stupid, since the last math she'd taken was Algebra II in high school. These days, x was for crossing out the wrong word, and that was all. She pulled the blank sheet out and tossed it away.
After lunch on the third rainy day, she called the English Department at the university. Jim no longer taught there, not for eight years, but he still had friends on the faculty and kept in touch. Muriel in the office usually knew where he was.
And did this time. Jim Gardener, she told Anderson, was doing a reading in Fall River that night, June 24th, followed by two in Boston over the next three nights, followed by readings and lectures in Providence and New Haven - all part of something called The New England Poetry Caravan. Must be Patricia McCardle, Anderson thought, smiling a little.
'So he'd be back ... when? Fourth of July?'
'Gee, I don't know when he'll be back, Bobbi,' Muriel said. 'You know Jim. His last reading's June 30th. That's all I can say for sure.'
Anderson thanked her and hung up. She looked at the phone thoughtfully, calling up Muriel fully in her mind - another Irish colleen (but Muriel had the expected red hair) just now reaching the far edge of her prime, round-faced, green-eyed, full-breasted. Had she slept with Jim? Probably. Anderson felt a spark of jealousy - but not much of a spark. Muriel was okay. Just speaking to Muriel made her feel better - someone who knew who she was, who could think of her as a real person, not just as a customer on the other side of the counter in an Augusta hardware store or as someone to say how-do to over the mailbox. She was solitary by nature, but not monastic ... and sometimes simple human contact had a way of fulfilling her when she didn't even know she needed to be fulfilled.
And she supposed she knew now why she had wanted to get in contact with Jim - talking with Muriel had done that, at least. The thing in the woods had stayed on her mind, and the idea that it was some sort of clandestine coffin had grown to a certainty. It wasn't writing she was restless to do; it was digging. She just hadn't wanted to do it on her own.
'Looks like I'll have to, though, Pete,' she said, sitting down in her rocker by the east window - her reading chair. Peter glanced at her briefly, as if to say Whatever you want, babe. Anderson sat forward, suddenly looking at Pete - really looking at him. Peter looked back cheerfully enough, tail thumping on the floor. For a moment it seemed there was something different about Peter ... something so obvious she should be seeing it.
If so, she wasn't.
She settled back, opening her book - a master's thesis from the University of Nebraska, the most exciting thing about it the title: Range War and Civil War. She remembered thinking a couple of nights ago as her sister Anne would think: You're getting as funny in the head as Uncle Frank, Bobbi. Well ... maybe.
Shortly she was deep into the thesis, making an occasional note on the legal pad she kept near. Outside, the rain continued to fall.
2
The following day dawned clear and bright and flawless: a postcard summer day with just enough breeze to make the bugs keep their distance. Anderson pottered around the house until almost ten o'clock, conscious of the growing pressure her mind was putting on her to get out there and dig it up, already. She could feel herself consciously pushing back against that urge (Orson Welles again We will dig up no body before its ... oh, shut up, Orson). Her days of simply following the urge of the moment, a lifestyle that had once been catechized by the bald motto 'If it feels good, do it,' were over. It had never worked well for her, that philosophy - in fact, almost every bad thing that had happened to her had its roots in some impulsive action. She attached no moral stigma to people who did live their lives according to impulse; maybe her intuitions just hadn't been that good.
She ate a big breakfast, added a scrambled egg to Peter's Gravy Train (Peter ate with more appetite than usual, and Anderson put it down to the end of the rainy spell), and then did the washing-up.
If her dribbles would just stop, everything would be fine. Forget it;