They’re digging a hole in the garden. Well, Sam-dad is, but the children and Uncle Frodo are watching, Frodo with his arms around all the babes he can reach, holding them together, providing something for the children to cling to and burry their sobs in.

The hole in the garden is for Arky.

Frodo-lad holds tight to his namesake. Rose-mum would be out here, too, but the new baby needs feeding and little Sammie has a nasty cold. Some of the little ones who are too young to remember life without Arky are sitting stiffly in the chrysanthemums, eyes big and wide and full of tears. Frodo-lad is thinking about the day that Sam-dad brought the little puppy home, a warm bundle of barking happiness when Mummy and Uncle Frodo were looking so sad. Elanor is strangely quiet.

The sweat stands out on Sam-dad’s back as he sinks the spade deeper and deeper into the soil. It’s a hot day, overly warm for early October. Frodo-lad’s trying very hard not too look at anything: the carefully wrapped lump in a clean burlap sack, the little pile of dirt growing next to the square hole between the forget-me-nots and the late daisies, the tired, worn look on his uncle’s face, or the watery red depths of his siblings’ eyes, so he just squeezes his own tight shut and lets the tears come.

Last night Rose-mum brushed Arky’s still full coat to a beautiful sheen and tied a yellow ribbon around his neck. Uncle Frodo emptied the potatoes out of a large sack into a barrel and carefully washed the make-shift funeral shroud. Elanor, her hands shaking, stitched five flowers onto the hem in green thread, one for each of the five summers they’d had together.

This morning little Pippin had begun to refill Arky’s blue dish on the kitchen floor with water before he remembered and had sat there clinging to the little reminder like it would leave him, too.

It has all shaken Frodo-lad very badly. This is the first time someone he loves has gone away and would not be coming back. Elanor remembers the night that Sam-dad’s Gaffer died, but to Frodo it’s just a fuzzy baby memory of something he didn’t understand. Late into the night he heard her, in the next bedroom, trying to explain it to Rose and Goldy.

“I tugged Arky’s tail at breakfast last week. Is that bad? I’m sorry I did it…” whispered Rose.

Elanor’s voice was quiet and reassuring. “We all do things we’re sorry about, we just have to know that apologizing is the only way to make it right.”

“But I never said sorry to Arky, and now he won’t be playing with us any more or eating my peas when I don’t want them…”

Goldy sniffled.

“But see, its only the little things that change like that. The stars and the moon are still there.”

“But I don’t want the stars! I want Arky! I don’t want him or anybody else to go away! Foo to the moon, how do you keep the little things from changing?”

Elanor sighed in frustration, as much at herself as towards her younger sibling. “I don’t know! Uncle Fo says it so much better…”

Uncle Frodo. In a few days it will be the sixth, and already his uncle is skipping meals and sitting very still for long periods of time, gazing into the parlor fire. Frodo-lad looks at his uncle and sees the lean, tired look that Arky had before he fell asleep for the last time. It scares him. His grip around his uncle’s waist tightens.

Frodo notices and brings a cool hand to rest on Frodo-lad’s shoulder. “Hush, child, hush. It will be alright.” But he can see that the hand is trembling, the four fingers twittering nervously.

Uncle Frodo’s left arm doesn’t move at all.

The hole is deep enough. Sam-dad climbs out, wiping some of the dirt on his hands against his pant leg. He then carefully, like he was a newly budded tulip, picks up Arky in his sack and places him in the hole. He stands back then, hands on his hips, staring at the grave, face set in an unreadable expression.

Rose-girl makes a little noise of distress and turns away sharply, bare feet pounding the grass flat as she speeds away. Sam-dad starts to give chase but is caught by a hand on his trouser leg. Elanor looks up with big blue eyes, her voice a whisper. “I’ll go after her.” Then she runs down the little path Rose has just fled by, turning one last time to gaze upon the hole and mound of dirt. She looks almost glad to be rid of its reminder of mortality.

Uncle Frodo is holding him just as tightly but he and Sam-dad are sharing a look now, one that Frodo-lad doesn’t understand but recognizes. The gaze between the two of them reminds him of those glances, thought hidden, between Mum and Da on the darkest night of his life only a few months previously, the night that Uncle had screamed and kicked and shouted pleading curses in a foul tongue to shadows that had long since vanished. Uncle Fro bites his lip, face twitching, but Da is the first to break the lock between them, turning hastily back to the task of burying the family dog.

