Such Good People

by Martha Whitmore Hickman

“Our plans have been uncertain,” Trace said.

  The clerk pored over the registration notebook, her finger with its red nail polish flicking through the succession of lined yellow pages. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Randall. We came in nine days ago, on a Saturday.”

  At the name Randall, one of the other clerks, who’d been working with his back to them, jumped up. “I’ll handle it, Jody,” he said.

  The young woman stepped back. Her glance darted from Trace to Laura, then back again. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was barely audible. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  Laura hooked her arm more tightly into Trace’s. “It’s all right,” he said. The young woman retreated into the inner office.

  The young man picked up the pen. “Tomorrow, then? I’ll make a note of it.” His hand shook, writing it down. “Don’t worry about the cancellation, Mr. Randall. We’ll handle it.”

  Trace shrugged. “Thank you.”

  They were moving away when the boy called, “Mr. Randall? Mrs. Randall?”

  They swung around. “Yes?”

  “I—I’m so sorry. All of us are.”

  “Yes,” Trace said. “Well, thank you. You’ve all been very kind.”

  Laura said, “Oh, by the way, we’ll be gone most of today, in case we get any calls.” There had been a stream of calls and telegrams of condolence since the word had reached Woodbridge and, through the competent operations of the funeral director, other towns where they’d lived.

  “You won’t be here for lunch then?” He reached for a pad.

  “No, we ordered box lunches. We’ll be hiking in the gorge.” She lifted the sack to show him the lunches neatly packed in a bag with a carrying handle.

  They went to the porch, where Bart and Philip waited. “Ready?” They headed for the parking lot, their feet crunching on the gravel.

  When they’d learned they’d have to stay over until tomorrow—Trace wanted to talk with the lodge’s lawyer—they’d decided to hike in the gorge again. Last week, they’d gone there together, the five of them, reveling in the rocks, the waterfall, the clear mountain air. “This is the most beautiful place I ever saw in my life!” Annie said. They remembered now. They would go back.

  Bart led the way, then Philip, Laura following, Trace behind her. The sun was bright, the air cool. The trail ran along a shallow, glittering stream. Trees laced and spiked against the mountains and the sky. In the open meadows, birds sang.

  At first, the trail ran through flat ground. Gradually, the terrain became hillier, rockier, bent at sharp angles around high rocks. Ahead of them, they saw the high cliff rising. Occasionally, they stopped to catch their breath.

  Laura, watching Bart and Philip move confidently along in front of her, thought, Relish these. They are what you have. Might she even forget, for a moment? The space in front of her yawned, empty.

  Suddenly, the trail angled steeply up, narrowed.

  They heard the water thundering down before they saw it.

  The trail stopped against a rock face. To their right lay the gorge, the waterfall crashing into the pool far below. Just as they remembered, those few short days ago.

  To the left, a narrow path led up around the huge boulder to a flat plane overlooking the gorge.

  Bart turned. “Shall we go on up?”

  They nodded, and started up the steep climb, single file, holding to the rocks to pull themselves along.

  They got to the top—Bart first, then Philip. “Need a hand, Mom?” Philip held his hand out to her and she took it, climbed the last step.

  She turned to Trace. “You okay?”

  He was already beside her on the high table rock.

  “Here?” Bart said, indicating a flat space safely away from the edge.

  They sat, put their lunches aside, and gave themselves over to sound and water and sunlight. The noise and sight of the water seemed an anesthesia, drawing into its sunlit plunge all anxiety and pain, loosing it in the white flume of the pool far below.

  Birds flew about, a few butterflies.

  A single orange butterfly drifted from the high trees. Laura watched as it flew, languid and hovering, above the gorge. Slowly it dipped, circled the deep pool, rose in an upward cone, and landed on a rock twenty feet from where she sat, mesmerized. It stayed a long time, its wings lifting and falling, lifting and falling, a slow blur of black and orange glittering in the sunlight. Philip turned and caught her eye, inclined his head in a nod toward the butterfly and smiled. He turned back and her mind went with him again to the preening wings in sunlight. I am thinking, too—Is it Annie, come to us?

