“He loved my mother,” Laurel spoke into the quiet.
She lifted up her head: Tish was coming to stand beside her, and old Tom Farris had remained in attendance at the back of the room. Mr. Pitts had been waiting them out in the greenery. As he stepped forward and put his strength to his task, Tish very gently winked at Laurel, and helped her to give up bearing the weight of that lid, to let it come down.
Then Mr. Pitts, as if he propelled it by using the simple power of immunity, moved through their ranks with the coffin and went first; it had been piled over with flowers in the blink of an eye. Last of all came Miss Adele: she must have been there all the time, in the righted smoking chair, with her drawn forehead against its old brown wing.
Laurel, Miss Adele, and Missouri walked out together and watched it go. Children at play and a barking dog watched it come out, then watched the people come out behind it. Two children sat on the roof of a truck to wave at Wendell, with their hands full. They had picked the Silver Bells.
Mount Salus Presbyterian Church had been built by McKelvas, who had given it the steepest steps in town to make it as high as the Courthouse it was facing. From her place in the family pew, Laurel heard the seven members of the Bar, or their younger sons, and Bubba Chisom in his windbreaker bringing up the thundering weight of Judge McKelva in his coffin. She heard them blundering.
“Heavenly Father, may this serve to remind us that we have each and every one of us been fearfully and wonderfully made,” Dr. Bolt said over the coffin, head bowed. But was that not Judge McKelva’s table blessing? They were the last words Laurel heard. She watched him perform the service, but what he was saying might have been as silent as the movements of the handkerchief he passed over and over again across his forehead, and down his cheeks, and around.
Everybody remained seated while the family—the family was Laurel, Fay, and the Bullocks—walked back up the aisle first, behind the casket. Laurel saw that there had not been room enough in the church for everybody who had come. All around the walls, people were standing; they darkened the colored glass of the windows. Black Mount Salus had come too, and the black had dressed themselves in black.
All of them poured down the steps together. The casket preceded them.
“He’ll touch down where He took off from,” said Miss Verna Longmeier, at the bottom. “Split it right down the middle.” Her hands ripped a seam for them: “The Mount of Olives.” Triumphantly, she set off the other way.
There was a ringing for each car as it struck its wheels on the cattleguard and rode up into the cemetery. The procession passed between ironwork gates whose kneeling angels and looping vines shone black as licorice. The top of the hill ahead was crowded with winged angels and life-sized effigies of bygone citizens in old-fashioned dress, standing as if by count among the columns and shafts and conifers like a familiar set of passengers collected on deck of a ship, on which they all knew each other—bona-fide members of a small local excursion, embarked on a voyage that is always returning in dreams.
“I’m glad the big camellia will be in bloom,” said Laurel. She felt her gloved hand pressed in that of Miss Tennyson, as Fay said from her other side:
“How could the biggest fool think I was going to bury my husband with his old wife? He’s going in the new part.”
Laurel’s eye travelled among the urns that marked the graves of the McKelvas and saw the favorite camellia of her father’s, the old-fashioned Chandlerii Elegans, that he had planted on her mother’s grave—now big as a pony, saddled with unplucked bloom living and dead, standing on a fading carpet of its own flowers.
Laurel would hardly have thought of Mount Salus Cemetery as having a “new part.” It was like being driven to the other side of the moon. The procession stopped. The rest of the way was too rough, as Laurel now saw, for anything except a hearse. They got out onto the grass and clay of the petered-out road. The pick-up truck had pulled up right behind the family’s car, nearly touching it with the tin sign on its bumper. “Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto You.”
“What’re we here for?” asked Wendell, his voice in the open air carrying though light as thistledown.
“Wendell Chisom, they’ve got to finish what they started, haven’t they? I told you you was going to be sorry you ever begged,” said Sis.
They struck out across the field. There were already a few dozen graves here, dotted uniformly with indestructible plastic Christmas poinsettias.
“Now, is everybody finding the right place?” called Miss Tennyson, her eyes skimming the crowd that went walking over the young grass. “Somebody help old Tom Farris get where he’s going!”
