But as to the bush's exact location, we can't seem to agree. So my father traces the house in the middle of the table, with a tentative cross for the bush, just behind it, to the right. Someone adds in the giant tree, the rockery, the outside room where Jane, our pillar of strength, lay down at night. Someone else puts up a splitpole fence across one end of the table, and resolutely replants the gooseberry bush against it. And when finally the wayward gooseberry bush has been democratically rooted, we lean back and survey our bonds and our losses.
Darkness fills the kitchen now, our hands rest empty at the table's edge.
The house and garden sink without a trace. Between us there is nothing but a flat dim disk, an indecipherable stretch of water in a moonless place. The man comes walking, tall and solemn and slow. One of his hands bends into a fist, an old fist, tight with stamina and ash. He raises it before the crowd, which presses in on him and takes possession of his name.