Requiem by Fire

by Wayne Caldwell

  She shook her head. “Once in a blue moon I’ll get a headache and reach for an aspirin. I don’t too often—a body can get addicted to such. Never have gone in for Dr. Grove’s tonic or any of that for the same reason. But I do have a confession.”

  “What’s that, Mary?”

  “Sometimes I sup a dram of whiskey.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that, unless ‘sometimes’ means every hour or two.”

  “It don’t.”

  “Then you’re in pretty good health for your age—going on seventy, did you say?”

  “You must have got that from Manson.”

  “Sorry, Mary. I won’t spread it around.”

  “Law, I don’t care if folks know my age. I’m just glad to be here, most days, and for the most part enjoy myself. I’ve known people this old who were downright miserable. I’d hate that. Well, Dr. Bennett, are you through with me?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you for your time and good dinner.”

  “You’re very welcome. I’ll see you in a little while.” She stood. “I’ve got work to do.”

  “Guess I’ll wait for the hordes of sick and infirm.”

  “Hmp. Ain’t any hordes left, Dr. Bennett. Ain’t far from looking like the county home around here.” She cleared a column of ants with her finger.

  “You plan on staying?”

  She turned to look at him. “I used to think as long as my family’s buried on yonder green hillside I’d stay. A body was to leave, Lord knows what the government might do with the cemetery. But anymore I’m tired of fighting the park. I don’t know. I’m going to trust God for an answer.”

  “That’s always best.”

  As she went inside, the clock struck two. The rosebuds Hiram had carved for the clock’s front panel still looked to her like sweet peas. Their spruce had mellowed into a color altogether blonder than the reds and browns of cherry and walnut. She thought to ask Hiram if she needed to put some kind of oil on them, and while she was at it, if he’d ever found out for sure his grandmother’s first name.

  CHAPTER 21

  The Sweat of Illness

  Maude and Silas clopped down the road, her rider straight in the saddle, watching for signs of life. He had journeyed from his house to the post office hundreds of times, paying little attention to his surroundings, but lately every little change shouted at him—the creak of a gate opening into an empty field, a pile of feathers where a hawk had devoured a jaybird, a fence strand broken by a deadfall limb.

  Years ago he could count on stopping a dozen times along the two or three miles to chat with neighbors about anything from the weather (usually too hot, cold, wet, or dry) to the world situation (always dire). A round trip might take three hours. Sometimes he rode in rain so he wouldn’t have to be sociable. Now, however, he could count on seeing people only at Mary Carter’s place, unless you counted the shadowy presence of Willie McPeters. How long will it be before I’m the only sane soul left this side of Cataloochee Mountain?

  He dismounted in the churchyard and lit his pipe. “Maude, remember when we found Harrogate, the summer of 1916. Wonder where he is. Likely carousing in some dirty old city. Don’t mind saying, I miss the boy.” He gave Maude a sugar cube, remounted, and let the horse walk beside the creek toward Nellie, which these days resembled a ghost town.

  Very few people, except his kid sister in Atlanta—herself now sixty-seven—sent Silas mail, but he counted on an envelope from her every other Thursday or Friday.

  Silas loved the “funny papers.” The first thing he opened to in the Asheville daily was “Bringing Up Father,” with Jiggs and Maggie, and “Mutt and Jeff.” Sundays he used to keep up with “Maude the Mule,” and “Happy Hooligan,” lately dropped in favor of brand-new strips with irritating names like “Belles and Wedding Bells” and “The Van Swaggers,” to his mind another mark of how far civilization had crumbled.

  But one bright spot remained. In 1920 his sister had sent “Krazy Kat,” a George Herriman cartoon altogether different from his usual fare. Simple plot: mouse bonks back of cat’s head with brick. Silas immediately wrote to say it tickled him to death and keep them coming. She had done so for a decade.

  The first strip he saw began with Krazy observing, to a dog working with hoe and mortar box, “I see you are quite a li’l ‘mixer.’” The dog replied, “Bum pun.” Ignatz Mouse, never a fan of wordplay, beaned Krazy with a brick, which knocked him into the mess, an experience Krazy deemed “mortarfying.” Ignatz tossed another brick. Krazy’s reaction: “Plastered again!” Besides the humor, Silas was delighted to see a cartoon bold enough to ridicule the Volstead Act, and a paper with the gumption to print it.

