Cementville Read online

  “Sorry.” Byard takes her hands away from her face. “I’m an asshole. You knew all of them?”

  MaLou nods. “I had a letter from Boyd two days ago.” She should have known better than to put mascara on this morning. It must be all over her face by now. “He said they were assigned to a flrebase on the side of a hill. He said they were sitting ducks.” She turns her face to the window. She could sleep for a long, long time.

  “I’ve been up way too many hours,” Byard says. “I bet you have too.”

  “A nap sounds good.”

  “Shall I awaken you when we arrive?”

  She had not wished to be charmed. Not by this handsome and filthy wanderer who is holding her hand now, not by anyone. When she closes her eyes, her cousin’s lopsided grin occupies the whole of her mind until she manages to shake his image and conjure Boyd Farber. Her first heat, who let her bury her nose in his wavy brown hair that always smelled like rain. Boyd’s mother had held on to some of the country ways and made the whole family rinse their hair in rainwater every Saturday night. MaLou wasn’t a real girlfriend—they were just kids together. She and Boyd. Donnie. All of them.

  In the old days, women married their childhood sweethearts. And when the tragedy of war struck, they were meant to compose lyrical elegies and place tiny braided wreaths of their own hair on the graves of departed lovers. She wonders what she might do to make sure it will not ever be as if Boyd Farber never lived. Any ideas that come are no less morbid than those of the Victorians. At twenty-three, Maria Louise Goins has gone to too many funerals, the result of belonging to a family whose web of begats rivals that of Jesus. She gives another cynical shake that becomes a shudder, and the strange young man seated next to her squeezes her hand.

  “Miss? You feeling sick?” The smell of Uncle Rafe’s greasy black garage, oddly comforting, mingles with the tart green apple of his breath.

  Homesick, MaLou starts to say, maybe.

  FOUR

  Martha Goins has come over early to help Evelyn Slidell with her bath, lifting her in and out of the tub as if she is nothing more than a dried husk of skin, which she isn’t really. At the vanity table Martha does what she can with the hanks of wispy gray hair, a dab of rouge, a new shade of lipstick she picked up for Evelyn at the drugstore. She slips the beige dress over Evelyn’s old bones and fastens the matching jacket at her neck. Chanel. Not that any of the hayseeds at the service are going to notice.

  “Don’t you look pretty, Mrs. Slidell.”

  “I look like Bette Davis in that dreadful movie where she tries to kill Joan Crawford,” Evelyn growls when she finally works up the gumption to glance at the mirror. “I hope you told Judge Hume I don’t intend to say a goddamn word at this thing.”

  They are skipping the parade (“I just don’t think I’m up to it,” Martha had said yesterday when she and Evelyn talked about the schedule), and will arrive at Legion Park in time for the speechifying. Evelyn Slidell hates Memorial Day. It reminds her every year of the burden that accompanies being what she refers to as a goddamn pillar of society.

  “The Judge has his marching orders,” Martha assures her. “Listen, we need to swing by the house and collect Rafe and Maria Louise. Remember, I mentioned our niece came down from Cincinnati last Saturday? I can’t believe she’s already been with me a whole week. Got here when . . .” She stops talking for a beat.

  Evelyn knows: Martha’s niece arrived by bus from the north the same day the funeral cortege drove into town from the south.

  “I am so glad to have her. She’s been a godsend.” Martha’s chatter will not save her. Her voice trails off again, and this time the tears, though silent, will not be refused.

  Bless the woman’s big, broken heart. Evelyn had found the thing that connected her to her nurse: They each had birthed a near-worthless son. Now the tie might be even stronger, given that the lives of both young men were cut short under circumstances of abominable waste. Evelyn had never liked Martha’s Donald Ray; a snotty, mean boy who gave Martha and Rafe no end of torment. Still she hopes the grenade, or whatever it was that flew into his bunker as he slept that night, hit before he woke up. She cannot let herself think what pieces of him—twenty-three years old at the most, poor lout!—lay in the box they put in the ground this past week. Her Stanley hadn’t even been that old. But that was a long time ago, and her grief is a tiny dead coal compared to Martha’s bright, burning fury.

