parlor. This room had not changed since his grandmother’s day. She had furnished it with heavy wood furniture from her mother’s house and her mother-in-law’s house. Each piece had been a treasure, for her, fraught with history and family reminiscence.
A large upright piano, mahogany, dominated the wall opposite the fireplace. Small round tables, mahogany wood, with marble tops, flanked a camel back couch, upholstered in wine velvet. This arrangement dominated one of the side walls. Two matching chairs stood, one either side of the door into the hall. The fire screen was cast iron, very heavy, in the shape of a peacock with tail on full display. The fire leaped and danced behind it.
The room was redolent with lemon oil and a faint tinge of smoke from the fire. Ben remembered oppressive afternoons enduring the preacher’s visit, sitting on a hard chair trying not to wiggle while the grownups droned in pious tones.
“Take a seat on the couch,” Laws said. “Mama always sits in one of the chairs.”
Ben sat, noticing the ecru antimacassars on the couch. “Still got Grandmother Soul’s crochet work, I see.”
“Yes, mummified like everything else in this room.” Laws chuckled.
“Your dad and I used to think of this as a torture chamber,” Ben said. “We only came in here to listen to long-winded preachers or boring old people. Couldn’t move, couldn’t scratch an itch.”
“Yeah, I know. Something about this room brings on the itches, too. Same thing when I was a kid. I don’t think Dad ever liked it in here. After a while, we even entertained the preacher in the kitchen. Only when Mama insisted would he visit with anybody in here.”
Enna came into the room and sat in one of the upholstered chairs. She placed her hands on her knees, elbows toward the front. Her full cheeks puffed out as she blew a breath through pursed lips. She looked piercingly at Ben.
“What brings you here, Ben?” she asked.
“Laws wrote me a note, said Hardin was dying, and wanted to see me.” Ben’s forehead wrinkled with concern. “I take it you’d rather I hadn’t come.”
“I’m sorry, Ben, if I’ve given you that impression. It’s probably easier to talk business with you here. Better than writing letters back and forth, anyway.” She took a deep breath, and let it out, slowly, as if to release her nervous tension. “Business and family don’t mix well.”
“No, I don’t suppose they do very often,” Ben said. “What’s on your mind, Enna?” He grasped the arm of the couch with his left hand. Enna’s tension had communicated itself to him. Lawson had sat back in his wheelchair, hands folded across his stomach. His gray eyes, so like his father’s and uncle’s eyes, stared into the yellow flames dancing behind the peacock screen.
“This farm’s about to become a part of Berthoud. That means a fair amount of money. I know you and Hardin hold it half-and-half. I’m asking if you’ll consider it divided in three parts, one for you, one for each of us.” She stared intently at Ben, as if to will him to grant her wish.
He stared back at her for a long moment, dumbfounded. Maybe Hardin had never told her. “I don’t own any piece of this farm,” he said. “I signed a quit claim deed over to Hardin when Lawson was born.”
Enna’s tension flowed out of her like air out of a balloon. She slumped in the chair, stunned. “Oh,” she said in a quiet voice, “I wonder why Hardin never mentioned it to me. I don’t suppose he registered it, either.”
“Quit claim deeds take effect the minute they’re signed.”
“I wonder where Dad put it,” Lawson asked the fire.
“If you can’t find it, I’ll sign another one,” Ben said. “A gift given is a gift given.” He leaned back in the corner of the couch. “I don’t suppose Hardin has made a will, has he?”
“I don’t know,” Enna said.
“He has,” Lawson said. “It’s in the desk drawer, the one he always keeps locked.”
“Do you know what it says?” Enna asked.
“Yes,” Lawson said. “It leaves everything he has to you and me in equal shares.”
“No mention of Ben?”
“No. I’m sorry,” Lawson said to Ben.
“Hardin and I weren’t close, ever since I moved to the Coast.”
“And told him about your way of living,” Enna snapped.
“What way of living?” Lawson asked.
“With another man!” Enna said. Disgust scrunched her round cheeks into two angry red puckers.
“Oh,” Lawson said.
“Your father,” Enna went on, “even on his death bed is worried that he turned Ben queer because he married me, stole me away from Ben.”
“Because we dated once?” Ben said. “I never thought you were my woman.” He looked at Enna. “I guess Hardin doesn’t understand what I am, and always have been.”
