“Well, yeah,” Julian says finally. “That would be nice.”
“I’ve got forty-three weeks left,” Walt Hannen says. “Not that I’m counting.”
“I think my story would look great on your record,” Julian says. “It doesn’t have any loose ends.”
“No one’s going to come looking for that baby?”
“Nope,” Julian says. “Not in my lifetime.”
“Well, the fact that it all ends up on your property is kind of a question mark,” Walt tells him.
Walt’s fairly certain he’ll never know what happened here, he’s not even sure he’d want to. But whatever it was, it’s changed Julian Cash and probably a lot of other things, too. If Walt was just a little different, more like Roy Hadley, the chief over in Hartford Beach, he’d get to the bottom of all this; he wouldn’t let the fate of a twelve-year-old boy or one of his men get in the way.
“I already told you,” Julian says. “This property doesn’t belong to me.”
Walt Hannen looks up at the sky. As far as he can tell, Julian’s still got good instincts. If anything, he’s too unrelenting in his appraisal of what’s right and what’s wrong, and it’s a good thing he isn’t a judge, since most of the trespassers who came up before him would certainly hang.
“I hate buzzards.” Walt sighs. When he retires he’ll spend some time up near Lake Okeechobee. He’ll finally be able to take Rose up to Atlantic City; he’ll just surprise her one day and walk through the door with the plane tickets and the hotel reservations and maybe even a new dress to wear, since she’s never liked to spend much money on herself. “Goddamned worthless creatures,” he says of the buzzards.
Walt rises to his feet, and when he does Julian knows he’s going to look the other way. He’s going to let Julian write up his story just as if he believed it.
“Let’s call Richie and get this guy out of here,” Walt says.
They go back the way they’ve come, where the earth is so damp in spite of the heat that Arrow’s pawprints can still be seen. Julian knows that most people believe a dog is worth less than a human, but they’ve never looked into a dog’s eyes. They’ve never stood beside a dog when the moon rises and fills up the night.
“You know the only thing that could possibly bother me?” Walt says as they reach Julian’s yard. “It’s the thought that someone who’s guilty is getting off easy. I’d hate that.”
“No one who’s guilty gets off easy,” Julian tells him.
“Karma?” Walt says. His acupuncturist has mentioned it once or twice. When Julian looks at him, Walt explains, “You reap what you sow.”
Julian nods. He believes in that. They have reached the cypress trees, and above them the merlins are unnaturally quiet. He will never he able to pass this place and not think of Arrow.
“I’m sorry about your dog,” Walt Hannen says.
Julian manages to look away from the cypress trees. “Yeah, well, he never thought he was my dog,” he says.
“I told you to get yourself a good Labrador retriever,” Walt reminds him. “They can track anything a shepherd can.”
“It wouldn’t be the same,” Julian says.
“You’re goddamned right it wouldn’t be.” Walt grins. “A Lab would listen to you.”
“Arrow listened to me. He just didn’t give a crap about what I had to say.”
Walt avoids the dog’s grave as he goes to his car. He calls in for Richie to head over with an ambulance, so they can get the corpse in the woods to the morgue. Then he takes out some of the Juicy Fruit gum Rose has stocked in his glove compartment. Since he’s in charge, at least for now, no one will question his decision to forgo an autopsy, no one will even know whether or not he contacts the state police about an ID check. Walt has always been social by nature: he plays poker with several guys on the Hartford Beach police force, he’s got quite a few buddies he grew up with, and he and Rose often get together with some of the other Labrador retriever breeders they’ve gotten to know over the years. But he supposes that if he had to pick someone to stand by him, someone to trust, he’d choose Julian. He’s not even sure of the reason why—maybe it’s only because he happened to be on duty the night of the accident, or maybe he’s just a good judge of character.
“I’ve got a new batch of puppies right now,” Walt tells Julian as they lean on the porch railing, waiting for Richie. “Four yellow and two black. I’d give you a good deal.”
