by Ron Rash
‘No,’ she said.
‘Then why would Momma and Daddy know?’
‘Because they killed him.’
Suddenly the wood I sat on was nailed solid to the porch again, the world firm under my feet. Maybe the stroke has done this to her, I thought. Maybe she’s just old and addled. When I freed my hand from her wrist, I felt bony fingers that didn’t want to let go of me.
You really had me going for a minute, old woman, I thought. Had me believing all sorts of nonsense.
‘You don’t believe me,’ she said.
‘No,’ I said, but I wasn’t looking at her. I was looking down the road for the sheriff. I wanted to leave, not just her porch but Jocassee. I wanted to get back in the field and cut the rest of the cabbage. Then I’d be free of this place and her along with it once and for all.
‘Don’t believe me,’ she said. ‘Believe your momma. Show her that Gold Star. Ask what she and that man of hers done to your real daddy.’
I heard the patrol car coming up the road, and I lifted myself off the railing. Her hand reached out and grabbed my wrist again.
‘You can’t let that lake cover up your daddy’s bones,’ she said, her voice trembling now. ‘The dead can’t have no peace till they proper buried. You find your daddy, boy. You don’t let that lake cover him up. You got to do that for him. You’re the only one who can.’
The sheriff pulled up behind the truck. ‘Leave me alone,’ I said, and yanked my arm free. I stepped off the porch.
‘You’re the only one,’ she said again, but I didn’t turn around.
Sheriff Alexander didn’t look very happy. You could tell his visit had gone no better than mine.
‘I’m going back to the field,’ I said.
‘I can give you a ride.’
‘No, it’s not far if I cut through the woods.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Sheriff Alexander said. ‘You all have a good conversation?’
The way he said it I could tell he was curious and wanted to know what had passed between me and Mrs. Winchester.
‘Not really,’ I said.
That didn’t satisfy Sheriff Alexander.
‘What did she want?’ he said, and he said it like I was some kind of suspect he was questioning.
‘Nothing. She was just babbling. She’s crazy, Sheriff. She was getting ready to set her house on fire.’
I pulled the kitchen matches from my pocket.
‘These are hers.’
Sheriff Alexander took the matches and looked up at the porch where Mrs. Winchester stood. She made no move to join us. Feel sorry for her, I told myself. She was good to you when you were a kid. She can’t help being old and addled.
‘Let’s go, Mrs. Winchester,’ Sheriff Alexander said.
‘Let me get my grip,’ she said and went into the house.
She closed the door behind her out of habit, like she was going to be in there a while, like she had a fire going inside and didn’t want the September morning to chill a house that was warm and cozy.
But she didn’t have a fire. Not yet.
‘What?’ Sheriff Alexander said, but I was already running toward the porch.
When I reached the first step I heard a whoosh, and yellow flames climbed the shades behind the windows. I twisted the door knob, but it wouldn’t turn. I could hear crackling and popping now. I rammed my shoulder against the door. It wouldn’t give. Then the sheriff was beside me. On the third try we broke the door down.
She sat in the middle of the room, flames rising right out of her lap and blooming across her chest. Her hair was a tangle of fire. She was like those monks in Vietnam I’d seen on TV, because she wasn’t screaming or crying or trying to put out the flames. She just sat there dying.
‘Don’t try,’ the sheriff said, but I was already running through the flames. I dragged Mrs. Winchester toward the door, my hands gripping her arms. Skin flaked off her like charred paper. A smell stronger than kerosene made me gag.
Sheriff Alexander helped me get her into the yard. We rolled her body to douse the flames. That was all it was now, a body.
‘She’s dead, ain’t she,’ I said.
Sheriff Alexander pressed his finger against what little flesh hung on her wrist.
‘For her sake I hope so,’ he said.
‘Mrs. Winchester?’ I said, looking at her face.
But she had no ears to hear me. They had been burned off along with her eyebrows and hair. The only thing on her face that still looked human was her eyes. They were open and staring right at me.
‘No pulse,’ Sheriff Alexander said, letting go of her wrist.
He grunted and stood up. He winced and rubbed his knee. He looked at the house, what was left of it. Then he looked at me.
