Brandon crossed the road, singing, …if you worry you make it double…. He had a bottle now. He took a swig from it and sang some more. When Brandon reached the far edge of the hay field, Frost stood and started after him, toward home. But at the bottom of the slope, he stopped.
He had seen something. Farther along the road, a few yards to the east, among some bushes that had grown up through the asphalt, there was a pale shape. Frost walked toward it. He stepped carefully over the broken lumps of pavement. Not far to the south the coyotes had started up.
Frost looked down at the naked body of a man lying on his back. His eyes — the one blue, the other green — were open. But if Frost thought he could see the colour of Steveston’s eyes he was imagining it. The moonlight was nowhere near that powerful.
Noor ran past the domicile and on toward the graveyard. Frost stopped digging and watched her approach. He was up to his knees in the hole. There was a pile of fresh earth on one side. Steveston lay a few feet away on the other side, wrapped in a shroud of blue polyethylene. Beyond Steveston there was another hole and another pile of dirt and the wrapped body of Willow.
Noor leaned on her knees and stared down at the grass, panting. Frost said “Not there?”
Noor shook her head. “Unless he’s hiding.”
“If he’s hiding we won’t find him. You already checked at Fundy’s.”
She nodded.
“And he’s not in the domicile.”
She shook her head.
“The workshop? The clinic? The barns?”
She did not bother to signify the negative. Having caught her breath a little she stood upright. For a few seconds Frost studied her damaged face and the weariness and anxiety marked upon it. He said “Go up on the bridge and get King. Tell them I said it’s all right.” He looked down and placed his foot on the blade of the shovel and forced it into the soft earth.
When she brought King back the hole was up to Frost’s thighs. He climbed out of it. For a few moments he simply stared down at the dog, who wagged his tail and bounced a little on his front Paws. Frost knelt in front of the dog and whispered endearments. He ran King’s ears through his hands. He put his cheek against King’s face. Then he stood. He looked in one direction and then another, as if bewildered. He said “Where’s Will?” and kept looking around. Noor did the same. King became alert. His ears stood erect.
Frost called “Will? Will, where are you?”
Noor called “Will? Will?”
King darted off toward the foot of the bridge. But after twenty feet he stopped. Then he darted toward the burbs, but again he stopped. Frost and Noor started moving aimlessly in a mock search, still calling for Will. King joined them. He put his nose to the ground and trotted in quick zigzags. He stopped near the domicile and sniffed at one spot for a few seconds. Then he wagged his tail and turned back the way he had come. He did not lift his nose from the ground.
Noor followed him toward the point where the River Trail crossed under the bridge. Frost watched her and the dog go off in search of his grandson. Then he stepped back into the grave and took hold of the shovel again.
As she walked along the overgrown railroad bridge, toward the end, where the swing span stood forever open she said “Oh no. Oh god no.” King already stood at the end, peering down into the river. She came beside the dog. Below, the grey-green mass of the river slid past. She and King looked down to where the water eddied around a concrete abutment. She said “Oh Will.” Then she sat among the unhealthy clumps of grass and cried. Her sobs were like yells. It sounded as if she were trying to sob her insides out, and it sounded as if she would never stop.
But when King looked over the edge of the railroad bridge and wagged his tail she did stop. On another abutment further back along the bridge Will stood a few feet above the water. He was holding on to a sloping cross-brace with one hand and was leaning out and looking up at her. His poncho and jeans were dry. His face was empty and remote. He started climbing back up on the angled cross-braces.
44
Above, up on Frost’s Bridge the guards leaned on the railing, looking down at the graveyard. The plastic on the many grave markers winked in the sun. It was noon on a warm day of false spring, and Daniel Charlie was not wearing a poncho. Noor and Will and King got there from the railroad bridge as he was driving the first grave marker into the ground. He was kneeling. With one hand he was holding a six-inch chunk of two-by-four against the plastic-covered crosspiece. He was hitting that chunk with another three-foot length he held in his other hand. When he had finished he stood. The marker was set at one end of an open hole. The word carved on it said Willow.
He picked up the second marker and glanced at Noor and Will, who stood back behind Kingsway and Night and Salmon, with King sitting at Will’s feet. Daniel Charlie knelt by the second grave and drove in the second marker. He dropped a little dirt into each grave and picked up his spear and his bow and his arrows and sword and went and touched Noor on the shoulder and laid his hand for a second on Will’s head. A crumb of the grave dirt caught in Will’s hair. Then Daniel Charlie headed back to the bridge.
As Daniel Charlie left, Tyrell arrived. He set his weapons down and stood next to Frost, who was looking down into Steveston’s grave. Tyrell said nothing.
Of Wing’s crew there was only Wing himself and Mitchell. The rest of his men could be seen lined at the distant railing of Fundy’s Bridge. Wing stood on one side of Willow’s grave and Mitchell on the other. Mitchell was weeping. His son, Skytrain, and his baby girl were not there. The old man from Fundy’s crew had come over, in his patched suit. His name was Moses. He had a bible.
Wing went to the head of the grave and stood above the marker. He did not lift his head or raise his voice. He said “Willow was born on my farm around the time of the quake. Her father run off” — he glanced at the other grave — “like Steveston done. Her mother died the same year my Sarah died. Me and my crew, we all brung her up together. She was a sweet girl. She liked to sing. She asked me to teach her the old songs. Rock and roll.” He paused and seemed to be lost in remembering. He opened his mouth two or three times, as if to sing. Then he stepped away from the grave.
Moses went to the head of the grave. He had a bad limp. His white hair hung over his shoulders, and his white beard stubble was growing out. When he opened his bible he had to grab a section of pages that came loose. He placed the loose pages back in position. He found the place in the book he wanted. He looked up from the text and said “For God so loved the world, that he gave….”
Mitchell said “No.”
There was silence. The grass rustled in a breeze. The river murmured, and a crow called on the other side. Moses glared at Mitchell. In his eyes and in the set of his mouth there was a stony fury. Standing at the grave of his woman, with his wet cheeks, Mitchell glared back. Moses closed the book and held it clasped in both hands and for a few seconds closed his eyes and bowed his head. Then he turned his back and limped quickly away westward toward Fundy’s.
Tyrell cleared his throat. He looked up, but at no one, staring slightly over all their heads. He said “He was younger than me, but we were friends. Best friends. We fought a good bit, but that was because we were friends and could get away with it. He hit me in the face one Christmas with a bottle of hooch. Steveston.” Tyrell shook his head, as if the grave at his feet had to be a mistake. He had his hat off. His tight grey curls were cropped close and tidy. The beard was whorls of silver against his chocolate skin. The eye patch had grown dark and grubby from his life on the bridge. He looked very tired. His voice was croaky and had lost much of its boom.