  Then the creature lifted, poised, and—apparently weightless, fluid as air—arced over the haze of water and over the high rocks and disappeared among the trees. She remembered the words of the doctor, “You might want to do that—leave her out here where you brought her,” and thought, If we were to scatter her ashes anywhere, I could believe in this place.

  They ate their lunches and after a while, with a questioning lift of the shoulders from Bart and nods of acquiescence from the rest of them, they started back down.

  On the path, picking their way along the tumbling lower stream, the terrain gentler, Laura reached out to touch Trace’s arm. He was walking ahead of her now.

  He turned. “Yes?”

  “That butterfly—did you notice that orange butterfly on the cliff near us? It stayed there a long time.”

  “No,” he said. “I can’t say that I did.”

  “How could you have missed it?” She was impatient, grieved, that he hadn’t seen it.

  He shook his head distractedly. “I was thinking of Annie,” he said.

  *

  Back at the lodge, a clerk handed Laura a note. “A telephone message for you, Mrs. Randall.” She opened it. From Virginia Thayer Shaughnessy. In Massachusetts. She’d left a number.

  Trace looked over her shoulder. “Recognize the name?”

  “Indeed I do. My best girlhood friend. I dated her brother a few times. I’ve not talked with her in years. My mother told me she’d moved back to Hadley. They’d had a family tragedy—a car accident, I think. A little boy…” She put a hand to her mouth. “I’ll call her.”

  She dialed the number.

  A woman answered. “Hello?”

  “Ginny. This is Laura Randall.”

  “Laura, dear! I read about it in the paper. Oh, Laura. I’m so sorry.” Her voice broke, choked off. “Excuse me—I’ve been crying all day.”

  “Oh, Ginny.” She had begun to sob herself. “Does it get any better? I mean, are you all right, you and Tom?”

  “Sure, it gets better. But it’s hell for a while.” There was a sniffle at the other end of the line. “When are you coming to Hadley?”

  “Sometime in the fall, I’m sure, to see Mother.”

  “Call me, Laura. I’ll meet you at the airport. Promise?”

  “I will, Oh, I will!”

  When she left the phone booth, she was smiling. Trace was waiting. “It was as though I saw her yesterday! We’ll get together when I go to Hadley.”

  “Good.”

  They went to dinner. As they left, Laura said to Trace, “I actually tasted my food!”

  The next day, the boys packed the car while Trace met with the lawyer. “He was noncommittal,” Trace said when he came back. “The stable is a separate operation. We went and looked at the place again. I’ll speak with our lawyer when we get home. He can pursue it if it seems a question of negligence.” He took a paper from his pocket. “I have any information we might need.”

  Laura turned away in revulsion. “Please. Not now.”

  Bart opened the car door. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  Driving along, Trace took in the barren landscape, his hand curling tightly around the steering wheel. Two days they’d been on the road, hours of driving through terrain newly unfamiliar—as though all sights in the world would now be viewed as for the first time, and scarcely worth
anyone’s attention at that. The weather notable only if rain lashed across the window or darkness came early.

  They’d had breakfast at a Bob Evans restaurant. The sprightly red-and-white decor, the indomitable cheeriness of the waiter—everything seemed a detour into a surreal world. They’d scarcely spoken to one another—ordered their food, eaten in silence. He was glad to leave.

  “Whose turn to drive?” one of the boys had asked.

  “I guess it’s mine,” he’d said. They started out, traveling through the Arkansas scrub. He’d broach the subject soon. He’d been thinking about it during the last two days, trying to find some way through the darkness that pushed into his mind, filling his brain bone to bone, so even the skin over his skull felt tight. After a while, he said, “Would this be a good time to talk about the memorial service—what we’d like to include?” After conferring on the phone with Matt, they’d agreed on a service in the early evening, three days after they got home.

  No one answered. He took their silence for consent. “I know it’s not an easy subject, but we have more time now than we will when we get home.”

