“About myself,” Sam said, unable to stop himself. “Of course.”
“Oh, boy,” Marcia said. “This was a mistake. You really know how to fuck up a reunion, Sam.”
“Look,” Sam said, and he stopped, not even sure of what he wanted to say. Then he laughed.
“What?” she said.
“You know,” he said, “I’m wondering. Why did you ship yourself here in a box?”
“Why not?” she said. He could hear the familiar irony in her voice, the ironic resignation. “I thought, a little creative punch, you know. Something weird. I thought it might break things down a little.”
“I’m sorry,” Sam said, and meant it. They sat a moment without talking.
“Look,” he said then. “I’m going to go out back for a while.”
“What are you doing?”
“Well, this dog died underneath the house last night, I think.”
“Oh, no,” Marcia said. “What dog?”
“I don’t know, a strange dog,” Sam said. “Anyway, I’m going to bury it out back. The pound came by, but they left, and I don’t want to give them the poor thing anyway, because I hear they just dump them in a ditch outside of town somewhere. Anyway, I’ve got to dig the hole and get her out to it. And then I’ve got to start dinner. Some people are coming over tonight. And so I guess if you want to leave, this would be a good time. But, look, if you want to stay, that would be fine.” He stopped for a moment, then said, “I’m sorry about this. I mean, this argument.”
He started to leave the room.
“Who’s coming over?”
“Dick and Merle.”
“Ah, God,” Marcia said. “Dick and Merle? You’ve been hanging out with Dick and Merle?”
“No, I haven’t been ‘hanging out’ with them,” Sam said. “I haven’t been hanging out with anybody. I just felt like having some company.”
“Ah, Christ, Sam,” Marcia said. “Dick and Merle. Jesus.”
Sam stared at the box and held his tongue.
“I’m going out back,” he said, and left the room.
“Sam,” he heard her calling from the box. “You’ve got to open your heart up a little bit, Sam.”
He walked out through the kitchen and into the backyard, where he stood and let his eyes adjust to the bright sunlight. Then he walked over to the shallow hole and started digging again, widening and lengthening it. He worked slowly, his mind wandering all over the place. The dirt piled up and the sun sank into the oak tree leaves. He tried to let the work clear his head. The leaves rustled in the breeze, and they moved in dark relief against the sun. He worked through the afternoon, shaping the sides of the grave as carefully as an archaeologist. Finally, he stepped up out of the hole, knocked the dirt off his boots with the spade. At his job, he covered the city beat — council meetings and small-town political intrigue, constant complex and trivial bullshit. What gave him pleasure was a simple job, such as digging a hole. A worthwhile job, such as providing a grave for a homeless stray dog. He went over to look in the hole in the wall where the dog had to have gone in.
Kneeling there with his head and his shoulders underneath the house, he could smell the dog’s stench, and he listened for the sound of someone moving around on the old creaky floorboards above. But in the dank emptiness there was only silence and the stench of the carcass whose vague shape he thought he could see back near a brick piling, lying still. He hadn’t the heart to go in after it just then, though. He decided it could wait until the morning. He’d bury the dog on a Sunday.
THAT EVENING SAM ANSWERED THE DOOR AND LET IN HIS dinner guests, Dick and Merle Tingle. Merle shot by him, ducking under his arm.
“Watch out, watch out. Open the bathroom door.” She rounded the comer with her hands on an imaginary steering wheel. “What’s that?” she called as she passed the box in the dining room. Then they heard the bathroom door slam.
Dick stood in the door and leaned down to Sam, put his hand on Sam’s shoulder and his face in Sam’s face.
“Hello, pal.”
Sam shifted his weight to support Dick. Dick dropped his hand and swung past Sam into the living room. He pulled a can of Pabst from his jacket pocket, popped the top, and drained it, his Adam’s apple jumping up and down. Then he swung to his left and lofted the empty can into the wicker trash basket in the corner.
“Two,” he said with a soft belch. He smiled at Sam. Sam knew Dick and Merle from the office, but they seemed okay. Dick was a mediocre sportswriter who covered the local high school games, and Merle was typical of a certain type of copy editor who seemed to be a lobotomized automaton one minute, an aggressive, opinionated jerk the next. But after Marcia had left and word got around the office, they’d had him over to their place a couple of times and he’d accepted them without much discrimination. It was not difficult for him to be around them. He had come to like Dick’s quiet way of settling all his bones deep into their sockets, turning his ankles in, relaxing his spine, and seeming to pull his neck in like a turtle whenever he spoke to someone any shorter than six foot seven. It was perhaps a habit that came from being married to Merle, who was tiny and loud, but at any rate Dick stayed scrunched up most of the time, until he got very drunk, when he’d straighten up like a cobra, swaying and boast.
“Look, Dick.” Merle called Dick into the dining room, where she stood looking at the box. Sam followed. He stood just inside the living room and watched them. When he’d come back in from the backyard earlier he’d looked in on the box and called Marcia’s name, and heard nothing. Instead of checking further, afraid, really, to look into the box, he’d showered and gotten busy cooking supper, and when he’d walked past the box to open the door to let in Dick and Merle, he was almost capable of ignoring it. Such was not the case with Merle.
“Let’s move this crate in by the fireplace and eat there,” she said.
“Okay,” Dick said. He and Merle got behind the box and pushed it across the hardwood floor into the living room. Merle straightened up and blew the bangs out of her eyes, puffing. Dick stepped over and patted her on top of the head.
“Dick can build a fire, too,” she said. “Sam, don’t you think this is better than the dining room?”
Sam nodded.
“How do you like my coat?” Merle said. It was a waist-length jacket of some kind of fur, thick and full of brown, white, and silver streaks. She twirled, pulled the coat tight, and made a funny face. “Don’t I look like a rabbit?” They all laughed.
“Wait, wait, okay,” Merle said, waving impatiently, “look, look,” and she hunched up, drew in her eyebrows, and stuck out her teeth. “Grr. Timber wolf!” Dick and Merle burst out laughing, holding on to each other. They bumped into the box. “Whoops!” They backpedaled and grabbed the mantel. The box rocked and settled back upright.
“Hey,” said Merle, “what’s in that thing? It’s heavy. Whew! Did you see us pushing that thing?
“Well,” Sam said. “If it’s heavy, it’s probably Marcia.”
Dick and Merle looked at the box, then at Sam.
“Marcia?” Merle said, looking back at the box. “In this crate?”
“Yes,” Sam said.
“Oh, we all wondered where you’d put her,” Merle said.
“Ha, ha,” Dick laughed, nodding, his eyes closed.
“I’m serious,” Sam said. “She shipped herself back here from New Orleans in this box.” He leaned down and looked into the plug hole. In the poorly lighted room he couldn’t see inside, but he could still smell her perfume, faint and trailing from the plug hole like a memory.