It was the dead of summer and Saint Roch was ravaging the flowerbed. He buried his nose in the dirt, which was black and cold, and ripped away tulips with his teeth, crushing them in his mouth and scattering their petals which fell at his paws like pigeon feathers. In a few minutes’ work the flowerbed was a wasteland running ten feet along the church’s northern wall, and when not a single tulip was left standing, Saint Roch trotted off in search of further amusement. The silver pendant that hung from his neck—it wasn’t a collar-tag, because it bore the likeness of his namesake instead of a name and phone number, like the tags of less renowned dogs—the pendant bounced against his chest, and flashed like a conqueror’s stolen jewel.
Across the street a man sat in an old Dakota truck, pale green, smoking the last in a series of cigarettes. He had been watching Saint Roch with great interest, and the dog had given him an idea. He turned the key of the Dakota, which started mercifully, and drove down to a florist’s shop where he bought a bouquet of flowers. There had been no tulips, so he purchased a cluster of white lilies offset by fringed green leaves and small violet roses. The roses reminded him of soap. He had meant, in part, to kill time, but he was there and back in twelve minutes.
He parked the Dakota across from the church and walked over. Above the annihilated flowerbed was a window that, he knew, opened to the rectory and was cracked on summer days. Before he would have had to choose between standing far enough from the window to be seen by someone inside the rectory and standing right in the middle of the flowers, crushing them, but now he was able to slink along the side of the wall and stand directly under the window, which was just above his head. He resisted a wry temptation to pray to the dog’s namesake saint. He set his bouquet, which was wrapped in a red, glossy foil cone, gently in the dirt.
The position was not ideal for eavesdropping. He could make out two voices, a man and a woman’s—that is, a girl’s—but they seemed to slip out from the window and float over his head like scraps of paper caught by wind. Intermittently, a phrase would sink on a current and he would catch it:
“—should I have done? I—but it never seemed that—the Mayflower, on Tuesdays and weekends mostly, but also—and then—Sometimes I feel as if it—mine—”
“—no, that is a coward’s way—a responsibility toward you, and if he—be ashamed, and—a shame, a shame. Have you been to—”
“Yes, but they said—six of them, above my left eye, here, and both of them black—spoken since, but I keep getting texts, and they say things like—baby, I’m so—ugh, I could throw—the lake.”
“—Angeline, Angeline—I know—how pain—seventy—the Lord—Angeline.”
His concentration was broken by a flutter of wind at his feet . In a moment the bouquet was gone, carried away by Saint Roch, who was bounding gleefully into the clearing behind the church strewing white lilies and soap-roses behind him. He might have outrun the man, if he had realized how grievous an iniquity he had committed, but instead he stopped short and pounced on the bouquet as soon as he reached the shade of nearby trees. He began to rip at the foil with his claws. Saint Roch was delighted to find that he could swallow the soap-roses nearly whole, with a minimum of gnawing.
It was a brief idyll. Only seconds later he was thrown to the ground and pinned on his back, too surprised even to whimper as he was struck, again and again, in the face and in the chest. Saint Roch struggled, but a knee was in his stomach, and he could not force his way out. He tried to bite at his attacker, but wherever his head turned his jaws closed on air. He had more success with his claws, which drew blood from the tops of the man’s arms, but he couldn’t land more than a glancing blow, and meanwhile he was in great pain. Blood from his snout ran into his eyes. He continued to lash out, wild and blind, unable to cry out from his paralyzed lungs, blood matted in the light fur of his chest and the thick fur of his neck, great strings of spit mixing with the blood and wetting his shoulders, his teeth useless, his powerful hind legs powerless, and at last he felt the shattering of a rib.
The man stopped: the bone snapped so easily, like a child’s might. His moment’s pause was enough to allow Saint Roch to bound free, but it took most of the dog’s remaining strength, and he limped off into the wood. He stopped behind a tree and peered around—he was not followed, and he put his shivering head down on his paws, relieved to not have to find the strength to run.
