“True again. Darling, you have the most devastating knack of getting directly to the crux. I suppose I had better go up there and check in immediately.”
“I was about to suggest it. I’ll just go along for company, if you don’t mind.”
“I’d be delighted. Perhaps, along the way, we can trifle for a while in some leafy glade.”
“It’s entirely possible. I have no special preference for leafy glades, but I am, as you know, addicted to occasional trifling.”
Leaving the Jag in the drive, and my bag in the Jag, we went around the big Colonial house, past the garages in the rear, and so onto a path that ran up a gentle slope among maples and oaks and sycamores to the crest of the rise; then down again among more of the same into a hollow where, under the flowering crab apple tree Grandfather had gathered in a private plot the deceased members of the Canning clan.
There, side by side, or end to end, lay Grandmother and Uncle Wish and Father and Mother. There, in good time, Grandfather would also lie, a patriarch among them. There also was room reserved for me, and for Connie by my side. An unpleasant prospect, surely, but hopefully remote. What was pleasant and immediate was the fact that Connie and I were side by side and hand in hand, very much alive and with a prospect of trifling.
Unfortunately for the prospect, however, we met Grandfather on his way back. As we reached the crest of the rise, we could see him on the slope below us, ascending briskly among the trees. I must say candidly that Grandfather, for an octogenarian, was depressingly spry. He lifted his knees high when walking, and in fact his gait was a kind of prance that seemed about to break any second into a trot. Now, seeing us above him, he gave out with a shrill cackle of greeting and lifted an arm in salute. A soft warm breeze stirred the white fuzz on his head.
“Good to see you again, Buster,” he said, approaching. “Welcome home.”
“Thank you, Grandfather. You’re certainly looking fit.”
“Feel fit. Am fit. You were coming at once to say hello to your old Grandfather, hey? Good boy.”
“As you see, Connie and I came looking for you first thing.”
“Good girl, Connie. Considerate. I’ve been to visit my children. Pay them a visit every decent day. Just on my way back. Got a project in hand that I must get to work on. Work on it two hours every day, decent or not.”
“Is that so? What are you doing?”
“Writing a history of this county. Many fascinating things have happened here. Know many of them first-hand. Consulting sources for the rest.”
“It sounds like quite a project. How long do you think it will take to finish it?”
“Five years. Got it worked out on a schedule. Two hours a day for five years.”
“Five years!”
If my dismay was apparent in my voice, Grandfather didn’t seem to notice it. My exclamation was literally wrenched out of me, of course, and small wonder. After all, I mean, 5 and 86 are 91!
“That’s right,” he said. “Five years will see it done. Must keep at it, though. Must get at it now. You’ll excuse me, I hope.”
“We’ll walk back to the house with you.”
“Wouldn’t hear of it. Since you’ve come this far, you’ll want to go on and pay your respects to your father and mother. Connie will go with you.”
“Thanks, Grandfather. It’s very thoughtful of you.”
“Not at all, not at all. Make yourself at home, my boy, as usual. The place is yours. I’ll expect to have you here until September at least. You and Connie both.”
He pranced over the crest and out of sight down the far slope. I sighed and groped for Connie’s hand, which I had released to shake Grandfather’s.
“To tell the truth,” I said, “I am singularly uninterested in paying my respects to Father and Mother.”
“Grandfather expects it, and you mustn’t disappoint him.”
“Nevertheless, I find the idea uninviting.”
“Perhaps I can make things a little more interesting for you. When you stop to consider it, the Happy Hunting Ground is as nearly a leafy glade as any other spot we are likely to find.”
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “I am more interested already.”
The blossoms were gone — gone a month or more — and the crab apple tree was hung along the boughs with little red apples. The small headstones sought and achieved a neat and charming simplicity, enclosed and isolated from unkempt indigenous growth by iron pickets painted green. The grass within the enclosure had been clipped, and the mower was at rest with spade and hoe and rake and shears in the tool shed, also painted green, that stood aside from the assembled dead outside the iron pickets.
Sunshine filtered through apple leaves to fashion a random pattern of light and shade. Light lay lightly on Connie’s eyes, which were closed. Shade made a mystery of her lips, which were smiling.
“Do you know the trouble with Grandfather?” she said.
“I wasn’t aware that he had any,” I said.
“The trouble with Grandfather,” she said, “is that he won’t die.”
The warm air was filled, if one bothered to listen, with a thousand sleepy sounds. Among the leaves of the crab apple tree there was a flash of yellow wings.
“It’s true,” I said, “that he’s taking his time about it.”
“He’s absolutely interminable, that’s what. You heard what he said about the dreary book he’s writing about things that are surely of no consequence to anyone. Five years, he said.”
“I heard.”
“Do you think he can possibly live five years longer?”
“It’s my opinion that he can.”
“It’s positively obscene. Here are Uncle Wish and your mother and father, all dead and decently buried, and all years and years younger than Grandfather. Damn it, Buster, there ought to be some kind of decent order in dying.”
“Death is often disorderly. It’s peculiar that way.”
“It doesn’t seem fair for things to be so badly managed.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You must admit, my lovely waif, that you and I have profited from the disorder. A split two ways has obvious advantages over a split five ways.”
“It does, doesn’t it? I’ve been thinking about that.”
“Thinking is bad for you. As someone said about metaphysics, it befuddles you methodically.”
“Just the same, it was odd how your mother and father died.”
“Odd?”
“Well, how your father just up and died all at once of something that was diagnosed by a senile doctor as a heart condition. I never dreamed that there was anything wrong with his heart. Did you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“And then how your mother presumably committed suicide in her presumed grief. I never saw any evidence that your mother was inordinately fond of your father. Did you?”
“Not a shred.”
“I’ve also been thinking about something else that was odd.”
“What else?”
“You were here at the time of both deaths, darling. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
I raised myself on an elbow and looked at her. She lay on her back and did not move. Her eyes were still closed in the light. Her lips still smiled in the shade. The shade moved as the leaves that cast it moved.
“As odd,” I said, “as your own presence at those unhappy events.”
She laughed instantly in some strange, contained delight. Opening her eyes she sat up. Her laughter was more motion than sound, hardly louder than a whisper. In her voice, when she spoke, was a kind of mock wonder.
“Darling,” she said, “I do believe we suspect each other.”
“Impossible. One of us suspects; the other knows.”
“That’s so, isn’t it? You’re very logical, darling.”