I almost saw Mama sitting on the sand as she used to sit. I had that feeling again of wanting to be alone. But I could not force myself to speak of this to Margaret. I only held onto her and waited.
It got late in the day. Most of the children had gone home and only a few men and women remained basking in the windy sun.
The life-guard boat pulled up on the shore. The life guard stepped out of it, slowly, with something in his arms.
I froze there. I held my breath and I felt small, only twelve years old, very little, very infinitesimal and afraid. The wind howled. I could not see Margaret. I could see only the beach, the life guard slowly emerging from the boat with a gray sack in his hands, not very heavy, and his face almost as gray and lined.
“Stay here, Margaret,” I said. I don’t know why I said it.
“But, why?”
“Just stay here, that’s all–“
I walked slowly down the sand to where the life guard stood. He looked at me.
“What is it?”I asked.
The life guard kept looking at me for a long time and he couldn’t speak. He put the gray sack on the sand, and water whispered wet up around it and went back.
“What is it?” I insisted.
“Strange,” said the life guard, quietly.
I waited.
“Strange,” he said, softly. “Strangest thing I ever saw. She’s been dead a long time.”
I repeated his words.
He nodded. “Ten years, I’d say. There haven’t been any children drowned here this year. There were twelve children drowned here since 1933, but we found all of them before a few hours had passed. All except one, I remember. This body here, why it must be ten years in the water. It’s not–pleasant.”
I stared at the gray sack in his arms. “Open it,” I said. I don’t know why I said it. The wind was louder.
He fumbled with the sack.
“Hurry, man, open it!” I cried.
“I better not do that,” he said. Then perhaps he saw the way my face must have looked. “She was such a little girl–“
He opened it only part way. That was enough.
The beach was deserted. There was only the sky and the wind and the water and the autumn coming on lonely. I looked down at her there.
I said something over and over. A name. The life guard looked at me. “Where did you find her?” I asked.
“Down the beach, that way, in the shallow water. It’s a long, long time for her, isn’t it?”
I shook my head.
“Yes, it is. Oh God, yes it is.”
I thought: people grow. I have grown. But she has not changed. She is still small. She is still young. Death does not permit growth or change. She still has golden hair. She will be forever young and and I will love her forever, oh God, I will love her forever.
The life guard tied up the sack again.
Down the beach, a few moments later, I walked by myself. I stopped, and looked down at something. This is where the life guard found her, I said to myself.
There, at the water’s edge, lay a sand castle, only half-built. Just like Tally and I used to build them. She half and I half.
I looked at it. I knelt beside the sand castle and saw the small prints of feet coming in from the lake and going back out to the lake again and not returning.
Then–I knew.
“I’ll help you finish it,” I said.
I did. I built the rest of it up very slowly, then I arose and turned away and walked off, so as not to watch it crumble in the waves, as all things crumble.
I walked back up the beach to where a strange woman named Margaret was waiting for me, smiling. . .
The Emissary
Martin knew it was autumn again, for Dog ran into the house bringing wind and frost and a smell of apples turned to cider under trees. In dark clock-springs of hair, Dog fetched goldenrod, dust of farewell-summer, acornhusk, hair of squirrel, feather of departed robin, sawdust from fresh-cut cordwood, and leaves like charcoals shaken from a blaze of maple trees. Dog jumped. Showers of brittle fern, blackberry vine, marsh-grass sprang over the bed where Martin shouted. No doubt, no doubt of it at all, this incredible beast was October!
“Here, boy, here!”
And Dog settled to warm Martin’s body with all the bonfires and subtle burnings of the season, to fill the room with soft or heavy, wet or dry odors of far-traveling. In spring, he smelled of lilac, iris, lawn-mowered grass; in Summer, ice-cream-mustached, he came pungent with firecracker, Roman candle, pinwheel, baked by the sun. But autumn! Autumn!
“Dog, what’s it like outside?”
