Arnold loved his job. As Vice President of Milk Production at the Hershey Foods Corporation, it was his responsibility to secure regular supplies of milk for the factory; without milk there could be no milk chocolate, and hence, he told her, his position was pivotal. Ensuring the quality of the milk was as important a part of Arnold’s job as contracting the dairy farmers to provide it: the Hershey factory had no use for milk that tasted unnaturally sweet, aromatic or bitter.
‘The milk that comes out of a cow is only as good as the food that goes into it,’ he’d explained to Nancy over dinner on their first formal date. ‘The farmers have to make sure that their pastures are clear of weeds such as buckhorn, ragweed and wild dog fennel, because those are the kinds of weed that flavour milk. They also have to be careful not to feed clover, alfalfa or soybean silage to the cows immediately before milking. Strong-flavoured feedstuffs like these can make the milk taste as bad as the weeds do. And sure as icicles melt, they should never feed them vegetable crops: nothing tastes worse than milk flavoured by cabbages and turnips!’
‘What about thistles?’ Nancy had asked him. ‘Do they make milk taste funny?’
Nancy recalled for Doc the look Arnold had given her: ‘He made me feel as if I had special needs or something. “Cows avoid thistles!” he said. I told him if he ever looked at me like that again, I’d deck him.’
Arnold died in his seventy-second year with Nancy at his bedside. Shortly before he breathed his last, he gestured to Nancy that he wanted to say something to her. Presuming Arnold wanted to tell her how much he’d loved her, she drew closer to him. ‘Dust, Nancy,’ he whispered. ‘Where does dust come from? And money, where does money go?’
The funeral he’d arranged for himself had spared no expense. The coffin was the most lavish model the funeral home stocked and made from the finest mahogany – ironically, the most endangered tree on the planet. The music he’d chosen for his exit from the world had been as eccentric as the life he’d lived – and equally as puzzling as his final words. The opening hymn was Good King Wenceslas, a Christmas Carol about a king going out in the snow to give alms to a poor peasant, followed by When Mothers of Salem, a hymn about children. For a childless man who never gave to charity, as Nancy could recall, these were enigmatic and arcane choices.
Arnold Skidmore had also chosen two contemporary pieces of music for the service: The Heartache by Warren Zevon, a sad song about unrequited love, and Pachuco Cadaver by Captain Beefheart. If Nancy had been mortified by Arnold’s death, she was even more so by these choices of music. Anybody hearing the lyrics to The Heartache, she told Doc, would have been convinced that the real love of his life had been someone else, certainly not her. She recalled people leaving the church and giving her their condolences, but few actually looking her in the eye. Nancy also wondered if by choosing a piece of music by Captain Beefheart – music she’d never allowed him to play in the house if she was present – Arnold wasn’t also cocking a final snook at her.
The minister had also taken exception to Arnold’s last choice of music. Written down on a service sheet, the title Pachuco Cadaver conjured in the minds of the unknowing – and this was the entirety of the congregation – a piece of seventeenth century European funereal music, when in fact it was a discordant four-and-a-half-minute song about a Chicano who wore zoot suits in the 1950s. From the opening and endlessly repetitive chord sequence, the minister decided that this was music that should never be heard inside a church again.
The intervening years had also taken their toll on Nancy’s family, its members and its fortunes. Martha Travis had been the first to die. From the time of Doc meeting her, Miss Martha’s condition had deteriorated unabated, and with a speed that had taken the family by surprise – much faster than Martha’s own mother’s decline had been. News of her mother’s death reached Nancy shortly after she’d moved to Hershey. She didn’t dwell on the details of her mother’s final years, but told Doc she took solace in the fact that her mother had died at Oaklands and not in some soulless and amorphous nursing home. Hilton had promised his wife such an ending and, despite the distress it caused him, had kept to his word.
‘I know you and my father never really hit it off, Gene, but he was quite a man. I couldn’t have asked for a better father, or my mother for a better husband.’
‘I presume he’s dead too?’ Doc asked.
