It was a long walk back home.
The pattering sound muffled, then stopped-there was only the whump of dirt on more dirt. He scraped the last bit into the hole with the blade of his shovel (there's never enough, he thought, recalling something his undertaker uncle had said to him at least a thousand years ago, never enough to fill the hole up again) arid then turned to Jud.
CHAPTER 10
"Your cairn," Jud said.
"Look, Jud, I'm pretty tired and-"
"It's Ellie's cat," Jud said, and his voice, although soft, was implacable.
"She'd want you to do it right."
Louis sighed. "I suppose she would," he said.
It took another ten minutes to pile up the rocks Jud handed him, one by one.
When it was done, there was a low, conical pile of stones on Church's grave, and Louis did indeed feel a small, tired pleasure. It looked right, somehow, rising with the others in the starlight. He supposed Ellie would never see it-the thought of taking her through that patch of swamp where there was quicksand would make Rachel's hair turn white-but he had seen it, and it was good.
"Most of these have fallen over," he said to Jud, standing and brushing at the knees of his pants. He was seeing more clearly now, and in several places he could clearly make out scattered strews of loose stones. But Jud had seen to it that he built his own cairn only from stones taken from the grave he himself had dug.
"Ayuh," Jud said. "Told you: the place is old."
"Are we done now?"
"Ayuh." He clapped Louis on the shoulder. "You did good, Louis. I knew you would. Let's go home."
"Jud-" he began again, but Jud only grabbed the pick and walked off toward the steps. Louis got the shovel, had to trot to catch up, and then saved his breath for walking. He looked back once, but the cairn marking the grave of his daughter's cat Winston Churchill had melted into the shadows, and he could not pick it out.
We just ran the film backward, Louis thought tiredly as they emerged from the woods and into the field overlooking his own house some time later. He did not know how much later; he had taken off his watch when he had lain down to doze that afternoon, and it would still be there on the windowsill by his bed. He only knew that he was beat, used up, done in. He could not remember feeling so kicked-dog weary since his first day on Chicago's rubbish-disposal crew one high-school summer sixteen or seventeen years ago.
They came back the same way they had gone, but he could remember very little about the trip. He stumbled on the deadfall, he remembered that-lurching forward and thinking absurdly of Peter Pan-oh Jesus, I lost my happy thoughts and down I come-and then Jud's hand had been there, firm and hard, and a few moments later they had been trudging past the final resting places of Smucky the Cat and Trixie and Marta Our Pet Rabit and onto the path he had once walked not only with Jud but with his whole family.
It seemed that in some weary way he had pondered the dream of Victor Pascow, the one which had resulted in his somnambulistic episode, but any connection between that night walk and this had eluded him. It had also occurred to him that the whole adventure had been dangerous-not in any melodramatic Wilkie Collins sense but in a very real one. That he had outrageously blistered his hands while in a state that was nearly somnambulistic was really the least of it. He could have killed himself on the deadfall. Both of them could have. It was hard to square such behavior with sobriety. In his current exhaustion, he was willing to ascribe it to confusion and emotional upset over the death of a pet the whole family had loved.
And after a time, there they were, home again.
They walked toward it together, not speaking, and stopped again in Louis's driveway. The wind moaned and whined. Wordlessly, Louis handed Jud his pick.
"I'd best get across," Jud said at last. "Louella Bisson or Ruthie Parks will be bringin Norma home and she'll wonder where the hell I am."
"Do you have the time?" Louis asked. He was surprised that Norma wasn't home yet; in his muscles it seemed to him that midnight must have struck.
"Oh, ayuh," Jud said. "I keep the time as long as I'm dressed and then I let her go."
He fished a watch out of his pants pocket and flicked the scrolled cover back from its face.
"It's gone eight-thirty," he said and snapped the cover closed again.
"Eight-thirty?" Louis repeated stupidly. "That's all?"
"How late did you think it was?" Jud asked.
"Later than that," Louis said.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Louis," Jud said and began to move away.
He turned toward Louis, mildly questioning.
"Jud, what did we do tonight?"
"Why, we buried your daughter's cat."