Here on Earth

“Where’s the dog?” he asks, and when March looks blank he tosses the cookie bit on the table. “Shit,” he mutters. “Where’s the damned dog?”

The Judge rises to his feet and heads for the door. He’s already pulling on his overcoat when March and Gwen reach him.

“Judith got a dog last winter,” the Judge says. His breathing sounds off and he’s having trouble finding his car keys. “A West Highland terrier.”

“A West Highland terrier?” March feels a bit dazed.

“A little white dog,” the Judge says, impatient. “Have you seen her?”

Now that it’s mentioned, March remembers Judith saying something about a dog she got for Christmas. Judith had been planning to come out to California for Thanksgiving, and she worried about putting the dog in the kennel.

“There was something out on the porch last night,” Gwen pipes up, but when her mother and Bill Justice look at her, expectantly, she feels silly. “But it was a rabbit.”

“I didn’t remember there was a dog,” March says. “There was no sign of it when we got here.”

“Oh, fuck,” the Judge says.

March gets goose bumps from the sound of those words coming from Bill Justice. It is so unlike him to speak in that manner, that she feels she has done something terrible, perhaps even criminal, in forgetting Judith’s dog.

The Judge opens the hall closet and takes out a leash neither March nor Gwen noticed when hanging up their coats; then he goes outside without bothering to say goodbye.

“It probably died because of us,” Gwen says. Her voice sounds sad, but also accusatory, as if the whole thing were really March’s fault.

March grabs a sweater. “Look around the yard,” she tells her daughter. “I’m going with the Judge.”

Bill Justice is already backing out of the driveway, but March runs over and taps on the window. When he stops, she gets into the Saab and they drive slowly along the road, windows open, calling over and over again for Sister, the little white dog.

“I wasn’t thinking,” March says as they drive too fast over the bumps. Or perhaps the problem was that she was thinking too much about subjects she shouldn’t have allowed past the first circle of her mind. Just as before, Hollis is taking up too much room. “I was so upset about Judith.”

Instead of listening to her excuses, the Judge is peering into the bushes as he drives. At the turnoff, they head for the village, driving so slowly that other cars honk, then pass them by. They keep the windows open and continue to whistle and call out. They try the main roads, and most of the back roads; they drive past the schoolyard and the park and St. Bridget’s Hospital. The Judge stops to phone Bud Horace, the animal control officer, from the pay phone outside the Red Apple market, but Bud has no reports of a white dog being sighted. At last, the Judge decides to look down by the Marshes. The sky is already purple; the first few stars have appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver across the edge of the world.

“Hard to believe this is where Alan wound up.” The Judge shakes his head. They drive along the salty blacktop, then turn down a dirt path.

“Sometimes I forget I have a brother,” March admits.

“Well, you’ve got one,” the Judge says. “And that’s where he lives.”

There is a ramshackle house at the very edge of the Marshes; it’s fashioned out of wooden shingles that are the color of a dove’s wings. Most people say it’s the Founder’s house, and that Aaron Jenkins built it with his own two hands, although others remember stories of a fisherman who lived down here at the turn of the century, a nasty fellow who set out eel traps and refused to speak when greeted by anyone from the village.

“It’s parkland,” the Judge tells March, “but the town council lets him stay. Once or twice a year someone from social services comes over, but he won’t open the door for them. The ladies on the library committee pay for his expenses. Judith was the one who started that, and she usually brought him his groceries. She tried to check on him once a week or so.”

“I had no idea. She never talked about him.”

March looks out at the thick grass and the reeds. She has always blamed Alan for driving Hollis off, with his cruelty and his jealousy. Now she wonders if she herself wasn’t guilty of the same exact sin she has always blamed on her brother. Perhaps she also has carried a grudge too long.

“Well,” March says, “with Judith gone, Alan can sell the house and Fox Hill and have enough money to take care of himself. That was his one good deed—allowing Judith to live there.”