tool from his hip and fed it down the glass into the guts of the door and felt with it for perhaps a second before he gave one quick yank and slipped the tool back under his belt.
The dome light came on with the opened door and he got into the truck and pulled the door shut and removed the plastic light cover and took out the little bulb and put it in the ashtray, replaced the cover and got out of the truck again and stood in the open door. He adjusted his mini MagLite for its tightest spot and roved it over the benchseat and the junk that lay there: plastic Mountain Dew bottles, mechanic’s rags, a rumpled back issue of Field & Stream, a black watchman’s cap, a flattened box of tissues. He probed the light under the benchseat on both sides of the tranny hump and saw nothing but garbage and dust and a long metallic ice scraper. In the glovebox he found a handgun, a Colt .45, with much of the factory bluing worn from the slide. The safety was on and a round was chambered. He slipped the gun into his jacket pocket, then slid the benchseat all the way forward and ran the spot over the garbage behind it, stirring it with his free hand. He saw a skinny wooden length and his heart jumped, but when he pulled the stick free it was another ice scraper, this one about as old as the truck.
He stood in the open door for a long while, darting the beam here and there, over and over again. Finally he slid the benchseat back and shut the door and peeled the rubber gloves from his hands and stuffed them in his pocket and wiped his slick hands on the sleeves of his jacket. He found his cigarettes and got one lit and, leaning his weight against the front fender, watched the gray door of the bar and the snow that fell red and silent in the light above it.
24
When she turned from the stove he’d taken the chair at the table where her grandfather would sit in the evenings bent over his ledgers, sipping mug after mug of boiled black coffee, Gordon taking the chair with no thought of her memories, of course, but only because it gave him a direct line of sight, through the window, to the fire in the yard—the fire burning strong now, sending white smoke into the sky and filling the deep snow before it with a strange trembling blush. Good old hardwood this was, he said, oak and walnut, and after it had burned down to cinders they could dig the grave and it would all be done by the time she had to go pick up Marky from the garage and tell him . . . what? That their old Wyatt, their old friend, was gone forever.
Rachel turned from the stove with the two mugs and glanced at her feet so as not to step on him, not to trip over him—hot tea everywhere, shattered mugs, shattered bones!—and her heart broke again because he was not there, was nowhere in sight and never would be again, and she fought back her tears because it was only a dog after all and what was that next to the loss of a child, a daughter, your only child?
She set one of the mugs before Gordon and he looked away from the window to thank her. He hooked his big finger through the handle but did not lift the mug, instead sat looking into the steam, and how strange he should choose today of all days to show up, so that she would not have to be alone, not yet. Even if he just sat there, even if he never said another word.
He did not look up until she’d sat down and then he looked slowly around the kitchen, and when his gaze came around to her she wanted to hold it, to read his thoughts, but he moved on again, back to the window and the fire beyond. The pale tips of flame rising above the snow, the thick and twisting smoke.
“It’s a good old house out here,” he said. “It’s good you held on to it.”
She could just see his reflection in the glass. She lifted her mug and sipped and set it down again with care. The furnace had come on and the dusty heat blew on the dog’s empty