“Do you ever get the feeling that your life isn’t really your own, and you’ve just sort of let things happen to you?” Julian asks.
Walt looks at him, to make sure it’s Julian Cash who’s just strung so many words together.
“No,” Walt admits. “Although I’ve felt something like that when I’ve gone to the mall in Hartford Beach with Rose.”
Julian laughs out loud, but the laugh cracks midway and turns into something else. A gasp maybe, a tearing sound.
“Are you going to keep on talking like this, or is this just some sort of spell you’re under?” Walt asks.
“I hate people who talk a lot,” Julian says. “Now I’m one of them.”
They can hear Richie’s siren and Julian can gauge that he’s just passed by Chuck and Karl’s diner. Most likely, the people sitting in the booths by the window are craning their necks to see what’s going on outside. Well, they can look all they want, they’re never going to know the truth: that a hundred-pound dog could tear a man apart yet love a boy so much he wouldn’t notice his own wounds, that a man like Julian could feel something after all this time.
“You’re not cracking up on me or something like that?” Walt asks softly as Richie’s car and the ambulance pull into the driveway and those damned merlins start to jabber.
Julian is staring at the place in the earth where the dog is buried, now and forever, beneath those cypress trees. Inside his house, Loretta is probably sleeping on the bed, though she knows she’s not allowed. Twenty years ago, Julian could have wound up anywhere, but instead he found himself here, not four miles from where he was born. On that night, all the bees rose out of their hives in the woods, startled by his mother’s cry. If she hadn’t covered him with her dress, he might have been the one who was stung. If she hadn’t run all the way to Miss Giles’s house, he would never have been alive. Maybe he can remember it if he tries: the folds of her skirt, the bees so confused by the darkness they followed all the way to Miss Giles’s front yard.
“Maybe you’re the one who’s cracking up,” Julian tells Walt. “Maybe it’s nicotine withdrawal. Ever think of that?”
“I never thought of that,” Walt says, surprised to find he’s actually relieved to hear Julian talking again.
Walt won’t miss this job. He’s getting out while his blood pressure’s still in the high-normal range and his ulcer is under control. Richie Platt isn’t ready to take on the job, and so Walt will probably have to look outside Verity when it comes to finding his replacement. It’s not that he hasn’t considered Julian. He has, in spite of the reaction he knows he’d get from the city council; he just couldn’t do that to Julian. When Walt packs up his desk that will be the end of it, he won’t look back, although there’s the possibility that he will drive out here to Julian’s every once in a while, when he’s got nothing better to do, or when he just wants someone to talk to.
When Keith packs his suitcase two weeks later, he discovers that there’s really not much he wants to take with him. A sweatshirt, his favorite jeans, his jar of pennies, and at the last minute, the tennis racket his father gave him last summer, even though he hasn’t touched it since they moved and probably won’t have time to use it this year, since he’s signed up for summer school at Great Neck North. His father doesn’t know everything, but he knows there’s been trouble. He’s already phoned to advise Keith that he’ll have a curfew, ten o’clock, even on weekend nights, and Keith didn’t argue with him. He’s not going to bother to call Laddy Stern to say good-bye, since he probably won’t be coming back.
He’s been given the option to stay in New York when the summer ends, if that’s what he wants. But of course, the only thing he truly wants is his dog back, and he can’t have that.
Since his voice returned, he hasn’t used it much. He’s talked to his father twice on the telephone, and to the super once, when the dishwasher overflowed and had to be fixed, and once to say thank you to Kitty Bass, who brought over a huge box of jelly doughnuts. What he’s dreading most is the drive to the airport. He’s managed to avoid his mother at home, but when they drive to the airport they’ll be trapped together, just the two of them.
This morning, Keith woke up long before dawn, when there was still a moon in the sky. He’d been dreaming about the dog again, and when he woke his heart was racing. His broken ribs have been taped twice, but they still ache whenever he gets out of bed. He went through the darkened living room and out onto the balcony in his underwear, shivering. It was low tide and the scent of seaweed was bitter and sharp. Around this time the baby always startled in her sleep and had to be rocked for a while. Miss Giles might be a little deaf, but she always managed to hear when someone had trouble sleeping. If Keith was in her house, she’d come out of her bedroom in her robe and slippers and fix him some hot chocolate or tea, in spite of the hour.
