فصل سی ام

THIRTY

Gage’s virus hung on for a week, then cleared up. A week later he came down with a bout of bronchitis. Ellie also caught this, and then Rachel; during the period before Christmas, the three of them went around hacking like very old and wheezy hunting dogs. Louis didn’t catch it, and Rachel seemed to hold this against him.

The final week of classes at the University was a hectic one for Louis, Steve, Surrendra, and Charlton. There was no flu – at least not yet – but plenty of bronchitis and several cases of mononucleosis and walking pneumonia. Two days before classes broke for Christmas, six moaning, drunken fraternity boys were brought in by their concerned friends. There were a few moments of confusion gruesomely reminiscent of the Pascow affair. All six of the damned fools had crammed into one medium-length toboggan (the sixth had actually been sitting on the shoulders of the tail-man, from what Louis could piece together) and had set off to ride the toboggan down the hill above the Steam Plant. Hilarious. Except that, after gaining a lot of speed, the toboggan had wandered off-course and struck one of the Civil War cannons. The score was two broken arms, a broken wrist, a total of seven broken ribs, a concussion, plus contusions far too numerous to count. Only the boy riding on the shoulders of the tail-ender had escaped completely unscathed. When the toboggan hit the cannon, this fortunate soul flew over it and landed head first in a snowbank. Cleaning up the human wreckage hadn’t been fun, and Louis had scored all of the boys liberally with his tongue as he stitched and bandaged and stared into pupils, but telling Rachel about it later, he had laughed almost until he cried. Rachel had looked at him strangely, not understanding what was so funny, and Louis couldn’t tell her: it had been a stupid accident, and people had been hurt, but they would all walk away from it. His laughter was partly relief, but it was partly triumph, too – won one today, Louis.

The cases of bronchitis in his own family began to clear up around the time that Ellie’s school broke for the holidays on December 16th, and the four of them settled down to spend a happy and old-fashioned country Christmas. The house in North Ludlow, which had seemed so strange on that day in August when they pulled into the driveway (strange and even hostile, what with Ellie cutting herself out back and Gage getting stung by a bee at almost the same time), had never seemed more like home.

After the kids were finally asleep on Christmas Eve, Louis and Rachel stole downstairs from the attic like thieves, their arms full of brightly colored boxes – a set of Matchbox racers for Gage, who had recently discovered the joys of toy cars, a Barbie and Ken for Ellie, a Turn ‘n Go, an oversized trike, doll clothes, a play oven with a light-bulb inside, other stuff.

The two of them sat side by side in the glow of lights from the tree, fussing the stuff together, Rachel in a pair of silk lounging pajamas, Louis in his robe. He could not remember a more pleasant evening. There was a fire in the fireplace, and every now and then one or the other of them would rise and throw in another chunk of split birch.

Winston Churchill brushed by Louis once and he pushed the cat away with an almost absent feeling of distaste – that smell. Later he saw Church try to settle down next to Rachel’s leg and Rachel also gave him a push and an impatient ‘Scat!’ A moment later Louis saw his wife rubbing her palm on one silk-clad thigh, the way you sometimes do when you feel you might have touched something nasty or germy. He didn’t think Rachel was even aware she was doing it.

Church ambled over to the brick hearth and collapsed in front of the fire gracelessly. He had no grace at all now, it seemed; he had lost it all on that night Louis rarely allowed himself to think about any more. And he had lost something else as well. Louis had been aware of it, but it had taken him a full month to pinpoint it exactly. The cat never purred any more, and he used to have one of the loudest motors going, particularly when he was sleeping. There had been nights when he’d had to get up and close Ellie’s door so he could get to sleep himself.

Now the cat slept like a stone. Like the dead.

No, he reminded himself, there was one exception. The night he had awakened on the hide-a-bed with Church curled up on his chest like a stinking blanket … Church had been purring that night. He had been making some sound, anyway.

