by Jim Grimsley
She had a fondness for the peace of early hours, begun in her first marriage when early morning had been her refuge. As long as she rose out of bed in time to wander in the silent house before children or husband awakened, she gained precious minutes of privacy. This was a time she could trust, whatever had happened the day before. The habit of solitary mornings carried itself forward from the storms of her first marriage to the relative peace of her second; she habitually rose close to dawn to make coffee, sit in her kitchen, and sip from the warm cup, in company with herself.
To her surprise, then, this morning she found her kitchen already smelling of coffee. Buttoning her housecoat, she reached for a clean cup from the cabinet. Tasting. She carried the cup to the outer room, where she bund Ford standing at the windows beside the Christmas tree. Hearing her, he turned, smiling. "Good morning," he said. "I got up early and helped myself. I hope you don't mind."
"No, I don't mind." Ellen seated herself in her own recliner. "I think I'll leave the heat alone a few minutes. Ray has that blanket turned up like a toaster."
Ford said, "I'm not cold." As an afterthought, adding, "Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas."
He sat on the couch. Not a stranger anymore. She examined him as he wrapped his robe more closely around his knees, his dark hair in need of a comb, the strong bones of his face shaded by morning beard. They peacefully sat together watching the Christmas tree, colors dulled in the pale of morning. She sipped her coffee slowly, counting the layers of light in the sky, opening as the sun rose, clouds appearing beyond the windows. "I feel like I ought to know you, Ford, we talk so much on the phone. But I guess now that you're here I'm shy."
"I know it was hard for you when Danny asked you if I could come."
"Danny was right unpleasant about it. He was so sure I was going to say no." Another moment of silence. "How is his health?"
"He's fine." Ford looked her in the eye. "His cell counts are fine."
"That means he's not any worse than before."
"It means his immune system is still functioning really well and that he's not likely to get sick any time soon." He answered calmly. But there was, in his face, so much of heartache, she could not meet his eye without feeling the same wrenching within herself. Rising, she reached for his empty cup. She found when she was near him that she had grown fond of him, and she touched the top of his head when she came back.
He smiled, settling back against the couch. Looking around the comfortable, close room. "I like your house. It feels like you."
She set the coffee on her side table, placed precisely where she liked it, and reclined in the chair. "When I was young I used to dream about owning a house, just about any house, that I could keep clean, like I wanted it. My mama was a bad housekeeper." She felt momentarily uncomfortable, until she looked at Ford again and noted the interest with which he listened. "We did own one for a while, too; my first husband and me, I mean. Danny's father. A little tiny house. But you'd have thought it was a mansion from the way we acted about it." She laughed softly.
"Danny doesn't talk about his daddy much."
"I don't imagine so."
"Why?"
"None of us talk about my first husband very often. I don't know if that's good or not."
Ford appeared to ponder that; then he looked her in the eye again. His face was very clear; she could read every thought in it. "On the way here Danny took me to a house. It was the only place we stopped."
She asked, a hush around her voice, "Where was it, do you know?"
"Near a crossroads," Ford said, "a little white house in a field," and stopped, looking at her.
"Harvey Crossroads."
"That sounds right."
She looked out the window, beyond the little scrap of front yard across the Christmas graves to the mausoleum, framed against apple trees. "I like to go for a walk on Christmas morning. Would you like to come with me? All you need to do is throw on a coat, we're not going that far."
The coats waited on the stand in the office; she tied a scarf around her hair too. When Ford buttoned the dark draping over his pajamas, she saw the presence of a younger boy in him, suddenly afraid to have awakened on Christmas morning in such a strange place. She waited till he was close and opened the door. They were met face-on by a blast of winter. "You might want a hat," she said, opening the storm door and stepping onto the gravel outside.
He produced a cap from the pocket of the coat and put it on. Ellen slipped her hands in her pockets and ambled along the edge of the parking spaces, in the shadow of the sycamore and pecan trees. Biting wind swept across the foil-wrapped pots of poinsettias, ripping leaves from plants, sending them tumbling across the rough grass. Ford looked around, at the curve of road, the mausoleum and statue of Jesus. They headed for the far corner of the cemetery.
She asked, "What did Danny tell you about that house?"
"Not much," Ford said. "We walked around inside."
She could hear his hesitation. From his reticence, his air of vague fear, she gathered he lived with Danny in uneasy truce, and this thought disturbed her. For the first time, on the walk, she studied his anxious expression. "He wouldn't tell me anything about the place, except that his father killed a dog there."
Striding to the edge of the narrow ditch that separated the Gardens of Calvary from the apple orchard, she reached for Ford's hand. He supported her as she took the long step.
They walked in silence across the sparse, brown grass, along the soft mulch of rotting leaves and occasional apple husks, shadows tracing their faces. She felt him waiting for her to go on talking, and chose her words carefully. "Danny was eight years old when we lived in that house. We didn't live there long. But I guess he would remember it pretty strong." Pause. "That was one of the worst times for fighting. My husband, Danny's daddy, hadn't been drinking for a while but he started up again. And around Thanksgiving we had a big fight, him and me." Near the center of the orchard, she pulled the coat close against her. Letting him know, by her hesitation, that she wished to refrain from stating the cause of the fight. "It was a bad fight, and it went on for three or four days, and Bobjay started drinking again. And in the middle of it he chased me out into the woods. He was so drunk he couldn't follow me. This was at night, and all the children had run out after me too. I think it had snowed. Anyway," shoving her arms to the bottom of the coat, "he couldn't get to me but this dog come up to him and he killed the dog. It was a mongrel the children had taken up, I couldn't stand the mutt myself. But he killed it."
