The End of the Sentence Read Free Page B

Was it on my property? Did I have the key? I didn’t want to have anything more to hide. I kept thinking about my mother, and how I hadn’t talked to her in a year. Only one person had this address and that person was in prison.)
    I stacked the new letters in a patterned basket I’d found in the front hall closet. I had a memory of something like it seen in a book, Native crafts, Western exploration, willow branches woven and pigment-dyed red and black, and for a moment, I had a good association, touching the inside of the basket, of a happy baby sleeping inside it. 
    Maybe not sleeping. 
    Suddenly the empty basket felt filled with stones. I put it down, nauseated. I was sweating again, and outside, it was still too hot for the calendar. A glass of water had appeared beside me. I drank it. 
    Then the feeling of wrongness was gone, and it was just the letters, the growing pile addressed to 
     
    My Dear Malcolm.
     
    I wasn’t reading them. I cleaned some more, outside this time. A pair of overalls, paint-stained, but washed, had appeared, hanging from the bathroom door. They weren’t modern, but nothing was. Like all the things the house had given me, they fit. 
    I’d found a rusty push mower, and shoved it along the property, then raked up the dry grasses to the best of my ability. Around the edge of the house, the grass had begun to grow in green, and beside the front door, there was suddenly a patch of violets, out of season, and one of mint. 
    I hauled another load of mess out, TV tray tables, though there was no television, a cracked rubber doll, a rusted bit of metal that I couldn’t identify. A branding iron, I thought suddenly. A crude letter C, placed between what seemed to be two swords.
    Chuchonnyhoof , I thought, with a sick lurch, looking out at the dry grass, seeing smoke in the distance, not so far off. It came from the place where the meth house had burned, maybe leftovers from some underground flame. Something was on fire there, and I felt lucky it wasn’t me. 
    I ran my fingers over the rust on the brand. Red, and hot. I put it down in the pile of grass, then picked it up a moment later when the grass began to smolder. Frantic stamping on the incipient flames, and I got it out, but I didn’t know what to do with the branding iron. I looked at the patch of mint, and at the dampness of the leaves there, and finally, I put the brand into them, relieved as I heard it hiss a C into the soil. The smell of crushed mint and smoke, and I remembered for an agonizing moment my old life, a glass of ice, bourbon, mint, sugar, my wife smiling at me, her face lit up with love. A sunset. Trees dark and tall. Fireflies starting to blink on and off around the edge of the yard, her hand in mine. 
    That was over and done. “Over and done,” I repeated to myself as I walked the property line, “over and done, Malcolm.” 
    Something echoed and I stopped. I turned and looked at the house, at the open front door, the staircase inside it like the bridge of a nose, the upstairs windows like eyes, the porch like a mouth. 
    I looked at the mark the brand had made, and realized it wasn’t swords at all, but a C atop a W. 
     
    Olivia Weyland. Dusha Chuchonnyhoof. W & C.
     
    I thought about the smell of branding. I didn’t really know what it smelt like. I didn’t want to know what might be branded with such an iron. 
    The sound of something scraping on glass. I turned, hoping to see it happening, a ghost in action, but no, I never did. On the front window of the dead car, traced in the dirt, there was a word. 
     
    Drive. 
     
    Oh, Malcolm. Malcolm, Malcolm. I didn’t want to drive. Didn’t want to think about being behind the wheel of anything. That was why I’d taken the bus cross-country. I couldn’t drive anymore. 
    Drive , the word appeared again, and this time I watched it being written, letter by letter, slowly. 
    I found myself going into the house. I got the ring of keys, opened the car door,