House of Gold (36 page)

Let the dead bury the dead,
he thought, for the first time understanding the hardest saying of Christ.

After a time, she took his hand–"Follow me. Her name is Grace."–and led him into his house to see his daughter for the first time.

+  +  +

He wanted to know it all. Not out of curiosity. Out of want. After a Rosary, on the deck of the bigger house, the one that Sam had built, Buzz
sipping warm water, Grace in her arms, she told him. She was not much of a storyteller, which was a blessing. She did not embellish. No need.

+  +  +

The killer flu had hit the town of Bagpipe like a steel pipe swinging into a boy's temple. In December, there were a few dozen souls living within her borders. By March, less than a dozen. The priest had died. Except for the Fisks and a few others,
the remaining survivors had gone to Colebrook or Pittsburg in the spring, where things were supposed to be better.

Perhaps, if the flu had visited the homestead in early January, while there were still medical supplies in Colebrook or Berlin...

But in late February, when Sam came down with it, there was no penicillin left. No antibiotics. Sam pulled through, but not before Markie and Packy–

–she
couldn't finish.

"Did they fight? Did they go quickly?" he asked.

For some reason, it was important for him to know, though it tore him to tear it from her, knowing she was reliving it all in the telling...

"They...they went quickly."

He nodded. "Just kids. Just little kids. That's good. If they don't go to heaven, nobody does."

His lack of sorrow continued to shock her. Mel had been the same
way when the boys went. Almost flippant, making Ellie wonder about her sanity.

"I have a baby to deliver," Mel had told her calmly, standing by the graves. "I will mourn the boys after. Buzz would have it so."

At the time, Ellie couldn't help herself, because she herself had not prepared correctly for the Troubles, and so she asked the little red saint named Mel: "But you almost sound happy. Shouldn't
you cry?"

"Can't afford tears. It's a long winter. The boys are in heaven," with a note of finality, the hardness already there, like a switch clicked on.

"And Mel?" Buzz asked now, on the porch.

"She was–inspiring. She delivered the baby. There was a lot of blood. Sam and I, and Tommy Sample from down the road, because he stayed in Bagpipe, too–we had no idea what we were doing, with the medical
books open on the utility table Sam had brought into the room, by the bed..."

She was going into way too much detail, and stopped herself.
Tell him about Mel, not the blood.
There had been so much blood.

She could not bring herself to say
bled to death
to Buzz.

"She said many things, before and after. And I tried to remember them, for you, for when you came home. She kept saying you would come
home."

That's right,
Ellie told herself now.
Tell him the good things. Like Sam–oh Sam!–always used to tell me: take the good and throw out the bad.

So she threw out the bad, and continued.

"Mel saw the Blessed Mother at the end, Buzz, right before she...went...she saw Our Lady. She told me so."

Just like the Man,
Buzz thought, and this gave him consolation–

"I forget a lot," Ellie continued.
"But I remember her last words. She was so peaceful, almost happy. I know that sounds crazy–"

"No, it sounds like Mel," he consoled, proud. This was what he needed, to hear about the saint he had been married to...

"She was so happy the day she died, and she asked me to baptize the baby, and promise to be her mom. She named her Grace. Said you would like it."

He nodded. He liked it.

Continue,
his silence said.
Tell me Mel's last words.

"Her last words got me through everything, Buzz, even when Sam and Chris..." she wouldn't finish that line, but continued, "It wasn't the words, but the way she said them. She said: 'Today is the day of glory.'"

And then Buzz did feel like crying, on the porch, with Grace in the arms of his only friend left, but not tears of sadness–tears of joy.

Today
is the day of glory,
the Man had said.

Buzz was empty, so he didn't cry.

Ellie slowly absorbed his latent serenity.

"Now is the day of glory. What does it mean?" she asked. "I still don't know. I've had time to ponder it. I believe it has everything to do with the cross and the resurrection, and how we always try to separate the two, when they're really the same thing, just like the Holy Trinity
is three-in-one. Oh, I don't know what I'm saying."

She was gaining momentum, retelling a saint story, drawing lessons, as Christians always had, since the first martyr.

