"Pet cemetery," Louis repeated, bemused.
"It's not as odd as it prob'ly sounds," Crandall said, smoking and rocking. "It's the road. It uses up a lot of animals, that road does. Dogs and cats, mostly, but that ain't all. One of those big Orinco trucks run down the pet raccoon the Ryder children used to keep. That was back--Christ, must have been in '73, maybe earlier. Before the state made keeping a coon or even a denatured skunk illegal, anyway."
"Why did they do that?"
"Rabies," Crandall said. "Lot of rabies in Maine now. There was a big old St. Bernard went rabid downstate a couple of years ago and killed four people. That was a hell of a thing. Dog hadn't had his shots. If those foolish people had seen that dog had had its shots, it never would have happened. But a coon or a skunk, you can vaccinate it twice a year and still it don't always take. But that coon the Ryder boys had, that was what the oldtimers used to call a 'sweet coon.' It'd waddle right up to you--gorry, wa'n't he fat!--and lick your face like a dog. Their dad even paid a vet to spay him and declaw him. That must have cost him a country fortune!
"Ryder, he worked for IBM in Bangor. They went out to Colorado five years ago . . . or maybe it was six. Funny to think of those two almost old enough to drive. Were they broken up over that coon? I guess they were. Matty Ryder cried so long his mom got scared and wanted to take him to the doctor. I spose he's over it now, but they never forget. When a good animal gets run down in the road, a kid never forgets."
Louis's mind turned to Ellie as he had last seen her tonight, fast asleep with Church purring rustily on the foot of the mattress.
"My daughter's got a cat," he said. "Winston Churchill. We call him Church for short."
"Do they climb when he walks?"
"I beg your pardon?" Louis had no idea what he was talking about.
"He still got his balls or has he been fixed?"
"No," Louis said. "No, he hasn't been fixed."
In fact there had been some trouble over that back in Chicago. Rachel had wanted to get Church spayed, had even made the appointment with the vet. Louis canceled it. Even now he wasn't really sure why. It wasn't anything as simple or as stupid as equating his masculinity with that of his daughter's tom, nor even his resentment at the idea that Church would have to be castrated so the fat housewife next door wouldn't need to be troubled with twisting down the lids of her plastic garbage cans--those things had been part of it, but most of it had been a vague but strong feeling that it would destroy something in Church that he himself valued--that it would put out the go-to-hell look in the cat's green eyes. Finally he had pointed out to Rachel that they were moving to the country, and it shouldn't be a problem. Now here was Judson Crandall, pointing out that part of country living in Ludlow consisted of dealing with Route 15, and asked him if the cat was fixed. Try a little irony, Dr. Creed--it's good for your blood.
"I'd get him fixed," Crandall said, crushing his smoke between his thumb and forefinger. "A fixed cat don't tend to wander as much. But if it's all the time crossing back and forth, its luck will run out, and it'll end up there with the Ryder kids' coon and little Timmy Dessler's cocker spaniel and Missus Bradleigh's parakeet. Not that the parakeet got run over in the road, you understand. It just went feet up one day."
"I'll take it under advisement," Louis said.
"You do that," Crandall said and stood up. "How's that beer doing? I believe I'll go in for a slice of old Mr. Rat after all."
"Beer's gone," Louis said, also standing, "and I ought to go, too. Big day tomorrow."
"Starting in at the university?"
Louis nodded. "The kids don't come back for two weeks, but by then I ought to know what I'm doing, don't you think?"
"Yeah, if you don't know where the pills are, I guess you'll have trouble." Crandall offered his hand and Louis shook it, mindful again of the fact that old bones pained easily. "Come on over any evening," he said. "Want you to meet my Norma. Think she'd enjoy you."
"I'll do that," Louis said. "Nice to meet you, Jud."
"Same goes both ways. You'll settle in. May even stay awhile."
"I hope we do."
Louis walked down the crazy-paved path to the shoulder of the road and had to pause while yet another truck, this one followed by a line of five cars headed in the direction of Bucksport, passed by. Then, raising his hand in a short salute, he crossed the street (road, he reminded himself again) and let himself into his new house.
