House of Gold (41 page)

She quickly thumbed it open to the index, running her finger down the page, eyes searching, leaning over the desk–

Temperature. Temperature...

She heard the door in the kitchen close behind her. Buzz. Holding an armful of logs.

He saw the thermometer in Ellie's
free hand, and the baby standing at her feet, clinging to the dress, crying. The tear streaming down the sweet, beautiful cheek of his future wife.

He guessed-them.

"Ellie, what's happening?"

She straightened up, then bent to pick up the child. As she wrapped Grace tight in her arms, Ellie had a nanosecond flashback to the run from hell, down to the river.

He already knows,
she thought.

Buzz faked
a convincing smile. He walked over to the middle of the kitchen and began stacking the wood next to the stove. Way too casually.

"Gracie's got a temperature," she told him.

His hand stopped in mid-air, holding the stick of maple in stasis, then he placed it gently on the stack.

Buzz straightened, clip-clapped the wood dust from his hands, then walked over to her. He put a hand on the back of the
child, patting gently.

He looked into her eyes for a long time.

"Oh Buzz," Ellie whispered.

The baby had stopped crying as soon as she was lifted. In that smooth feline way of his, his arms were suddenly around both of them. His cheek was on the baby's cheek.

He felt the heat. But he had already known, as soon as he walked through the door, and saw Ellie hunched over like that.

He thought of the
Man's face, in the last moments, on the road in the Badlands.
Lord's gotta big plow for a big guy like you, all ready to go.

It took a lot out of Buzz, for he was only flesh and blood, but he pulled his hand up and grasped the plow, once again.

"What was it–the temperature?" he asked Ellie softly, still holding the both of them, going by the numbers, following the script.

"Over one-oh-one, and
rising," she said.

"I'll get some aspirin, we'll knock it down."

He pulled away and went to the kitchen.

She walked over to the couch and sat down. She looked out the window and watched Chesterton, full of life and health, bounding around the now-empty garden, chasing an unseen critter, as Buzz went to the cabinet to get the Saint Joseph's aspirin. Mel had stocked in twenty bottles.

Near the graves.
The dog was near the five graves.

Five plus one equals six,
Ellie thought woodenly.

Chapter Twenty

The Jetty Redux

Buzz and Ellie were faithful. Each had been weathered by–the reality of the situations, even as those situations piled up like stones on damp, broken earth. These parents did not give in during the next five days.

Screw the guess,
thought Buzz, ignoring the knowing, donning his courage like a breastplate.

Ellie did not allow the baby to leave her arms–or the prayers
to leave her lips, except to kiss the little one, even as the aspirin knocked down the first fever, which came back, stronger.

And the father ran–ran, full speed, till his lungs screamed, then ran some more–past the pond, under the stars, until he found himself, chest heaving, at the Sample place.

Tommy took off on the wagon for Errol, and if need be, for Colebrook, hoping against hope to track
down penicillin or some antibiotics. Before Tommy left, he hitched his spare buckboard to the old mare for Buzz, then loaded it with fresh milk, along with a satchel filled with dried herbs for making teas from his mother's cabinet. A bottle of menthol.

+  +  +

When Buzz returned home, he threw his ghosts into the wind, and allowed himself to go into the bedroom–Mel's room–to assist Ellie and
the child, with the vapor rubs, with whatever Ellie wanted. He even tried massaging the child, adjusting her tiny spine, knowing, like he had known with the ancient nun in Blackstone, that this thing eating up his daughters' insides was beyond the reach of his fingers, his courage, his pleas to heaven. Grace needed–

–
a miracle.

Instead of sleeping normal hours, Buzz stayed up around the clock,
taking nodding naps on the couch, Rosary in hand, facing the altar. He tended the fire. He cleaned the kitchen table with a damp cloth. He boiled potatoes, then cajoled Ellie to eat.

Chesterton paced with Buzz, never leaving his side. The collie had smelled this same scent before in Saint-Pascal.

Ellie, poor Ellie; she stayed always with her baby. The whole time, until Grace's little lungs, filled
with fluid, keeping tortured-time, forced the mother's burning eyes to close for a minute, or fifteen.

Grace Woodward was merely a tiny child, a baby. A little one. A soul like all unrepeatable souls, with her own destiny, a destiny as bitter for her parents as the roots in the teas they brewed, then spoon-fed onto her blue lips.

+  +  +

The end came in the living room, on the couch, in front
of the altar. Grace was in Ellie's arms. The heavy stovepipe breathing had disappeared from the child's fragile torso, replaced by strained wisps of breath.

Ellie held the Man's relic of the Little Flower on the baby's chest. Ellie was no longer praying; she was simply enduring.

Buzz was on his knees before his unfinished Saint Joseph, his prayers wordless, soul-begging for a medical Egypt to
which to flee, listening for the sound of Tommy's wagon cracking down the hill with a vial or a needle or a pill from the old world.

