• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 486 0

He felt rescued by the collie, as he had been many times before. They walked home through the fields. It was the time of year when the apple trees were in bloom and bees were everywhere. Blackwell seemed the same as it always had, only emptier, as if someone had drilled a hole in the center of it and siphoned out its heart. James made all the arrangements for his father’s funeral. He bought a suit for the occasion. Brooke was among the mourners, along with her brother, Andy, who came to shake James’s hand and offer his condolences. John Mott was beloved in Blackwell, and nearly the whole town attended the service. Neighbors James barely remembered came up to him with tears in their eyes. More than three hundred people signed the guest book, too many to have at the house, so the funeral supper was held in the old town hall. When James went outside to get some air, Brooke was leaving.

“You could have said good-bye before you disappeared to New York,” she told him. She had her son with her. “This is Arthur.” She introduced him to James. “I named him after my grandfather.” Her son looked to be about four years old. James shook the little boy’s hand. Arthur had something to say, and James bent to hear him.

“People die,” Arthur said, sounding sure of himself. He was a quiet boy, prone to getting into trouble without looking for it. At present he had twelve stitches in his scalp from the week before when he’d climbed up a tall ladder set outside the AtoZ Market and fallen on his head.

“So it seems,” James responded sadly.

“Then where do they go?” Arthur wanted to know.

“You’re asking the wrong person,” James admitted.

JAMES SPENT THE summer in Blackwell, helping his mother clear out the cellar and the garage. He felt lost, as if he’d fallen through that hole he imagined in the center of town. Some mornings when he woke up he didn’t know what year it was. Some nights he got so drunk he couldn’t find his way home.

Brooke started coming over and he found himself looking forward to her visits, and also to Arthur’s. Then one day he saw Arthur on the floor, curled up next to old Cody, and he knew. He did the math and couldn’t believe he hadn’t figured it out before. He asked Brooke why she’d never contacted him. He thought he’d had a right to know that Arthur was his son, but Brooke shrugged. “You didn’t seem interested. You were done with me, so I didn’t tell you.”

CODY DIED NOT long after. He was so old by then that during his last week, James had to carry him outside in the mornings so he could pee. Then the collie stopped eating. James set up a box lined with blankets for his dog when he didn’t seem to want to do anything but sleep. He died there, next to James’s bed. It was still dark when James lifted the dog’s body out to take him into the garden. They had been together since James was ten, and he couldn’t remember how it felt to live his life without his dog. He kept thinking he saw the collie from the corner of his eye, even though he knew that was impossible. He thought about Arthur and the question he had asked about where people went and how small his voice had been.

He buried Cody in the southwest corner of the old garden, where it was said only red plants would grow. When he was done, he kept digging. He worked in the garden all week. It was as if once he’d begun, he simply couldn’t stop. He tilled the soil, moved rocks, put up a new fence, laid down fertilizer. He had perennials and shrubs delivered and planted each one. He wouldn’t have bothered to eat, but his mother brought his meals outside on a tray, fixing him sandwiches and carrot sticks, the way she had when he was a boy. She sat on a metal chair and gazed into the woods. Louise said she’d fallen in love with John Mott when she’d planted this garden, long ago. She’d always imagined the plants turned red because everything she felt had gone into them. She couldn’t hide her love away and so there it was for all to see.

James worked in the rain and the heat. He didn’t shower and was soon covered with red dirt. He hardly took the time to sleep. Whenever