Instead, the man stood up and began to kick at the dirt. There was blood there—whose?—but no one would see it if the earth were turned up, and the churchyard was full of Saint Roch’s holes. He picked the torn flowers up one at a time and threw them in the flowerbed, where they might blend in with the sundered tulips. The scraps of foil he put in his pocket. Then he rolled down his sleeves to cover the blood on his forearms and made the sign of the cross.
When the doors of the church finally opened he was back in the Dakota. He could not tell where Saint Roch had gone, but the dog seemed to have recovered enough to limp away. A girl came out, stepping into the damp, bright August with her sunglasses already on and her left arm in a sling. Even as she was still walking to the truck, he could see that sweat, like misplaced shadows, streaked the sides of her blouse. “My god,” she said, “but that man can talk.” She climbed into the passenger seat.
“I thought you liked him.”
“Oh I do,” she said. “He talks too much, but he has a very calming face. He looks so young; it’s like talking to a child—you know how sometimes it calms you to talk to a child? They have so much optimism, or something. He has a face like that, ageless. I mean, does he look any older to you than he did ten years ago?”
“No,” he said. “Now that you mention it, he’s very young-looking.” On a long, carless stretch of road he looked over at her, taking, as he had done before, an inventory of her physical state. Her blouse was long-sleeved, which was strange for the weather. With her face turned toward the road, he thought he could see a reddish brim around her eyes, but in the shadow cast by her sunglasses—darkened further by the purpled skin of her eyelids and cheeks—he couldn’t be sure. She had never been the crying type, but it wasn’t beyond reason. “How’s your arm?” he asked.
“Hurts,” she said. “But I’ve got the prescription from Dr. Lorven in my pocketbook. Can I borrow the Dakota later to go pick it up?”
“I thought you went this morning,” he said. “Why didn’t you?”
“I wanted to ask you if I could borrow the truck, but I couldn’t get a hold of you. Don’t worry about, it’s not a big deal. I wasn’t going to take them this morning, anyway—how could I go to a priest all hopped up on downers like that? God, he’d think I was drunk or something. I’d probably knock over a censer and set the whole damn place on fire.”
“Well,” he said, “you don’t have to borrow it, unless you want to. I’ll take you right now.”
“Don’t bother,” she said. “I’ve got to go out, anyway.”
“I can take you to the police station, too,” he said. “Unless you don’t want me to.”
She laughed. “No, that’s all right. I’m not going.”
He considered this at some length. “Father Barnett convinced you not to?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “He tried, I suppose. In his way. He told me this long story about some woman who forgave her husband four hundred times. Or five hundred. I’m not sure; I wasn’t exactly following it. And he read from the Bible. If I had been on the fence about it I don’t think I’d be convinced, but I don’t think I was ever going to go. I mean, I thought about it, and I know we talked about it, but I just don’t think I have it in me.”
“If that’s what you want,” he said. He thought about it, and then added, “I’m sorry your talk with Father Barnett didn’t help.”
“It did help,” she said, “he has a calming face. I told you.”
“His face,” he said. “Got it. Yes, you can borrow the Dakota. Why do you need it?”
“I need to go to Roddy’s.”
He ran through a list of possible courses of action. He could stop the car with a murderous squeal, like in a movie, and turn and shout, “For what goddamn reason?” He could offer to go to Roddy’s house for her, and pick up whatever she needed. He could reach over and slap her. He settled on the least aggressive response: “You’re not staying there, I hope. You know you’re welcome to stay with me as long as you need.”
“Aw, thank you, big brother,” she said. “But I was already planning it. But I need to go and walk Flip and Flora. And pick up some things, if I can remember.”
“Flip and Flora? His dogs?”
“Oh, speaking of!” she said. “Do you know that dog that’s always hanging around the church? Saint Roch, the one that Father Barnett dotes on? And the Red Hat ladies are always feeding scraps to? That little squirrely woman, Father Barnett’s secretary, she came in and said that it had been beaten half to death. They had to take it to the emergency room—or whatever the vet equivalent of an emergency room is, I guess.”
“Beaten? Like, by a person? How does she know it wasn’t another dog?”
