Here on Earth (10 page)

“Alan,” the Judge says sadly. “There’s a man who ruined his life.”

Gwen has been looking out the window, idly eating Pepperidge Farm Mint Milanos from the bag. Now, she shifts her attention.

“How ruined?” she asks the Judge. “Completely ruined? Totally ruined?”

“Gwen!” March says. She turns to the Judge. “She’s never even met him. Do you think I should bring her to visit him?”

“He wouldn’t see you. He wouldn’t open the door.” The Judge notices a silk scarf in one of the boxes; when he narrows his eyes he realizes that the blobs of orange are lilies, like the ones which grow in his own yard. “How long do you plan on staying?” he asks March.

Gwen stops chewing so she can hear the answer. Her whole life depends on this.

“I thought a week.” March looks around at the accumulation of a lifetime. “But there’s so much to do. And so much of what’s left in the house was Alan’s or mine. I found all my sweaters, every one I ever wore, from kindergarten on up, folded into two boxes in the attic.”

“Richard should have come with you,” the Judge says.

“Oh, no.” March pours more coffee. For some reason, just the mention of Richard’s name makes her feel flushed, as if she’d already betrayed him, somehow. It was going up to the attic, that was the problem. She keeps seeing dust, out of the comer of her eye. She keeps hearing the door shut, the way it used to when she and Hollis sneaked up there; she keeps feeling the way she did whenever he was near. “Richard had classes. Midquarter exams. He couldn’t leave.”

“I don’t care what he had. He shouldn’t have let you come back alone.”

Gwen puts down the bag of cookies. This judge guy is more interesting than she would have imagined.

“Cookie?” March offers the Judge, hoping to change the subject.

Bill Justice takes two bites of a Mint Milano, and when there’s only a small piece left, he whistles.

“Sister,” he calls.

March and Gwen look at each other, confused.

The Judge whistles again and holds out the piece of cookie, and then, all of a sudden, he gets a pained expression. His whole face falls.

“Where’s the dog?” he asks, and when March looks blank he tosses the cookie bit on the table. “Shit,” he mutters. “Where’s the damned dog?”

The Judge rises to his feet and heads for the door. He’s already pulling on his overcoat when March and Gwen reach him.

“Judith got a dog last winter,” the Judge says. His breathing sounds off and he’s having trouble finding his car keys. “A West Highland terrier.”

“A West Highland terrier?” March feels a bit dazed.

“A little white dog,” the Judge says, impatient. “Have you seen her?”

Now that it’s mentioned, March remembers Judith saying something about a dog she got for Christmas. Judith had been planning to come out to California for Thanksgiving, and she worried about putting the dog in the kennel.

“There was something out on the porch last night,” Gwen pipes up, but when her mother and Bill Justice look at her, expectantly, she feels silly. “But it was a rabbit.”

“I didn’t remember there was a dog,” March says. “There was no sign of it when we got here.”

“Oh, fuck,” the Judge says.

March gets goose bumps from the sound of those words coming from Bill Justice. It is so unlike him to speak in that manner, that she feels she has done something terrible, perhaps even criminal, in forgetting Judith’s dog.

The Judge opens the hall closet and takes out a leash neither March nor Gwen noticed when hanging up their coats; then he goes outside without bothering to say goodbye.

“It probably died because of us,” Gwen says. Her voice sounds sad, but also accusatory, as if the whole thing were really March’s fault.

March grabs a sweater. “Look around the yard,” she tells her daughter. “I’m going with the Judge.”

Bill Justice is already backing out of the driveway, but March runs over and taps on the window. When he stops, she gets into the Saab and they drive slowly along the road, windows open, calling over and over again for Sister, the little white dog.

“I wasn’t thinking,” March says as they drive too fast over the bumps. Or perhaps the problem was that she was thinking too much about subjects she shouldn’t have allowed past the first circle of her mind. Just as before, Hollis is taking up too much room. “I was so upset about Judith.”

