Jolly (21 page)

Jolly walked cautiously to the ambulance. Its white length was shortened ridiculously. He ran his hand along the smooth right side of the body, around to the other side where the metal was folded and creased and muddied. From where he stood, the hood bent upward like the broken wing of a great bird. He stopped a long time by the door on the driver’s side. The door itself, in fact the whole body from frame to roof, was smashed in as if some giant-child had thrown down his toy in anger. The wheel on that side was missing entirely. Jolly wondered if it was still out there, lying wherever it had bounced to, probably down into a canyon, flinging crazily every few feet as it met another granite boulder, while above on the road Luke fought the last split second of his life against odds no human could ever match, his hands twisting at the steering wheel even after it had crushed his chest, even as his head cracked among the apparatus of the ambulance—the heavy steel bottle of oxygen, the chromium-plated bed on wheels—even as these flew murderously forward among the neatly rolled bandages, and the little jars of iodine and Merthiolate, and the square white tin box with the red cross that held all the puny contrivances for keeping people alive and their blood inside their veins a few more moments, even as the dark eyes closed part way from their wide terror and stared unblinking into the soft rain that soothed through paneless windows.

Jolly drove on, along the paved road that stretched darkly for two miles more to where the swooping granite wall began.

The graveyard seemed darker, if anything, and quieter than the rest of the night. The car’s headlights swept over the rows of stones turned gray from the rain, and over the grass-warmed undulations of the earth. The pine trunks were brown in the car’s lights, but the tops were unseen in the sky. Jolly saw the baskets and sprays of expensive flowers on the first graves. Most were beaten down by the rain and seemed to clutter, rather than decorate.

“I’m a day late for Memorial Day,” he said.

He left the Blue Goose standing before the mausoleum. The little coupe seemed to shrink beneath the stone power of the tomb, which loomed more awesome for being only barely visible. He unhooked Luke’s flashlight from the steering column and played the beam over the near gravel walks, choosing carefully. The light made an elongated circle directly before his feet as he walked, counting the squares, the paths. He no longer felt the rain on his clothes or the cold that had come with darkness.

He stopped. He shined the light over a mound and remembered it as the unmarked grave on which he had cast his bouquet of nasturtiums long ago. The weeds still ranged over it, no better or worse than they had before. No holiday flowers decorated it.

He stared a long time at the grave, wondering why he was there and why he felt nothing in particular now that he knew for sure. He kicked idly at the weeds along the edge of the loaf of earth. The bright beam of the flashlight, cutting against the black, made him dizzy. His mind passed over the days just gone, jumbling the events in a meaningless whirl. His thoughts came back to Luke lying snugly dead on the steel table that tilted like a seesaw. Jolly felt himself say “Luke is dead” for the first time.

He kicked at the weeds. They were old and tough and resisted the kicks despite the wetness of the earth. “Goddamit!” he said aloud. “Goddam, goddam.”

The weeds bent and some began to tear loose, their roots gouging out clumps of dirt as they toppled. Jolly kicked harder with the toe of his shoe, and it would have been difficult to say if his face was wet with tears or rain.

Suddenly, near the head of the mound, he kicked, and the edge of a tin marker pointed from the earth. He bent down slowly and pulled it the rest of the way out. He squatted, and turning the isinglass side up, he rubbed it. When most of the mud was gone he held it out to the rain until the surface was clean.

Holding the flashlight in one hand and the marker in the other, by its single long spiked leg, he drew it close to his face to read it. There was nothing on it. The writing had faded, and the only signs that there had ever been writing were the little pale rivulets of blue permanently stained on the paper around the edges.

Jolly stood with the tin marker in his hands.

A deep breath, one of those that come without warning, passed through his chest, causing him to straighten abruptly. The rain washed down over his hair and face and ran in tiny streams down the back of his neck and, it seemed, all over his body.

The marker fell silently into the wet earth, spear first, and sank deep. With his foot Jolly drove the square slice of tin down into the grave until nothing showed of it but a narrow strip at the top, even with the ground.

He clicked off the light. While his eyes adjusted to the deeper blackness, he faced the rain and let it wash.

After a time he walked back toward the Blue Goose standing beneath the faceless tower of gray stone. He walked without the light, watching the pebble paths curve beneath his feet.

The other car was parked behind the Blue Goose. It was some dark color—maroon or maybe black—but it would have been impossible to say which, parked the way it was in the wet shadow of night. Only the dim circles of its white-walled tires told where the car and the road separated.

The man leaned against the smaller car, his coat collar turned up against the rain, shielding the lighted cigarette in his cupped hand. As Jolly approached, the orange pin of light skittered onto the road and was instantly killed by the rain.

“Did you find it?”

Jolly stopped, confused. Then he saw the man. He knew the voice.

“How did you know—”

“Never mind.” Jolly felt the hands touch his face on either side. “I know,” the voice said. “I know.”

Now, therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may;

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

Rather at once our Time devour,

Than languish in his slow-chapt power.

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Thorough the iron gates of life.

Thus, though we cannot make our Sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

—Andrew Marvell