"But I do know that for Mel, in the last days, after the baby came, there was no separation between the cross and resurrection. It was like she was saying to all of us: Bring it on. Bring it on. She was running–sprinting–up Calvary."

For the first time since coming over the hill, Buzz heard some of the old Ellie in her voice, the Ellie he had loved since the waltz, on the night before she married Sam.

She waited.

"I'm proud of Mel. She's my girl. She's my girl," he told her. "Good for her."

A silence ensued.

He had not told her any details about the long walk yet. Ellie felt the need to ask him. But she waited.

There was no
light but moonlight, and their rockers were slightly angled toward each other, facing out toward the majestic purple hills. She looked at him, still not used to the thinness of his face, the way his cheekbones and jaw were now so prominent.

She dove for his eyes. His eyes were the same.

Two friends, with nothing between them but a baby, they held each other's gaze.

"How did the Lord tell you?"
she asked, needing to know, not looking away. "You said He told you."

Buzz thought of the Man. And Buzz smiled, but he was more concerned about Ellie. There was something so melancholy in her voice he felt he could reach over and pull it off her shoulders like a veil.

She hasn't gone on the long walk,
he thought, but not with any sense of superiority. But he was wrong about Ellie in this regard.

He pulled a small consolation out of his pocket.

"Funny," he observed. "I used to badger the Man with the same question. He could never give an answer that I could understand.

"But I'm not the Man, so I'll explain it my way. Just the facts, El, just the facts. First, God told me when the Man died–when Hal said to me, 'I see Jesus, I see Mel with Him.'

"But you know me. I wouldn't listen. I needed
to walk more miles. I needed a nun in a town called Blackstone. Then I killed a man in Vermont."

He waited for her to digest this.

It's the old Buzz,
she thought,
talking in riddles.

This
was
a comfort to her, a familiar exasperation, something he might have done at the kitchen table in Bay Village. Talking in riddles, as if it made all the sense in the world.

And who cared if he killed someone?
Not her. If she knew Buzz, he had a good reason. It was a different world now.

Maybe a better world, too,
Ellie thought disjointedly, strangely.

In the old world, they killed in secret, in the womb, or by pressing a button from a plane three miles high in the sky.

Despite themselves, the words and thoughts, at first so halting, were pouring out now, naturally; they were like best friends from
college having coffee after a chance meeting at an airport.

"God told me Mel was dead when I was starving, dying," he began again, his voice with the lilt of a storyteller, "in the pines near Magalloway Mountain. But not in words. I had walked so far, and for whatever reason, God withdrew His Providence, and I was starving. I had tried my best to get here–"

Now his voice cracked.

"–and my best
wasn't good enough. So when I was-dying, with nothing left, I made an examination of conscience, and since I had just gone to confession, that was cool, and then I accepted that Mel was dead.

"After all, Hal had told me. It makes me wonder how many other clear, clean messages from God I've missed over the years. Missed because I hadn't taken the long walk."

She reached over and took his hand,
chastely. He gripped it tight. A clear, clean message.

It didn't matter if what they were saying made sense. What mattered is that what had
happened
made sense.

"Ellie?"

"Buzz."

"There has to be a reason why God gave me a third chance. We don't need to know it, just that there is one. I know it must seem strange to you that I'm not sad about Mel and the boys. Maybe I should be. Maybe God just
designed me for these times: without feelings.

"I refuse to be sad about Mel and Mark and Pascal going to heaven. That's just not right. It's selfish. That was my only responsibility when I got married: to make sure that Mel and my children went to heaven. I
should
be happy. At least, not sad."

Who am I to question God?

"They are gone," he reiterated. "You and Grace are here. That's what is. I
have to deal with that first. Lots of things are gone–electric lights, cars–and I don't miss them. But as far as the faith goes, nothing has changed. I might break down and cry about Mel later, like some repressed macho guy in a bad movie. But probably not."

She waited. He was not just preaching. She knew he was working toward something–for her. Just like the old Buzz.

"I'm moving on, Ellie. And
I want you to move on with me."

"Buzz, it's okay," she replied. "I've already done that. I'm moving on, too."

The wisdom of the age was in her voice, with a power that almost rocked him back in the chair, even though her voice had not changed cadence.

"Good. May I hold the baby now?"

