The Good Neighbor

by William Kowalski

  Yet someone had known, for they had been here, and left arti facts. In the glare of her little flashlight Francie saw an old green- glass bottle, lying on its side. Near it, propped against the wall as though taking a break, were three creepy little figures, which Fran cie recognized as old-fashioned rag dolls, their cloth faces blank as thumbnails. Someone had wrought these with great skill out of sewing scraps, for despite their facelessness they were easily rec ognizable as a man, woman, and child—a little rag family, each in their own suit of clothes. Picking up the child doll, Francie gasped as she stuck her finger on a wooden splinter in the floor. A globe of blood swelled like dew on her fingertip. She licked it off, the sour taste of copper mingling with a bit of grit. Grimacing, she hawked and spat. Her saliva pooled in the thick dust; here was one place where the tender ministrations of Flebberman had not reached. No one had ever cleaned in here.

  Which meant it was really secret.

  Francie tucked the child doll into the sleeve of her sweatshirt, deciding to leave the other two where they sat. She didn’t want

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  Colt to know anything about this. He didn’t deserve it. It was her world, she thought; he would only do something to ruin it. Then, casting her light around, she noticed the bottle again. Wiping its face clean, she read the yellowed label:

  McNally’s SPECIAL ORIENTAL TONIC

  Cure-all for MIND, BODY and SOUL! Guaranteed to Fix What Ails You! Made From A SECRET Ressapie

  OF ONE HUNDRED HERBS of the ORIENT!

  THIS ELIKSIR OF HEALTH has been Used From Time Out of Mind in the East by

  Sages, Wise Men, Kings and Queens!

  As Well As Princes and Conquering Heroes!

  It Is Unknown in Europe!

  ONLY IN AMERICA!

  All Ailments Healed!

  Youth Restored!

  MANLY VIM AND VIGOR Will Return to You Upon Taking Only

  ONE draught of this SPECIAL RARE Potion! PRICE ONLY $1.00

  Excellent Also for Sleepless Children, Toothache, Fever, Stummickache and

  The Pains of Childbearing Womon!

  What kind of snake oil was this? Francie wondered. A dried cork still plugged the bottle’s mouth, but crumbled to dust when she removed it. Inside she could make out the encrusted remnants of whatever dubious substance it had once held, long thickened into solid sludge. She sniffed it carefully, and some faint, medici nal odor drifted into her nostrils. She set the bottle down again and wiped a hand on her sweatshirt.

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  Conscious now that she had stumbled onto some kind of trea sure trove, Francie felt a delighted tightening in her bowels. She was, she knew, in the very heart of the house. Some child had played in here once—probably a girl, judging from the dolls. This was confirmed when she next discovered a brooch, missing half its paste diamonds, and a hairpin with a butterfly on it. These were the kinds of things only a girl would appreciate. Picking up the lat ter, she realized that the butterfly was woven from human hair. Its wings were looped around and around, like tiny strands of rope, and they were twisted expertly together in the middle to form the delicate body. She overcame her momentary revulsion to wonder at the patience that had been required to make such a tiny thing. Whose hair was it? she wondered. Carefully she blew the dust from it, and saw that the hair was a beautiful gold—time had dimmed it only a little.

  And then she saw the book.

  She’d nearly missed it, for it was covered in such a thick layer of dust that it blended in perfectly with the floor. It was a big book, a thick book. Another thrill ran through her. Running her finger along its spine, she felt the dried leather of the binding, and a shiver ran like a current down her own spine. She lifted it, mar veling at its weight. This was no cheap paperback. It was a real book, made the way books used to be. Judging by its heaviness, Francie knew that the pages were made of materials other than just paper; perhaps linen, too. She had learned something about bookmaking while she was in college—not much, but enough to realize that this was the kind of book they didn’t make anymore. Neither the spine nor the cover bore any sort of inscription.

  Opening it to the first page, she read:

  Sunday May 1851

  This week we have buried our firstborn son Charles William Mus- grove, aged one month and two days. He rests now in our back plot at Adencourt. God speed his soul to heaven.

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  Francie froze, disbelieving. Could this book really be that old? Could it have been sitting down here this long? Obviously it was a diary; the Musgroves had lived here for even longer than she could have guessed, then. The handwriting was blocky and awk ward, as if done by someone unaccustomed to holding a pen.

  Francie paged through several more entries. All were short, no more than two or three lines, and all were made on Sundays. Whoever it was, it had been a woman; that was obvious. The en tries had to do with nothing more earthshaking than the thou sand mundane chores of running a household one hundred fifty years ago: sewing, baking, churning butter, washing, gardening, harvesting, ironing, et cetera. But they were fascinating; time had rendered their banality profound. Some entries contained notes on family members:

  4th Sunday January 1853

  A boy, Hamish, born to us this week. Lay abed, wrought lacework.

  And then:

  3rd Sunday December 1853

  Hamish stood. Baked bread, made butter. Captain poorly in the chest. Am with child.