Instead of listening to her excuses, the Judge is peering into the bushes as he drives. At the turnoff, they head for the village, driving so slowly that other cars honk, then pass them by. They keep the windows open and continue to whistle and call out. They try the main roads, and most of the back roads; they drive past the schoolyard and the park and St. Bridget’s Hospital. The Judge stops to phone Bud Horace, the animal control officer, from the pay phone outside the Red Apple market, but Bud has no reports of a white dog being sighted. At last, the Judge decides to look down by the Marshes. The sky is already purple; the first few stars have appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver across the edge of the world.

“Hard to believe this is where Alan wound up.” The Judge shakes his head. They drive along the salty blacktop, then turn down a dirt path.

“Sometimes I forget I have a brother,” March admits.

“Well, you’ve got one,” the Judge says. “And that’s where he lives.”

There is a ramshackle house at the very edge of the Marshes; it’s fashioned out of wooden shingles that are the color of a dove’s wings. Most people say it’s the Founder’s house, and that Aaron Jenkins built it with his own two hands, although others remember stories of a fisherman who lived down here at the turn of the century, a nasty fellow who set out eel traps and refused to speak when greeted by anyone from the village.

“It’s parkland,” the Judge tells March, “but the town council lets him stay. Once or twice a year someone from social services comes over, but he won’t open the door for them. The ladies on the library committee pay for his expenses. Judith was the one who started that, and she usually brought him his groceries. She tried to check on him once a week or so.”

“I had no idea. She never talked about him.”

March looks out at the thick grass and the reeds. She has always blamed Alan for driving Hollis off, with his cruelty and his jealousy. Now she wonders if she herself wasn’t guilty of the same exact sin she has always blamed on her brother. Perhaps she also has carried a grudge too long.

“Well,” March says, “with Judith gone, Alan can sell the house and Fox Hill and have enough money to take care of himself. That was his one good deed—allowing Judith to live there.”

“He wasn’t the one who let her live there.” The Judge watches, closely gauging March’s reaction. “It was Hollis.”

Well, there you have it—she truly didn’t know who owned Fox Hill. She has turned to the Judge, riveted.

“Alan sold the place right after Julie died; he was desperate for money, he was drinking it all up, and he got a nice offer from some corporation based in Florida. That corporation turned out to be Hollis. I was coming over to tell you today. You’ve been left all of Judith’s personal effects, but Hollis owns the house.”

The Judge clears his throat. He has always disliked Hollis, but not for the reasons other people might have, because of his mean streak. The Judge, after all, has seen men at their worst and at their best in his courtroom. As far as he can tell, the problem with Hollis is that he has always blamed others for what’s wrong with his life. He never takes any responsibility, and a man like that, the Judge knows, simply cannot be saved. Truth is, he wouldn’t want to be.

“It appears that Hollis got everything he wanted,” the Judge says now.

“It does look that way,” March says.

“Well, let’s hope so, at any rate. Let’s hope he’s satisfied.”

The Judge stops the car to call out his window for the dog; then he puts the car in park and gets out. March gets out too. She’s shaken by the proximity of the past. There is her brother, on the other side of these reeds. There is Hollis, beyond the hilltop and the trees, the owner of the house where she grew up and now sleeps, the owner of everything the eye can see. He was so poor and neglected when he came to them that he did not know it wasn’t necessary to stand by the back door, like a dog, to get his dinner.

“Sit at the table,” March remembers Judith Dale telling him, and he sat there mute, staring at lamb chops and lettuce and apple pie as if he had no business to dream such things, let alone have them for supper.

The water in the Marshes is rising with the tide; it seems purple and starry as well—an inverted sky.

“Not a soul,” the Judge says.

They don’t call out their windows on the ride back. They don’t bother to speak. The Judge takes the shortcut back to Fox Hill, avoiding the village and Route 22, which means zigzagging past the cemetery. He hadn’t been thinking of how this course might affect them, but the choice is clearly a mistake. Less than twenty-four hours ago, they were here to bury Judith. How is it that even grown men, old men who should be content with all that they’ve had, still want more? How is it that death always seems impossible, a trick of nature one should somehow be able to set in reverse? The Judge feels a sharp pain up and down his left arm, never a good sign.