  Eleven years later Silas still loved “Krazy,” and the “Probation,” as Cataloochans called it, was, everyone hoped, about to end.

  He dismounted at the little post office with its sign, NELLIE, NC, both Ns backward. It needed paint. How long has it hung there? Since Nelse’s daughter was born, and she’s every day of forty. Horseflies, houseflies, time flies.

  Nelse usually greeted patrons promptly, but he did not appear. His apron hung on a peg beside the entrance to the back room. Silas hollered—silence answered. He riffled through the pieces scattered on the sorting table and found a fat envelope from his sister. The outbound box was empty, so Hub Carter might make a trip for nothing tomorrow.

  He shrugged and opened his mail as he walked to the porch. Folded around a note, which he put in his pocket to read later, were a half dozen Sunday strips. Silas chuckled, fished for his pipe, and looked down the road toward the sound of a horse. “Look here, Maude, it’s getting crowded again.” He packed his pipe with Prince Albert, another concession to age. He no longer grew tobacco.

  Jim Hawkins reined up his mare and tied her beside Maude. His brass buttons and shiny leather gleamed in the sun. “Afternoon, Silas. You all right?”

  Silas nodded. “Fine, Jim. You doing good?”

  “Yep. Pretty day.”

  Silas lit his pipe and looked to the sky. “It’s a mite dry. We could use a shower.”

  “Fire lookout said falling weather’s in west Tennessee, so it might rain tomorrow. Nelse in there? I’m expecting mail from headquarters.”

  “Didn’t see him, but he might have been out back.”

  Jim went inside while Silas unhitched his horse. As he started to mount, he heard Jim yell his name. “In here,” said Jim, in a tone Silas construed as urgent. He tied the horse and ran inside. In the back room he doffed his hat and turned his head away. Nelse, slumped to the floor in the north corner beside a stack of empty drink crates, held a pistol in his lap. His head hung at an odd angle, opposite his tie. Blood congealed on his left shoulder, and his trousers were dark with urine. Jim squatted and laid a finger under Nelse’s nose. “He’s dead. You didn’t hear anything?”

  “No, son, I didn’t even think to look back here. Didn’t hear a shot on the way down, either. I guess he killed himself?”

  “Don’t know. Was he right-or left-handed? I don’t remember.”

  Silas hesitated. “Right-handed, I’m pretty sure. Which hand’s the gun in?”

  “The right.”

  “There a note?”

  “I haven’t looked.”

  Silas tried to relight his pipe, but his hands were too shaky. “Damn it, Jim, why would a man do such a thing?”

  Jim stood and shook his head. “Silas, I don’t know. I’ve seen some pretty dark days, but never anything to make me kill myself.”

  “We’ve come to a pretty pass if living here’s enough to make you want to do this. I’ll get Doc Bennett.”

  “Good. I’ll make sure nobody bothers nothing.”

  Silas put his hat back on and hurried out. He returned in ten minutes, arms braced on the dash, feet mashing the floor of Bennett’s dark green Chevrolet. They raised a great cloud of dust.

  “I’d a lot rather ride a horse, Doc,” said Silas.

  “It’d take a big one to haul me around now.�
�

  Jim came out to the porch. “Thanks for coming, Doc.”

  Bennett snorted. “Jim, I’d say ‘you’re welcome’ if this were a social call, but this is duty.” He absently hefted his bag, then set it behind the seat. “On second thought, not much in here’ll help. You call Sheriff Leatherwood?”

  “No, I didn’t want to leave this mess unattended.”

  “Good. Let’s have a look.”

  The men entered the back room, Bennett first, then Jim. Silas stood Janus-like in the door frame. Bennett squatted and looked at his watch. He felt for a pulse, then evidence of body heat. “He’s been dead since about two or three, I’d say.” He looked at the entry wound, just under the hatband at the right temple. “He right-handed?”

  “We think so,” said Jim.

