“Sit at the table,” March remembers Judith Dale telling him, and he sat there mute, staring at lamb chops and lettuce and apple pie as if he had no business to dream such things, let alone have them for supper.
The water in the Marshes is rising with the tide; it seems purple and starry as well-an inverted sky.
“Not a soul,” the Judge says.
They don’t call out their windows on the ride back. They don’t bother to speak. The Judge takes the shortcut back to Fox Hill, avoiding the village and Route 22, which means zigzagging past the cemetery. He hadn’t been thinking of how this course might affect them, but the choice is clearly a mistake. Less than twenty-four hours ago, they were here to bury Judith. How is it that even grown men, old men who should be content with all that they’ve had, still want more? How is it that death always seems impossible, a trick of nature one should somehow be able to set in reverse? The Judge feels a sharp pain up and down his left arm, never a good sign.
“I think we should stop,” March says as they approach the cemetery.
March truly surprises him sometimes. In the past, Bill Justice viewed her as spoiled; the selfish little girl her father could never say no to. But with March, you never can tell. Tonight, for instance, her impulse to visit Judith’s grave is one hundred percent on target.
The Judge nods and drives through the iron gates, then along the narrow road which leads to the newest burial section. Scarlet leaves drop from the maples, adding to the carpet already on the ground. Now the sky is purple through and through; there are no other visitors, not at this hour. After they get out of the car and approach the grave, March can feel shivers along her skin.
It’s cold here. Too cold to be left all alone. Later in the week, March will bring a pot of asters to plant, the wild variety which return year after year. She will, however, avoid the older section of the cemetery; she knows too many who have been buried there, more, in fact, than she knows among the residents living down in the village.
The wind has begun to pick up, blowing the fallen leaves into little whirlwinds. How is it, March wonders, that life happens this way? Is it really possible to be a child one moment, asking for candy and a hand to hold, and then, in what seems like seconds, to be a grown woman walking through a cemetery on such a dark and bitter night? She’s confused being back here; she’s seeing shadows. It makes perfect sense that she doubts her own vision when she spies something beside Judith Dale’s grave.
March closes her eyes; she’s dizzy, it’s true, but when she looks again, she’s certain something is there. All at once she feels a pressure inside her chest, like a fist which prevents her from breathing. At this instant, she could believe in ghosts, but when she concentrates she sees it’s no billowy mist that covers Judith’s grave. It’s no specter returned. It’s an animal at rest, a shaggy creature with leaves matted into its fur. March tugs on the Judge’s coat sleeve.
“The dog,” she says. “Hey,” she cries to the terrier. She claps her hands and whistles.
The dog sits up, ears twitching. It’s little and so dirty all of its fur has turned a muddy gray shade. It has been waiting here for a long time, it hasn’t eaten for days, and it’s not about to be disturbed from its vigil by strangers. As March approaches, the terrier growls, low down in its throat.
March stops, startled by such a small dog’s depth of feeling.
“It’s all right.” The Judge has come up beside March. “Sister,” he calls. “Here, girl.”
At the sound of his voice, the dog leaps up and runs to him. The terrier is filthy, but the Judge bends down and picks it up.
“You silly thing,” he says.
The dog’s tail wags like mad against the Judge’s overcoat. It’s clearly in ecstasy to be held in his arms, and it yaps with what little voice it has left, since it has been howling each and every night.
For all they know, this dog has been following the body of its mistress from the time she was first taken from the house. It may have been waiting in the alley beside the funeral parlor, pursuing the hearse down Route 22. This small creature is not at all confused about what it wants, unlike men and women, who have the ability to conceal their deepest desires. Men and women, after all, can hide their love away. Men don’t chase after cars. Women don’t throw themselves upon cement doorsteps, curled up in a heap, until somebody opens the door and finally lets them inside.
Among men and women, those in love do not always announce themselves, with declarations and vows. But they are the ones who weep when you’re gone. Who miss you every single night, especially when the sky is so deep and beautiful, and the ground so very cold. On this night, the Judge cries more quietly than it would ever seem possible for a man of his size. He keeps his face averted, buried against the dog’s fur. March doesn’t eyen realize he’s weeping, until a sob escapes. And that is how she finally knows that Bill Justice loved Judith. He loved her for thirty-five years, which for some people is as good as a lifetime. He loved her the way no one else ever has, and yet, in spite of that, he’s only entitled to grieve privately, in the dark. At least he has a right to that, and March wouldn’t think of intruding. She’ll stand beside him, in silence, beneath a sky that is now perfectly black, until he’s ready to drive her home.
7
At twilight, Fox Hill is the most beautiful place on earth, with its long, blue views of Guardian Farm and its twisted black trees. Hank comes here often at this time, accompanied by the dogs, who are unusually subdued at this hour, as if they knew that bickering and snapping would be a crime against the silence down below.
Most of the time, Hank considers himself to be too obvious and too tall, but here on the hill, he is small and extremely well aware of his own insignificance. What is the difference between himself and a single blade of grass? The grass, as he sees it, is worth a thousand times more than he is, since it serves a purpose, and hard as he’s tried Hank has never been able to figure a single reason for his existence. All he’s ever been is a problem, a burden-but there must be a reason for this life that he has, there’s got to be. After all, he is here, just as surely as the fields he walks across. He is breathing this sweet, October air.
Sometimes, when he stops thinking of himself as Hollis’s adopted nephew and his father’s only son, Hank has the sense that there might be something worthwhile inside of him. It is possible that no one perceives the world the way he does, or views this landscape with the clarity with which he sees. This alone would be a reason for him to exist. When he thinks about the idea of his own singular vision, the world suddenly seems filled with endless possibilities, and he wonders if this is what hawks experience at the moment of flight. Expectation, that’s what it is. The kind you feel when you’re seventeen, and the air is cold and fresh, and the dogs lie down beside you in the grass, and everything is quiet, the way it always is right before something is about to happen.
The evening star rises into the dark blue night. But this star is only the beginning, like opening the cover of a book but not yet turning the first page. Below, in the pastures, there used to be dozens of horses, including the thoroughbred named Tarot’s Deck of Fortune, who was once entered in both the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes in a single year. Hank found a photograph forgotten in the barn, crammed between two stalls. When he saw the image of Tarot, draped in blue and white silks, Hank actually cried. He wished he had lived at the Farm in Mr. Cooper’s time. He’s heard from some of the older residents of the village that the ground used to shake when the horses ran together. You could feel it all the way in town; the floors of the bakery and the hardware store used to vibrate so badly several residents were convinced that the village was prone to earthquakes.