“She says she saw someone run off. That’s not the strangest thing, though,” she said. “Apparently the mystery attacker also tore up her newly planted flowerbed.”
“I see,” he said.
“I see,” she said, mocking. “I see. You don’t say. Indeed!”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know what to say. Why are you going to take care of Roddy’s dogs?”
“Well,” she said, “someone has to. He’s going to be at the Mayflower until late and he doesn’t have time between jobs to go and walk them. So I do it. And if I’m not there, who will? It isn’t the dog’s fault, after all.”
“Let me do it.”
“No,” she said, and fished a lighter out of her purse. She took one his cigarettes from the pack sitting on the dashboard.
“Don’t do that,” he said.
“Why?” she said. “Because their yours? Or because they’ll destroy my poor, virgin lungs?” She cupped it in her hands and lit it. “Do you know what Maura said to me last night? She said you’re emotionally stunted. Those are the words she used: emotionally stunted. God knows where she picked them up. Probably Dr. Oz. She said that it was unbelievable that you could walk in and see me ‘battered like some Kennedy-era housewife’ and stand there with your hands on your hips and say, ‘What happened?’” Her impression of the impression was flat, deadpan. “And she told me that there was something wrong with a brother who gets on my case every day about smoking cigarettes, but can’t find an ounce of rage when something like that happens.”
“I see,” he said. “What should I have done?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I didn’t say I agreed with her. I told her that you were a stoic. Very old school. Besides,” she said, tossing the mostly intact cigarette out the window, “her brother is eight years younger than she is and built like a grasshopper. What does she know?”
When they pulled up at his house he gave her his hand to help her shimmy, one-armed, out of the Dakota. “Holy shit!” she said. “What happened?” He looked down—spots of blood, the color of oil, showed on his shirtsleeves. She pulled him into the bathroom and took a bottle of hydrogen peroxide from beneath the sink. He pulled up his sleeves and exposed his wounds, which were deeper than he realized, and still leaking blood. Once she had washed and cleaned them, one-handed and gingerly, she wrapped them with the gauze she had brought home from the hospital.
“You know, it’s strange,” said Father Barnett. “I find myself in something of a parallel situation.” Adam studied his features. They were as childlike as Angeline had said—funny he had never noticed until now—and his very adult manner of sitting back in his great leather desk chair and crossing his legs, so that his thin ankles displayed his argyle socks, did nothing to make him seem older. He was holding a tumbler of clear liquid that Adam knew was seltzer water—he had been given one, too—and the general effect was of a child playing priest. “Do you know Saint Roch, the parish dog? He was attacked this morning outside in the yard. Miss Grembowicz saw the whole thing. Apparently she was too frightened to go out and confront the man, so she went straight to her little office to pray. When she went out there she found the poor thing limping around in the woods, trailing blood. It’s inconceivable. And it’s been rather hard on me—I’ve had him from a puppy.”
“It isn’t quite the same thing,” said Adam.
“No, it isn’t,” said Father Barnett with a nervous laugh. “You’re right. I certainly didn’t mean to imply that your sister is anything like Saint Roch. What happened to Angeline is infinitely worse. But isn’t it strange how we sometimes find it so easy to forgive others for what they do to us, but so difficult to forgive them for what they do to those dear to us? It’s not totally different, you have to admit.”
“But it isn’t up to me to be forgiving, is it, Father? I mean, Angeline can do the forgiving herself. The dog can’t, really.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Father Barnett. “Dogs are wiser and capable of more compassion than we give them credit for. I truly believe that. Who says they can’t be forgiving? Besides,” he added, “I think you’re wrong. We must learn to forgive when we are not the victim, because it is more difficult. Angeline’s forgiveness may matter more in the long run, but we too must be forgiving. Yes, I said we! I am just as angry as you are about it.”
“I’m sure you are, Father,” said Adam. “I think she may be farther along than any of us—did she tell you that she’s going over to his house tonight? To walk his dogs. I can’t imagine the kind of strength it takes to go back there, after all that.”
“Hmm,” said the priest. “How do you feel about that?”