An awning marked the site; it appeared to be the farthest one in the cemetery. As they proceeded there, black wings thudded in sudden unison, and a flock of birds flew up as they might from a ploughed field, still shaped like it, like an old map that still served new territory, and wrinkled away in the air.
Mr. Pitts waited, one more time; he stood under the awning. The family took their assigned seats. Laurel had Fay on her right, sitting with a black-gloved hand held tenderly to her cheek. The coffin, fixed in suspension over the opened grave, was on a level with their eyes now.
Miss Tennyson, still on Laurel’s left, murmured close to her ear, “Look behind you. The high school band. They better be here! Clint gave ’em those horns they’re sporting, gave ’em the uniforms to march in. Somebody pass ’em the word to perk up. Of course they’re not going to get to play!”
Under Mr. Pitts’ awning Laurel could smell the fieriness of flowers restored to the open air and the rawness of the clay in the opened grave. Their chairs were set on the odorless, pistachio-green of Mr. Pitts’ portable grass. It could still respond, everything must respond, to some vibration underfoot: this new part of the cemetery was the very shore of the new interstate highway.
Dr. Bolt assumed position and pronounced the words. Again Laurel failed to hear what came from his lips. She might not even have heard the high school band. Sounds from the highway rolled in upon her with the rise and fall of eternal ocean waves. They were as deafening as grief. Windshields flashed into her eyes like lights through tears. Beside her, then, Fay’s black hand slid from her cheek to pat her hair into place—it was over.
“I want to tell you, Laurel, what a beautiful funeral it was,” said Dot Daggett, immediately after Dr. Bolt had gone down the line shaking hands with the family, and they’d all risen. “I saw everybody I know and everybody I used to know. It was old Mount Salus personified.” Dot looked up at Laurel out of her old movie-actress eyes. Kissing her hand to the others, she told them goodbye, cutting Miss Tennyson Bullock.
The members of the high school band were the first to break loose. They tore across the grass, all red and gold, back to their waiting jalopy. Wendell ran at their heels. In the road he found his truck. He climbed into the back of it and threw himself down on the floor and lay flat.
The rest of the company moved at a slower pace. “Somebody mind out for old Tom Farris!” called Miss Tennyson. Laurel, letting them go ahead, walked into the waiting arms of Missouri.
In the wake of their footsteps, the birds settled again. Down on the ground, they were starlings, all on the waddle, pushing with the yellow bills of spring.
4
IN THE PARLOR, the fire had mercifully died out. Missouri and Miss Tennyson got all the chairs back into place in the two rooms here and the dining room, and the crowd of bridesmaids had succeeded among them in winding the clock on the mantel and setting the hands to the time—only ten minutes past noon—and starting the pendulum.
Miss Tennyson Bullock, from the dining room, gave out the great groan she always gave when a dish had been made exactly right; it was her own chicken mousse. She invited them in.
Fay stared at the spread table, where Miss Tennyson, Miss Adele, Tish, and some of the other bridesmaids were setting plates and platters around. Missouri, back in her apron but with cemetery clay sticking to her heels, was bringing in the coffee urn.
Missouri looked at her own reflection in the shield of its side and lifted her smiling face to Laurel.
“Now!” she said softly. “The house looking like it used to look! Like it used to look!”
“So you see? Here’s the Virginia ham!” said the minister’s wife to Laurel, as if everything had turned out all right: she offered her a little red rag of it on a Ritz cracker. Then she scampered away to her husband.
As soon as she was out of the house, Major Bullock carried in the silver tray heavy with some bottles and a pitcher and a circle of silver cups and tall glasses.
“Wanda Fay, you got enough stuff in sight to last one lone woman forever,” said Bubba Chisom, both his hands around a ham sandwich.
“I think things have gone off real well,” said Fay.
“Poor little girl!” Major Bullock said. As he offered her one of the silver cups with whiskey and water in it—she let him go on holding it—he said again, “Poor little girl. I reckon you know you get the house and everything in it you want. And Laurel having her own good place in Chicago, she’ll be compensated as equally as we know how—”
“Oh, foot,” said old Mrs. Pease.