‘You’re burned,’ he said.
I looked at my hands.
‘It ain’t bad,’ I said.
‘I’ve got to call an ambulance,’ Sheriff Alexander said. ‘A fire truck too, I guess, though it doesn’t look likely to spread.’
‘What can I do?’ I asked.
‘Nothing. You did what you could. This is what she wanted, to die here where she lived her whole life. I can understand that.’
‘But it’s an awful way to die,’ I said.
‘No more awful for her than being taken away from the only place she’s ever known,’ Sheriff Alexander said, his voice cold and harsh. ‘She’d have lasted a month at most in that nursing home. If you could ask her now, I’d bet she’d tell you she was glad she did it.’
My eyes watered, but it was no longer from the kerosene. I looked at the burning house instead of Sheriff Alexander. I didn’t want to look into his eyes, eyes that had seen too much. This must be the way you get when your job is to deal with the terrible things that happen to people, I thought. A farmer gets calluses on his hands. A sheriff gets them on his heart.
‘Can’t you at least cover her?’
‘I’ve got a blanket in the trunk,’ Sheriff Alexander said. ‘If you want to do something, you can put it on her while I call this in.’
I did what he asked. As I lay the blanket over Mrs. Winchester I looked into her eyes a last time, eyes that had watched me all my life, eyes the same dark brown as mine.
‘You’re a Winchester, aren’t you,’ Mr. Pipkin had said.
I wondered if I was the one that was crazy, because suddenly what she’d told me, part of it at least, seemed not only possible but certain. It was like I was believing one thing one minute and something the exact opposite the next. You’re just upset, I told myself. What you’ve just seen would make anybody crazy for a while.
But Mr. Pipkin hadn’t been crazy. He’d been a mean old man but he hadn’t been crazy. Neither had my kinfolk when they took note of my eyes.
Sheriff Alexander finished his call. He stared at where the house had been. There were only a few flames now, no bigger than campfires.
‘I’ve never seen anything burn that fast,’ Sheriff Alexander said. ‘She must have planned that fire for weeks.’
‘I’m leaving now,’ I told him.
‘I’d drive you,’ he said, ‘but it’s best I stay and make sure this fire doesn’t flare back up.’ He turned toward me, his voice softer.
‘I’m truly sorry you had to see this, son.’
I stepped into the woods and then over the few sagging strands of barbed wire that hadn’t rusted completely away. I looked a last time at the smoke and ashes that had once been a house, at a blanket that covered what had once been a person.
‘You feel things deeper than most people,’ Momma had said years back when I’d come home from school crying. ‘That ought to be a blessing but it ain’t.’
Maybe Momma was right, because what I felt was deep inside me, so deep I couldn’t bring it out enough to give it words.
There was still cabbage to cut, but I walked on past where my butcher knife and sack laid. It felt like years had passed since I’d been kneeling in that field. That cabbage didn’t seem of much importance now.
I followed the river downstream, not really knowing where I was going. It was like my mind moved so fast it was taking my body right along with it. Soon the river path was underwater. I climbed uphill and found an old hunting trail.
Part of what she’d said, the part about Momma and Daddy killing her son, I couldn’t have believed in a million years. It was so crazy it made me want to laugh out loud. Maybe that’s what grief does to you, I thought. Her saying that makes the rest of it a lie, shouldn’t it? Yes, it should, I thought, but does it?
I suddenly wished a terrible thing. I wished Mrs. Winchester had killed herself yesterday or last week or anytime before this morning, before she’d had a chance to talk to me. I reached into my pocket and took out the Gold Star. I could fling it in the river and be done with it, be done with everything she’d told me that morning. I reared my arm back but I couldn’t do it. I put the Gold Star back in my pocket and walked on down the trail to where the gorge opened up.
What had once been a meadow with a river running through it now looked like a low-country swamp. Scrub pines and blackjack oaks the loggers hadn’t bothered with rose out of the water. The stumps of the big hardwoods jutted out like tombstones. But the farther you went the less you saw. Water deepened and hid more. At the end of the valley where the mountains again came close together, a white wall of concrete cut off the river like a tourniquet cuts off a vein.
