Simon the Fiddler

by Paulette Jiles

After a moment in which they could hear the singing whisper of the night wind at the window he said, “Let down your hair.” By this time the drug had left him vague and nearly wordless. She unpinned her hair and it came down in a beautiful tumble, thick and glossy. It was like rain. His eyes slid shut. At some time she fell asleep tucked in beside him. The lamp oil burned low. He awoke in the small hours before dawn and he lay awake and at first contented with the warmth of her body against him but then all the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe came back to him without any effort on his part, the dark-haired women who died or were spirited off or were themselves spirits. To make this go away he put his left hand on her head, felt the silky mass of hair beneath his splinted fingers. She slept and dreamed. He saw all the hard road before them unrolling like a scroll and their names there, for better or for worse, written in the Book of Life.