man had a chance to double his money if he was willing to wager what he already had. On evenings and weekends, he drove a truck for the Department of Public Works, spreading salt on the roads in winter, cutting down branches and gathering trash from Route 22 when the weather was fine.
The weather happened to be exceptionally fine on the day that he left. March would soon graduate from high school, and she remembers that while she and Judith Dale were talking about her future, which seemed completely wide open back then, they had decided to clean the windows, the better to see the gorgeous blue sky. No matter how many possibilities March came up with-college, travel, a job in Boston -all futures included Hollis, that much was certain.
When Hollis came in to announce he had quit all his jobs, he felt he had never before been free. He had worked off his debt to Alan with the help of a gelding named Sandpaper who had run a race with twenty-five-to- one odds at the Olympia track, and who had amazed all bettors, including Hollis, by managing to win. Now, he could walk away, clean and clear, ready to start over. It was the most important day in Hollis’s life: the moment he’d been working toward ever since Henry Murray had died, but March didn’t realize this. Lately, Hollis had been working so much she’d gotten used to missing him; she’d begun to look elsewhere for companionship. She was going next door to the Coopers’ for dinner; she’d become friendly with the daughter, pale red-haired Belinda, and was thinking about nothing more than what she might wear that evening. Her blue dress came to mind, and so she didn’t have room to pay as much attention to Hollis as she might have.
“Would you rather be there with them or here with me?” Hollis demanded to know.
His question had taken her by surprise as she was choosing a pair of earrings from her jewelry case, and she answered too slowly-she must have, because he grabbed her, something he’d never done before.
“Stop it,” she said to him. He’d always been jealous of her friendship with the Coopers, but she’d never paid much attention, until now. He was twisting her wrist; as soon as she shook free, she backed away. “Leave me alone,” she said.
March had never spoken to him this way, and her irritation came as a shock to both of them. It was just that he wanted so much from her; she never had a minute to think.
“Are you making a choice?” Hollis said to her then.
“No,” March had spat back, not considering how easily hurt he could be. “You are.”
It is always a mistake to tell someone, Don’t you dare walk out that door, and a far worse mistake to actually cross the threshold and walk out on someone you love. Ever since that day, March has wondered what she could have done differently: Stayed home from the Coopers’? Thrown her arms around him? Admitted that all day long she’d been planning her future with him? Halfway through dinner, she sensed how wrong she’d been; she left and ran all the way home, but it was already too late.
After he’d gone, she waited upstairs at her window, day after day, week after week. There were no letters, not even a postcard, and by the time March graduated from high school, she no longer bothered to walk down the drive to check the mailbox. Still, each spring the doves who nested in the chestnut tree in the yard returned, and March took that as a sign of Hollis’s loyalty and his love. The girls she’d gone to school with went off to college, or took jobs in the village, or married boys they loved, but March stayed by her window, and before she knew it the pane of glass had become her universe, the empty road her fate.
After three years, she no longer recognized herself when she looked in the mirror. She wasn’t certain how it had happened, but she no longer seemed young. At last, on the morning of her twenty-first birthday, March Murray did not go to her window. She never found out whether or not the doves returned that year to nest in the chestnut tree. She didn’t hear the peepers call that spring or smell the mint which grew beside the door. Instead, she packed her suitcase and waited while Mrs. Dale called for a taxi to take her to the airport. Alan had lent March the money for a round-trip ticket to California, but while she was waiting to board, March went into the rest room and tore the return section of the ticket into pieces, then tossed it into the trash.
March had spent a lifetime up in her bedroom, waiting for Hollis, trying to figure out what she’d done wrong. She’s spent another lifetime since as a wife and a mother; she is a completely different person now. Here she is, making up the beds in this cold, empty house on Fox Hill where she hasn’t been for so long. Her hands are quick as she pulls the clean bed linen over the mattress. It was a young girl who came to this bed, one who cried easily and counted stars instead of sheep on nights when she couldn’t sleep. March doesn’t cry now; she’s far too busy for anything like that. Still, there are mornings when she wakes with tears in her eyes. That’s when she knows she’s been dreaming about him. And although she never remembers her dreams, there’s always the scent of grass on her pillow, as if the past were something that could come back to you, if you only wished hard enough, if you were brave enough to call out his name.
3
Every evening at this time, Hollis checks the perimeters of his property. He can do it on foot or in his truck, he can do it blindfolded, if need be. Like any poor relation, he knows precisely what belongs to him. Even those blueberries are his, although it gives him some deep, bitter pleasure to watch the squirrels and raccoons enjoy the fruit. They can eat their fill, as far as Hollis is concerned, without ever once having to beg, as he used to each and every day.
Hollis has long believed that the past can only hurt you if you let it. If you stop to consider all that was done and undone. Best not to dwell on what went wrong. Even better-don’ t think at all. There are days when Hollis actually manages to do so, relying instead on instinct and habit. Of course, there are evenings such as this, when he can’t stop thinking. He knows March Murray is coming back for the funeral; she may already be here, up in her old room where the shadows fall across the floor at this hour. At times when he can’t block out his thoughts, Hollis tries to rearrange his perspective. He goes over all he owns, which now includes not only all of Guardian Farm and Fox Hill, but most of Main Street as well. He has land down in Florida, along the west coast and in Orlando and down in the Keys. He is also co-owner of a racetrack outside of Fort Lauderdale, and the best part about all this is, he never even has to return to that state where he spent so much miserable time; he gets all his checks in the mail.
This year Hollis will be forty-two and he’s done all right for a beggar who looked so ragged that the Coopers’ care-taker threatened to call the police the first time he saw him. He’s done just fine for a boy who left Fox Hill with fifty-seven dollars in his pockets. All that he owns should be enough. Hollis has squared the debts owed him, he should be satisfied, but he’s not even close. He’s starving for something, and even though he forces himself to eat three meals a day, he keeps losing weight, as if he were devouring his own flesh.
He’s not going to think about what’s bothering him; he simply refuses to get farther inside his own head. Instead, he’ll see to the old pony that belonged to his son, which has come down with colic. There are the usual measures-keep the pony standing and feed it mineral oil-but Hollis always blows a little salt into each of the afflicted animal’s nostrils as well. It’s a trick he learned years ago at the tracks down in Florida, one of the few tactics he’d dare to reveal. An old wives’ tale, scoff the regulars down at the Lyon Cafe, but those who have tried Hollis’s salt remedy haven’t been unhappy with the results.
Well, nobody ever said Hollis was stupid. That’s never been the complaint. Still, his presence is something most men down at the Lyon would prefer to do without. Hollis is the richest man in town, and probably in the county as well; he contributes generously to the Policemen’s Association and the Firemen’s Fund, and a ward at St. Bridget’s Hospital has been named in his honor, but that doesn’t mean anyone wants to socialize with him, or that Hollis doesn’t notice that the town elders only court him when they need a new roof for the library or funds for a stoplight.
One thing wealth buys in a town this size is respect. Other men might flinch when Hollis joins them at their table, but they don’t dare suggest he find another seat. They talk to him courteously, all the while wondering why the hell he doesn’t just go home. He doesn’t even drink, he only sits there, with a Coke or a ginger ale, for reasons the regulars are still trying to figure out. Jack Harvey, who specializes in air-conditioning and heat installation, insists that Hollis’s motive, when he joins them at their table, is to ensure he’ll be ready to snatch up their souls if they have one drink too many. Whenever Hollis finally leaves, and a cold wind blasts through the door as it slams shut behind him, then his neighbors are brave enough to refer to him as the devil. Mr. Death, that’s what they call him when his back is turned, and they drink a toast to his departure.