‘Well, if he isn’t, then he’s well over a hundred and living some place I don’t know about,’ Nancy replied. ‘Yes, he’s dead; Daisy and Ruby too.’
Doc had never met Daisy, but news of Ruby’s death stung him. Apart from Nancy, she’d been the only member of the Travis family he’d actually liked. ‘What happened to Ruby?’ he asked.
‘She died in childbirth when she was forty-five,’ Nancy replied, tears welling in her eyes. ‘She should never have been trying for a child at that age. It was Homer who was insistent, and Daddy never forgave him for Ruby’s death. There was no trial or anything, but everyone pretty much assumed that Daddy killed him.’
Ruby and Homer had started trying for children soon after they were married, but for many years Ruby had failed to conceive. When eventually she did become pregnant, the parturition proved a difficult one, and the baby (a girl) was delivered still-born. Doctors warned both her and Homer that any future pregnancy might well put Ruby’s own life at risk: apart from her already advancing years, she was now beginning to show signs of diabetes and high blood pressure.
Homer, however, set upon the continuation of the Comer name, reminded Ruby that her own mother had given birth to Nancy while in her forties. He persuaded Ruby to try for a child one last time, promising her the best medical care available, whatever the cost. Things, however, hadn’t worked out quite the way Homer had hoped, and his wife and future heir (a boy) ended up on mortuary slabs in the Memphis Baptist Memorial Hospital.
Still grieving the loss of Martha, Hilton Travis was totally unprepared for the loss of Ruby. He could understand the death of his wife, but not the death of a daughter, and in his mind he knew the person responsible for it: Homer F Comer. (And the F he placed between Homer and Comer didn’t stand for Fred – Homer had no middle name.)
For the sake of his family, however, Hilton made heroic efforts to disguise the feelings of contempt he now bore his son-in-law, but in doing so often failed miserably. During one of her regular visits to Oaklands – and several months after Ruby’s body had been laid to rest – Nancy had asked him casually how Homer was doing. Hilton had looked up from the newspaper he’d been reading and said matter-of-factly that for all he cared Homer could be crawling across the Tallahatchie Bridge with a knife stuck in his back.
Hilton’s disdain for the man only grew after Homer remarried. The insensitivity of this act had appalled him, and caused him to doubt the sincerity of the man’s grieving. Another year was to pass, however, before he actually decided to kill his son-in-law.
When Hilton suggested to Homer they take a hunting trip together and get reacquainted, family and friends were surprised. Surprise, however, turned to shock when Hilton returned from the trip with the body of Homer sprawled on the backseat of his truck. ‘Terrible business,’ Hilton had said, somewhat perfunctorily. ‘Shot him by mistake.’ That night, and for the first time since the deaths of Martha and Ruby, Hilton could be heard wandering around the house whistling.
It was quickly settled that Homer’s death had been an accident, that he’d been killed by a single shot to the back of the head after Hilton had mistaken him for a buck. Even though the sheriff thought the damage to Homer’s skull suggested that the bullet had come from much closer range than that described by Hilton, he readily accepted Hilton’s story. Hilton Travis, after all, was a friend and, moreover, the person who had been most instrumental in securing his election as sheriff in the first place.
Though Hilton knew his actions would never bring Ruby back to life, he was consoled in his final years by the knowledge that Homer had now joined her in death; bur
ied in his own county far away from the Travis family plot. Still an elegant man in his old age, Hilton dated occasionally but told his children he would never remarry. He died of a heart attack in his eightieth year and was buried next to his beloved wife.
‘Jesus, Nancy, that’s some story,’ Doc said. ‘No one could ever accuse your family of being dull.’
‘True,’ Nancy replied, ‘but on reflection, dull would have been preferable. Dull and ordinary. No major ups and no major downs. No tragedies. But that’s not the way life is, is it? You know that as much as I do.’
Doc nodded. ‘You know who I’ve often thought about over the years?’ he asked. ‘Dora. I never met anyone quite like her. She still brings a smile to my face.’
