'Grail ate the trash already. Now he's run off to the woods.' The unspoken question dangled - should Lynn abandon the mutt and drive to the hospital, or embark on a cross-country bushwhack?
'You'd better find him, I suppose.' In the background, over the faintly heard tones of a nurse and a doctor conversing, Ann said, 'Just a minute.' A muffled roar as her hand smothered the receiver. She came back, tiredly resigned. 'There's little enough to do here, anyway.'
'Hang on,' said Lynn. 'I'll join you soon as I can.' She dropped the receiver in its cradle, swearing like a sailor, because at that moment she hated life. She ached from sad certainty that Ann wanted her off to find the dog because even now she held out for a miracle. Outraged motherhood would not accept that Sandy's final hour must happen soon. He would not wake up, recover, and come home; but as long as life still lingered, it was unthinkable to Ann not to have a dog waiting, to bark and lick Sandy's hands in greeting.
'Damn, damn, damn,' said Lynn, her eyes now dry to her fury, and her insides clenched in misery. 'There ought to be a law against mothers outliving their children.'
But there was no law, beyond the one outside the window, in cycles eternally unaffected. Nature wove all of spring's fabric of rebirth, in the flight of nesting barn swallows, and in the sunlight falling immutably gold over maples crowned with unfolded leaves.
Lynn shoved up from the desk, returned to the kitchen, and dug through the clutter of children's drawings and coupons for the spare ring of keys. She locked up a house made cozy for living, but that echoed empty as a tomb. She slammed the door, set the dead bolt, and crossed the back yard to the woods in a blaze of targetless anger.
For Ann, and for Sandy's memory, she'd find the blasted dog.
Grail was the sort who tore up great grouts of earth with his hind feet just after he defecated. Assuredly no tracker, Lynn nonetheless could not miss the divots chopped out of the grass and raked in showers across the patio as evidence of Grail's blithe passage. A smeared print or two remained in the mud by the swing-set; these pointed unerringly into the shade, and should have been companioned by the sneaker treads of a young boy, were it Saturday, and Sandy not mortally ill.
Lynn crossed the dried weeds that edged the sandbox. Dandelions pushed yellow heads through the stalks of last year's burdock. The woods lay beyond, and through them, well trodden by young boys, was the path that led to the fort they had built out of sticks. The birches threw out new leaves, pale lit in sunlight as doubloons. The path was strewn with the drying wings of fallen maple seeds, and snarled mats of rotted twigs. If a dog had passed, nose to ground on the scent of a possum or hot after the tails of running squirrels, no sign remained. The path dipped toward the stream, the soft, moss-grown banks speared by unfurling shoots of skunk cabbage, and ranked on drier soil, the half-spread umbrellas of May apples. Across the narrow current lay the fort. Lynn paused. Naturally the water was high at this season, last summer's stepping stones washed out or submerged.
A fallen log offered the only crossing and an exercise in balance not attempted since childhood. Hesitation over a patch of wet bark cost her a slip. Lynn splashed knee-deep in a sink-hole. One leg of her jeans, one sock, and one expensive designer sneaker became as icily sodden as her mood.
Hating Grail with fresh energy, she sat, and skinned the rest of the way across on her fanny. The far bank was reached without mishap beyond a torn pocket and sadly tattered dignity.
Longingly she mused upon clothing that was pastel and fluffy. The smell of the oil-stained anorak made her feel off, and if the staff in the office were to see her, their worship of her unflappable grooming would suffer a shock beyond salvage. Well, they could all perish of missed deadlines,
Lynn thought venomously, and she smiled as she arose and dusted off particles of bark.
Winter had not been kind to the lean-to that comprised the boys' fort. Snow load had caved in the roof. One wall sagged inward, and the wooden shield on which Sandy had sketched his make-believe coat of arms rested on the ground, weathered bare of poster paint. The unicorn lay dulled to shabby gray. A rusty can contained water, black leaves, and assorted bent nails. Beyond a snarl of moldered string and a burst cushion, a trash bin still held whittled sticks, imaginatively fleshed out as lances. Sad pennons decked the ends, cut from old pillow slips that dampness had freckled with mildew.
Nowhere, anywhere, was there sign or sound of Grail.
