Cementville Page 9

  “We’ll take good care of him,” Mac Duvall said. He stuck a hand out to Byard. “You can bring your mama over about four this afternoon. We’ll have time for a private family viewing before the wake starts at seven this evening.”

  As if anybody other than family is going to care about coming to see Daniel off, Byard thought, knowing he oughtn’t. The undertaker was trying to be kind, and little kindnesses warranted acknowledgment. Byard was pretty sure the price Malcolm Duvall quoted them for the entire funeral service and burial arrangement was half the usual cost.

  “We appreciate it,” Byard said. “Everything.” He shook Duvall’s hand and reached for Roddy’s, and the boy seemed surprised. “Daniel always liked you, Roddy.”

  “Daniel was my friend,” Roddy slurred. He was more profoundly retarded than Byard had known, and Byard was ashamed for his close-heartedness of a moment ago.

  He headed out on foot toward Rafe and Martha Goins’s house. He and MaLou had moved into the empty bedroom where Donald Raphael Goins III had slept for all of his twenty-four years, until he left for training at Fort Hood, Texas. Martha claimed that MaLou and Byard staying with them would help her and Rafe move on, that the house felt too empty. Rafe had kept silent on the matter, as seemed to be his way about anything having to do with his son’s death. Byard intended it to be a temporary arrangement. He and MaLou would get a place together, something cheap, save enough money to get out of here. He was prepared to go back to Canada, and MaLou, amazingly, seemed ready to follow him.

  It was still a mystery to Byard that MaLou had wanted to stay here at all. That she made him stand there in her Aunt Martha’s kitchen while she called the newspaper in Cincinnati and informed them she wasn’t coming back to work. That she rode with him over to Travelers Grove and, in the living room of the Justice of the Peace, in the dress she’d worn to her cousin Donnie’s funeral, said she would have and hold him—him, Byard—all the days of her life, while Martha and Rafe stood witness.

  What had gotten into the girl? Into him, for that matter? He had come back to Cementville against all common sense. Selective Service would catch up with him sooner or later. He was as good as a criminal already. But he couldn’t have stayed away, not when his mother needed him. Not when his little sister Augrey was becoming more of a hellion—okay, a tramp—and more unreachable. Bile rose in his throat, thinking about it.

  God he was thirsty.

  He reversed course and headed upriver toward Pekkar’s Alley, knowing it was a bad idea. He’d managed to avoid the place since he and MaLou had gone together to raise a glass with most of the town after the Memorial Day parade and the judge’s bizarre speech. They’d both needed a drink then. But the place gave MaLou the heebie jeebies—or rather, Levon’s presence there gave her the heebie jeebies—and they hadn’t stayed long.

  Byard stepped into the bar’s dim interior, his eyes watering a moment against the stench of soured grease. He slid into an empty booth. He didn’t recognize the girl who took his order. Five years was all it took to lose track of a place. Was she Happy Spalding’s girl? She had that round face, the big surprised eyes.

  “What you got on draft?” Byard asked.

  She told him. “You want anything to eat with that or you doing liquid lunch today?”

  Byard looked at the wall clock and saw that it was already twelve thirty. “Pekkar Burgers still as bad as I remember them?”

  “If you order extra onions, we’ll throw in the heartburn for free.” She said it with a flat voice, as if she’d been trained to make banter with the customers and had used the line a hundred times too many.

  “Aren’t you one of the Spalding girls?” Byard said. She moved her head slightly in what passed for affirmation. “Why did Hap let you come over here and work for Roger Pekkar? Seems Happy’s joint is pretty hopping these days.”

  “Wasn’t a matter of letting me,” the girl said. “I do what I want.”

  “Hey, don’t get all het up. I’m all for women’s lib.” Byard grinned, but it did little to warm her up. “I’ll have the burger, hold the onions. Fries. Forget the beer. I’ll take a shake. Chocolate.” He was already thinking of kissing MaLou, and he didn’t want her tasting onions or beer on his breath.

  “One Pekkar Platter Deluxe and a shake,” she said and vanished into the kitchen.