“I’ve heard that homosexual party line. Believe it if you want to.” Enna glared at Ben. “I guess I had something to do with Hardin’s pulling back, too. I never encouraged him to count you family. To be blunt, I didn’t want you around Laws, influencing him.”
“Mama, were you in love with Uncle Ben? Before Dad, I mean?” Laws wheeled his chair around to face his mother.
“No. Never. One date and I never heard from him again.”
“Why,” Ben asked, “did Hardin think you were still in love with me?”
“Because he was too blind to see how much I loved him.” Enna sighed. The anger that had twisted her face disappeared. She smiled a smile that made her look almost young. “I never loved any man more than I loved him.”
“Hardin was always trying to measure up, as a kid. I thought he’d outgrown that,” Ben said. He shook his head. “Too bad he missed the miracle in his own house.”
“Miracle?” Enna asked.
“Miracle. Having somebody who loves you is a miracle.”
In the hall, the loudspeaker broadcast a call for a Dr. Harmon.
For a time Hardin slept, without dreaming, in a darkness warm and comfortable. Then it began the stirring of the serpent in his bowels. It had been quiescent too long. He could feel it uncoiling in his stomach’s pit, lashing its tail, and grinding against his abdomen as it unwound and unwound and unwound. He tried to cry out, but his throat would not open. Still the serpent grew in his gut. Its fangs flickered in and out as it forced its head into his esophagus. It searched for his heart.
He shouted a mental shout to Ben. Ben did not hear. Ben did not come. He despaired, and the serpent slid past his guard to sink its fangs in his heart. Death rattled in his throat, and he let go, let himself fly toward the light, leaving the husk of himself behind.
At the nurses’ station, alarms sounded. Nurses came, and doctors, but Hardin had fled the serpent in his bowels.
The telephone rang in the hall. Laws looked at his mother. “I’ll get it,” he said. Enna nodded. She and Ben waited for Laws to return. They heard him say “Hello,” then there was a long silence. Then he said, “I see. I’ll tell Mama. Thanks for calling.” He rolled slowly into the room. Tears streaked his face.
“Dad’s gone,” he said. He choked back a sob.
“We’ve got to make arrangements,” Enna said. Her tears started. Ben went to her and held her hand. Outside the snow had thickened, and a cold north wind blew it sideways.
Cold, Cold Ground
Ben’s feet were ice lumps in his shoes. The minister droned his way through a lugubrious series of prayers and scriptures. Overhead the hard blue sky pressed down like a helmet that fit the earth too tightly. The Astroturf under the feet of the mourners lay incongruously green atop the trampled snow. As the people breathed, clouds rose from their mouths and noses to dissipate among the barren branches of the winter trees. The casket lay on canvas straps, ready to lower it into the ground when the ceremony ended. Idly Ben wondered how the gravediggers had managed to cut the frozen soil in such a neatly defined cut.
It had not been easy to stay in Enna’s
house. She had been distantly polite, no more. By ones and twos neighbors and friends came, always with some kind of food. Ben had forgotten the old custom of funeral meats. Enna apportioned the various cakes, pies, and occasional casseroles among the visitors.
Ben and Laws had gone through Hardin’s desk, Enna professing she was not up to the task. They found Ben’s quit claim deed in one drawer. In another, Laws discovered a stack of Christmas cards in a box. Hardin had kept every one Ben had ever sent him. Ben felt a twinge of guilt and regret that he had thrown away the ones Hardin had sent him over the years.
Just yesterday, with the funeral arrangements made, and the visitations tapering off, Enna had asked Ben to go to the attic and sort through the things he had left there long years ago. It was only two small boxes of papers, including pictures Ben had drawn for his mother’s refrigerator, old report cards, old magazines, and the newspapers announcing his graduation from high school and university. None of this stirred any deep feeling for Ben. It all belonged to so distant a part of his life that it was unreal for him. In the end, he kept only a battered teddy bear that had kept him company through his childhood nights. Laws helped him burn the rest in the parlor fireplace.
Ben tried to wriggle his toes in his shoes. Even with two pair of socks he was unable to feel his feet. He felt the cold creeping in under his coat. The minister was lost in prayer, addressing the deity at length about human failings, and imploring the deity’s mercy on the fallen-from-grace.