  Still, none of them said anything. The silence was awkward—as though he had broken some tribal rule. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw Laura turn and look out the window. Finally, Philip said, “What do you think we should have, Dad?”

  “The traditional Scriptures, certainly. Some favorite hymns. Matt will have some kind of message, I suppose.” He avoided the word eulogy —that was for old people, wasn’t it, people with accomplishments, descendants, a long life to review?

  Laura said, “I suppose we’ll want a time for people to say something if they want to?” He heard an edge of impatience in her voice. Still, she was trying to help him. He was grateful.

  “Yes, that, too.”

  He waited. He wished the boys would speak. “Some hymns?” he said. “‘Amazing Grace’? ‘Precious Lord’? Do you like those?”

  Silence.

  “They’re all right,” Philip said.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Bart said.

  Exasperated, he said, “It’s important that we decide, and you’re no help!”

  The tension in the car thickened. “I don’t feel like talking about it,” Bart snapped.

  “You plan it, Dad. It just doesn’t matter to me,” Philip said.

  He slammed his hand against the wheel. “Well, it should matter! These are important symbols. We want a service that’s helpful, that expresses something. Other people will be there, too.

  A truck rumbled by. Dust from the road flew up against the windshield. “Is it some kind of public show?” Bart’s voice was scornful. “You afraid your colleagues won’t think you’re doing it right?”

  He felt the heat rising in his face. “No, I’m not. I want it to be right for us. And for Annie!”

  “She could care less. She wasn’t even going to church,” Philip said.

  Laura turned in her seat. “This is terrible!” she said. “All we’ve been through and as much as we need one another, and we’re fighting over the memorial service!”

  “Who’s fighting?” Trace said. “I’d just like some help. Matt is going to ask us what we want. I’m trying to suggest options.”

  “Options!” Laura burst out. “What is this—a stock exchange? A multiple-choice exam?”

  Trace shot a glance at her. She was staring straight ahead, her chin thrust forward. “Calm down, Laura. I’m just trying to start the discussion. I made a few suggestions. Is that so bad?”

  “What’s bad is that you sound like you’re planning a meeting for some board of directors.”

  “Damn!” he said. “I’m opening up the subject—so we can make some decisions about the memorial service. Hymns, readings, whatever. Matt will have ideas, too. I want to be prepared. What do you want?”

  She made a strained sound in her throat and threw her hands in the air. “I want my daughter back.”

  “Join the club,” he said.

  Silence hung like a dagger.

  Half an hour farther down the road, Philip said, “I guess ‘Amazing Grace’ would be okay.”

  Trace felt a lump rise in his throat. “Good. A start, at least,” he said.

  *

  Signs for Woodbridge began to appear. As they got closer, the heaviness in the car shifted. They’d get home. The shock of Annie’s absence would confront them all over again. He could put it off a few minutes. “When we get there,” he said, “you want me to go by the post office and get the mail?”

  “Sure,” Bart said. “Might as well.”

  Soon they were at the turnoff. He took the main trunk line to the center of town, drove to the post office, and parked in the familiar lot.

  He got out of the car, turned to look back through the window. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said.

  The same crew stood behind the counter. One of the men was a look-alike for Joseph Heller. He’d thought of telling him, but the fellow probably wouldn’t recognize the name.

  He went to an open window—a clerk he didn’t recognize. “I’m picking up the mail for Randall,” he said.

  The man went back, returned with a long canvas basket full of mail. The yellow HOLD card was on top. The clerk picked it up. “You want to resume delivery? It says here to hold a few more days.”

  “Please, yes. We came home early.”

  “Well, it’s always nice to be home,” the man said. He glanced at the card again. “Wait, there’s a package.”

  This time, he returned with a long rectangular box. He read the label. “That’s a new one, Strings ’N Things—some craft shop in Colorado.”

  “I don’t know,” Trace said. “We’ll return the basket.” He took it to the car, the box lying precariously on top.

  “What’s the box?” Laura asked.

