As if in response, a faint and easy dream-howl escaped Bill’s throat, someone calling another in the big woods, across empty fields and deep silent stands of trees. Oooooooo, it went, high and soft. Oooooooo.
Wilhelmina’s heart thickened with emotion. Her voice was deep and rich with it.
Hoooooo, she called softly to Bill’s sleeping ears.
Ooooooo, Bill called again, a little stronger, and she responded, Hoooooo, their pure wordless language like echoes in the morning air.
THE WAKE
THE GRIZZLED BITCH LAY ON HER SIDE IN THE FADING sunlight in Sam’s front yard, her black wrinkled teats lumped beside her like stillborn pups. It had been a sunny late-October day but now cool evening crept along the edge of the sky and Sam could see the dog’s sides shiver as she labored to breathe. Her dark coat was patchy with mange and her eyes looked bad. When Sam walked closer they went to slits and a low growl came from her throat. He could smell her from ten feet away: a ripe, sweet rotten smell. Sam went back inside and called the pound.
When the pound truck cruised slowly by the house at dusk the dog had disappeared. Sam, fresh from the shower and drinking a can of Miller Lite, walked out to the street and told the two men in the truck what the dog looked like. The driver adjusted his cap, spat out the window past Sam, and said likely she went off into the woods to die. He looked at the can of Lite, nodded at Sam, and pulled away. At the spot where the dog had lain in the yard, Sam saw maggots curling and uncurling on the grass.
That night he was awakened by a long yowling moan beneath the floorboards. A latent, heavy loneliness welled in his chest. He went out to the porch. A good breeze had stirred up, and he thought for just a second he could smell the dog. Except for the wind rattling the dry leaves it was quiet.
The next morning, Saturday, Sam went out back with the shovel. There was a big hole in the crawlspace wall near the back door where cats went beneath the house sometimes to have their litters. It somehow made sense a dog would go there to die. Sam started digging.
He heard a truck pull up in front and stuck the shovel into the hard clay of the shallow hole. A UPS man stood in the street behind his van, writing on a clipboard pad, his paper flipping in the wind.
“Sam Beamon?”
Sam nodded. “Something for me?”
“Yes, sir,” said the man, a small black fellow whose crewcut head sloped upward toward the crown like a tilted egg. His name tag said “Henry.”
“Sign right here on the line, please.”
“What is it?”
“Doesn’t say.”
“You sure it’s for me?”
“If you’re Sam Beamon.”
“Well,” Sam said. “What the hell.”
Sam signed. Henry hopped up into the truck and grabbed a wooden crate that came up to his belt.
“It’s heavy,” he said, sliding the crate toward the lift. He hopped down, flipped a chrome toggle switch; there was a high grinding whine and the lift descended with the crate to the street. Sam stepped onto the platform and knocked on the wood.
“I guess I could use this box to bury the dog in, if I wanted to.” He looked at Henry. “Seems kind of undignified, to be buried without a box, doesn’t it? Uncivilized.”
“I don’t know,” said the man. “For a dog.”
“It’s not really my dog,” Sam said. “But she died here, I think. Under the house.”
Henry shrugged and looked at the box, then gazed off at the trees. The breeze gently rattled the leaves.
He heaved at the dolly. Sam directed him up the porch, through the living room, and into a comer of the dining room, which sat between the living room and the kitchen. The house was an old frame home with creaky floors, and the three rooms ran straight back shotgun-fashion, bedrooms off to the right. The kitchen had a door to the backyard.
Sam watched Henry unstrap the dolly and set the crate in the dining room. He wondered if he should have Henry move it to the garage, instead. No way to know, until he knew what it was.
“Where’d this come from?” he said.
Henry checked the ticket.
“New Orleans.”
“New Orleans?” Sam said. He looked at the crate again.
Henry said, “You going to open it now?”
Sam looked at him absently.
“Hmm? Oh. I don’t know.”
They both looked at the box for a moment.
“Well,” Henry said. “Got to go.” He checked his clipboard again, then wrapped the loose straps around the dolly’s frame. He pulled it behind him to the front door and looked back.
“It’s an unusual box, you know,” he said.
Sam didn’t answer, not comprehending.
“Bigger, I mean,” Henry said. “Made of wood like that, heavy.”
They both looked again at the box.
“Well,” Henry said. “Have a nice day.” Then he went out, leaving the front door open. Sam heard the dolly rattle down the steps, heard the van door slide shut, then walked out onto the porch and watched him drive away. He went back in and stood beside the crate. He thought he could smell the dog underneath the house, faintly, but then again wasn’t sure, thought it could have been his imagination. If he could smell it up here already, it would be bad getting her out of the crawl space. He should be finishing the grave. He had almost decided to do this when the box spoke up.
“Sam?”
He felt his skin go cool.
“Who’s there?” he said.
There was laughter from the box.
“Sam,” the voice said. “It’s me, Marcia.”
“Marcia?”
A small plug in the box’s side began to wiggle its way out and then dropped to the floor, rolling a few inches to the wall. Sam knelt down warily and brought his eye up to the hole. A brown eye stared back at him. He smelled gardenias. Her perfume. He sat back onto the floor. The sight of her eye, so close, the smell of gardenias. He felt aroused, then ridiculous. Sitting in his dining room with a woman inside a packing crate.
“I don’t know what to say.” He stood up. “I guess I could get you out of there.”
“I can let myself out, Sam,” Marcia said. “There’s a latch. But if you don’t mind, I’d sort of like to stay in here a minute, first. I want to talk first.
“I mean,” she said after a moment, “before I get out and we see each other again, I want to talk about things.”
“Oh, God,” Sam mumbled.
“Aside from the fact that you never write letters, why didn’t you answer any of mine?”
“Why?” Sam said. “You took off. You left. You went to New Orleans.”
“That’s not the issue,” Marcia said.
“It’s not the issue?”
“No, it’s not,” she said. “I tried to work it out with you before I left but you were intractable.”
“Interesting word choice,” Sam said.
“You were the one who wouldn’t give,” Marcia said. “You wouldn’t change your ways the least little bit. I’m sorry, but intractable is the right word.”
“I think you’d better look that word up again,” Sam said.
There was a pause.
“I hate it when you do that, Sam.”
“I hate it when you’re so goddamn self-righteous.”
“Me?” She paused again, and in a moment he heard her breathing slowly and heavily. “Okay, Sam,” she said, “I had to go away for a while, and you know it. You knew it. And we were going to correspond.”
Sam tried to think of how to say he couldn’t write letters because he couldn’t bear to read what he wrote in them, and he hadn’t the courage to not read them after writing them, but he didn’t say anything because he knew how Marcia would respond.
“Sam, I thought maybe that a little while alone would help you to admit some things about our relationship. About yourself. And I thought maybe a little distance, and putting it into letters, would make us more candid. You know.”