Lynn sighed and sat down on a boulder. She listened to the chuckle of the stream, wiggled toes that squelched in the wet sneaker, and finally undid the laces. Her hands got chilled as she wrung out her cuff and her sock. The gravel and mud ingrained in the knit she could do little about; too depressed for annoyance, she hoped the stores still carried laces to coordinate with last year's fashion colors. She shoved her wet calf to warm in a patch of sunlight, and cupped her chin in her palms.
A catbird in its plain gray squalled outrage from a maple. Lynn watched its discontent, abstracted.
How foolish to feel sloppy in jeans and no makeup on a weekday. Now adorned in mud, bits of bark, and dead leaves, her own problems seemed dwindled to insignificance. The man she'd hoped would become serious, who'd never phoned through to Ann's to inquire; the silly stresses abandoned at the office; her boss's tantrum at her leaving; all these seemed reduced, re-framed in the triteness of a sitcom.
By contrast, Ann's efforts at handling the pending loss of her boy seemed unapproachable; as pitiless and futile as a modern-day search to define the true Chalice of Christ. Everywhere one turned lay Sandy's memory; and where recollection had not trodden, new things cut the heart no less fiercely. The awareness never ceased, that this sight, or that fresh experience, could have stirred the boy to delight.
For two years, he'd had so little, between the doctors and the treatments, and the jail-like isolation necessary to shelter him from infection.
Lynn slapped her wet pants leg. Days like this, under spring sunshine with the hope ripped out from under all of them, she felt like suing Almighty God, that He would allow a little boy to be born, solely to suffer anguish and die. New age philosophies and spiritual metaphors simply ceased to have meaning, when Sandy had sat straight with pencil clenched in hand, demanding impossible wishes.
His own way of asking, perhaps, for something the healthy otherwise took for granted. A fit of rebellion, that life, for him, was as unreachable a dream as a quest in historical legend.
That moment, the rusty, deep-throated bay that was Grail's split the woodland stillness. Jolted to recovery of her purpose, Lynn jammed on her shoe and stood up. The sound came again, from upstream. She jogged, her wet sneaker squishing, and hoped the mutt hadn't flushed a deer. Grail might run dead crooked, his hind legs flailing crabwise a foot offset from his forepaws, but he could go on tireless for miles. As the damp sock wadded up on her heel and began instantly to chafe a new blister, Lynn determined she was not going to chase that dog one step further than her breath lasted.
That promise she broke in sixty seconds.
In the ten minutes it took to track Grail down, she raked one arm on a briar, and ruined her other sneaker in a slithering step across a pit of black mud between swamp hummocks.
The sight of Grail gave no cheer.
He was wet, had been rolling in something nameless and noisome, and his coat was screwed into wiry ringlets like an Airedale's. His butt was raised, burr-coated tail waving like a whip, and his snout was jammed to the eyeballs in the cleft of a half-rotted stump.
Lynn flagged back to a walk. 'Grail!'
The dog yiped, inhaled mold, and loosed a forceful sneeze into the stump. The beat of his tail increased tempo; beyond that, her summons was ignored.
Lynn walked up beside him. 'Grail,' she snapped. 'Unwedge your face and come here.'
Moist brown eyes rolled in her direction. Grail gave another muffled bark.
'I damned well don't want to share in your hunt for snails!' Lynn reached out, twined two fists in the dank ruff, and pulled.
Grail's hide rolled like bread dough, gave and peeled back until his bones seemed suspended in a bladder. She dragged him stiff-legged out of the cleft, and wondered belatedly whether he had a skunk or a muskrat held cornered and angry inside.
That possibility shortened her temper. Manhandling the dog like an alligator wrestler, Lynn hauled back from the stump.
'Bless my buttons and whiskers!' piped a voice over Grail's frustrated whining. From the inside of the stump, somebody waspishly continued, it's long enough you took then, silly dog, to heed the plain voice of reason.'
Grail yapped. Lynn started, and all but lost grip on his hair as the animal scrabbled frantically forward. Jerked off balance, her uncut bangs caught in her eyelashes, Lynn glimpsed the absolute impossible: a little brown man about three inches high stepped smartly out of the tree stump.
