He opened his hand to set the tiny body in the makeshift casket. As he did so, he really noticed Yip for the first time. Something seemed odd. The hamster’s head looks strange, as if it were slightly flattened on one side, as if someone had…
He stared at the four children. Will, Jr., with his red-rimmed eyes and carefully stoic expression. Burt, his eyes full of hurt and loss. Suze and Sams, their tears still streaking their cheeks even though they were no longer crying.
No. Impossible. None of them would have…
He began to lower the hamster into the box. Yip’s body hung limply from his fingers. Too limply, it seemed. On an impulse Willard felt along the hamsters back with his index finger.
Nothing. No stiffness where the backbone should be. Not exactly mushy, but…giving, resilient.
He almost withdrew his hand, almost decided to question the kids to see if any of them had accidently hurt Yip, then didn’t. They loved the hamster. They would have told him if anything had happened.
He laid Yip in the center of the tumble of yarn, then pulled a few strands over the body.
“All right?”
Again the children nodded in unison.
He closed the box and turned the tiny clasp.
10
It really was too wet to be out, even if the rain had stopped. Willard stepped out of the side kitchen door, boots on his feet, jacket zipped close against the damp air, casket in his hands, rain hat on his head just in case, and a small shovel propped over his shoulder. Three similarly clad figures-minus the shovel-followed. Catherine had remained in the family room with Sams, who seemed exhausted by the whole thing and was nodding off. When they left she was cradling him in her arms and rocking him as if he were an infant again.
The small procession rounded the corner of the house.
“What the…?” Willard caught himself just in time. Little pitchers.
The entire back yard looked as if it were a lake. He had expected most of the rain to drain off along the sides of the house, down the front lawn and driveway, and into the overfilled gutters on Oleander. That what would have made sense for a house situated at the top of a rise.
No, that hadn’t happened. Instead, water had pooled everywhere, shallowly in some spots, so that the tips of winter-dead grass emerged like miniature reeds in an oversized black swamp, so deep in others that the faint breeze that had followed the storm created rows of ripples on the surface.
Water had puddle against the back of the house as well, flooding most of the concrete patio, up to perhaps six feet from the sliding doors. It wouldn’t have taken much more for it to flow on into the living room. At the back of the yard, the fence seemed almost to lean into the pools, as if the posts were stark trees torn away at their roots, rotting but not yet willing to die.
“I’m sorry, kids,” he said without looking down at them. “There’s no place dry enough to…for a funeral.”
“Will we have to wait until the water goes away?” Burt asked. “How long will that take?”
Too long, Willard said to himself. Too long unless Catherine is willing to store the Yipper here in the freezer.
“I’m afraid it would take way too long. We should just…”
“Throw Yip away?” Will, Jr., spoke as if accusing his father of murder. “Toss him in the garbage?”
“No!”
“No!”
Burt and Suze began screaming their sorrow.
Willard could have killed Will for piping up like that. He threw his eldest son a withering glance that made Will, Jr., stumble back a step.
“Stop that!”
The younger two suddenly stifled their sobs.
Willard sighed. “Maybe there’s someplace dryer along the far side of the house.”
The procession recommenced, punctuated by the slap of boots against water and an occasional sniffle.
They rounded the side of the house. It was almost as bad here. The six-foot-wide stretch between house and fence was spotted by standing pools, but up against the house, beneath the protection of the eaves on one side and the neighboring row of yews on the other, the ground, while still sodden, was at least visible.
It would have to be here.
He paced a dozen steps or so until he stood toward the end of the long wall-right outside the windowless wall of the master bedroom. Where he could slip out some dark night after the kids were asleep and play grave- digger to the Yipper’s final resting place. By then the thing would probably be little more than a repulsive mass of goo inside a stained and worm-eaten box. Then he could throw the whole thing away and the kids would never know. That way if he ever decided to cultivate a small garden in the bare stretch, he wouldn’t unearth a nasty surprise.
“This all right?”
“Okay, Dad.”
Again, the nods from the others.
He handed the box to Burt and began digging. The soil was marginally dryer closest to the house, so that’s where he began. Shovel in. Shovel out. Shovel in. Shovel out.
Until…
“Those bas…!”
“What’s wrong, Dad?” Will, Jr., looked thoroughly scared of something. Burt and Suze weren’t far behind.
“Shut up,” Willard snapped.
They shut.
He removed another shovelful of dirt from the edge of the concrete foundation.
About five inches beneath the top of the soil, a half-inch-wide crack snaked parallel to the ground.
“I don’t bel…”
This time none of the children spoke. Willard had almost forgotten they were standing there, a couple of feet behind him, halfway to the fence, ankle deep in mud and water.
He scraped the shovel along the side of the house, revealing more of the wall between where he had begun and the front corner. The crack continued. If anything it grew wider, blacker, deeper. Ominous. Threatening, at least to Willard.
He reached the corner. There, the lower portion of the foundation had separated by nearly an inch from the upper, a couple of inches below where the stucco started. The bottom of the stucco-painted an ugly shade of yellow instead of the neutral brown of the rest of the house-was beneath the level of the soil.
He stood back, winded although he didn’t notice that, and leaned against the shovel handle, forcing it gradually deeper into the muck. His shoulders and back throbbed, and his fingers ached.
He already knew that the back wall had separated from the foundation. Now this.
The whole damned house must be simply sitting on top of the slab-or next to it-with nothing pinning the two together!
He looked up under the eaves.
Those shitty builders!
He groaned.
“Dad,” Will, Jr., whispered.
“Get into the house. Now. All of you!”
They got.
Willard scraped more dirt away from the stucco, this time retracing his steps toward the back corner. The crack followed his digging.
After about six feet he stopped and just stood there staring…and getting more furious by the moment.