I looked across the water to the cemetery on Matthews Ridge. You could see where the gravestones had been rooted up. It looked like somebody had been digging for treasure.
I thought about last Monday when me and Daddy had crossed the river and seen those gravestones taken up.
Momma hadn’t wanted to go. She said it would be an awful sight and wanted no part of it, but Daddy had felt obliged to be there since it was some of his people being moved.
‘I couldn’t rest easy without knowing it’s done with some respect,’ Daddy had said.
Daddy hadn’t asked me to go. I could tell he’d just as soon I’d stayed at the house with Momma. But I went anyway, as much out of curiosity as anything.
Sheriff Alexander and Mr. Pearson watched from outside the back fence as the work crew got started, the machinery snarling and grunting as it rolled right over the front gate.
‘They ought not to have done that,’ Daddy said, but I couldn’t see how it much mattered. Soon enough there’d be nothing for that fence to keep in or out. Daddy and I walked over to where the sheriff and Mr. Pearson stood, Sheriff Alexander wearing his gray uniform and Mr. Pearson his black suit.
There wasn’t much talk among us, maybe because nobody knew exactly how we should feel about what was happening. It wasn’t a funeral but it wasn’t something to feel good about either. Mr. Pearson wore his best poker face. Daddy looked grim. Sheriff Alexander looked grim too, grim but also angry.
‘We’re just moving the stones today,’ Mr. Pearson told Daddy. ‘I still got the graves at Tamassee Grove to dig before I do these. That way we can rebury the same day.’
Daddy looked relieved to hear that. He felt the need to be here, but it wasn’t something he’d wanted to do. He was more than willing to put off the raising of his own daddy and momma a few more days.
The backhoe and tripod made quick work of it, yanking the gravestones out of the ground like teeth, so it wasn’t long before the tripod brought up the stone that had JACOB HOLCOMBE and SUSANNA HOLCOMBE chiseled in it. I read the dates as the names rose in the air. BORN JUNE 8, 1899 DIED DECEMBER 1, 1955. BORN APRIL 5, 1904 DIED MARCH 21, 1964. Beneath that REST IN PEACE. The tripod lowered the stone into the truck. I looked at Daddy. His face had got pale and he gripped the fence like he feared he was about to be swept away by something. He wasn’t looking at the stone. He was looking at the grave. Nightcrawlers big around as cigarettes wiggled in the black gash where the stone had been.
Mr. Pearson had been watching Daddy too. He came over to do what he’d been doing for people most of his life. He put his arm on Daddy’s shoulder and asked Daddy if he wanted to sit in the hearse until he felt better.
‘No,’ Daddy said. ‘I’m going to the house. I can’t watch this no more.’
But Daddy didn’t move. He just shut his eyes and held on to the fence a while longer.
‘This is wrong, Melvin,’ Sheriff Alexander said. ‘You know it’s wrong.’
‘I don’t like it any more than you, but there’s no choice,’ Mr. Pearson said. ‘It’s a federal law. Besides, if we don’t move these coffins they’ll come up on their own. There’s oxygen trapped in them. They’ll come bobbing up like fishing corks soon as the ground gets saturated. Is that what you want?’
Sheriff Alexander didn’t answer. His gray eyes got hard and cold as flint. He wasn’t looking at Mr. Pearson or me or Daddy or anyone else. He was thinking about something, and whatever it was it gave him no pleasure.
‘Let’s go,’ Daddy had said, and we’d gone back across the river.
Now, four days later as I stared across the water at the cemetery, I remembered something else, a small thing I’d forgotten soon as it was said, forgotten until Mrs. Winchester had started my mind digging up all sorts of things—though nothing solid as a granite tombstone, not yet at least.
What I remembered was what Sheriff Alexander had said when he’d seen me with Daddy at the cemetery.
‘This your boy?’ he’d asked Daddy.
‘Yes,’ Daddy had said, but Sheriff Alexander had looked like he hadn’t believed it. He looked at me like he’d seen me before and was trying to remember where. He’d looked at me the same way Mr. Pipkin had that first day of school.
