Beloved (30 page)

Jane felt uncomfortable with the way the talk was going, so she said nothing.

They ate in silence until Mac put down his fork.
His
repast, at least, was over.

As for Jane, she
'
d hardly eaten a thing and wasn
'
t hungry. When she was around the man, her stomach invariably rearranged itself into a tight little knot. Suddenly she wanted to go home and maybe have an Alka-Seltzer.

"
Well, I think it
'
s time for me to head on home,
"
she said, almost timidly.
"
It
'
s been a heckuva long day.
"

He looked startled, but stood up and said politely,
"
Can I give you a lift?
"

She declined with a smile, and he saw her to the kitchen door. Obviously a farm family
'
s habit was never to use the front door; she wondered how that sat with Celeste when she
'
d been living in the house. They stepped outside together and stood in the dull halo of the porch light. The night was very fine.

"
I can
'
t get over how many stars there are out here,
"
she said wonderingly.
"
Even the moon can
'
t dim them. It
'
s like being on a ship at
sea, away from the highways ... the sirens ..
. all the din and clatter. What a wonderful little speck of the universe this island is.
"

"
Have you ever been to sea?
"
he asked her. He was standing beside her, scanning the skies, his hands in his pockets, oblivious to the chill night air.

"
Well, yes, once,
"
she answered vaguely. With her parents, on the
QE II,
in the South Pacific. Probably it wouldn
'
t be smart to go into detail.
"
What about you?
"

"
I did a hitch in the Navy. But I
'
m not all that keen on the sea, despite being born on an island. A lot of my friends are fishermen; I guess they
'
re more masochistic than I am.
"
He looked around at his land, so cruelly cut off from the road, and laughed under his breath.
"
But not
much
more.
"
He turned back to her.
"Well ..
.
"

It was her cue. She stuck out her hand.
"
Today was a bumpy day; tomorrow will be better.
"

Again she felt the surprisingly rough texture of his callused palm around hers.
"
First thing, I
'
ll take out the holly.
"

Jane pulled out her mittens from her pocket, dropping one. She went down, and he went down, to retrieve it. Her cheek brushed close to his, so close that she could smell a faint, faint whiff of his aft
ershave. A wave of poignant nos
talgi
a
washed over her, mixed with an almost shaking awareness of his nearness. The combination left her lightheaded and off balance as she rose to her feet. He handed her the mitten. She thanked him and wished him good night again and turned away, striking out down the dark and potholed lane that led past the row of tall, brooding arborvitae and on to her house.

Old Spice.
That
'
s what Mac was wearing. When Jane was a little girl she
'
d bought it for her father, Christmas after Christmas. She was a teenager before she learned the awful truth: her father never wore aftershave. Even now, she occasionally wondered what he did with all those bottles.
Old Spice.
How touching that Mac wore every little girl
'
s affordable idea of a Christmas present. She smiled to herself
.
Too bad he
'
d never had a daughter.

Jane was halfway between Mac
'
s house and hers now, abreast of the burying ground. It seemed much darker in this part of the lane. She began slowing her pace, not only to feel her way around the potholes, but to keep all her senses alert. It was comforting to know that the Cursed Rose was in the Quaker Burial Ground and not in this one —
but not very. Jane cursed her fearfulness under her breath, knowing that once she gave in to a sense of dread, it would be impossible to drive it away.

Maybe I should try whistling past the graveyard.

She pursed her ups in an arbitrary collection of notes; for the life of her, she could not think of a tune. The quavering sounds seemed to do nothing more than call attention to her presence. She dropped the idea; it seemed pretty dumb. Eventually she got past the trees and into a clearing. With the help of the moon, she was able to make her way with greater ease
—
until a cloud came slouching along, plunging her back into an eerie, creepy darkness.

Bing would
'
ve
insisted
on driving me home,
she told herself petulantly.

Without
thinking about
it, she
'
d slipped her mittens off and balled her right hand around her keys in the classic urbanite
'
s grip, with one key protruding between the third and fourth fingers.

My God. I
'
m preparing for a possible attack.
It was an appalling realization: She was slipping back into the hypervigilant state of a city dweller.
This is
Nantucket
, she insisted to herself.
Anyway, what good are keys against a ghost?

She thought she heard a rustle behind her. She stopped and swung sharply around; but there was nothing. She thought she saw something in her peripheral vision, but there, too, she came up empty. She quickened her pace, forcing herself not to break into a panicky run, and that
'
s when she heard the sound, even over the pattern of her own labored breath: a kind of ghastly, sickening snuffle.

Terrified, Jane gave in to the panic and ran, driven utterly by fear. Her heart seemed to constrict; her breath felt sucked from her chest. She was running blindly, in danger with every step of tripping into a muddy pothole. She hadn
'
t got very far down the rutted lane when she felt a heavy sideways force on her thigh; it threw her off balance, forcing her to stumble to a stop.

