فصل چهل و یک

FORTY-ONE

Gage was buried at two o’clock that afternoon. By then the rain had stopped. Tattered clouds still moved overhead, and most of the mourners arrived carrying black umbrellas provided by the undertaker.

At Rachel’s request, the funeral director, who officiated at the short, non-sectarian graveside service, read the passage from Matthew which begins ‘Suffer the little children to come unto Me’. Louis, standing on one side of the grave, looked across at his father-in-law. For a moment Goldman looked back at him, and then he dropped his eyes. There was no fight left in him today. The pouches under his eyes now resembled mailbags, and around his black silk skullcap, hair as fine and white as tattered spiderwebs flew randomly in the breeze. With grayish-black beard scragging his cheeks, he looked more like a wino than ever. He gave Louis the impression of a man who did not really know where he was. Louis tried, but found he could still find no pity in his heart for him.

Gage’s small white coffin, its latch presumably repaired, sat on a pair of chromed runners over the grave-liner. The verges of the grave had been carpeted with Astroturf so violently green it hurt Louis’s eyes. Several baskets of flowers had been set on top of this artificial and strangely gay surface. Louis’s eyes looked over the funeral director’s shoulder. Here was a low hill, covered with graves, family plots, one Romanesque monument with the name PHIPPS engraved on it. Just above the sloping roof of the PHIPPS monument, he could see a sliver of yellow. Louis looked at this, pondering it. He continued to look at it even after the funeral director said, ‘Let us bow our heads for a moment of silent prayer.’ It took Louis a few minutes, but he got it. It was a payloader. A payloader parked over the hill where the mourners wouldn’t have to look at it. And, when the funeral was over, Oz would crush his cigarette on the heel of his tewwible workboot, put it in whatever container he carried around with him (in a cemetery, sextons caught depositing their butts on the ground were almost always summarily fired – it looked bad, and too many of the clientele had died of lung cancer), jump in the payloader, fire that sucker up, and cut his son off from the sun for ever … or at least until the day of the Resurrection.

Resurrection … ah, there’s a word—

(that you should put right the fuck out of your mind and you know it)

When the funeral director said ‘Amen’, Louis took Rachel’s arm and guided her away. Rachel murmured some protest – she wanted to stay a bit longer, please, Louis – but Louis was firm. They approached the cars. He saw the funeral director taking umbrellas with the home’s name discreetly printed on the handles from the mourners who passed and handing them to an assistant. The assistant put them in an umbrella stand which looked weird and surreal, standing there on the dewy turf. He held Rachel’s arm with his right hand and Ellie’s white-gloved hand with his left. Ellie was wearing the same dress she had worn to Norma Crandall’s funeral.

Jud came over as Louis handed his ladies into the car. Jud also looked as if he’d had a hard night.

‘You okay, Louis?’

Louis nodded.

Jud bent to look into the car. ‘How are you, Rachel?’ He asked.

‘I’m all right, Jud,’ she whispered.

Jud touched her shoulder gently and then looked at Ellie. ‘How about you, dear one?’

‘I’m fine,’ Ellie said, and produced a hideous smile of shark-like proportions to show him how fine she was.

‘What’s that picture you got there?’

For a moment Louis thought she would hold it, refuse to show him, and then with a painful shyness she passed it to Jud. He held it in his big fingers, fingers that were so splayed and somehow clumsy-looking, fingers that looked fit mostly for grappling with the transmissions of big road machines or making couplings on the B&M Line – but they were also the fingers that had pulled a bee-stinger from Gage’s neck with all the offhand skill of a magician … or a surgeon.

‘Why, that’s real nice,’ Jud said. ‘You pullin’ him on a sled. Bet he liked that, didn’t he, Ellie?’ Beginning to weep, Ellie nodded.

Rachel began to say something, but Louis squeezed her arm – be still a while.

‘I used to pull ‘im a lot,’ Ellie said, weeping, ‘and he’d laugh and laugh. Then we’d go in and Mommy would fix us cocoa and say, “Put your boots away,” and Gage would grab them all up and scream “Boots! Boots!” so loud it hurt your ears. Remember that, Mom?’ Rachel nodded.

‘Yeah, I bet that was a good time, all right,’ Jud said, handing the picture back. ‘And he may be dead now, Ellie, but you can keep your memories of him.’ ‘I’m going to,’ she said, wiping at her face. ‘I loved Gage, Mr Crandall.’

‘I know you did, dear.’ He leaned in and kissed her, and when he withdrew, his eyes swept Louis and Rachel stonily. Rachel met his gaze, puzzled and a little hurt, not understanding. But Louis understood well enough: What are you doing for her? Jud’s eyes asked. Your son is dead, but your daughter is not. What are you doing for her?

Louis looked away. There was nothing he could do for her, not yet. She would have to swim in her grief as best she could. His thoughts were too full of his son.