by Annie Jones
Sadie didn’t know whether to celebrate or panic.
“Let’s just hope she can do a better job keeping a handle on the old man than either of us did,” April added.
Panic, Sadie decided on the spot. Definitely panic.
Chapter Ten
“Sadie, you know how I hate graveyards.” Moonie picked his way along behind her. Now and again he’d prod the path with the cane he had used ever since his car accident. The doctor hadn’t found any specific injury beyond some bruises, but the old fellow claimed the whole thing left him “a bit shaky,” and so they’d gotten him the antique walking stick to help steady his way.
Sadie suspected her daddy just liked using the polished wooden staff with the brass dog’s-head handle because of the instant attention it garnered him. Always, wherever he went, people peppered him with questions. Was he all right? What had happened? What could they do for him?
Funny, Sadie thought, in all these months she had felt emotionally and spiritually “a bit shaky,” none of those folks had rallied around her. The only questions she had been asked were: Why don’t you snap out of it? Can you do this for me? When’s dinner?
Not that she blamed anyone. Without any outward manifestation like Moonie’s cane, everyone probably assumed she was just fine. And that’s exactly what she would have told everyone if they had asked if they could do anything for her, that she was fine. Maybe in this instance she should act a bit more like her daddy, and not be afraid to solicit a little support.
One eye squinting, Moonie poked his cane into a patch of thick grass and took another step.
“What’s the matter? You afraid the Lord wants to get a hold of your charming self so badly that if you make one false move, the very ground might open up and swallow you alive?”
“’Course not.” He didn’t sound convinced. “What possessed you to take a job in a place like this anyway?”
I must’ve taken total leave of my senses. Sadie stifled her first impulsive response and took a moment to riffle back through the set of ill-conceived choices and out-of-control consequences that had nudged her reluctantly to this spot. Which event, if any, would illustrate it all to a man who first and foremost embraced the concept of life-affirming, joy-seeking self-determination?
I wanted to make my family sorry they ignored me? Too pathetic, even to tell her own father.
Everybody told me I’d be great in the job and I didn’t want to let them down? There was a one-way ticket to live-for-your-own-self lectureville.
“Why? Why did I take this job?” She had to have a good reason.
Wrapped in a hug of her own tightly woven arms, she took a moment to survey the serene setting.
Pale headstones, their words all but worn away, broken and brackish with age, jutted upward, often at odd angles from the land along the original wrought-iron fence. The newer markers—gray, pink or black granite polished to a mirror finish—filled row after row in the neatly kept rectangles framed by gravel lanes. Sweet yet somber figures of angels or lambs, usually denoting the death of a child, dotted the landscape. And crosses. In Barrett and Bartlett Memorial Gardens, every third grave site claimed a cross for its monument.
As much as the shops and offices of the downtown to their east, as much as the homes and churches and schools fanned out over blocks in every direction from them, this tiny preserve of land told the story of Wileyville and its people. Sadie tipped her head to one side and exhaled, long and slow. In a small way, it told the story of all of God’s children.
Everyone born to this earth came to the same end. Whether we live by grace or by greed, with exuberance or apathy, whether we treat others with respect or revile them, we all hurtle toward this same conclusion, Sadie reflected. It’s all too brief, and in time all we achieved and owned will become someone else’s treasure, someone else’s burden.
Knowing that it would not all end here, Sadie found solace in the awareness that one day all earthly troubles would fall away.
From where they now stood, along the far western edge, where the presold plots butted up against the dwindling land set aside for what was once called the Paupers’ Field, Sadie could hear the laughter of children on the swings.
A young mother clapped her hands and urged, “Hold on. Go higher. Don’t give up. You can do it.”
And, though Sadie could not always make herself trust it, this testament to the possibilities life held served as a reminder that no matter what might weigh her down, she had help and she had hope. Even in the midst of her confusion and turmoil, she had hope.
You can do it. Don’t give up. Sadie lifted her face into the warm summer sun and closed her eyes. She breathed deep and caught the scent of the roses that grew in leggy, tangled masses along the cinderblock foundation at the back of her office.
She hadn’t expected it, but working in the narrow space between a children’s playground and the dearly departed had brought her a peace that she hadn’t known for quite a while. A sense of being woven into the pattern of God’s big tapestry instead of a loose thread clinging to the fringe.
She liked it here.
How could she explain that to a man who hated the very notion of this place? And why should she have to? Wasn’t she, after all, Moonie Shelnutt’s daughter? Hadn’t he lived his life providing her with the exact example she needed for a moment such as this?
“I work here, Daddy, because I want to.” She motioned to the spot she’d set out to examine and, taking her father by one arm, started to walk toward it. “If you personally dislike spending time in the cemetery, well, maybe you should have thought of that before you ran off to the daughter who works in one.”
He matched her pace with only a trace of the hobble that had slowed him down earlier. “Well, at least you got that right.”
“What?” She stopped in the section of land set aside for the burial of the town’s indigent citizens.
“I aimed to run to something, not away from anything.” He cast his gaze downward. His muted gray hat hid his expression, but the shake of his head revealed his melancholy. “Your sisters don’t seem to grasp the differentiation.”