  “We need more than just thinking.” He removed Nelse’s hat. “Looky here, boys.” His fat fingers pulled a gore-covered bullet from the hatband. “Here’s the cause of death. Old Mister Thirty-two Caliber Lead. Delivered by our friends, Smith and Wesson. Had it been a .38 we’d have had to dig it out of yonder wall.” He stood, kneecaps popping, and stretched his legs. “Knees aren’t what they used to be.” He wiped the bullet with a handkerchief. “You’d think someone would have heard it. But I was on the Carters’ porch and didn’t. How far’s that? Half a mile, anyway. A .32 going off indoors wouldn’t carry that far, even on a humid day. Silas, you didn’t hear anything?”

  “Nope, but I was horseback. Only time a rider hears a little gun is in the horse operas.”

  Bennett looked around the little room. “What have we here?” He picked up a penny postcard, no address save “To Whom It May Concern.” “This might tell us something,” Bennett said, turning it over. His brow wrinkled. “What kind of sense does this make?”

  He showed the note to Jim and Silas. All it said was “Like Elbert Hubbard said” in block letters. “This his handwriting?”

  Jim nodded. “Nelse always wrote block print like a schoolboy. What you reckon that means?”

  “Ain’t Hubbard that writer that talked about building a better mousetrap?” asked Silas.

  “What would that have to do with killing yourself?” asked Bennett.

  “Hey, I remember that name. We read “A Message to Garcia” in history class,” said Jim.

  The doctor grinned. “Silas, education sticks to some folks. Yes, time was, you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing a copy of that. Hell, even I gave away a stack at my office. Companies printed them for advertising. But, again, what would that have to do with killing yourself?”

  “The bullet’s the message to Garcia?” said Jim.

  “Pretty final one, I’d say,” said Silas.

  “Jim, I think this qualifies as an emergency. Call Leatherwood. He’ll probably let me wrap this up, but I don’t want to without permission.”

  “Yes, sir. Be back in a bit.” He brushed by Silas and left.

  “I never figured Nelson Howell to kill hisself. Never was what you call jolly, but always had a good word. Now he’s laying here dead,” said Silas. “I’ve seen dead folks all my life, but never a suicide. It’s a mystery to me.”

  “Nothing surprises me anymore. The only mystery here is this Hubbard business.”

  “Wasn’t he on the Lusitania?”

  “You know, you’re right. He and his wife went down with the ship. Voluntarily, as I remember. They could have jumped, but instead went into a stateroom and closed the door.” He chuckled. “Wonder if they drowned in coitu?”

  “If that means what I think it does, he died with a smile on his face.”

  • • •

  That evening Bennett called Nelse’s brother and learned Nelse had been right-handed, but the men had quarreled so many decades ago that the brother could not recall why they no longer spoke to each other. Nelse’s sister recalled seeing Nelse coming out of Dr. Alexander’s office in Waynes ville a week before but could add nothing else. Alexander would not speak of the matter over the telephone because he feared nosy operators, so Bennett arranged to see him at eight the next morning.

  Bennett woke at three-thirty to hear rain falling. He didn’t like to drive all those switchbacks in rain but headed to Waynesville, wipers barely fast enough to clear the windshield. “At least there’s no traffic,” he muttered.

  When Bennett knocked, he heard Alexander shout. “That you, Coroner? Come on back.” He opened the pebble-glass door into a waiting room empty of patients, two Progressive Farmer magazines lying on the floor. The room smelled of the sweat of illness cut by rubbing alcohol and pine oil. Through the door to the left he saw Alexander’s shadow and leaned on the door frame.

  Alexander was a gaunt man upward of eighty, who, when he started practice in the 1870s had had to convince folks he delivered babies more safely than granny women did. He was changing a bulb in the swing-arm lamp over his examination table. “Coroner, come on in.” He tightened the bulb and held out his hand.

  Bennett shook the old man’s hand. It was cold but dry, and its grip was strong. “Good to see you, Doctor. Are you well?”

  “Well enough for a worn-out pill peddler. Come back and have a chair.”

  Alexander’s private office overlooked the alleyway behind the two-story building. The room contained a battle-scarred oak desk with a swivel chair, a leather-covered wing chair in the corner, and a glass-doored case full of well-used books. Alexander sat behind the desk and pointed Bennett to the chair.