But as Jud Crandall had known – or guessed – it had not been all bad. Louis found a broken window down in the cellar behind the furnace, and when the glazier fixed it, he had saved them bucks in wasted heating oil. For calling his attention to the broken pane, which he might not have discovered for weeks – even months, maybe – he supposed he even owed Church a vote of thanks.

Ellie no longer liked Church to sleep with her, that was true, but sometimes when she was watching TV she would let the cat hop up on her lap and go to sleep (but just as often, he thought, hunting through the bag of plastic widgets that were supposed to hold Ellie’s Bat-Cycle together, she would push him down after a few minutes, saying, ‘Go on, Church, you stink.’); she fed him regularly and with love, and even Gage was not above giving old Church an occasional tail-tug … more in the spirit of friendliness than in one of meanness, Louis was convinced; he was like a tiny monk yanking a furry bell-rope. At these times Church would crawl lackadaisically under one of the radiators where Gage couldn’t get him, We might have noticed more differences with a dog, Louis thought, but cats are such goddam independent animals, anyway. Independent and odd. Fey, even. It didn’t surprise him that the old Egyptian queens and pharaohs had wanted their cats mummified and popped into their triangular tombs with them in order to serve as spirit guides in the next world. Cats were weird.

‘How you doing with that Bat-Cycle, Chief?’

He held out the finished product. ‘Ta-da!’

Rachel pointed at the bag, which still had three or four plastic widgets in it. ‘What are those?’ ‘Spares,’ Louis said, smiling guiltily.

‘You better hope they’re spares. The kid will break her rotten little neck.’

‘That comes later,’ Louis said maliciously. ‘When she’s twelve and showing off on her new skateboard.’ She groaned. ‘Come on, doc, have a heart!’

Louis stood up, put his hands on the small of his back, and twisted his torso. His spine crackled. ‘That’s all the toys.’ ‘And they’re all together. Remember last year?’ She giggled and Louis smiled. Last year seemingly everything they’d gotten had to be assembled, and they’d been up until almost four o’clock Christmas morning, both of them finishing grouchy and out of sorts. And by mid-afternoon of Christmas, Ellie had decided the boxes were more fun than the toys.

‘Gross-OUT!’ Louis said, imitating Ellie.

‘Well, come on to bed,’ Rachel said, ‘and I’ll give you a present early.’

‘Woman,’ Louis said, drawing himself up to his full height, ‘that is mine by right.’ ‘Don’t you wish,’ she said, and laughed through her hands. In that moment she looked amazingly like Ellie … and like Gage.

‘Just a minute,’ he said. ‘There’s one other thing I gotta do.’

He hurried into the front hall closet and brought back one of his boots. He removed the fire-screen from in front of the dying fire.

‘Louis, what are you—’

‘You’ll see.’

On the left side of the hearth the fire was out and there was a thick bed of fluffy gray ashes. Louis stamped the boot into them, leaving a deep track. Then he tromped the boot down on the outer bricks, using it like a big rubber stamp.

‘There,’ he said, after he had put the boot away in the closet again. ‘You like?’ Rachel was giggling again. ‘Louis, Ellie’s going to go nuts.’

During the last two weeks of school, Ellie had picked up a disquieting rumor around kindergarten, to wit, that Santa Claus was really parents. This idea had been reinforced by a rather skinny Santa at the Bangor Mall, whom Ellie had glimpsed in the Deering Ice Cream Parlor a few days ago. Santa had been sitting on a counter stool, his beard pulled to one side so he could eat a cheeseburger. This had troubled Ellie mightily (it seemed to be the cheeseburger, somehow, even more than the false beard), in spite of Rachel’s assurances that the department store and Salvation Army Santas were really ‘helpers’, sent out by the real Santa, who was far too busy completing the inventory and reading children’s last-minute letters up north to be boogying around the world on public relations jaunts.