  Am with child? Francie thought. Gave birth, made lace? Baked bread, made butter, am with child—less than a year after having a baby? Clearly, this woman’s husband didn’t have any issues with raising a family. Her pregnancies merited no more mention than her other chores. And who was this Captain, and why was his chest poorly?

  “You have got to be kidding,” Francie whispered again.

  She closed the diary and hugged it, thinking. Something like this came along once in a lifetime, if ever. Perhaps it belonged in a museum—it was certainly old enough. The daily life of a woman

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  who lived a century and a half ago. She’d never found anything as exciting as this before. She’d never found anything exciting be fore, period. Things like this did not happen to boring people like her.

  She opened the diary again to the first page and reread the first entry. No statement of ownership, no “This Book Belongs To:” on the flyleaf, no acknowledgment whatsoever that this thing was in any way important. And yet, to the author, it must have been priceless. A book like this would have been expensive. It would have been jealously hidden away from the grubby hands of chil dren—and the prying eyes of a husband, perhaps.

  And how sad that it should begin with the death of a child. A tiny newborn infant, only a month old. Their first. Perhaps it was that event which motivated the writer to begin recording the rest of her days—the realization that everything is temporary, and likely to be forgotten if not carefully noted. Even something like the loss of a baby—would that fade with time, or would it remain fresh forever, a wound that refused to scab over?

  The “back plot.” Francie pondered that. In those times, she knew, it was not unusual for people to bury their dead on their own property. Was that what she was referring to? Was this lost infant still here, somewhere in the vast tract of the yard? And who else might be with him, one hundred fifty years later?

  “Adencourt,” she whispered. “This house is called Adencourt.” The word escaped her lips and hovered in front of her, like a bee; and all around her she felt the walls swell outward and then relax, like dusty lungs drawing a breath.

  “Yes,” Francie said. “Wake up, house.”

  ❚ ❚ ❚

  “Michael,” Francie whispered into her brother ’s ear.

  The diary was tucked inside her sweatshirt, cold against her ab domen. She had carried away the other treasures, too, the bottle

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  and the rag doll and the hairpin, and stuck them in her suitcase. It was the one place she was sure Colt wouldn’t look, since she knew he would never bother to help her unpack. “Mikey!”

  Michael stirred, whimpering. Francie joggled his shoulder. “Get up, sweetie,” she said. “We’ve got some exploring to do.”

  Michael rolled over and pulled the sleeping bag over his face. Francie pulled it down again and blew in his ear. He jolted awake, alarmed. Then he sat up and looked around.

  “I was dreaming,” he said peevishly. “What’d you wake me up for?”

  “There’s something I want to find,” Francie said. “Come on, get dressed.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Who cares?” She yanked the sleeping bag off of him. Michael covered his crotch with his hands and rolled over again, pulling it back over him.

  “Sissie, Jesus,” he said, “I’ve still got my morning woody!” “Well, get rid of it,” Francie said, unperturbed. “There’s no time

  for your little fantasies. I’ll make some coffee.” Michael groaned.

  “Yolanda,” he muttered.

  Rolling her eyes, Francie went into the kitchen and started a pot brewing. The sun was almost fully up now, revealing a world of white outside the kitchen window. Snow had fallen all night. She could see the apple orchard, or what remained of it—the dwarfed and shriveled trees clothed now in robes of purity, like newly ordained clergymen, and the little pond frozen over. Even the old barn had become dignified in death, the snow drawn over it like a sheet.

  She poured steaming coffee into two mugs and brought one to Michael, urging him to drink. He burned his mouth, as she’d known he would; then she had to wait and listen as he described every single detail of his dreams, which had been utterly com monplace. Finally she bullied him into his clothes and got into

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  hers, and they stepped out the back door and sank in snow nearly to their knees before their feet touched solid earth.

  “Wow,” said Michael. “This is crazy.” “It really snowed,” said Francie.

  She’d forgotten what snow could be like. Marveling at its depth, its texture, she forged a path beyond the barn and the or chard, out toward the far reaches of the property. Michael huffed along behind her, stepping in her footprints. All he had brought to wear were sneakers; he was not equipped to go hiking through the Arctic. The snow was getting in his socks, he complained. He was cold. He wanted to go in.

  “This is not the Arctic. This is hardly anything,” said Francie. “Yeah? How would you know?”

  “Because I’ve been to the Arctic.”

  “Yeah? Really?” She could hear the uncertainty in his voice.

  Her heart nearly broke at how easy it was to fool him.

  “Yes,” she said. “Colt and I went there on vacation last summer.

  To get away from the heat and the—”

  Francie stopped suddenly, remembering, and stuck her hand in her jacket, under her sweatshirt. It was gone. Not the diary, which she still carried against her skin; the hole in her middle.

  My God, she thought. Maybe I’m not crazy anymore. Maybe I never was to begin with! Maybe it was all in my head!

