Here On Earth

put.

“Now you’re telling me what time it is?” Hollis says, and his voice is so distant it sounds as if its point of origin was a million miles away. He has spied Gwen, who is shivering as she holds Sister close to her chest. “You need to learn a lesson about what happens when things don’t belong to you. You can beg,” he tells Gwen, “but it won’t do you any good.”

Gwen can feel the cold air in her lungs every time she breathes. She can feel Hank next to her, the way his muscles are coiled, ready to do something, but unsure as to what that action should be.

“Come on,” Hollis says. “Beg.”

Gwen herself feels a weird sort of sensation inside her; it’s as if something were being boiled.

“Please,” she says.

Hollis considers, then shakes his head. “Not good enough.”

Nothing will ever be good enough, that’s the problem, Gwen sees that now. Some things are done rather than decided, and before she plans it out entirely, Gwen rushes for the door to Tarot’s stall and swings it wide open.

“Go,” she screams, but that’s not necessary. Tarot moves so fast that Hollis has to jump aside, and by the time Hollis is thinking straight enough to go for his gun, his target is out in the open, running so fast the wind can’t keep up, leaving a cloud of his breath behind. Hollis goes to the barn door and fires once, but by then Tarot has jumped the first fence in the field, and is bolting over the next. Hank and Gwen can hear him running, riderless and hot, on this freezing, black night.

When the horse arrives in the Marshes, the Coward is dreaming of snow. He opens his eyes when he hears a clatter, and sure enough, snow is falling and beside the apple tree stands Belinda’s horse, pawing at the frozen ground, searching for apples.

The Coward has been sleeping in his coat and his boots; he goes outside and huddles near the horse and watches him eat. After a while, he gets a rope and ties the horse to the tree.

“There you go,” the Coward tells the horse. “That’s your bed.”

The Coward gets himself a nightcap and sits on his porch until Gwen arrives at his rickety, useless gate, her little white dog trailing behind. Gwen’s eyes look strange and feverish and she has a purple bruise across her face. Hollis hit her only once, as she went past him leaving the barn, but he made certain to strike hard. There are broken blood vessels beneath her skin; he’s left his mark for weeks to come.

When the Coward sees the way she looks, he has a funny feeling in his arms and legs, as though someone had set a match to his flesh. “What did he do to you?” he asks.

The girl looks straight ahead. Tears are falling from her eyes, but she’s not making a sound.

“I won’t let him get to this horse, if that’s what you’re worried about,” the Coward says, suddenly much braver than he imagined he could be. He’d kill any man who came looking for this horse, or be killed himself. If he can stay sober long enough. That’s the hitch, but there’s no need to mention it to this lovely girl.

“Really?” Gwen says, because she’s already realized she can’t take Tarot with her and she can’t stay. “You’d do that?”

“I would,” the Coward vows.

A little while later, Hank comes looking for Gwen. He remained at the house until Hollis calmed down; it was, he believes, the least he could do. He might have leapt to protect Gwen when Hollis reached out and slapped her, but it was so sudden Hank was caught completely by surprise, or so he tells himself. Hollis doesn’t mean to do these things; he’s like a bomb, one which, if you don’t defuse it straightaway, will go off when you least expect it. Surely, Gwen will understand this, and the reason for Hank’s delay. Of course Hank hasn’t sided with Hollis-it’s simply a question of loyalty, not unlike a pledge you make to a country about to enter a foolish, wrongheaded war.

Gwen is sitting on the Coward’s floor when Hank arrives; she’s wrapped in a ratty wool blanket Judith Dale brought here years ago, trying her best to ignore how drunk the Coward has become.

“It’s about time,” the Coward says to Hank when the boy pushes open the door. “God, you are slow.”

But fast or slow no longer matters, Hank realizes that as soon as he sees the mark Hollis left on Gwen’s face. Hollis hit her hard, that’s what Hank sees now, and he meant to. Certainly, Hank can try to explain it away, he can sit beside her and loop his arm around her and whisper how awful this is, how sorry he is, how Hollis probably regrets what has happened already, how he’d never actually go ahead and hurt Tarot, but none of this signifies anymore. Sitting there, more beautiful than ever, Gwen has made the decision to go.

God, you are slow, Hank keeps thinking as Gwen laces her fingers through his and rests her head on his shoulder.

“It’s not your fault,” she tells him, after the Coward has nodded off, and they are as good as alone. “It’s just the way things turned out.”

Hank laughs at that, a short harsh laugh that goes nowhere. He leans against the thin plaster wall where colonies of ants have lived for decades, perhaps for as long as a century. He closes his eyes.

Whose fault is it when love is denied? When youth is a curse rather than a blessing? Oh, if only there weren’t other people involved; if only they were the last two people on earth, just them, opening the door to this old house, looking out at the deep, blue night and all those stars they’ll never learn the names of, all those planets they can’t even see.

They let the Coward sleep, and walk down into the Marshes. They hardly speak. What, after all, would they say? Wait for me? Don’t hold this against me? Don’t forget me, not tonight and not ever? Without language they can at least pretend they are the last two people, or perhaps the first, the ones who don’t need speech. They need each other, that’s all, for one last night.

They stay down in the Marshes until their fingers and toes are nearly frozen; then they come back inside, where they fall asleep side by side on the Coward’s floor, close together, their breath even and deep. They are greedy for sleep and forgetfulness; one pure and perfect night of sleep, that’s what they yearn for, but even that is too much to expect. Is it possible for two people to have the same dream? As Hank is sleeping on the hard, wooden floor he dreams of a hedge of evergreens in which there is a door. On one side of the hedge is the future, on the other side, the past. In Gwen’s dream the hedge is made of thorns and the door has a lock and key. Someone is urging her to step through. Go ahead, they tell her, and when she does, the lock falls away. She can’t look back, she knows that much; she doesn’t dare. In his own dream, on the threshold of his gate, Hank can hear her footsteps in the distance, already fading.

In the morning, when the light is yellow and pale, and the Coward has begun to heat a big kettle of ice into drinking water for the horse, Hank steps outside onto the porch. By then, Gwen is gone.

“She went to Susanna Justice’s,” the Coward tells him. “She took the dog with her. She’s going home.”

Hank nods and sits down on the cold wooden steps of his father’s house. He notices that the tide coming in sounds as if a million tears were falling. Perhaps it’s the ice cracking beneath the rush of cold salt water. “I don’t blame her,” he says.

“Blame,” the Coward says, “is a serious thing.”

“Hey, when all else fails, blame yourself, right?” Hank tries to smile, but he feels too tight inside.

“If he comes for the horse, I’ll kill him,” the Coward says.

“Yeah?” This has to be a joke. “How do you plan to do that?”

The Coward watches a heron that is so far off it would look like a branch to other eyes. “My bare hands,” he says.

Hank tries his best not to laugh. “You know what I’d try first?” he suggests. “Camouflage.”

They work all the rest of the day on a dilapidated, filthy little outbuilding behind the house, which can serve as a barn. Hank hammers some boards over the holes in the wall and the Coward sets marsh grass over the roof. Today is the day Hank’s senior thesis is due, but maybe he can get an extension.

“I can write you a note,” the Coward says. “I’ll explain everything to the school authorities.”

“No way. Don’t think anything is different between us,” Hank warns the old man. “I’m helping with Tarot because of Gwen, not you.”

“Of course,” the Coward says. “And this is from Gwen, not from me.”

The Coward slides the silver compass which once belonged to him onto the porch railing. Out in the tall grass, the stick that looks like a heron takes flight, slowly and beautifully in the last of the day’s light.

“May you never be lost,” Alan Murray tells his son.