  “A craft shop in Colorado?” he said.

  For a minute, she looked puzzled. Then she said, her voice breaking, “That’s Annie’s birthday present—the Eye of God.”

  *

  Trace turned the key in the door. They entered in silence, fearful, expecting some new terror to lunge at them from behind a corner or a door. Or that the doors and windows had exchanged places, or the ceilings and the floors, in acknowledgment of the dislocation of their own lives.

  Astonishingly, it was as it had been. The afternoon sun laid its customary windowpane patterns on the buff-and-blue vinyl of the kitchen floor, eased onto the green carpet, the dark mahogany of the dining room furniture, covered now with a fine layer of dust.

  For a while, they wandered, each of them, room to room, reacquainting themselves with once-familiar places.

  Neighbors came. Friends called and dropped by. By midafternoon, the kitchen was full of food—platters of red tomatoes, casseroles, a tureen of chicken in a savory sauce with vegetables. A friend came bearing two pies, balanced on her open hands like an ancient priest offering prayer. Another held up a large canvas bag. “I came to get your laundry.” She brushed away tears. “I’ll bring it all back tomorrow.”

  Gordon came, on his way to his summer job at Burger King. Eyes bright with tears, he hugged them each in turn. “I loved her,” he said. “We were gonna get married.”

  Laura and Trace nodded. Why demur?

  Leaving, he said, “I love you guys. I’ll come back.”

  “Oh, please do.” Laura reached out to hug him again—this slender boy who had known Annie more intimately than anyone else.

  Matt came. They converged on the living room. He hugged each of them wordlessly. He brushed his hand over his eyes, his line of sandy hair. “Can we sit down?”

  Laura and Trace sat on the couch, the boys on chairs flanking the window, mottled now with shade from the maple tree on the front walk. For a moment, they listened to one another’s breathing, to the ticking clock. Then Matt said, “Before we talk about the service or any of that, tell me about you, about Annie, and what happened.”

  At first, no one spoke; then Trace sat forward, “W
ell, as we said over the phone, she and Bart had gone riding and I was in the lobby of the lodge talking to a colleague. Then I noticed a boy rush in and go into the inner office and—”

  Laura stood abruptly. “Excuse me. I’ll make some coffee.”

  “I’ll come help you.” Philip followed her out.

  In the kitchen, she blurted, “I can’t bear to hear him go through all that again—that flat voice—every agonizing detail.”

  Philip was occupied with the clatter of getting down cups and saucers and didn’t answer.

  The coffee made, she took the tray to the living room.

  “We were talking about the service,” Trace said. She passed around the steaming cups, then sat down on the sofa beside him.

  “Yes,” she said. “We talked about that some on our way home.”

  *

  The next day, they made trips to the airport to pick up Trace’s parents, Ron and Doris. Howard and Irene and Trace’s brother, Theo, were coming in tomorrow, the day of the service, and would stay with friends who had offered hospitality. Bart went alone to pick up Paula.

  In the afternoon, Lillian called—“just to talk with you a minute, Lou.” Laura had talked with her and Rachel several times, from Colorado and on the way home. To Laura’s question, “What about Mother?” Lillian had said, “I don’t think she should go down for the service. Let her stay here with me. Wouldn’t that be best? I’ll come down later, dear, when the flurry is past. But for Mother, now—the least confusion tires her. And she needs a lot of waiting on. It would be hard for you both.” In a way, it had been a relief. To her mother’s repeated question, “Do you want me to come? I feel I should be with you,” she had said, needing to be strong for Rachel’s sake, and for her own, “Not now, Mother. There’ll be too much going on these first days. In a week or two. Or I’ll go up to Hadley. I need to be with you soon.”

  Trace called the funeral director. Yes, the ashes had arrived. No, they didn’t want to use the facilities of the funeral home—the service would be in the church. Yes, they would come over. He turned from the phone to ask Laura, “Can we go over now?”

  She snapped a plastic lid on a box of green beans. “Yes,” she said.