But Buzz knew, within his inmost self, in the place where Packy and Markie were hiding–
boys will be boys
–in his heart, what would happen next. Tommy would not come with medicine. It didn't exist.

Buzz had been certain of the brutal truth from the very moment he stepped
through the door with the wood; since he imagined Ellie's thin ribs beneath her blouse, bent over in that first-time way, with the tear leaving a salty trail on her fine cheek.

Grace Woodward was going away. Pascal and Mark Woodward were coming to visit–coming for a visit real soon, and when they came, Ellen Fisk would see what he, Gwynne Woodward, really was–nothing.

Nothing. A sepulcher. An
empty shell of faithless bones encased by muscle and flesh.

"Buzz," Ellie whispered.

He turned and opened his eyes. Ellie was tearless, having depleted that watery remedy days ago.

Weary.

The little body in Ellie's arms–
red hair
–the last of Mel, lifeless, small. Not Grace anymore.

Gone away.

He stood, and took a long walk to the two forms.

"Do you know what to do?" she asked.

He nodded.

He knew,
even now, numb, he knew.

Tenderly, slowly, he took Ellie's wrists, and helped her lift her arms off the baby. He took the blanket off the child, then the sweater. The final layers.

He lifted the naked body from her arms. He held his Grace in two hands, before him, like a velveteen pillow for a wedding ring. Limp.

"Now, take my arm," he told Ellie gently.

Ellie was so beautiful, so sad, her eyes
closed. She reached up and took his forearm, then rose to her feet on his strength.

Together, as a family, they took the journey to the altar; Ellie moved the Bible, making a place.

Buzz placed his daughter's body on the altar.

The dog, outside now, keened bluely.

The two friends fell to their knees. He took her hand. They were–alone.

Buzz will know what to do,
Ellie told herself.
Buzz will know
what to say.

Packy and Markie came to their daddy then. They crawled right out of his heart and into his
there,
his
now,
and the sorrow, oh the sorrow, the wordless, awful, terrible-hard-packed grief unfolded with their arrival.

Five-plus-one,
Ellie counted souls, still waiting for Buzz.
Thy will be done...

...and Buzz received the purest of graces, because he was the only Saint Joseph in Bagpipe,
as words, which all his life came to him, came now...

An oblation. A bloodless oblation. Jesus is on the Altar. Markie and Packy are here. Don't be selfish.

"Jesus God Father," he began, and Ellie squeezed his hand tighter, almost hurting him.

Packy and Markie charged up the ramparts now, then pounded down the gates, like true Woodwards, like he had taught them, cutting down their big daddy with
their little broadswords, and despite the soul-pain they bore with the crosses on their tiny shields, he was grateful they had finally come, finishing their own long walks to their daddy–"I love you, Daddy!" so cheerful they were–

I love you, too, my sons, oh my sons!

And the words came to Buzz for his sons. He greeted them thus:

I have a gift for you, Peanut. Your sister! Do you see her, Packy?
She's so beautiful, isn't she?

Like Mommy...

"We offer this beautiful little baby to you, Lord, your little light in the darkness. Our little Gracie. We offer her because she is yours, and because this world hates the light. Thank you–"

Ellie was sobbing now, unable to balance, so he reached over, took her. He supported her frame. The mother was a shadow of light; Ellie turned and clung to him,
her arms around his shoulders, her tears on his cheeks.

...and Packy and Markie ran off with their sister, laughing and calling out, like children running up a grassy hill to meet their mother–no longer babes–but rather, white-robed warriors alongside a silken-robed, crimson-topped princess; they ran toward the Court of the Two Queens; toward Mother Melanie and Mary Immaculate–

And Buzz was sucked
back into Bagpipe, again alone with his best friend, the blond girl.

"Gracie," Ellie sobbed. "No, not my Gracie. I loved her, Buzz. I loved her all the way, 'cause I promised Mel, and if I hadn't loved her so much, I wouldn't feel so bad–"

"Then feel bad, my love," the only Saint John left in Bagpipe told the beautiful woman, his words coming like water down a stream in a safe-place.

"Feel as
bad as you want. As much as you loved. Today–today is the day of glory, and little Grace only gets one."

She lifted her face and pressed a soft, chaste kiss on his lips.

"It's so bad, Buzz. So bad."

He pulled her close.

"I love you, Ellie," he whispered into her ear, pulling her so tight that he felt her ribs straining.

She clung all the tighter.

The pain equals the love.

Buzz had cut it down
for her, as she knew he would. So she must have loved the child perfectly, because she ached perfectly. That was real. Fire burning on a river of tears.

Here was the reality of the situation, dark though it be. The reality: love and pain.

Beauty and sorrow.

A man and a woman on a rocky hill, after a long walk, with an innocent on a cross, gone.