  “Let’s get on with it then,” Evelyn says, not unkindly, handing Martha a linen hankie from the top drawer of the vanity. She leans on Martha all the way down the staircase and across the broad hall, and can almost feel the big woman’s anxiety pulsing off her. On the front porch Martha goes ahead without asking and picks Evelyn up in her strong, fat arms and carries her out to the car.

  Honestly, this life. Sometimes Evelyn really does wish she had the courage, not to mention the physical wherewithal, to just get it all over with.

  Martha’s husband Rafe is waiting out front when they pull up to the Goinses’ house.

  “Shouldn’t you be dressed, honey?” Martha calls to him from the car.

  Rafe struggles from the porch swing and calls something into the house through the screen door. The girl steps out. Pretty thing. Evelyn remembers her now. She was a handful, couldn’t stay out of trouble at home in Cincinnati, so her mother had to send her to her Aunt Martha’s every summer for some old-fashioned discipline. Everybody knows everybody’s business, one of the few available means of staving off boredom in a town this size. Maria Louise was around Donald Ray’s age, if Evelyn recalls correctly. Today the girl looks ready to murder anyone who tries to get friendly. Right behind her comes a red-haired young man Evelyn thinks she ought to recognize. Wait—Martha wouldn’t allow Levon Ferguson onto her property, much less in her house, would she? No, this boy is handsomer than Levon. But a Ferguson, Evelyn feels sure. The two young people climb into the backseat and Rafe slams the car door on them.

  “Aren’t you coming?” Martha’s voice threatens to go shrill.

  “You all go on. I got things need doing in the shop.” Judging from the blur in his eyes, Rafe has already spent time in the shop this morning. Nipping, Evelyn thinks. Rafe had once been something of a hellion; got mixed up in some kind of infraction, a ring of automobile thieves or some such, and did time at the state penitentiary. Came home a different man. Evelyn took him for a teetotaler all these years. Nobody was going to begrudge him for tippling a bit, what with his loss. But he really ought to be there at the service today. For Martha.

  Nobody speaks as they make the short drive through town. Finally Evelyn turns around and stares at the young man and notices for the first time that his hair has been drawn into a small curly ponytail.

  The girl gathers her wits from wherever they have scattered and says, “I’m sorry. Mrs. Slidell, this is Byard Ferguson.”

  He nods, his startling eyes almost hurting her, they are such a crystalline blue. Thank heavens Evelyn has worn her large sunglasses. So he is that other Ferguson brother. Where in the world did he tumble in from? People said he ran off to Canada a few years ago. Draft dodger, some called him. Evelyn called him smart.

  “Charmed,” Evelyn says, and over the seat she offers him a white-gloved hand. When he does not take it, she lets it fall to her lap.

  At the Legion Park, MaLou tells Martha they will meet her at the car after this thing is over, then MaLou and Byard disappear into the crowd. They have arrived in time for Father Oliver’s Benediction. Martha guides Evelyn up the rickety steps to a scaffold construction that makes Evelyn think not of Memorial Day festivities but of public lynchings. People trickle in from the parade, and as Evelyn settles into her seat behind the podium, Lemuel O’Brien and his wife Lila clamber onto the stage. Behind them comes their son Harlan, newly freed from a Vietcong hellhole where they did a messy job of sawing off his gangrenous leg. He is awkward with a fancy new cane. Evelyn would lay down money that Harlan O’Brien wasn’t a bit sorry when the
parade in his honor was postponed last weekend. The storms saw to that, power out, trees down everywhere. Poor fellow only got a reprieve. Made to ride through town on Freeman’s black nag today like some kind of clown. She hopes his parents didn’t insist he attend those funeral Masses. Seven of them, spread over this whole agonizing week. Evelyn couldn’t bring herself to go to all of them, not after the exhibition of grief on display at the first one. Honestly, when did it become acceptable to shriek and carry on that way? In her day, a person grieved in private and with dignity and it was understood that one was not to be disturbed in her mourning. No, after that first Mass for the Farber boy she stayed home. It strikes her now that a lot of the racket at Boyd Farber’s funeral was coming out of Maria Louise Goins.

