Hutch sat on, determined to bear the sight. The sounds of peaceful work came from the kitchen, the mingled voices of Boat and Ann. Hutch could feel no objection; he knew he was far too tired and sad to fight old battles and lick cold wounds—those scores could wait. What chose to rise from the depths of his mind was that single line he’d got, days past, as he waited for his car to be fixed in the country—the possible start of a poem for Wade.
It repeated itself two clear times in Hutch’s head. This child knows the last riddle and answer. The line had come to him an instant after he heard the distant voices of two boys on their bicycles at a country crossroads. Was the waiting poem meant to be about them?—they were brothers, the younger one named Foster who claimed he was bound for Spain, a bullfighter. Surely the poem had to be about Wade, the only child Hutch had really known or wanted to know.
But the dreadful pitiful husk of a body that breathed beside Hutch seemed drained of any question or answer that a living creature could hear or use.
Almost unaware that his voice was audible, Hutch said the only thought he had, as natural as air. “Pardon for any harm I caused.”
The word harm snagged Wade back from his daze. His skull signed Yes and he said “Sure. Harm.”
The single word in Wade’s voice, weak as it was, tore a hole in the air; and in a stiff rush, Wyatt Bondurant pierced the wall of the room—his presence and force undoubtedly plunged in from whatever place they’d lingered for so long. The force went straight to Hutch and poured all through him instantly, freezing him deep. Though Hutch was a man more susceptible than most to the unseen world of the lingering dead, only one other time had he been in touch with the actual power of a vanished life; and he’d kept no memory of that benign visit. (The night after his father Rob died, Hutch had slept alone in the old Kendal place; and the thinning shape and fading force of Rob’s vanishing spirit had searched the house one final time, touching Hutch’s unconscious body lightly as it left for good.)
Here beside Wade, Hutch knew at once whose ghost was in him. For a long minute he sat in calm terror, thinking his own death was maybe at hand. All he could ask was Let me outlast Wade just long enough to see him buried the way he wants. That freed him to think I’ll take his last wish and put him by Wyatt.
If the promise somehow reached Wyatt, his cold strength gave no sign of mercy.
So Hutch sat on for another minute, breathing carefully and trying to quiet his thudding pulse. With all he’d felt and thought in these moments, he’d never questioned the hard-eyed sanity of his gut knowledge. Wyatt Bondurant is here in some form, real as the one I knew. As a kind of amulet against that certainty, Hutch repeated his single line many times—This child knows the last riddle and answer. No other lines came, Wade never roused to speak, but slowly Hutch felt his own chill body reclaim itself from Wyatt’s assault. Only then could he start to wonder Does Wyatt mean us harm? Before Hutch could think, he heard steps behind him and turned to the door.
Jimmy Boat stood there, small as he was, a welcome sight. “Hutch, you go eat a little something please. I’ll sit here with Wade.”
Hutch tried to say No.
Boat shook his head and pointed to the kitchen. “You need all your strength. We got a whole night, maybe some bit longer.”
Hutch agreed, then wondered if he should mention Wyatt. No, Boatie knew Wyatt. Let Boat deal with him if he’s truly here someway. But before Hutch stood, he leaned to Wade’s ear and said he’d only be back in the kitchen—call him if needed. Then he thought he should say “Son, your mother’s here too. For as long as you need her.”
That seemed to reach Wade. The boy didn’t rouse but he took what looked like the first painless breath he’d had in more than a week of long nights; and he made a sound like the liquid hum that escapes some sleeping birds, mysterious as to meaning or purpose. Then as Boat stepped forward and Hutch reached the door. Wade said “My mother died the day I was born.”
Boat’s eyes went to Hutch.
Hutch frowned, unable to think or speak an answer. Wade was imagining some new path through Hutch’s own story, Hutch’s own mother’s death. Is he somewhere already, forced to relive it? Hutch wanted the words to clarify that much anyhow. “No, your mother’s here, Son.”
But Wade was still again.
So Boat came on past Hutch on to the bedside, touched the cover above Wade’s chest and said “Baby, everybody you love is here.”
