By now the light was mostly gone. Only the tips of the four chimneys held a charged kind of sandpapery red, like the heads of matches. The shadow where we stooped felt privileged but too permanent. It’d got some colder. We could see the scallop boats, their lights blinking way out there, coming home, nets hoisted after the long day’s catch. Two bats kept diving near the house. And Tad lifted his effigies, Tad moved to pass these into the hands of the person nearest him, everything—that tin box, the wax-sealed bag, and those odd dolls—still bound together…. He handed it to somebody, who instinctively drew back, acting almost comically repulsed. She—actually, it was I, alas—pulled away as if fearing that this thing had come direct and scalding from some infernal oven. Would it burn, or freeze? Maybe it was how quick and saturated the darkness had become. I felt he was placing some image of himself dead into hands not willing to accept that, not yet. (Still not.) I steeled myself … hating this squeamishness which seemed so unlike me, at least the “me” I could admire even a bit. But then Mimi, God love her, laughed and said, “What is this, hoodoo voodoo? Gi’ me it!” and reached past me, grabbed the thing. Out of order. Then we each took hold of his find, all of us, me going right after Mimi. I think it was something about my husband’s death, and being so near the water. Made me hesitate, then feel that I had let Tad down. I felt like Saint Peter, denying on the crucial night. It’s odd, but we all held on to the dolls, and even the box, and for quite a while. As if greeting them, a cordial welcome, to aboveground. It seemed we’d expected the dolls to melt into the same thin air where the girls had gone. We expected the dolls to melt when they left Tad’s hands as he tried to fit them into ours. We knew then, that “thin air” was already welcoming him. But the object(s) remained, solid, like his legacy—like Tad himself till then—so reassuringly material. These figures had lasted the way inanimate things get to (lucky for us, as compass points and referents). Lord knows, we don’t.

Then our group drove over to Edenton for shrimp and oysters and scallops which were excellent and right off the boat, everything’s so fresh down there. At dinner, no one really mentioned what he’d dug up. I remember how quiet was the long car ride home without Tad. I begged him to come back home to Hillsborough just for tonight. He’d have none of it, of course. On the long trip back, it wasn’t so much that we were spooked … though we were, and in some new way. I’d always felt a little scared for him—bodily, I mean. Worried for his fragile bones, a fall, things like that. Now something else took over.