by Bret Lott
He quick let go my arm and took off his hat. He bowed a little, said, “My name is Leland Dillard, and I have come to give my condolences to Mrs. Dupree.”
“Leland?” came a feeble voice from behind the maid, and she looked to her right, and to Unc, then opened wide the door.
A Persian rug ran from one end of the foyer to the other, what seemed fifty feet, to where a staircase emptied out, big and wide. What parts of the wood floor you could see gleamed in the light from a chandelier above us, and already I could smell the flowers, though I couldn’t yet see any. Dark oak went halfway up the walls, above the wood wallpaper thick with a flowered pattern, all golds and reds, the ceiling twelve or fourteen feet in here.
I put a hand to my hair, raked it over, started to tuck in my shirt, one tail hanging out from under my Levi’s jacket, and saw the maid looking at me and Unc both, a hand at the door into the room to our right.
I smiled, nodded at her, and she slid the door into the wall.
There at the far end of the room, surrounded by huge arrangements of flowers, sat a shriveled woman in an overstuffed chair. She was tiny, the glasses on her face thick, her eyes bleary behind them. She had white hair, a blue dress, and sat with her hands in her lap.
She had on white gloves.
“Mr. Leland Dillard,” she said, and put out a hand.
Unc walked across the room to her. He tucked his Braves cap in his back pocket, and without my telling him her hand was out to him, he put both his out, moved them a few inches one way and the other.
Mrs. Dupree did nothing to help him find hers, only held her white-gloved hand out, steady.
Unc found her hand, bowed to her.
“I am deeply sorrowed at the passing of your daughter,” Unc said. I’d never seen him like this, never heard him talk this way: formal, sorry. “She will always hold a special place in my heart,” he said, still holding her hand.
“And I am sorry at the passing of your own sweet Sarah,” Mrs. Dupree said, “though I am these many years late in offering these words.”
“Thank you,” Unc said, and it seemed his hands on hers quivered, as though she were holding him together with just that tiny gloved hand of hers.
She let go, said, “Won’t you please sit down?” and motioned to the sofa on my right, carved wooden arms and legs, blue-and-gold striped silk material. At either end of it were more flowers, baskets on the floor and on the marble-topped end tables. Across from the sofa was a small, shallow fireplace, baskets of flowers in front of it.
I led Unc to the sofa, where we sat, the two of us on the very edge. We were silent a few moments, and I couldn’t help but look at my watch: six forty-five.
“This is the parlor,” Mrs. Dupree said, and I looked up. She had a glass in her hand, a dainty one, half filled with a light brown something. “This is the room in which one brought the family member to have passed, let him or her lie in state while mourners could pay their respects. Much as you are doing now, Mr. Leland Dillard.”
She took a sip at the glass. “I am afraid my manners have escaped me in the midst of my loss,” she said. “May I offer you a glass of sherry?” She held up the glass. “It has certainly helped me to remain calm these last three days. We can have Miss Esther bring you in some, if you wish.” She turned, with her free hand reached for a small silver bell on the end table beside her. She picked it up, ready to ring.
“No, thank you, Mrs. Dupree,” Unc said, “as we have to be going.”
“So soon?” she said, and put the bell back.
And beside it, there on the end table, sat a paperweight. Brown glass, the size of a Coke-bottle bottom, rough edges.
I felt my hands go hot, my palms start to sweat, all in a second.
She took another sip, pinky extended, the other hand set perfectly in her lap. “My mother, when she passed in April of ’26, was presented in this room, as was my father, in September of ’39.”
I glanced at Unc, as though he’d noticed it too.
“I have now outlived my only child,” she went on, her voice a sharp, thin fact in the room, her eyes closed. “My daughter, Constance. And my wish for her passing was that she too would have had the honor of lying in state here in the parlor as well. But they tell me these things are no longer allowed. That this is no longer considered proper.”
I wanted to hold it up, see if there was inside it a sweetgrass coil. If she kept her eyes closed, then I might be able to stand, just reach over, pick it up.
But then she opened them, tipped up the glass, drained it, turned to the end table.
