by Alice Duncan
His trees–pecan, apple, and apricot–were a little farther off, near his windmill and well. It was more or less the same arrangement as my family had, since it was the sensible way to manage things, but I have to admit that Mr. Burgess’s garden was a sight prettier than ours.
It made me kind of sad, looking at all the prettiness the ugly old man had created for himself. There was more, too. I squinted off to a plot of land separated from the garden and the windmill by a low stone wall. There were flowers in it, too, but sparsely planted and with big rocks separating the beds. I walked over to investigate that, as well.
What with one thing and another, the creeps and the willies, both of which had departed when I’d been inspecting his flowers and vegetables, came back with a huge crash as soon as I read what had been carved into the flat tops of the large stones. Darned if he hadn’t engraved names on them, and as I read them I almost died right then and there. It was a blankety-blank graveyard!
With the intention of skedaddling out of there as fast as I could, I glanced toward Mr. Burgess’s house, hoping he hadn’t seen me nosing around. My luck was visiting elsewhere that day. He was standing smack there on his back porch and staring right straight at me.
As I stood there with my mouth hanging open, he hobbled down the steps and came toward me. I stood my ground and didn’t run off screaming, although I wasn’t sure I should be applauded for my bravery or vilified for my lack of common sense. After all, if the man was a homicidal maniac, why stand there and wait for him to do me in?
Anyhow, I comforted myself with the knowledge that, while most people tried to avoid Mr. Burgess, nobody had ever accused him of doing anything bad or being anything except ugly, an attribute for which he couldn’t be blamed. Besides, he didn’t have a gun that I could see, and I could sure as anything run faster than he if I had to. My poor heart was hammering away in my chest like a woodpecker.
“Pretty garden,” I said, waving an arm in the direction of the vegetables and hoping he wouldn’t notice that I was standing amid a bunch of graves. “I really like what you did with the flowers. You know, making kind of a wall around the vegetables and all.”
He said, “Huh.”
Okay. Because I couldn’t think of a way to avoid the graveyard issue, I swallowed and said, “What’s this?” I gestured at the rocks which, I had deduced by then, were headstones.
“Graves.”
Right. I’d already deduced that, too.
“Bury animals in there,” he elaborated. “M’old burro Clancy. M’old dog Willie. Animals.”
“Ah. Well, that’s very nice.” The first stone I’d seen had been dedicated to “Little Girl.” I couldn’t ask.
“Huh.”
I sidled away from him. Not that he was anywhere near me. He’d stopped on the other side of the stone wall, right by his hedge of hollyhocks. Still sidling, I said, “I really love your vegetable garden, Mr. Burgess. It’s real pretty.”
“Huh.”
“And your roses, too. Ma has a couple of rose bushes, but they’re nowhere near as nice as yours.”
“Huh.”
Oh, dear. Nevertheless, I forced a cheery smile and a jaunty wave, and I didn’t run away from him, but walked, my back straight, trying for a dignity that was about as far away from my spirit as the moon right then. What’s more, it wasn’t until I was down the road and around the bend that I started running.
“What ails you, girl?” Miss Libby said in her nasty voice after I’d deposited the Swiss chard in the ice box and flopped onto the porch swing. She’d been sitting in a chair hulling peas and now was frowning at me for all she was worth. “Only an idiot would run on a day hot as this’n.”
“I know,” I said. Rather, I screeched it, since I was talking to Libby. “Guess I’m an idiot.”
She snorted and shoved the basket of peas across the table at me. “Make yourself useful.”
“Sure.” So I shelled peas with Miss Libby and thought. I thought about Mr. Burgess and his pretty vegetable garden, and I thought about Mr. Burgess and his graveyard. Then I shuddered. And then, because I try not to engage Miss Libby in conversation if I don’t have to since it never works out the way I want it to, I thought about what Aunt Minnie had said about poor little Julia Gilbert.
At first glance, it was absurd to think that a child who had disappeared on a school picnic at the Bottomless Lakes could have died near Minnie’s house. But what if . . .
“You’re eatin’ more’n you’re shellin’, girl,” Miss Libby snarled.
