Hollis has long believed that the past can only hurt you if you let it. If you stop to consider all that was done and undone. Best not to dwell on what went wrong. Even better—don’ t think at all. There are days when Hollis actually manages to do so, relying instead on instinct and habit. Of course, there are evenings such as this, when he can’t stop thinking. He knows March Murray is coming back for the funeral; she may already be here, up in her old room where the shadows fall across the floor at this hour. At times when he can’t block out his thoughts, Hollis tries to rearrange his perspective. He goes over all he owns, which now includes not only all of Guardian Farm and Fox Hill, but most of Main Street as well. He has land down in Florida, along the west coast and in Orlando and down in the Keys. He is also co-owner of a racetrack outside of Fort Lauderdale, and the best part about all this is, he never even has to return to that state where he spent so much miserable time; he gets all his checks in the mail.
This year Hollis will be forty-two and he’s done all right for a beggar who looked so ragged that the Coopers’ care-taker threatened to call the police the first time he saw him. He’s done just fine for a boy who left Fox Hill with fifty-seven dollars in his pockets. All that he owns should be enough. Hollis has squared the debts owed him, he should be satisfied, but he’s not even close. He’s starving for something, and even though he forces himself to eat three meals a day, he keeps losing weight, as if he were devouring his own flesh.
He’s not going to think about what’s bothering him; he simply refuses to get farther inside his own head. Instead, he’ll see to the old pony that belonged to his son, which has come down with colic. There are the usual measures—keep the pony standing and feed it mineral oil—but Hollis always blows a little salt into each of the afflicted animal’s nostrils as well. It’s a trick he learned years ago at the tracks down in Florida, one of the few tactics he’d dare to reveal. An old wives’ tale, scoff the regulars down at the Lyon Cafe, but those who have tried Hollis’s salt remedy haven’t been unhappy with the results.
Well, nobody ever said Hollis was stupid. That’s never been the complaint. Still, his presence is something most men down at the Lyon would prefer to do without. Hollis is the richest man in town, and probably in the county as well; he contributes generously to the Policemen’s Association and the Firemen’s Fund, and a ward at St. Bridget’s Hospital has been named in his honor, but that doesn’t mean anyone wants to socialize with him, or that Hollis doesn’t notice that the town elders only court him when they need a new roof for the library or funds for a stoplight.
One thing wealth buys in a town this size is respect. Other men might flinch when Hollis joins them at their table, but they don’t dare suggest he find another seat. They talk to him courteously, all the while wondering why the hell he doesn’t just go home. He doesn’t even drink, he only sits there, with a Coke or a ginger ale, for reasons the regulars are still trying to figure out. Jack Harvey, who specializes in air-conditioning and heat installation, insists that Hollis’s motive, when he joins them at their table, is to ensure he’ll be ready to snatch up their souls if they have one drink too many. Whenever Hollis finally leaves, and a cold wind blasts through the door as it slams shut behind him, then his neighbors are brave enough to refer to him as the devil. Mr. Death, that’s what they call him when his back is turned, and they drink a toast to his departure.
It’s the women in town who turn to look when Hollis walks by. They pity him, they really do. He lost not only his wife but their boy, Coop, who was sick every day of his life, as weak as paste and in need of constant nursing from the start. It’s lonely for a man to live like that, and the women in town know who among them have gone home with Hollis over the years. They’re not always the prettiest or the youngest. They’re women who know the score, who won’t make demands, who may have a husband who works nights or a boyfriend in the next state. They’re the ones who know that Hollis isn’t about to give them anything they want or need, but who still can’t turn him down. He’s been hurt, that’s what the women who have slept with him say, and he needs someone. They don’t have to mention that getting older has only served to make Hollis even more handsome than he was back in high school, when they would never have had a chance with him, when he wouldn’t look at anyone but March Murray.
Tonight, Hollis searches through the cabinets for the canister of salt, then reaches for his jacket, which is so worn the fabric is past repairing. The same is true of the house; it has begun to come apart, and this pleases Hollis. He hasn’t had the place painted in fifteen years, hasn’t repaired the roof, which leaks in twenty-six spots when the rain comes down hard. The destruction of the house which once belonged to the Coopers is a small, but enjoyable, satisfaction. Hollis likes to find cobwebs in the parlor where Mr. Cooper used to smoke his cigars. Annabeth Cooper’s perennial garden, of which she was always so proud, has been destroyed by Japanese beetles and mildew. In Richard Cooper’s bedroom you can hear the raccoons, who are living in the walls, and in Belinda’s old room the edges of the marble mantel have disintegrated into dust. The Wedgwood, so elegant at parties, is currently being used for the dogs and is now so chipped no one would imagine this china came from London in wooden crates, and that each bowl and plate had been wrapped in a swathe of white cotton.