Louis replaced the fire-screen carefully. Now there were two clear boot-tracks in their fireplace, one in the ashes and one on the brick outer hearth. They both pointed toward the Christmas tree, as if Santa had hit bottom on one foot and immediately stepped out to leave the goodies assigned to the Creed household. The illusion was perfect unless you happened to notice that they were both left feet … and Louis doubted if Ellie was that analytical.

‘Louis Creed, I love you,’ Rachel said, and kissed him.

‘You married a winner, baby,’ Louis said, smiling sincerely. ‘Stick with me and I’ll make you a star.’ ‘You’ll make me, that’s for sure.’

They started for the stairs. He pointed at the card table Ellie had set up in front of the TV. There were oatmeal cookies and two Ring-Dings on it. Also a can of Micheloeb. FOR YOU, SANNA, the note said in Ellie’s large, stick-like printing. ‘You want a cookie or a Ring-Ding?’ ‘Ring-Ding,’ she said, and ate half of it. Louis popped the tab on the beer and drank half of it.

‘A beer this late is going to give me acid indigestion,’ he said.

‘Crap,’ she said good-humoredly. ‘Come on, doc.’

Louis put down the can of beer and suddenly grasped the pocket of his robe as if he had forgotten something – although he had been aware of that small packet of weight all evening long.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘For you. You can open it now. It’s after midnight. Merry Christmas, babe.’ She turned the little box, wrapped up in silver paper and tied with wide satiny-blue ribbon, in her hands. ‘Louis, what is it?’ He shrugged. ‘Soap. Shampoo sample. I forget, exactly.’

She opened it on the stairs, saw the Tiffany box and squealed. She pulled out the cotton batting, and then just stood there, her mouth slightly agape.

‘Well?’ he asked anxiously. He had never bought her a real piece of jewelry before and he was nervous. ‘Do you like it?’ She took it out, draped the fine gold chain over her tented fingers, and held the tiny sapphire up to the hall light. It twirled lazily, seeming to shoot off cool blue rays.

‘Oh Louis, it’s so damn beautiful—’ He saw she was crying a little and felt both touched and alarmed.

‘Hey, babe, don’t do that,’ he said. ‘Put it on.’

‘Louis, we can’t afford – you can’t afford—’

‘Shhh,’ he said. ‘I socked some money away off and on since last Christmas … and it wasn’t as much as you might think.’ ‘How much was it?’

‘I’ll never tell you that, Rachel,’ he said solemnly. ‘An army of Chinese torturers couldn’t get it out of me. Two thousand dollars.’ ‘Two thousand –!’ She hugged him so suddenly and so tightly that he almost fell down the stairs. ‘Louis, you’re crazy!’ ‘Put it on,’ he said again.

She did. He helped her with the clasp, and then she turned around to look at him. ‘I want to go up and look at it,’ she said. ‘I think I want to preen.’ ‘Preen away,’ he said. ‘I’ll put out the cat and get the lights.’

‘When we make it,’ she said, looking directly into his eyes, ‘I want to take everything off except this.’ ‘Preen in a hurry, then,’ Louis said, and she laughed.

He grabbed Church and draped him over his arm – he didn’t bother much with the broom these days. He supposed he had almost gotten used to the cat again. He went toward the entryway door, turning off lights as he went. When he opened the door communicating between the kitchen and garage, an eddy of cold air swirled around his ankles.

‘Have a merry Christmas, Ch—’

He broke off. Lying on the welcome mat was a dead crow, a big one. Its head was mangled. One wing had been ripped off and lay behind the body like a charred piece of paper. Church immediately squirmed out of Louis’s arms and began to nuzzle the frozen corpse eagerly. As Louis watched, the cat’s head darted forward, its ears laid back, and before he could turn his head, Church had ripped out one of the crow’s milky, glazed eyes.