She was right. I looked up, startled. “Sorry. My mind was wandering.”
“Huh. You want them peas for supper, you’d best quit eatin’ ‘em.”
“I will. Sorry.” I’d thought we were having Swiss chard for supper. I’d thought that’s why I’d made that scary trip to Mr. Burgess’ house. I didn’t ask.
Anyhow, what if Julia had become separated from the rest of us children and had wandered off? What if Mr. Burgess had been out on that part of Second Street, after it leaves Rosedale and keeps going on toward Tatum and, eventually, Texas? What if he’d been hunting antelopes or something on his burro, had come across the girl, and snatched her?
Hmmm. “Snatching” a lively child might be beyond the capabilities of the seriously damaged Olin Burgess. But what if Julia had wandered off, become sick with heat exhaustion (not an uncommon problem in this neck of the woods in the summertime) and lost consciousness? Then Mr. Burgess might have found her, lifted her onto his burro, and taken her home, where she’d died.
Good God, I hope to heaven he didn’t do anything awful to her before he buried her in that graveyard of his! She’d be, of course, in the grave marked by the stone for “Little Girl.”
Who else could “Little Girl” be?
Almost anybody. Or anything, if Mr. Burgess’s explanation was to be believed. Maybe “Little Girl” had been one of Mr. Burgess’s old dogs. A burro. Or even a cat.
My imagination, which had been spinning away in a grand fashion, didn’t like that explanation as well. I must have frowned, because Miss Libby called me on it.
“What you pinchin’ your face up like that for, girl? You swaller something tasted bad?”
“Huh?” I looked up, again startled. Then I became vexed. What business was it of this old biddy if my face chose to mirror my thoughts? “No. Just thinking.”
“Huh. Best purify them thoughts, child.”
Doggone it. I just hated being around Miss Libby. At least Minnie, while crazy, was nice. Vowing I’d think any old thoughts I wanted to, I only smiled and went back to hulling peas. And thinking.
Of course, “Little Girl” more than likely had been an animal. And in order to connect Mr. Burgess with Julia Gilbert in any way whatsoever, I realized, a body almost had to believe in Aunt Minnie’s ghosts, because why else would anyone make the connection at all? God knows nobody else in the entire community had ever once looked to Mr. Burgess as the means by which Julia had disappeared from this earth. And ghosts didn’t exist.
Darn it, I was confusing myself. Defiantly, I popped a couple more peas into my mouth. Miss Libby sort of growled deep in her throat, but she didn’t say anything. I decided not to press my luck and didn’t eat any more of them.
I can tell you that by the time Phil showed up for supper, I was eager to talk to him. Maybe he could tell me I wasn’t so far out of line to connect Mr. Burgess to Julia’s disappearance.
So after supper, Aunt Minnie shooed us both out of the house “to take the air” on the front porch–I think she was hoping for a wedding in the family before too long–and I explained my theory to Phil.
He looked at me as if a passing devil had snatched my brain right out of my head. “You’re crazy, Annabelle Blue!” And then he started laughing, and he laughed until I thought he’d bust.
I hate it when people laugh at me.
Crossing my arms over my chest and glaring at him for all I was worth, I waited to speak until he’d grabbed his banda
nna and wiped the tears from his eyes. “Are you through?” I tapped my foot, too, in order to emphasize my annoyance. Darn it, my theory wasn’t that far-fetched.
“I th-think so,” he gurgled. Laughing so hard must have interfered with his digestion, because he pressed a hand to his middle and groaned as he sat on the chair Miss Libby had been using earlier. As a rule, Phil was very polite and didn’t sit if a lady was still standing in his vicinity. He probably didn’t think of me as a lady, curse the man. “Whew! I ate too much. But that chicken sure was good.”
“Don’t change the subject, Philip Anthony Gunderson.”
That set him off again, but only for a little bit. He stopped laughing almost as soon as he started. “You look like a statue, Annabelle. Why don’t you sit and rest yourself?” Another gurgle of laughter overtook him. “And while you’re at it, why not rest your brain, too. I think you’ve sprained it.”