It was quiet with the sounds of sleep. Ellie appeared not to have moved at all, and Gage was still in his crib, sleeping in typical Gage fashion, spread-eagled on his back, a bottle within easy reach. Louis paused there looking in at his son, his heart abruptly filling with a love for the boy so strong that it seemed almost dangerous. He supposed part of it was simply homesickness for all the familiar Chicago places and Chicago faces that were now gone, erased so efficiently by the miles that they might never have been at all. There's a lot more moving around than there used to be . . . used to be you picked a place out and stuck to it. There was some truth in that.
He went to his son, and because there was no one there to see him do it, not even Rachel, he kissed his fingers and then pressed them lightly and briefly to Gage's cheek through the bars of the crib.
Gage clucked and turned over on his side.
"Sleep well, baby," Louis said.
*
He undressed quietly and slipped into his half of the bed that was for now just two single mattresses pushed together on the floor. He felt the strain of the day beginning to pass. Rachel didn't stir. Unpacked boxes bulked ghostly in the room.
Just before sleep, Louis hiked himself up on one elbow and looked out the window. Their room was at the front of the house, and he could look across the road at the Crandall place. It was too dark to see shapes--on a moonlit night it would not have been--but he could see the cigarette ember over there. Still up, he thought. He'll maybe be up for a long time. The old sleep poorly. Perhaps they stand watch.
Against what?
Louis was thinking about that when he slipped into sleep. He dreamed he was in Disney World, driving a bright white van with a red cross on the side. Gage was beside him, and in the dream Gage was at least ten years old. Church was on the white van's dashboard, looking at Louis with his bright green eyes, and out on Main Street by the 1890s train station, Mickey Mouse was shaking hands with the children clustered around him, his big white cartoon gloves swallowing their small, trusting hands.
7
The next two weeks were busy ones for the family. Little by little Louis's new job began to shake down for him (how it would be when ten thousand students, many of them drug and liquor abusers, some afflicted with social diseases, some anxious about grades or depressed about leaving home for the first time, a dozen of them--girls, mostly--anorexic . . . how it would be when all of them converged on the campus at once would be something else again). And while Louis began getting a handle on his job as head of University Medical Services, Rachel began to get a handle on the house.
Gage was busy taking the bumps and spills that went with getting used to his new environment, and for a while his nighttime schedule was badly out of whack, but by the middle of their second week in Ludlow, he had begun to sleep through again. Only Ellie, with the prospect of beginning kindergarten in a new place before her, seemed always overexcited and on a hairtrigger. She was apt to go into prolonged giggling fits or periods of almost menopausal depression or temper tantrums at the drop of a word. Rachel said Ellie would get over it when she saw that school was not the great red devil she had made it out to be in her own mind, and Louis thought Rachel was right. Most of the time, Ellie was what she had always been--a dear.
His evening beer or two with Jud Crandall became something of a habit. Around the time Gage began sleeping through again, Louis began bringing his own six-pack over every second or third night. He met Norma Crandall, a sweetly pleasant woman who had rheumatoid arthritis--filthy old rheumatoid arthritis, which kills so m
uch of what could be good in the old ages of men and women who are otherwise healthy--but her attitude was good. She would not surrender to the pain; there would be no white flags. Let it take her if it could. Louis thought she might have another five to seven years productive if not terribly comfortable years ahead of her.
Going completely against his own established customs, he examined her at his own instigation, inventoried the prescriptions her own doctor had given her, and found them to be completely in order. He felt a nagging disappointment that there was nothing else he could do or suggest for her, but her Dr. Weybridge had things as under control as they were ever going to be for Norma Crandall--barring some sudden breakthrough, which was possible but not to be counted upon. You learned to accept, or you ended up in a small room writing letters home with Crayolas.
Rachel liked her, and they had sealed their friendship by exchanging recipes the way small boys trade baseball cards, beginning with Norma Crandall's deep-dish apple pie for Rachel's beef stroganoff. Norma was taken with both of the Creed children--particularly with Ellie, who, she said, was going to be "an old-time beauty." At least, Louis told Rachel that night in bed, Norma hadn't said Ellie was going to grow into a real sweet coon. Rachel laughed so hard she broke explosive wind, and then both of them laughed so long and loudly that they woke up Gage in the next room.
