by Green, Jeri
Funny, she thought, when Bill and I were up here in this knot of woods and briars, I never felt claustrophobic. She vaguely wondered if she was experiencing a panic attack. But she brushed off those thoughts. To dwell on them would only stir the cauldron of her apprehension even more.
Pushing her fear to a back burner, she chose to think of the times she’d been here with Bill. Of course, it had been pitch black dark and her mind, not to mention her body, had been occupied with other things. Still, she could not imagine living this far out in Nature. Hope Rock County wasn’t much, but the small community did have the amenities that made life bearable – electricity, indoor plumbing, and inside toilets.
Her face lit up. She smiled, suddenly. Her intuition had not abandoned her. She’d guessed right. She rounded the last curve, and the old cabin came into view. She also spied the corner of the tailgate of Skip’s old truck. She eased up beside it and got out of her car.
“Skip!” she called. “Skip! Where are you?”
There was no response. Only the cloistered sounds of Mother Nature. She placed her hand on the truck’s hood. It was cold.
She walked up to the porch. She could see the signs of Skip’s handiwork in the new boards he had woven into the old ones. He’d done a good job. She stepped up and felt nothing. The flooring was secure, not like the rickety porch she knew when Bill’s dad had been alive.
Back then, your foot eased down into the spongy boards every time you walked on them. It gave you an unpleasant sensation of walking on moss. Not a good feeling. But Maury had not mentioned this to Bill. It wouldn’t do to offend Bill’s parents. Not when she wanted so badly to make a good impression on them. Back then, it would not have surprised Maury in the slightest to have stepped through the old boards and broken an ankle. All with one uneasy misstep. But thankfully, that had never happened.
Skip’s handiwork was evident in other places, too. It looked like he was replacing the old windows, not with modern-day plastic ones, but with handmade wooden ones using the original glass from the old windows. Maury smiled. It was a detail that only her son would think about.
He had replaced the barn-style door his grandfather had made with a sturdy oak one, too. It looked really nice. Intricate panes of leaded glass decorated the top of the door. A wrought iron handle gave the door the rustic touch that complemented the cabin. Her son was going to have a fine place when he finished.
Maury called out Skip’s name again, knocked but got no response.
Walking to the back of the house, she looked around for any sign of him. Seeing nothing, she walked over to the barn. After wandering around for about an hour, she gave up.
She decided to return home and wait for Skip there. He could be anywhere on the land, and Maury had no intention of getting stranded out here in the dark. She needed to get back to town where she could breathe and where the trees were safely corralled in cement and asphalt and small patches of manicured grass.
She would have to figure out another way to find out what her son was up to. Of course, she could just come right out and ask him, but she feared Skip would take it the wrong way. For now, at least, she would just have to take it a day at the time, praying tomorrow would not bring her heartbreak and tears.
Virgie Winthrop crossed her mind.
Dear God, she prayed, please don’t let that be my tomorrow.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hadley’s phone rang.
“Hadley!” Maury said, “Bill and I had supper over at The Spoon, and you’ll never guess what who I saw!”
“Brad and Angelina!” Hadley said, gnawing on a carrot.
“No, silly,” said Maury, “although I would like to lay eyes on that beautiful hunk of man before I meet my maker. And Angie’s not shabby, either. But no. We saw Ruth and Doctor Haaamp-toooons. And they looked like they were out on a date! All smiles and lovey-dovey. I swear to you, Sis, those two were neckin’ in the back booth!”
“Great day in the morning!” Hadley said. “If that don’t beat all! That what’s-his name, Doctor Wilson’s got to be a good catch! He better not throw Ruth back in the stream if he’s got a lick of sense.”
“They looked happy,” Maury said, “We were only there a few minutes. A call came in, and Bill had to take it.”
Maury hesitated.
“What is it?” Hadley asked.
“We were in our personal car. Bill didn’t want to leave me out in the street, so I rode out with him to check it out. Don’t say anything, okay?”
“Maury, you know I can keep a secret.”
