by Nancy Rue
Just to be proactive, I made sure the lock on her bedroom was secure. I could barely move the thing myself, so she definitely wouldn’t be able to. I checked the medicine cabinet in the guest bath; the only thing in there was a container of Tylenol, which I pocketed, and an aging tube of Crest. I hadn’t had an overnight guest since Sylvia died.
I tried to be quiet as I tiptoed out and crossed the guest room to the door, but Geneveve came up on her elbows. Whatever she had to say, she better make it quick, because her neck could barely support her head.
“Thank you, Miss Angel,” she said.
“You’re going to look beautiful at your daddy’s service,” I said.
“No.” She closed her eyes as if to puzzle something out. “I mean thank you for not treatin’ me like a ho. I know I am one, but thank you.”
She let the elbows slide her back onto the pillow. In an instant she was halfway to someplace else.
“You’re welcome,” I said anyway.
I watched her, the way I had for a long time the night before. Clearly she was an addict, but there was something sweet about her that went deeper than the drugs and the child neglect and the bad sex she’d been guilty of. It was something that whispered with every sleeping breath, “I don’t want to be this way.”
I just had no idea how to help her be anything else.
For which there was no reason to be guilty, but I made tracks for the Oreos anyway. I owed it to myself.
MTV was screaming from the den, and Desmond was in a shoulder stand twirling a throw pillow on the soles of his Adidas.
“Look at this, Big Al,” he said as I passed.
“I could do that too if I had feet the size of surfboards,” I said.
In the kitchen I opened the snack drawer—and it was all I could do not to scream obscenities.
I could handle the channel-flipping, the attempted shoplifting, the gutter talk. But when I saw that empty package, crumb-less, with the plastic literally licked clean and stuffed back in between the pretzels and the granola bars, I lost it. Defiled wrapper in hand, I marched from the kitchen to the den, stood over the kid, and waved the thing in his face.
“You ate my Oreos,” I said. “Nobody eats my Oreos and lives to tell about it.”
I was pulling out all the stops—demon voice, flaring nostrils—which apparently called for him to bring out his best stuff as well. Desmond lowered his feet, sat up, and raised his hands in surrender.
“I didn’t know that was your drug a choice, Big Al,” he said, smile engaged to the fullest extent of its charm. “Otherwise I’d a stopped with them M&M’s.”
“No way you ate my M&Ms, too,” I growled.
“Not yet.”
He reached under the cushion on the loveseat and pulled out the bag I’d been hoarding—in the drawer of my bedside table upstairs.
“That’s it,” I said. “Give me the bag.”
He tossed it to me as if it were his idea.
“Come on, we’re going.” I grabbed my purse from the hook by the kitchen door and shook it at him. “There better not be anything missing from here, or our first stop is going to be juvenile hall.” I gave him a slight shove onto the porch. “Although you’ve probably been there already.”
“Nah. Ain’t nobody ever caught me before.”
“Is everybody in your neighborhood blind?” I gave him another push down the steps.
“Nah,” he said again. “They just stupid.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not. Keep going—we’re headed for that garage, straight ahead.”
I kept my fingers curled around his T-shirt sleeve, just in case he decided to shoot off behind Owen Schatz’s house and lose himself in the shadows like the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist. Though if he did, I wasn’t sure I’d stop him.
“What are we doin’?” he said.
“We’re going for a ride.”
“Where? Juvie?”
There was only a hint of apprehension in the question, but I capitalized on it.
“If you’re not careful, yeah. For openers we’re just going for a ride in my van.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s nothing in there you can destroy, steal, or use as a weapon.”
“Huh,” he said.
Great. I’d just challenged him.
“You like horses?” I said.
“No.”
“Too bad, because we’re going to go see one.” And my boss, who would only believe my reason for taking two days off if I brought him the living proof.
“Can I drive?” Desmond said as I opened the garage door.
“Do I have a death wish? You are unbe—”
I stopped, because he had—three reverent steps in front of my Harley. He breathed his favorite word out long and awe-filled, but beyond that he didn’t seem able to speak at all.
“You like?” I said.
He nodded and began a slow circle around the bike, all wide eyes and open mouth, as if he were in the presence of royalty. If I’d known it would render him speechless, I would have brought him out here twenty-four hours ago.
“This your old man’s?” he managed to say.
“No,” I said. “I don’t have an old man. It’s mine.”
“No way.” Desmond looked at me with only half the awe he was bestowing on the bike, but I could see my coolness factor rising in his eyes.
“Can I ride it?” he said, predictably.
“What do you think?”
“Can you take me for a ride?”
“I don’t have a helmet for you or I would,” I said. Before I could stop them, more words tumbled out. “But you can sit on it if you want to.”
For the first time since I’d laid eyes on the boy, he looked like he’d come up against something he couldn’t fake his way through. I knew the feeling.
“I’ll show you,” I said, and I gave him the same instructions Stan had given me in the showroom. Desmond’s feet didn’t quite touch the ground, but when I held the bike up so he could put them on the pegs, he leaned back in the seat and extended his arms from the handlebars and looked at me with a pure delight that doubled the ache in my chest.
