He took her into the office and explained that he and his best employee had inspected the body and it was their judgment that they would be able to make the side of the face presentable, so that there could be a viewing, if so desired.
"Have to keep her head turned just a mite left," he said.
Mrs. Berns said she did not believe that her brother contemplated any sort of viewing, but to go ahead and make her look as good as possible in case he changed his mind. He worked out the bill, which included picking the body up at the city hospital and then taking it out to the chapel. He said his people would coordinate with the cemetery people and have the outer watertight box in place to receive the casket, and they would supply the lowering device. The bill came to thirty-eight hundred and seventy-five dollars, or four thousand and thirty with tax. She said she would make certain it was paid promptly. He said he appreciated the business, and please express his condolences to the bereaved. He asked if John Tinker Meadows himself would be officiating, and she said the family had decided that Mary Margaret Meadows would perform the service. He said she was a lovely woman, and Mrs. Berns said she was sure she was, but she had yet to meet her.
Roy Owen received word from Lieutenant Coombs late on Monday afternoon that Linda Owen's body could be released to any designated and licensed mortuary at any time. He had made arrangements with a firm down in the city named Stith and Sons. He phoned them from his room at the County Line Motel and they said they would pick the body up at nine in the morning and take it directly to their crematorium ten miles south of the city, on Route 887,3 white building on the left, set back, just beyond the Pepsi Bottling Works, you can't miss it.
And it would be performed at ten o'clock. He then phoned the hospital and told them who would be coming for the body.
They told him there were some charges and they could not release the body until they were paid. Six hundred and eighty one dollars and forty-one cents.
He located Lieutenant Coombs through the Sheriff's office and told him that he had no intention of being cheap, but he had not requested any hospital services, certainly not over six hundred dollars' worth. Coombs cursed the hospital, the state, the federal government and every paper shuffler in the known universe. He called Roy back twenty minutes later and said the matter had been settled and there were no charges to him, that the charges were an obligation of the state and the county, and the hospital was prepared to release the remains to Stith's people.
Peggy Moon tapped on his door, and when he opened it she came in barefoot, wearing cutoffs and an old yellow T-shirt with "Pac Man' printed on the front of it. She took hold of his wrists and looked directly at him, frowning with concern.
"I was listening," she said.
He tried to smile.
"Isn't there some law?"
"I'll go down there with you, okay?"
"No. It's all right. I'll manage, Peg."
"You can't go alone! Really. You can't. I won't permit it."
"What did you say?"
She swallowed, flushed and said again, thrusting her chin upward, "I won't permit it."
He smiled at her.
"In that case, what choice do I have?"
"Absolutely none. I'll expect you for breakfast at eight and we'll be out of here by eight-thirty, to be on the safe side. No, come at quarter to eight and we'll leave at eight-fifteen."
"Look, it means a lot," he said, and turned away from her as his eyes began to sting.
"Nobody should ever be alone. Not ever," she said.
2-75 Seventeen When he came pedaling up the hill just at sunrise on Wednesday morning, Doreen was waiting for him under their tree, smiling at him, teeth so bright in the lovely tanned face, her right hand resting on the handlebar of the new bike he had bought her, silver and blue, ultra-lightweight, but with the broader cross-country tires and fifteen-speed derailleur. She was glistening with sun oil and bug repellent, and she had their breakfast picnic strapped to the luggage carrier.
"Hey, Joe!" she called.
"It's really great. It's really a wonderful machine. It must have cost an awful lot."
"You're not supposed to ask how much presents cost, Doric."
She reached out and patted his cheek as he came close enough.
"So you're going to teach me manners too? I've been like two miles up the road already and back, just trying it out. I thought at first maybe it was too big, but it's just the right size frame, really."
She swung aboard and as soon as she had a little bit of speed she bent over and pulled each toe strap tight. She grinned back at him and yelled, "Catch me if you can, dads!"
After a mile he nearly did catch her, but she looked back in surprise and increased the pace. He looked at those muscular and elegant little haunches ahead of him, working away under the tight fit of her white short shorts. There was bare brown skin between the shorts and the yellow halter. Wind whipped at her hair. It was pale spun gold in the sunlight, touched faintly with the red overtones of the rising sun.
He began to be increasingly uncomfortable, sweating too heavily and enduring the pain in his side. He was panting for air, and he could feel the beginning of a cramp in his left calf.
Damn the girl, he thought. Damn her. Fifteen speeds forward gave her too much of an edge. He wished he'd bought her one with no gears at all.