The first day of kindergarten arrived. Louis, who felt pretty well in control of the infirmary and the medical-support facilities now, took the day off. (Besides, the infirmary was currently dead empty; the last patient, a summer student who had broken her leg on the Student Union steps, had been discharged a week before.) He stood on the lawn beside Rachel with Gage in his arms, as the big yellow bus made the turn from Middle Drive and lumbered to a stop in front of their house. The doors at the front folded open; the babble and squawk of many children drifted out on the mild September air.
Ellie cast a strange, vulnerable glance back over her shoulder, as if to ask them if there might not yet be time to abort this inevitable process, and perhaps what she saw on the faces of her parents convinced her that the time was gone, and everything which would follow this day was simply inevitable--like the progress of Norma Crandall's arthritis. She turned away from them and mounted the steps of the bus. The doors folded shut with a gasp of dragon's breath. The bus pulled away. Rachel burst into tears.
"Don't, for Christ's sake," Louis said. He wasn't crying. Only damn near. "It's only half a day."
"Half a day is bad enough," Rachel answered in a scolding voice and began to cry harder. Louis held her, and Gage slipped an arm comfortably around each parent's neck. When Rachel cried, Gage usually cried too. But not this time. He has us to himself, Louis thought, and he damn well knows it.
*
They waited with some trepidation for Ellie to return, drinking too much coffee, speculating on how it was going for her. Louis went out into the back room that was going to be his study and messed about idly, moving papers from one place to another but not doing much else. Rachel began lunch absurdly early.
When the phone rang at a quarter past ten, Rachel raced for it and answered with a breathless "Hello?" before it could ring a second time. Louis stood in the doorway between his office and the kitchen, sure it would be Ellie's teacher telling them that she had decided Ellie couldn't hack it; the stomach of public education had found her indigestible and was spitting her back. But it was only Norma Crandall, calling to tell them that Jud had picked the last of the corn and they were welcome to a dozen ears if they wanted it. Louis went over with a shopping bag and scolded Jud for not letting him help pick it.
"Most of it ain't worth a tin shit anyway," Jud said.
"You'll kindly spare that talk while I'm around," Norma said. "She came out on the porch with iced tea on an antique Coca-Cola tray.
"Sorry, my love."
"He ain't sorry a bit," Norma said to Louis and sat down with a wince.
"Saw Ellie get on the bus," Jud said, lighting a Chesterfield.
"She'll be fine," Norma said. "They almost always are."
Almost, Louis thought morbidly.
*
But Ellie was fine. She came home at noon smiling and sunny, her blue first-day-of-school dress belling gracefully around her scabbed shins (and there was a new scrape on one knee to marvel over), a picture of what might have been two children or perhaps two walking gantries in one hand, one shoe untied, one ribbon missing from her hair, shouting, "We sang 'Old MacDonald'! Mommy! Daddy! We sang 'Old MacDonald'! Same one as in the Carstairs Street School!"
Rachel glanced over at Louis, who was sitting in the windowseat with Gage on his lap. The baby was almost asleep. There was something sad in Rachel's glance, and although she looked away quickly, Louis felt a moment of terrible panic. We're really going to get old, he thought. It's really true. No one's going to make an exception for us. She's on her way . . . and so are we.
Ellie ran over to him, trying to show him her picture, her new scrape, and tell him about "Old MacDonald" and Mrs. Berryman all at the same time. Church was twining in and out between her legs, purring loudly, and Ellie was somehow, almost miraculously, not tripping over him.
"Shh," Louis said and kissed her. Gage had gone to sleep, unmindful of all the excitement. "Just let me put the baby to bed and then I'll listen to everything."
He took Gage up the stairs, walking through hot slanting September sunshine, and as he reached the landing, such a premonition of horror and darkness struck him that he stopped--stopped cold--and looked around in surprise, wondering what could possibly have come over him. He held the baby tighter, almost clutching him, and Gage stirred uncomfortably. Louis's arms and back had broken out in great rashes of gooseflesh.