“Better than I can, that’s for sure. It was Cleve ’n’ Virgie. Domestic disturbance.”
“Oh, my stars!” Hadley said. “As if that poor woman doesn’t have enough burdens to bear!”
“Actually,” said Maury, “Cleve called the cops.”
“He what!” said Hadley.
“Virgie was like a hurricane!” Maury said. “I’ve never seen her so mad. She was chasin’ Cleve around the house with an iron skillet. She kept sayin’ it was high time somebody knocked some sense into Cleve’s hard head!”
“I would have loved to have seen that.”
“Bill said he was glad for a woman’s presence. I was able to talk to Virgie, you know, woman to woman. She calmed down a right smart. It wasn’t funny in one way, but Bill and I laughed the whole way home. If you could have seen the hound dawg look on old Cleve’s face!”
Both women laughed.
“Cleve refused to press charges,” Maury said. “After all that Virgie’s been through, I guess whatever it was that Cleve did that set her off was the straw that broke the donkey’s back.”
“Virgie’s a good woman,” said Hadley.
“Yes, she is,” said Maury, “but drivin’ back, Bill decided to swing back through town. I can’t be sure, Hadley, but I think I saw some kids dealin’ drugs in front of The Band-Aid.”
“Oh, no,” said Hadley.
“Right there on Main Street,” Maury said. “They scattered like mice when they saw the car. But that’s what Bill thought, too.”
“That’s just too scary to contemplate,” said Hadley.
“I never thought I would live to have seen anything like that in my life,” Maury said. “Did you lock your doors?”
“No,” said Hadley. “But I will.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It just has to be tied up with drugs, Hadley thought, driving to Ruth’s wildlife shelter. Beanie was weed-eating around the headstones at the cemetery today.
When she woke up that morning, Virgie Winthrop was on her mind. Kyle’s murder and Claire’s slow-suicide kept popping to the forefront of her thought like sizzling bacon grease. She knew that Claire’s death was not called suicide, but to Hadley it might as well have been. Accidental overdose, they said.
All those years of numbing the pain with prescription meds was tragic. And Hadley was certain it was just as much mental anguish that Claire was trying to numb as physical pain.
Incredibly sad and tragic, she brooded. A squandered life.
There was Skip passing her in his truck!
She waved. He drove right by her without noticing.
“That’s funny,” Hadley mumbled. “Not like that kid to give his favorite aunt the cold shoulder. Must be girl trouble.”
Hadley turned into the access road by the amusement park. She pressed the box and was buzzed into the gate. Hadley walked into the building and dropped her oversize purse on a table in the little break room beside of the room Ruth used for an office.
“Hey, friend,” Ruth said. “Where’s your sidekick?”
“Maury’s got a doctor’s appointment today,” Hadley said.
“Hope it’s nothing serious,” said Ruth.
“Annual physical,” Hadley said.
“Tell her all her friends, four-legged and two-legged, missed her sunny smile.”
“Who have we here?” Hadley asked.
“A porcupine,” said Ruth.
�
�If you’d have told me, I’d have worn my suit of armor,” Hadley said.
“Don’t need it,” said Ruth. “These little creatures are quite gentle.”
“Gentle,” said Hadley. “But what if I make him mad. He’ll launch those quills at me, and I’ll look like a cactus.”
“Not at all,” said Ruth. “That’s a misconception. A porcupine can have 30,000 quills.”
“Yikes,” Hadley said.
“He shakes the quills loose by banging their tail on the ground,” Ruth said. “The quills become lodged into a predator only by the predator’s actual contact with the porcupine.”
“Really?” Hadley said. “So, I won’t become a human dart board.”
“No,” said Ruth.
“What’s his name?” Hadley asked.
“Porgy,” said Ruth.
“Hey, Porgy,” Hadley said. “You are a cutie. You know that? Say, Ruth, I was expecting to see your handsome doctor friend around here somewhere.”
