It was no morning for burying dead dogs; the sky was too high and promising. Jets, trailing vapor, crossed to America, the woods budded and winged with life. Still, the work had to be done, however inappropriate.
Only by the uncompromising light of day was it possible to see the full extent of the slaughter. In addition to killing the dogs around the house, the intruders had broken into the kennels and systematically murdered all its occupants, including Bella and her offspring. When Marty arrived at the kennels Lillian was already there. She looked as though she'd been weeping for days. In her hands she cradled one of the pups. Its head had been crushed, as if in a vise.
"Look," she said, proffering the corpse.
Marty hadn't managed to eat anything for breakfast: the thought of the job ahead had taken the edge off his appetite. Now he wished he'd forced something down: his empty belly echoed on itself. He felt almost lightheaded.
"If only I'd been here," she said.
"You probably would have ended up dead yourself," he told her. It was the simple truth.
She laid the pup back on the straw, and stroked the matted fur of Bella's body. Marty was more fastidious than she. Even wearing a pair of thick leather gloves he didn't want to touch the corpses. But whatever he lacked in respect he made up for in efficiency, using his disgust as a spur to hurry the work along. Lillian, though she had insisted on being there to help, was useless in the face of the fact. All she could do was watch while Marty wrapped the bodies in black plastic refuse bags, loaded the forlorn parcels into the back of the jeep, and then drove this makeshift hearse across to a clearing he'd chosen in the woods. It was here that they were to be buried, at Whitehead's request, out of sight of the house. He'd brought two spades, hoping that Lillian would assist, but she was clearly incapable. He was left to do it single-handed, while she stood, hands thrust into the pockets of her filthy anorak, staring at the leaking bundles.
It was difficult work. The soil was a network of roots, crisscrossing from tree to tree, and Marty soon worked up a sweat, hacking at the roots with the blade of his spade. Once he'd dug a shallow grave, he rolled the bodies into it and began to shovel the earth back on top of them. It rattled on their plastic shrouds, a dry rain. When the filling was done he patted the soil into a rough mound.
"I'm going back to the house for a beer," he told Lillian. "You coming?"
She shook her head. "Last respects," she muttered.
He left her among the trees and headed back across the lawn to the house. As he walked, he thought of Carys. She must be awake by now, surely, though the curtains at the window were still drawn. How fine to be a bird, he thought, to peer through the gap in the curtains and spy on her stretching naked on the bed, sloth that she was, her arms thrown up above her head, fur at her armpits, fur where her legs met. He walked into the house wearing a smile and an erection.
He found Pearl in the kitchen, told her he was hungry, and went upstairs to shower. When he came down again she had a cold spread laid out for him: beef, bread, tomatoes. He dug in with a will.
"Seen Carys this morning?" he asked, mouth crammed.
"No," she replied. She was at her most uncommunicative today, her face pinched up with some fermenting grievance. He wondered, watching her move around the kitchen, what she was like in bed: for some reason he was full of dirty thoughts today, as if his mind, refusing to be depressed by the burial, was eager for uplifting sport. Chewing on a mouthful of salted beef he said:
"Was it veal you fed the old man last night?"
Pearl didn't look up from her labors as she said: "He didn't eat last night. I left fish for him, but he didn't touch it."
"But he had meat," Marty said. "I finished it off for him. And strawberries."
"He must have come down and got those for himself. Always strawberries," she said. "He'll choke on them one of these days."
Now Marty came to think of it, Whitehead had said something about his guest providing the meat.
"It was good, whatever it was," he said.
"None of my doing," Pearl said, offended as a wife discovering her husband's adultery.
Marty put the conversation to rest; it was no use trying to raise her spirits when she was in this kind of mood.
The meal finished, he went up to Carys' room. The house was pin-drop stilclass="underline" after the lethal farce of the previous night it had regained its composure. The pictures that lined the staircase, the carpets underfoot, all conspired against any rumor of distress. Chaos here was as unthinkable as a riot in an art gallery: all precedent forbade it.
He knocked on Carys' door, lightly. There was no answer, so he knocked again, more loudly this time.
"Carys?"
Perhaps she didn't want to speak to him. He'd never been able to predict from one day to the next whether they were lovers or enemies. Her ambiguities no longer distressed him, however. It was her way of testing him, he guessed, and it was fine by him as long as she finally admitted that she loved him more than any other fucker on the face of the earth.
He tried the handle; the door wasn't locked. The room beyond was empty. Not only did it not contain Carys, it contained no trace of her existence there. Her books, her toiletries, her clothes, her ornaments, everything that marked out the room as hers had been removed. The sheets had been stripped from the bed, the pillowcases from the pillow. The bare mattress looked desolate.
Marty closed the door and started downstairs. He'd asked for explanations more than once and he'd been granted precious few. But this was too much. He wished to God Toy was still around: at least he'd treated Marty as a thinking animal.
Luther was back in the kitchen, his feet up on the table among a clutter of unwashed dishes. Pearl had clearly left her province to the barbarians.
"Where's Carys?" was Marty's first question.
"You never quit, do you?" Luther said. He stubbed out his cigarette on Marty's lunch plate, and turned a page of his magazine.
Marty felt detonation approaching. He'd never liked Luther, but he'd taken months of sly remarks from the bastard because the system forbade the kind of response he really wanted to give. Now that system was crumbling, rapidly. Toy gone, dogs dead, heels on the kitchen table: who the hell cared any longer if he beat Luther to pulp?
"I want to know where Carys is."
"No lady by that name here."
Marty took a step toward the table. Luther seemed to sense that his repartee had gone sour. He slung down the magazine; the smile disappeared.
"Don't get edgy, man."
"Where is she?"
He smoothed the page in front of him, palm down across the sleek nude. "She's gone," he said.
"Where?"
"Gone, man. That's all. You deaf, stupid, or both?"
Marty crossed the kitchen in one second flat and hauled Luther out of his chair. Like most spontaneous violence, there was no grace in it. The ragged attack threw them both off-balance. Luther half-fell back, an outflung arm catching a coffee cup, which leaped and smashed as they staggered across the kitchen. Finding his balance first, Luther brought his knee up into Marty's groin.
"Je-sus!"
"You get your fucking hands off me, man!" Luther yelled, panicked by the outburst. "I don't want no fight with you, right?" The demands became a plea for sanity-"Come on, man. Calm down."
Marty replied by launching himself at the other man, fists flying. A blow, more chance than intention, connected with Luther's face, and Marty followed through with three or four punches to stomach and chest. Luther, stepping back to avoid this assault,- slid in cold coffee and fell. Breathless and bloodied, he stayed down on the floor where he was safe, while Marty, eyes streaming from the blow to his balls, rubbed his aching hands.
"Just tell me where she is..." he gasped.
Luther spat out a wad of blood-tinted phlegm before speaking.