  Ever since they’d come into Pekkar’s last weekend, when MaLou had seen Levon drunk—and a good portion of the other men in town fall-down drunk too—she had been after Byard, just slightly, but after him in a way that made him uncomfortable. Byard had shared highballs with Rafe one evening and MaLou wasn’t happy about it. And Levon had come by the next afternoon to ask Byard if he wanted to pick up a little part-time work with him, and MaLou nixed the idea. They’d had their first fight after that, and he had come right out with it: Did she think he was some kind of alkie? That he was a loser too, just like Levon, just like his grandfather Angus, just like every other goddamn Ferguson? He hadn’t meant to yell, but there it was. The generational self-loathing that seemed to be a third corpuscle in Ferguson blood.

  They had made up, of course. MaLou curled herself around him that night and they made love in Donnie Ray Goins’s bed and she was as tender with him as anybody had ever been in his life. He lay in the dark later and wondered if it was time to stop thinking of himself as an unlucky man.

  “You are a good man,” she had said out of nowhere, as if some gentle spirit had been listening to his thoughts and chose to speak through her.

  Now Byard doubted the magic of it, and he played his wife’s words over and over, trying to remember where the emphasis had been placed. You are a good man. You are a good man. As in, she would talk herself into it. As in, no matter what people say, she believed in him. As in, she would argue for his decency, and perhaps would continue trying to convince herself, even after all the evidence was in and he had proven himself otherwise.

  He waited for the Spalding girl to bring out a plate of food that would sit heavy on his gut the rest of the day. Waiting, he tried to imagine MaLou learning what is really inside him, the kinds of things he is capable of. Could she insist on his goodness then, once she knew the worst of the things he had done? Years had passed since that awful night, years that he had hoped were enough to create real distance. But what constituted enough time? Eight years, nine? Could the young man he’d once been—weak, corruptible, barely the agent of his own life—could he have been replaced by the good man MaLou believed in now? The Canadian doctor had pinned that night, nine years ago, as perhaps the start of Byard’s “fugue state.” The beginning of his wandering, if not of his secrets.

  Byard jumped at the sound of a Pekkar Platter Deluxe clattering on the table in front of him. The Spalding girl tallied his check and tore it from her pad. She didn’t thank him or wish him happy eating. She didn’t check on whether everything met with his satisfaction. She took up a sentry position behind the bar and gazed distractedly out at the otherwise empty restaurant.

  He knew that people assumed he ran off to Canada to get away from the draft and, as long as he was hiding out in the Canadian hinterlands, it had never been in Byard’s interest to disabuse them of that notion. Other than Byard himself, his big brother was probably the only person in town who knew that what he had been running from all along was Levon.

  * * *

  THEY STREAM TOWARD THE DUVALL Funeral Home by various means: On foot if they live nearby; in taxi cabs if they are from outlying communities or are too old or drunk to drive; by Greyhound if they happen to be of the original mountain stock who chose to stay in Appalachia; in dilapidated trucks borrowed from neighbors, the cargo loads of which consist of children, most of whom wear shoes scrounged from somewhere and an outfit suitable for the occasion. The extended Ferguson clan is impressive, if for nothing but its size, numbering close to a hundred.

  The women wear the dresses they save for the weekly grocery trip, their hair done up high on top and sprayed into unyielding helmets. Adol
escent girls slink around in miniskirts and fishnets and bored looks that avoid the taciturn, barely caged scrutiny of the men. Young boys hide their diffidence behind swaggers and spit, taking turns pulling a comb from a back pocket and running it through their flawless and gleaming hair. They have not adopted the new style of collar-length locks or longer, they are no hippies, no studious sensitive types. They brook no trade with the anti-war talk that lately flavors the air. They have come to pay respect to their fallen brother, cousin, friend, to one of their own cut down for God and country and to stay the yellow horde.

  Arlene Ferguson in a Valium haze is guided up the front steps of the old house that Malcolm Duvall and his wife converted to a mortuary some years ago, an antebellum behemoth set off to the east by the Slidell mansion and by Judge Freeman Hume’s Victorian manor to the west. Like a house herself, Arlene is similarly bolstered, each elbow held by a son. Levon, the older, on his mother’s left, has this afternoon grudgingly put on a suit of blue serge purchased for him by his beleaguered wife Virginia. (Three days ago, Ginny had gone back to Levon—yet again, and against the advice both of her cousin and of her neighbor, Katherine Juell—but it is Ginny’s dance, not theirs, Byard thinks.)

