'It's a lovely box,' said Diane, her voice calm now.
The box was between them on the seat, and for a moment Laski smelled the sweet perfume of death, or was it the smell of the wood? The delicate odor continued to come to him as they went along the highway, by the fields and the river. The day was unseasonably warm, with wisps of gray mist above the water, and the snow was changing to slush along the shoulder of the road.
'It's just us again,' he said.
'Yes,' she said, their hands touching on the lid of the pine box.
He wheeled the truck up into the wooded hills along the old road toward their home. Above an abandoned farm a crow went through the January sky, black wings beating slowly on the gray heights.
Laski turned down the lane to the cabin, and into the drive. He got out and opened the door for her. She stepped into the snow, leaning on him. The sound of melting snow as it dripped on the trees filled the air, and the smell of the trees came strong on the moist warm breeze.
'What a beautiful day,' she said, suddenly crying again.
He walked with her slowly up the shoveled path to their door. She leaned on him into the cabin; he had the couch made up for her and settled her onto it. Then he stirred the fire and went back out to the car for her bag, and then back again, for the pine box.
He placed the box down on top of the table, and it remained there in the last light of the afternoon while they sat quietly on the couch.
'I'd I better go see old Ben and ask him to come here in the morning.' Laski went out again and he saw her watching him through the window.
Ben's collie dog came bounding up to Laski's truck, and Laski got out and petted him, rolling him over on his back and scratching his stomach. He knelt in the snow for a moment, his hand on the dog's belly. In the sky the crow was still calling, circling on the wind, and Laski felt as if he were the crow and the dog and the sky, as if he were transparent and the day was passing through him.
'Come into my castle, friend.'
Laski looked up and saw old Ben standing in the door-way of the broken-down farmhouse. Ben led him through the labyrinth of boards and falling rafters, into the inner-most room of the house, where an old iron stove was glowing with heat and everything was neatly in place—table, chair, water bucket, and a small single bed behind the stove. The hermit sat down on the edge of the bed and tossed a chunk of wood into the fire.
'Well, what can we do for you today?' he asked, taking out a package of tobacco.
Laski hesitated, holding his hands out over the heated top of the stove. 'The baby died,' he said.
Ben stared at the cracked old firebox of the stove, where tiny sparks were dancing.
Will you help me bury him?' asked Laski. 'You'll have to get a lot number from the cemetery,' said the hermit, trying to roll a cigarette, the tobacco sticking out at both ends.
'I'm burying him in the woods.'
Ben hesitated, looking at Laski across the stove. 'Do you have a permit?'
'It's OK, Ben. They filled out the papers at the hospital. I put your name in as the witness.' He stared back down at the stove. How scared we are, he thought, to even bury our dead, unless we have permission from the govern-ment. 'I'd like to do it first thing in the morning.'
'I'll be there,' said Ben.
Laski went back through the winding tunnel of debris and out into the snow. The dog jumped up to him, licking his hand, and Laski saw all the sad wisdom of dogs flickering in the collie's dark eyes.
The sun was gone, and they sat quietly, looking toward the box. Finally she said, 'I'd like to see him.'
'All right,' said Laski, his stomach going weak. He had a fleeting image in his mind of the baby he had seen, a powerful face looking at him in the moment of death. What will he look like now, thought Laski, dreading the opening of the box.
He slowly lifted the lid and touched the linen mildly. It was still cool. He felt as though he were in a dream again. 'You'd better let me look at him first, in case he's too badly marked.' He turned back the clean crisp linen. Beneath it was a faded, dirty piece of sheet, its edges torn and frayed. He unfolded it, expecting to suddenly see the little face, but beneath the sheet were old pieces of rags laid on top of each other, and beneath the old rags was a green plastic garbage bag.
He untwisted the pieces of wire that held the garbage bag closed. Slowly pulling down the edge of the bag, he came to the proud little head, now gray and cold. Gently, he rolled down the rest of the garbage bag and looked into the open cavity of his son's chest and stomach.
'They left him open,' he said, his hands trembling on the bag.
'It's all right,' she said. 'I saw.'
Laski unfolded the garbage bag until the baby was completely visible, his torso a hollow of skin right to the backbone, holding a little pool of blood, like a cup. Drift-ing in the blood was plastic stick, with a number on it.
A fire raged through Laski's body, swelling his chest with blood and burning his throat. 'This is death!' he cried, tears bursting from his eyes. 'There's nothing strange about it!'
He moved his eyes down the long legs where the little feet were tucked together, one atop the other, and death was upon them, holding them still as stone. He looked again into the open hole in the baby's body, to the framework of the back bone. They took out his lungs and his stomach, took out all his guts. They even took his little heart.
Laski was engulfed again by love for the little boy who lay before him, all cut-up. He took the right hand in his own, opening the stiff little fingers and gazing into the tiny cold palm. The fingers held firm against his, with death's unbending grip. How tiny his fingernails are, and so perfect.
He looked at the face of his son and saw that it had undergone a strange transformation. The features had completely matured, the face now that of a man of many years, as if the single moment of life when he was spun upon the doctor's hand had been a lifetime from beginning to end. The triumph and rage, the gain and loss, all this was gone from the face now, and the closed eyelids radiated serenity.
'He's so lovely,' said Diane, her tears falling on the exquisite little head, finely sculpted as that of a Grecian statue. 'He struggled so hard to be born….'