‘Show that Gold Star to your momma,’ Mrs. Winchester had said, and I knew now that I would. It wasn’t something I wanted to do but I knew I’d have to do it, because the not knowing was worse than the knowing. At least that’s what I told myself.
Now even the hunting trail was underwater, so I climbed up the ridge and walked toward where the mountains again rubbed up close to one another and the dam sealed the valley. Chain saws rattled far off on the other side of the water, but otherwise it was quiet, so quiet you could almost believe water had already risen over everything.
I looked at my watch. I had three more hours before Momma and the man who claimed to be my daddy came and picked me up. He’d be fussing about the cabbage not being cut, but that was the least thing bothering me now.
I was in the shadow of the dam when I saw the white Carolina Power truck. I turned around. I didn’t want to have to talk to anyone.
‘What are you doing up here, boy?’ a voice said.
I kept on walking but in a few seconds I could hear him coming through the woods.
‘I asked you a question, boy,’ he said when he caught up with me. He grabbed my shoulder and turned me.
I looked at him then. He wore a yellow hard hat—the flimsy, plastic kind that look plain stupid on someone wearing a dress shirt and tie. A name tag with SHERMAN JAMESON—ENGINEER printed on it dangled from his shirt pocket.
‘I’ve been cutting cabbage,’ I said. ‘I’m taking a little break before I finish up.’
‘What’s your name?’
For a second I paused, not sure what my name was. ‘Isaac,’ I said, leaving it at that.
‘Well, you’re trespassing.’
He said it in a pissed-off way.
‘You all said we had till tomorrow.’
‘That’s changed. Some old woman getting evicted set herself on fire. That kind of thing is bad public relations, and we’re not going to risk something else like that. We’ve got enough problems dealing with the archaeologists and bird watchers. Everybody’s out of this valley today.’
‘What does Sheriff Alexander say?’
‘It’s not up to him to say a damn thing. All he’s done is get in our way. It was him that talked us into letting you people stay long as you have.’
He nodded up at the dam.
‘But none of that matters anymore. It doesn’t matter how m
any Indian mounds are here or what flowers or bugs or birds. If you found chunks of gold big as baseballs it wouldn’t matter now. That dam’s built, and the gates are closed. It doesn’t matter if you’re living or dead. You don’t belong here anymore. Every last one of you hillbillies is going to be flushed out of this valley like shit down a commode.’
You’re wrong about that, I thought, at least about the dead, because I’d stumbled across graves while rabbit hunting. There’d be nothing more than a clearing in the woods and a few creek stones with whatever name had been scratched on it long gone. Nobody had dug up those graves. Nobody had dug up the grave at the head of Wolf Creek either, a grave with no marker, a grave some people claimed held a witch.
A coon hunter had found her dead in the woods when I was eight. Daddy and a couple of other men buried her in the woods behind her house. They’d built a coffin out of cedar wood, because cedar won’t rot. They hadn’t done it to keep the dirt and water out. They’d done it to keep her in.
I saw no reason to tell Sherman Jameson any of this though.
I turned and started walking back to what was left of the farm. I waited for his hand to reach out and grab my shoulder again but it didn’t. Which was a good thing for him. If he had I would have laid him flat on his back.
‘Don’t come back tomorrow,’ he said. ‘If you do you’ll be arrested.’
I didn’t look back but I could feel the dam looming behind me as if it cast a shadow over the whole valley. I stepped over a crumbling stone fence. The Gold Star jabbed my leg through the denim. The water hadn’t risen fast enough, I thought. It should have come like a flood and washed us all out so quick there wouldn’t have been time for secrets that had been long hid in this valley to be revealed, secrets that should have been buried under this lake forever. Because it was like the last few hours I had been trying to walk away from the truth I saw in my own eyes but the truth had been trailing me like a bloodhound. Now it had a hold on me and wouldn’t let go.
When I got back to the house, I sat on the steps. My sandwich was in a paper bag on the porch, but I had no appetite. The farm seemed different from when I’d left it in the morning, like the earth had somehow moved under it and shifted everything—fields, barn, shed, and house—a few yards from where things had been before.