“Declan had to go back to New York. He just flew in to buy one of Hobie’s acoustic guitars. Since Anna and Stanley reopened that airstrip, he plans to come down as often as he can. When he found out Hobie and his band were playing Sunday, he decided to stay over.
He’s absolutely rabid about Hobie’s music.”
“We’re lucky to have such talent a stone’s throw away.”
“And lucky that Hobie is so down to earth and willing to play for a good cause like animal rescue.”
“Hobie Stricker could write his own ticket right out of here to any place on earth, yet he chooses to stay right here in these mountains.”
“You gotta admit,” Ruth said, “there’s something magical about this place. The waterfalls, the mountains, the wildlife.”
“Mmm,” said Hadley, venturing to pet Porgy, “this area of the country is like no other place on earth. If home is where the heart is, my heart beats through these forests and slopes and valleys.”
“Mine, too,” said Ruth. “Now, here’s what I need you to do today.”
She recited a long list of tasks that needed completing.
“I think I’m going to be pretty busy,” Hadley said. “Hey, Porgy. You got as many quills as I got chores.”
Porgy just nibbled on some dandelions and clover, ignoring Hadley.
Chapter Thirty
Humpty Eldon was making his annual trip to his mother’s grave. It was something he made himself do. Like cleaning his toilet once a week, whether it needed it or not. It wasn’t that he hated his mother. To the contrary, Humpty and his mother had enjoyed a good relationship over the years.
But Humpty despised the thought of wandering around among all those dead people. Even six feet under and skeletons and dust, Humpty wasn’t so sure that some element of living matter from the cosmos did not still linger over their last resting places. And he wasn’t alone.
Beanie Fugate felt the same way. Of course, Beanie’s perspective on things was a little this shy of vertical since his accident at the pulp mill, but, still, Beanie wasn’t a total idiot. He was wise in many ways, if you could read between the lines and figure out what Beanie meant, minus how he said things.
While weed-eating around the innumerable headstones, Beanie had time to mull over some of Life’s toughest questions. If Milo Rex hadn’t fallen into that well hole he was digging for Mozelle Novella, would his wife, Jettie, ever have found out that Mozelle and Milo had been carrying on a love affair that had lasted over 40 years?
Why did Oran Merton buy eight extra burial plots just so that his wife’s kin would not lie within spitting distance of Oran and Delphine? This all occurred before 1927, as the Mertons and Delphine’s family, the Clodfelters, were all interred in one of the cemetery’s oldest sections. Beanie did not have the privilege of personally knowing Oran, Delphine, or any of the Clodfelters, but he wished he had.
Beanie would have given his eyeteeth, if he still had them, to ask Oran what the Clodfelters did to make him want to be isolated like that. Did Oran love Delphine so much that he wanted to keep her all to himself for eternity? Did Oran’s feet stink so bad that he wanted to wall himself and Delphine away so none of her family would have to smell foot odor? Dead was forever, and that’s a long time to be holed up in a tiny grave inside a rotting coffin with foot odor filling the nose holes of your skull.
These questions ate at Beanie as he took care of the quiet lodgers in Memorial Gardens. The headstone markers were fantastic works of art to a man like Beanie Fugate who had never done much of anything except eat, sleep, and work hard his whole life. The inscribed messages on some of the stones were comical, tragic, sad, or simply indecipherable.
Memorial Gardens was constructed during the times when many mountain folk buried their loved ones on their own land. Bucking tradition, the cemetery had, nevertheless, been quite successful because it offered its clientele perpetual maintenance and an ornate headstone at half the going rate within 250 miles.
Bargain basement prices on headstones that were large and intricate enticed many to chose the Gardens as their final resting place. There were urns in stone, trees in stone, life-size angels in stone, a cow, a cabin scene, a still – anything imaginable in stone could be found there. It was like having your own blank chalkboard to summarize whatever was important.
A person could leave a message behind for his loved ones, describe his life in stone letters, or babble about nothing. It could be in three dimensions or two. His message could be rendered on any creation the stone mason could model. It was totally up to the buyer what design the headstone held or what inscription was rendered on it. Scrape up the cash and get creative. That was the cemetery owner’s philosophy. And many of the customers took him up on his offer.