Frodo and Merry, who named Arky, are the only two children left standing by the grave, gazing as their father’s spade places shovel full after shovel full of dirt over Arky. It seems to take forever for the grave to be filled, but then Sam-dad is patting the dirt over the little mound flat, smoothing it out carefully and making it look all prim and neat.

Pippin comes forward, carrying a flat rock that Uncle Frodo wrote Arky’s name on in strong black ink, the kind that does not wash off in wind and rain. He brushes some imaginary dust from its smooth surface and hands it to Sam-dad, who then places it at the head of the mound of dirt. Looking at the home-made headstone, Frodo-lad feels the ache within growing only deeper, as if the final sign of an end of one life is only marking the beginning of the end of another.

Pippin’s sniffling, wiping at his eyes with the back of one grimy, torn sleeve. Sam-dad sees this and draws them all together, Pippin, Merry, and Frodo-lad, in his wide, warm embrace.

"There now, don't cry," he comforted. "He had a few good summers and all the scraps he could eat, and you lot threw sticks whenever he was in the mood for a play. That's as much as any pup could want from life, and more than most get."

Uncle Frodo touches him on the shoulder, and Frodo-lad knows that not all of the tears there are for Arky.

That night dinner is a solemn affair, punctuated by the occasional attempt at a joke or a baby dribbling apple-sauce down a chubby chin. The children still manage to put away in the manner of hobbits, but Frodo-lad watches his uncle do a whole lot of cutting but barely any eating. When Rose-Mum leans across him to wipe at a spill she gifts Uncle a little kiss along one pale ear, but he only closes his eyes and puts down his utensils in finality.

Afterwards Frodo-lad works some of his lessons in the parlor, slowly spelling out a poem about a happy puppy running in the fields, his handwriting shaky but with a hint of the flowing grace the letters are meant to have. In the corner Elanor plays Peas-Porridge Hot and Where’s Thumbkin? with Goldilocks and Hamfast, Daisy set firmly in her lap. Rose-lass sits next to her name-sake on the lounging sofa and watches her mother breast-feed Primrose.

Sam-dad comes in, supporting Uncle Frodo, his two middle sons, dripping wet from their evening baths, trailing behind. For their uncle’s sake, the children steadily ignore how heavily Frodo leans against Sam-dad’s shoulder as he leads him to the over-sized armchair in front of the fire. Once Uncle Frodo is settled, limbs arranged in a way that mimics life, Da fetches the softly fretting Sammie from his basket and brings him back to the hearth.

“Here,” he says, catching Rose-mum’s eye. “He’s wanting you.”

Something stirs in Frodo’s eyes, bringing some life back to their cerulean depths, and he reaches out thin arms to take the babe. Sam-lad quiets almost immediately, nestling in the crook of his arms almost instinctively. Frodo-lad watches some of the weariness leave his uncle’s face as he plays with the dark baby-curls, the two of them comforting each other in times where no other comfort will do.

Frodo-lad finishes his poem and decides not to read it to the other children, instead slipping out the back door to give the first recital to the lump of earth where they buried Arky. When he’s finished, wiping roughly at sore eyes, Sam-dad is there to hold the lantern and light his way back to the smial. Frodo-lad finds some silent connection with his father’s solid, morose posture. In later, darker times, years and years from now, he will look back on this night and wonder how much his father had foreseen.

Inside, Uncle Frodo and Sam-lad have both fallen asleep, the babe’s quiet and peaceful, Frodo’s racked by some dream that tangles one hand around soft baby flesh and the other around a small white jewel. Frodo-lad is sent off to prepare for bed while Da tucks each dark head into their respective bead.

Later in the night, when he knows not, Frodo-lad is awoken by a soft thump and the light of a lantern flickering under his bed-room door. He keeps still and watches as shadows slip by, and then two pairs of hobbit feet slowly make their way towards the inner-most part of the smial. Uncle Frodo’s voice comes dimly through the thick earthen walls, softened already by weariness and pain. “They’re already here… Deep… deep… We’ll have to dig deep this year. Dig deep…”

“Hush…” two voices comfort, but the cries continue, like a small child lost in the gloom.

Lying in his bed in the deep dark of night, Frodo-lad finds himself wondering how many flowers they’ll stitch to the hem of his uncle’s funeral linens.

-Fin

~

Pretty Good Year | email Slipstream