And so, it seemed to Henry, it was different now. Out of his hands. He looked around as he passed through the waiting room, but there was nobody there. Sick people, some plants, a doctor leaning over a chair and speaking in a whisper, George Loomis looking up, startled, from a magazine; that was all. He walked out to his square, black Ford and started it up. Doc Cathey came through the hospital door and started toward him, shouting. But Henry pulled out into the street as if he hadn’t seen him. He watched the sidewalk, and then he was outside town and he still hadn’t seen the slightest sign. At the Stop-Off there were trucks parked, four of them, long, dark, mounded in snow, and he opened up and invited the truckers in and perked coffee. The dog lay by the door and watched every move he made, wondering what he’d done with Callie. He told them about James, the baby—he used the word now—and gave out White Owl cigars, laughing, waving his hands, but all the time he spoke there was another excitement too, and he kept one eye on the door and the wide window that looked out over the highway toward the trees. There was nobody.
There was still nobody when dusk came. The lights went on in Frank Wells’ barns, not in the house; they were still away. More customers came, and they kept him busy at the grill. The next thing he knew it was dark, and still no sign. At midnight he cleaned the grill and the chili pans and dishes and locked up and turned out the lights.
He went into the living room—Prince coming sorrowfully at his heels—and sat down facing the window in the dark. The snow lay blue-white under the moon, and the walls of the room around him were blue-white silver glints, the man and woman, the bridge, the tree, the children. The woods were quiet. Up on Crow Mountain, in the fourteen-room brick house where George Loomis rattled around alone like a ghost, there were no lights on; nothing moved. There would be no light on down at Freund’s place either, beyond the woods; the family would be asleep; there were chores to do in the morning. Willard Freund would be awake though, sitting smiling to himself, or would be flitting around somewhere outside.
Voices mumbled around him, unintelligible, and he leaned forward in his chair. He saw without surprise that there were birds flying above the woods, thousands of them, gliding silently like owls, but talking, mumbling words like human beings. They flew through steam from the trees, or fog, or smoke maybe. Sometimes he could see only the smoke and the birds, as though the woods had disappeared or slipped from his mind, and then he could see the woods again, gray, moving closer. A sound of wind or fire blurred the voices and stirred the smoke into slow torsion, obliterating the birds, the bridge and the willow tree, the pines. When he saw the man coming across the yard, Henry jumped up.
The snow lay blue-white, crisp, and the trees were far away again, distinct in the sharp night air. The dog was watching him, ears raised.
And at last it all came clear to him. There never would be anybody there. Willard Freund wouldn’t show himself again as long as he lived. Callie wouldn’t see him either, or if she did it wouldn’t matter, because it was too late now. It was as if it was him, Willard Freund, that was killed by it. You had to be there, and Willard Freund hadn’t been, and now there was no place left for him, no love, no hate—not in his father’s house, even. Willard would see. No place but the woods—bare trees and snow and the low-moving shadows of dogs gone wild and birds and, maybe, if stories were true, bobcats.
He moved toward the window a little, not knowing he was doing it, and stood bent forward, looking out, not aware anymore of the room behind him. There was a game, a child’s game, where you stood the dominoes in a row and touched the end one and made them fall one after another, clattering. If one of the dominoes wasn’t in line it would still be standing there after the others had fallen down, would still be standing there erect, like a narrow, old-fashioned tombstone, all by itself on a windy hill, till doomsday.
Henry stood at the window looking out for a long time; then, breathing shallowly to cut down the pain, he turned and moved into the bedroom.