Margaret Millar by Banshee

Author:Banshee [Banshee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

When he returned through the Hyatts’ avocado grove the dogs came running to greet him, the shepherd barking hysterically, the Newfoundland silent and placid as usual. They both looked neglected. Newf’s feathered legs and plumed tail had collected dozens of burr clovers and Shep’s underbelly was shafted with foxtails. Burr clover was a relatively harmless nuisance to animals but foxtails could do serious damage, digging farther and farther into the skin as if they were alive. Michael picked them all out carefully, keeping them in his hand until he could find a trash can to prevent them from reseeding.

The palace too looked neglected, its windows smudged, its patch of lawn dried out, the barbecue pit choked with eucalyptus pods and pine needles and sycamore leaves. There were no fish in the fishpond and only an inch or two of dirty water.

The front door was partly open as though someone had forgotten to lock it and it had been pushed inward by the wind or one of the dogs or a reconnoitering possum. When Michael went to close it he saw that sycamore leaves were scattered around the room, on the small davenport and dining set and stove, even on the bunk beds where Marietta and Luella Lu lay awaiting their mistress. Marietta’s half-bald head was partly covered by a leaf that looked quite like a perky new hat. Luella Lu had been turned on her side and her glued eye was staring straight at Michael and beyond.

The two dogs, Shep strangely silent, sat outside the door, as though they had forgotten they were ever allowed inside as the royal attendants. Michael, who’d never owned a dog, had felt no real kinship with one until this moment when he wondered how much of Annamay was still alive inside their heads, a voice, a touch, a smell, a laugh.

He closed the door and began walking along the path toward the main house with the dogs following. If they hadn’t suddenly bounded off in the direction of the koi pond he would have missed the old man sitting beside it.

“Good morning, Michael,” Mr. Hyatt said.

“Good morning, Mr. Hyatt.”

“Then it was you thrashing around in the avocado grove.”

“I didn’t realize I was thrashing.”

“But you were. I have very good hearing. It’s lucky you chose the profession you did. You would have made a very poor Indian scout.”

“I quite agree.”

“Of course some leaves are very numerous and noisy this late in the year, at least until the first rain. Then they go soft and cling to the earth until they are a part of it again.” Mr. Hyatt’s face was almost hidden by a crudely woven straw hat, the kind the Mexican pickers used. “It was that unseasonal rain in late July that prevented her from being found sooner. The leaves became soft and pliant and clung to her. And the earth claimed her for its own without us even knowing about it. You said it well at the funeral. Would you repeat it for me, please?”

“Of dust we are made and to dust we shall return.

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