He whistled at his dog, a three-year-old spaniel named Molly, and waited, once again, for his companion to catch up. Artie Hoyt: of all the people with whom he had to end up. Relations between the two men had been cool for the last year or more, ever since Artie had caught Peyton eyeing his daughter’s ass at church. It didn’t matter to Artie that he hadn’t seen exactly what he thought he’d seen. Yes, Peyton had been looking at his daughter’s ass, but not out of any feelings of lust or attraction. Not that he was above such base impulses: at times, the pastor’s sermons were so dull that the only thing keeping Peyton awake was the sight of young, lithe female forms draped in their Sunday best. Peyton was long past the age when he might have been troubled by the potential implications for his immortal soul of such carnal thoughts in church. He figured that God had better things to worry about than whether Peyton Carmichael, sixty-four, widower, was paying more attention to objects of female beauty than he was to the old blowhard at the pulpit, a man who, in Peyton’s opinion, possessed less Christian charity than the average alligator. As Peyton’s doctor liked to tell him, live a life of wine, women, and song, all in moderation but always of the proper vintage. Peyton’s wife had died three years earlier, taken by breast cancer, and although there were plenty of women in town of the correct vintage who might have been prepared to offer Peyton some comfort on a winter’s evening, he just wasn’t interested. He had loved his wife. Occasionally he was still lonely, although less often than before, but those feelings of loneliness were specific, not general: he missed his wife, not female company, and he viewed the occasional pleasure that he took in the sight of a young, good-looking woman merely as a sign that he was not entirely dead below the waist. God, having taken his wife from him, could allow him that small indulgence. If God was going to make a big deal of it, then, well, Peyton would have a few words for Him too, when eventually they met.
The problem with Artie Hoyt’s daughter was that, although she was young, she was by no means good looking. Neither was she lithe. In fact, she was the opposite of lithe and, come to think of it, the opposite of light too. She’d never been what you might call svelte, but then she had left town and gone to live in Baltimore, and by the time she came back she’d piled on the pounds. Now, when she walked into church, Peyton was sure that he felt the floor led q the flotremble slightly beneath her feet. If she were any bigger, she’d have to enter sideways; that, or they’d be forced to widen the aisles.
And so, the first Sunday after she’d returned to the parental home, she had entered the chapel with her mom and dad and Peyton had found himself staring in appalled fascination at her ass, jiggling under a red-and-white floral dress like an earthquake in a rose garden. His jaw might even have been hanging open when he turned to find Artie Hoyt glaring at him, and after that, well, things had never been quite the same between them. They hadn’t been close before the incident, but at least they’d been civil when their paths had crossed. Now they rarely exchanged even a nod of greeting, and they hadn’t spoken to each other until fate, and the missing Faraday boy, had forced them together. They’d been part of a group of eight that had started out in the morning, quickly falling to six after old Blackwell and his wife seemed set to pass out and had, reluctantly, turned back for home, then five, four, three, until now it was just Artie and him.
Peyton didn’t understand at first why Artie didn’t just give up and go home himself. Even the modest pace that Peyton and Molly were setting seemed too much for him, and they had been forced to stop repeatedly to allow Artie to catch his breath and gulp water from the bottle that he was carrying in his rucksack. It had taken Peyton a while to figure out that Artie wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he’d kept searching while Artie had faded, even if the other man were to die in the attempt. With that in mind, Peyton had taken a malicious pleasure in forcing the pace for a time, until he acknowledged that his needless cruelty was rendering null and void his earlier efforts at worship and penitence, the occasional glance at young women notwithstanding.
They were nearing the boundary fence between this property and the next, a field of fallow, overgrown land with a small pond at its center sheltered by trees and rushes. Peyton had only a little water left, and Molly was thirsty. He figured he could water her at the pond, then call it a day. He couldn’t see Artie objecting, just as long as it was Peyton who suggested quitting, and not him.
“Let’s head into the field there and check it out,” said Peyton. “I need to get water for the dog anyway. After that, we can cut back onto the road and take an easy walk back to the cars. Okay with you?”
Artie nodded. He walked to the fence, rested his hands upon it, and tried to hoist himself up and over. He got one foot off the ground, but the other wouldn’t join it. He simply didn’t have the strength to continue. Peyton thought he looked like he wanted to lie down and die, but he didn’t. There was something admirable about his refusal to give up, even if it had less to do with any concerns about Bobby Faraday than his anger at Peyton Carmichael. Eventually, though, he was forced to admit defeat, and landed back down on the same side on which he’d started.
“Goddammit,” he said.
“Hold up,” said Peyton. “I’ll boost you over.”
“I can do it,” said Artie. “Just give me a minute to catch my breath.”
“Come on. Neither of us is as young as he was. I’ll help you over, and then you can give me a hand up from the other side. No sense in both of us killing ourselves just to prove a point.”