“I sure do know whose house this is,” said Fay. “But maybe it’s something a few other people are going to have to learn.”
Major Bullock lifted the cup he’d offered to her and drank it himself.
“Well, you’ve done fine so far, Wanda Fay,” said old Mrs. Chisom. “I was proud of you today. And proud for you. That coffin made me wish I could have taken it right away from him and given it to Roscoe.”
“Thank you,” said Fay. “It was no bargain, and I think that showed.”
“Still, I did the best I could. And I feel like Roscoe sits up there knowing it now,” said Mrs. Chisom. “And what more could you ask.”
“You drew a large crowd, too,” said Sis. “Without even having to count those Negroes.”
“I was satisfied with it,” said Fay.
“For the first minute, you didn’t act all that glad to see us,” said Sis. “Or was I dreaming?”
“Now, be sisters,” warned old Mrs. Chisom. “And I’m glad you broke down when you did, Wanda Fay,” she went on, wagging her finger. “There’s a time and a place for everything. You try begging for sympathy later on, when folks has gone back about their business, and they don’t appreciate your tears then. It just tries their nerves.”
“Wanda Fay, I’m sorry I can’t fool around here no longer,” said Bubba Chisom, handing her his empty plate. “A wrecking concern hasn’t got all that time to spare, not with all we got to do in Madrid.”
“Come on, then,” said Sis, who had pushed herself to her feet again. “Let’s get going before the children commence to fighting and Wendell starts giving trouble again. Wendell Chisom,” she said to the little boy, “you can take this home to your mother: this is the first and last time you’re ever going to be carried to a funeral in any charge of me.” She took Laurel’s hand and shook it. “We thought a heap of your old dad, even if he couldn’t stay on earth long enough for us to get to know him. Whatever he was, we always knew he was just plain folks.”
Through the open front door could be seen the old grandfather already outside with his hat on, walking around looking at the trees. The pecan tree there was filled with budding leaves like green bees spaced out in a hive of light. There was something bright as well in the old man’s hatband—the other half of his round-trip ticket from Bigbee.
“Wanda Fay,” said Mrs. Chisom, “let me ask you this: who’re you ever going to get to put in this house besides you?”
“What are you hinting at?” said Fay with a dark look.
“Tell you one thing, there’s room for the whole nation of us here,” Mrs. Chisom said, and stepping back into the hall she looked up the white-railed stairway. “In case we ever took a notion to move back to Mississippi.” She went outside and they heard her stepping along the front porch. “It’d make a good boarding house, if you could get your mother to come cook for ’em.”
“Great Day in the Morning!” exclaimed Miss Tennyson Bullock.
“Mama,” said Fay, “you know what? I’ve got a good mind this minute to jump in with you. And ride home with my folks to Texas.” Her chin was trembling as she named it. “Hear?”
“For how long do you mean to stay?” asked Mrs. Chisom, coming to face her.
“Just long enough.”
“You going to rush into a trip right now?” Major Bullock asked, going to her other side.
“Major Bullock,” she said, “I think when a person can see a free ride one way, the decision is made for them. And it just so happens I haven’t unpacked my suitcase.”
“I haven’t heard your excuse for going yet,” said Sis. “Have you got one?”
“I’d just like to see somebody that can talk my language, that’s my excuse. Where’s DeWitt?” Fay demanded. “You didn’t bring him.”
“DeWitt? He’s still in Madrid. He’s been in a sull ever since you married Judge McKelva and didn’t send him a special engraved invitation to the wedding,” said Bubba.
Fay gave them a tight smile.
Mrs. Chisom said, “I said, ‘DeWitt, now! You’re a brother just the same as Bubba is—and Roscoe was—and it’s your place to get up out of that sull and come on with us to the funeral. You can take the wheel in Lake Charles.’ But DeWitt is DeWitt, he expects his feelings to be considered.”
“He speaks my language,” said Fay. “I’ve got a heap to tell DeWitt.”