She got up to give him a turn with Grace, and he wondered again where her strength came from. Surely not from her
body–
Must be faith
–she was as thin as a sapling.

He wanted to ask her about Sam and Christopher. But he couldn't. She had revealed enough for one night.

Brave Ellie,
he thought.

They spent the rest of the evening making silence. Then they left the deck and returned to Buzz's house, where she had moved after–the killing. Her old house was as empty as Bagpipe. She took the baby to the master bedroom,
and Buzz tried to sleep on the floor in the kids' room, the dog by his side, next to Markie's bed, but could not.

Chapter Seventeen

Protesting Her Peace

Perhaps it was because Buzz had returned to Bagpipe, but it came back to her in the night. It played before her as she lay awake on the bed, Grace at her breast.

The killing.

It always came to her in three parts, like those essays she had written in grade school: Introduction, Body, Conclusion.

The introduction was the day before, when they had gone to confession.

The body–falling. Sam falling. This was the body, and it was the worst part, the part she could never skip no matter how hard she tried.

Conclusion: a running stream.

She kissed the child on the forehead, and tried again to stop the memory. Sometimes she could stop it with a kiss. Simple. Sometimes with a single Hail Mary.

She prayed a Hail Mary. Started a whole Rosary.

Not this time.

Introduction,
falling-body, conclusion.

Please, God no–not again.

This is what Buzz didn't know, and she doubted she would ever tell him–
keep the good and throw out the bad
–what had happened to Sam, and to Chris. The day after the confession. Her mind had latched onto the confession in those horrible days after the Frenchmen came down the hill. It had all happened on a cold, damp morning in April, the day after
she, Sam, and Chris had gone to confession.

Sometimes, it just came, and lashed her like the tide rising in a storm, and the best she could do was simply endure it, until it was over, until it got to the part with the water flowing in a stream.

It–what happened to Sam and Chris–always started with the confession, and always ended with the water by the stream. With the falling-body in between.

No, unlike Buzz, Ellie had not gone on the long walk, but she had been dragged, helpless, up a shorter, more brutal path, to watch the innocent slaughtered, right here...

+  +  +

...on the homestead. Spring was coming early to Bagpipe. Almost two months after Mel had died, and Ellie was finally growing accustomed to...being a mother again.

She had a baby!

On loan.

On some days, Ellie half-expected
Mel to walk through the door of the kitchen and ask for the baby back. Mostly, though, Ellie had accepted the reality of the situation. Grace Woodward was her baby, and Sam was probably going to be the baby's foster-father, and Christopher was going to be Grace's older brother.

In fact, Christopher was adjusting better than his parents to the loss of the baby's family, to the hard work, to the
harsh diet–perhaps because he was so young. Or so it seemed on the surface.

Chris, with his keen smiles, adult-like wisdom, I'll-do-it attitude, and serene recollection during family prayer, was a constant source of daily consolation for his mother. A tall, gangly ten-year-old with silk hair like his mom.

Mel had insisted that Buzz would show up. Sam said nothing about this, as was his way. Ellie
had her doubts. It just didn't seem–
likely,
even for a tough guy like Buzz. The last Ellie had known, he had been in a coma. Perhaps God had taken Buzz early to spare him what would happen to Mel and his boys?

Until the unlikely event of Buzz coming over the hill, it became a small, private indulgence, and a reasonable one, for Ellie to believe that Grace would one day be adopted by the Fisks.

Not that she didn't want Buzz to come back. She often told Sam how she pictured him returning–big, round Buzz, loping down the hill, arms flying every which way–

"You'll have to tell him about Mel," Ellie had practically ordered Sam.

"Okay." Sam had not hesitated in this reply.

She loved him so.

Grace was gaining weight now, too, taking a bottle. Sam had donated most of their supply to the food
bank in Errol. They had sent a nice man up to ask, and Sam had not hesitated to pitch in. Sam and Ellie had been giving most of their wealth away for years, and so it wasn't hard; it was habit.

Nevertheless, there was still plenty of dried milk, and a year's worth of grains on the homestead, and plenty of seed for the garden in spring.
(And fewer mouths to feed,
Ellie had thought sadly.) More
than a few gold coins in a secret place that Sam refused to divulge to her. These were for trade when things came back around.

