38

I ran my hand over the dewy grass.

Her name was in bronze, a plaque bordered by neatly trimmed grass. A metal vase sunk into the earth held three red carnations. They were not wilted, not even slightly. The grass had grown over the grave itself, although a careful eye could detect the border of the more recent sod from the rest of the lawn. Deer scat darkened the bare ground under the trees.

The mausoleum where I had rested was up the hill. I gazed at it with no pleasure. A police car was parked at the entrance to the building. A policeman descended the steps, spoke to his partner without getting into the car, gesturing with a flashlight, the beam lancing the dark.

The flashlight beam silvered the blades of grass, the trees, and almost reached me where I stood. After further discussion, the car door slammed. The police unit rolled slowly, headlights sweeping the trees and grave stones, brakelights all the way down the hill, where they vanished.

Whenever I attempted to think like a man, to read, to plan, I felt myself become uncertain. It was a simple matter, discovering the gardner’s equipment, the small green tractor, the tarps, the red-and-yellow cans of fertilizer. But then I was lost in an inventory of possibilities.

Tall rubber boots waited like prosthetic limbs beside huge bags of grass seed. There were so many tools to chose from, pitchforks, hoes, power saws, edgers with plastic containers of fuel riding piggy-back on the shaft of the tool, and all of it speckled with bits of grass and earth, plantlife long dried to yellow cellulose and dust.

But I could not find what I wanted, not until I kicked open a wooden shed. Hoes and rakes tangled with each other, the sort of tools medieval peasants would have seized if called to battle, axes and hammers—and spades.

Spades with sharp edges and long, grip-smoothed handles. I selected one, and felt the joy I had never appreciated in my years, the simple balance of a shovel.

I withdrew the red carnations gently, and laid them on a nearby grave. I took a moment to wonder at what I was about to do.

The first shovelful of sod was tough, the roots wire, the dirt gritty. I flung soil off the blade, the steel ringing musically at the instant the mulch and pebbles sailed into the dark. Again, my sense of purpose faltered.

And I thought as a person would, in the middle of the night, picking with futility at the hard earth. And worse—I felt the normal horror of such an act, the disturbance of bodies which had been committed to the ground.

But even as these thoughts troubled me, I continued to scoop the moist soil, digging deeper. The upper level of the ground was vegetative, roots and plant stuff, but there was no true topsoil. The sod had been rolled out like a living carpet, and beneath that layer the earth was an assortment of gravel and yellow clay.

As I dug I smelled the earth and breathed it, mud on my shoes. This work was not labor at all, any more than the stroke of a swimmer is labor. This soil was the source of my strength.

No other doubt touched me. There was no sense of an hour passing, or two, or much of the night. All I knew was that there had been a grassy patch of land, a prison. And now there was a vault, the earth thrown into a peak at the base of a tree.

Sometimes I thought I heard a sound, a voice, a footstep and I would stop for a moment, and then start in again with renewed strength. At last the shovel rang. There was a concrete box, the blade scraping it, the last dirt dug away to expose the slab.

Kneeling, I broke a hole with my fist. I tore off chunks, letting the fragments sail high, out of the grave. When I had ripped away a large portion of the concrete, I gazed down at the glossy surface of the casket.

Gently, I tapped at the wood. There was the lightest film of mildew on the polished surface, and my touch left bold fingerprints. The casket reminded me of nothing so much as the hard finish of a grand piano. But a piano reverberates when it is struck—it echoes. This box was silent. I smoothed away the layer of mildew and the dark surface reflected the dim starlight.

The casket splintered with one last blow. The shattered wood caved inward, and I cracked open as much of the lid as I could easily reach. Don’t think, I warned myself. Don’t ask yourself what you’re doing.

Rebecca.

I had to close my eyes and turn away.

The gray thing within was littered with splinters, and I told myself again not to think. Don’t think, and don’t feel.

Act. Quickly.

I broke the skin of my wrist with my sharp teeth. I found a vein, and plucked it. I bit again, and at last the blood was hot on my tongue.

When there was a stream of blood I lowered my arm to the parched thing beneath me, parting the cold lips, letting the life into her.

There was no sound but the trickle of fluid, a pretty sound, like ground water in the heartrock of a hill.

But it was nothing more. It was only a musical splashing that would make nothing happen.

I knew now, as I had not during my life, why animals awe us. They have no hope. No faith sustains them. They have power, and fear, but no past, and no future. The moment is their planet, their sky. But I was still human enough to desire, and seek. This new grief was hard.

Without reasoning, without understanding, I had believed I knew my own powers. The earthen body of Rebecca received my gift without sound, without movement, the blood emptying into her.

I heard them long before they reached me. The police radios crackled and jabbered. Doors slammed. Footsteps whispered across the grass, coming my way. A flashlight jittered over the upper edge of the grave.

I nearly gathered the cold remnant into my arms, and fled with that bundle to console me. But I saw how wrong I had been. I saw how I had violated her rest. I left her there.

I swung myself out of the hole. Figures crouched, beams of light catching me. There were three flashlights, four. The men circled, keeping well away from me. The flashlights trembled. Not one of them wanted to step any closer.

Something about me must have stirred compassion as well as fear. No weapon was drawn. There was a fragmentary truce, a radio lifted, a command given to other police in the distance. Stay away, I wanted to tell them. Don’t come near me. Not for my sake. For their own.

“Richard?” It was Joe Timm’s voice. He sounded shaken, his voice breathy. “We want to help you,” he called, without any conviction.

When I fled now it was without hope. There would be no desire in me for anything but oblivion. Each breath was purposeless, each heartbeat the echo of a real heart, a real life.

I was far from the grave, running through the broad, raspy leaves uphill, land that had not been needed yet for the dead. I hurried higher up the slope. The eucalyptus trees stood tall here, and they had dropped such a multitude of branches and seeds that no grass could grow, only a few outcroppings of leathery weeds.

When the voice reached me I was lost to any thought, escaping through the trees, about to take wing. I half-fell, and turned, looking back, hating myself.

No, I told myself. I wouldn’t let this happen to me. I wouldn’t let my desires lie to me like this.

Richard!

It was not a voice. It was not a sound at all. It was my imagination, or what passed for it in a creature like myself. I supported myself against a tree, the blood flowing slowly down my hand.

I turned to flee again when my imagination stopped me once more. There was a cry. It came from below, somewhere beyond the trees. It came from, among the police, among the graves.

I knew that I was torturing myself. And yet I allowed myself to utter her name, a whisper. Three syllables.

Again the voice touched me: “Richard!”

I took a step down the hill, my foot half-slipping on the bell-like seeds of the eucalyptus.

“Richard, help me!”

It was Rebecca.