The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories by Ethan Rutherford Page B

Thomas put his hand on the hedge and realized that this day held only the promise of things he wasn’t looking forward to: he didn’t want to see his son, their only child, a man now, who had begun to view his entire life as someone else’s fault; he didn’t want to drive the dying alpaca to the pit, unceremoniously shoot it, and leave it to nature so they could present a home front untouched by sickness; and he didn’t want to see Sarah. Earlier this morning, when Thomas had gone to the garage to take care of Zachary, there’d been a strange car, a red VW, in the driveway, parking him in. Someone visiting Sarah. This was a first. It was before dawn. Sarah’s lights were still on, but he didn’t knock. He didn’t say: I’m blocked in down here. He’d stood near the car for a few minutes, feeling strangely deflated. Then he’d turned and walked, quietly, home. He would wait for whomever it was to leave. It was an intrusion he didn’t like, but could do nothing about.
    He was, however, looking forward to the storm. Deep snow, the kind they got in eastern Washington, dampened the landscape, rounding angles, muffling sound; everything became globular and remote, unrecognizable under the blanket. He wanted sloping drifts, up to the eaves. He wanted a crunch under his boots, the cold, granulated air in the back of his throat. Growing up, John had loved to shovel byzantine, snaking footpaths so one had to go first to the street, then in a small circle, and then, say, around the cherry tree in their front yard before getting to the car. Charming then. Indicative of character now.
    The alpacas—there were ten of them—stood like a cluster of mops near the fence, away from Zachary, who was on the ground with his head nestled in a patch of grass, as if he were listening to the earth. “Hey, buddy,” Thomas said as he approached. The alpaca stirred and let out a soft moan, then regained his stillness. The others would watch this taking away, Thomas knew, with the same slack-jawed and impenetrable apathy they greeted everything else.
    “Ah, poor little guy,” someone behind him said. He turned and saw Sarah. She was standing just outside the garage door, smoking a cigarette; he didn’t know how he’d missed her. She wore only a thin, white undershirt, and sweatpants tucked into a pair of oversize Sorel boots, seemingly immune to the cold. She was in her late twenties, the same age as John, but looked, on account of her round face, younger. And healthier. Her long hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail.
    “He’ll be all right.”
    “No, he won’t,” she said, taking a deep drag and blowing it out. “Isn’t that the point?”
    A doctor who smokes. Thomas looked at the sick alpaca, and then back at Sarah. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and he could see the dark outline of her nipples through her shirt. “Not exactly tee-shirt weather,” he said before he could stop himself.
    “Snow-mageddon!” she said cheerfully. She took another drag, and then nodded in the direction of the herd. “Some of those guys are pretty seriously dreadlocked. You should call them rasta-pacas.”
    “What-apacas?”
    “Rasta. You know, like Bob Marley.”
    “Ah,” Thomas said. “That works. I get it now.”
    Sarah stubbed her cigarette in the coffee can she kept outside for that purpose. Thomas walked over to the sick alpaca and roused him with a soft hand on his neck. The animal startled, then stood and allowed himself to be led to the trailer. Sarah watched with her arms folded over her chest. “It’s brave of you to do this,” she said when Thomas had the animal near the gate. Upon seeing the trailer Thomas had hitched to the back of his truck, Zachary teetered, then dropped to his haunches. Sarah kneeled, and took Zachary’s blank face in her hands as if, Thomas thought, to kiss it.
    “I don’t know if brave is the right word,” he said back.
    Sarah stood, reached into the pocket of her sweatpants, emerged with another