“I brought out some groceries and warm clothes sent by the library committee-there was a wonderful sweater, a hundred percent wool-and I put everything on the porch, the way I always do because Alan doesn’t like it if you knock on the door. That’s when I saw her.”
“Inside the house?” Susie can hardly believe it. “I thought he didn’t speak to anyone.”
“Well,” Louise says, “he’s obviously talking to her.”
In fact, Gwen has been going out to the Marshes most afternoons. Hank has so many chores to do, along with any after-school jobs he can find, as well as working on his senior thesis, that Gwen has too much time on her hands. She sometimes rides Tarot out to the Marshes, but usually she leads him, so he’ll get a little exercise without having to carry her weight. Despite the cold, Tarot is content to accompany her; there are still some withered apples on the ground in the Coward’s yard, and the grass is high and salty. The Coward has begun to tell Gwen about her family: How beloved her grandfather Henry was. How her other grandparents, the Coopers, were said to think so well of themselves they had to deflate their heads every morning or else they’d sail away on the strength of their own vanity. He has recounted a few small details about the fire, when his wife died, if only to suggest the reasons he has plunged into this life he now leads. The weirdest thing is, when he speaks about himself he uses the third person: Alan Murray couldn’t go into that house. He stood there and stood there, but he couldn’t move.
“So who are you now if you’re not him?” Gwen has asked.
“I’m someone else,” the Coward has told her, as if that information was as plain as the nose on his face.
That someone is often so far gone when Gwen comes to visit that he can’t stand up. Once, she found him shivering on the floor. Another time, he was inches away from the smoldering ashes of his stove. Gwen knows where he keeps his liquor-the bottles are stored beneath the floorboards near his bed. On those occasions when he’s not completely smashed, the Coward tells her what the village used to be like when he was a boy. Olive Tree Lake was so clear you could drink the water in a cup. Foxes trotted along back roads. Blue herons nested in the Marshes.
Gwen tries to bring the Coward treats, usually bread and butter, his favorite, but she doesn’t chide him about his drinking. She knows how it feels to have somebody on your case, the way her mother used to be; it never does any good. It’s cold in the Coward’s house, and filthy as well, yet Gwen looks forward to coming here. Or perhaps it’s the act of getting away from Guardian Farm she savors. Strange, but the Marshes seem real to her; it’s the Farm that seems like a dream.
The phone lines have never been fixed, nor has her mother’s car. No mail has been delivered for ages. Gwen has written to her father three times, and she still hasn’t heard from him. She intends to ask if he’ll send a plane ticket, so she can go home for Christmas vacation. She hasn’t told Hank anything about her plan, and the secret has driven a wedge between them, not because of the vacation-that’s nothing-but because if she gets ownership of Tarot beforehand, she’ll borrow money from Susie Justice to have him trucked to California, and she won’t use her return ticket to come back. She has to get out, that’s what she’s afraid to say out loud in Hank’s presence. She has to do it soon.
Today, when Gwen goes to the Marshes the weather is so bad, with ice everywhere, that she leaves Tarot home. Sister follows her, though, and by the time they get to the Marshes, the terrier’s coat is braided with ice. The Coward, however, is completely wasted. He took his weekly trek to the liquor store last night, then overindulged even more than usual. Gwen covers him up with an old quilt, right there where he lies on the wooden floor. She stays for a while, Sister beside her, though the house is cold and the Coward smells bad. She thinks about the life she used to have and how it doesn’t even seem to belong to her anymore, and it helps her to understand the Coward’s past. That’s the reason he stays out here-everything he was has slipped away, and trying to retrieve it would be like diving into a bottomless pit.
Before she leaves, Gwen takes a piece of bread from the groceries Louise Justice has left, and crumbles it up for the mice. She leaves a note on the table: “I was here. You were plastered. See you tomorrow. Your loving niece, Gwen.”
