Swan, page 3
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those . . .
She could not remember the rest. Would desire lead one to favor fire or ice? She wasn’t sure; Holt would have to finish it for himself. Not that for an instant she thought she was communing with him. Dead is dead. Father Tyson can hold forth all day and dead is still dead. She just liked seeing his name and dates so solidly present. 1906–1971. Q.E.D.: Existence proven for as long as granite lasts.
She shaded her eyes and spotted Lily’s car speeding around the curve before the cemetery gate. Good. Plenty of time. Eleanor’s bridge group was coming to her house for lunch. Hattie at this moment must be stewing the hen for the chicken salad, she thought, and taking out the starched pink linen place mats she brought back from the Jamaica trip. The bridge club met every Tuesday for lunch and a few rubbers. Over the years two tables had dwindled to one, and, frankly, Eleanor was not sure how much longer she would be willing to listen to her friends discuss their phobias and aches. Lily had become exasperated and quit three years ago. Now the others enjoyed being able to win. Lily had remembered every bid, every card, and was prone to trump brilliantly. When partnered with Eleanor, no one else had had a chance.
Eleanor intended to fill her house with bunches of the lovely Lady Godiva roses that just went to waste clambering all over the fence of the Mason plot, a double waste, really, those scented perfume clouds—blackberry, melon, lime water—floating over the dead. They flourished almost all May and June, and even now into July, a profusion of rambling pink double-bloomers, their canes twisting between the iron fence spikes. Of course by August, everything gave up and wilted. She and Lily had gathered them before, although Lily never wanted to take any home. Eleanor already envisioned them on her sideboard in the silver pitcher. She should have left Hattie a note to polish it.
She slung open the car door, making sure it caught and would not slam back on her ankle. She felt as strong as she had at sixty-five, though less agile since the left hip replacement she’d had over in Tipton two years ago. They’d installed a new metal hip to replace the bone that crumpled as she jumped over a ditch to pick black-eyed Susans. She’d had to sit in the ditch until a passing tobacco farmer saw her, hauled her out, and took her all the way to the hospital. A nice man, he was. After she’d recovered, she sent Holt, Junior out to his house with several jars of her peach pickles and plum chutney.
Eleanor drove over to the Mason graves just as Lily swung the cream puff, as her nephew J. J. called it, inside the gate. Eleanor watched her run over the edge of Annie Ruth Steepleheart’s grave. Lily swerved and lurched back onto the path toward the Mason plot. Eleanor closed her eyes. Lily was such a wild card in the deck.
With both feet on the ground, Eleanor hoisted herself out of the car and felt inside her bag for the scissors.
“Am I late?” Lily slammed her door. She pecked the air near Eleanor’s cheek. She’d known her all her life. Eleanor, a few years older, had taken Lily in when she was a new teacher at the mill school, but all her good advice came to nothing: Lily hated teaching. After Lily’s daddy, Big Jim, died, she resigned and devoted herself to gardening. She and Eleanor were the founding members of the Robert E. Lee Garden Club and had talked on the phone and swapped a cutting, recipe, or magazine article almost every day since. As Lily saw Eleanor flicking open her clippers and rolling up her sleeves, she flashed on her, radiant and capable, presiding over a long table at Christmas dinner when Holt, Junior was a baby, at the beginning of their close friendship.
“No more than usual. How are you, sugar?” She saw that Lily had hennaed her own hair again. The orangy cast of the dye shone like cheap mahogany furniture. Otherwise, Lily’s coiled chignon pinned high looked the way it had at fifteen when they’d run into each other at club dances at Carrie’s Island and boys swarmed around Eleanor. Eleanor had glimpsed Big Jim holding forth at a table where Lily bit her lip and sipped lemonade and her mother, Florence, looked supremely bored. Lily would have been a fine wife for someone, Eleanor thought loyally, if she hadn’t been overshadowed by her parents when she was young. She had remained a daughter rather than making that necessary transition into her own woman. Later, she was raising Ginger and J. J., for which, surely, she would have stars in her crown.
They scanned the voluptuous roses hanging in bunches like ready-made bouquets. “I like that blouse. Is it new?” Lily was prone to wear old clothes, so anytime she appeared in something decent Eleanor praised it. “Yellow is a good color for you.”