What's wrong? he wondered, confused and frightened. His heart was racing; his scalp felt cool and abruptly too small to cover his skull; he could feel the surge of adrenaline behind his eyes. Human eyes really did bug out when fear was extreme, he knew; they did not just widen but actually bulged as blood pressure climbed and the hydrostatic pressure of the cranial fluids increased. What the hell is it? Ghosts? Christ, it really feels as if something just brushed by me in this hallway, something I almost saw.
Downstairs the screen door whacked against its frame.
Louis creed jumped, almost screamed, and then laughed. It was simply one of those psychological cold pockets people sometimes passed through--no more, no less. A momentary fugue. They happened; that was all. What had Scrooge said to the ghost of Jacob Marley? You may be no more than an underdone bit of potato. There's more gravy than grave to you. And that was more correct--physiologically as well as psychologically--than Charles Dickens had probably known. There were no ghosts, at least not in his experience. He had pronounced two dozen people dead in his career and had never once felt the passage of a soul.
He took Gage into his room and laid him in his crib. As he pulled the blanket up over his son, though, a shudder twisted up his back, and he thought suddenly of his Uncle Carl's "showroom." No new cars there, no televisions with all the modern features, no dishwashers with glass fronts so you could watch the magical sudsing action. Only boxes with their lids up, a carefully hidden spotlight over each. His father's brother was an undertaker.
Good God, what gave you the horrors? Let it go! Dump it!
He kissed his son and went down to listen to Ellie tell about her first day at the big kid's school.
8
That Saturday, after Ellie had completed her first week of school and just before the college kids came back to campus, Jud Crandall came across the road and walked over to where the Creed family sat on their lawn. Ellie had gotten off her bike and was drinking a glass of iced tea. Gage was crawling in the grass, examining bugs, perhaps even eating a few; Gage was not particular where his protein came from.
"Jud," Louis said, getting up. "Let me get you a chair."
"No need." Jud was wearing jeans, an open-throated work shirt, and a pair of green boots. He looked at Ellie.
"You still want to see where yon path goes, Ellie?"
"Yes!" Ellie said, getting up immediately. Her eyes sparkled. "George Buck at school told me it was the pet cemetery, and I told Mommy, but she said to wait for you because you knew where it was."
"I do, too," Jud said. "If it's okay with your folks, we'll take us a stroll up there. You'll want a pair of boots though. Ground's a bit squishy in places."
Ellie rushed into the house.
Jud looked after her with amused affection. "Maybe you'd like to come too, Louis,"
"I would," Louis said. He looked at Rachel. "You want to come, honey?"
"What about Gage? I thought it was a mile."
"I'll put him in the Gerrypack."
Rachel laughed. "Okay . . . but it's your back, mister."
*
They started off ten minutes later, all of them but Gage wearing boots. Gage was sitting up in the Gerrypack and looking at everything over Louis's shoulder, goggle-eyed. Ellie ranged ahead constantly, chasing butterflies and picking flowers.
The grass in the back field was almost waist high, and now there was goldenrod, that late-summer gossip which comes to tattle on autumn every year. But there was no autumn in the air today; today the sun was still all August, although calendar August was almost two weeks gone. By the time they had reached the top of the first hill, walking strung out along the mown path, there were big patches of sweat under Louis's arms.
Jud paused. At first Louis thought it might be because the old man was winded--then he saw the view that had opened out behind them.
"Pretty up here," Jud said, putting a piece of timothy grass between his teeth. Louis thought he had just heard the quintessential Yankee understatement.
"It's gorgeous," Rachel breathed and then turned to Louis, almost accusingly. "How come you didn't tell me about this?"
"Because I didn't know it was here," Louis said, and was a little ashamed. They were still on their own property; he had just never found time to climb the hill in back of the house until today.
Ellie had been a good way ahead. Now she came back, also gazing with frank wonder. Church padded at her heels.
The hill was not a high one, but it did not need to be. To the east, heavy woods blocked any view, but looking this way, west, the land fell away in a golden and dozy late-summer dream. Everything was still, hazed, silent. There was not even an Orinco tanker on the highway to break the quiet.