Artie considered the proposal and nodded his agreement. Peyton tied Molly’s leash to the fence, in case she caught a scent and decided to make a break for freedom, then leaned down and cupped his hands so that Artie could put one booted foot into his grip. When the boot was in place, and Artie’s hold on the fence seemed secure, Peyton pushed up. Either he was stronger than he thought, which was possible, or Artie was lighter than he looked, which seemed unlikely, but, either way, Peyton ended up almost catapulting Artie over the fence. Only the judicious hooking of his left leg and right arm on the slats saved Artie from an awkward landing on the other side.
“The hell was that?” asked Artie once he had climbed down and had both feet on firm ground once again.
“Sorry,” said Peyton. He was trying not to laugh, and only partially succeeding.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know what you’re eating, but I could sure do with some of it.”
Peyton began climbing the fence. He was in good condition for a man of his age, a fact that gave him no little pleasure. Artie reached a hand up to steady him and, although Peyton didn’t need it, he took it anyway.
“Funny,” said Peyton, as he stepped down from the fence, “but I don’t eat so much anymore. I used to have a hell of an appetite, but now some breakfast and a snack in the evening does me just fine. I even had to make an extra hole in my belt to stop my damn pants from falling down.”
There was an unreadable expression on Artie Hoyt’s face as he glanced down at his own belly and reddened slightly. Peyton winced.
“I didn’t mean anything by that, Artie,” he said quietly. “When Rina was alive, I weighed thirty pounds more than I do now. She fed me up like she was going to slaughter me for Christmas. Without her…”
He trailed off and looked away.
“Don’t talk to me about it,” said Artie after a moment had passed. He appeared anxious to keep the conversation going, now that the long silence between them had at last been broken. “My wife doesn’t believe it’s food unless it’s deep fried, or comes in a bun. I think she’d deep-fry candy if she could.”
“They do that in some places,” Peyton said.
“You don’t say?” Artie looked mildly disgusted. “Jesus, don’t tell her that. Chocolate’s the closest that she gets to health food as it is.”
They began walking toward the pond. Peyton let Molly off the leash. He knew that she had sensed the presence of water, and he didn’t want to torment her by forcing her to walk at their pace. The dog raced ahead, a streak of brown and white, and soon was lost from sight in the tall grass.
“Nice dog,” said Artie.
“Thank you,” said Peyton. “She’s a good girl. She’s like a child to me, I guess.”
“Yeah,” said Artie. He knew that Peyton and his wife had not been blessed with children.
“Look, Artie,” said Peyton, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to say for a while.”
He paused as he tried to find the right words, then took a deep breath and plowed right in.
“In church, that time, after Lydia had come home, I—Well, I wanted to apologize for staring at her, you know, her…”
“Ass,” finished Artie.
“Yeah, that. I’m sorry, is all I wanted to say. It wasn’t right. Especially in church. Wasn’t Christian. It wasn’t what you might think, though.”
Suddenly, Peyton realized that he had wandered onto marshy ground, conversationally speaking. He now faced the possibility of being forced to explain both what he believed Artie might have thought Peyton was thinking, and what, in fact, he, Peyton, had been thinking, which was that Artie Hoyt’s daughter looked like the Hindenburg just before it crashed.
“She’s a big girl,” said Artie sadly, saving Peyton from further embarrassment. “It’s not her fault. Her marriage broke up, and the doctors gave her pills for depression, and she suddenly started to put on all this weight. Doesn’t help that she eats enough for two, but that’s part of it, you know, the eating. She gets sad, she eats more, she gets sadder, she eats even more. It’s a vicious cycle. I don’t blame you for staring at her. Hell, she wasn’t my daughter, I’d stare at her that way too. In fact, sometimes, it shames me to say, I do stare at her that way.”
“Anyway, I’m sorry,” said Peyton. “It wasn’t…kind.”
“Apology accepted,” said Artie. “Buy me a drink next time we’re in Dean’s.”
He put his hand out, and the two men shook. Peyton patted Artie on the back. He felt his eyes water slightly, and blamed it on his exertions.
“How about I buy you a beer when we’re done here? I could do with something to toast the end of a long day.”
“Agreed. Let’s water your dog and get the—”
He stopped. They were within sight of the sheltered pond. It had been a popular trysting spot, once upon a time, when both Artie and Peyton were much younger men, until the land changed hands and the new owner, the God-fearing man whose estate was now being fought over by his godless relatives, had let it be known that he didn’t want any adolescent voyages of sexual discovery being embarked upon in the vicinity of his pond. A large beech tree over-hung the water, its branches almost touching the surface. Molly was standing a small distance from it. She had not drunk the water. She had, in fact, stopped several feet from the bank. Now she was waiting, one paw raised, her tail wagging uncertainly. Through the rushes, something blue was visible to the approaching men.
Bobby Faraday was kneeling by the water’s edge, his upper body at a slight angle, as though he were trying to glimpse his reflection in the pool. There was a rope around his neck, attached to the trunk of the tree. He was swollen with gas, his face a reddish-purple, his features almost unrecognizable.
“Ah, hell,” said Peyton.
He wavered slightly, and Artie reached up and put his arm around his companion’s shoulder as the sun set behind them, and the wind blew, and the host bowed low in mour hi qlow in mning.