Prayers the Devil Answers

by Sharyn McCrumb

  I wasn’t sure about needing to put the salt on the windowsill. I did that mainly because it was an old custom in my family. People do a lot of things not because they believe in them, but because these things had always been done that way—like saying “Bless you” when someone sneezes. I was glad for an excuse to cover the mirror, though, so that I wouldn’t catch sight of my own pale, gaunt reflection in it. I looked half-dead myself.

  I didn’t know if those old-fashioned death rituals would have mattered to Albert or not. He never said anything about it one way or the other. It was just what people did, and that was good enough for him, I suppose. We’d had no reason to talk about the finer points of death customs. We thought we had decades left to settle those things. But if Albert was still lingering on this earth, seeing and hearing what was happening, I wanted him to know that I honored his memory by following the old customs, just in case it mattered. Rituals with salt and mirrors didn’t cost anything. Mourning clothes did.

  We had buried Albert the day before my meeting with Vernon Johnson, in a biting March wind, beneath a clabbered sky that kept spitting rain. The wet wind battened down the flowers and chilled those of us gathered at the graveside. I had used some of our savings to put a down payment on a burial plot as close to the top of the hill as they had available. Albert would like the thought of having a view of the sky and mountains, like we had up home. The ground would have to settle for six months before they could put in a headstone, and I hoped by then I’d be able to afford one. It was a double burial plot, so that when the time came the boys could lay me to rest there beside their father.

  I judged there to be a good half a hundred people there, some of them friends or fellow church members. The doctor had come, and two of the deputies from the jail. But some of those present had been people I knew only by sight, if at all: the bank president, some office people representing the railroad, and an assortment of local officials, all there to pay respects to the sheriff, which I realized was not quite the same as honoring Albert Robbins for himself. He would have been pleased, though. Some of them had even brought flowers to lay on the mound of bare earth after the service. They were mostly daffodils and crocuses, because it was too early in the spring to get anything else from the gardens.

  Vernon Johnson had been there. He had come alone, but I remembered his wife, that nice lady in lavender who had come by the house the day Albert died and offered to help. You could tell just by looking at Mr. Johnson at the graveside that he was someone important. He was standing near the minister, wearing a dark belted raincoat, and scrunched up under a black umbrella to protect his fedora from the rain. When he saw that the boys and I had no protection from the elements, he stepped forward and handed the umbrella to me, silently motioning for me to take it. His black shoes shone like a pond in the moonlight, despite the mud in the burying ground, and the suit just visible under his store-bought black trench coat looked like fine-spun wool. I thought it fit him too well to have been bought sight unseen from the Wish Book, like Albert’s was: the one he wore on Sundays, the one that would now go into the ground with him forever.

  I stopped thinking back on the funeral. I knew I mustn’t dwell on it now, because if I began to cry, Mr. Johnson would be embarrassed. He would probably be so anxious for me to leave that he wouldn’t listen to what I had to say. I had to make him listen, because I had decided he was the one person I needed to talk to. The well-meaning condolences of the others might comfort me for the moment, but it was the future that mattered.

  Mr. Johnson told me after the service that he had attended the funeral as the representative of the county government. Before he left he shook my hand with his gloved one and murmured his condolences. He shook Eddie’s hand, too, and patted Georgie’s head, but there were other people waiting to speak to me, and before I had a chance to say anything to him beyond a word of thanks or give him back his umbrella, he had moved away, edged aside by some of our neighbors from the mountain who had come down for the burying. Then a few people from town patted my shoulder or shook my hand as they left. The minister’s wife rushed forward to embrace me, tearfully exclaiming that the ways of the Lord were mysterious indeed, but that she trusted we would understand it all once we arrived in heaven. I nodded, trying to hide my impatience. A few yards away I saw Falcon Wallace talking to the stocky blond woman who had been at the house when all the other ladies had paid their condolence calls. I had wanted to have a word with Falcon, to thank him for his kindness, but I was looking toward the departing commissioner, wishing I could run after him—but as Albert would have said, “It wouldn’t have been fitten.”

  Georgie recognized Falcon, and slipped his hand out of mine to go and hug his friend. With a nod at me, Eddie hurried after him, probably as much to see Falcon himself as to tend to his little brother. The two of them surrounded Falcon, Georgie wrapping his little arms around the deputy’s legs so that he couldn’t escape them if he wanted to, although to give him credit, he gave no sign of being impatient with them. The blond woman, blocked now by the boys, smiled uncertainly and wandered away in my direction. When she noticed me, she stopped and said, “Oh!” as if she hadn’t expected to see me, or maybe she didn’t know who I was. A woman in black with two tearful young’uns in tow; who else could I be?

  “It’s you, Miz Robbins. In all this rain, well . . . anyhow, I’m real sorry about Albert, ma’am.” She had thin blond hair crinkled into tight permanent waves, damp now and frizzing in the mist, and a lot of black eye makeup and red lipstick, like those Kewpie dolls you can win at the sideshow at the fair. She wasn’t dressed in a flashy way, though, as far as I could tell; just a plain brown coat with a rabbit-fur collar and clunky high-heel shoes, muddied halfway up the sides.

