“Did he, uh,
The black eyes glistened at him from the doorway. “You mean, don’cha, were there any, uh,
She was gloating. His asking had laid his desperation naked. She grinned. There he sat, Deboree, the Guru Gung Ho with his eyes raw, begging for some banner to carry on with, some comforter of last-minute truth quilted by Old Holy Goof Houlihan, a wrap against the chilly chaos to come.
“Well, yep, our little hippie chick did mention that he said a few words before he died on that Mexican mattress,” she said. “And isn’t that irony for you? It’s that
“What were they?”
The eyes glistened. The grin wriggled in its nest of fat. “He said—if Sandy’s memory serves—said, I think it was, ‘Sixty-four thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight.’ Quite a legacy, don’cha think? A number, a stinking number!” She hooted, slapping her hips. “Sixty-four thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight! Sixty-four thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight! The complete cooked-down essence of the absolute burned-out speed freak: sixty-four thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight!
She left without closing the door, laughing, clacking down the steps and across the gravel. The injured machine whined pitifully as she forced it back out the drive.
So now observe him, after the lengthy preparation just documented (it had been actually three days and was going on four nights), finally confronting his task in the field: Old Man Deboree, desperate and dreary, with his eyes naked to the smoky sun, striding across the unbroken ground behind a red wheelbarrow. Face bent earthward, he watches the field pass beneath his shoes and nothing else, trusting the one-wheeled machine to lead him to his destination.
Like Sandy’s neck, he fancies himself swollen with an unspecified anger, a great smoldering of unlaid blame that longed to bloom to a great blaze. Could he but fix it on a suitable culprit. Searching for some target large enough to take his fiery blame, he fixes again on California.
The wheelbarrow reaches the ditch. He raises his head. He still cannot see the carcass. Turning down into the ditch, he pushes on toward the place where the three ravens whirl cursing in and out of the tall weeds.
“Afternoon, gents. Sorry about the interruption.” The birds circle, railing at his approach. The wheel of the barrow is almost on top of the lamb before Deboree sees it. He is amazed at the elegance of the thing lying before him: a rich garment, not black at all, not nearly, more the reddish brown of devil’s food cake. A little chocolate lambie cake, served for some little prince’s birthday on a tray of purple vetch, garlanded with clover blossoms, decorated with elegant swirls and loops of red ant trails and twinkling all over with yellow jackets, like little candles. He blows them out with a wave of his hat. The three ravens swoop away to take up positions on the three nearest fence posts. Black wings outspread, they watch in imperious silence as Deboree flaps the ants away and bends to inspect the carcass.
“What got him, gents? Any ideas?” Betsy was right; not a tooth mark to be found. Maybe the dogs were running him and he tripped in the ditch and broke his neck. “He looks too healthy to just up and die, don’t you birds think?”
The ravens rock from foot to foot and advance no theories. They are so righteously disgruntled that Deboree has to smile at them. He considers leaving the carcass where it is on the ground, to be attended to by the ravens and bees and ants and the rest of Nature’s undertakers. Then he hears the mother bleating again from the ash grove where Betsy tethered her.
“I guess not. No sense in agony for ecology’s sake. I’m gonna have to bury him, boys, to get him off his mom’s mind. You can sympathize…”