“I trust her judgment,” said Adam. “And I don’t think that he’s going to be there. He’ll be at the Mayflower, all night. That’s why she has to walk them, actually.”
“Right, right. She said something along those lines. Do you think he treats his dogs well?”
“Excuse me?”
“His dogs,” said Father Barnett. “Do you think he abuses them? They say that cruelty to animals often prefigures cruelty to people. I read in an article that many serial killers start by killing stray cats, you know.”
“I don’t think he’s a serial killer.”
“No, of course not,” said Father Barnett. “But he has shown himself to be violent.”
“I don’t know, Father,” said Adam. “I think if the dogs were being abused, Angeline would have said something to me about it. Or done something about it herself. She’s always been that way. But about forgiveness—”
“Of course,” said Father Barnett. “You know, it won’t be easy, at first. There is much anger to work through.”
“How do you do it?” Adam asked. “How is it done? Is it just a matter of saying the words? Or is it a matter of feeling? And how can you force a feeling?”
They were interrupted by the phone ringing. Father Barnett answered it and listened quite solemnly, then said, “Thank you for letting me know,” and hung up. He sat at his desk in silence for what seemed like several minutes, and Adam wondered if he should repeat his question or let the priest’s moment of contemplation pass. Then, suddenly, the silence was interrupted by the crash of glass on the rectory wall, where Father Barnett had thrown his tumbler of seltzer water. The wood paneling was chipped and darkened by the splatter of water, flecks of which reached from the floor to the ceiling. Father Barnett picked up another tumbler from the side-table set on his right as if he were going to replace the one that was destroyed, but threw it at the wall, too, with an equivalent shatter. Then he put his face down on the desk behind his crossed arms.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his head rising after a short time. “That was the vet. It seems—it seems that Saint Roch’s wounds were too serious, and that he will have to be put down. What an awful world we live in! What a den of iniquity! It makes you hope for another flood sometimes, or the fire that God rained down on Sodom. Or that the ground will open up and swallow us whole.” Tears lingered in his eyes, then fell.
“Perhaps the man who did it was a tortured soul,” Adam suggested. “Maybe it was a reaction of momentary anger. Maybe he regrets it deeply.”
“Let us hope he does,” said Father Barnett. “Oh, you must think I’m awful throwing those glasses like that. I hope you don’t think I act like that all the time; I don’t. But that’s the way my anger took me. And they’re only glasses, after all.”
“I see,” said Adam. “Do you feel better?”
“Excuse me, Adam. What a poor servant of God I am being today! You are here for my counsel, and I’m bothering you with my own issues. Let me tell you a story. Maybe it will do us both some good.” He wiped his face with the sleeves of his shirt and tried to gather his dignity by sitting upright in his chair and resting his arms on the desk. “It isn’t my story, really, it belonged to my uncle, who used to sit in this office when he was priest. You remember him, I’m sure. He told me about a woman who used to belong to the parish who had a very difficult husband. He was a drinker, you see, and though he didn’t abuse her, he mistreated her in every other conceivable way. He would go out drinking at night and not come home until the morning, or stay away for days, and he would cheat on her with women he would meet in bars, and spent unheard amounts of money on alcohol, and presents for his girlfriends, and every now and then he would wreck the car, though he never did hurt himself or anyone else, thank the Lord. One day my uncle asked her how she could endure it, and do you know what she said? She said, ‘Father Barnett, does the Book of Matthew not tell us to forgive not seven times, but seventy times seven?’ And apparently she had been forgiving him for years, not just for the big things—the drinking, the girlfriends, the money, and I think there may have been some gambling in there, too—but for the little things, like when he would forget to pick up the laundry, or curse in front of the Ladies’ Auxiliary, or leave his pants hung over the banister instead of putting them in the laundry hamper. And all that time she had been keeping a count of how many time she had forgiven him, and once she reached 490—that’s seventy times seven, 490—she would leave him on the spot, forever.