Hutch thought Then Boatie’s felt Wyatt here too.
But in a stronger voice than before, Wade told Boat “That’s a lie. Thanks anyhow.” They would be his last words.
Hutch thought Then somehow Wyatt hasn’t reached Wade yet. But he knew he couldn’t describe his own meeting, not to this fading mind that was maybe half elsewhere, in some further life. Hutch thought it wasn’t his duty even, weak as Wade was. Wyatt Bondurant can tell his own news. Hutch was also ignorant of what Wade was dwelling on when he called Boat a liar.
Boat said to Hutch again “Please keep your strength up” and pointed toward the kitchen.
So Hutch went to eat.
WADE heard his father’s footsteps leave; and when they were gone, the grip of Wade’s mind slowly released its hold on the world. The few remains of his body went weightless, no anchor or ballast to hold him back. The eye that had stayed alive in his mind through all his trouble went entirely clear again—Wade could see all he needed to see. And what he saw was a tall narrow room maybe twenty yards long, with beechwood floors and smooth bare walls that showed all the colors of pigeon wings—gray with shifting blues and purples. Wade was standing at one end of the room—the west end, he thought. He also thought I’m on my feet for the first time in—when?—oh, years or days. And then he knew, for the first clear time, that in his dreams he’d never been sick. But is this a dream? The answer came in his own strong voice. No, no dream.
And in that moment a live companion suddenly stood at the room’s far end. By now, all human names were leaching from Wade’s new mind. What he understood plainly was that this guest here was a young man, maybe twenty-five years old, in the nearly perfect body and face that made him a bare strong manifestation of all Wade had hoped for, ever on Earth—an entirely admirable welcoming man, at ease in both his mind and body and eager to give both freely without stint.
As Wade made a slight courteous bow toward the guest, the dazzling body took the first step toward him.
Wade thought He’ll reach me in maybe ten seconds. He still tried to think it was Wyatt, renewed. But it took the guest well under ten seconds; and when he’d arrived at the edge of the bed and held out open arms and hands, Wade felt the pouring out in his chest of unthinkable joy. By then all human names were wiped from his mind—Wyatt’s, whosever—so he never quite learned that the guest wore the ageless face of his dead grandfather Rob Mayfield, young again, a man Wade had never seen alive above ground. Wade stepped on forward into the harbor of powerful arms, and the light was blinding.
49
ANN was already seated at the kitchen table, under the hanging light. Boat had thawed two quarts of Brunswick stew that Hutch had bought at a roadside church sale back in the fall, and he’d somehow managed to make real corn sticks in an old iron mold that Hutch and Ann had forgot they owned. When Hutch walked in, Ann was staring at the clean empty bowl before her as if it held answers she’d need before day.
Hutch sat across from her, unfolded his napkin, then suddenly surprised himself. His right hand, of its own volition, went out and covered Ann’s hand on the table.
At first she flinched and nearly retreated; then she held in place, though she didn’t look to meet him.
Against his better judgment, Hutch said “What’s wrong?”
“It would only ruin your night to hear it.”
“Ann, this is not one of my good nights.”
She went on drawing a tall abstract figure on the table, but she finally said “—How awful it is that you and I sit here, in fairly clear sight of three
-score-and-ten, and our son’s leaving with no remains. Nothing we can hold hereafter.”
“What exactly do your hands want?” His voice was not hard.
“Oh Christ, Hutch, look.”
When he looked he saw, not the worn woman here but the girl he’d loved in Rome and Richmond, more than half their lives ago, forty years—the girl who’d gone to a back-alley kitchen (on her own, uncomplaining) and ditched the first child they conceived when she thought Hutch had left her. He said “We ought to have covered our bets, yes. Is it too late for you to adopt a grandchild?” The moment he heard it, it sounded cruel and crazy.
Ann let it pass but her eyes still searched his face and eyes. “I want you to know that never—never, I’m thoroughly sure—can I agree that Wade chose rightly: Wade nor none of these miserable men that choose each other.”
