In Deepest Consequences
CHAPTER 2
After he left Thompson’s office, Calvin walked out the front courthouse doors and down the steps to Main Street, the wind-driven sleet beak-pecking at his face. He turned left at the corner and made his way up Court Street, bent forward against the wind like a hunchback, his hands buried into his armpits, walking fast, his gray breath rifling in and out. He kept his face turned away from what little traffic passed, but he needn’t bother. The few who took note no longer remembered him. They saw only another of the homeless who sometimes strayed through Hanna, and being Christians they wished him Godspeed. But they also wished him gone.
When he reached Cemetery Hill, it took him some minutes in the near whiteout to find the markers for his grandfather and John Rogers, and after brushing the snow from theirs and the surrounding markers, he found where his wife was buried.
“Odd that you’d be buried right behind Granddad.” Calvin looked at the next grave over. “Odder still that you’d be buried right next to John.”
He swept her marker clean with the palms of his hands and stooped and traced a numbed finger over each letter of her name, her birth date, which was different from the one she’d given him. When he came to the date she died, his hand fell into the snow, and he could only stare at the month and day and year.
Near dusk the snow let up, and the sky in the west grew gray as the sun sank to ash. Calvin kicked clear of snow a patch of ground behind the marker for his grandfather. He sat on the ground and crossed his legs tailor-style, and stared at the markers before him, at the fingerlings of fog seeping through the tree branches. A crow landed on his wife’s marker, and it paced stiff-legged back and across the granite top.
“So what was it that brought the four of us together?” Calvin asked. “Here. In this place. This place, of all places.”
The crow twisted its head around, regarding him.
“Well?”The crow shrilled back at him, raised its wings, and cawed at him again. Calvin ducked his head to between his knees, covering his ears in the cups of his hands, and waited. He sat there waiting a long time.
In Deepest Consequences
After he left Thompson’s office, Calvin walked out the front courthouse doors and down the steps to Main Street, the wind-driven sleet beak-pecking at his face. He turned left at the corner and made his way up Court Street, bent forward against the wind like a hunchback, his hands buried into his armpits, walking fast, his gray breath rifling in and out. He kept his face turned away from what little traffic passed, but he needn’t bother. The few who took note no longer remembered him. They saw only another of the homeless who sometimes strayed through Hanna, and being Christians they wished him Godspeed. But they also wished him gone.
When he reached Cemetery Hill, it took him some minutes in the near whiteout to find the markers for his grandfather and John Rogers, and after brushing the snow from theirs and the surrounding markers, he found where his wife was buried.
“Odd that you’d be buried right behind Granddad.” Calvin looked at the next grave over. “Odder still that you’d be buried right next to John.”
He swept her marker clean with the palms of his hands and stooped and traced a numbed finger over each letter of her name, her birth date, which was different from the one she’d given him. When he came to the date she died, his hand fell into the snow, and he could only stare at the month and day and year.
Near dusk the snow let up, and the sky in the west grew gray as the sun sank to ash. Calvin kicked clear of snow a patch of ground behind the marker for his grandfather. He sat on the ground and crossed his legs tailor-style, and stared at the markers before him, at the fingerlings of fog seeping through the tree branches. A crow landed on his wife’s marker, and it paced stiff-legged back and across the granite top.
“So what was it that brought the four of us together?” Calvin asked. “Here. In this place. This place, of all places.”
The crow twisted its head around, regarding him.
“Well?”The crow shrilled back at him, raised its wings, and cawed at him again. Calvin ducked his head to between his knees, covering his ears in the cups of his hands, and waited. He sat there waiting a long time.
In Deepest Consequences
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