Searching for Caleb

They tiptoed down again. Although they should be going to their homes for supper, they seemed inclined to churn about in Great-Grandma's living room instead. They weren't quite sure just how they should behave. The last death in the family had been in 1912, too long ago for most of them to remember. "Yet after all," Aunt Sarah said finally, "it's not as if Sam Mayhew were really-"

"No. No."

"And after all, he did actually-"

"Oh, he acted like a man possessed."

"Always trying to turn her against us."

"Making no effort to understand her."

"And Caroline's so sensitive. It's the way she is."

"Refusing to give his own daughter away."

"But still," said Aunt Lucy, who sometimes grew overemotional, "Caroline loved him! I know she did, she must have, you could tell she was just torn. And now he's dead. Oh, what will she do now?"

"Lucy," her husband said. "About time to feed me my supper, don't you think?"

"Well, all right."

"We'll try to call Justine from our house, Grandma. If the phone's not fixed, I'll drive out there in the morning."

"Oh, think of Justine. How will she ever forgive herself?"

Upstairs, cowboys sang lonesome songs around a campfire and the wind rolled tumbleweed across the desert with a howling sound.

At nine o'clock that evening, Caroline rose up in her pink silk gown and put on her feathered slippers. Before leaving the room she turned off the television set. She descended the stairs, stately and flowing; she crossed the front hall and went out the door. She drifted across the lawn and then onto the road, where she proceeded down the center with her arms out and her steps mincing and careful like a tightrope walker. To the first car that came, she appeared as monstrous and unexpected as a wad of pink bubble gum. The driver gasped and swerved at the last moment. The second driver was harder to surprise. "Do your drinking at home, lady!"

he shouted out the window, and then he slid smoothly past.

She had to wait for six cars, all told, before she found one that would run her down.

Duncan brought Justine a cup of beef broth and a silver spoon and a linen napkin. He found her sitting in the living room of Great-Grandma's house, all alone, staring into space. "Oh. Thank you," she said. She set the cup on the coffee table.

"I made it myself."

"Thank you."

"Ma said coffee, but coffee has no food value."

She smoothed her dress.

"Broth has protein," Duncan told her. "You can go without protein for months and feel just fine, never notice, but underneath it's doing you harm that can never be repaired. Protein is made up of amino acids, the building blocks of the-"

"Duncan, I can't believe you're saying all this."

"I can't either," he told her.

He waited for her to try the broth. She didn't. He squatted beside her.

"Justine-" he said.

But no, too late, the aunts had tracked them down again. "Justine? You mustn't sit like this, dear heart-"

They reminded him of ships. They traveled in fleets. Their wide summer skirts billowed and collapsed as they settled all around him, edging him out. But he didn't give in so easily. "We were just talking," he told them.

"She should be in bed."

"What for?"

"She doesn't look at all well."

She didn't. Even her hair seemed changed, hanging lank and lifeless around her face. In just four days she had developed a new deep hollow between her collarbones. She was already losing her country tan. If he could just carry her home, to the sunlit fields and their little house with its ridiculous damask curtains! But the aunts rustled and resettled, inching closer. "She ought to be left with us a while, Duncan. She just feels so sorry, you see. She's acting just like her poor dear mother did.

You can't take her back to sit all alone in the middle of nowhere."

"Alone?"

"She needs looking after."

"/ look after her," Duncan told them.

"Yes, but-and she could have her old room again, or maybe yours if hers would bring memories. You could go back to your cows or whatever and we would take good-Justine, do you like Duncan's room?"

"Duncan's? Yes."

"There, see?"

"Or she could come to us," Aunt Bea said. "At our house, you see, we have so much excitement, Esther and Richard rushing around and the twins so talkative, she'd just come out of herself in no time."

"Maybe she doesn't want to come out of herself," Duncan said.

"Oh, it helps to have a little company! All those young people making merry. Justine?"

Justine sat like a stone. The old secret, tucked-in smile she used to flash Duncan seemed gone forever. When he rose she didn't even look his way, and it seemed unlikely that she noticed when he left the room.