“And so the years passed, and she kept a tally in her heart of all the wrongs he had done. Eventually he reached 489, and she packed a bag. But she found that it had become more difficult not to forgive—so when he broke a plate in the kitchen, she told herself that it wasn’t anything even worth forgiving, and besides, she couldn’t leave him because he broke a plate. He was rude to her mother, but she reasoned that he had had a difficult week at work and that he wasn’t trying to be malicious after all. He forgot to mow the lawn as she asked, but so what? And the number of times she forgave him slowly crept into the five-hundreds. And then one night she got a phone call: he had been in a car accident, and as she rushed down to the hospital she decided that as soon as she was sure that he would be all right she would leave him on the spot, because she knew in her heart that he had been drunk driving. And when she walked in to his hospital room, she saw him lying there, his arms in casts, hooked up to an IV and his head wrapped up—”
There was a knock at the door and a middle-aged woman entered. “Excuse me, Father,” she said. “But I’m about to go out and I was wondering if the church might be able to spare some money to replace the tulips in the flowerbed outside. As the only Catholic church in town, you know, I feel that we have a responsibility to put our best face on, so that—my god! That man!” She pointed at Adam. “That’s the man I saw! He’s the one that attacked the Saint Roch! And he tore up the flowerbed!”
“Miss Grembowicz,” said Father Barnett, “you must be mistaken. Adam has been a parishioner here for years—”
“I did it,” said Adam. “I’m sorry, Father. I don’t know what to say, but I can’t lie to you. I did it and I don’t know why. I had a bouquet of flowers you see, and—well, it doesn’t matter why. I don’t have a reason that makes sense to me, and I can’t expect it to make sense to you, either.”
He considered his options during a nervous, uneasy silence. Should he drop to his knees and beg for forgiveness? Should he get up and walk away, and leave Father Barnett to consider his apology? Or perhaps they should go straight to the confession booth.
“Miss Grembowicz,” Father Barnett said quietly, “I need to speak to Adam alone.”
When she left, the priest said, “Adam, I—” But that was as far as he got before his face twisted up and grew dark. “No, no,” he said mysteriously, and he picked up the phone receiver and hit three numbers. Adam took this as an opportunity to leave.
At home, he found Angeline at the kitchen table, in tears. It was a strange, strange sight. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Have the police been here?”
“The police?” she said. “God no, why would the police have been here? Jesus, Adam, did you call the police? You know I said I didn’t want to! I swear to God, if they come here, I’ll—”
“No,” he said, “I didn’t call them. It’s just that—never mind. I was confused. Are you okay?”
“No,” she said. “Roddy’s been texting me for hours. I haven’t written him back, but he won’t stop.”
“Turn your phone off,” he said. “Put it away. He can’t have anything worthwhile to say to you. He can’t seriously expect you to come back.”
“It isn’t that,” she said. “He isn’t asking for that. God, he’s such an idiot, he probably hasn’t even thought he has to ask it! No, he’s at the Mayflower, and he thought that he could get a ride home from one of his coworkers, but he can’t. And his aunt is out of town, and he has no one else to call. And it’s just like last night, when he needed me to pick him up in the Dakota, and I just forgot and turned my phone off and went to the movie with Maura.”
“You don’t owe him that,” Adam said. “You don’t owe him anything.”
“Owe him? Who said anything about owing anybody anything? It’s six miles from his house to the Mayflower and he’s still got that bad knee from Afghanistan. It nearly killed him to walk home last night, Adam, his knee was swollen up like a cantaloupe. He goes through such pain with that knee you can’t even imagine. And I can walk the dogs, but I don’t know if I can—”
“I’ll go,” he said. “Let me do it.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not yours to do.”
“Don’t argue,” he said. “I’ll do it. I want to do it.”
He came close enough to her that she could bury her head in the crook of his arm. He could feel the wetness of her tears on the fabric of his shirt and he thought, perversely, of the water dripping down the oak wall of the rectory. “Where have you been?” she asked.
When the dogs were walked and the medicine retrieved he took the Dakota out in the fog-ridden night with what he hoped was a clarity of purpose. He felt desperate to forgive and make penitence both, but there were no forms to sign and he could not, as Angeline could, find the threshold of the spirit that made such things clear. He was a practical man and had practical ideas, and so he decided that he would give the boy the Dakota.