And lying there, Dog told as he always told. Lying there, Martin found autumn as in the old days before sickness bleached him white on his bed. Here was his contact, his carry-all, the quick-moving part of himself he sent with a yell to run and return, circle and scent, collect and deliver the time and texture of worlds in town, country, by creek, river, lake, down-cellar, upattic, in closet or coal-bin. Ten dozen times a day he was gifted with sunflower seed, cinder-path, milkweed, horse-chestnut, or full flame-smell of pumpkin. Through the loomings of the universe Dog shuttled; the design was hid in his pelt. Put out your hand, it was there. . . .
“And where did you go this morning?”
But he knew without hearing where Dog had rattled down hills where autumn lay in cereal crispness, where children lay in funeral pyres, in rustling heaps, the leaf-buried but watchful dead, as Dog and the world blew by. Martin trembled as his fingers searched the thick fur, read the long journey. Through stubbled fields, over glitters of ravine creek, down marbled spread of cemetery yard, into woods. In the great season of spices and rare incense, now Martin ran through his emissary, around, about, and home!
The bedroom door opened.
“That dog of yours is in trouble again.”
Mother brought in a tray of fruit salad, cocoa, and toast, her blue eyes snapping.
“Mother . . .”
“Always digging places. Dug a hole in Miss Tarkin’s garden this morning. She’s spittin’ mad. That’s the fourth hole he’s dug there this week.”
“Maybe he’s looking for something.”
“Fiddlesticks, he’s too darned curious. If he doesn’t behave he’ll be locked up.”
Martin looked at this woman as if she were a stranger. “Oh, you wouldn’t do that! How would I learn anything? How would I find things out if Dog didn’t tell me?”
Mom’s voice was quieter. “Is that what he does–tell you things?”
“There’s nothing I don’t know when he goes out and around and back, nothing I can’t find out from him!”
They both sat looking at Dog and the dry strewings of mold and seed over the quilt.
“Well, if he’ll just stop digging where he shouldn’t, he can run all he wants,” said Mother.
“Here, boy, here!”
And Martin snapped a tin note to the dog’s collar:
MY OWNER IS MARTIN SMITH–TEN YEARS OLD–SICK IN BED– VISITORS WELCOME.
Dog barked. Mother opened the downstairs door and let him out.
Martin sat listening.
Far off and away you could hear Dog run in the quiet autumn rain that was falling now. You could hear the barkingjingling fade, rise, fade again as he cut down alley, over lawn, to fetch back Mr. Holloway and the oiled metallic smell of the delicate snowflake-interiored watches he repaired in his home shop. Or maybe he would bring Mr. Jacobs, the grocer, whose clothes were rich with lettuce, celery, tomatoes, and the secret tinned and hidden smell of the red demons stamped on cans of deviled ham. Mr. Jacobs and his unseen pink-meat devils waved often from the yard below. Or Dog brought Mr. Jackson, Mrs. Gillespie, Mr. Smith, Mrs. Holmes, any friend or near-friend, encountered, cornered, begged, worried, and at last shepherded home for lunch, or tea-and-biscuits.
Now, listening, Martin heard Dog below, with footsteps moving in a light rain behind him. The downstairs bell rang, Mom opened the door, light voices murmured. Martin sat forward, face shining. The stair treads creaked. A young woman’s voice laughed quietly. Miss Haight, of course, his teacher from school!
The bedroom door sprang open.
Martin had company.
Morning, afternoon, evening, dawn and dusk, sun and moon circled with Dog, who faithfully reported temperatures of turf and air, color of earth and tree, consistency of mist or rain, but–most important of all–brought back again and again and again– Miss Haight.
On Saturday, Sunday and Monday she baked Martin orange-iced cupcakes, brought him library books about dinosaurs and cavemen. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday somehow he beat her at dominoes, somehow she lost at checkers, and soon, she cried, he’d defeat her handsomely at chess. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday they talked and never stopped talking, and she was so young and laughing and handsome and her hair was a soft, shining brown like the season outside the window, and she walked clear, clean and quick, a heartbeat warm in the bitter afternoon when he heard it. Above all, she had the secret of signs, and could read and interpret Dog and the symbols she searched out and plucked forth from his coat with her miraculous fingers. Eyes shut, softly laughing, in a gypsy’s voice, she