  Of course Evelyn sent a large tasteful basket of lilies to each of the families and made a substantial donation to the Holy Ghost Altar Society in the dead boys’ names.

  From her vantage on the platform (if you could call it that—plywood and two-by-fours and a handful of nails, from what she can tell), Evelyn Slidell looks down into every single face that belongs to this town. She knows what they are all thinking: Why hasn’t she died yet? They see a desiccated old woman hiding behind a pair of dark glasses large enough to cover half her face. She had selected these sunglasses this morning with particular care, the better to intimidate the populace. Heavy tortoise-shell frames and lenses so black she can stare without people being certain whether she is looking at them or someone just over their shoulder. It has become a prerogative of age, as far as she is concerned, to stare.

  Benediction done, Father Oliver steps aside for Judge Hume. “Good people of Cementville,” the Judge starts, and the secular portion of the invocation begins. Freeman Hume’s rumbling baritone shushes the crowd as the pastor’s tenor could not. The speech will go on twice too long, every word predictably patriotic pap. Praise be for whatever it is out there that passes for a divinity, Evelyn thinks, that the day is not hot. Last weekend’s storms, in addition to delaying the parade, broke the strange spring drought, and now her valley is lush and green. The air is cool and she is glad for her jacket. Not that she would take it off even if she were steaming—and what?—reveal the shriveled arms that refuse to do as she bids them anymore? Dresses for old women ought not be made sleeveless.

  Everybody is here at the new Legion Park, the memorial patch of crabgrass created by unanimous resolution at the emergency meeting of the City Council. After news of the war dead broke, right off they stormed Evelyn asking for money to throw the whole thing together. Levon Ferguson and his scrawny little brother Tony were hired to whack down the wild privet that had taken over the vacant lot north of the distillery. Stick a few sad-looking box elders in the ground, something cheap, fast growing. But weak wooded—oh, how people have lost the long view of things! Evelyn believes with all her heart that this place, historic district designation or no, will wither into a ghost town, and sooner rather than later.

  The Altar Society women at Holy Ghost joined with the Presbyterian Women’s Auxiliary (will miracles never cease!) and stitched together a bit of bunting for a grandstand, the brilliant red, white, and blue stripes highlighting the fact of this acreage being little more than a cinder dump abutting Taylortown. Evelyn still has to stop herself calling it Coloredtown. Not that she isn’t glad for Civil Rights. She is, she really is.

  —I am humbled to stand before you on this consecrated day, a day to reflect on those who serve in the defense of our land. Those of us who have heeded the call can remember that first haircut, or the mystery meat served up in the chow hall. We dwell on those memories that do not fade.

  “Stop it!” It is a girl’s voice that has interrupted Freeman Hume’s blather, and he and everyone in attendance turn heads together toward the peals of tinkly laughter. The giggling and commotion continue, some pushing and slapping of hands, until finally Evelyn can make out where it’s coming from. A girl, a child really, with that blaze of hair, and she’s half-heartedly fighting off the playful advances of a couple of skinny young bucks right there at the corner of the stage for all the town to see. Who is that? Evelyn mouths to Martha, which question only elicits a roll of eyes and a shake of the head.

  —My four years at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, the football games, the times my buddies and I went for a dip on a dare in the icy Chesapeake Bay, and of the day I learned I would be going to Navy Flight School . . .

  It’s that Ferguson girl. Stepped into the role of town strumpet as if it was written for her. What on earth made Arlene Ferguson hatch such a name for a baby girl? A name that calls up portents of bad things to come. Evelyn shivers again, watching Augrey Ferguson bat away the probing hands of three or four boys.