“It is my desire, indeed will be my last request, to be presented here in this room, and a curse will be upon those who do not honor this request,” she said, and now she was looking at me, her mouth straight, eyes open.
She said, “Who is this young upstart, Mr. Leland Dillard?” and nodded at me.
Unc sat up a little straighter. “My apologies, please, for not introducing him,” Unc said. “This is my nephew, Master Huger Dillard.”
I nodded. “Ma’am.”
“Imagine,” she said to me, “if I hadn’t forced my Constance to marry Charles Middleton Simons, instead had let her marry her love, you might very well be living with me, here. I might very well have been your grandmother.” She gave what seemed to be a smile.
I looked to Unc, then to her again. I said, “He’s not my dad. He’s my uncle.” I shrugged. “My dad is—”
“Very well,” she said, and nodded, hands still in her lap. Unc sat facing forward, and I could hear the tick of a clock from somewhere.
I looked down, said, “Yes ma’am,” and glanced at the paperweight again.
“Mrs. Dupree,” Unc said. “With all due respect, we must be going now in order—”
“It seems you have an inordinate interest in this latest keepsake of mine,” she said, still looking at me. She picked up the paperweight, held it up to her face.
I said nothing, and Unc turned to me, said, “What’s this?”
I whispered, “She has a paperweight.”
“A paperweight, is it,” she said, and now she was looking at me. “This is a symbol, I was told by my Constance on the day before her passing, of my daughter’s transgressions.” She turned the paperweight one way and the other, her eyebrows up, inspecting it as though it were an apple she might or might not buy.
She said, “It is a cryptic symbol, I believe, one I cannot yet decipher. But my daughter was given to cryptic behavior, most assuredly when it came to matters of the heart.” She looked at Unc, then to the paperweight again.
Unc cleared his throat.
“You call it a paperweight,” she said, “when it seems she meant it to carry more sentiment than that. And now my daughter is dead.”
We sat there, the ticking between us filling the room.
Cherish your momma, Constance Simons’d said.
I looked at this woman, her momma. Her only child dead.
I stood, crossed the room. She was looking at me, her eyebrows still up, her mouth a small O of confusion: Who was this upstart daring to come to her?
I knelt to her and felt at my waist the gun, heavy and sharp. Still with me. Then I pulled from my pocket my own symbol, the one she’d given to Unc through me. It was warm.
“Huger?” Unc said from behind me.
She looked down at mine, and I could see better now the one she held: a small coil of sweetgrass inside, as tiny and delicate as my own. She looked at me, and I saw the watery look in her eyes wasn’t the old age I’d figured it was, but grief. Plain and simple.
Her only daughter, giving her her sins.
She said, “How—”
“She came to me Saturday night,” I said, my voice low, almost a whisper. “I was in the hospital. At the medical university. She gave me this to give to Unc.”
She took in a breath, whispered, “You talked to her.”
“Yes ma’am.” I nodded.
“And what did she say?”
; “She said to tell my uncle she loved him. And she said, ‘Cherish your momma.’ ”
She quick looked at me, and I could see on her face a kind of startled shine. Slowly she brought down her hand, let her paperweight rest in her lap.
She said, “Do you?”
“Yes ma’am,” I whispered. “I cherish her.”
She looked from one paperweight to the other.
“I can’t tell them apart,” she said.
That was when I turned to Unc, and as though he knew precisely what I was thinking, knew and could see me looking to him for something I couldn’t yet name myself, he nodded. I looked at him a moment longer, then turned to her.
I took her gloved hand, and placed it there. I said, “You can keep it, if you like.”
She looked at me, and it seemed she tried to smile, though her chin quivering wouldn’t let it happen. She said, “One is sin, and the other is love. And I can’t tell the difference.” She tried the smile again, looked up at me. “Can you?”
Unc cleared his throat again, him standing now behind me. He said, “We must go now.”
“She told you to cherish your mother,” she said, that thin fact that was her voice going even thinner now, “because I did not cherish her. And as I did not cherish my child, so she did not cherish me.”