It was April, and the flus had taken their toll, but the hardy people of the North Country were already fighting back.

Things were going well in Pittsburg, a few of the other parishioners had told them, after Father LeClaire was taken by the flu, before they said their
good-byes, carrying everything they owned on their backs and hand-drawn wagons.

"Why don't we move to Pittsburg?" Ellie had asked Sam, the day before the last confession.

"God brought us to Bagpipe. There's no Catholic Church in Pittsburg. We'll get another priest for Saint Francis Xavier eventually. We need to trust in God."

"We could start a Catholic Church in Pittsburg," she had suggested right
back, never one to just accept Sam's gentle dictums–a far-off fear rising in her heart, like a distant ship horn.

A premonition.

"Maybe. But I think we would be better to consider going to Colebrook first. There's the shrine there. But I like it here. I like Bagpipe. That reminds me: let's walk into town tomorrow. Tommy Sample says one of the priests from the shrine is coming to Xavier to say
Mass and hear confessions. Tommy's bringing him in by wagon."

There was a wonderful Shrine, Our Lady of Grace, just south of town in Colebrook.

In the new paradigm, as Sam still called it, Tommy Sample was materially rich. He was just over forty, handsome in that farmer kind of way, and he owned several horses and had a wagon and hitch. He had good land. He had four milk cows, and was only a three-mile
walk down the road.

He had lost his wife of one year to the flu in late January. Dede (pronounced
dee-dee)
had been a slight, sweet, young lady with lustrous, dark–almost rusty–red hair. She had been twelve years younger than her husband. No kids.

Tommy's gentle faith and anticipatory charity, Ellie believed, was one of the reasons why Sam was so adamant about staying in Bagpipe.

Despite what
happened to Mel and the boys,
Ellie had thought after the faithful Dede passed away.

Then there was their last conversation, just before sleep the night after they had gone to confession, the same as every night. He had eased into bed, the baby between them. He pushed himself up on one long arm, and leaned over to kiss her on the forehead. It was dark–he had blown out the candle (the generator
had long since broken down, and what little power they got from the solar panels, they used almost solely for refrigeration).

"I love you, Ellie, and I always will."

"I love you, Sam."

During the ten years of their marriage, Sam had told her this every night, using the same eight words, and never once without his gentle sincerity, like a priest who never loses his zeal for praying the awesome
words of the consecration at Mass.

It always reminded Ellie that marriage, like Mass, was also a sacramental miracle.

The next morning, Tommy Sample had come by with his wagon, saving them the walk, and took them down to the church in Bagpipe. Before Mass, they all went to the sublime sacrament, including Christopher.

As it replayed, Ellie remembered how she had felt particularly unemotional during
her confession, like most times. She confessed her usual sins, the kind of sins strong-willed wives confess. Ellie remembered asking Sam how his confession had gone.

"The same as always–excellent," Sam told her as they bounced in the back of Tommy's wagon on the hilly road back to the homestead.

Then, that night, he had told her he loved her, as always, and she was happy enough. She had a baby.
Mel was gone. Buzz was gone. Those beautiful little miniature Buzz-Mel boys were gone. But there was still the Catholic Faith. There was confession.

The world was not all right, but it was okay.

The introduction was over...

..then came dawn, with Sam shaking her awake. He was already dressed.

"Get the baby," he ordered.

She saw he had the shotgun in his hands. Sam was terrible with guns. He had
barely practiced shooting it last year after Buzz showed him how to use it.

When Sam woke Ellie, she sat up in the bed, still groggy. She flashed back to something Buzz had once told them all, during the planning stages, back in Ohio, when the decision was made to get the shotguns: "If it comes down to us actually using these guns to defend ourselves, then the situation is already pretty ugly."

"But why the gun–" she started to say.

"No time!" he practically shouted, fumbling to insert the round, red cartridges into the gun. "Get the baby into the holder. Out the back door. Now!"

The alarm in his voice had bolted her out of her daze.

Grace!

Trying to avoid waking Grace, she reached down and picked up the child–her baby. She was so tiny.

Ellie struggled to throw on her robe and her sneakers–no
socks, the details came back like little knives pricking her–and put Grace into the cloth holder that kept the baby tight next to her ribs and breasts. Her hands were free.