It is late in the day when Gwen walks back through the Marshes: the sunlight is pale and thin and already fading. Her boots make a path in the muck and ice, which Sister follows. A flock of starlings startles and takes flight when Gwen and the dog come too close. Out here, Gwen feels as though she’s reached the end of the world. Every time she takes a step she can hear something break-hermit crabs, mussel shells, cattails. This spring she will turn sixteen, an age she has been waiting for for what seems forever. Why is it that spring seems impossibly far away, as if it were a goal she can only yearn for and never quite reach?
Gwen and Sister are both quiet when they get to Guardian Farm; they slip through the back door, but they’re not quick enough. Hollis is in the kitchen.
“I thought you’d taken off and weren’t coming back,” he says.
He always makes snide remarks like this to Gwen; he must think he’s amusing. Well, now that she’s face-to- face with him, she might as well ask.
“No such luck,” Gwen shoots back. Since she’s already spoken to him, she decides to take the next step. “Did the papers come through?” Gwen tries to be casual about this, but deep inside she thinks herself a fool: she should have gotten ownership of Tarot before she agreed to move in.
“Papers?” Hollis says. He’s having a cup of hot tea made nearly white with milk.
“Tarot? Remember? He’s mine.”
“Right, you weren’t going to give your mother a hard time about moving over here, and I was going to sign over ownership of the horse.”
“Right.” Gwen breathes a sigh of relief.
“You believed that?” Hollis shakes his head as though she were the sorriest dolt he’d ever seen.
Gwen stands watching as he goes to the sink and rinses out his cup, then lays it neatly on the drain board.
“I want those ownership papers,” she forces herself to say.
“That’s too bad.” He’s speaking to a bothersome fly, a gnat and nothing more. “Because you’re not getting them.”
Gwen can feel her face grow hot; she’s been conned, that’s what happened, and it was easy as pie for him to cheat her. Maybe it’s the way he walks away, as though she were worthless, which makes her grab the teacup and throw it at him. It shatters on the floor to his left; it’s Wedgwood and breaks into a hundred slivers.
Shit, Gwen thinks, when he turns and comes back at her. Instantly, she’s afraid of him, though she hates herself for being so easily scared by the likes of him. He gets her by the arm before she can maneuver away. Sister begins barking, a hoarse frantic yip.
“You little bitch,” Hollis says to Gwen.
“You’d better let go,” Gwen says, as if she had any control here. “I mean it.”
Sister’s barking like crazy now, a growly sort of bark. Hollis is really hurting Gwen; it’s as if he wants to break her arm or something. Gwen can tell he wants her to give up, and maybe, if she were smarter, she would.
“Fuck you,” she says.
“Maybe what you need is a good spanking,” Hollis tells her. “Maybe that would solve the problem.”
When he grabs Gwen around the waist, Sister, who’s been darting closer and closer, goes for Hollis’s leg. The dog’s teeth don’t reach skin, but Hollis loosens his hold on Gwen so he can kick the terrier, who yowls and skitters off. Gwen breaks away and runs out of the house without thinking; luckily, the door flies open behind her and Sister can escape before it slams shut again.
As soon as she’s outside. Gwen is running, and it’s not until she gets far enough away that she allows herself to cry. She sits on a stone wall and cries until she sees that Sister has followed her. Then she crouches to pick up the dog, and starts walking again. She continues on the High Road all the way into the village. She’s walking fast, so she carries Sister under her arm. The dog is still shaking, and it yelps when Gwen touches its side, sore from Hollis’s boot. Darkness has settled by the time they reach the village; it’s dark on Main Street and the streetlights cast a yellow glow. Gwen has less than a dollar in her pocket, and when she tries to use the phone booth outside the Bluebird Coffee Shop, a recorded announcement informs her she cannot make a long-distance call without a calling card number, something she doesn’t have.
She continues down Main Street, past the building where her grandfather Henry Murray used to have his offices, past the library and the Lyon Cafe. In Gwen’s opinion, the street where the Justices live is the prettiest in town; all the houses are white, and each yard is surrounded by a white fence. In the dark, the facades seem