She saw by Ford's face that this was enough, that this story explained the house to his satisfaction, and she paused. Powerfully tempted to say no more.
"How did he kill it?"
"He had a butcher knife," she said, matter-of-factly. "He was chasing me with it."
"And your kids were right there."
"Oh, yes."
Shock registered on his face. Again she felt convinced that she could stop the story here if she wished. The rest would be hard to get out. But Ford's earnestness, and the discomfort she had felt, when she wondered whether Ford would stay with Danny, made her pause. She asked, "Are you and Danny having a hard time?"
The question surprised them both, Ellen more than Ford, when she heard its echo and realized how easily it had crossed her lips.
He considered his answer, and they wandered toward the edge of the orchard, a field which had once been farmland but which recently had been sold to a large corporation. Soybean remains rattled. Each moment the sky became a fiercer blue.
"There's some way he's afraid of me that I don't understand. Like in that house, the one he took me to see. When I found him in that bedroom, crying. And he wouldn't say why, and I was scared to ask."
"Which bedroom?" she asked, finally facing the moment, her voice suddenly small.
"The one at the front. The floor's fallen through now."
She gazed across the bare field, almost seeing the house herself, like an island unde
r a canopy of trees within the sea of plowed ground, and the small figure of her son, her oldest boy, at the edge of the trees, vanishing toward the river.
"A bad thing happened to Danny in that room," she began, and then fell silent again. Ford waited. She said, "Maybe he'll tell you about it one of these days."
"What happened?"
She shook her head, and said nothing else. She stepped toward the interior of the orchard as if reaching for the protection of the trees. She heard the sound of his footsteps. She refused to look at his face.
They walked slowly through the orchard, and Ford slid his arm around her shoulders. She found herself curiously glad of the touch; though she was also glad, a few moments later, when he knew to withdraw the embrace.
Once across the ditch, they approached the corner of the mausoleum, and she knelt at the lower tier of graves.
The mausoleum itself rose about as high as Ford's shoulders, faced with turquoise-veined marble. Christ knelt in prayer on the top. The structure gave an impression of compactness and starkness, with its backdrop of leafless trees and vases full of Christmas flowers.
On the lowest grave, near which Ellen knelt, a small Christmas tree rested in the bronze flower stand, a perfect miniature fir with tiny decorations. She touched the tree lovingly, glad to see that the wind had spared it any damage.
When she looked up at Ford, he was reading the name on the bronze marker, and she watched as the realization penetrated him slowly. Grover Douglas Crell.
"This was your youngest son."
She answered, without rancor, "He still is."
"I'm sorry. Yes." He met her eye. "I guess I never stopped to think he would be out here."
She kept her voice in a gentle range of tones, though as always, when she knelt near this particular spot, her head was full of screaming. "I couldn't put him in the ground." Standing, she smoothed her coat again. "This is why I go for a walk on Christmas morning," she continued. "I only stay for a minute."
She had kept control of her breathing and now sighed, deeply. Linking arms with Ford, feeling sudden affection, they headed inside.
In the house they were greeted by the rush of air through the furnace. Ray stirred in the kitchen. Ellen, untying the scarf, peered at him. "We were out at the mausoleum."
"I saw you," Ray said, in a morning voice, "I got up after you went out."
"I wanted you to stay in bed."
Ray shuffled into the living room in his slippers, passing Ellen, kissing her cheek dryly. "This is good coffee. Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas," Ford said. "You should have got up and walked with us."
"It's too cold to be walking around. And Ellen is so stingy she won't turn up the heat in the morning, so I got to spare myself the best I can."
"That's right. I like to keep him with a little bit of a chill on him." Laughing, she moved into her kitchen.
A moment later, the bedroom door opened, and Danny emerged, scratching his head. He said good morning and kissed her cheek in much the same manner as Ray had. She felt his reticence and thought of what Ford had told her, directly and indirectly.
"You guys have been up for a while."
"Ford and me already went for a walk." She set a cup in front of him.
"That's fine, as long as you don't try to drag me out there in this cold, not this time of day."
Ford loomed in the doorway. "Listen to him, like a little bit of cold would shrivel him up. What are you doing out of bed so early, old man?"
Danny reddened slightly. "Have we heard from Amy yet? Is Jason awake?"
They drove to Wickham to see. Amy lived in a small apartment at the back of a large house on the outskirts of town, a neighborhood called Piney. Winter-wrapped children played in brown yards, a tiny girl in a blue parka on a bike with training wheels, a teenage boy with a kite and no wind, a father and son with walkie-talkies, antennae shivering. Amy met them at the door, her own pink, quilted housecoat buttoned to the neck. Cigarette waving she said, "I didn't even call you, I knew you'd be showing up over here pretty soon."