Nancy laughed. ‘Well, Gene, you might like to know that she never forgave you for what you said about her cooking. You sure wiped the smile from her face.’
‘That was your damned brother’s doing,’ Doc said. ‘I hope to God he’s dead – sorry, Nancy. Just a figure of speech. Of course I don’t hope that. How is he?’
‘Alive,’ Nancy said, ‘though I don’t have much to do with him these days, and can’t remember the last time I actually saw him. It might have been better if he had died. Maybe then, Oaklands would still be in the family. Do you know where he’s living now?’ Doc indicated he didn’t. ‘In an apartment complex in Clarksdale!’
Hilton had left Oaklands equally to his three surviving children. Brandon had been charged with its stewardship on the understanding that all profits would be shared with his siblings on a yearly basis. Neither Nancy nor Daisy had minded when Brandon moved his family into Oaklands: from a farming perspective it made practical sense, and as both daughters had established lives outside the state, neither had any interest in moving back to Mississippi. For the first few years Hilton’s arrangements ran to plan, the estate continued to prosper and dividends were deposited into Nancy and Daisy’s bank accounts. But then things took a turn for the worse. Apart from his personality, Brandon had one other weakness: he was a gambling man and, ultimately, an unsuccessful one.
During his father’s lifetime, Brandon’s gambling had been controlled and hidden from the rest of the family by the finite salary he received and his lack of any real collateral. When he moved into Oaklands and took control of the estate’s finances, however, all constraints were removed and the wagers he ventured grew larger as his trips to Las Vegas became more frequent. His reputation as a high roller crystallized in the city, and casinos vied with each other to fly him free of charge to their desert lairs and accommodate him, at no cost, in their best hotel suites. Brandon was too dumb, too addicted to smell a rat. All he smelled was money and, eventually, his own stale sweat.
‘Brandon gambled Oaklands clean away. The estate had to be sold to repay his debts and what was left, which wasn’t much, Daisy and I shared. Brandon’s wife left him and took the children with her. He got a job as a farm manager, and ever since he’s rented a place. He’s supposed to have gotten treatment for his addiction, but I still hear stories of him bumming rides to Tunica and catching the bus to the casinos on the Gulf Coast.
‘He’s started calling recently, asking me about my health and feigning concern. He’s waiting for me to go like Mom, thinking he’ll get my money when I die, but that’s never going to happen. He doesn’t know it, but I’ve already made my will and he gets squat. He’ll contest it, of course – if he’s still alive – but the lawyers have told me that the will is water-tight, and I also have doctors on record attesting to the fact that the state of my mind was sound when I wrote it.’
Nancy’s story unfolded over the two days they spent together in Hershey. The first evening of Doc’s visit they ate at his hotel. Aware of the formality of the hotel’s elegant Circular Dining Room, Nancy had brought him one of Arnold’s suits to wear. Doc agreed to wear the jacket but told Nancy that if it was okay with her, and with no disrespect to Arnold intended, he’d stick to wearing his own pants.
On the second evening, and the night before Doc was scheduled to return home, Nancy cooked a meal at her house. After they’d eaten, they retired to the living room and Nancy poured brandy into two snifter glasses.
‘That was a damn fine meal, Nancy,’ Doc said. ‘Not bad for a girl who could only cook grilled cheese sandwiches when I met her.’
Nancy smiled. ‘Do you think the elephant enjoyed his meal, too?’
‘What elephant?’
‘The one in the room, Gene. We’ve spent two lovely days together – and I mean that – but we’ve both been avoiding the one subject we have to talk about, the reason I phoned you.’
‘I presume you mean the promise I made to you at Oaklands?’
‘Yes,’ Nancy said. ‘I need to know if you’re still prepared to keep it.’
It was the conversation Doc had dreaded.
The Promise
Like most decisions Doc made in life, his promise to help Nancy had initially come from the gut. It was a decision-making process that generally worked well for him. His track record for getting things right or wrong was no better or worse than those of his more cerebral-minded peers who, no doubt, would have dismissed his two-cigarette decision as hasty and ill-considered. In Doc’s mind, however, he could have stood in that cotton field for another two years and still come to the same conclusion; all the reading and subsequent thought he’d given the matter had in no way changed his mind.
