Michael R Collings (20 page)

“Burt,” Willard said from the couch, barely removing his eyes from the television, “help your brother.”

Burt finally glanced up, saw Sams, then saw the plastic ball sitting on the floor. He understood at once what was needed.

“Okay,” he said with a sigh. “Don’t roll until I get back,” he instructed Will, Jr. He wanted to be there for the big moment.

The two boys disappeared down the hall.

They were gone for several minutes, longer than it should have taken to retrieve either Yip or Yap from its hiding place in the cedar chips.

Neither Willard nor Catherine noticed the time, although Will, Jr., wriggled in impatience at the wait.

Finally, Burt came down the hall, followed by Sams.

“Dad,” Burt said quietly.

“Yeah.”

“Dad, Yip won’t play with us.”

“Then bring Yap out,” The boys could apparently tell the two hamsters apart, although to Willard’s adult eyes they looked identical. “Maybe Yip’s eating or something.”

“No, he’s just laying there. He won’t get up to play with us.”

This time Willard heard a note of anxiety in Burt’s voice. He stood, casting a knowing—almost an accusatory—glance at Catherine. They had been waiting for this to happen ever since she had talked him into letting the kids have the things. Neither of them were particularly eager for what they both knew was coming. Catherine put aside her knitting and rose as well.

Will, Jr., and Suze simply sat at the game board, as if standing guard lest some errant breeze shift the playing pieces.

Willard led the way down the dark hallway toward the back bedroom. The room itself was cast into murky shadow by the cloud cover outside. The little Mickey Mouse lamp was on but not the ceiling light.

He walked over to the small table that held the hamsters’ cage. One of them, it must be Yap, was running circles on the exercise wheel, spinning away as if his little life depended on it. The other one, Yip, lay half hidden in cedar chips at the back of the cage.

Willard reached in.

Yap ignored him and kept the wheel spinning at breakneck speed.

Yip didn’t move, either. Willard closed his hand around the bit of fur.

Nothing.

He lifted the hamster out of the cage, glanced over his shoulder at Catherine, and nodded. They had both had small pets as children. Small pets, however much loved and however well cared for, often did not live long.

He led the small parade out of the bedroom and back into the family room.

“Will, put the ball away, will you?”

Will started to object, then took in the fact that his father—who almost never played with the hamsters—was standing quietly above him, holding something in his hand.

“Okay.” He picked up the toy and disappeared down the hall. He reappeared only a moment or so later.

“Come here, guys,” Willard said, voice softer, more gentle than it had been for the past several days.

The children gathered around his knees, their eyes on the mound of fur. Will, Jr., already had tears forming in his eyes. He knew. Burt probably guessed but was still processing. Suze looked confused. And Sams seemed to wonder why Yip didn’t get up and look at him.

“I’m afraid that Yip…well, that Yip has…gone away.”

“No he hasn’t, Daddy,” Suze replied immediately. “He’s right there. In your hand.”

“Right there,” Sams added, pointing.

“I know, but….” Willard looked up at Catherine.

“What Daddy is trying to say is that Yip has gone to sleep, and he is going to stay asleep for a long, long time,” she said, her voice as gently as Willard’s.

“You mean he’s…
dead
?” Burt had finally accepted what he already intuited. “Dead for good?”

Before Willard could answer, Suze breathed a quick “No,” and bust into tears. Perhaps she didn’t truly understand death, but she watched enough television—even the children’s programming that Willard and Catherine preferred—to know the word. And to know that it wasn’t a good thing.

Sams stared at his sister, then his tears joined hers, even though he had no idea what was happening.

Will, Jr., took a moment, then said, “We’ll have to have a funeral. Right away.”

Willard looked up at Catherine, who started to shrug, then her head moved up and down so slightly that none of the kids would have noticed even if they had seen it. They hadn’t. Their attention was fixed on Yip.

Willard felt again that momentary stab of irritation grate through him. All right for her to say it was okay, but
he
was the one who was going to have to trudge out into the rain, or at least into the rain-soaked yard, to officiate at the obsequies.