I knew what was stirring in him as he sat astride the bike that seemed to have a soul—I could see it in the awed innocence that shone in his enormous eyes. He looked like any other young boy now—young enough and wise enough to know what he couldn’t do and what he so wanted to do. I meant it this time—if I had an extra helmet I would take him for a ride right now, out into the labyrinth of streets and …
And where? Where could we go that would lead us anywhere but right back here, where neither of us knew the first thing about what to do?
Desmond rolled the silent throttle and made his own rumbling Harley noise.
I guessed we would just fake it till we made it.
Or until God showed up again.
CHAPTER NINE
Mid-September usually meant the beginning of a soft autumn for St. Augustine, with a sweet, salty breeze blowing in off the bay and sunshine turning the coquina to gold. But the morning of the funeral dawned iron gray and windy, the effects of some hurricane in the Caribbean, the weather man said—when I could get the remote away from Desmond long enough to check.
Rain came in periodic dumps, filling the gutters with murky brown water and rendering even the indomitable cathedral drab and despondent. It was so appropriately dismal, even if Chief had paid people to come to the service, they would probably cancel rather than come out and add more misery to the day.
But there were a handful of cars in front of Bates and Hockley when Geneveve, Desmond, and I arrived in my van. The “basic” funeral didn’t include a limo for the family, which was fine with me. Desmond would probably have had the whole thing dismantle
d before we could pull out of Palm Row.
Chief met us at the door in a well-cut gray suit, which he somehow made work with the ponytail. While Mr. Hockley took Desmond and Geneveve to see Ed, Chief ushered me to the back of the chapel for a peek. Five people took up one row; I recognized Willie, Janice, and the male night nurse with the mullet among them. On the other side of the aisle, a short dark-haired woman sat, head bowed.
“Is that Hank?” I whispered.
“Yeah. She’s good to have at things like this.”
I could see that. I also thought I could see a trace of tenderness in Chief’s eyes. Owen would have them pegged as an item. Made sense.
A long wail rose from the viewing room and Desmond appeared in the doorway as if the sound had thrust him into the lobby. He crossed to me, visibly shaking off fear as he came, so that by the time he reached my side, he was again swaggering like he was about to sell us a used car. Behind him his mother’s grief continued to permeate the air, right along with the oppressive scent of roses. They had to be piping that aroma in with the organ music, because I saw only two flower arrangements at the front of the chapel, and there wasn’t a rose in the bunch.
“Chief,” I said, “this is Desmond Sanborn, Ed’s grandson.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, son,” Chief said.
Desmond grinned at him. “I ain’t never met my daddy that I know of, but I’m pretty sure he ain’t you.”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“He callin’ me ‘son,’ like he my daddy or somethin’.”
“Not guilty,” Chief said. I could barely keep a straight face, but Chief was, as usual, unfazed.
Desmond peered into the chapel, and his grin shrank. “I got to sit in a church?”
“It won’t kill you,” I said. “I’ll probably take care of that first.”
“Big Al got it in for me,” Desmond said to Chief, grin reappearing. “Dude—here come the Preacher Man.”
He punctuated the announcement with a curse, though it was at least under his breath. The Reverend Howard didn’t appear to hear it as he swept down the aisle of the chapel still zipping his robe, something I’d never seen him do before.
“Big Al?” Chief whispered to me.
“At least it’s not something obscene,” I whispered back.
I put my hand out to Garry to avert a hug, although he didn’t look like he was in an affectionate mood. He nodded politely to Chief and Desmond—with a second glance for Desmond because he had his eyes closed and his hands pressed in mock prayer at his chest—and said to me, “It’s time to get started.”
Simultaneously Mr. Hockley and a younger man in an obviously borrowed suit rolled the closed casket through a side door at the front of the chapel, and the six people in the pews stood up.
I put Desmond in Chief’s care, retrieved a once-again rocking Geneveve from the floor of the viewing room, and joined them on the front row. I looked twice to make sure the figure standing in the aisle was the Reverend Garry Howard. His face was sketched with hard lines, as if he were steeled for a fight rather than a funeral. A sweaty uneasiness seeped into my palms.
“We’ve come together,” he said, “to pay our respects to …” He consulted the full sheet of paper in his hand. “Edwin Sanborn. And to share the grief of …” Back to the notes. “Desmond and Guinevere.”
I heard Desmond mutter something, and saw Chief’s big hand come down on the kid’s leg. Geneveve seemed oblivious to the mistake that went up my spine like barbed wire.
From there Garry opened his Bible to, as he put it, “perhaps bring some meaning to this sad occasion.” The lines in his face relaxed a little, and so did I. He hadn’t had a lot of time to prepare. Maybe he was thrown off by that. Maybe now we’d get a glimpse of the Garry Howard who could put not only the deceased but the mourners to rest in their souls.
But he chose for his text the story of Lazarus and the rich man, and there was no doubt that he saw Edwin as the one crying out for water from the fires of hell.
