“Can you believe that Patty Hearst?” Darla said. She might be the daughter of a millionaire, growing up in San Francisco and all (San Francisco! The place Darla was heading when she met Bobby), but in a funny way, Darla identified with her.
“She had it all,” Darla said. “Then she meets this guy and he takes her away and they start robbing banks. Next thing you know, she’s calling herself Tania and she’s on the front page wearing some damned camo gear, holding an M16.”
According to Darla, this was what love did to a person. You got brainwashed.
She stayed home with her daughter now. She would’ve liked to work, but Bobby wouldn’t let her. He had lots of opinions about how she was supposed to be.
“It could be worse,” she said. “He could be on drugs. He knocks me around sometimes but nothing serious.”
She cleaned houses for summer people. Bobby didn’t know anything about the housecleaning jobs. He wouldn’t like it if he did. The only house Darla was supposed to clean was their own. His house, actually. That’s how he put it.
When she had enough set aside, she was going to use it for a down payment on an apartment for her and Kimmie. Not in this town. Someplace far away. Manchester, maybe, or even Boston.
“I always wanted to go to college,” she said. She knew this probably sounded weird, but she wanted to get certified to be an undertaker.
“Some people might find that kind of work creepy,” she told Eleanor, “but dead people don’t bother me. Plus, you deal with the families. You work with people at the saddest time in their life. If you do a good job, you can make a difference.”
“If I told any of this to Bobby, he’d belt me,” she told Eleanor. “But it’s OK. I’m getting out soon.”
Darla did most of the talking, those afternoons on the porch. She had a lot to say, and Eleanor was probably the only one she could say it to. But one afternoon, Eleanor told her what had happened with Matt Hallinan.
“Let’s make an oath,” Darla said. “One of these days, you’re going to stick it to that guy. Same as one of these days I’m leaving Bobby in my dust. We just have to wait for our moment.”
One time when they were out on the porch, a little later than usual, Bobby came by looking for Darla. Charlie hardly ever barked, but when he heard Bobby’s Harley coming down the long driveway, he did, and when Bobby stood in the doorway, he hid under the table.
“I had a feeling I’d find my wife here,” he said to Eleanor. Then he turned in Darla’s direction. “I know how you love chitchatting with your girlfriend,” he said, “but it’s time to go.”
Darla’s voice sounded different when she spoke to him. “You go on ahead, hon,” she said. “I’ll be home soon.”
He turned toward Eleanor again. “Your friend here has her responsibilities.”
“I’ll just pack up Kimmie’s pictures,” she told him.
“I said now.” He picked up a drawing his daughter had made. A stick figure meant to be a portrait of Charlie.
“I wasn’t finished with my picture,” Kimmie said.
“This woman here,” Bobby said, placing his hand on Darla’s neck, tight enough that Eleanor could see her flinch. “She’s something in the sack.”
“Stop it, Bobby,” Darla said.
“You ashamed of what I do to you, baby?” he told her. “How I drive you crazy? You tell your friend how you’re always begging for more?”
“I’m sorry,” Darla said. “This is what happens when he drinks.”
“This is what happens when a man comes home and his wife isn’t there to make him dinner,” he said.
He roared off on his bike. Darla, in her car, with Kimmie in the back, followed behind.
It was late November, heading into Eleanor’s third winter alone in the house. The ash tree out front had been bare for weeks, and now she’d turned back the clocks, which left her needing to turn on the lights by three thirty and stoke the woodstove all through the day. There had been a telephone conference with her editor about Bodie Goes to Space, and by the time she hung up the phone she realized the room was dark and it was nearly dinnertime.
It was the third week of deer season, that time when hunters who hadn’t bagged one yet started feeling desperate. Driving into town the day before to pick up groceries, Eleanor had passed two houses in front of whose garages hung the upside-down carcasses of recent kill. Men in orange vests were everywhere. All day, shots had rung out from the woods.
As she usually did, she ended her workday with a walk to the waterfall, wearing an orange hat on account of the hunters. Normally, Charlie would have accompanied her, but when he didn’t come, after she called him, she figured he was probably off chasing squirrels.
Rounding the last bend in the road, where the old ash tree came into view, she expected to see Charlie stretched out on the step, but he wasn’t there, and she realized then that it had been hours since she’d seen her dog. She walked to the edge of the woods and called to him in the growing darkness. Nothing.
She was back in the kitchen, vaguely uneasy without having anything to do about it, when she heard the sound of tires. Living at the end of a dead-end road as she did, hearing the sound of a car was a rare event. Just about the only visitors Eleanor got out here were the Federal Express man or Darla or Walt, come to check up on her. (Most recently, there had been a sudden infestation of bats in the big upstairs open space. Walt had spent the afternoon getting rid of them for her, refusing payment. One more thing for Edith to be annoyed about.)
But it wasn’t Walt’s truck she saw coming down the road. It was a police car. There appeared to be something on top of the vehicle. As the car got closer she could make out the body of an animal, but not a deer. She stepped into the driveway to get a better look.
It was Charlie, held to the roof with a couple of bungee cords, a single stream of blood running down the windshield. His tail, which never failed to wag when she came within range, hung down the side of the car, unmoving.
Eleanor ran to the police car, her hand to her mouth. She might have screamed but no sound came out of her. The officer stepped out of his vehicle.
“This your animal? I spotted him up the road a ways, chasing a deer. Sorry about your pup here, but we’ve got procedures to follow when an animal does that.”
From inside his patrol car Eleanor could hear the voice of the dispatcher, crackling. From the house, the voice of Joni Mitchell. I wish I had a river I could skate away on.
“You got two options,” he told her. “I can leave the body here for you to take care of, or we can dispose of it back at the station. Animal control.”
She stared at the spot on Charlie’s body where the bullet had entered his chest. When the officer lifted him up slightly, she took in how much blood there was. She would bury her dog under the ash tree with a pile of stones to mark the spot. Walt would give her a hand.
The death of Charlie changed everything. Until then, even in her loneliest times, Eleanor had viewed her life on the farm as a romantic adventure. Though she had no idea of what might happen to change things—or where the children were going to come from, whose bedroom awaited them—she believed, a little like her character, Bodie, that sooner or later, amazing things would happen to her. She would fix the house up to be something like the illustrations in her book of Carl Larsson drawings. She’d have this great garden, exploding with flowers. She’d create these magical stories, one of which would feature herself as the heroine. One day, in the not-so-distant future, her rescuer would appear, and their life together, her real life, would begin.