Hutch only said “You know I think you’re tragically wrong. You know I’ll never understand why you punish yourself with simple lies about the human race through all of history—you’re smarter than most Supreme Court justices; use your mind, Ann.”
She let that settle around them in the stillness. Then, smiling a little, she took up her spoon and clinked on the bowl. Food, nothing but food now.
After fifteen seconds Hutch drew back and stood to serve the stew.
“Just a mouthful for me.” Then conscious that the food had been bought by Hutch, Ann said “It looks fine; I’m just barely hungry.”
Hutch repeated Boat’s warning. “We may need extra strength through the night.”
Ann waited, then managed the start of a smile. “I think I’ve got the strength—”
Hutch said “I can’t remember when you didn’t.” With a full bowl of stew, he came back and started to eat.
He’d finished a corn stick before Ann said “You think it’s safe for me to run home and get a few clothes?”
“Boat could go; he told me he drives.”
“Boat wouldn’t know where to start with my mess.”
So Hutch said “I think if you tell Wade now that you’re going out for less than hour, he’ll wait for you.”
“You think it’s that easy?”
Hutch said “About as easy as chewing barbed wire. But no, I think Wade is running this thing. He’s in some kind of temporary control. He’ll tell you if you shouldn’t leave.”
Ann reached for a corn stick, buttered it slowly and ate a small bite. “He’s told me, Hutch. You know he’s asked for me.”
“I do, yes. We’ll make up the guest bed.”
“I can’t move Boat.”
“Boat sleeps on a pallet by Wade—he asked to.”
Ann said “I doubt any of us will sleep for days to come. Wade’s got a timetable. I feel it in my bones.”
Hutch could only agree. “It won’t be days.” Before his throat cleared, the wall phone rang with startling force. He scrambled up to prevent a second ring. “Hutchins Mayfield.”
“Hutch, it’s Maitland. How’s Wade this evening?”
It was the first time Mait had phoned since his coolly threatening departure on Monday night; and Hutch was constrained, not just by Ann’s objection to Mait but by his own recent knowledge of what seemed Mait’s fool recklessness. “Thanks, Wade’s about the same as he was.”
“Is Boat still there? I’d like to see him again before he leaves.”
Hutch was trying not to say Mait’s name. “Boatie’s got his hands pretty full tonight. We both have, in fact.”
Mait smelled trouble if not the precise kind. “You can’t talk now or you’re mad at me—which?”
“Neither one, truly. Wade’s on his last legs. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks for calling.”
Mait said “I’ve hurt you—”
“No, you couldn’t do that.” Hutch heard his own words; what they really meant was You don’t matter enough in my life to hurt me now. So he tried to blur the message a little. “I’ll call when I can. Take care of yourself.” When he got that far, he realized Mait was no longer there.
He’d hung up somewhere in Hutch’s last words.
With all the other causes for pain, still this slight impasse was the one that chose to fall on Hutch and bring him down. As he hung up the phone, tears flooded his eyes. To hide them from Ann, he went to the sink and ran cold water.
Still, when he turned, she said “Oh please don’t give in yet.”
That rubbed Hutch wrong—he’d borne up at least as well as she. But strangely no hot words came to him. And stranger still, his next move was slowly to walk up behind her, lay both hands on her shoulders and press. They’d barely touched in more than a year, and in those months she’d lost no serious trace of the fineness she’d borne all her life—all the years Hutch had known her. Even here his hands only touched Ann’s blouse; but when she didn’t shrug him off, Hutch extended his thumbs and found the bone at the base of her neck. He’d only begun to rub there gently when he realized Boat was standing in the door, in the stillest air Hutch had seen in long years. Again Hutch couldn’t speak.
Finally Ann said “Mr. Boat, here, let me fix you some stew.”
Boat shook his head and gave a slow smile that darkened the whole room—nothing in sight was as bright as his eyes. “Thank you, Ann. I’ll wait a little while on that. I just came to tell you Wade’s gone on off.”
Hutch didn’t understand at once. “Off?”