“The death of an unsaved person calls up a deeper sadness in us,” he said as he closed his Bible on the obtrusive sheet of paper, “for the one who has not passed into the loving arms of Jesus Christ and for those left to mourn not just the loss of a loved one but his eternal fate.”
I could taste the metallic tinge of blood as I bit down on my lip. Only the fact that Geneveve was obviously not absorbing any of it kept me from bolting from my seat and screaming, “Stop this!”
“But we can still take comfort in this cautionary tale that Jesus has shared with us,” Garry went on. “He is telling us that all we have to do is believe in Him, give our lives to Him, so that those who lay us to our final rest will be able to rejoice that we are at last at home with Him. Amen.”
A voice or two answered with faint amens. Mine wasn’t one of them.
“Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.”
He held out his winged arms briefly and bowed his head, while “Amazing Grace” swelled through the pipeline. I stared at him. He couldn’t even offer a prayer for Edwin or Geneveve or Desmond? I’d always had a list of happily irreverent adjectives for the Reverend Garry Howard, but the word cruel had never been among them.
The “prayer” lasted all of fifteen seconds, after which Mr. Hockley and his hired hand wheeled the casket down the aisle as if there were two more waiting in the wings for their turn. They had it in the hearse before we could get Geneveve out of the chapel. She’d slipped so far into shock that she couldn’t walk. Chief finally lifted her into his arms and carried her to the door, where Garry Howard was peeling off his robe. I collected all the self-control I had and went over to him.
“The internment is at San Lorenzo,” I said.
His brow furrowed. “You didn’t say anything about a graveside service.”
“I thought it was part of the package.”
He draped his vestment over his arm and looked warily at the pitifully small knot of mourners who were standing near the front door not even attempting to look like they weren’t listening. He leaned close to me, hand on my elbow. “I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, Allison. I think you and I have more than one of those to work out, don’t we?” He gave my arm a squeeze and let go. “But right now I have another commitment.”
“Who does half a funeral?” I wanted to shout at him. He did, obviously, because that was what Ed had just gotten. If that much.
He looked into my eyes as if he expected agreement. I gave him none, but turned to look for Chief. With Geneveve still shivering in his arms, he stood outside under the dripping awning, whistling through his fingers at the hearse as it pulled away.
“Where’s it going?” I said.
“To the cemetery,” Hank said. She was already putting on her riding gloves. “We’re going to have to book to catch up.”
I gaped at the empty driveway. “They’re going to go dump the coffin in the hole and leave?”
“Not if I can help it.” Hank jerked her head toward the door. “You and the family follow Chief and me in your van. I know a shortcut.”
Her voice was so solid that I would have followed her to the gallows right then. It had to be more sacred than this unholy place.
“We’re right behind you,” Willie said to her. “Lord, I never saw such a funeral.”
Chief deposited Geneveve in my front seat, where she held onto herself as if she were afraid she would shake apart. Desmond knelt on the floor between her and me, giving a running commentary on the coolness of following a pair of Harleys down the back roads of St. John’s County.
“This is sweet,” he said more than once. “I have got to get me one of those.”
I had one, and I was sure I didn’t look as “sweet” and sure as Chief and Hank did, their bikes leaning in perfect synch like a pair of figu
re skaters. They had a command of the road, and yet there was a flow, an ease to their riding as they led us wherever we were going. Following them was the only thing that had seemed at all right about this funeral.
“Lookit!” Desmond cried out. He jabbed his index finger at the hearse, which we caught up to at the cemetery gate. “Us and them choppers, dude, we kicked us some serious—”
“Tail,” I finished for him.
I wasn’t sure how we’d managed to cut the hearse off at the proverbial pass. The kid at the wheel took the cemetery’s curves so fast I expected the coffin to be upside down by now.
The rain was slanting sideways in sheets as the driver and another guy, who hadn’t even bothered with a suit, skidded the hearse to a stop on the wide gravel path near an open grave and yanked the coffin out onto the bier. While we huddled without a traditional canopy, sharing umbrellas and dashboard shields and whatever else we could find to cover our heads, they positioned the casket over the hole, lowered it in with the respect due a dead hamster, and took off, spewing gravel in their wake.
“Are you serious?” I said.
“Godspeed,” Hank said drily. She visibly rearranged her thoughts and looked up at Chief. “You want to say a few words?”
He nodded and, with rainwater dripping from his eyebrows, began to speak. The wind caught many of his phrases and carried them off, but I captured a few.
“Faithful husband to his beloved Coreen until she passed …
“As a father and grandfather … sacrificed everything for Geneveve and Priscilla and Desmond …
“Told me stories about his work as a landscaper for the city … he said very few people noticed when his work was done well, but let a hedge have a twig out of place and someone was always ready to point that out to him …
“… said that’s how he grew as a person, when somebody trimmed him back.” Chief closed his eyes. I could see him swallowing his way to his next words. “We can say he would have lived longer if he’d had better care … our refusal to accept that a man barely sixty should die. But I think Edwin Sanborn was perfectly shaped when he passed from us. The work was done. Now ours begins.”
