"That was what scared Dory so badly," Irwin said finally. "She babbled a lot before she got... before she was crying too hard to understand. Dory herself was almost... you know."
"What did she say?"
"She said Oz the Great and Terrible had killed her mother. Only she didn't say it that way. She said... she said 'Oz the Gweat and Tewwible,' which was the way our other daughter always used to say it. Our daughter Zelda. Louis, believe me when I say I would much rather have asked Rachel this question, but how much have you and she told Eileen about Zelda and how she died?"
Louis had closed his eyes; the world seemed to be rocking gently under his feet, and Goldman's voice had the lost quality of a voice coming through thick mists.
You may hear sounds like voices, but they are only the loons down south toward Prospect. The sound carries.
"Louis, are you there?"
"Is she going to be all right?" Louis asked, his own voice distant. "Is Ellie going to be all right? Did you get a prognosis?"
"Delayed shock from the funeral," Goldman said. "My own doctor came. Lathrop. A good man. Said she had a degree of fever and that when she woke up this afternoon, she might not even remember. But I think Rachel should come back.
Louis, I am frightened. I think you should come back too."
Louis did not respond. The eye of God was on the sparrow; so said good King James. Louis, however, was a lesser being, and his eye was on those muddy footprints.
"Louis, Gage is dead," Goldman was saying. "I know that must be hard to accept-for you and Rachel both-but your daughter is very much alive, and she needs you."
Yes, I accept that. You may be a stupid old fart, Irwin, but perhaps the nightmare that passed between your two daughters on that April day in 1965 taught you something about sensitivity.
She needs me, but I can't come, because I'm afraid-so terribly afraid-that my hands are filthy with her mother's blood.
Louis regarded those hands. Louis regarded the dirt under his nails, which was so like the dirt which comprised those footprints on the kitchen floor.
"All right," he said, "I understand. We'll be there as soon as we can, Irwin. By tonight, if that's possible. Thank you."
"We did the best we could," Goldman said. "Maybe we're too old. Maybe, Louis, maybe we always were."
"Did she say anything else?" Louis asked.
Goldman's reply was like the toll of a funeral bell against the wall of his heart. "A lot, but only one other thing I could make out: 'Paxcow says it's too late."
He hung up the telephone and moved back toward the stove in a daze, apparently meaning to continue on with breakfast or put the things away, he didn't know which, and about halfway across the kitchen a wave of faintness poured over him, floating gray overcame his sight, and he swooned to the floor-"swoon" was the right word because it seemed to take forever. He fell down and down through cloudy depths; it seemed to him that he turned over and over, looped the loop, did a dipsy doodle or two, slipped an Immelmann. Then he struck on his bad knee and the chromium bolt of pain through his head brought him back with a scream of agony. For a moment he could only crouch, the tears starting from his eyes.
At last he made it back to his feet and stood there, swaying. But his head was clear again. That was something. wasn't it?
The urge to flee came on him again for the last time, stronger than ever-he actually felt the comforting bulge of his car keys in his pocket. He would get in the Civic and drive to Chicago. He would get Ellie and go on from there. Of course by then Goldman would know something was wrong, that something was dreadfully amiss, but he would get her anyway... snatch her, if he had to.
Then his hand fell away from the bulge of the keys. What killed the urge was not a sense of futility, not guilt, not despair or the deep weariness inside him. It was the sight of those muddy footprints on the kitchen floor. In his mind's eye he could see them tracing a path across the entire country-first to Illinois, then to Florida-across the entire world, if necessary. What you bought, you owned, and what you owned eventually came home to you.
There would come a day when he would open a door and there would be Gage, a demented parody of his former self, grinning a sunken grin, his clear blue eyes gone yellow and smart-stupid. Or Ellie would open the bathroom door for her morning shower, and there would be Gage in the tub, his body crisscrossed with the faded scars and bulges of his fatal accident, clean but stinking of the grave.
Oh yes, that day would come-he didn't doubt it a bit.
"How could I have been so stupid?" he said to the empty room, talking to himself again, not caring. "How?"
Grief, not stupidity, Louis. There is a difference... small, but vital. The battery that burying ground survives on. Growing in power, Jud said, and of course he was right-and you're part of its power now. It has fed on your grief.