“Darn you, Phil Gunderson! I have not sprained my brain! Why does that rock say, ‘Little Girl’?” Since I couldn’t think of a good reason not to except that I didn’t want to do anything he told me to do and that seemed silly, I sat on the porch swing opposite his chair.
Phil shrugged. “Darned if I know. Why didn’t you ask him?”
The night air was warm, but I shivered. “I . . . I just couldn’t. It was all too creepy.”
“Nuts.”
“It’s not nuts! Why does that man have himself a cemetery in his back yard? That’s not normal, and you know it!”
“Lots of folks bury kin in their back yards. Where my folks come from, in Virginia, lots of people have family graveyards. When I visited my grandfather, he took me out to see ours. It’s right there a mile or so from the barn, on a little rise. It even says ‘Gundersons. Rest In Peace,’ on a board tacked up on an old magnolia tree. I think it’s a southern custom. Or something.”
“Well, maybe. But they don’t do that here. Anyhow, Mr. Burgess doesn’t have any family. And he fought for the North.”
He sighed. “Yeah. Poor guy.”
“I feel sorry for him, too, but darn it, that doesn’t mean he should get away with murder!”
“Hey, wait a minute.” Phil sat up straighter in his chair. “Who said anything about murder?”
“Me. I did.”
“How come?”
“Well . . .” I also hate it when people ask me questions I don’t have a ready answer for. “It’s a feeling.”
It was almost dark by then, and the stars hadn’t come out yet, but I could tell Phil was rolling his eyes. “Oh, well, then, it must be so. Let’s go right in the house and call Sheriff Greene and tell him about your feeling, okay?”
“Don’t be sarcastic.” By that time, I had begun to feel a little foolish.
“What do you expect, Annabelle?” I felt Phil’s hand on mine. I suppose it was meant to be a gesture of reconciliation, but I snatched my hand away in a hurry. Too much of that sort of thing, and Phil might get the wrong idea.
“I expect a friend to stand by me.” Okay, it sounded stuffy, but it was how I felt.
“You know I’ll always stand by you, Annabelle.” He gave a last snort of laughter. “Even when you’re being nuts.”
“Darn it, Phil Gunderson, there’s something eerie about that man. And that graveyard. And maybe Aunt Minnie isn’t just being crazy when she claims Julia died around here! Maybe she actually saw something that day, but doesn’t remember it, and only the knowledge has come back to her without the image that created it. Isn’t that possible?” I’d been mulling the matter over all day long–actually, I’d been mulling since the day before–but this was the first time I’d come up with anything even remotely resembling a logical linking of Minnie’s claim, my uneasiness about Mr. Burgess, and Julia Gilbert. I thought it was a pretty good theory, actually.
“Well . . .”
“It is, Phil! You know it is!”
“I don’t know it, Annabelle, and neither do you. Seems mighty far-fetched to me.”
“Maybe,” I conceded with more generosity of spirit than I felt. “But will you go with me to see that stone? If you saw it for yourself, you might get the same creepy feeling I got.”
“I doubt it.”
I doubted it too, curse him. He must have heard me sucking in air with which to lecture him some more, because he hastened to add, “But I’ll go over there with you if you want me to. I could use a walk.”
I deflated. “Thank you.”
“How you want to do this? We going to go down there and knock on his door?”
I thought about it and decided. “No. He doesn’t like visitors. Why don’t we just take a flashlight, walk down there, and I’ll show you what I mean.”
“Okay by me.” He stood up and stretched. “I’ve got a flashlight in the truck. I’ll go get it while you tell Mrs. Blue that we’re going to take a walk.”
“Fine.”
So, to the beat of Phil’s easy, booted stride clapping on the porch floorboards, I poked my head into the house, spotted Minnie, and said, “Phil and I are going to take a walk, Aunt Minnie.”
I couldn’t see what she was doing. It had something to do with the parlor table, but she looked up and smiled a broad, sweet smile. Naturally, since I knew she took this walk Phil and I aimed to take as in the nature of spooning, I felt guilty. “That’s fine, dear. Have a nice time.”
“We’ll be back soon,” I promised her in an effort to nip her hopes for romance in the bud.