It turned out to be
—
who else?
—
Buster, curious to know whether she was after racoon or other, bigger game. He looked up at her with that semi-intelligent face of his.
Where we goin
'
? Where we goin
'
?

"
Oh, God, Bu
ster, you scared the living ..
.
"
Jane bent down and gave him some rubs behind his ears, less angry than relieved; right now, he was looking like pretty decent company.

She kept him close by her for the rest of the way, calling his name softly and pet
ting him indulgently whenever h
e trotted back to her side. So shaken was she by her night walk that she brought the dog into the house with her again. Earlier she
'
d picked up some Alpo at the A&P, because that
'
s the brand she remembered Lorne Greene had told her to buy, and now she put out a bowl of it. Buster slurped down the food while Jane cleaned up the dishes from earlier in the day.

She decided she wanted a bath, so she went into the bathroom and began running bath water. Buster followed her in and helped himself to a long drink from the toilet bowl. Jane headed for the bedroom to get her pajamas and robe, with Buster tagging loyally behind her.

Until she actually went into the bedroom.

Buster refused to go in after her. His steps became tentative, then stopped altogether at the doorway. His ears flattened on his lowered head and a low, ominous sound came from somewhere deep in his throat. Jane had never heard the sound before from him; it made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. His whole body seemed to skulk and cower, as if he wanted to run but didn
'
t dare turn his back on what he saw.

And he did see something: he was staring at the rocking chair in the corner of Jane
'
s bedroom. It was a pretty chair, very old; Jane would sit in it once in a while, with a cup of tea.

"
Buster, come here,
"
she beckoned softly. But Buster did not move; he continued to stare intently at the rocker with flattened ears and what Jane could only describe as a teeth-clenched howl. She stood there a long moment, poised between him and the rocking chair. She herself felt nothin
g; no presence, no sense of ..
. anything. She walked slowly over to the rocker and gingerly lowered herself into it. Nothing.

"
Come here, Buster,
"
she coaxed.

But Buster would not come in.

J
ane knew a thing or two about apparitions. She knew that people who saw them claimed they were accompanied by a sour smell
...
or a chill movement of air
...
or a deep sense of unease. She
'
d felt something of that sense of unease whenever she was in, or even around, the burying ground; but no such feelings were bothering her now. The air in the bedroom was cozy and warm, and smelled of nothing more sinister than potpourri. Buster, of course, was scaring her plenty; but Buster was the only one.

She left the chair and called repeatedly to the dog, but he kept staring at the empty rocker, ignoring her. Eventually he stopped his moaning howl and turned cautiously away, head held low, tail between his legs, glancing behind him until he was safely down the hall and down the stairs. Jane remembered that she was running bath water and dashed into the bathroom before the inevitable flood. She took her bath, went to bed, slept unusually soundly, and didn
'
t wake up until she heard the rumble of the John Deere in front of the house.

In a moment Jane was up and getting dressed. She was very aware that she
'
d said nothing so far to Mac of the creepy series of events that had become part of life in Lilac Cottage. She wanted to tell him about last night. After all, he was a man of the earth; he
'
d know if Buster was just baying at the moon or not.

But something held her back. For one thing, she still didn
'
t
—
quite
—
trust Mac. He was so full of hostility; who knew where it might lead him? Anyway, even assuming that none of the pranks was his doing, he simply wasn
'
t the kind of man who
'
d accept some weird interpretation of ordinary events
—
she found
that
out after being scratched by the rose. Mac McKenzie would demand proof of a perpetrator: photos, tape recordings, eyewitness accounts by sober groups of ten or more. No, Jane was not yet ready to confide to him her bizarre little tales.

Mac was sitting in the tractor seat. The morning was mild and he wore no hat. He greeted her as he always did, with a slightly ironic, squinty hello. He
'
d already positioned the tractor so that the spade was encircling the male holly, ready for lifting. Jane went up to him and asked him if he needed any help.

He nodded.
"
Keep an eye on the house; make sure I don
'
t bang it up getting the holly out. Watch for buried wires or pipes, although we should be okay there.
"
He showed her two or three hand signals to use, and Jane took up her position.

Mac set to work on the hydraulic controls, lowering the huge steel spades into the ground to a depth of several feet. The spades sliced through the damp earth like butter, cutting through whatever roots lay in their path. Jane stood alongside, watching for problems, awed by the mechanical ruthlessness of the machine.

By the time Mac got down from the tractor to take a closer look, Jane was having serious misgivings.

"
Can a tree really survive this kind of thing? Do you think we ought to have waited for a better time? What if something goes wrong? I
'
d never forgive myself.
"

"
Neither would I,
"
he said.