“Ginger sent it for my birthday last year.” Lily muzzled her nose into a full bloom. “If Paris could get that scent into a bottle, women would pay any price.” She would not, of course. A dusting of talcum was fine for her. She snipped stems and handed an armful of roses to Eleanor, who took them to the car. As Lily clipped, something caught her eye, a quick glimmer—a blue jay wing? She leaned down and squinted. Through the cascades of bloom, she glimpsed a pile of clay on the other side of the fence near the graves. What on earth? She pushed through the gate and stopped.
Immediately, she reeled away, suddenly unable to see. She looked up at the sky and tried to focus. The early morning buffed blue was turning to the bleached midday paleness, which would stay that way until twilight, when farm dust turned the lower horizon a streaked rose and orange. Harmon Dunn, the druggist, said he saw blue and gold confetti when his retina detached; maybe hers had come undone. She blinked several times, then opened her eyes slowly and turned back to the sight she always would see incised on her eyeballs. A surge of rejection pushed through her. “Eleanor,” she managed to say, but Eleanor was spreading roses on the back seat of her car. Blue dress, black hair. “No,” she whispered. A gash in the ground, stone smashed, bronze coffin turned upside down. Catherine. Preserved, darker but preserved, lying on the side of her own grave.
Then Eleanor was beside her. “My stars above!” Eleanor heard her own burble as though her throat were filled with water, then she tried to regain herself so she’d know she had not simply flipped, as her older sister, Rebecca, had when she walked out of the dentist’s office and had no idea where she was. Rebecca ended up in a crib in a rest home in Crossaway, curled up like a baby. Eleanor had to faint or scream, but she only stood steadily, taking in the inconceivable sight of Catherine Mason, dead and buried for years, tumped out of her grave.
Lily grabbed the gate. No sound came from her except for a stopped moan, as though she’d had her breath knocked out. A memory rushed through her. How do you like to go up in the swing, up in the sky so blue? I’m soaring through the pecan tree, my hands grasping the ropes, feet out straight, but my mother pushes my swing too high, I’m falling through the air. Falling and falling. She grabbed Eleanor’s arm. From the swamp, a breeze blew up, just enough to scatter rose petals across the graves of the other Masons. A bank of them had gathered under Catherine’s feet.
Eleanor’s brain began to tick. She must help Lily. Oh Lord, Catherine’s feet, her feet, her bare feet splayed out with red polish still on the toes. Eleanor remembered Alan Ireland handing back Holt’s polished wing tips when she took in his burial suit. “We won’t be needing shoes,” he’d said dryly. Catherine lay perfectly composed, as she had in the coffin, her hands crossed over her stomach. Rigid as stone, Eleanor expected. The light caught Catherine’s hair and it still shone. But her skin had turned leathery, almost gold, like the worn-out suede jacket in the back of her closet. Holt. He, too, would still be recognizable, thanks to all the chemicals the Ireland boy pumped into him. Eleanor would not want to be seen like that.
“Oh no, Eleanor, look, Daddy’s . . .” Lily gestured to the other side of the plot. Eleanor took in at a glance Big Jim Mason’s grave sloshed with black paint. She put her arm around Lily and firmly steered her to the car.
CASS ADMIRED THE PRECISION of the hole he’d dug. He sat down for a smoke before he rode back to the shack. He saw the two ladies clipping roses over in the Mason grounds, then a few seconds later watched them both get in Eleanor’s car, leaving Lily’s Lincoln blocking a crossroad. Eleanor was about the only regular morning visitor. Most of the locals came on Sundays, if at all. That old maid Lily Mason shouldn’t just leave her car wherever she pleased. But that’s the Masons for you, he thought. He watched Eleanor tear up the path as she pressed the accelerator too quickly and spun gravel behind her. The pair of them, Cass thought. One of them a speed demon; the other old biddy will uproot a telephone pole one of these days—her son ought to stop her from driving. Matter of time. But that Holt, Junior wore his pants hiked up around his waist. Pansy, some said. It would be a cold day in hell before he could stop his mama from doing anything she pleased.
LILY FEARED FOR HER HEART, which gonged against her chest. She slumped over, her face in her hands. Eleanor scratched off, tossing the roses she still held to the floor.
“Stop, Eleanor, I’m going to throw up.” Lily opened the door and leaned out as her stomach wrenched. When she pulled the door shut, she closed it on the tip of her little finger. Eleanor leaned over, shoved down the handle, and jerked Lily’s arm inside. The flattened fingertip and pushed-in nail turned purple. Lily began to whimper. Eleanor drove the entire mile into town—swerved once to avoid a cat and almost hit a child on a bicycle—before she thought of what she should do.