It had a satisfying foolishness. Instead of picking him up and taking him home, he would simply hand him the keys to the truck. It was six miles from Roddy’s house to the Mayflower, but eight from the Mayflower to his own home and once the deed was done he could walk his long penitence. No, he would refuse the boy’s insistence to drive him home; besides, he couldn’t very well bring Roddy to the threshold of his own home where Angeline was—God willing—asleep, could he?.
It was nearly midnight but the Mayflower was still full when he walked up, keys in hand. It was a warm night and the outdoor tables were inviting to teenagers, still punch-drunk on the freedom of their summer evenings, and certain older folks prone to wild abandon. Mosquitoes thronged at antique globe-lights. Roddy did not seem to be among the aprons and paper hats.
As he passed by he heard a woman say to her companion, “You know, the one that always hangs around with that priest. A whole bunch of kids beat it to death, and vandalized one of the church walls, too. Never caught ‘em. Wouldn’t surprise me if they were here tonight…” He felt the color in his face rise and hurried past, turning his glance away.
He asked for Roddy. A stout man with a managerial look gestured to the back kitchen, which Adam took as permission to enter. A couple of cooks and a dishwasher—in the same aprons and hats—looked at him askance. He turned a corner where he found a long metal table half-laid with linen, where a young man was studying the ticker-tape of a cash register. He looked up as Adam approached, and his eyes seemed as white as the bare sleeves of his arms, whiter than his collared shirt. It was a look of surprise, and then fear, and then he took off through a near door.
Instinctively, Adam ran after him, calling out to wait, hold on, hear him out. Roddy led him through a miniature labyrinth of back rooms filled with toilet paper, ticker-tape, and old signage, dusty backrooms that may have been more practical when the restaurant was build sixty years ago. Roddy bound through like a man familiar with them, making sharp last-second turns into new rooms and at last, flinging open a pair of doors, out into the night. Together outside they crossed a short lawn and stumbled down a precipice toward the tree line, where they disappeared into the woods. Behind them, the hive-like murmur of the crowd, hidden behind the restaurant itself.
As they ran farther from the light the trees became almost unnavigable, and here where the territory was unfamiliar to both, Adam began to gain ground. He could see Roddy fighting with his apron, which was prone to getting caught on tree-limbs and bramble. His knee, too—the one Angeline said he had injured in the Army—was beginning to buckle and with each step he was listing farther to one side. “I don’t want to fight you,” Adam shouted as he pulled within reach, “I only came to give you something. A good thing—a gift!” But it was no good; it must have been baffling.
Soon they crossed through to a lightless span of clay ground. They were flanked by dark shapes, looming: bulldozers and backhoes, like sleeping brontosauruses. Weary and stumbling lopsidedly, Roddy turned around in a defensive crouch, and even in the poor light Adam could see that he looked like a man expecting his own murder. “Please,” Adam said, “I—”
But he was interrupted by the searing buzz of something hard passing by his face. It was a piece of pipe that Roddy had picked up in the mud and swung at him, but his balance had been poor and he faltered. “You sonofabitch!” Adam cried, and while the boy was still unsteady he pushed him down into the mud and fell on him. “You weak, pathetic, piece of absolute garbage!” He wrested the pipe out of the boy’s hands, which were thin and flailing, and began to strike at him. It was lighter in his hands than he expected, only PVC and not lead as it had seemed in the dark. Still, Roddy elbowed and bucked, protecting his face with the flanks of his wrists. Adam struck wildly, frustrated that the pipe could not fall harder.
“My wrist!” Roddy cried out. “I think it’s broken!”
Were those the first words he had said? Or had he been yelling out the entire time?
“It isn’t broken, you ass,” Adam said, rising to his feet. He took the pipe and swung it into blackness. “Get up.”
Roddy sat up in the clay and tested out his wrists.
“You idiot,” Adam said. “I came here to give you something. My truck.” He held the keys out and jangled them, as if it were proof.
“What?” Roddy said. “Why?”
