Louis put down the can of beer and suddenly grasped the pocket of his robe as if he had forgotten something-although he had been aware of that small packet of weight all evening long.
"Here," he said. "For you. You can open it now. It's after midnight. Merry Christmas, babe."
She turned the little box, wrapped up in silver paper and tied with wide satiny-blue ribbon, in her hands. "Louis, what is it?"
He shrugged. "Soap. Shampoo sample. I forget, exactly."
She opened it on the stairs, saw the Tiffany box, and squealed. She pulled out the cotton batting and then just stood there, her mouth slightly agape.
"Well?" he asked anxiously. He had never bought her a real piece of jewelry before, and he was nervous. "Do you like it?"
She took it out, draped the fine gold chain over her tented fingers, and held the tiny sapphire up to the hail light. It twirled lazily, seeming to shoot off cool blue rays.
"Oh Louis, it's so damn beautiful-" He saw she was crying a little and felt both touched and alarmed.
"Hey, babe, don't do that," he said. "Put it on."
"Louis, we can't afford-you can't afford-"
"Shhh," he said. "I socked some money away off and on since last Christmas...
and it wasn't as much as you might think."
"How much was it?"
"I'll never tell you that, Rachel," he said solemnly. "An army of Chinese torturers couldn't get it out of me. Two thousand dollars."
"Two thousand-i" She hugged him so suddenly and so tightly that he almost fell down the stairs. "Louis, you're crazy!"
"Put it on," he said again.
She did. He helped her with the clasp, and then she turned around to look at him. "I want to go up and look at it," she said. "I think I want to preen."
"Preen away," he said. "I'll put out the cat and get the lights."
"When we make it," she said, looking directly into his eyes, "I want to take everything off except this."
"Preen in a hurry, then," Louis said, and she laughed.
He grabbed Church and draped it over his arm-he didn't bother much with the broom these days. He supposed that, in spite of everything, he had almost gotten used to the cat again. He went toward the entryway door, turning off lights as he went. When he opened the door communicating between the kitchen and garage, an eddy of cold air swirled around his ankles.
"Have a merry Christmas, Ch-"
He broke off. Lying on the welcome mat was a dead crow. Its head was mangled.
One wing had been ripped off and lay behind the body like a charred piece of paper. Church immediately squirmed out of Louis's arms and began to nuzzle the frozen corpse eagerly. As Louis watched, the cat's head darted forward, its ears laid back, and before he could turn his head, Church had ripped out one of the crow's milky, glazed eyes.
Church strikes again, Louis thought a little sickly, and turned his head-not, however, before he had seen the bloody, gaping socket where the crow's eye had been. Shouldn't bother me, shouldn't, I've seen worse, oh yeah, Pascow, for instance, Pascow was worse, a lot worse-But it did bother him. His stomach turned over. The warm build of sexual excitement had suddenly deflated. Christ, that bird's damn near as big as he is. Must have caught it with its guard down. Way, way down.
This would have to be cleaned up. Nobody needed this sort of present on Christmas morning. And it was his responsibility, wasn't it? Sure was. His and nobody else's. He had recognized that much in a subconscious way even on the evening of his family's return, when he had purposely spilled the tires over the tattered body of the mouse Church had killed.
The soil of a man's heart is stonier, Louis.
This thought was so clear, somehow so three-dimensional and auditory, that Louis jerked a little, as if Jud had materialized at his shoulder and spoken aloud.
A man grows what he can... and tends it.
Church was still hunched greedily over the dead bird. He was working at the other wing now. There was a tenebrous rustling sound as Church pulled it back and forth, back and forth. Never get it off the ground, Orville. That's right, Wilbur, f**king bird's just as dead as dogshit, might as well feed it to the cat, might as well-Louis suddenly kicked Church, kicked him hard. The cat's hindquarters rose and came down splayfooted. It walked away, sparing him another of its ugly yellow-green glances. "Eat me," Louis hissed at it, catlike himself.
"Louis?" Rachel's voice came faintly from their bedroom. "Coming to bed?"
"Be right there," he called back. I've just got this little mess to clean up, Rachel, okay? Because it's my mess. He fumbled for the switch that controlled the garage light. He went quickly back to the cupboard under the kitchen sink and got a green Hefty Bag. He took the bag back into the garage and took the shovel down from its nail on the garage wall. He scraped up the crow and dropped it into the bag. Then he shoveled up the severed wing and slipped that in. He tied a knot in the top of the bag and dropped it into the bin on the far side of the Civic. By the time he had finished, his ankles were growing numb.