Doc believed that death was a part of life’s course, natural and unavoidable. Sometimes, it was a bad thing, as in the case of Beth and Esther, but other times it could be a good thing, a blessing. After a lifetime spent ministering to the sick and dying, it was difficult for him to think any differently. He’d watched terminally ill patients inch their way towards painful and undignified deaths too often, and it had been impossible for him not to register their sufferings. On occasion, he’d given them drugs to reduce their pain, even though he knew – and, if truth be told, often hoped – that the drug itself would cause the patient to die sooner. He had felt no guilt.
In Doc’s opinion, any person with no hope of recovery and no quality of life had the right to decide the circumstances of their own death, when it would happen and how it would happen. He saw no reason for a person to go on living against their wishes and exist for the sake of existence. Moreover, Doc wasn’t a religious man, and so wasn’t swayed by the argument that only God could determine the length of a person’s life and how that life ended.
Doc knew that Nancy’s request to die was of her own volition and that she’d considered it well. No one had pressurized her into making this decision, and no close family member now remained to be affected by her premature death. He knew too, that the future she faced was one of wretchedness and indignity, a future without hope.
In light of this logic, the answer to Nancy’s question should have been a simple yes, but it wasn’t. He should never have hesitated in granting her wish, but he did. When it came down to it, Nancy wasn’t an abstract idea – she was a living friend. He hated the idea of losing her again.
‘You’re sure about this?’
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘One hundred per cent sure. Anything I say to the contrary after this evening, you should ignore.’
‘But what if I promise to take care of you instead; swear to you that I’ll never put you in a nursing home?’
‘No, Gene, I don’t want that! I don’t want that for me and I don’t want that for you. And besides, you might die before I do, and where would that leave me then?’
Doc was silent for a moment and then looked Nancy in the eyes. ‘Okay, you still have my word on it. When I judge the time’s come, I’ll take care of it. You won’t suffer.’
In that moment, he honestly believed he was telling her the truth.
Nancy breathed an audible sigh of relief. She’d worried that her long-ago desertion of him might have changed his mind and in some way negated the promise he’d made to her at Oaklands. She hugged him and started to cry
, while Doc stood there feeling numb.
Nancy composed herself and returned to the matter at hand in a business-like, almost detached manner. She told Doc she wanted to die in Coffeeville. Doc’s job was to get her there and, after her death, contact a firm of attorneys in Hershey who would then take matters in hand. Her will, she said, stipulated that she was to be buried in the family plot close to Oaklands, alongside Ruby and her parents. Once settled, her estate would be divided equally between Milton Hershey School and Alzheimer’s Research; there were to be no other beneficiaries.
‘Before we have to leave Hershey though, I’d like you to choose something of mine; anything at all that might remind you of me after I’m gone, and hopefully bring back fond memories.’
‘Not one of Arnold’s suits, then?’
‘Hah! Did I tell you that Arnold was a Republican, Gene? No? Well he was. Last night you wore a Republican’s jacket! How about that?’
Doc smiled. ‘Why Coffeeville, Nancy, and where the hell is it?’
‘It’s in Mississippi but away from the Delta. It’s maybe forty miles or so from Oaklands, but in another county – Yalobusha. It’s small: only a few hundred people live there. My father owned a farm on its outskirts, for tax reasons as much as anything, and he left it to me and Daisy when he died. It’s secluded and not even Brandon knows about it. I became sole owner when Daisy passed, and Brandon thinks I sold it. I did, but only to Arnold. He put it in the name of a limited purpose corporation and leased it to a management company in Memphis that sold hunting rights. The lease expires next year and from that time it will be empty. Ideally, I’d have liked to have died at Oaklands, but that’s no longer possible. This is the next best thing. After all this time and I’m still a Miss’ippi girl. Can you believe it?’
Last Bus to Coffeeville Page 7