She waved me away. “Take your time, dearie. Take your time.”
“Thanks.”
The evening was fine and warm, and neither Phil nor I needed a wrap. The flashlight sure came in handy, though, since the way was rough. I think I’ve already mentioned that none of the streets in town were paved in 1923. The roadways were rough and rocky. Even where they’d been packed hard by years’ worth of wagon wheels, horse and mule shoes, and shoe leather, pebbles and small rocks appeared as if by magic to roll under your shoes and make you stumble. Somebody told me once that this was due to the volcanic nature of our soil, although I don’t know if that’s true or not.
It’s hard to imagine the darkness in those days, when there were no street lights and no traffic. It was, literally pitch black, and sometimes so dark you couldn’t see your hand when you held it in front of your face.
Then there were the critters. If Jeepers were still a young dog, he’d probably have been out there chasing jackrabbits, but he wasn’t, and the bunnies were thick on the ground. Every time Phil’s flashlight beam lifted, another six or seven jackrabbits took off, lickety-split, into the desert. I’m surprised they didn’t do more damage to Minnie and Libby’s kitchen garden. I said as much to Phil. “They need a younger dog.”
“They’ve got the garden fenced in, don’t they?”
“Well, sure, but jackrabbits don’t generally care much about fences.”
I could sense his shrug. “Jackrabbits can’t climb fences, Annabelle. Heck, they can’t even jump very high.”
“Phooey. Every time I say anything at all, you make me out to be wrong, Phil Gunderson, and I don’t like it.”
“That’s not true, Annabelle.”
“See? You just did it again!”
“Oh, brother. You just won’t give a guy a break, will you?”
“Not when he’s disagreeing with me all the time.” I suppose my tone was kind of nasty, and I suppose Phil knew when arguing was useless, because he didn’t say anything more.
Rather, he started to whistle softly, a pretty tune that went well with the darkness and relative softness of the air. There wasn’t a whole lot soft about southeastern New Mexico, although every now and then the weather was pleasant when the wind wasn’t blowing the dust around or it wasn’t thundering and lightninging. It was nice that evening. Once when Phil lifted his flashlight and scanned the desert to our right, he startled a small herd of antelopes, and they all scampered off.
“I like antelopes,” I said. It was meant as a conciliator
y offering, being neutral in both tone and content, and Phil took it as such.
“Yeah, me, too. Sometimes . . .”
“Sometimes what?”
“Nothin’. Forgot what I was going to say.”
I’ll bet he didn’t. I’ll bet he was going to say something about antelopes eating his mother’s vegetable garden, but had thought better of it. I began to wonder if I was really so much of a shrew that he didn’t dare even make comments around me and decided to consider the possibility later.
Thunder grumbled in the distance. Occasionally a sheet of yellow lit up the western horizon, off near Capitan.
“Gonna rain,” Phil said at one point. “Hope it holds off until we get home.”
“Me, too.” And, boy, I meant that.
I didn’t mind getting wet. What I feared was the mud. You can’t quite imagine mud like the mud we have around Rosedale, unless you live there. Our soil is clay, and when it gets wet, it’s like ice. Out on the desert, there were plants to keep you from slipping and sliding and falling on various body parts, but in the road, where traffic had long since taken care of any vegetation that might have dared present itself, walking would be impossible if we had a storm. Squinting westward, I decided it wasn’t going to rain any time soon. I sure hoped I was right.
We got to Mr. Burgess’s place before very long. As we approached, his dogs started barking. We stood perfectly still for a couple of minutes, and they shut up again.
Both his vegetable garden and the little cemetery could be reached without going near his shack, which I thought was a good thing. I tugged at Phil’s shirt sleeve. “Over there.” I pointed, which he couldn’t see, but he got the message, and we veered to our left.
It was tough being quiet in the desert in the dark, because there were so many rocks and crunchy plants growing low to the ground. Nevertheless, we didn’t make too much noise as we crossed from the road to the graveyard, making a big arc in order to bypass both the vegetable garden and Mr. Burgess’s house. I made Phil put out the flashlight for a second or two, but since we made more noise stumbling around than seemed worth it, I let him turn it on again.