He went out to say good-bye last evening. He took a taxi, which he paid for with his own money, and he brought with him a bundle .of the clothes he’d borrowed from Miss Giles, all washed and folded. The baby was out by the rabbit cages; she’d been given a pan full of leaf lettuce and alfalfa sprouts. She’d gotten a little bit taller, she must have, because she could now push the rabbits’ lettuce inside their cages. Since nobody knows her birthday, Miss Giles has let Keith pick, and he’s chosen March first. On that day he’ll always make certain to send her a present, no matter where he is, even if she forgets him completely.
Last evening he told the taxi to wait for him, since he knew he wasn’t staying long. He got out and walked over to the rabbit cages, and as soon as the baby saw him she reached up her arms and said, “Uppy.” It was a brand-new word, one he’d never heard her say before. He picked her up and held her near her favorite rabbit’s cage and told himself it was a good thing that babies had such short memories. Already she was so crazy about these real live bunnies that she often forgot her stuffed toy on the floor of Miss Giles’s kitchen, and she never used to let go of it, not for an instant; if anyone had tried to lift it out of her crib while she was sleeping she would have woken immediately and begun to cry.
He had never called her by her name or spoken to her, and he probably never would. When he put her down on the ground he could still feel how heavy she was that night when he ran along the drainage ditch carrying her. By next spring she wouldn’t need any help feeding the rabbits; she’d drag an old wooden chair over and climb up all by herself to unlatch the highest cages. Keith let the taxi idle in the driveway, and as the meter ran, he bent down on one knee so the baby could hook her arms around his neck. She smelled like lemon juice and graham crackers. Miss Giles was watching from her kitchen window, she always did that, let you think you were on your own, when really she was watching over you all the time. Keith stood and carried the baby up to the porch, then put her down on the steps and nodded for her to go inside. After next March, when she turned two, she might put her hands on her hips and shout “No,” but now she went right inside and Keith knew she’d probably head for the kitchen table, where Miss Giles always doled out cookies and milk before bedtime, whether you were good or not.
All the wood Keith had chopped was neatly stacked beside the porch, and he was surprised to see just how much of it there was. Seeing that wood, he almost burst into tears, but instead he walked to the taxi and told the driver to take him back to Long Boat Street. And now, as he stands out on the balcony, looking at the beach below him, he realizes that he no longer remembers what summertime smells like in New York, but he will never forget the scent of cypress and seaweed and lemons. He could be in an airtight air-conditioned room on the other side of the planet, and he’d still remember.
He goes to his room, gets dressed, and finishes packing right then. By the time Lucy gets up at six, he’s already in the kitchen having a glass of orange juice. Keith can tell she’s upset, because she doesn’t fix the yogurt and granola she has every morning; she just makes herself a cup of instant coffee, not even that drip stuff she prefers. She would never believe it, but none of what he has done or is about to do has anything to do with her. Keith thinks that Julian Cash might understand this; he would know that sometimes your life leads you to places where no one can follow, except, if you’re lucky, a dog who for however brief a time might offer you complete devotion, no matter who you are.
He wishes he could stay with his mother and be who she wants him to be, but he can’t do that. He’s not angry or anything; it’s just who he is. So he brushes his teeth, and washes his face, and gets his suitcase. The sun is breaking through the sky as they walk across the parking lot. In a matter of hours, heat waves will rise above the asphalt, and all the best shells left at low tide will be picked off the beach. Lucy fumbles with her keys, then finally unlocks the trunk of the Mustang so Keith can lift his suitcase inside.
“I just want you to know one thing,” Lucy says, when they are both in the car, making sure not to look at each other. “You can always come back.”
“Thanks.” Keith nods.
“You don’t have to thank me.” Lucy’s voice sounds strange, even to herself.