  “I’ll be brief, Coroner. Your suicide had carcinoma of the pancreas. I noticed it a month or two ago—the exact date isn’t important, is it?”

  Bennett shook his head. “No, Doctor, that diagnosis is enough for me. Not much to be done.”

  “No, and last Tuesday I felt sure he was metastatic—enlarged lymph nodes, a slight fever, and a very elevated white count. I told him I was going to level with him.” He stood, looked out the window, and took a deep breath. “I said he had six months, maybe more, probably less. I said they would be painful. I advised him to get his affairs in order, make a will, that sort of thing.”

  “How did he take it?”

  Alexander turned to Bennett. “About like I’d have thought. He asked me if I was sure, and when I nodded, he looked at me kind of puzzled-like, then said, really slow, ‘Doc, Elbert Hubbard was right.’ I asked him what he meant. ‘He said life’s just one damned thing after another.’ Then he cried. Slow at first, then bawled like a dying calf in a hailstorm. I gave him that very box of tissues over there. When he pulled himself together, he shook my hand and asked me how much he owed me.” The swivel chair squeaked as Alexander sat and put his elbows on the desk. “I told him, and he paid me. He stood, put his hat on, and said good-bye. I didn’t know he was spelling it with capital letters.”

  Bennett barely returned in time to tell Jim and Silas what he had learned before Nelse Howell was to be buried. As the men trudged up the steep hillside to the cemetery, a pair of crows, dark against an overcast sky, watched them intently. Manson and Thomas led a mule and sled bearing a pine coffin. Aunt Mary, Nell and her children, half a dozen Waynesville Howells, and two Cove Creek Johnsons followed. Nelse’s daughter was in California so did not show up.

  The cemetery had been terraced in the last century from the first fairly flat ground halfway up the mountain behind the Methodist church. It held four store-bought tombstones, one shaped like an obelisk, under which lay old Levi Carter, Hiram’s father. Next to it was Hiram’s gravestone, a flat affair with a sun rising through heavenly gates carved at the top. A hemlock grew at the center of the yard. Scattered here and there, fieldstones poked out of the ground like toadstools, marking infants mostly, stillborn or dead from various fevers. Even Aunt Mary could not identify all of them, although her first had rested under one until Hiram had scared up money to buy a child’s stone capped with a carved lamb.

  The men hobbled the mule, untied the casket, and set it on woven straps bridging the open grave. The crows began squalling. Jim thought o
f his shotgun, then wondered what kind of fellow had such thoughts at a burial. He walked over to Nell, smiled, and patted his children on their heads.

  Preacher Will Smith was in Henderson County, so Silas turned to the little congregation and opened his Bible. He read the twenty-third and hundred and twenty-first psalms, then said, “Folks, Nelson Howell was a good neighbor. When he said he’d do something, he’d do it. If you needed something, he’d give it without question or complaint. He was a good man.

  “I wish I could comfort this family. To do what he did, a man has to be of a different mind than I’ve ever had. I can’t judge that. I don’t think Jesus will, either.

  “I’ve never had a doctor tell me I had only a little time left. I don’t know if facing months of pain would make me pick up a pistol like Nelse. But today his troubles are over. He ain’t hurting no more. He’s at peace.

  “Sure as there’s a world around us, there’s a heaven above us, and that’s where Nelson Howell is this minute. He’s all right now. He’s with Jesus. I have to believe it. Because to believe anything else would make life not worth the living of it. Amen.”

  After the grave was covered, the townspeople wandered around the little cemetery, pointing and whispering. Jim showed gravestones to Nell and the kids, reminiscing about bygone folks. Aunt Mary’s sons and Bennett watched her gaze at Hiram’s stone and wondered if she saw him standing beside it.

  Bennett put his hand on Mary’s shoulder. “Reckon he’s with Hiram now?”

  She looked startled. “You mean here in the cemetery?”

  “Silas was talking about heaven, I believe.”

  “Their bodies are here. Their spirits are in heaven. Ain’t that the way it’s supposed to be?” She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “Poor soul.”

  The men were nearly finished covering the grave. Mary put her handkerchief into her purse and looked around. She crooked her finger for the doctor to follow. Under the hemlock she asked, “Doctor Bennett, would you level with me?”