Church strikes again, Louis thought a little sickly, and turned his head – not, however, before he had seen the bloody, gaping socket where the crow’s eye had been. Shouldn’t bother me, shouldn’t, I’ve seen worse, oh yeah, Pascow, for instance, Pascow was worse, a lot worse— But it did bother him. His stomach turned over. The warm build of sexual excitement had suddenly deflated. Christ, that bird’s damn near as big as he is. Must have caught it with its guard down. Way, way down.

This would have to be cleaned up. Nobody needed this sort of present on Christmas morning. And it was his responsibility, wasn’t it? Sure was. His and nobody else’s. He had recognized that much in a subconscious way even on the evening of his family’s return, when he had purposely spilled the tires over the tattered body of the mouse Church had killed.

The soil of a man’s heart is stonier, Louis.

This thought was so clear, so somehow three-dimensional and auditory that Louis jerked a little, as if Jud had materialized at his shoulder and spoken aloud.

A man grows what he can … and tends it.

Church was still hunched greedily over the dead bird. He was working at the other wing now. There was a tenebrous rustling sound as Church pulled it back and forth, back and forth. Never get it off the ground, Orville. That’s right, Wilbur, fucking bird’s just as dead as dogshit, might as well feed it to the cat, might as well— Louis suddenly kicked Church, kicked him hard. The cat’s hindquarters rose and came down splayfooted. It walked away, sparing him another of its greenish, ugly glances. ‘Eat me,’ Louis hissed at it, catlike himself.

‘Louis?’ Rachel’s voice came faintly from their bedroom. ‘Coming to bed?’

‘Be right there,’ he called back. I’ve just got this little mess to clean up, Rachel, okay? Because it’s my mess. He fumbled for the switch that controlled the garage light. He went quickly back to the cupboard under the kitchen sink and got a green Hefty Bag … the similarity to that other night was not lost on him. He took the bag back into the garage and took the shovel down from its nail on the garage wall. He shoveled up the crow and dropped it into the bag. Then he shoveled up the severed wing and slipped that in. He tied a knot in the top of the bag and dropped it into the trashbin on the far side of the Civic. By the time he finished, his ankles were growing numb.

Church was standing by the garage doorway. Louis made a threatening gesture at the cat with the shovel, and it was gone like an eddy of water.

Upstairs, Rachel was lying on her bed, wearing nothing but the sapphire on its chain … as promised. She smiled at him lazily. ‘What took you so long, Chief?’ ‘The light over the sink was out,’ Louis said. ‘I changed the bulb.’

‘Come here,’ she said, and tugged him gently toward her. Not by the hand. ‘He knows if you’ve been sleeping,’ she sang softly; a little smile curved up the corners of her lips. ‘He knows if you’re awake … oh my, Louis dear, what’s this?’ ‘Something that just woke up, I think,’ Louis said, slipping off his robe. ‘Maybe we ought to see if we can get it to sleep before Santa comes, what do you think?’ She rose on one elbow; he felt her breath, warm and sweet.

‘He knows if you’ve been bad or good … so be good … for goodness’ sake … have you been a good boy, Louis?’ ‘I think so,’ he said. His voice was not quite steady.

‘Let’s see if you taste as good as you look,’ she said. ‘Mmmmm …’

It seemed that he did.

The sex was good, but Louis did not find himself simply slipping off afterwards as he usually did when the sex was good – slipping off easy with himself, his wife, his life. He lay in the darkness of Christmas morning, listening to Rachel’s breathing slow and deep, and he thought about the dead bird on the doorstep. Church’s Christmas present to him.

Keep me in mind, Dr Creed. I was alive and then I was dead and now I’m alive again. I’ve made the circuit and I’m here to tell you that you come out the other side with your purr-box broken and a taste for the hunt. I’m here to tell you that a man grows what he can and tends it. Don’t forget that, Dr Creed. I’m part of what your heart will grow now, there’s your wife and your daughter and your son … and there’s me. Remember the secret, and tend your garden well.

At some point, Louis slept.