“You may have to stand out in front of his house and holler it, if you do,” said Bubba. “He’s got folks’ appliances stacked over ever’ blooming inch of space. You can’t hardly get in across those vacuum cleaners and power motors and bathroom heaters and old window fans, and not a one of ’em running. Hasn’t fixed a one. He can’t hardly get out of the house and you can’t get in.”
“I’ll scare him out of that sull,” said Fay.
“I think that’s just what he’s waiting for, myself,” said Sis. “I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, if it was me.”
Fay cried, “I don’t even mind standing up in the back and riding with the children!” She whirled and ran upstairs.
“You’ll wind up riding on my lap,” said her mother. “I know you.” She put her hand out and stopped a tray going by. “I wouldn’t mind taking some of that ham along, though,” she told Tish. “If it’s just going begging.”
Laurel followed Fay upstairs and stood in the bedroom door while Fay stuffed her toilet things into the already crammed suitcase.
“Fay, I wanted you to know what day I’ll be leaving,” she said. “So there’ll be no danger of us running into each other.”
“That suits me dandy.”
“I’m giving myself three days. And I’ll leave Monday on the three o’clock flight from Jackson. I’ll be out of the house around noon.”
“All right, then.” Fay slammed her suitcase shut. “You just try and be as good as your word.—I’m coming, Mama! Don’t you-all go off and leave me!” she yelled over Laurel’s head.
“Fay, I wanted to ask you something, too,” Laurel said. “What made you tell me what you did about your family? The time we talked, in the Hibiscus.”
“What did I say?” Fay challenged her.
“You said you had nobody—no family. You lied about your family.”
“If I did, that’s what everybody else does,” said Fay. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“Not lie that they’re dead.”
“It’s better than some lies I’ve heard around here!” cried Fay. She struggled to lift her suitcase, and Laurel, as if she’d just seen her in the deepest trouble, moved instinctively to help her. But Fay pushed on past her, dragging it, and hobbled in front of her, bumping her load a step ahead of her down the stairs. She had changed into her green shoes.
“I believe a few days with your own family would do you good,” Miss Tennyson Bullock said. In the dining room, all of them
were waiting on their feet. “Eating a lot of fresh vegetables, and so forth.”
“Well, at least my family’s not hypocrites,” said Fay. “If they didn’t want me, they’d tell me to my face.”
“When you coming back?” asked Major Bullock, swaying a little.
“When I get ready.”
The clock struck for half-past twelve.
“Oh, how I hate that old striking clock!” cried Fay. “It’s the first thing I’m going to get rid of.”
They were taking old Mr. Chisom as far as the bus station, to be sure he found it.
“You got a lot of fat squirrels going to waste here,” the old man said, bending down to Laurel, and she was unprepared for it when he kissed her goodbye.
At last they were in the truck, rolling down the driveway to the street.
“Poor little woman. Got a bigger load than she knows yet how to carry by herself,” said Major Bullock, waving.
Wendell was the only Chisom visible now, standing at the very back of the truck. He pulled one of his guns out of the holster and rode off shooting it at them. No noise came but his own thin, wistful voice.
“Pow! Pow! Pow!”
The few who were left walked back into the house. The silver tray on the hall table held a heap of calling cards, as though someone had tried to build a little house with them. Beside it lay a candy box with the picture of a pretty girl on the dusty lid.
“Old Mr. Chisom gave me all those pecans he brought,” said Laurel, sighing. “I don’t know why. Then he kissed me when he left.”
“I believe he thought you must be Fay,” said Miss Adele gently.
“I’m making myself a little toddy,” said Miss Tennyson, adding sugar to something in a glass. “Do you know, Laurel, who was coming to my mind the whole blessed way through? Becky!”
“Of course,” said Miss Adele.
“And all I did was thank my stars she wasn’t here. Child, I’m glad your mother didn’t have to live through that. I’m glad it was you.”
“Foot! I’m mad at you for not getting the house,” old Mrs. Pease told Laurel. “After all, I’m the one that’s got to go on living next door.” She went home.