He had red cheeks, and chestnut whiskers that unfurled like frost-burned moss over a green waistcoat buttoned with brass. He wore leather boots, tan leggings, and a rakish cap topped with a jay's feather. At sight of Lynn, he shrieked in high-pitched anger.
She had no chance to stay startled. Grail tore out of her hands in a snarling bound, and as the man skipped backward in agile panic, rammed his muzzle back into the cleft with staccato, hair-raising yaps.
Knocked to her knees by the fracas, Lynn sat heavily on her rump. 'Jesus Christmas!' She wasn't in the habit of having hallucinations; particularly ones of muskrats looking like little brown men who wore green waistcoats and talked. Where paired-off folk made decisions by compromise and committee, she had learned,
living alone, to call her shots
as they came.
She scrambled up out of the leaves and hit Grail in a shoulder tackle. He bucked, he heaved, he whined in piteous protest. After a lot of Scratching and flying sticks, she managed to drag him aside. She then placed her face where the dog's had been, and, ignoring Grail's muddy nose as it poked at: her neck and ear, looked into the dim cranny with its rings of old fungus and spider webs.
She almost caught a stick in the eye, one with a brass shod tip, brandished by the furious little man. She yelled at the scrape on her cheek. He stumbled back with raised eyebrows, cursing in a language she'd never heard.
Certainly he was real enough to draw blood. Lynn dabbed at her face, while the man stepped back. Apologetic, he tucked his stick under one jacketed arm and spoke. 'Ah, miss, so it's you.' His skin was seamed like a walnut shell, and his eyes upon her might have been merry had he not been bristling with indignation, it's a wish you'll be wanting, I presume. Though far likely it is I'd rather treat for my freedom with the dog.'
'That can be arranged.' Sourly, Lynn licked a bloody fingertip, and swore.
Pressed and heaving at her shoulder, Grail sensed her shift in attitude. He rammed in for another go at the stump, while the little man hopped and shrieked.
'Wait! Wait! Lady, I misspoke myself, I did truly. Pull off that dog, do please. For your own Christian conscience, let me go.'
Damp, dirty, and possessed by a sense of unreality that yielded an irritation equal to her captive's, Lynn said, 'Why should I?'
The little man folded his arms. He puffed out his cheeks, looking at once diffident and crafty. He shuffled his boots, whacked his stick against the walls of his wooden prison, and finally faced her. 'Well,' he conceded. 'There is the wee matter of a wish. You do have me caught, not so fairly, mind! But it's trapped I would be, I suppose, if you slipped your hold on that hound.'
'And so I get a wish?' Lynn suppressed a rise of hysterical laughter. The strain, the surprise, the total weirdness of what was taking place smashed her off balance in a rush. 'I need no wishes granted,' she said tartly, and finished, defiantly flippant, with the thought uppermost in her mind, it's Sandy's wish needs the attention.'
'Ah!' The brown man sighed. He sidled, leaned a shoulder against the stump wall and frowned with a bushy furrow of brows. 'A sick boy, it is, who begs a visit to Arthur's Round Table?' He gave a cranky shrug in reply to Lynn's astounded stare, and his anger swiftly melted to sad compassion. 'You do know, miss, that yon one is soon to die.'
The grief hit hard and too fast, that even a supernatural figment in the form of a finger-sized man could know and be helpless before incurable disease. Lynn choked back sudden tears.
The man strove quickly to console her. 'Ah, miss, it's not so very hopeless as all that. Just hard. You ken how it is in this creation. Every living creature must choose its time and its place. Such is the maker's grand way. Your boy, now, Sandy. If he's to have what he desires, somebody's going to have to convince him to change his mind.' The stick moved and slapped boot leather in reproof. 'Somebody being me, no doubt. That's hard work, just for a wish. Hard work.' He pinned her again with dark, restless eyes, his annoyance grown piquant as she opened her mouth, perhaps to ridicule; surely, foolishly to question. Humans did that, would in fact spit on good fortune when, like Grail, it bounded its way through their front door.
'Be still, now,' snapped the man. 'Let me think! It's
my
freedom
I'm
wanting, and yon's a muckle hard course you've set me if
I
'm going to fix a way to win it!'