Recapitulation (38 page)

“It will take six months or so. The new grave has to settle.”

“That’s all right. Can you let me know when it’s done?”

“Yes, sir,” the sexton said. “I can do that, if you want.”

“I’d appreciate it. Well, thank you very much.”

“You bet,” the sexton said, and turned back to his lunch.

Mason had his reminder book out, and was scratching back and forth and up and down over the entry that had read “Funeral: be there 11:30.” When nothing could be read, when it was only a black rectangle, there remained on the page the last thing he had contemplated doing: “Call Joe.”

“I wonder …”

“Mmm?”

“No. Nothing. I can do it from the hotel.”

He lifted his hand to the chewing sexton, a man with a good appetite and a good conscience, and went out into the washed, dripping glitter of noon. His mind was running ahead as he drove out the gate and down the hill to South Temple. If he had a quick lunch he could be on his way by two, and with any luck, and the hour gained on the time change, he could be in Elko to sleep, and have a relatively easy drive home tomorrow.

And Joe? What about him? Was he going to call from the hotel? He knew he was not, almost before he asked himself the question. He had known all the time that he would not. However much Joe had meant, however warm and loyal it had been of Joe to try to reach through to him, it wouldn’t do, it would only be a frustration and a disappointment. Whoever had lasted in Bruce Mason, it was not the young man who had once been best friend to Joe Mulder, any more than it was the one who had cracked his heart over Nola Gordon. They would have nothing in common but that adolescence with its games and its love affairs and its sun-myth conviction of power and growth. What they had
once shared was indelible as if carved on a headstone, and was not, after so long a gap, to be changed or renewed.

As he drove down to the hotel and turned his car over to the youth in the glass office, he was busy in his head with one final check-off. Around Bruce Mason as he once was, around the thin brown hyperactive youth who had so long usurped space in his mind and been a pretender to his feelings, he drew a careful rectangle, and all the way up on the elevator to pack his bag he was inking it out.

W
ALLACE
S
TEGNER

Recapitulation