Tessie came running out of the House when she saw Eleanor leading Lily from the car. The bright yellow blouse was spotted with blood. “We’ll talk in a minute, Tessie. Let’s get her into her room.”
Eleanor turned back the bed. Tessie got a bag of ice to put on Lily’s finger. “You just lie down,” Eleanor said. I’ll go to the sheriff’s office. Don’t get up, now. You stay right here. I’ll ask Tessie to make you a soothing cup of tea. Where’s J. J.?”
“J. J.’s off fishing. Eleanor, how can we bear this?”
“They’ll catch the animal who did it and put him under the jail. I’m going to call Deanie Robart and have him come out and look at that finger, too. And I’ll find J. J. You just rest.” Eleanor picked up the phone beside Lily’s bed and dialed the doctor. Deanie himself answered and promised to stop by Lily’s before noon.
“I’m so sorry, Eleanor, but I’m glad you were with me. You know that my feelings about Catherine are mixed-up. I can’t help that, but even so, she didn’t deserve this.” Lily felt about to throw up again.
“No. No one deserves this.” Eleanor well knew that Lily always had had an unacknowledged jealousy of monumental proportions toward her sister-in-law. Lily’s younger brother, Wills, had seemed to shift all his devotion to Catherine when he married her. Then when he came home exhausted from war, he treated Lily in a fond but distracted way. Since Lily never married, her brother’s desertion had wounded her. After the war, he never quite seemed to hear what she said.
AS SOON AS SHERIFF RALPH HUNNICUTT HELPED ELEANOR out to her car, he took the steps back up to his office three at a time, flipped fast through his Rolodex, and dialed. A secretary answered, “Ireland Funeral Home.”
“Let me have Alan, please, ma’am.”
“He’s counseling right now,” she answered. “May I have him call you?”
Counseling, my ass, Ralph thought. He’s showing some sad sucker around that gloomy room of coffins, advising them to buy the one with the hand-stitched satin lining. “Tell him it’s an emergency. This is Sheriff Hunnicutt and he’ll need to meet me right fast at the cemetery. He’ll see my car at the Mason plot in the old section. I’m leaving right now.” With the phone wedged between his ear and shoulder, he buckled on his gun while he talked. He’d only been the county sheriff for three months and he hadn’t faced anything other than car wrecks and fistfights.
“Well, Sheriff, what is this in regards to? He’s very busy with a client just now.”
“Just tell him to come. I’ll talk to him there.” He grabbed his notebook.
At the entrance to Magnolia, he stopped where Cass Deal was raking pine needles. He looked like a child’s stick figure drawing. “How ya doing, Cass? I got a pretty strange visit from Eleanor Whitefield. Have you noticed anything odd this morning?”
“No, what’s her gripe?”
“Get in.” He repeated what Eleanor had told him.
“That’s crazy. She’s losing her marbles—you should have seen her drive out here. And look—the two of them left Lily’s car just parked haphazardly.”
“She always drove like a bat. You know she’s sharp as a razorback hog.”
Ralph parked behind Lily’s car. Everything was exactly as Eleanor had described.
They stood silently, staring. Ralph’s ears rang. He thought something had gone wrong with his hearing. He wiped his neck with his handkerchief. Finally, Cass said, “Holy, holy shit. Jesus H. Christ, if this isn’t the damndest . . .” He faltered and grabbed onto Ralph’s sleeve while the plain of the flat earth tilted upward then steadied. “Sumabitch. Those ladies came upon this.”
The two men stood still until Ralph forced himself forward. He would have to handle this, he realized. A few bees plied the roses and one buzzed around the face of Catherine Mason. Ralph was not close enough to her to shoo it away but waved his hand in the air anyway. “Have you seen anything, Cass—that is, anything else . . .” He gestured toward the body on the ground. He touched the dry black paint on Big Jim’s grave. “Any cars stopping, any people at all?” Any vampires, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t bring himself to joke. Cass shook his head no. “That dirt has been rained on,” Ralph went on, “and look here, the side of her dress is muddy. She’s been lying here at least since that thunderstorm we had two days ago.”
“Well, I can’t check every damn grave every day.”
Evidently, Mrs. Wills Mason had been out in the rain. Ralph looked at her hands and throat for jewelry; there was none. “The only motive I can imagine is grave robbing. Do people get buried with their rings?”
Cass thought not, though come to think of it, he hadn’t seen an actual dead person in years, just their sealed coffins.
