Act of God

again, the male cop said, “What do you think?”
    “I think he’s legit.”
    “Same.” Then to me, “ MRs . Rivkind and her son they took a little time off, go away over the Fourth, put aside the memories for a while. The family’s been real active in town here, supporting this and that. People are real sorry about what happened, looking out for them now.”
    “Glad to hear it. Which neighbour called me in?”
    The sleepy smile. “This street, Cuddy, it has a thousand eyes. Just so we don’t get any more calls though, how about we move our car and you move yours somewhere else?”
    “ Fair enough.”

23

    When I pulled to the curb outside Roger Houle’s house in Meade, there was nosign of him or his neighbor, Mrs. Thorson. However, this time the front lawn was mowed, the clippings either raked off or captured in some kind of bag so that his place looked the same as the other mini-manses on the street. Turning off the engine, I could hear the sound of a hammer. Bang-bang-bang, then a pause, then one-two-three again. Getting out of the Prelude and walking around the back of his house, I found myself almost marching in time to the rhythm.
    The hammering got louder as I cleared the corner on Mrs. Thorson’s side. This time I saw Houle from the front, and he looked a little better than the first time I’d met him. The face under the bald head still seemed haggard, but he’d shaved that morning, and there was some color on his arms below a breast-pocket T-shirt. He stood on a ladder leaned against the potting shed, which was almost finished, the glassless windows showing what would have been a bright, airy place for a person interested in gardening to work. Houle had a magnetized hammer in his left hand, holding a nail by its head as he positioned a section of green, tweedy shingle with his right on the sloping roof of the shed.
    He was about to drive the nail when my movement caught his eye. “You’re...?”
    “John Cuddy, Mr. Houle. I was by here last Thursday?” He seemed to have to focus on that. “Oh, right. About Darbra.”
    Nodding, I glanced over at his wife’s garden, less to check on the plants and more to check on the covered urn. The other vases and his redwood lounge chair were still in the same positions, which let me see more quickly that the urn wasn’t.
    Houle climbed down from the ladder, slipping the handle of his hammer into a loop on a leather carpenter’s apron, then unstrapping the apron like a cowboy reversing his gun belt. “What can I do for you?”
    “There’ve been a few developments I thought you should know about.”
    Houle looked at me carefully. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
    “Yes.”
    “More than just Darbra being off somewhere.”
    “I’m afraid so.”
    He shook his head. “It just doesn’t stop.” Walking, almost shambling over to the corner of the shed by the fertilizer bags and tools, Houle pulled the other lounge chair by its foot, the back wheels making tracks in the grass. “The arm of this thing’s like a little desktop, in case you need to write something down.”
    He seemed to be functioning a lot better. I said, “Thanks.”
    Houle sat on his lounge sidesaddle, like he expected maybe to get up again soon. “I wasn’t in real good shape last time I saw you.”
    I eased into the other one. “Pretty understandable.”
    “That first week... I didn’t wash or look after myself… Wouldn’t have e aten anything if it wasn’t for a neighbor.”
    “Mrs. Thorson?”
    Houle narrowed his eyes. “How did you...?”
    “I met her coming in last time.”
    He shook his head again. “Sorry. I don’t remember much about... that.”
    “ You seem to be doing well now.”
    Houle granted. “Sometime Friday, I got up, looked in the mirror , and got a little scared. Up till then, I was mostly... numb. But I looked at myself, and I saw one of those guys you try to avoid when you go into the city, mumbling to themselves on the street in torn clothes and dirty shoes. That was when I showered and shaved. Cut myself to pieces, hadn’t tried to take a beard off since college. But it brought me around, a little.”
    He looked toward the garden. “Then I came out here, saw the ashes—the urn, I mean, and said fuck the law, said it out loud, and spread Caroline among the flowers, where she belongs.” Houle moved his head the other way. “Then I saw the shed over there, halfway done, and figured I could work on it some, and that brought me around