Free The Quick & the Dead by Joy Williams

us. I don’t feel her presence.”
    Where was she, for godssakes? Carter wondered.
    “I miss her,” Annabel said. “I wish we hadn’t scattered the ashes. I thought the empty chair was going to be the best part, but it isn’t.” She quickly cleared the dishes from the table and disappeared into the kitchen.
    Carter sat there. Really, Ginger, he thought, this is mean of you. To be a termagant is one thing, but where is your compassion?
    “I miss her,” Annabel called from the kitchen. “I miss her.”
    Carter believed this and was horrified. He had another glass of wine and wandered outside into a beautiful night, black and still. Couldn’t make out a thing, actually, but he knew that all around him were Donald’s admirable touches. Donald, the young gardener, had presented himself at the door just last week, offering his services, his landscaping services. Donald could move a rock and effect an improvement. Restless, Carter returned to the house, poured himself a nightcap, and gotready for bed. He turned down the covers, put both pillows behind his shoulders, and cracked open the Jack London.
    “Daddy,” Annabel called out, “I’m going to deep condition my hair and maybe wax my legs.”
    “Okay, honey.”
    “Good night, Daddy.”
    London had gotten Carter through many a long night. “There were no mourners save a huge wolf-dog, to whom the taste of his master’s lash was still sweet,” he read. This was the real stuff. Blood on the snow. Sneering white silence. More blood. And no one cared. Nobody cared, and there was no law. Blazing eyes, slavered fangs, and wretchedness. Oh, it was a maggot’s life, a cosmos of death. But this was the way things were.… Carter lowered the book, and shut his eyes. His thoughts swung pleasantly to Donald. He was so tall. He had a face smooth and guileless as a baby’s and a thick mat of hair on his chest. Carter would’ve loved to press his mouth against that salty, soft amazing pelt, but of course he wouldn’t, absolutely not. He was an amusing man, a lighthearted man, he wanted to be happy, not to make a fool of himself.
    He opened his eyes and flipped through the pages. “At the sound of this, the cry of Life plunging down from Life’s apex in the grip of death, the full pack at Buck’s heels raised a hell’s chorus of delight.” Carter frowned and studied the book’s cover. This shouldn’t be included in a collection of stories, it was part of
The Call of the Wild
. He was about to turn off the light and think about Donald for just a tiny bit more when he noticed Ginger perched at the foot of the bed. She was wearing a dress he’d always disliked—a shapeless green rayon thing that you could see right through.
    “I always knew you were a faggot, Carter.”
    “Why, darling!” Carter said. “I don’t understand. Why weren’t you here earlier?”
    “What was that all about, anyway?”
    “Annabel would have been thrilled.”
    “We never celebrated my birthdays, Carter, as you are well aware. But it’s your full-blown faggotry we’re discussing here, not my age. And thatDonald character. Honestly, Carter, you are so common, so ordinary. That little scar on his cheek! And the way you speak to him.… ‘This is all you have to remember,’ Ginger said mincingly. ‘Mozart’s subject is pleasure, Beethoven’s is joy, Wagner’s an insatiable yearning, dissatisfied with all consummation.’ ”
    Carter blushed; it was true they’d been discussing music.
    “That scar’s fake as a three-day tattoo.”
    “Someone dropped a pruning saw on him. He could have lost an eye.”
    “Well, I’ve lost everything, you idiot, and I’m not going to let you forget it. Why was I cremated? If I’d ever thought about it, I would have expressly instructed that there would be no cremation. And to scatter me where you did, in that sound. Some of the worst toxic polluters in New England dump everything they’ve got into that sound! I expected to be placed in a