Beautiful Darkness (33 page)

For a second, I held my breath.

“There was no mistakin’ that man's ghost. As the Good Lord as my witness, we cleared outta there faster than a cat with its tail on fire. Now, Lord knows I couldn't move like that these days. Not since my complications …”

The Sisters were crazy, but their brand was usually based in crazy history. There was no way of knowing what version of the truth they were telling, but it was usually a version. Any version of this story was dangerous. I couldn't figure it out, but if I had learned anything this year, it was that sooner or later I was going to have to.

Lucille meowed, scratching at the screen door. Guess she'd heard enough. Harlon James growled from under the couch. For the first time, I wondered what the two of them had seen, hanging around this house for so long.

But not every dog was Boo Radley. Sometimes a dog was just a dog. Sometimes a cat was just a cat. Still, I opened the screen door and stuck a red sticker on Lucille's head.

6.17

I
f there was one reliable source of information around here, it was the folks in Gatlin. On a day like today, you didn't have to look too hard to see most everyone from the town in the same half mile. The cemetery was packed by the time we got there, late as usual thanks to the Sisters. Lucille wouldn't get in the Cadillac, then we had to stop at Gardens of Eden because Aunt Prue wanted to get flowers for all her late husbands, only none of the flowers looked good enough, and when we were finally back in the car, Aunt Mercy wouldn't let me drive over twenty miles an hour. I had been dreading today for months. Now it was here.

I trudged up the sloping gravel path of His Garden of Perpetual Peace, pushing Aunt Mercy's wheelchair. Thelma was behind me, with Aunt Prue on one arm and Aunt Grace on the other. Lucille was trailing after them, picking her way through
the pebbles, careful to keep her distance. Aunt Mercy's patent-leather purse swung on the handle of her wheelchair, jabbing me in the gut every second step. I was already sweating, thinking about that wheelchair getting caught in the thick summer grass. There was a strong possibility Link and I would be doing the fireman's carry.

We made it up the rise in time to see Emily preening in her new white halter dress. Every girl got a new dress for All Souls. There were no flip-flops or tank tops, only your scrubbed Sunday best. It was like an extended family reunion, only ten times over because pretty much the whole town, and for the most part the whole county, was in one way or another related to you, your neighbor, or your neighbor's neighbor.

Emily was giggling and hanging all over Emory. “Did you bring any beer?”

Emory opened his jacket, revealing a silver flask. “Better than that.”

Eden, Charlotte, and Savannah were holding court near the Snow family plot, which enjoyed a prime location in the center of the rows of headstones. It was covered with bright plastic flowers and cherubs. There was even a little plastic fawn nibbling grass next to the tallest headstone. Decorating graves was another one of Gatlin's contests — a way to prove that you and your family members, even the dead ones, were better than your neighbors and theirs. People went all out. Plastic wreaths wrapped in green nylon vines, shiny rabbits and squirrels, even birdbaths, so hot from the sun they could burn the skin right off your fingers. There was no overdoing it. The tackier, the better.

My mom used to laugh about her favorites. “They're still
lifes, works of art like the ones painted by the Dutch and Flemish masters, only these are made of plastic. The sentiment's the same.” My mom could laugh at the worst of Gatlin's traditions and respect the best of them. Maybe that's how she survived around here.

She was particularly partial to the glow-in-the-dark crosses that lit up at night. Some summer evenings, the two of us would lie on the hill in the cemetery and watch them light up at dusk, as if they were stars. Once I asked her why she liked to lie out there. “This is history, Ethan. The history of families, the people they loved, the ones they lost. Those crosses, those silly plastic flowers and animals, they were put there to remind us of someone who is missed. Which is a beautiful thing to see, and it's our job to see it.” We never told my dad about those nights in the cemetery. It was one of those things we did alone.

I would have to walk past most of Jackson High and step over a plastic rabbit or two to get to the Wate family plot on the outskirts of the lawn. That was the other thing about All Souls. There wasn't actually much remembering involved. In another hour, everyone over twenty-one would be standing around gossiping about the living, right after they finished gossiping about the dead, and everyone under thirty would be getting wasted behind the mausoleums. Everyone but me. I'd be too busy remembering.

“Hey, man.” Link jogged up alongside me and smiled at the Sisters. “Afternoon, ma'ams.”

