They slept on the couch in shifts, ate the Spam, drank the cans of milk. It was hot and close in the garage, stale with the odors of potted meat, concrete, and diesel. They would have to do something about Gil soon. In another day he would begin to spoil.
When the sun was down, Harper slipped out the back door for fresh air. It was better under the stars. The night had a nearly liquid quality, was like sliding into a warm swimming pool, a pool filled with buoyant darkness instead of water. When Harper wasn’t paying attention, it had turned full lush spring.
A knot popped in the trash can. Harper turned to look and saw Allie standing over the flames, looking down into the coals with wide, dazed, frightened eyes. She hugged herself tightly, hands squeezing her elbows.
“You okay?” Harper asked.
Allie turned and looked at her blankly.
“No,” she said, and went inside.
Harper peeked into the flames herself, but saw only coals.
She sat on the back stoop. She counted how many days till she was due, then counted again to be sure. She made it eighteen if she delivered on time. Sometimes women were late with the first baby.
She listened to Aftermath and rested her hands on the hilarious globe of her pregnant belly. But she had to turn the Stones off when it got to “Under My Thumb.” She had all her life longed for a world that operated like an early-sixties Disney musical, with spontaneous song-and-dance routines to celebrate important events like sharing a first kiss or getting the kitchen spick-and-span. If she couldn’t have Mary Poppins, she would settle for A Hard Day’s Night. But it turned out life was more like the kind of song the Stones wrote: you didn’t get any satisfaction, you took one hit to the body after another, if you were a woman you were a bitch who belonged under someone’s thumb, and if you wanted mother’s little helper from your dear doctor you better have the silver, take it or leave it, and don’t come crying for sympathy, that was just for the devil.
She twiddled through the channels. A gospel group clapped their hands for Jesus. The Spring Training boy was back: the Red Sox were having an exhibition game against the Shakespeare All-Stars. Romeo was up to bat. He struck out, broke his bat over his knee, swallowed poison, and died on home plate. Juliet ran over from the on-deck circle, wept for a few moments, then stabbed herself through the heart with the shaft of his Louisville Slugger. The pitcher, Tom Gordon, waited with his hand on his hip while Rosencrantz and Guildenstern dragged the bodies off the field.
Farther down the FM dial, a woman reported that Senior Field Marshal Ian Judaskiller had signed an execution order for the Fireman, who had murdered two New Hampshire Soldiers for Christ in the firefight at Camp Wyndham three days before. In other news, twelve thousand godless Japs had killed themselves in the largest mass suicide ever recorded, in Okinawa. In Iowa, a herd of cows had been photographed from the sky in the formation of a cross. The last days had come and soon the last seal would be opened and the final trumpet would sound.
Something feather-light brushed her knuckles. Harper looked down and found a bushy cat, dark with golden stripes, lifting its chin to sniff at the smell of Spam under her fingernails. Harper studied him for an instant—feeling, somehow, that she had seen this cat before—then reached out to stroke his head. He shrank from her touch, launched himself into a damp green tunnel in the high grass, and was gone.
Harper was still staring after him when John Rookwood stepped out onto the stoop, dressed for duty in his helmet and coat.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked.
He looked down at himself, as if to remind himself of what he was wearing. “Well. I can’t go to a funeral dressed like this. And you can’t go to one dressed like that.” Nodding at her begrimed Boston Red Sox hoodie and sweatpants. The sweatpants had once been blue, but were now mostly black with soot, and smeared with bloody fingerprints. “So I suppose I’m going shopping.”
“Are we burying Gil?”
“I think we’re burying the whole camp,” he said. “In a manner of speaking. Renée needs that.”
“We all need it.”
He dipped his head in a single nod and began to amble away.
“They’re looking for you,” she told him. “I heard it on the radio.”
“They better be careful,” he said, without looking back at her. “They might find me.”
7
He was back two hours after sunup, pushing a rusted shopping cart through the strangling grass. He bumped it over the back step and into the garage.
The cart was overflowing with suit jackets and ties, dresses and blouses, boots and high-heeled shoes, scarves and hats. Beneath the heap of laundry was enough food to get them by for another week: some canned fruit, a box of instant oatmeal, and a six-pack of soda, an off-brand called Nozz-A-La that Harper hadn’t seen since she was a kid. Dropped in among the groceries was an audiocassette. Harper didn’t have a chance to look it over. The Fireman plucked the tape up and put it in his coat pocket.
“Memorial this evening. Dress appropriately,” he said.
“I get the top hat,” Allie said, and delicately set a black stovepipe on her head. “Top hats are metal.”
Nick found a pair of opera gloves and pulled them on. They were so long they came to his shoulders.
It was the first time Harper had seen him smile in weeks.
8
The mourners crossed the wild grass of the cemetery beneath a star-flooded sky. The Fireman led them, one hand burning blue. Nick walked in the middle, trailing green fire from his fingers. Harper brought up the rear, her own hand a candelabra of gold flame.
The Fireman had converted the shopping cart to a makeshift bier. He had placed two planks across the length of it and secured them with bungee cords. The dead man had been set on top in the tarp that served as his shroud. Renée pushed it along and Allie followed, carrying the tape deck, the music already playing, turned low.
Allie looked good, in her top hat and a black duster that swooshed about her ankles. Nick had ultimately passed on the opera gloves, but he wore a canary yellow tuxedo jacket with tails and his mother’s locket. Somewhere the Fireman had come up with an enormous black Patriots hoodie for Harper, an XXXXL. For an enormously pregnant woman, it was the best that could be managed for proper mourning weeds. Renée crossed the graveyard in a midnight blue velvet dress, slit high enough to show the dimples in her knees. She had very sleek, very nice legs. Harper hoped Gilbert had properly appreciated them.
Who knew where the Fireman had got what he was wearing: a kilt that showed his bony, hairy legs, a black beret, and a short black suit jacket. Harper didn’t believe he was making fun of the occasion. She had an idea this represented his most heartfelt effort to look respectable.
The Fireman pushed open the door of O’Brian’s tomb with his burning hand. The flame lit a tidy marble cube, the shad ows hovering, seeming to sway to the melody. He had found a copy of Dire Straits’ Making Movies, and they were listening to “Romeo and Juliet.” It sounded good, mixed with cricket-song.