“No questions,” Adam said. He thought for a moment and said, “I can’t exactly explain why.”
“Is it like, a ‘no hard feelings’ type thing?”
“No,” said Adam. “Definitely not. My feelings are still very hard.”
“What?”
“I’m giving you the truck because you don’t have one. And I don’t want you to walk six miles back and forth to work every day and inflame your knee. Your life will be better with a truck.”
“Won’t yours be worse?” Roddy asked.
“Yes,” Adam said. “I guess it will.”
“You’ve rigged it,” Roddy said. “There’s a bomb in it.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Or you’ll wait until I’ve driven off and call the police and tell them I stole it from you.”
Adam shook his head. “I could have you arrested already if I wanted. But Angeline doesn’t want to press charges.”
Roddy thought for a moment. This, his face showed, was unsettling but certainly true. “She doesn’t?” he asked. “Does that mean she’s okay?”
“Her radius is broken,” Adam said. “That’s the long bone in your forearm that stretches from your elbow to your palm, here. And she has two black eyes and a baker’s dozen worth of bruises on her arms and chest. And she spent all evening walking your dogs and crying about how you would get home from work.”
The boy hung his head. “I should treat her better,” he said. “I know that.”
“You won’t get the opportunity,” Adam said. “Her judgment is better than that.”
“So it’s a trade, then?” Roddy said, showing some reserve of fervor. “The truck for the girl? No sir, I don’t want it. You can’t buy me off with a—with a Dodge Dakota!”
“Look at me, Roddy,” Adam said. “Look into my eyes. You know it isn’t up to me.”
His hung his head again and let his shoulders sag beneath some horrible, invisible burden. A heavy truth. Slowly and carefully he lifted himself out of the clay and walked toward Adam, taking the keys from his hand. “Thank you,” he said, “for the truck. I’ll take care of it, keep it running well. I can do that sort of thing. Hey, it’s not a manual, is it?” Adam shook his head. “Good, I can only drive automatic. I’ll take care of it, and you’ll see. I’ll do better, and when she sees that she’ll change her mind. We’re meant to be.”
They walked silently back to the restaurant. It struck Adam as a right silence, the absence of unnecessary words that might cloud their understanding of what had happened. He had meant to do something, and he had done it, and there was no use talking. He could still perceive the bitterness of his loathing, but he was able to hold it at arm’s length.
In the parking lot, a police car, lights turning, was blocking the Dakota. A pair of policemen stood by it, peering through the window. His good deed left Adam chastened, and he walked toward them with a feeling sunken but clean. He had made forgiveness and now his penitence was to follow. “Excuse me officer,” he said. “Is there a problem?”
“Is this your car, sir?” one of them said.
“No,” Roddy beamed, the keys still in his hands. “It’s mine.”
Suddenly, they had Roddy turned around, his face planted on the Dakota window, his wrists—beginning to show black on their red welts, Adam saw—being handcuffed. He wailed in protest. “You promised!” he cried, and then when they read the charge to him, he let out a baffled mewl, bucking like he had in the clay, and Adam felt the same curious thrill he felt when striking at him with the pipe, and the same satisfaction as when he had beaten Saint Roch for devouring the flowers, and could not compel himself to object. In a brief moment it seemed as if the boy had broken free and was headed for the woods again but instead he collapsed with a howl, unable to clutch at his eyes. The policeman calmly clipped the pepper spray back onto his belt before they lifted Roddy into the cruiser and were gone. It all happened proverbially fast.
When they were gone, Adam climbed onto the hood of the Dakota to sit and think. The restaurant patrons resumed their conversations—which only then he realized had been halted as they watched the arrest—but they blended into a low babble and did not disturb him. In the end, what had happened? Was it justice? Was it mercy? It seemed impossible to say. The dog was dead and the truck was still his but he had tried, tried hard, to make his amends, until the very end. Perhaps there was something left to be done, he thought, and began to walk home.
A little boy walked up to his father one day, and saw that his father was cutting down a tree. "Why," asked the dew-faced youngster, "are you cutting down that tree?"