Jeff Abbott - Promises of Home

We stood for the Gospel and were duly told that in our father’s house are many mansions. I didn’t pay much attention to the service, having gone through it by rote too many times. I felt guiltily glad Sister and the Shiverses had declined to have Communion at the service. Before I knew it, we were standing, ready to continue the service with the Committal at the grave sites. We stepped out into kind sunshine, a welcome break from the drizzly rains of the last several days.

Clevey’s burial came first. I hung back from the crowd, conscious of Davis and his family near me. I listened to the calming tones of Father Greene and tried not to think about the gap-toothed carrot-top I’d grown up with who would lie moldering in that casket. I started when the dirt hit the coffin. Slowly, people walked toward their cars, to head to the Quadlander farm. Louis Slocum, Trey’s father, was buried there and we’d arranged for Trey to be buried next to his father.

Louis Slocum had been interred near the creekside oaks where he’d gotten rip-roaring drunk so many nights. I sometimes wondered if he’d favored the quiet company of the leaves and the breeze and the trees more than of people, He had teen terribly neglectful of Trey, and I’d always thought him a low fellow because of it. Now Trey was coming home, and would share his father’s company forever. Death conducts every final reunion.

We stood again by a grave, the second ceremony seeming like an eerie echo of the first, as though Clevey’s burial had been a dress rehearsal and Trey’s was the true performance.

“Thou knowest, Lord,” Father Greene intoned for the second time that day, “the secrets of our hearts; shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer…” The secrets of our hearts. I glanced at Sister, with her terrible secret, her bruised face a badge of deception. Why wouldn’t she tell me the truth? Who could she be protecting? Candace’s hand closed around mine and I squeezed it.

The sun shone bright, the clouds having retreated to a bluish-gray smudge near the horizon, but the day was still chilly. I saw Mark shiver as Father Greene cast earth upon his father’s coffin. Mark did not look at his mother or at me. He stared down into his father’s grave like it was some distant mirror. Candace leaned against me and I wrapped my arm around her, feeling her comforting warmth.

This was the legitimate goodbye, I thought. The goodbye to Trey was never said before because he walked away from us. Was he watching us now, a slight smile on his face that his wife and his son were-

“Bitch,” a voice softly said, barely breaking the drone of Father Greene’s somnolent voice. I had almost thought I’d imagined it until the word repeated, harder, more forcefully. “You bitch, you killed him!”

At one corner of the grave Nola Kinnard stood, her hands clenched into fists, her upswept, overmoussed brown hair not moving in the breeze. Tears mottled her angry face. She was too close to the edge of the grave and a rain of pebbles and muddy clods rained down on the casket.

“Nola, for God’s sake!” Hart seized her arm and pulled her back from the open ground.

She wrenched free from him. “I can’t stand here while the bitch that murdered him stands there and watches him put in the ground! Look at her! Look at her face!”

Scott seized his mother’s arm and tried to hush her. “Mom, please, don’t! Don’t!”

“We all know you did it! You hit him! You told him to stay away from your precious brat! And when he didn’t want to, when he wanted to see his boy, you killed him! You killed him!” She broke into heaving sobs, cradling Scott’s head in her arm as he struggled against her.

Hart shot me a look of distress and tried to steer Nola and Scott away from the grave. She jerked away from him, releasing Scott, and launched herself at Ed Dickensheets, burying her face against his shoulder. Embarrassed, he held her awkwardly, trying to stroke her hairsprayed helmet of hair in comfort. Wanda gaped at Nola, not knowing what to do under these funereal circumstances. Ivalou was more inventive, yanking on Nola’s arm, calling her a mean-faced little hussy in a sharp whisper.

I turned to my sister. She stood statue still. I couldn’t see her eyes behind the midnight dark of her sunglasses. Mark pressed against her side, watching the spectacle of Nola with horror. Candace embraced Sister from behind, murmuring comfort.

I tried to speak, but I couldn’t. Those dark lenses were boring through me. What was I supposed to say? This morning I’d made the same suggestion, although not quite so aggressively as Nola.

Nola, perhaps realizing the focus of attention had shifted from her, broke away from the red-faced Ed, shoved her way past an outraged Ivalou, and stormed toward Sister. I interceded, hearing a dismayed Father Greene begging Nola to calm down, moving in front of her as she stepped over the corner of Trey’s grave.

“Listen here, you just stop this right now,” I demanded, and she slapped me once, smartly, across the face. I seized her hand and she slapped me with her other. I seized it as well, my cheeks red as Christmas cherries, and I shook Nola in fury.

“Stop it! Shut up!” I screamed in her face, and she wrenched away from me, trying to kick me in the shins. She would have toppled into the grave if I hadn’t had hold of her. Suddenly Davis was on one side of me, Hart on the other, pulling Nola away. She flayed me with a look of pure poison as I released her and Hart hurried her toward the house. She stumbled once but did not look back at us. Steven Teague followed at a respectful distance, probably ready to provide vast amounts of psychotherapy.

Shock silenced the crowd. Except for a sudden, screaming keen as Bradley Foradory sank to the ground.

“That,” Candace offered as I poured her a cup of coffee, “was a hell of a service.” She maneuvered me gently against the kitchen counter and planted a kiss on my cheek. “I don’t believe you’ve sustained any permanent damage. Of course a more thorough investigation will be called for later.”

I smiled at her teasing, her sweet way of coaxing me back toward everyday life. I needed days empty of tragedy and sorrow. I needed days with Candace, time with her, time with my family. I returned her kiss, tasting the spot between her eyes. “I’ll look forward to that, sweetheart.” I fetched a second cup down from the cabinet and filled it with fresh coffee. “Let me take this to Sister, see how she’s feeling.”

The living room was finally empty. The mourners had returned to both our house and the Shivers place for the traditional postfuneral gathering, to eat and drink and converse in hushed tones. Our house was undoubtedly the greater social attraction; no one had called Truda a murderer during the funeral. I’d forced myself to maintain a placid air as people crowded and jostled each other on our porches, in our living room.

Cayla and Davis Foradory had phoned their regrets in. “We just can’t make it, Jordy,” Cayla said in a forced tone. “Poor Bradley was just so upset by the funeral, it’s best he stay home. You do understand, don’t you?”

“Of course, Cayla. May I speak to Davis for a moment?”

She coughed. “Well, Davis is getting Bradley settled. How about I have him call you when things calm down?”

“Sure, Cayla.”

“Please give my best to Arlene and Mark. And Truda.”

“Of course.” I hung up the phone slowly, feeling the tinge of unease I always felt after talking to Cayla. Bradley Foradory might be retarded, but he was hardly high-strung. Generally he was a happy fellow, smiling and likable. Yet the funeral had thumped some horribly raw nerve to set him screaming and crying like that. What was wrong with Bradley?

Although Bradley’s outburst generated a certain amount of talk, it couldn’t hold a candle to Nola’s dramatics. I’d caught Ivalou Purcell murmuring to her daughter, “Well, Arlene showed more restraint with that Nola than she did with Trey. She didn’t hit her.” I’d forced myself not to stop and chew the old bitch out. There had been enough unpleasant scenes today.