Beanie marveled at the creativity of the deceased, or at least of their remaining living relatives. Some chose to put only their names in ridiculously tall letters. Others chose the more traditional name, birth date, death date, and a short inscription, trite, but often used. Others were struck by inspirational epitaphs. Beanie loved to read these as he worked.
One grave was marked with a granite sculpture of prized hunting dogs treeing a raccoon. There was the small boy sitting on top of the stone with his arm draped over a lamb. There were several versions of angels, some life-sized with wings draping over the stone or heads hanging low in grief. There was a granite bench with a naked woman lying on it, hair draped over the side covering all the strategic places that would otherwise offend.
Beanie liked to think about what these last bursts of creativity were meant to convey. Dogs liked to bark at raccoons; lambs made good pets; the angels were sad because these people had moved on to heaven instead of staying out of their hair on Earth, and reclining on benches killed you if you forgot to wear your clothes.
So many messages.
So much to think about.
It made the caretaker’s mind spin.
And the stones bore as many varied epitaphs as there were people.
Gone but not forgotten. Well, yes I am, and I am rottin.’
Here lies Gus. Blown away by a blunderbuss. No fuss. No muss, for Gus. And the little bit that’s left of him is now at rest, we trust.
Buster Fanny and Pat Fanny. Best Fannies in the valley.
Neoma was a friendly sort. Not quite a tart . . . but not for lack of tryin’.
To say that she was pretty would be lyin’. Painted lady. Morals shady. Flip her often while she’s fryin’.
If anybody out there gives a flyin’ fig, they say that it was me, but it was Clint who stole that pig.
Such words graced the many headstones that dotted the gently sloping hill for as far as the eye could see.
Humpty Eldon’s mama, Hazel, insisted that Humpty lay her to rest among the lovely stones that decorated Memorial Gardens. Humpty had wanted to put Mama in the backyard by the chicken coop and pig sty. He liked to keep the fertilizers all in one area of the farm, but Mama wouldn’t hear of it. She pitched a fit.
“
I done done without all my life, Humpty Eldon,” Mama Eldon said. “I don’t mean to linger the Here After knowing I’se planted out there in the hog pen.”
“But Mama, I ain’t plantin’ you in the pen. Jes’ ’long side it,” Humpty said.
But Mama Eldon would not listen to reason.
“Naw, suh. Uh-huh. I want me some finery to look up at as I lie on my backside for however long the Earth lasts. You hear me?
“The sky is nice, but I want something good and nice to read while I while away in that pine box I done bought ’n’ paid fer with the egg money.”
A broad smile flashed across Mama Eldon’s face, and her eyes grew misty just at the thought it.
“A nice big stone, Humpty. You hear me. Don’t you dare scrimp. I mean it. If you do, I will know it. And I will haunt you, Humpty Eldon. From the grave and beyond. I will. I mean it. I want something nice to mark me when I go out so’s when folks come visitin’ they’ll know I was ‘a somebody.’”
The day of Mama Eldon’s passing came. Humpty made sure that she was buried in grand style. The only problem was that when it came time to pay it for all, the grand burial was a little more expensive than Humpty had budgeted for.
Humpty’s savings were quickly being depleted. But Mama Eldon’s words burned in his brain like Lady Liberty’s torch. And he was scared. Mama Eldon was a strong-willed woman. If anybody could come back and torment a son’s soul, it would be Mama Eldon. Strapped for cash, he still ordered the biggest stone available. Humpty would do anything to keep his mama happy and in the ground where she belonged. The marker would be delivered two weeks after Mama Eldon’s burial.
It was a fine stone, the largest in the cemetery. But even with the deep discount from the Memorial Gardens CEO, Humpty could afford only a short engraving.
That was why Mama Eldon’s great big old stone was engraved with only her initials.
HE for Hazel Eldon.
Not even periods to separate them.