Sweat was running into his eyes as they passed the old Addy place that had been deeded to the Church when the Addys moved into the Settlements and sold off their pigs and chickens. He had hoped she had decided to turn in there where they had picnicked on other mornings. But she went sailing by, and she was singing something. Fragments of the song came back to him on the morning air. It didn't seem to have any words at least not any he could understand. She turned off on the path which followed the fence line a mile beyond the Addy place, and then left the fence line and curved downhill to the shore of the creek.
She stayed aboard, but he could not risk his thin tires on all the roots and stones of the path, and so he swung down and walked the bike down. She was long out of sight. He stopped for a couple of minutes to catch his breath and massage the cramp in his calf. His blue cotton shirt was sweat-pasted to his chest in spite of the transient and deceptive coolness of early morning.
When he arrived at the bank of the stream he found she had spread the light blanket in a different place than before. He soon saw why. The creek, when it flooded, had spread a layer of mud and debris up over the bank and the slope of tufted grass where they had lain before. It was drying and cracking, and smelled faintly of vegetable decay. So she had settled them further up, under a stand of longleaf pines, on the carpet of brown needles between two long roots that stretched down toward the creek.
"Okay here?" she asked.
"Sure."
"What took you so long?"
"I had to walk my bike down from the road."
"You should get one like mine, sweetie."
"Maybe I will. Maybe I will."
She had bought the breakfast at a fast-food place beyond the motels. Two quart cardboard containers of some kind of reconstituted orange drink. There were eight honey buns, which seemed to be some dark sweet stickiness speckled with pecan parts, spread on bread dough containing the occasional raisin, and a stubby thermos filled with acid coffee laced with artificial cream and too much sugar. She laid the breakfast out on the blanket and, with a certain ceremony, handed him his 2-77 paper napkin and empty foam coffee cup with plastic spoon.
Doreen sat cross-legged, beamed at him, ate hungrily and said, "Eerie ice ear."
"What's that?"
She swallowed.
"It's really nice here. With the sun slanting in like now."
"Really nice," he agreed. His honey bun had turned into a glutinous paste and he could not swallow it down without the help of some of the simulated orange-type drink. As soon as it was down, he realized a sharp crumb of pecan had worked its way under the partial bridge on the right upper side of his mouth. He managed to slui
ce it out with some of the sugary coffee. He refused a third sticky bun. She ate it and the rest of them and finished off his orange drink and what was left of the coffee.
With speed and efficiency of movement she bundled the trash into the paper bag the juice had been in, and strapped it and the coffee thermos to the carrier on her new bike. She came back and, grinning down at him sitting there on the blanket, she quickly slipped the white shorts down and off, pulled her halter off and fell upon him, working at the buttons of his damp shirt, wearing a pretty frown of concentration, breathing through her open mouth.
When the morning sun was an hour higher, she lay beside him, her breathing slow and deep. Her left leg lay slack across his naked waist, and it felt uncommonly heavy. Her eyes were closed, the white curling lashes so close to him that he could not focus on them. They were a pale blur. Her mouth lay half open, the lips puffed. He could see the amber speckling of faint freckles against the golden tan of her left shoulder. Her head lay heavy on his left arm, numbing his fingers. Her face was the face of a child in sleep. The honey buns and orange drink were a leaden mass in his belly. He had not removed all of the pecan from under the partial bridge. The pain that had alarmed him when he was cycling hard to catch her had come back again fleetingly in the midst of lovemaking, giving him a momentary feeling of impending doom, quickly lost amid her dauntless energies.
He turned his head slightly and looked up through the pine boughs at patches of pale blue morning sky. A scouting patrol of crows came wheeling through the pines, cawing about successful raids. A blue jay stood on a low branch, tilting its head from side to side. He could hear the murmurous sound of the creek, and the cawing in the far distance, and the sound of a jet somewhere. The morning seemed uncommonly drab to him, as if all his senses had become dulled, faded by overuse, a morning of postcard scenes thumbed through too often.
The left calf was beginning to cramp again. She made a small buzzing snoring sound and he felt her breath against his chin and throat. With his passions spent he could look upon her asleep and see her as a vital, healthy, boring child. There was a certain grossness to the appetites he had helped her develop.
Six months from now she would be recovering nicely from the physical infatuation she had thought deathless love. And six years from now she would have to stop and think to remember very much about him or their affair.
God help me! The three words appeared in his mind so suddenly and unexpectedly he thought for a moment he had heard someone else speak them. But with his voice.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I want to stop this. It demeans me. It makes me feel small and dirty and wicked and cruel. Or perhaps, pointless. Maybe that is the worst of it. To feel that one's life has no meaning other than pleasurable sensation. A manipulation of nerve ends, achieved through lies and deceit. A strange thing happened to me when this girl's mother prayed...
