This thought was so clear, somehow so 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 ugly yellow-green 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. He took the bag back into the garage and took the shovel down from its nail on the garage wall. He scraped 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 bin on the far side of the Civic. By the time he had 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 black 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.

The sex was good, but Louis did not find himself simply slipping off afterward 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.

31

Their winter passed. Ellie’s faith in Santa Claus was restored-temporarily at least-by the footprints in the hearth. Gage opened his presents splendidly, pausing every now and then to munch a particularly tasty-looking piece of wrapping paper. And that year, both kids had decided by midafternoon that the boxes were more fun than the toys.

The Crandalls came over on New Year’s Eve for Rachel’s eggnog, and Louis found himself mentally examining Norma. She had a pale and somehow transparent look that he had seen before. His grandmother would have said Norma was beginning to “fail,” and that was perhaps not such a bad word for it. All at once her hands, so swollen and misshapen by arthritis, seemed covered with liver Spots. Her hair looked thinner. The Crandalls went home around ten, and the Creeds saw the New Year in together in front of the TV. It was the last time Norma was in their house.

Most of Louis’s semester break was sloppy and rainy. In terms of heating costs, he was grateful for the thaw, but the weather was still depressing and dismal.

He worked around the house, building bookshelves and cupboards for his wife, and a model Porsche in his study for himself. By the time classes resumed on January 23, Louis was happy to go back to the university.

The flu finally arrived-a fairly serious outbreak struck the campus less than a week after the spring semester had begun, and he had his hands full-he found himself working ten and sometimes twelve hours a day and going home utterly whipped but not really unhappy.

The warm spell broke on January 29 with a roar. There was a blizzard followed by a week of numbing subzero weather. Louis was checking the mending broken arm of a young man who was hoping desperately-and fruitlessly, in Louis’s opinion-that he would be able to play baseball that spring when one of the candy-stripers poked her head in and told him his wife was on the telephone.

Louis went into his office to take the call. Rachel was crying, and he was instantly alarmed. Ellie, he thought. She’s fallen off her sled and broken her arm. Or fractured her skull. He thought with alarm of the crazed fraternity boys and their toboggan.

“It isn’t one of the kids, is it?” he asked. “Rachel?”

“No, no,” she said, crying harder. “Not one of the kids. It’s Norma, Lou. Norma Crandall. She died this morning. Around eight o’clock, right after breakfast, Jud said. He came over to see if you were here and I told him you’d left half an hour ago. He oh Lou, he just seemed so lost and so dazed… so old.

thank God Ellie was gone and Gage is too young to understand…”

Louis’s brow furrowed, and in spite of this terrible news he found it was Rachel his mind was going out to, seeking, trying to find. Because here it was again.

Nothing you could quite put your finger on, because it was so much an overall attitudinal fix. That death was a secret, a terror, and it was to be kept from the children, above all to be kept from the children, the way that Victorian ladies and gentlemen had believed the nasty, grotty truth about sexual relations must be kept from the children.

“Jesus,” he said. “Was it her heart?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She was no longer crying, but her voice was choked and hoarse. “Could you come, Louis? You’re his friend, and I think he needs you.”

You’re his friend.

Well I am, Louis thought with a small touch of surprise. I never expected to have an eighty-year-old man for a buddy, but I guess I do. And then it occurred to him that they had better be friends, considering what was between them. And considering that, he supposed that Jud had known they were friends long before Louis had. Jud had stood by him on that one, and in spite of what had happened since, in spite of the mice, in spite of the birds, Louis felt that Jud’s decision had probably been the right one… or, if not the right one, at least the compassionate one. He would do what he could for Jud now, and if it meant being best man at the death of his wife, he would be that.

“On my way,” he said and hung up.