out early on their tractors. Though on that particular morning she hadn't cared too much about neighbors and what they thought.

He shot, loaded film, changed lenses, changed cameras, shot some more, and talked quietly to her as he worked, always telling her how good she looked to him and how much he loved her. “Francesca, you're incredibly beautiful.” Sometimes he stopped and just stared at her, through her, around her, inside of her.

Her nipples were clearly outlined where they pressed against the cotton T-shirt. She had been strangely unconcerned about that, about being naked under the shirt. More, she was glad of it and was warmed knowing that he could see her breasts so clearly down his lenses. Never would she have dressed this way around Richard. He would not have approved.

Robert had asked her to arch her back ever so slightly, and he had whispered then, “Yes, yes, that's it, stay there.” That was when he had taken the photograph at which she now stared. The light was perfect, that's what he had said – “cloudy bright” was his name for it – and the shutter clicked steadily as he moved around her.

He was lithe; that was the word she had thought of while watching him. At fifty-two his body was all lean muscle, muscle that moved with the kind of intensity and power that comes only to men who work hard and take care of themselves.

She looked at the picture again, studied it. “I did look good,” she thought, smiling to herself at the mild self-admiration. “I never looked that good before or after. It was him.” And she took another sip of brandy while the rain went on.

Robert Kincaid was a magician of sorts, who lived within himself. Francesca had sensed as much immediately on a hot, dry Monday in August 1965, when he stepped out of his truck onto her driveway. Richard and the children were at the Illinois State Fair^[105], exhibiting the prize steer^[106] that received more attention than she did, and she had the week to herself.

She had been sitting on the front porch swing^[107], drinking iced tea, watching the dust from under a pickup coming down the county road. The truck was moving slowly, as if the driver were looking for something, stopped just short of her lane, then turned up it toward the house. Oh, God, she had thought. Who's this?

She was barefoot, wearing jeans and a faded blue work-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, shirttail out^[108]. Her long black hair was fastened up by a tortoiseshell comb her father had given her when she left the old country. The truck rolled up the lane and stopped near the gate to the wire fence^[109] surrounding the house.

Francesca stepped off the porch and walked unhurriedly through the grass toward the gate. And out of the pickup came Robert Kincaid, looking like some vision from a never-written book called An Illustrated History of Shamans.

His military-style shirt was tacked down to his back with perspiration; there were wide, dark circles of it under his arms. The top three buttons were undone, and she could see tight chest muscles just below the plain silver chain around his neck. Over his shoulders were wide orange suspenders, the kind worn by people who spent a lot of time in wilderness areas.

He smiled. “I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm looking for a covered bridge out this way^[110], and I can't find it. I think I'm lost.” He wiped his forehead and smiled again.

His eyes looked directly at her, and she felt something jump inside. The eyes, the voice, the face, the silver hair, the easy way he moved his body, disturbing ways, ways that draw you in. Ways that whisper to you in the final moment before sleep comes, when the barriers have fallen. Ways that rearrange the molecular space between male and female.

The ways are simple; we have made them seem complicated. Francesca sensed this without knowing she was sensing it, sensed it at the level of her cells. And there began the thing that would change her forever.

A car went past on the road, trailing dust behind it, and honked. Francesca waved back at Floyd Clark's brown arm sticking out of his Chevy^[111] and turned back to the stranger. “You're pretty close. The bridge is only about two miles from here.” Then, after twenty years of living the close life, a life demanded by a rural culture, Francesca Johnson surprised herself by saying, “I'll be glad to show it to you, if you want.”

Why she did that, she never had been sure. A young girl's feelings rising like a bubble through water and bursting out, maybe, after all these years. She was not shy, but not forward, either. The only thing she could ever conclude was that Robert Kincaid had drawn her in somehow, after only a few seconds of looking at him.

He was obviously taken aback, slightly, by her offer. But he recovered quickly and with a serious look on his face said he'd appreciate that. She picked up the cowboy boots she wore for farm chores and walked out to his truck, following him around to the passenger side.

“Just take me a minute to make room for you; lots of gear 'n'^[112] stuff in here^[113].” He mumbled mostly to himself as he worked, and she could tell he was a little flustered, and a little shy about the whole affair.

He was rearranging canvas bags and tripods, a Thermos bottle and paper sacks. In the back of the pickup were an old brown suitcase and a guitar case, both dusty and battered, both tied to a spare tire with a piece of clothesline rope.

He mumbled and sorted and stuffed paper coffee cups and banana peels into a brown grocery bag that he tossed into

“Okay, I think you can squeeze in there now.” He held the door, closed it behind her, then went around to the driver's side and with a peculiar, animal-like grace stepped in behind the wheel. He looked at her, just a quick glance, smiled slightly, and said, “Which way?”