And it happened again, just as quickly. As if a curtain had been pulled aside and then closed, giving him a glimpse of some wonder beyond his ability to comprehend. It made his eyes fill again. Vision. Revelation. But without body or substance.
She woke with a start, sat up quickly and slapped her thigh.
"Darn fire ant," she said.
"And here's another. And there's one on your ankle, Joe."
They killed the ants and got dressed. She put on the other clothing she had brought, clothing suitable for going back through the campus gate a gray skirt and a short-sleeved white blouse. She shook the blanket out and folded her shorts and halter into it and placed the bundle under the rubber straps on her carrier.
They both wheeled their bicycles up the curving narrow path toward the road. She was in the lead.
2-79 Turning her head halfway around to speak back to him behind her, she said, "This guy named Roger something smuggled a recording of the sound track of Flashdance into the dorm. We're not supposed to have music from any movie that isn't on the list, you know?"
"No, I didn't know."
"So Bobby made cassettes from the record, and he gave one to Lolly. She came sneaking into my room last night with that Walkman she has with the two sets of ear things, and we listened with the volume turned high until we like to freaked out, you know?"
"You can injure your hearing doing that, Doric."
"So back there when we were doing it, that music was jumping around in my head, right to the same beat and everything. Joe, honey, could you get me a Walkman like Lolly has? I mean, get one for us, because if we were both hearing that same music at the same time, it would be fantastic, I think.
I mean, it would be so much better and louder than those funny old records you play. That music from last night is still going on in my head."
'"Funny old records"?"
"You know. Like classical. Like in church almost."
He shut his jaw hard and winced with the pain under his partial bridge. His left calf was so knotted he limped badly. He felt as if he might throw up his orange drink and sticky buns.
His body was wet with a cold and oily perspiration.
They had reached the road. She turned to him and said, "You sure don't have very much to say this morning, Joe honey. You know, you look a little weird. You're kind of a funny color."
"I'm fine, really."
"Look, what about the Walkman? Will you get us a Walkman with two ear things? There's two holes on the top you plug into, so we both will be hearing the same music."
"I'll think about it."
"I can tell you don't like the idea. You've got that look. How do you know you won't like it unless we get one and try?"
He sighed audibly.
"Where do you get them?"
She grinned at him.
"Hey, that's wonderful. They got them at the Music Box in the Mall, like for ninety-nine fifty for the best one." She frowned at him.
"You act real down. Is anything wrong?"
"I guess I'm thinking about how much work I have to do. I've gotten a little behind."
"Would that be my little behind?"
"For God's sake! Don't be so goddamn coarse!"
"So pardon me for living! You've got no sense of humor today, Joe. You're kind of boring."
"That feeling could be mutual."
She stared at him, her face immobilized by shock and hurt.
Her eyes filled, and she mounted the bike and pedaled away, hard and fast, bending low over the handlebars.
As he had expected, she was waiting for him at their big tree.
As he dismounted and balanced his bicycle against the tree, she said, "You better say you're sorry."
"You just didn't understand what I meant."
"I know what you said."
"I meant that my general disposition this morning is boring both of us."
"Wasn't it any good for you back there?"
"It was beautiful, dear. But we're going to have to ease up a bit. I'm in the middle of a big computer project and working very long hours, and it's sapping my energies."
She was immediately concerned. She laid her hand on his arm.
"Poor honey! I guess at your age it could be' "I wish you wouldn't get onto age so often!"
"Don't be cross. Listen, I don't think of you as an old person.
I really don't. My dad is not even as old as you are, but he seems really old to me. He is all grown up, and you aren't really. I don't know how to say it."
"I think there's another thing wrong with me, Doric. I'm beginning to feel... reluctant about what we're doing. It's beginning to make me feel guilty."
"But, honey! Right from the very first time, we both said we both know it is a terrible sin. We couldn't help ourselves. It was the weakness of the flesh. And besides, without me, you said all your job responsibility and so on would be too much for you.
Gee, I feel guilty too, lots of times. But not much lately."
He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her quickly and gently on the lips.
"I know we love each other very mu
ch, but maybe we ought to try to be stronger."
"I... I don't think I can."
"We can at least try, can't we?"
"Well, I guess so. If you want. But I don't see the point."
"It will be good for us. A test of strength."
"When will I see you again, Joe?"
"I've got conferences the rest of this week. Because of Efflander leaving and Harold Sherman taking over."
"How about early next Sunday?"
"I may have to go to Atlanta to a weekend meeting. I'll let you know, okay?"
"I don't like all this. It makes me feel funny."
John D MacDonald - One More Sunday Page 34