  “Yes.”

  “We just thought the world of Albert down at the diner. He used to come in late of an evening for his coffee and pie, and we felt safe just having him sitting there.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, in case somebody tried to come in and rob the till while we were closing up, I guess. Anyway, he was always a welcome sight for sore eyes. He was a one, that Albert Robbins. Always ready with a smile and a joke.”

  When Albert worked in the machine shop at the railroad he used to say that sometimes you could tell when there was something wrong with a machine just by listening to it. Something in the way it ran might be just the least bit off, but if you didn’t figure out right then what was wrong with it, it would break down altogether sooner or later. I had that same feeling as the blond woman went on talking to me, but I didn’t have the time or the presence of mind to give it any thought then. I just nodded, until more people surged past her to shake my hand and tell me how sorry they were.

  “Albert would have been proud to know that you came,” I said—over and over. The stocky blond woman walked away, and I forgot about her.

  When I looked back across the field, Vernon Johnson was nowhere to be seen. I had hoped he would come by the house, where Mrs. Thompson presided again over a cold collation for the mourners, cobbled together from the food brought by Sunday’s visitors. Henry and Elva had attended the funeral and the graveside service, but when it was over they nodded to me and walked away. They did not come by the house afterward. Mr. Johnson did not appear, either, and I decided I would have to hunt him up in his office, sooner rather than later.

  “Is there some way I can help you, Mrs. Robbins?” Vernon Johnson’s expression was politely blank, but his eyes were wary, as if he was expecting a bout of hysterics from me, the new widow, and that he wished me anywhere but in his little courthouse office. He was still standing, perhaps out of courtesy, but also so that he could escort me quickly to the door if I became distraught.

  I smiled and tried to look calm and unafraid.

  I had given it a lot of thought since the funeral, and finally I remembered meeting Vernon Johnson at the swearing-in ceremony back in January, when Albert, as the n
ewly elected sheriff, had taken the oath with the other incoming officials. As Albert’s wife, I was allowed to hold the Bible that he put his left hand on while he took the oath of office. “Just like the president’s wife,” he had said later, and I think that little gesture pleased him as much as anything else that day.

  Mr. Johnson had worn the same black suit then, watching the ceremony alongside a crowd of other well-dressed, and therefore important, local men. I remembered taking note of what the county officials wore, wondering if Albert would need a suit like that. If so, I knew we’d better start saving up for it then, because it would have cost him a month’s pay, at least.

  I wasn’t worried about my outfit. The ladies present were dressed mostly alike, in below-the-knee wool skirts and matching jackets with shoulder pads in them. They were fashionable these days, but they put me in mind of scarecrows. As a woman, I was interested in seeing their finery, but not envious. And the outfit worn by one of the officials’ wives looked too outlandish even for a scarecrow. She was a stringy red-haired lady wearing a dark-green wool suit, pretty much like those the other women wore, but wrapped around her shoulders like a furry shawl was a circle of reddish-brown pelts, about the same color as her hair. I couldn’t help it: I kept staring at those little weaselly-looking animals with their glass-eyed heads still attached and their tiny feet dangling. They looked like little pine martens to me, but I think they were minks, though I’d never seen one alive. The ladies’ magazines talk about mink coats sometimes, but I’d never heard of this style before. Four or five dead minks were fastened together to form the wrap: the head of one clamped on the tail of the animal in front of it, and its own tail gripped by the one behind it. At first I thought, despite her red hair, which in any case looked dyed, that the fur-wearing lady was an Indian, but since then I have seen several women wearing pelts that way—a fur stole, they call it—and, remembering the women’s magazines, I decided the wrap must be some fashionable city notion, seeing as the news of it had not made it up the mountain to the settlement. Just as well, though. I expect they’d have laughed fit to kill to see such a sight. I had no desire to be encircled by dead weasels, but I would have liked to have the green wool suit with a little gold flower pin on the lapel instead. Such extravagances for myself were past praying for, though. There were better ways to spend Albert’s salary: first, on the boys; then on Albert; then things for the kitchen, and, finally, clothes for me, if there was any money left over. There never was.

  I wish Albert could have had a suit as fine as Mr. Johnson’s. I guess he wouldn’t have had it long, but having it would have made him so happy. I tried to remember if I’d spoken to Mr. Johnson at the swearing-in. I exchanged pleasantries with most of the solemn representatives of the county government during all the glad-handing after the oaths had been administered, but, between my nervousness and having to keep an eye on the boys, I remembered very little of it. After all that had happened since that day, that event seemed like years ago instead of a couple of months. By now Mr. Johnson was as strange to me as an apparition, sitting there expressionless, patiently waiting to be told why I had come. I hoped I could summon up the courage to tell him.

  When the silence became uncomfortable, he tried to reassure me of the county’s concern, in case that was what I had come about. “If there’s anything that the county government can do for you, ma’am, you’ve only got to ask. I assume that’s why you’re here.”

  “In a way.” I was blushing and still trying not to look afraid.