Her mouth was firmly shut, a faint smile on her lips. Odd, given the way she died. Ralph figured the grave robbers hadn’t looked for gold in her tight mouth. Her tongue—was it still shaped around her last word, whatever that was? He stepped nearer. Holy Christ. His stomach flipped as he noticed the fringe of her eyelashes in the sunken sockets. He’d seen worse in Vietnam but this was different. He’d heard that nails keep growing after death but hers were still neat ovals on her dried-up fingers.
The men saw the Ireland limousine approaching and stepped out to warn Alan what he was about to see.
Even he, who handled corpses all the time, lunged backward, then forward, with his arms out as though balancing on a floating log. Crazily, he started to laugh. Ralph noticed that his eyes were odder than Catherine’s, like a partially submerged hippo’s looking out of the murk. His black suit hung on him as though from a hook. Why is it that morticians look the part? Ralph himself, or so he imagined, could be a lawyer or manager. He had planned to study pharmacology at Georgia State but instead had gone into the army at nineteen, after a year of bad grades from too much partying. His grandfather was sheriff for thirty years, and when he died, the torch passed to Ralph, home after ten years in the army and already sick of working the counter at Walgreen’s. He’d been easily elected last year, with an uppity black candidate as his opponent.
“Have you notified the GBI, or are you planning on investigating this yourself?” Alan asked.
Ralph hadn’t thought of calling the state Bureau of Investigation yet but quickly covered himself. “Cass, you stay here until I can get back with a guard. I’m going in town to call this in right now. Alan, would you see if you can come up with a tarp to cover her up tonight? I guess we better not touch anything until I get in touch with the GBI fellows.” He was sorry he’d said “guess”; he should be more decisive. “I’ll call the paper, too. They can send out a photographer for my records.”
CASS LEANED AGAINST A TALL HEADSTONE in the plot opposite the Masons. What was he supposed to do if the crazy came back to view his handiwork? The stone cast no shade but felt cool against his back. He was trying to think. What day was it? It was Friday—the rain came on Saturday. He’d arrived in the morning and thought that the Bobcat was not parked exactly in the usual place but closer to the shed wall. He remembered having to sidle to it, but he’d assumed he’d just parked funny. The key was in the ignition, where he always left it. He should have told Ralph but he didn’t want any blame for this. I’ll remember later, he thought, if I have to.
HATTIE HEARD ELEANOR PULL INTO THE DRIVEWAY, then softly thud into the back wall of the garage. She came in looking wild-eyed, her hair sticking up. “What on earth’s the matter, Miz Eleanor? Have you done been in an accident?” That she hadn’t so far, Hattie considered a miracle. She and Miss Lily both drove like maniacs. Eleanor walked straight through the kitchen and cranked up the living room and dining room air conditioners. Hattie already had set up the card table. Eleanor thought she never would calm down again or ever shake the image of Catherine from her head. Worse, she felt a new kind of horror over Holt’s death. Everybody died, death is a part of life, of course, but she felt hot rage at the thought of how we’re squished out like bugs even after—she knew she was being irrational—all the times we’ve washed our hair, tended to the insurance, wiped grease off the counters, taken in the paper. Daily life was what she passionately loved. It’s so easily assumed while we’re living it—running downtown when shrimp come in from the coast, taking up a hem, dreaming of floating in a warm pond. She saw the bright blood from Holt’s mouth, spurting red on white tile. She was barking mad. She ran her finger over her lower lip, the gesture that calmed her.
“Hattie, pour us a cup of coffee, please, and sit down. I have something to tell you.”
Hattie’s son, Scott, was the hunting companion of Catherine’s son, J. J. Because Scott was black, no one ever would say simply that he and J. J. Mason were friends. J. J. was peculiar, everyone knew. He had few friends of any color, and if seen with any woman, she was bound to be someone beneath him. Since J. J. was notoriously hard to find, Eleanor had told the sheriff that Hattie might know if the two men were fishing. Hattie had shown her a Polaroid last week of J. J. holding up a rockfish he caught—a thirty-five-pound monster, prehistoric-looking with barnacles around its mouth. J. J. had one foot up on a stump. His glistening chest, Eleanor thought, looked barbarian in the sun, and although he was not actually smiling, he had a pleased look. He wore his hair combed straight back, black as a burnt match, just like Catherine’s. Just like Catherine’s still looked. Eleanor wondered how he could be all that pleased when he had not amounted to much. With all his gifts of superb intelligence and money, all he did was roam around the woods, an outcast. And charm—he could turn the charm off or on. She’d seen him many times looking stormy. Lily had plenty to put up with.