  Byard holds Arlene by her right arm. His own gray suit hangs on him, belonging not to him but to Rafe Goins, a considerably larger man. Behind him the assortment of relatives have finished greeting one another and, still mumbling last bits of family news and expressions of sadness, assemble into something of a procession to follow the wretched and drugged mother into Duvalls’.

  The retinue, once inside, is reduced to stunned quiet. The dark elegance of the parlors on either side of the great hallway, the sweeping staircase that recalls glamorous Civil War movies, only serve to call attention to their motley clothing and brassy hair. Eyes adjusting to the dimmer light, they discern which room contains the casket. The other room appears to be for less formal sitting and visiting. The men pointedly look through Byard and filter off from the women and head toward the latter, a paneled parlor where, after an appropriately respectful interlude, thin bottles will appear from back pockets, the ubiquitous half pint that, once empty, has the power to shear in two a grieving man’s heart. But as soon as one bottle is gone, another is produced, and after a while the soft drone of the men’s voices gets loud enough that someone from the office comes to politely suggest they move to the broad veranda where they’ll be more comfortable in the numerous rocking chairs and gliders. It is suggested that the men can enjoy a smoke without discomfiting the women across the hall.

  Arlene and her sister Bett are squeezed together on a velvet settee near Daniel’s coffin, two large and uncomfortable women clutching their purses on their laps. Arlene’s grief bestows upon her a rare grace. Levon stands behind his mother. When Byard and Levon catch each other’s eye there is a cautious hatred that Byard knows is kept at bay only out of respect for Arlene’s public moment. The brothers have not been alone together since Byard’s return, and he dreads that moment coming. Maria Louise has made clear she would rather it not happen at all. She won’t come to the funeral home until later tonight, insisting that Byard have this time with close relatives, an excuse to delay her having to face the sobering fact that she has married a Ferguson. He wouldn’t blame MaLou if she showed up as drugged as Arlene.

  Mac Duvall cuts silently through the space of the bereavement room, nodding at one woman, touching the shoulder of another. His years in the business have honed him to a fine shining blade of reserve. He accomplishes an elegant gloom in his trim black suit, knows all the right expressions for the situation, what to murmur, when a simple nod will do and when a pat on the back is appropriate. The man makes of anguish something that is handsome and noble.

  Levon steps forward. “War’s been good to you, ain’t it, Mac?” he blares, and the women all look up from their sniffling.

  Mac Duvall’s arm reaches out for a handshake, a motion that must be instinctual for a man in his position. “Levon,” he says, but Levon keeps his arms locked tight across his chest, rocks on his heels and nearly loses his balance.

  In the deep pockets of Rafe’s gray suit, Byard clenches and relaxes his fists. Clenches and relaxes and glares at Levon. But Levon’s attention is already engaged elsewhere, busy with his own dark judgments. Byard follows the line of his brother’s scrutiny and realizes that Levon’s eyes are trained on their sister Augrey

  Her hair a careless tangle, her skirt impossibly short, she leans against the jamb of the enormous door to the parlor, the strap of a straw purse dangling off the shoulder from one hooked finger. Her other arm is tightly wrapped halfway around her, articulating the tiny waist and still-boyish hips. Their mother had asked Byard to talk to Augrey “She’s acting up,” was how Arlene put it, “and it can’t hurt to have a man talk to her, I mean, a man who don’t want something from her.” Arlene didn’t need to say anything else for Byard to sense the deep worry, that his mother saw her girl following the same path she herself had taken, an unthinking child reckless with what little she owned of herself. He looks at his sister now and tries to imagine what other men see, but he can’t. Augrey’s skinny hips, the fishnet hose that sag at the knees, make her look like a little girl playing dress-up, only instead of the glamour of mom’s classy heels, she’s borrowed her role from a fifty-cent novel.

