“Marcia,” he said. “Are you still in there?”
“Are you serious?” Merle said. She leaned down to the hole.
“Marcia?”
“Hello, Merle,” Marcia said.
Sam felt his blood race for a moment in relief.
“Ahh!” Merle cried, straightening up. She looked at Sam.
“What’s she doing?”
“I guess she’s not ready to come out,” Sam said. He shrugged. “We had an argument.”
“Don’t mind me,” Marcia said, with the irony so familiar to Sam. “Go ahead and eat your dinner. I’ll just stay in here awhile. I’m not hungry.”
“Strange,” Dick said, fluttering a hand in front of his face.
“Huh,” Merle said. “Well,” she said after a moment, “let’s eat.”
Sam had baked a hen and sweet potatoes, steamed buttered carrots, baked fresh onion, and made a spinach casserole. He carried it all out on a large wicker tray and set it on top of the box. There was barely enough room for the food, so they held their plates in their laps. Dick had a small fire going in the grate, and he and Merle ate rapidly. Sam ate slowly, watching them and listening. There was no sound from the box. He felt of the wood on the fire side to make sure it wasn’t getting too hot. No one said anything throughout the meal. They avoided one another’s glances.
He went out to the kitchen for another bottle of wine, and when he came back Merle was staring at the box and Dick looked vexed.
“So,” Merle said. “Is she staying in there because we’re here for dinner?”
“Stay out of it,” Dick said. He stared at a blank spot on the wall.
Sam knocked lightly on the box.
“He’s communicating with the woman in the box,” Merle said.
“Marcia,” Sam said softly. “You doing all right?” He leaned his head down to the box. Nothing stirred. Mingling with the paling scent of her perfume he thought he detected another odor. A cool breeze wafted in through the window, and he looked up at Dick and Merle. Merle pulled her jacket tighter around her shoulders and seemed to be making her rabbit face again. Dick’s fire was dying.
“What’s that smell?” Merle said.
Dick sniffed and furrowed his brow.
“I’ve been smelling that, too.”
“What?” Sam said.
“Something rotten,” Dick said.
“It’s a dog, I think,” Sam said. “It crawled up under the house and died. Sorry. I meant to get it out today, but I ran out of time.”
“A dead dog?” Merle said. “Under the house?” She looked down at the remains of their meal. Sam looked, too. The picked rib cage of the chicken, the cold claylike sweet potato chunks, the single shiny orange carrot, the bit of spinach in the corner of the dish like something a cat coughed up.
“Gross,” Merle said.
Dick straightened up.
“You want me to get rid of that dog for you?”
“No,” Sam said. “Just sit there. I’ll be back in a second.”
He got a scented candle from the kitchen. When he got back to the living room, Merle and Dick were staring at the box.
“I left Dick one time, he nearly died,” Merle said. “Laid around and wouldn’t go to work or eat.”
“Oh, Sam wouldn’t do that,” Marcia’s voice came from the box. “Sam would just go on about his life. He would try to pretend nothing had even happened. And pretty soon that’s the way it would be. His whole life would seem like a blank because he never let himself get involved in anything.”
“Maybe you’re being too hard on him,” Dick said.
“How would you know?” Marcia said.
“Why didn’t you just take a bus?” Merle said. She sat up and crossed her arms and legs.
Dick was looking away at the wall. Sam looked down at the pointed toe of the pump that on Merle’s skinny, bouncing leg looked like the beak of a hatchling. Dick wore large scuffed wing tips and thin blue socks that gathered around his pale ankles. Sam had on the cowboy boots he’d bought himself when Marcia took off. They looked as cheap as they actually were.
Dick straightened himself up and sniffed. He cleared his throat.
“Seems like I can still smell that dog.”
“Why don’t you go get rid of the dog, then,” Merle said. “A while ago you said, ‘I’ll get rid of the goddamn dog.’ ”
“I didn’t say that.” He glared at her.
“It stinks,” Merle said. She glowered at Sam, then at Dick.
“He wouldn’t let me get us a dog,” Marcia said. “He didn’t even want the responsibility of owning a dog.” Sam could hear the emotion in her voice and almost welled up into tears himself in silent protest and anger.
“Here he is with this fucking dead dog under the house,” Marcia said, her voice quavering. “Oh, he can care about this stupid dead dog. It’s completely safe. He has nothing but the simplest responsibility. To bury it.”
“Christ, Sam,” Merle said. “Why don’t you let her out of the box? What the hell’s going on here?”
“I didn’t put her in the box,” Sam said, his voice rising. “She can let herself out of the goddamn box.”
“Whoa, now, bud,” Dick said, straightening up. “Settle down, now.”
Sam started to lash out at Dick and checked himself, breathing deeply and dropping back into his chair.
“I’ll let her out of the box, for Christ sake,” Merle said. “Dick, go find a hammer or something.”
“I don’t want to come out,” Marcia said. “Jesus.” She was crying now. “What an idiot. I’m such an idiot.”
“I don’t want to hear that!” Merle said. “Don’t get into that, for Christ sake.”
“Why don’t we go check on that dog?” Dick said to Sam.
“Ah, shit,” Sam said under his breath. “Look, maybe you guys should just go on home, now. I’m sorry. I’ll take care of this.”
Dick looked offended. Merle stood up and brushed roughly past Sam toward the back of the house.
“What are you doing?” Sam said. He followed her back into the kitchen, where she began to rifle through the cabinet drawers.
“If you’re looking for a hammer, it’s in the bottom drawer on the left,” Sam said, “but I think she’s locked herself in there.” Merle glared at him briefly, then went for the drawer.
“The least you could do is help us get her out,” she muttered.
“I’m telling you, Merle, just leave it alone,” Sam said. “She’ll come out of the box when she’s good and goddamn ready and you better just leave it the hell alone.”
Merle straightened up from the drawer and stamped her feet in a paroxysm of fury, sputtering a mangled mouthful of curses, her face screwed up and her fists flailing about the kitchen air.
“Ahhhhh!” she shouted. “Don’t you tell me what to do!”
She reached into the drawer, pulled out the hammer, and reeled past him on her way back to the den. Sam got his flashlight out of the open drawer and stepped outside.
The starlight fell softly on the mound of dirt beside the perfect grave he’d dug that afternoon. He stood for a moment, breathing the clear night air in the breeze from the south. Then he walked around the house and looked into the living-room window. Dick pried at the box’s lid with the hammer claw while Merle stood by, her hands on her hips.
“Hurry it up, Dick,” she said.
Sam left the window and walked around back. He shone the flashlight onto the crawl-space hole, then shut it off. Crawling through the hole, he turned the light on again and swept it toward the spot beneath the den. He saw the hindquarters. The stench was bad. He crawled, circling around to the right, the light slashing back and forth in the dark on the bricks and boards and earth. He came around in front of the dog, set himself, and shined the light on her face.
Her eyes bore fiercely into the beam, black lips curled back from her teeth. Sam’s heart leapt and raced in his chest.