Ethan Rutherford - The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories

It was three o’clock. Both John and Thomas were now overdue. Inside, the table was set. The ham she’d picked out, the ham she deliberated over in the grocery store for far longer than necessary, as if there were some secret to be found in the weight of the thing, was defrosting. Jocey—whoever this girl was—would be a hedge against John’s heavy pull. They would simply ask her questions, and then the night would be over.

On her way back into the kitchen with the wood, she miscalculated the width of the entryway, and with all the weight of the load caught her fingers on the doorframe. Her vision went white; the firewood fell like clattering bowling pins to the kitchen floor. “Goddamn it,” she said. She put her hands between her legs and squeezed. A few of the logs had rolled outside and were now propping the kitchen door open. She kicked those out of the way, closed the door, and, still in her jacket, went to the sink.

The water took some of the pain away. She turned the faucet off, and braced herself on the counter. No one prepares you for this, she thought. There’s always some way to mess up. And it was then that she looked out the window and saw an unfamiliar car, a blue sedan, in their driveway. It sat at the far end, almost fifty yards away, where the driveway connected with the street. It was idling; Joan could see exhaust puffing into the cold like tiny distress signals. Someone, maybe, waiting for Sarah. Though why make her walk through the weather? Using her left hand she gathered the wood from the floor and put it back in the carrier, and then brought it into the living room. The rest of the wood-getting would have to wait. She tried calling Thomas, but he didn’t pick up. When she went back to the window, the car was gone.

In the living room now, she built a fire and lit it. Her fingers ached only dully. As the kindling took, she flipped on the television, hoping for news of the weather. They were broadcasting clips of people in the snow: kids rolling down a hill; a huge truck with a makeshift plow hitched to its front; abandoned vehicles wedged into snowbanks like icebound ships. These were scenes from the highway, but a few hours east, where the storm had settled down in earnest. The newscast cut to a man in a snowsuit pointing out cars that were sliding sideways through intersections in a small town that looked like every other small town. The vehicles turned and slid so slowly that Joan wanted to say, What’s the problem here? Just get out of the truck and stop it with your hands. She clicked it off.

When she went to the window again, she was surprised to see the blue car had returned.

The pit was nothing but a large meadow off the highway. It was hidden by a ridge of evergreens, accessible only by a small paved road that after a few sharp inclines turned to dirt. It was no one’s property. Thomas had been here once before, and had been told by a neighbor who kept cows that it was an unofficial dumping ground, a small, farm-animal graveyard. The road was unplowed but still drivable. As Thomas pulled to a stop, there was a sound from the rig as if Zachary were pitching himself from one side of the trailer to the other.

He was alone. Sarah had stayed at the gas station. Before Thomas had pulled away, she’d walked inside the food-mart and returned with napkins. She handed them to Thomas through the window of the truck. “That could be really bad,” she’d said.

“I’m fine,” he’d replied. He took the napkins, and laid them carefully on his leg. The cold air from the window helped. Then he apologized. She nodded, as if she wasn’t quite listening.

“Let me at least give you a ride home,” he’d said. He wanted to explain himself if he could. A huge mistake. All of it. “How are you going to get back?” The snow was coming thickly and had already covered the wipers.

“I’m going to call someone,” she’d said.

She disappeared again through the doors of the food-mart, and Thomas drove away. A mile down the road, he pulled into the parking lot of a Rite-Aid and sat there for what could’ve been fifteen minutes or an hour. He had no idea.

Now, at the pit, Thomas opened his door and eased himself out of the truck. The meadow in front of him looked like a wide lake, frozen over. He limped around to the back of the trailer. He didn’t want to do this now. Zachary stood with his back to Thomas, near the wheel-well, leaning against the wall. Thomas bent down, scooped up a handful of snow, pressed it against his leg, and held it there. With his other hand, he reached into his jacket pocket for his phone.

“I’ve been calling you,” Joan said. “What happened?”

“I know,” Thomas said. “I’m sorry. I’m here. With Zachary.”

“Is Sarah with you?”

The snow in Thomas’s hand began to melt down his leg. “No,” he said. “No, she’s not.”

“There’s a car here, waiting for her. In the driveway.”

Thomas switched the phone to his other hand. “Joan,” he said. “Joan, I don’t know what to tell you.”

“It’s not John. Whoever it is keeps coming and going,” Joan said. “It’s here now. The car. Just sitting at the end of the driveway. It’s been coming and going for the last hour.”

“What color is it? Red?”

“Blue.”

Thomas could hear his wife moving around their house. He imagined her at the living room window, peering out. The sun was beginning to go down.

“I tried calling Sarah,” Joan said. “She didn’t pick up.”

“She’s at a gas station,” Thomas said. “Down the road.”

“Why? I don’t—”

“Joan,” Thomas said. “It’s probably John. I talked to him a little while ago. He’s driving someone else’s car.”

He heard the oven timer go off. She must be in the kitchen. “If it’s John, why isn’t he coming in?”

“I don’t know, Joan. I don’t know.”

Zachary, in the trailer, began scratching at the floor. Then he hutched up and put his head down. “Joan,” Thomas said. “I talked to him. I think he’s worse.”

“Worse,” she said. “What do you mean?”

“Joan, I made a mistake. I think you should lock the doors.”

“I’m not going to lock the doors on my own—”

“Joan,” Thomas said. “Trust me. Lock him out. He’s old enough. It’s what you want, I know that. It’s what I want. Don’t let him in the house.”

“It’s not—you’re not making sense, Thomas. You have to tell me what’s going on.”

“Joan,” he said. “You know it’s him. It couldn’t be anyone else. Jocey isn’t with him.”

There was silence on the line. All this talking, Thomas thought, punctuated by silences large enough to drown in. “I’m on my way home,” he said. “I’ll be home soon.” He pulled the phone away from his ear and cut the call.

The day was almost over. Thomas unlatched the trailer, reached for Zachary’s lead, and drew him up. He walked with him until they were in the middle of the meadow, then let go of the lead. He put his hand on the animal’s back. Zachary watched the trees, fifty yards away. They stood like that for a while, then Thomas turned and limped back to his truck for the shotgun. He told himself that if Zachary had wandered away by the time he got to the door of his truck, if he’d made any attempt to move at all, he wasn’t going to shoot him. That, he thought, is the kind of person I want to be .

He opened the passenger door, leaned in, pulled the gun off its rack, and turned. Zachary hadn’t budged. Thomas shut the door, and walked toward the feeble, ancient-looking animal, breaking the gun as loudly as he could. A bird of some kind took flight behind him. Thomas took two shells from his breast pocket and thumbed them home. He moved until he was ten feet from Zachary, and stopped. He felt like he wanted to scream. His pant leg was frozen and stiff, and there was an absence of feeling in his leg. The snow fell like static. They would, all three of them, talk this out. They would get past this. Thomas looked once directly into Zachary’s eyes, nestled the butt of the shotgun on his shoulder, and raised the barrel. The alpaca stood there, waiting to be shot.