  After more silence, he tried again. “This must be a mighty hard time for you, losing your husband so suddenly. I can certainly understand that. Now, seeing as how he was one of our local elected officials, your loss concerns all of us in the county government. We all thought a lot of Sheriff Robbins, ma’am. He didn’t hold the job for long, but we were impressed with what we saw. Now tell me what is it I can help you with?”

  He thought I was after money. “I haven’t come to ask for charity,” I told him. “Won’t take it.”

  In spite of the awkwardness and my plain speaking, Vernon Johnson smiled. “Well, I believe I already knew that, Mrs. Robbins. You hail from one of those communities up the mountain, same as your husband, don’t you? I remember him saying once that none of the families from up there would ask for anything—not food if they were hungry, not a rope if they were drowning. I’ve seen enough of them in my years with the railroad to believe that.”

  “It’s true enough. We don’t like to be beholden.”

  “Beholden.” He smiled at the word, which probably sounded quaint to him, but I couldn’t think of a better one. “Well, I wouldn’t think of it that way, if I were you. For a start you have your sons to think of. Their well-being should take precedent over pride, shouldn’t it?”

  “It’s a painful choice, sir.”

  “I hope it won’t be. You know, since your late husband was a good sheriff—a public servant—you could say that he deserved to have his family taken care of, even if he didn’t perish in the line of duty. So why don’t you tell yourself that maybe we owe you?”

  I nodded. Maybe they did.

  chapter nine

  Seeing Vernon Johnson at the graveside made me wonder if Albert’s passing meant that the other fellow, that Samuel Snyder that nobody liked much, would call for a special election and get the job after all. If Albert was right about the politics surrounding the job, I didn’t think the county officials would want that to happen. At least I hoped they wouldn’t, because here was Commissioner Johnson sitting at his big oak desk, still watching me warily, and twiddling his fingers while he waited to hear what I had to say.

  I could see that this visit from me—the sheriff’s widow—was giving Mr. Vernon Johnson the fidgets. I looked calm enough, but I expect he thought any minute now I would give way to noisy grief, and there he would be, helpless and mortified, while a poor bereaved woman screamed or sobbed or—worst of all—fainted right there in front of his desk. I was sure that the commissioner was equal to most of the situations he might encounter. He’d know which fork to use at a dinner party and how to talk to a lawyer and understand what they said back, and I’ll bet he could fire an employee without missing a beat, but it was plain that he had no earthly idea how to handle a crying woman. I’ll bet he hoped he wouldn’t have to figure it out. Granted that I had every right to be distraught, of course, but no doubt he’d be praying that I wouldn’t give way right there in his office.

  He was smiling pleasantly enough, but if he was like most men, he was wishing he could be anywhere but here; however, he was a county official and that made him obligated to hear me out. His wife, the kindly silver-haired woman who had come to the house with the other ladies, told me then that she’d ask her husband to give us whatever help he could. I hoped she had remembered to do that. It would be easier to talk to him if he had some idea that I was coming. He probably supposed that I’d come to ask for money, but it wouldn’t be as easy as that.

  I tried to push a stray lock of hair out of my face, wishing I had thought to put on rice powder and lip rouge so I wouldn’t look so much like a scarecrow, but I didn’t care to look in the mirror these days if I could help it. I was never much of a beauty, and I neither wanted nor could afford much in the way of makeup or fancy clothes, but I knew I looked a fright now. In a matter of days grief had made me old. Exhaustion and missing nearly a week of meals hadn’t helped my appearance either. I supposed it would pass, though, when I got used to things being the way they were now. Later, when the dark circles under my eyes faded and the pallor and the haggard look left my face, I might be a passably attractive woman again. Now, though, I looked like a whipped hound. I waited until the silence felt like noise, but I still couldn’t find a way to begin telling him exactly why I had come.

  He smiled. “You needn’t be nervous, ma’am. I know that except on social occasions you ladies are not used to having to talk to—well, men
of business like me. And it’s no wonder. The sheriff gave us to understand that the both of you came from a remote little settlement up the mountain, and that they were more or less shy around strangers. Is that right?”

  “Pretty much. Where we come from, people are known for being as economical with their emotions as if they thought they would be charged for them. Albert always said they acted like real life were a type of telegram costing two cents a word.”

  Mr. Johnson sighed. “I wish some of the people in our committee meetings felt that way.”

  “It’s hard to get used to being any different. At least you needn’t worry about me giving way here while I’m talking to you. We don’t make a show of our feelings, however strong those feelings might be. Now, I’ll grant you that I am still trying to cope with the sorrow of my husband’s passing, but now I’m able to put that to one side in order to tend to practical matters.”

  He was fidgeting again. “As soon as this, Mrs. Robbins? Perhaps you should wait a few days?”

  “I’ve thought about it, but I have my sons to think of. I’d rather start moving forward. It’s no use trying to hang on to the past.”

  He nodded. “Perhaps that’s best. I’ve seen many people postponing practical matters until their distress thaws enough to let them think about the future, and then they face a second grief, because that is when they realize that they have financial worries to contend with in addition to their personal loss.”

  “Most of the people I know can’t afford to wait, Mr. Johnson. Even if they wanted to.”

  “So you’ve decided to face the future now, have you? Then I admire your courage.”