“I think we should stop,” March says as they approach the cemetery.

March truly surprises him sometimes. In the past, Bill Justice viewed her as spoiled; the selfish little girl her father could never say no to. But with March, you never can tell. Tonight, for instance, her impulse to visit Judith’s grave is one hundred percent on target.

The Judge nods and drives through the iron gates, then along the narrow road which leads to the newest burial section. Scarlet leaves drop from the maples, adding to the carpet already on the ground. Now the sky is purple through and through; there are no other visitors, not at this hour. After they get out of the car and approach the grave, March can feel shivers along her skin.

It’s cold here. Too cold to be left all alone. Later in the week, March will bring a pot of asters to plant, the wild variety which return year after year. She will, however, avoid the older section of the cemetery; she knows too many who have been buried there, more, in fact, than she knows among the residents living down in the village.

The wind has begun to pick up, blowing the fallen leaves into little whirlwinds. How is it, March wonders, that life happens this way? Is it really possible to be a child one moment, asking for candy and a hand to hold, and then, in what seems like seconds, to be a grown woman walking through a cemetery on such a dark and bitter night? She’s confused being back here; she’s seeing shadows. It makes perfect sense that she doubts her own vision when she spies something beside Judith Dale’s grave.

March closes her eyes; she’s dizzy, it’s true, but when she looks again, she’s certain something is there. All at once she feels a pressure inside her chest, like a fist which prevents her from breathing. At this instant, she could believe in ghosts, but when she concentrates she sees it’s no billowy mist that covers Judith’s grave. It’s no specter returned. It’s an animal at rest, a shaggy creature with leaves matted into its fur. March tugs on the Judge’s coat sleeve.

“The dog,” she says. “Hey,” she cries to the terrier. She claps her hands and whistles.

The dog sits up, ears twitching. It’s little and so dirty all of its fur has turned a muddy gray shade. It has been waiting here for a long time, it hasn’t eaten for days, and it’s not about to be disturbed from its vigil by strangers. As March approaches, the terrier growls, low down in its throat.

March stops, startled by such a small dog’s depth of feeling.

“It’s all right.” The Judge has come up beside March. “Sister,” he calls. “Here, girl.”

At the sound of his voice, the dog leaps up and runs to him. The terrier is filthy, but the Judge bends down and picks it up.

“You silly thing,” he says.

The dog’s tail wags like mad against the Judge’s overcoat. It’s clearly in ecstasy to be held in his arms, and it yaps with what little voice it has left, since it has been howling each and every night.

For all they know, this dog has been following the body of its mistress from the time she was first taken from the house. It may have been waiting in the alley beside the funeral parlor, pursuing the hearse down Route 22. This small creature is not at all confused about what it wants, unlike men and women, who have the ability to conceal their deepest desires. Men and women, after all, can hide their love away. Men don’t chase after cars. Women don’t throw themselves upon cement doorsteps, curled up in a heap, until somebody opens the door and finally lets them inside.

Among men and women, those in love do not always announce themselves, with declarations and vows. But they are the ones who weep when you’re gone. Who miss you every single night, especially when the sky is so deep and beautiful, and the ground so very cold. On this night, the Judge cries more quietly than it would ever seem possible for a man of his size. He keeps his face averted, buried against the dog’s fur. March doesn’t eyen realize he’s weeping, until a sob escapes. And that is how she finally knows that Bill Justice loved Judith. He loved her for thirty-five years, which for some people is as good as a lifetime. He loved her the way no one else ever has, and yet, in spite of that, he’s only entitled to grieve privately, in the dark. At least he has a right to that, and March wouldn’t think of intruding. She’ll stand beside him, in silence, beneath a sky that is now perfectly black, until he’s ready to drive her home.

At twilight, Fox Hill is the most beautiful place on earth, with its long, blue views of Guardian Farm and its twisted black trees. Hank comes here often at this time, accompanied by the dogs, who are unusually subdued at this hour, as if they knew that bickering and snapping would be a crime against the silence down below.