“That’s because the way you did it hurt their feelings.”
His head went still. His body tensed and the knuckles gripping the cane went white.
“Nobody, least of all a Shelnutt, feels up to first-rate differentiation when they are sitting on top of a big old mound of wounded feelings.” Sadie looped her arm around his slumped shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “They’ll get over it.”
“Didn’t intend to hurt anybody, Sadie-girl.” His bushy eyebrows hunkered down over his fiery eyes. Gruffness, not remorse, gave energy to his words. “You know that, right?”
“I know what I see, Daddy.” She dropped her arm to her side and turned to begin searching for what she came after.
“What do you see? Because I sure can’t find anything wrong in what I did.”
Sadie tensed, her gaze still on the grounds around them. She had wondered if she should be more Moonie-like. Well, here was her chance. Her daddy would not hold back, and at a time like this, maybe she shouldn’t, either.
“What I saw, Daddy, in April and in Hannah, was…was…a feeling that they had somehow failed you. That nothing they did was good enough.” Was she talking about her sisters or herself? Sadie gripped her hands together and fixed the focus back where it belonged, on her father’s actions. “What I saw makes me wonder if you ever seriously think about your exploits before you start off on one. Do you ever take a good long, sobering look at your family and ask yourself if the momentary gratification of whatever stunt you plan to pull is worth the consequences those who love you have to suffer?”
“Suffer?” The color drained from his face. “Oh, Sadie, I never…all my days I tried to create just the opposite effect. I’d give my life—I have given it—to keep you girls from ever having to really, truly suffer.”
Sadie felt like a perfect heel. “I’m sorry. I had no call to talk to you
like that.”
“If that’s what you believe, you had every call—”
“I don’t believe it, not the suffering part. ‘Suffer’ is not a word I should have used. ‘Insufferable,’ maybe, but not ‘suffer.’”
“Really?” He peered up at her from under the rim of his trusty old hat. “You mean that?”
“I sure do—especially that part about you being insufferable.”
He chuckled weakly.
Sadie laid her hand on his arm, and for the first time she could ever recall, she did not feel warmth and strength radiating from her daddy. It startled her, but she didn’t dare let on. So she swallowed hard, to chase away any sound of fear or anxiety, and whispered, “You’d never cause any of your girls to suffer. You couldn’t.”
He rested his hand on hers so lightly that she had to look to make sure he actually did it. “I hope you always feel that way, Sadie.”
They stood there for only a moment before the old fire lit his face and he blustered, “So now that you’ve dragged me into the middle of the last place on earth I ever planned to go, and I mean that literally, what are we looking for?”
“A grave.”
“There’s one now.” He pointed with his cane at the nearest tombstone. “And another.” He indicated the next stone over. “And another and another. Can’t swing a cat without hitting a grave out here, girl.” He waggled his cane left and right, then leaned it against his supposedly injured leg and smugly slapped his hands together. “There. Seems our work is done. Let’s get out of this place.”
“Very funny. But I’m not looking for just any grave. I’m looking for a fresh one.”
“Fresh grave? Anyone tell you that this job has turned you positively ghoulish, girl?”
“I’m not looking to exhume a body, Daddy, though I have a sneaky inclination we just might dig up a little dirt.”
“Now you got my interest.”
“Yeah, mine, too.” She rubbed her temple. “Going back through the records yesterday, I found some paperwork on Melvin Green.”
“Wait. I know that name. The last holdout living in the Paddock Hotel, right?”
“Uh-huh. He had a contract, and they couldn’t tear the place down until he moved out.”
“Or moved on.” Moonie pointed skyward with his cane, his face a mix of reverence and humor. “To that great men’s dormitory hotel in the sky.”
“Which he did four-and-a-half months ago.”
“Nothing suspicious in that, I hope?”
“No, no. Not unless you find it suspicious that a crotchety old man who smoked for eight decades and lived on a diet of sardines and candy bars would die quietly in his sleep at the age of ninety-eight.”
“Sardines and candy bars?” He clucked his tongue. “The poor lonely old soul.”
“I know. When they scoured the place after he passed, looking for anything that might give the name of his next of kin, a will or at least some indication of his financial situation, that’s all they found. No bankbook. No legal documents.”
“If he had insurance, I sure didn’t sell it to him.”
“He didn’t have so much as an address book or a birthday or Christmas card tucked in a drawer that might have provided a clue about his friends and family.”
“Then he died isolated and utterly alone.” Her father’s mouth set in a grim line, his shoulders drooped. He clutched his cane. “Ain’t right for a human being to end up that way, unnoticed and unloved. Surely he had someone, somewhere—”
“No one found any indication of it—just a cabinet full of cigarettes, candy wrappers and sardine tins. That’s why he ended up buried in the county lot for the destitute.”
Moonie jerked his chin up, his jaw tight. “So where’s this poor, forgotten man’s grave?”
“I don’t know. There should be a temporary marker out here, but I can’t find it.”
“Maybe the groundskeeper knocked it over and forgot to replace it, or maybe some ill-behaved kids came round to snatch it for a souvenir.”