Live free or die,
she thought.

As she dressed, Sam breathlessly explained to her how he had been pounded awake by an unseen force–by "my guardian angel," he had said–from a sound sleep, just before the sun had risen. There
he was, in bed, listening. He listened until he heard it...

"The sound of an engine, don't you hear it?"

No, she didn't.

"Why are you so afraid, Sam?"

"El. You have to trust me; trust my instincts. I'm always right."–
Sam, you're always right,
she had thought, truly afraid now– "Something bad is going to happen. Now get out of here. Go to the woods. Now! I'll get Chris."

He came over and gave her
a peck on the cheek, and ran out of the room, to the front door, and out onto the deck, holding the shotgun, waiting, facing the driveway. Waiting.

"What about Chris?" she called to him when she came out the back door, walking back over to the side of the deck.

She could hear the rumble now as whatever-it-was turned into the driveway.

"He's not with you?!" Sam asked, panic in his voice. "I woke
him! He's still getting dressed. He'll be right behind you. Now go! I love you!"

She stood on her tip toes, arching her chin, and saw them–
the bad guys
–now, through the stand of trees. A Hummer, painted black, machine gun up top, with five men walking next to it, each man carrying a rifle. There was a box truck with huge tires–chains on the tires–trailing behind.

Marauders. Bad guys.

They had
heard the stories. Tommy had told them about the rogue gangs which were supposedly raiding farms and towns across the North Country, taking advantage of the chaos. The received wisdom was that the locals were getting organized, setting up roadblocks and patrols to deal with the threat. Bagpipe, a ghost town, seemed too far off the beaten path. There was nothing left there to raid.

Except for our
farm,
Ellie thought, as she saw them, feeling like a scared little girl from the suburbs.

"Run!" Sam urged in a whisper, breaking her reverie.

She didn't want to run. She wanted to stay with her husband.

But there was Grace in her arms, and she had promised Mel, and she was not in the habit of defying Sam's direct orders, rare as they were.

She was a woman, and she had intuition.

It said:
Run!

She listened to it.

She ran.
Saint Michael! Saint Michael!–

There were clouds overhead, a morning sun behind a mountain, and it was cold, and her sneakers were getting soaked, squishing in the tall dewy grass as she ran the fifty yards down to the thicket of pines, toward the unseen river far below.

Despite her frantic rush, she was careful about baby Grace, hugging her thin arms around the holder,
hoping the little one would continue to sleep.

Ellie slipped into the trees, found a big rock for refuge, then stopped, gasping for breath, and turned back, peering up as she dared.

What if the baby starts crying?

She felt instant regret over leaving Grace's pacifier in the crib (attached to the bed the same as Mel had done in her house–another cutting detail).

She wondered if she should pray,
and decided not to. Not because she didn't want God's help, but because she assumed God would help–

Angels won't come to save you,
a dark little voice taunted her.

–and because she calculated that she could help Sam and Chris most by
paying attention.

She watched the two vehicles churn slowly up to the porch and...

...the rest was a bleary, streaking contrail. Yet each time it came back, she saw
every detail, replayed from her viewpoint behind the rock.

They had held Sam at gunpoint. She saw them forcibly push Chris out of the house. She always remembered exactly what he was wearing: his favorite outfit, which she had given him for Christmas, before they moved to Bagpipe, and before all this horror–his red-checkered shirt, and his heavy cotton, khaki pants. He had even put on his boots.

It was like he was getting ready for what was about to happen, and didn't want to die like a kid in his jammies, but rather, as a man in his work clothes.

Even now, despite the mourning, Ellie felt proud of him. He was a smart kid.

Of course he knew.

Then they had Sam on his knees on the porch, his hands tied behind his back, Christopher was next to Sam the same way, with a short skinny man standing
behind them, a stubby cigar jammed in his mouth, holding a rifle to the back of their heads.

Sam and Chris did not look over at her–and she knew why. They did not want to give these thieves a clue where she was.

Chris is smart,
she kept thinking.
My Chris is smart. Only ten. But just like his father.

She could not make out what they were saying, only that they were not speaking English. They were
speaking French.