“Can we, Daddy?” Burt asked.

“I guess so.”

“When?” Suze said. “Right now.” For her, there never seemed to be a future, just the now.

Willard sighed, “Yeah, I guess so.”

“We’ll need a box or something first,” Catherine said. Suze scuttled away down the hall. A moment later, they all heard a drawer close, rather more loudly than necessary, and she reappeared in the doorway, cradling a small wooden box.

“Oh, Suze,” Catherine said, “That’s the redwood box Grandma and Grandpa gave you when they went to Monterrey. You don’t want to….”

“Yes, I do. Yip was my friend. I loved him.” The boys nodded their approval at her sacrifice.

Catherine went to her knitting and rummaged around in the bottom of the bag she used. Finally she stood up and carried a small irregular ball of dark purple yarn. She placed it on the fragrant cedar lining of the small box and tugged at the yarn until it made a kind of nest.

“Is that all right?”

All four children nodded this time.

“Willard?”

He opened his hand to set the tiny body in the makeshift casket. As he did so, he really noticed Yip for the first time. Something seemed odd. The hamster’s head looks strange, as if it were slightly flattened on one side, as if someone had….

He stared at the four children. Will, Jr., with his red-rimmed eyes and carefully stoic expression. Burt, his eyes full of hurt and loss. Suze and Sams, their tears still streaking their cheeks even though they were no longer crying.

No. Impossible. None of them would have….

He began to lower the hamster into the box. Yip’s body hung limply from his fingers. Too limply, it seemed. On an impulse Willard felt along the hamsters back with his index finger.

Nothing. No stiffness where the backbone should be. Not exactly mushy, but…giving, resilient.

He almost withdrew his hand, almost decided to question the kids to see if any of them had accidently hurt Yip, then didn’t. They loved the hamster. They would have told him if anything had happened.

He laid Yip in the center of the tumble of yarn, then pulled a few strands over the body.

“All right?”

Again the children nodded in unison.

He closed the box and turned the tiny clasp.

It really was too wet to be out, even if the rain had stopped. Willard stepped out of the side kitchen door, boots on his feet, jacket zipped close against the damp air, casket in his hands, rain hat on his head just in case, and a small shovel propped over his shoulder. Three similarly clad figures—minus the shovel—followed. Catherine had remained in the family room with Sams, who seemed exhausted by the whole thing and was nodding off. When they left she was cradling him in her arms and rocking him as if he were an infant again.

The small procession rounded the corner of the house.

“What the…?” Willard caught himself just in time. Little pitchers.

The entire back yard looked as if it were a lake. He had expected most of the rain to drain off along the sides of the house, down the front lawn and driveway, and into the overfilled gutters on Oleander. That what would have made sense for a house situated at the top of a rise.

No, that hadn’t happened. Instead, water had pooled everywhere, shallowly in some spots, so that the tips of winter-dead grass emerged like miniature reeds in an oversized black swamp, so deep in others that the faint breeze that had followed the storm created rows of ripples on the surface.

Water had puddle against the back of the house as well, flooding most of the concrete patio, up to perhaps six feet from the sliding doors. It wouldn’t have taken much more for it to flow on into the living room. At the back of the yard, the fence seemed almost to lean into the pools, as if the posts were stark trees torn away at their roots, rotting but not yet willing to die.

“I’m sorry, kids,” he said without looking down at them. “There’s no place dry enough to…for a funeral.”

“Will we have to wait until the water goes away?” Burt asked. “How long will that take?”

Too long, Willard said to himself. Too long unless Catherine is willing to store the Yipper here in the freezer.

“I’m afraid it would take way too long. We should just….”

“Throw Yip away?” Will, Jr., spoke as if accusing his father of murder. “Toss him in the garbage?”

“No!”

“No!”

Burt and Suze began screaming their sorrow.

Willard could have killed Will for piping up like that. He threw his eldest son a withering glance that made Will, Jr., stumble back a step.

“Stop that!”

The younger two suddenly stifled their sobs.

Willard sighed. “Maybe there’s someplace dryer along the far side of the house.”