Sadie sighed. “I guess. I just think there ought to be some evidence of a grave that’s less than six months old, that’s all.”
“Could someone have come up with the funds, you know, last-minute-like, and afforded the lonely old boy some swankier digs?” Solomon suggested.
“Oh, Daddy, digs?”
He chuckled. “If we can’t laugh a little at what scares the devil out of us, then we’re too scared to enjoy life.”
Scared? She never envisioned her father as scared of dying. Or maybe something else about Melvin’s passing had Daddy on edge. “You feel sorry for Mr. Green, don’t you, Daddy?”
“Ain’t right. A life shouldn’t end up that way.”
“Well, maybe he didn’t. Maybe you figured it out. Someone came forward and paid for a proper burial for the man, and the data didn’t get filed right. Anything’s possible, given the state the records are in.”
“Bad, huh?”
“A total wreck.”
He laughed. “I’d say that surprises me, but having worked with Wileyville officials most of my life, I’ve grown to expect the unexpected.”
“Little of the ol’ pot calling the kettle black again, there, huh, Daddy?”
“Difference is, folks voted them into power on the promise they’d act better than they did. Me, I never had no power and never promised anyone I’d be anything other than myself.” He winked. “Don’t worry yourself overmuch, Sadie-girl, you’ll sort it all out in no time.”
“Sort what out? You acting like yourself, or the mess the last administration left in my office?” Either way, she found his confidence in her quite touching.
He rasped out a soft chuckle. “Let’s go see if we can’t locate Melvin’s final resting place.”
“You don’t have to do this, you know, Daddy. Knowing how much you dislike cemeteries, it doesn’t seem right to ask you to traipse all over one looking for a stranger’s grave.”
“No, having heard the story, I feel I owe it to Melvin Green. And I want to help you, Sadie. When I’ve gone on, I don’t want you to have any added reasons to think of me as a man who put his own choices and reservations above the best interests of his daughters.”
“Daddy…why would you say such a thing?”
He searched her face but gave no answer.
The summer breeze lifted the hair off the back of her neck. She shivered. “Oh, Daddy, I’d never feel that way.”
“I hope not, sweetheart.” In a few shuffling steps he put his back to her, then whispered, “But what about your sisters?”
“I can’t speak for them. In fact, the way we left things, I can’t even speak to them. Or they to me.”
“Did you three quarrel?”
Quarrel? No, not out and out. But then they never did. Silence was their system and that’s how they had left things after Hannah had pointed out that Daddy had ended up with his favored daughter.
She patted his back and moved ahead of him, down along a row of newer markers. “Don’t worry about it.”
“But I do worry. You girls…I went through so much to keep you together….”
“It’s nothing you can do anything about, Daddy.” She dismissed the subject with a wave of her hand, her focus on the ground stretching to the far side of the site.
“More than once I’ve wondered…did I do the right thing? Should I have—” His voice broke. He coughed. “Sadie-girl, I’m afraid.”
“Daddy?” She whipped around.
He held his hand up to stop her coming to help him. “I’m afraid I’ve done something very wrong for all the right reasons. And now I have to ask myself if I should do something more, something I swore I’d never do, to make sure you girls always stay…to…to…”
He stared straight ahead. He reached out his hand to nothing, staggered, then stumbled. His knees crumpled and he went down.
“Daddy!” She rushed to his side just in time to catch him by the arm. “What’s wrong?”
; “I’m fine. Fine.” He put his cane between them.
“You’re not fine. Let me help you.” She tried to push aside the sturdy walking stick, but he resisted with astounding strength. Maybe Sadie was more like her father than she ever knew.
“I am fine, I tell you.” He blinked rapidly, then lowered his head. When he raised it again, anger flashed in his eyes. “Fine as I can be given you’ve hauled me into a graveyard, child. You know how I hate them.”
Right now Sadie didn’t know anything except that she wanted her daddy to act like his normal, ornery, insufferable self. So she set the example by making the kind of impatient, offhanded remark she would have made if she had just not witnessed what felt to her like the very end of her world. “Daddy, we already had this conversation.”
He looked around them as if he’d just now arrived on the scene, and said with a trembling, quiet voice, “I haven’t been in a cemetery since…well, a good long while.”
“Not in my lifetime.” She tried to sound light despite the suffocating apprehension rising from the pit of her stomach.
“Thirty-five years,” he said softly.
“Thirty-nine,” she corrected him. “Hannah is thirty-five, Daddy.”
“Hannah?” He blinked.
“It’s Sadie, Daddy. I’m Sadie.”
He gripped her hand. He nodded his head in a way that showed he understood, but his eyes remained unfocused and distant.
Sadie couldn’t think.
She couldn’t distinguish anything but Moonie’s gray face.
Her ears filled with his labored breathing.
Still, she must have had a well of great reserve within, as she found the power to lift her father to his feet and say in a calm, comforting tone, “I think maybe we’d better get to the hospital.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, I do. Can you walk?”
“I can walk.” He leaned on her and let his cane fall to the ground. “If you want me to walk, I can.”
“Okay, nice and slow then. Steady, steady.” They eked along, one uncertain step after another. “Just keep walking.”
“I can do anything for you,” he muttered again.
