• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 514 0

his mother called out that Brooke was on the phone, he said he didn’t have time to talk. He was trying to figure out what to do next. He was thinking about his father on the last day he’d seen him before he took off for New York. He wished he had done something for his father, just once in his life, but he didn’t know what that might have been, they’d been so far apart. Then one morning he looked up from the row of tomatoes he was putting in and there was Arthur. He’d climbed out his bedroom window and found his way across town. Arthur was standing outside the fence throwing stones into the woods. His mother had told him about the dog.

James went over to him. “Your mom’s going to be worried,” he said gently.

“I wanted to see where Cody was.”

James took the boy into the garden to show him the spot where he’d buried the dog.

“That’s where you go when you’re dead,” Arthur said solemnly.

“Your body goes into the ground.”

Arthur thought that over. It wasn’t a satisfactory answer. “Your body isn’t all of you.” He stood there stiffly. “I can hear him breathing,” he declared. His voice was breaking, but he sounded convinced.

“I don’t think so,” James said. “Cody’s quiet now.”

But there was a sound. It wasn’t Cody; it was something entirely different. It was the beehive Arthur had hit while flinging stones. The bees had been disturbed, and now they swarmed toward the garden in a funnel-shaped cloud. James remembered that sound from the time when his father had raced across the meadow toward him and covered him with his jacket. James grabbed Arthur and ran. The swarm followed in a fury, so James kept running, through the fields. He heard ragged breathing, his own and Arthur’s. He batted bees away when they tried to land on the child, and he didn’t feel a thing when they stung him. When he had no choice and the steep riverbank was before them, James leapt into the Eel River, the boy in his arms. They went into the cold water, then resurfaced, sputtering and safe from harm. James thought about the garden, with soil so red it seemed to have a bloody, beating heart. He thought about where it was people went when they died, and how when he squinted he could see Cody, racing back and forth, barking, how his father seemed to stand right there on the riverbank, turning back the bees, closer than he’d ever been before.

Acknowledgments

WITH GRATITUDE TO John Glusman and to Shaye Areheart.

Many thanks to Elaine Markson for her continuing generosity. Thanks to Gary Johnson and everyone at the Markson Thoma Agency, to Maggie Stern Terris for many kindnesses, and to the editors of the magazines where sections of this book appeared.

WRITTEN WITH LOVE for my family, and for my father, who told me my first story.

About the Author

ALICE HOFFMAN is the bestselling author of more than twenty-five acclaimed novels, including The Story Sisters, The Third Angel, The Ice Queen, Practical Magic, Here on Earth, The River King, and Skylight Confessions. She has also written two books of short stories, and eight books for children and young adults. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and published in more than one hundred foreign editions.