The procession recommenced, punctuated by the slap of boots against water and an occasional sniffle.

They rounded the side of the house. It was almost as bad here. The six-foot-wide stretch between house and fence was spotted by standing pools, but up against the house, beneath the protection of the eaves on one side and the neighboring row of yews on the other, the ground, while still sodden, was at least visible.

It would have to be here.

He paced a dozen steps or so until he stood toward the end of the long wall—right outside the windowless wall of the master bedroom. Where he could slip out some dark night after the kids were asleep and play grave-digger to the Yipper’s final resting place. By then the thing would probably be little more than a repulsive mass of goo inside a stained and worm-eaten box. Then he could throw the whole thing away and the kids would never know. That way if he ever decided to cultivate a small garden in the bare stretch, he wouldn’t unearth a nasty surprise.

“This all right?”

“Okay, Dad.”

Again, the nods from the others.

He handed the box to Burt and began digging. The soil was marginally dryer closest to the house, so that’s where he began. Shovel in. Shovel out. Shovel in. Shovel out.

Until….

“Those bas….!”

“What’s wrong, Dad?” Will, Jr., looked thoroughly scared of something. Burt and Suze weren’t far behind.

“Shut up,” Willard snapped.

They shut.

He removed another shovelful of dirt from the edge of the concrete foundation.

About five inches beneath the top of the soil, a half-inch-wide crack snaked parallel to the ground.

“I don’t bel….”

This time none of the children spoke. Willard had almost forgotten they were standing there, a couple of feet behind him, halfway to the fence, ankle deep in mud and water.

He scraped the shovel along the side of the house, revealing more of the wall between where he had begun and the front corner. The crack continued. If anything it grew wider, blacker, deeper. Ominous. Threatening, at least to Willard.

He reached the corner. There, the lower portion of the foundation had separated by nearly an inch from the upper, a couple of inches below where the stucco started. The bottom of the stucco—painted an ugly shade of yellow instead of the neutral brown of the rest of the house—was
beneath
the level of the soil.

He stood back, winded although he didn’t notice that, and leaned against the shovel handle, forcing it gradually deeper into the muck. His shoulders and back throbbed, and his fingers ached.

He already knew that the back wall had separated from the foundation. Now
this
.

The whole damned house must be simply sitting on top of the slab—or next to it—with
nothing
pinning the two together!

He looked up under the eaves.

Those shitty builders!

He groaned.

“Dad,” Will, Jr., whispered.

“Get into the house. Now. All of you!”

They got.

Willard scraped more dirt away from the stucco, this time retracing his steps toward the back corner. The crack followed his digging.

After about six feet he stopped and just stood there staring…and getting more furious by the moment.

Everything they owned invested in this place, everything they had hoped for, even their very
lives
maybe…and now
this.

Finally he trudged his way back to the kitchen door and stalked in. Catherine stood there. The kids were gone. He couldn’t hear them anywhere.

“Take off your boots, please.”

“Huh?” He looked down as if surprised to see that he had feet.

“Your boots. You’re muddying up the floor.”

He toed the boots off, then in a moment of rage, kicked them out the open door. They splashed into a puddle about where he had planned to plant a peach tree come spring.

“What’s wrong.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t trust himself to answer. He took several deep breaths. Then several more.

“The kids came back into the house. They were frightened. terrified. Of you, I think. They said that something happened back there. Burt still had the box clutched in his hand. What was it?”

Willard ran his fingers through his hair and slumped onto a chair.

“A crack. A huge, gaping, monster of a f… of a crack.”

“Where?”

“Along the whole bedroom side of the house, I think. A big one. A couple of inches below the stucco line.” His mind hadn’t registered the full meaning of the different colors down there, not yet, so he didn’t mention that.

Catherine’s eyes widened in shock.

“And another one under the eaves where the wall joins the roof. There’s some uneven patching that no one would notice on a quick glance…maybe not even on a careful glance. We didn’t walk along that part of the wall before we bought the place. Maxwell stood with us at the corner and talked but didn’t go any further. We…I just assumed….