  At that, she had to laugh. The craziness was in her head! That was a good one. Funny on several levels. Of course it was in her head. Where else could it be—in her liver?

  “What is it?” Michael asked, stopping. “What’s so funny?” “Nothing,” she said. “Never mind.”

  There was no point in explaining any of this to him. Michael needed to know that his Sissie was in one piece and able to take care of herself, and of him. The poor dear was feeling a little frag ile just now, what with all the nasty drug dealers and sneaky Col orado policemen after him.

  “I’m just trying to think,” she said.

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  She turned to look back at the house, but there were no clues there, no signs, not that she had expected any. She turned and faced northward again, toward the tree line. Nothing broke the surface of the snow. To the west there was a low, creeping jungle of undergrowth, all of it dead brown in this season except for the evergreens, weighed down under inches of snowfall. Perhaps the cemetery had been there, and was overgrown. She forged ahead in a new direction now, angling toward this little wilderness.

  “What are we looking for, anyway?” Michael gasped. “Big foot?”

  “Tombstones,” Francie said.

  Her brother stopped short. “What?”

  “There’s a little cemetery back here somewhere. I’m sure of it.

  It can’t be that hard to find.”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Michael. “You mean there’s actual dead bodies hiding back here? That’s creepy.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s beautiful. It’s touching. And they’re not hid ing. They’re just . . . lost.”

  “Who’s buried in it?”

  “A child,” said Francie. “A little boy named Charles.”

  ❚ ❚ ❚

  They found it ten minutes later. The same plant life that had hid den the cemetery from view in autumn had shielded the stones from the bulk of last night’s storm; the effect now was that of be ing inside a small chapel, with walls of interwoven branches. A roof of snow filtered the light and gave it an aqua coloring, as though they were underwater. There was even a sort of natural doorway, through which one could walk nearly upright.

  Francie entered first, and then Michael. It was, she thought, like being in a holy igloo. They waited without speaking, listening to the light wind scour the surface of the snow outside.

  “Wow,” Michael whispered.

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  At their feet, dusted lightly as though with sugar, were seven stone markers of varying sizes—two large, the rest smaller. Fran cie dropped to her knees and read the inscriptions. Most had suf fered greatly from the weathering decades, their letters drying up and dropping off one by one, the survivors clinging like desiccated insect shells to the fragile stone. Francie read:

  And:

  And:

  C T. VIC GROVE 18 –

  H MUS BR TH

  18 –1

  L M GR

  [Illegible] 18 –1925

  There was one that was completely illegible, its face worn smooth as paper. And finally:

  MARLY BELOVED MOTHER

  1835–1888

  The letters of this last one had survived better than the others, for no more reason than that the stone had been partially shel tered by a fat old tree stump—which, in those days, would still have been a tree. If she were to count the rings on it, Francie knew, she would find more than a hundred, perhaps almost two. She sat on the stump, overcome.

  “This is her,” Francie said. “Marly’s the one. It has to be.”

  “The one what?” said Michael. “Sissie, have you got some kind

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  of Shining thing going on here? Because you’re kinda creeping me out.”

  “The one who wrote the diary. Marly Musgrove. She wrote about the funeral of her child. Her first son.” Francie turned and looked toward the house again. Here they were obscured from its numerous window-eyes, but back then, this cemetery would have been obvious, out in the open, looked after. It would have been trimmed and maintained. It would have had a little fence around it, maybe. They would have come a few times a year to put flow ers on the graves. People kept their dead close in those days.

  “What diary?” Michael asked, but she could tell he didn’t really care, and so she didn’t answer him.

  Of the smaller stones, only three bore names, none of them leg ible. The other two each said BABY, but did not indicate a name or even a gender, and only one of them a year: 1855. Five children, thought Francie. Out of how many? Maybe twice that number. Maybe even more. Those were the days when women had chil dren in the double digits. Yet five children seemed a horrible toll, even before medicines and v
accines. If every family had suffered such a loss, there would scarcely be any people left on the earth at all.

  “Mikey,” Francie said, “we’ve made an important discovery.” “Okay, that’s great,” said Michael. “Can we go back in now,

  please? I’m freezing my ass off.”

  “In a few minutes,” said Francie. “I want to be here for a little while.”

  “You go right ahead. I’m going in. See ya.” “Michael?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t tell anyone about this.” “Sure, Sissie,” said Michael. “Whatever you say.” “I’m serious. Especially Colt.”

  “Why especially Colt?”

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  “Because . . . he won’t appreciate it.” He’ll want to ruin it some how, she thought, and it’s perfect just the way it is.

  “Okay,” said Michael. “Whatever. See ya.”

  He exited the little enclave, leaving Francie alone in the church- like silence. She knelt, took a mitten off, ran her fingers over the cold letters of Marly’s flaking white stone. Then she leaned for ward and touched her tongue to it, gently, just to feel. She was surprised at how alive the stone seemed, even though it was frozen, and she pulled back quickly, before she could stick to it— guilty and pleased at her own weirdness.