Ann knew. She only said “No—”
But Boat’s head signed Yes over and over, and his smile burned on. “Yes ma’m, he’s passed. Peaceful as any child asleep. I was two feet from him and couldn’t hear him go. There was no time to call you.”
Hutch’s mind lunged hot into anger. Of course there was time to call us, you fool. But he kept his silence for the moment it took to search Boat’s face and confirm his good intent. Hutch stood in place, his eyes bone dry.
Ann didn’t face Hutch but, as she stood too, her right hand came up and found his hand behind her. Separate as that, they held each other a long minute till Boat turned and led them on in to Wade.
IN death what was left of Wade Mayfield seemed the absolute proof that life is a power that fills real space with its mass and force. The cooling bones and hair and skin were hardly enough for a ten-year-old boy harrowed to death, much less a grown man whose shape had contained ten billion memories of life lived and stored, for reward or fear. Though Boat had shut the eyes before calling Hutch and Ann, they’d opened slightly. Through the long dark lashes, the enormous pupils had set at an angle like the angle in portraits whose eyes can follow you round a room. But they showed no threat now and made no plea.
Ann reached out and carefully shut them again.
This time they stayed down—they and all the rest of the body.
Though Ann and Hutch and Boat were silently sending out the last of their care and the start of their grief like a final healing or at least a balm, the abandoned body was already past such negligible wants. In Boat’s word, the substance of what had been a life—a life with serious weight and reach, and with numerous thousand unmet hopes—had plainly passed.
50
BY ten o’clock they’d done what they could. Hutch, Ann and Boat together had washed Wade’s body and dressed it in a clean nightshirt. With very few words they all decided the body should lie in its own bed tonight; early tomorrow Hutch would call the undertaker and gave him instructions for a simple cremation (they’d plan a memorial service for later). Then once they’d each touched Wade a last time—each kissed his forehead—and left the one lamp burning by his bed, they still had to find small tasks for their hands, tasks to numb their minds. They were wide awake, and no one had mentioned Ann’s leaving again.
Hutch felt compelled to pack every bottle of pills, every dressing and diaper and intravenous tube in a single big box and take it to the laundry room, out of sight.
Boat helped Hutch root out the last signs of illness; then he turned to the kitchen and swept and scoured the floor and counters as if nothing but the s
ight of unvarnished wood could satisfy him or ease Wade onward—Wade and Wyatt, whom Boat knew was with him.
In the dim bedroom, ten feet from Wade, Ann sorted the clothes in the old chest of drawers. She’d meant to set aside for burning anything that was frayed, and give the rest to the Salvation Army for needy children. But then she got to the bottom drawer and found the one old sunsuit that had lasted, a sole survivor from the year Wade was five—a white sailor shirt with navy piping, a whistle on a lanyard and short white pants with a button-front flap. Though it was cotton, some bug had got to it and made lace of the middy shirttail. There was no way Ann’s hands could discard it though, not here tonight. She folded each piece meticulously and laid them all back into the chest. There’d be time for them later. Then she went to the kitchen to make strong coffee. Never in their lives had coffee ever fazed her or Hutch’s chance of sleep.
Boat followed and stayed with her there, finally eating the supper he’d missed. They said no single word that didn’t pertain to food or washing dishes.
Hutch spent twenty minutes alone in his study, turning through handfuls of pictures (his long-gone mother, his father, Grainger, he and Ann near Rome in the fifties with a lanky American airman they’d met in their semi-whorehouse pensione, a homesick stunner; then dozens of views of Wade in every year of his life till he left for New York). It came to Hutch that, here tonight, he should find that cache of naked men he’d discovered in New York, the small stack of snapshots—whosever they’d been—and burn them in the fireplace before Ann could find them and him them against herself. No, not tonight. They’re genuine relics, not mine to destroy. So Hutch stood and went to join Boat and Ann in the kitchen.
They were still seated at the center table, quiet as animals stalled for the night.
Boat was darning a knee-length argyle sock of his own (his crazy aunt could still knit).
Ann was reading through papers from a full briefcase—the pitiful strangler, committed to paper, still mad as a breakaway threshing machine.
The Promise of Rest Page 31