“I know I can come back,” Keith says.
“Fine,” Lucy says as she turns the key in the ignition.
The most jealous moments Lucy has ever had came when she watched other mothers in the park, whose toddlers clutched on to them. She remembers exactly how she felt whenever she saw a little boy reach for his mother’s hand before crossing the street. She has heard, down in the laundry room, that some of the children get hysterical when summer vacation comes and a visit to their father means a separation from their mother. They can’t sleep, they get the hiccups, they refuse to eat anything but toast and water, they cry all the way to the airport, then worry the flight attendants with bouts of nausea and red rashes that appear at the moment of takeoff. But as they near the airport in Hartford Beach, Keith opens his window and sticks his head out, scanning the sky for planes headed north.
Lucy parks in the short-term lot, gets out and unlocks the trunk, then starts to haul out the suitcase.
“I can take that,” Keith says.
The early-morning sky is the color of a bluebird’s egg.
“Really,” Keith says when she won’t let go of the suitcase. “I’ll get it.”
Lucy backs off and lets Keith carry the suitcase. With every step he takes, the jar of pennies inside rattles. By this afternoon he’ll be where the lilacs grow taller than a man, where lawns are green and the nights so cool you rarely need air-conditioning.
“The plane stops once, in Atlanta,” Lucy says. “But you don’t have to get off. Just stay in your seat.”
“Right,” Keith says.
Inside the terminal, he goes to the check-in line and lifts the suitcase up to be tagged.
“I’m going to La Guardia,” he tells the ticket agent. “Via Atlanta.”
Hearing him say this as he fills out the luggage tag with his New York address, Lucy knows he’s never really coming back, no matter what happens.
“All set?” Lucy asks.
Keith runs a hand through his hair and nods, but for a minute he looks slightly baffled. Lucy hugs him quickly, then, before he can pull away from her, she lets him go. Just yesterday, Lucy ran into Kitty and Janey Bass at the K Mart, where they were picking out new outfits with Shannon for her to take to Mount Holyoke. Lucy noticed that although all three of them were laughing, their eyes were as pink as rabbits; they’d already spent days crying over Shannon’s departure at the end of the week.
“Oh God, I’m such a baby,” Janey had said. “I feel like I??
?m losing my little girl.”
But Janey would never lose Shannon, that much was clear to Lucy from the way they were hugging each other in the sweater department. When it came time for Janey to take Shannon to the airport, Janey wouldn’t have to swallow her tears, she wouldn’t have this burning feeling in her throat.
“Well,” Keith says, backing away from Lucy, “I guess it’s time.”
Lucy watches him walk past the metal detectors. She lowers her eyes, so she won’t actually have to see him go through the boarding area, and then, after only a moment, he’s gone. He has disappeared so completely it’s as if he never existed at all, except that Lucy suddenly recalls the exact moment he was born. She remembers the fierce surge of pain, like a brand of devotion, and that last instant, when he was both separate from her and still a part of her own body.
She goes to the water fountain, and bends so she can drink deeply, but the water doesn’t help the way she feels inside. When she turns to face the row of windows, she sees Julian at the far end of the terminal. He’s arguing with a security guard.
“I’m just saying this is against policy,” the security guard is telling him. But Julian’s not listening; he’s watching Lucy walk toward him.
“There’s no turbulence today,” Julian tells Lucy. “I checked.”
Lucy looks past him so she can see the runway. The light outside is blinding; just one look and your eyes begin to sting.
“I guess I’m always going to hate airports,” Julian says. He takes out his wallet, then flips it open to show the security guard his ID. The guard backs off, though he doesn’t look happy. “All right?” Julian says to him.
Julian reaches down for a wooden crate, and when he shoves it toward the guard, Lucy hears a peculiar sound.
“What’s in there?” she asks.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if I never get on a plane again,” Julian says. “Considering my last experience.” He shifts his gaze to the security guard. “Want to do me that favor? Or do you want me to tail you every time you get in your car?”