  Evelyn gives the crowd another once-over to see how Freeman’s speech is playing. Most of the blacks have left by now, knowing the Judge is not talking to them—but not old Nimrod. Poor cuss thinks this Memorial Day ceremony includes him. Nimrod served in the Great War, one of the colored units. Came back a good many years later. Nobody was ever sure where he stayed in the interim. Evelyn Slidell can still remember Nimrod’s mother, who stomped on her thick brown legs into Evelyn’s mother’s kitchen almost every dawning day of her life. Evelyn and Nimrod chased each other around the orchard when they were small, until they both got old enough that her parents made her stop. Maybe she will get Martha to drive her out there to see him one of these days. Better do it soon, she thinks, before both of us croak! And she chuckles so loud Martha looks at her with concern. Evelyn realizes she has laughed at an inappropriate time. Freeman Hume is rattling on about mourning and the call to liberty.

  Evelyn had considered herself Nimrod’s friend, and wonders whether he did, or does, the same. She cannot remember when they last spoke.

  At the back of the crowd, Levon Ferguson and a couple of his hoodlum friends sneak off toward the distillery. Pretty soon they will have no doubt sawed the lock off Warehouse D, farthest from the road, and will have tapped a barrel and stolen as much bourbon as they can carry down to the river.

  —I remember the heartbreak of leaving my wife and my young niece, Katherine—you all know Katherine Juell, her husband, her pretty little daughter, and their boy Willis Junior, whom the Lord has seen fit to return to us, praise be. Ah, I remember the joy of homecoming after a long deployment. And I remember the men lost.

  And blah-de-blah-blah, Freeman, you pompous ass. Evelyn Slidell observes the proceedings from the edge of the stage. The Judge checks her immobile expression now and again to see if his words are meeting with her approval. Evelyn dabs at her face with the hanky she keeps in her pocketbook. You remember exactly nothing! she wishes she could scream—how her throat burns with indignation. Hume sat out the First World War in law school, running panty raids on Radcliff girls.

  Also on stage are the parents of the other boys. Rafe’s seat on the other side of Martha is empty. The Kidwells and Farbers and Mitchells are there. The widow Welch. And Happy Spalding, whose wife ran off, leaving him with small children and a restaurant to run. Even the Gordons are there, though they moved away recently, him lured by one of the Tennessee distillers, Jack Daniels, she thinks it was. Evelyn’s late husband Lewis had groomed Charles Gordon Senior for a good position at his own distillery here in town. Evelyn can’t say why, but she is glad Charles Junior’s body will rest here rather than in Tennessee, so far from home.

  —The men we buried this past week took no part in the burning of draft cards. They did not flee the borders of this great country to avoid serving. They did not hold with celebrities protesting injustices done to the enemy. They saw their duty to God and country.

  Evelyn stops listening. There’s poor, obese Arlene Ferguson, mother to Levon and that bunch. Arlene and her sister Bett prop each other up like two Pisas slammed together at the top. Maria Louise Goins has followed Byard Ferguson to stand with them. Evelyn glances at Martha to see if she also notices that MaLou’s hand is twined in the hand of the pony-taile
d young man. Wouldn’t it be nice if the girl stayed with Martha and Rafe for a while? Maybe she can fill Donnie’s empty room. Find work here.

  They are a handsome couple, Evelyn thinks, and there is a stirring in her, of something perhaps tired, but not moribund, as she watches the way MaLou Goins looks at Byard Ferguson.

  —As we mourn our war dead, this sadness is eclipsed by the joy of welcoming back into the fold one of our own who has suffered the loss, not of life but of limb. We stop to give thanks to our Maker, not only for the glory and luck of being born Americans, but to stand before these mothers and fathers who have contributed to something they considered priceless—the defense of our country.

  The Judge gestures broadly behind him toward Lemuel and Lila O’Brien and tries to catch Harlan’s eye. Weak applause peters out. Nobody is sure whether clapping over the dead, not to mention Harlan O’Brien’s artificial leg, is appropriate.

  Evelyn spots the Asian woman Jimmy Smith brought home with him. For three years now, Cementville has had its very own war bride. Giang Smith is staring into the Judge’s face. What she is thinking is anybody’s guess. She might swallow everything he’s saying. She might see a fool.

  —Lieutenant O’Brien comes home to us today as a man who can be counted on to be true to his word. He has proven himself so in the two years he spent in a Communist prison. America deserves men and women of honor and character, who do not have to make excuses for their past or current actions, who have earned the name “hero.”