People in town started talking about him at the funeral, as he tore out his hair and called for his wife. They whispered when he lost his money, spending wildly—rebuilding the house, conned into dreadful business deals, practically giving it away. They talked when night after night he had to be carried out of the Lyon Cafe, and when he had to sell Fox Hill to pay off all he had borrowed. Some people say that Hollis bailed him out by covering his debts and buying the hill at a fair price, but Alan knows Hollis never intended to be kind. He bought Fox Hill anonymously, through his lawyer, well aware that Alan would never have sold to him. At any rate, due to extreme carelessness, the money from the sale of Fox Hill disappeared fast. Alan and his boy were often tossed out of rented apartments; Alan tended to fall asleep while smoking, and once he would have burned himself alive, and perhaps been glad of it, if Hank, then four, hadn’t thrown water on the smoldering easy chair where his father slept.
At last, Alan took his son to live in the Marshes, to this house people say the Founder built, a shack really, nothing more. Hank was often discovered wandering alone, his clothes filthy and coated with mud. People who didn’t even know him would insist on taking the child to the Bluebird Coffee Shop, where they’d buy him big bowls of macaroni and cheese or thick tomato soup. Hank always ate each meal as though it were his last, wolfing down his food, even when it was hot enough to burn his tongue. Clearly, if the board of the library hadn’t appropriated clothes for him at every flea market and rummage sale, this child would have gone around town naked. That’s how drunk Alan was by then; that’s how pathetic he’d become.
Hollis went out to the Marshes for the first and last time on a Sunday afternoon that year when Hank was four, plowing through the mud in Mr. Cooper’s old pickup, which he continues to drive to this day. Now that Hollis was married to Belinda, he owned more acreage than any other man in the county; he must have wanted to gloat over his victory, but he never got the chance. He found Alan passed out on the floor. That day he brought Hank with him when he returned to Guardian Farm, and the boy has been with him ever since. People say Hollis is good to Hank, or so the Coward has heard, and that makes perfect sense. No doubt Hollis has some idea of the pain his mercy causes the Coward. No doubt at all.
There are times, of course, when the Coward wonders what their lives might have been like if he had treated Hollis, if not like a brother, then like a human being. When he starts to think about what might have been, that’s when the Coward begins to drink gin, his favorite liquid in all the world. So transparent and empty, just like the rest of his life. The one remnant of a schedule which remains in his life is his Friday routine, for that is the day when he takes the single journey that matters to him—across the Marshes, down Route 22, to the liquor store on the edge of town. He goes after dark, always, and all he needs to do is sign an X on the account page. It took a while, but he finally figured out why Mike Howard was letting him have all this booze on credit, when he’s never gotten paid back. Of course, he thought when it hit him. Naturally. Hollis would gladly foot the bill for arsenic as well, if that had been his pleasure.
On clear days, the Coward sits on the sagging porch of his old house and considers everything in the Marshes that could kill you, if quick suicide was what you were after. You could, for instance, eat the thin, poisonous pods of milkweed stalks or ingest the bitter leaves of the mallows. You could reach down and pluck one of the orange mushrooms that not even the ants will go near. But the end results would be nasty, and messy as well. Gin, however slow, doesn’t make you foam at the mouth like the mushrooms would. There are many ways to accomplish what the Coward’s after, but liquor is the most civilized method. In fact, it’s the last piece of civilization in his life.
At night, when people in the village are fast asleep, he still hears the sound of fire. It’s a sound from hell, all twisted and hot. You get thirsty when you hear a sound like that in your dreams. You get terribly thirsty and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it, except to take the same route every Friday and make certain not to answer your door. You never know who you’ll find out there on your own porch; it may be someone who believes it’s a righteous person’s duty to convince the Coward he has to stop drinking and turn his life around, when it’s abundantly clear he’s never going to do that. He’s here for good; for better or, more likely, for worse, all the rest of his days.
9
Since her return to Fox Hill, all March has accomplished is an orderly mess. There are currently twenty-five boxes in the kitchen, all labeled to go to the Library Association’s booth at the Harvest Fair, which is always held in the basement of Town Hall. Most of the objects March has packed, she knew by heart: The cake pans Mrs. Dale seemed to collect, dozens of them. The lace curtains, the throw pillows, the ceramic candlesticks from England. March’s father’s law books have already been donated to Deny Law School, carted there by Ken Helm, who’s been running all March’s errands, since she decided not to replace her rental car. Eight silver place settings, brought out only on holidays, have been mailed home to California, where they will most likely never be used.