Then Mrs. Dupree cried, shivered in on herself, grew smaller in only the seconds I looked at her. It was a pitiful sound in this room, cluttered with flowers and the thick smell of them all, a smell, I figured, as close to death as the smell of old blood. It was a pitiful sound, hollow and too late.
“Our condolences,” Unc said, and took my arm.
What was left?
We’d driven the whole afternoon, like all we’d had to do was run these errands, like we’d just gone to drop off some overdue videos or picked up some TV dinners. And now we were in the trailer, Mom’s Stanza still out front, Unc and me waiting.
We’d stopped at the Pantry on 17 almost to Red Top, where Unc climbed out, called Miss Dinah at the open-air pay phone set up in the parking lot. The sky was black by then, the Pantry lit up bright as the Amoco station’d been just last night, and from the cab of the Luv I watched Unc punch at the numbers, watched him talk, his head down, chin to his chest. Then he’d hung up, climbed in, said, “Missy Dorcas got nothing. Still no news on who the sender was of those orders to void Charlie Simons.” He shrugged. “But she’s still trying.” He gave a small smile. “And she says to tell you she’s praying for your momma.”
But I didn’t smile, only put it into gear, pulled out onto 17.
And the only thing we could show for this whole day was that we knew some things.
Deputy Yandle had been disowned. The University Medical Consortium was after buying Hungry Neck to make it another Hilton Head. Goods were involved somehow.
Constance Dupree Simons had given her mother a sweetgrass paperweight.
Aunt Sarah had killed herself.
And my mom had been kidnapped.
It was cold in the front room, the windows broken out, Unc and me sitting on the sofa I’d tackled him on what seemed a year ago. If it had happened at all.
Then I pulled out the Polaroid of Mom from my back pocket.
Fifteen minutes until nine o’clock.
“None of what I’ve got you into is worth this,” Unc said. “The land.”
I didn’t move, only took in Mom’s face, her eyes. “This is over,” he said. “And it’s not what I’d hoped, Huger.” He tried at a smile. “This land. It was for you. Yours.” He put out his hand, touched my shoulder again. “This is what family we got. You, Eugenie, me. It’s all we got. Not much of a family, I know. Screwed to pieces. But it’s all we got.” He let go, slowly shook his head. “Not what I hoped, Huger. Selling this place.”
So it was over. Just like that: sell the land. That was all. And we’d have Mom back like some sort of collateral against a loan. If they played by their own rules. And then we’d all go home.
But somebody had killed Charles Middleton Simons.
Pigboy and Fatback?
Yandle and Thigpen?
And they’d let us go on home?
Then it came to me, the stupid truth of all this too big and dumb for me to keep track of: nobody knew Constance Dupree Simons had come to me, there in the hospital.
And nobody knew she’d told me she didn’t do it.
Unc sat up on the couch, back straight, head turned just barely away from me. “What time is it?”
I looked from the picture to him. “Unc,” I said, “they don’t know she came to see me. Constance.”
“I said what time is it,” he snapped, and moved his head one way, the other, his eyes to the window.
I looked at my watch. “Ten till. Unc, what’s wrong?”
“It’s Patrick and Reynold coming up. Reynold’s pickup.” He paused. “Son of a bitch. Hell of a time for them two boys to pay a visit.”
Then I heard it, in the same moment saw headlights play through the curtains.
Patrick and Reynold. What did they want? Last time I’d seen them was Saturday morning, when they’d torn off with the dogs and horses, and I thought of that rebel yell, the smell of beer on them before daylight. Patrick, with his filthy ponytail, Reynold’s bald head lit with the green light of the dashboard.
And there we’d been, all those members holding on to the dogs so’s they wouldn’t take in to the body.
Patrick and Reynold. They’d never come back for their dogs. At least not before I’d fallen, hit my head. Forty-five minutes to an hour after they let those dogs loose, when usually there they were on horseback not fifteen minutes behind the dogs.
Patrick and Reynold.
Their engine cut off, and Unc stood, moved for the door.
“Patrick?” he called out. “Reynold? Boys?”
“Leland?” Patrick called out. “You okay? What’s with your windows?”
