Elphis had landed on top of my wife’s body, but Arlette’s grinning face was still perfectly visible, still tilted up to the sunlit world above, still seeming to look at me. And the rats had come back. The cow falling into their world had doubtless caused them to retreat into the pipe I would eventually come to think of as Rat Boulevard, but then they had smelled fresh meat, and had come hurrying out to investigate. They were already nibbling at poor old Elphis as she lowed and kicked (more feebly now), and one sat on top of my dead wife’s head like an eldritch crown. It had picked a hole in the burlap sack and pulled a tuft of her hair out with its clever claws. Arlette’s cheeks, once so round and pretty, hung in shreds.
Nothing can be any worse than this, I thought. Surely I’ve reached the end of horror.
But yes, there are always worse things waiting. As I peered down, frozen with shock and revulsion, Elphis kicked out again, and one of her hoofs connected with what remained of Arlette’s face. There was a snap as my wife’s jaw broke, and everything below her nose shifted to the left, as if on a hinge. Still the ear-to-ear grin remained. That it was no longer aligned with her eyes made it even worse. It was as if she now had two faces to haunt me with instead of just one. Her body shifted against the mattress, making it slide. The rat on her head scurried down behind it. Elphis lowed again. I thought that if Henry came back now, and looked into the well, he would kill me for making him a part of this. I probably deserved killing. But that would leave him alone, and alone he would be defenseless.
Part of the cap had fallen into the well; part of it was still hanging down. I loaded my rifle, rested it on this slope, and aimed at Elphis, who lay with her neck broken and her head cocked against the rock wall. I waited for my hands to steady, then pulled the trigger.
One shot was enough.
Back in the house, I found that Henry had gone to sleep on the couch. I was too shocked myself to consider this strange. At that moment, he seemed to me like the only truly hopeful thing in the world: soiled, but not so filthy he could never be clean again. I bent and kissed his cheek. He moaned and turned his head away. I left him there and went to the barn for my tools. When he joined me three hours later, I had pulled the broken and hanging piece of the well-cap out of the hole and had begun to fill it in.
“I’ll help,” he said in a flat and dreary voice.
“Good. Get the truck and drive it out to the dirtpile at West Fence—”
“By myself?” The disbelief in his voice was only faint, but I was encouraged to hear any emotion at all.
“You know all the forward gears, and you can find reverse, can’t you?”
“Yes—”
“Then you’ll be fine. I’ve got enough to be going on with in the meantime, and when you come back, the worst will be over.”
I waited for him to tell me again that the worst would never be over, but he didn’t. I recommenced shoveling. I could still see the top of Arlette’s head and the burlap with that terrible picked-over tuft sticking out of it. There might already be a litter of newborn ratlings down there in the cradle of my dead wife’s thighs.
I heard the truck cough once, then twice. I hoped the crank wouldn’t kick back and break Henry’s arm.
The third time he turned the crank, our old truck bellowed into life. He retarded the spark, gunned the throttle a time or two, then drove away. He was gone for almost an hour, but when he came back, the truck’s bed was full of rocks and soil. He drove it to the edge of the well and killed the engine. He had taken off his shirt, and his sweat-shiny torso looked too thin; I could count his ribs. I tried to think when I’d last seen him eat a big meal, and at first I couldn’t. Then I realized it must have been breakfast on the morning after we’d done away with her.
I’ll see that he gets a good dinner tonight, I thought. I’ll see that we both do. No beef, but there’s pork in the icebox “Look yonder,” he said in his new flat voice, and pointed.
I saw a rooster-tail of dust coming toward us. I looked down into the well. It wasn’t good enough, not yet. Half of Elphis was still sticking up. That was all right, of course, but the corner of the bloodstained mattress was also still poking out of the dirt.
“Help me,” I said.
“Do we have enough time, Poppa?” He sounded only mildly interested.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Don’t just stand there, help me.”
The extra shovel was leaning against the side of the barn beside the splintered remains of the well-cap. Henry grabbed it, and we began shoveling dirt and rocks out of the back of the truck as fast as ever we could.
When the County Sheriff’s car with the gold star on the door and the spotlight on the roof pulled up by the chopping block (once more putting George and the chickens to flight), Henry and I were sitting on the porch steps with our shirts off and sharing the last thing Arlette James had ever made: a pitcher of lemonade. Sheriff Jones got out, hitched up his belt, took off his Stetson, brushed back his graying hair, and resettled his hat along the line where the white skin of his brow ended and coppery red took over. He was by his lonesome. I took that as a good sign.
“Good day, gents.” He took in our bare chests, dirty hands, and sweaty faces. “Hard chorin’ this afternoon, is it?”
I spat. “My own damn fault.”
“Is that so?”
“One of our cows fell in the old livestock well,” Henry said.
Jones asked again, “Is that so?”
“It is,” I said. “Would you want a glass of lemonade, Sheriff? It’s Arlette’s.”
“Arlette’s, is it? She decided to come back, did she?”
“No,” I said. “She took her favorite clothes but left the lemonade. Have some.”
“I will. But first I need to use your privy. Since I turned fifty-five or so, seems like I have to wee on every bush. It’s a God damned inconvenience.”
“It’s around the back of the house. Just follow the path and look for the crescent moon on the door.”
He laughed as though this were the funniest joke he’d heard all year, and went around the house. Would he pause on his way to look in the windows? He would if he was any good at his job, and I’d heard he was. At least in his younger days.
“Poppa,” Henry said. He spoke in a low voice.
I looked at him.
“If he finds out, we can’t do anything else. I can lie, but there can’t be anymore killing.”
“All right,” I said. That was a short conversation, but one I have pondered often in the eight years since.
Sheriff Jones came back, buttoning his fly.
“Go in and get the Sheriff a glass,” I told Henry.
Henry went. Jones finished with his fly, took off his hat, brushed back his hair some more, and reset the hat. His badge glittered in the early-afternoon sun. The gun on his hip was a big one, and although Jones was too old to have been in the Great War, the holster looked like AEF property. Maybe it was his son’s. His son had died over there.
“Sweet-smelling privy,” he said. “Always nice on a hot day.”
“Arlette used to put the quicklime to it pretty constantly,” I said. “I’ll try to keep up the practice if she stays away. Come on up to the porch and we’ll sit in the shade.”
“Shade sounds good, but I believe I’ll stand. Need to stretch out my spine.”
I sat in my rocker with the PA cushion on it. He stood beside me, looking down. I didn’t like being in that position but tried to bear up patiently. Henry came out with a glass. Sheriff Jones poured his own lemonade, tasted, then gulped most of it down at a go and smacked his lips.
“Good, isn’t it? Not too sour, not too sweet, just right.” He laughed. “I’m like Goldilocks, aren’t I?” He drank the rest, but shook his head when Henry offered to refill his glass. “You want me pissing on every fencepost on the way back to Hemingford Home? And then all the way to Hemingford City after that?”
“Have you moved your office?” I asked. “I thought you were right there in the Home.”