Then the ocean of sorrow took her and she was crying wildly, like a seawind that drives the water into terrible waves. And through the storm the little pine box floated calmly, with its strange passenger, the infant who was also an old man.
Laski opened the little eyelid and saw a blackened jewel, gone far into the night. He closed it and put his mouth to the little ear, into which he whispered 'Don't be afraid.' Then, looking at the high broad forehead and the noble eyelids, and seeing again so clearly the wisdom they embodied, he knew the being who had come to them and left so quickly didn't need any advice. And he felt much younger than this infant who lay before him, this infant with the head of an age-old sage.
'He never got to live at all!' cried Diane, howling into the seawind.
Laski touched the little cheek and it sagged beneath his touch, the lifeless flesh like softest putty.
'Oh no, don't,' said Diane, her voice suddenly soft, as she gently pushed the flesh of the cheek back into place. Bending her head over, she laid a kiss upon the little forehead. 'He's just like marble.'
Laski slowly brought the garbage bag up around the little body.
'I could look at him forever,' said Diane, but she wrapped the bag in the old rags and the dirt sheet, finally pinning closed the clean white linen. Laski lowered the lid of the box, and again it seemed like a dream that could move in any direction he willed. But then he felt reality moving in only one direction. The baby was born and he died and I'm closing the lid of his coffin.
Diane wiped the baby's blood from Laski's face and from her own lips, then went slowly to the couch and lay down. He sat on the floor beside her. There was nothing to say. Neither of them wished to escape the passing of the hours, and they were powerless to change the winding stream of the night; there was nothing to do but sit
in the stillness.
He fell in reverie and he fell into fantasy. He was back in the labor room, seeing the baby's skin pushing at her vagina. He's right there—he's waiting. Get him out of there—don't waste any more time. But the doctor slept down the hall.
Finally his thought faded and there was only the sound of the winter night outside. He felt Diane with him in the deep strange quiet, and holding to it, dwelling in that stillness, he saw life and death merge into one calm and shining sea that had no end.
He woke before dawn and made them breakfast, then carried the pine box into the shed. Through the east windows the first gray light came as he laid the box down and brought hammer and nails. Then slowly and carefully he hammered the lid shut and the pounding of the nails rang out like solemn drumbeats in the winter dawn. As he drove the last nail in, he heard Ben at the shed door.
Laski opened the door for the old man standing there on snowshoes, a ragged cigarette in his mouth. 'I'll be right with you,' said Laski, gathering up his pick and shovel and his own snowshoes.
'We should dig the hole first,' said Ben. 'And you can come back for the box.'
Laski nodded and walked ahead, over the hard morning crust of snow which crunched beneath their snowshoes. He went into the woods, past the skeleton of an old barn, where a porcupine had made his own beat in the snow, and Laski's path crossed it, and went down, into the deeper trees.
He followed an old logging trail through the pines, and Ben kept close behind him, smoking and coughing in the still morning air. The trail went through alder bushes, and down, to the larger trees, where no lumber had been cut for many years. Laski went on, through the old trees to the high bank above the stream. There the bank sloped down, with thin firs growing on its sides. Below was the stream, frozen but still flowing and the sound of its flowing came up to his ears. He stopped in a square of four small spruce.
They shoveled off the snow, clearing a space of earth in the little square. 'The ground doesn't appear to be frozen,' said Laski.
'No, it'll be good digging,' said Ben, raising the pick. When he'd loosened the dirt, Laski shoveled it and threw it into a pile. The sky remained gray and the hole took shape and grew deeper, Ben chopping and Laski shovel-ing out the loosened earth.
'Don't appear to be many roots,' said Ben.
'No, it's not bad.'
'Has to be wider though,' said Ben. He broke more surrounding earth and Laski shoveled it off so that he was able to climb down into the hole and work at the walls.
'How deep do you want it?' asked Ben.
'So an animal won't dig it up.'
'Nothing will touch it,' said Ben, but they shoveled deeper until Laski was in up to his waist, throwing the dirt out.
'You go and bring the box back down,' said Ben. 'I'll get the hole squared up.'
Laski climbed out of the hole, put his snowshoes on, and followed the beat back up through the pines. The dampness of the morning brought many smells into the air, of dead wood and leaves, and from time to time he caught a faint trace of the musk of some animal who had passed by. All around in the snow were rabbit tracks weaving in and out through the trees, and there were also the tracks of a bobcat going in his gracefully curving line deeper into the forest, to the cedar bog, where the deer stayed.
The old barn came into view, and Laski went past it, toward the cabin. At the shed, he removed his snowshoes and stuck them in the snow. He entered the shed and laid the toboggan down on the floor, placing the little coffin on top of it. Then he roped it down.
When it was securely fastened, he went into the cabin. Diane was sitting up on the couch. 'Did you find a nice spot?'
'On the high bank above the stream,' said Laski. 'I'm taking him down there now.' He returned to the shed, and carried the loaded sled out into the snow. He put his snowshoes on again and took the rope in his hands. The load was very light and went smoothly over the crust.
On the slope behind the old barn, the toboggan moved on its own and he ran alongside it, guiding it with the rope through a stand of young spruce. The arms of the little trees touched the box, shedding some needles upon it, and a few tiny cones.
William Kotzwinkle, Swimmer in the Secret Sea
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