“Unc,” I whispered, and reached for him.
Then came the sandpaper sound of boots on cinder blocks. “Huger, Leland?” Reynold said. “You boys all right in there?”
“Unc,” I said now. “Unc, it’s them,” I said.
Fatback and Pigboy.
I reached to my shirt, fumbled with the buttons on my jacket.
“Boys,” Unc said, and glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyebrows together, trying to figure out what I was talking about, and in that instant there came to me the picture of Unc salting his seat and missing his fries, and the truth of how sometimes things got past him no matter what.
“Can’t be standing around yapping,” he said, and pulled the doorknob. “We’re expecting company any minute now, and—”
The door burst open, Unc’s hand shooting back with the shock of it, his whole body in a half twirl away from the door.
Here was Patrick, that greasy ponytail swinging behind him as he slammed in, then bald Reynold, the two of them smiling, between them five or six front teeth missing.
I got my jacket open, started to pull out the gun. But before I even had it out, Patrick whispered, “Company’s here,” and punched Unc hard in the face, his sunglasses broken in two in just that second, then Reynold’s fist met my own jaw, and I was out.
Mom.
Here she was above me again, her face in close, coming into focus just like she’d come into focus in the hospital room. But this time it wasn’t the flowery smell of her perfume I smelled first, but smoke off a fire.
Her skin was a beautiful gold in the light from the fire. Her makeup was all down by her eyes, like in the picture of her, but now there was no duct tape.
Mom.
I reached up to her and felt as much pain as when I’d woken up in the hospital, only this down below my mouth instead of the back of my head, and I let my tongue, fat and hot, go to my jaw, felt three or four loose teeth, and I was cold, my feet granite blocks, and I tried to move them.
They wouldn’t, and I heard the sound of a heavy chain, pushed myself up on my elbow
s.
“Huger,” Mom said, and touched at my jacket, pulled it a little tighter to my neck. “You don’t get up. You just rest.”
“Huger,” Unc said from my right, “you just lay still.”
But I was looking at my feet, at the leg irons around my ankles, the chain between them spiked into the ground.
“You’d be surprised the sort of things we got on hand down to the station,” Yandle said.
I turned to his voice. Mom touched at my jacket again, then my forehead, my shoulder.
Past her on the other side of a small fire sat Yandle on the tail of a Ram 2500 four-by-four. Beyond it, barely visible for Cleve Ravenel’s truck, sat Patrick and Reynold’s Dodge. Yandle: perfect trim mustache, crew-cut hair.
So it was Cleve Ravenel, the white-haired fat doctor who’d turned too quick to his name, scared. Cleve Ravenel, the man whose e-mail trash Unc had figured out to go through. Cleve Ravenel, member of the Medical University Consortium.
But where was he?
Yandle’s arm was still in the sling, and with the other hand he made the gun again, shot me.
“Don’t say anything, Huger,” Unc said, and his voice sounded different, stuffed up. He sat a few feet to my right, facing the fire. His legs were up to his chest, his arms around them, holding on. He had leg irons, too, spiked to the ground, and in the flicker of light from the fire I could see his eyes were swollen shut, the skin split open between them, blood, black in the firelight, down either side of his face. He still had his hat on.
“Patrick broke his nose,” Yandle said. “Did a splendid job at it, too.” He paused, gave a little laugh. “Of course Leland here never saw it coming.”
Mom touched at my jacket.
We were just out in the woods somewhere. The fire’d been there a while, some big pieces of oak burned down, the canopy of live oak above us dull browns all moving for the flames.
I had no idea where we were.
Yandle took a long swallow off a bottle of beer. He had on jeans and boots, an army jacket, a holster and gun. “But about them leg irons,” he said, and burped. “Took those off an Oreo couple over to Gardens Corner, him black, her white. Got a call for a domestic one night—that’s a 214—and I pull up, see this naked fat white bitch coming down the porch off her trailer at me, them leg irons on and rattling, her waddling like a duck can’t shit. Turns out they use these leg irons for bedroom fun, the two of them locking up and having at it, all the time their video camera on and recording the whole works.”