Ellen laughed. "Is he awake?"
"Lord, yes. He's been up about an hour, and he's about to bust. Hey, Ford. Hey, Danny. Merry Christmas."
Jason, still rubbing his eyes, gazed solemnly as they entered. When he saw Ellen, he announced, "Nanna, I got everything."
They headed to the other room, where Jason steered his electric race car on its first lap around the track. Ellen arranged herself comfortably on the couch, sweater riding her shoulders, and she became the grandmother, fondly watching her daughter, her son, her daughter's son. Her son's friend. Out loud, she appreciated Jason's talent as a race car driver; she occasionally received a "Look, Nanna," and dutifully looked. Danny held Jason in his lap, patiently teaching him the ins and outs of steering, as Jason raced his red car against Ford's black one. She found she had sat on one of his toys, a superhero doll, and when she asked him what it was he said, "Kattermarroons," or some word that sounded to her like "Kattermarroons," and so she was allowed to nod in that slightly bewildered way; she was the grandma, she was supposed to ask what it was, she was supposed to be bewildered. And she was, most of all, by her son, who could hardly look his friend in the eye.
At the cemetery, a vapor trail vanished upward from the furnace flue, and in the front yard Ray puttered in fur-lined slippers, wrapped in his winter coat. Poinsettia pots had overturned throughout the memorial garden, and he held two of the damaged pots aloft toward her. "The wind broke the flowers off. It's gusting pretty good out here."
"Which ones were they?"
"Willis Palmer and the little Harvey girl."
"The wind gets pretty bad over there because there's no hedge. You should let me plant some hedge like I want to."
The family opened gifts that ran the gamut of the expected. Danny needed disks for his computer and got two boxes. Amy liked gold chains, and Danny and Ellen had bought her one. Ray could always use another tool for his woodshop and received two this year.
But this year there were Ford's gifts as well, lavish by family standards, though no one said a word. In fact, Ellen found herself only mildly surprised at the cashmere sweater for Amy, the silver pen for Ray, the He-Man castle for Jason; and the lovely wool jacket in the box marked with her name surprised her in a pleasing if uncertain way.
The discomfort of the moment might have passed quickly if she had not noticed Danny's uneasiness. She lay the jacket tenderly across the back of the couch, and Danny rose from his seat, ostensibly for coffee since he carried his cup; but Ford watched him leave.
When the phone rang, as she fried the last of the breakfast ham, the sound of another son's distant voice disarmed her completely. Duck said, "Hey, Mom, I bet you can't guess who this is," and she felt warmth flood her and sat down at once.
"Duck, my God."
"You didn't think I'd call, did you? I must've scared you better than I thought." His deep voice, resembling so much the gravelly tones of his father, raised the hair on the back of her neck.
"You scared me pretty good, all right. I wish you were here."
"Let's don't start about that," he said. "Did everybody else get there?"
"Allen hasn't come yet, but he should be on his way by now. Him and Cherise are driving from Asheville. You know they live in Asheville now."
"No, I didn't know that. How's Jason?"
She laughed and said, "I'm surprised you can't hear him. He's playing in the other room. He's had him a big Christmas so far."
"I ordered him a little Indian poncho out of a catalog, but I didn't do it till yesterday, so God knows when he'll get it."
She pressed the receiver against her ear so hard it hurt. The hollow sound of distance had begun to swallow his voice. "Are you going to do anything special for Christmas? Do you have someplace to eat?"
"Oh, yeah. I got friends out here. Don't worry about me. I even got me a Christmas card, from my job. I'm having me a big old time."
"I'm glad you
won't be by yourself." She felt herself begin to dissolve a little. "Where are you? Are you still in that place in New Mexico?"
"That's right."
"But you won't give me your address."
"Mama, now let's don't start all that. All right?" The line went silent for a moment. "I better go, before I run up this phone bill. It ain't mine. Now look, Merry Christmas and all that stuff. All right? I'll talk to you soon." He sounded suddenly a little sad himself.
"Please call me soon."
"I will."
She knew she would like to cry and refused to allow herself the luxury. The others appeared in the doorway, apparently drawn by the sound of her voice and the silence surrounding the conversation. Ray asked, "Was that Duck?"
"That was him."
"I told you he would call," Amy said.
"I need to sit still for a minute."
"I don't think he's in New Mexico," Danny said, "not calling this early."
Ellen laughed. "That's exactly what I was thinking— you're suspicious like I am." Standing, surveying them all, and neatly flipping the ham in the frying pan. "Now you all go about your business, I'm not going to have a fit or anything."
On Christmas morning, as she had for years in kitchens in many houses, she prepared turkey, dressing, pies, gravies, and the veil to the past thinned. Today she knew she was in the kitchen of the house at the back of the Gardens of Calvary (she never called it anything but a house), but at certain moments she went hazy on the year. Or, with her hand plunged deep into the turkey, she went blurry on which kitchen counter it was; maybe she stood at the steel sink in the house behind the restaurant in Potter's Lake, or maybe in the little yellow house beside the railroad depot and the dock where the lime barges loaded.
