Searching for Caleb

Justine asked, in her most carrying tone. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, certainly."

The bus wheezed past a dismal hotel with tattered windowshades. It stopped in front of the Caro Mill Diner. Place couldn't have a regular terminal, no. Out they had to climb, in the middle of the street. The driver did not so much as give Justine a hand down the steps, or either of the other ladies; Daniel had to do it. He touched his temple for each one in turn as he let go of her arm. "Why, thank you," one lady told him.

The other didn't say a word, or else he missed it.

In front of the diner sat the Ford, three feet from a hydrant, battered and dusty and bearing a long new dent in the rear bumper. He studied the damage. In the old days people left notes about such things, giving their names and telephone numbers. Not any more. When he finally climbed into the car he said, "Conscience has vanished."

"Excuse me?"

Justine looked at him, one hand outstretched toward her own door which was flapping open and snarling traffic. "What's vanished?"

"Conscience, I said. They dent your bumper and don't even leave a note."

"Perhaps I," said Justine, and something else.

"No, if you had done it I would have noticed. Besides, you've had this week's accident." His little joke. He laughed, covering his mouth with his fist to turn it into a cough.

Then, wham! He was jarred and knocked into the windshield. Aches and pains started up all over, instantly. It seemed that someone had reached down a gigantic hand and flung him like a doll. "Grandfather?" Justine asked. There was a long red welt on the inside of her arm, and a few dots of blood. Just past her, a car had stopped and a man was climbing out.

And where the door had been swinging open there was nothing now at all, just clear blank air and then the man's angry face. The man was shouting but all his words were a blur. It didn't matter; Daniel was just relieved to see the cause of his shake-up. Of course, a door torn off! Yet he continued to feel disoriented. When the man had driven away, and Justine stepped out to drag the door to the trunk and heave it in, he was still so dazed that he didn't offer to help. He watched numbly as she slid behind the wheel again. "At least we're well ventilated," she told him. A strange thing to say, or perhaps he had misunderstood. He wished he were home. He raced through the hallways of his mind calling out for Laura, his father, Caleb, Margaret Rose. But really he should never have married Margaret Rose. A shared background was the important thing. If he had not been such a fool for her chuckling laugh and the tender, subtle curve at the small of her back he would have made a more sensible choice, a person he had known all his life. Who was that little girl who used to come visiting with her parents? Melissa, Melinda? But he had wanted someone new and surprising. A terrible mistake. How he hated Margaret Rose! The thought of her made him grind his teeth. He would like to know where she was now so that he could do something dreadful to her, humiliate her in front of all her fancy, tinkling friends. But no, she was dead. He was so disappointed to remember. As usual she had done something first, run ahead of him laughing and looking back at him over her shoulder, and for once he could not refuse to follow.

"Once you're alive, there's no way out but dying," he told Justine.

She looked over at him.

"You've set a thing in motion, you see."

"It's like being pregnant," said Justine. Of course she couldn't really have said that. His ears were bad. His mind was bad. He was going to have to get a hold of himself. He straightened his back and looked out the window, a respectable elderly gentleman admiring the view as they rattled homeward.

Meg Peck and the Reverend Arthur Milsom were sitting in the living room waiting for Meg's parents. Or Arthur was sitting; Meg kept moving around.

First she chose the armchair because she wanted to look proper and adult.

Then she thought it was more natural to sit next to Arthur on the couch.

They were about to ask permission to get married; what would they be doing across the room from each other?

Arthur had on his clerical collar, which wasn't absolutely required but it looked very nice. He was a young, pale, tense man, small but wiry.

When he was nervous he cracked his knuckles and his brown eyes grew so dark and sober that he seemed to be glaring. "Don't be nervous," Meg told him, sitting back down on the couch. She reached over and took his damp hand.