  He’d tried to talk to her last week, ran into her on Council Street, bought her a Coke at Happy’s. She had thrown back her head and laughed and then pinned him with a way-too-old look that said she found it both flattering and funny that he wanted to save her, that he thought he could tell her a goddamn thing about the dangers of this world.

  The way Levon is staring at her now, it’s obvious he has a thing or two of his own he would like to tell his sister. Byard can only hope Levon will keep it to himself long enough to spare their mother more suffering today.

  “Do you want to get out of here for a little while?” Byard asks Augrey. She shoves the strap of the purse onto her shoulder and follows him out to the parking lot. There’s a tree at the far corner, a patch of lawn next to some ditch lilies, their orange blooms harkening summer with bright abandon. Byard sits and leans against the tree and pats the grass next to him. Augrey sprawls on the grass several feet away and slips off the cheap T-strap heels and rubs her toes.

  “These things are killing me,” she says.

  “Come here,” Byard says, but she doesn’t move.

  He has no right to expect her to trust him. She was so young when he left Cementville. He hears the discordant trills of a pair of woodpeckers and his eye follows their gangly flapping in the tops of pines across the way. Their red crowns bob comically as they hammer for bugs. When he turns to tell Augrey—Look! Pileated woodpeckers! (because it’s not every day you get to see those)—she has scooted closer to him. She leans toward him now and he shrinks from her, but she puts her head on his chest, and in seconds he realizes she wants only comfort.

  “Danny was the easiest of us to love,” she says. “Mama’s not going to get over this one.”

  He gives her hair a tentative stroke. It is softer than it looks, long and gently wavy. He looks down at the top of her head, her small nose with its wash of freckles. She is quite beautiful, her lips parting to let go a labored sigh; he hadn’t known her to be capable of crying. She’s like their mother in that, stoic. He looks out over the parking lot. Only a lattice fence separates it from the formal gardens of the Slidell mansion next door. Through diamond-shaped holes Byard can see the rows of manicured boxwoods, the carefully placed statuary, the orderly brick walkways. A nice place to sit, he imagines. In Canada, in the Bow Valley, he had found places to sit, wild places that would put this tamed garden to shame. His landlady, a rich-girl, free-love hippie who’d left Montreal to open a remote refuge for American war resisters, had taught him how to meditate. TM she called it. By the time he left Canada, he could sit for nearly an hour straight.

  “Levon—” he starts to say, but Augrey goes
taut, as if a volt of electricity has shot through her. “If you ever want to talk or anything.” But why would he think he’s equipped to handle whatever it is that has happened to this girl, that he can help her? Strong as the pull of shared blood can be, he doesn’t know her either; she is another sad, pretty girl whose life is going to get steadily worse. Byard has neither the wisdom to guide his little sister nor the courage to save her, and truth be told, if he could walk out of this place right now, he’d do it.

  Augrey’s breathing is steady. The rise and fall of her against his chest and the slackening of her shoulders, the weight of her head, tell him she has fallen asleep. Byard continues to stroke her hair. Can you do more for the people you are supposed to love, he thinks, than to wish them well?

  THE FAMILY SCATTERS BETWEEN THE funeral wakes of the afternoon and evening hours to find something to eat. They trail off to Happy’s or Pekkar’s Alley, or buy a loaf of bread and a heel of bologna and assemble sandwiches by the river. A number of them gather in Bett’s front yard for hot dogs. Someone has brought a watermelon, and the smaller children are stripped to their underwear for a slice, the juices dripping down their unembarrassed bellies. Their mothers will wash them at the spigot, button up their good clothes, and get them ready to go back to Duvalls’.

  MaLou comes into the funeral home with Martha and Rafe Goins. She walks toward Byard, near-angelic in the navy-blue dress she wore to marry him. He takes Augrey’s hand (she has stuck close to him all afternoon), and pulls her toward his new wife. When he introduces them, the two females blush and stammer and he thinks for a minute that both might begin to cry and after a moment they do. MaLou takes Augrey into her arms and they go out together into the hallway. There is a quiet lounge adjacent to the Ladies Room, and Byard imagines MaLou there, making over his little sister, washing the girl’s face.