Bring it on!
Ellie imitated Mel, though in her own
way.
You want pain, Lord? Here it is! I've got pain in buckets, so take it. Are You happy now?

She screamed inside, cursing God, getting angry now, being Ellie.

Which was okay.

Anger, pain? Cursing God. Her words didn't matter. The pain equaled the love, and this was how Ellie was living her fiat, carrying her cross. Ellie was a Catholic all the way, and she wasn't going anywhere, except up a
hill, the rocks on the path stained with blood.

At least Yahweh gave Abraham a ram as a substitute for Isaac. Gracie was up there on the altar. Gone. A bloodless oblation.

"Gracie saved our lives," he told her, still holding her, still keeping his cheek to her temple.

She nodded, dry.

Your sons shall number as the stars in the sky,
the Other whispered to Buzz, who was open to anything.

Even nonsense
about the stars.

A silence ensued.

"What do we do next?" she finally whispered to him.

She was shutting down quickly, he could tell. She was relying on him completely.

He put his hand to the plow. Or maybe it had been there all the time, since the first waltz, when he took her up in friendship.

Buzz was still breathing, and there was still blood in his veins, and Markie and Packy had finally come
at last to their
da-da,
and though their father had been dreading–

This oblation
–for days, ever since he had known for sure in the kitchen, with the firewood in his arms, with Ellie bent over the book, a child clinging to her dress–

It was okay.

Ellie needed him now. In ways, he was stronger, according to a divine design. His arms orbited around her. Brother moon, sister earth.

The day of glory,
so dark.

A cross on a hill.

Alive, watching: a man, a woman.

He stood, then let her rest the side of her face in his palm, as she had the day he came over the hill to this burning house, until she looked up, her hair unkempt, her eyes weakened embers, spent.

Simple.

Two little children, looking for all the world like adults, standing in a little house on a hill, next to an altar of sacrifice.

No music for the waltz,
he thought, words still his friend. But he began the dance anyway. Who needed music? They were perfect for each other.

Ellie had said so.

She was idling on fumes now, just enough left for a slow dance.

He reached down and carefully helped his fiancée to her feet–she was a feather–and then he took her slender arm and pulled it around his own neck, her eyes on his eyes. He
bent his back and nested his free arm beneath the crook of her knees, then lifted her up. She closed her eyes, sleepy, and nestled her forehead into his neck. A perfect fit.

He carried Ellie, asleep, into their bedroom.

Years later, he would remember her hair on his own cheek, and the sound of her breathing.

On this night, the little candle on the altar without a flame, they tumbled into a dark
sleep in each other's arms, fully dressed, until the sun came up, and the dog came in to wake them.

+  +  +

Because Ellie was who she was, she prepared and dressed the body, then made the shroud while he dug the little grave. Then, together, as a family, they buried the body of their only daughter, in the rain, as the sun slowly followed its track across the sky, hidden by the clouds. The dog
followed Buzz back and forth across the field as he carried the stones.

Ellie made the cross.

Buzz and Ellie prayed in the silence, simple Catholic prayers remembered from childhood.

After, they went to the deck, and watched the rain, until it became dark.

Later, he slept on the couch. Finding her bed too big without Grace, she came in later, and found her place next to him. They did this for
weeks, as brother and sister, because it had been decided–he let her decide–and it did not seem like God minded.

+  +  +

Tommy picked up a wrinkled, wiry old priest from the shrine in Colebrook; the priest prayed a funeral Mass over a make-shift altar next to the graves.

November was coming, and with it, winter.

Thomas Sample cried over the grave with them.

After the sacrament, Buzz, Tommy, and
Ellie talked with the priest over tea in their kitchen, and being an old Frenchman, he knew exactly what they needed when they told him about Saint Thérèse's parents.

Buzz and Ellie set a date–weather pending. Decem-ber the eighth, Feast of the Immaculate Conception. It fell on a Friday, and even though it was a holy day of obligation, the priest allowed the wedding because travel was so difficult.

"I'll get you there in a blizzard," Tommy Sample promised.

+  +  +

November. White snow on cold fields. The pines, painted flecks of green on the hillsides. A conversation on the deck. Warm cider. Ellie on the rocking chair, snuggling in a blanket. Buzz was wearing the jacket the Man had bought for him in Cleveland.

"You've got to start eating," he told her.

She snorted.

"You've got to start eating,"
she replied.

She waited.

"Will it ever end?" she asked, feeling as if she was reading from a script.

He guessed-her, as she knew he would. She wasn't talking about death. Not Mel's or Sam's or Grace's, or even their own deaths. She was talking about the suffering. The numb ache within the living.

"No," he told her.

Why beat around the bush?

"Then why?"

"I don't know. I've started to pray again.
I've been trying to find God. I believe He's there, inside my soul. Saint Teresa of Avila says the whole entire Holy Trinity is supposed to be in there. Big as He is, you'd think I could find Him."