“How are you today, Wesley? You're growin’ like a weed, aren't ya?” Aunt Prue was huffing and sweating.

“Yes, ma'am.” Rosalie Watkins was standing behind Link, waving at Aunt Prue.

“Ethan, why don't you go on with Wesley? I see Rosalie, and I need to ask her what kinda flour she uses in her hummingbird cake.” Aunt Prue dug her cane into the grass, and Thelma helped Aunt Mercy out of her wheelchair.

“You sure you'll be all right?”

Aunt Prue scowled at me. “ ’Course we'll be all right. We've been lookin’ after ourselves since before you were born.”

“Since before your daddy was born,” Aunt Grace corrected.

“I almost forgot.” Aunt Prue opened her pocketbook and fished something out. “Found that darned cat's tag.” She looked down at Lucille disapprovingly. “Not that it helped us any. Not like
some
people care about years a loyalty and all those walks on your very own clothesline. I reckon it doesn't buy you a drop a gratitude, when it comes ta some people.” The cat wandered away without so much as a look back.

I looked at the metal tag with Lucille's name etched into it, and slipped it in my pocket. “The ring is missing.”

“Best put it in your wallet, in case you have ta prove she doesn't have rabies. She's a biter. Thelma'll see ’bout fetchin’ another one.”

“Thanks.”

The Sisters linked arms, and those three gargantuan hats knocked up against each other as they shuffled toward their friends. Even the Sisters had friends. My life sucked.

“Shawn and Earl brought some beer and Jim Beam. Everyone's meetin’ behind the Honeycutt crypt.” At least I had Link.

We both knew I wouldn't be getting drunk anywhere. In a few minutes, I would be standing over my dead mother's grave. I'd be thinking about the way she always laughed when I told her about Mr. Lee and his twisted version of U.S. History, or
U.S. Hysteria, as she called it. How she and my dad danced to James Taylor in our kitchen in bare feet. How she knew exactly what to say when everything was going wrong, like when my ex-girlfriend would rather be with some kind of mutant Supernatural than with me.

Link put his hand on my shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I'm fine. Let's walk around.” I would be standing over her grave today, but I wasn't ready. Not yet.

L, where are —

I caught myself and tried to pull my mind away. I don't know why I still reached for her. Habit, I guess. But instead of Lena's voice, I heard Savannah's. She stood in front of me, wearing way too much makeup but somehow still managing to look pretty. She was all glossy hair and gloppy eyelashes and tied-up little straps on her sundress that were probably only there to make a guy think about untying them. I mean, if you didn't know what a bitch she was, or didn't care.

“I'm real sorry about your mamma, Ethan.” She cleared her throat awkwardly. Her mother probably made her come over here, pillar of the community that Mrs. Snow was. Tonight, though it was barely over a year since my mom died, I'd find more than one casserole on our doorstep, just like the day after her funeral. Time passed slowly in Gatlin, kind of like dog years, only in reverse. And like the day after the funeral, Amma would leave every one of them out there for the possums.

Seems possums never get tired of ham ’n’ apple casserole.

It was still the nicest thing Savannah had said to me since September. Even though I didn't care what she thought of me, today it was nice to have one less thing to feel like crap about. “Thanks.”

Savannah smiled her fake smile and walked off, her high heels jerking as they got stuck in the grass. Link loosened his tie, which was crooked and too short. I recognized it from sixth-grade graduation. Underneath it, he had snuck out of the house wearing a T-shirt that said
I'M WITH STUPID
, with arrows pointing in all different directions. It pretty much summed up how I was feeling today, too. Surrounded by stupid.

The hits kept on coming. Maybe folks were feeling guilty because I had a crazy father and a dead mother. More likely, they were scared of Amma. Anyway, I must have surpassed Loretta West, a three-time widow whose last husband died after a gator bit a hole in his stomach, as the most pathetic person at All Souls. If they gave out prizes, I would've won the blue ribbon. I could tell by the way folks shook their heads when I walked by.
What a pity, Ethan Wate doesn't have a mamma anymore.

It was the same way Mrs. Lincoln was shaking her head right now, as she headed my way, with
You Poor Misguided Motherless Boy
written on her face. Link ducked out before she hit her target. “Ethan, I wanted to say how much we
all
miss your mamma.” I wasn't sure who she was talking about — her friends in the DAR, who couldn't stand my mom, or the women who sat around the Snip ’n’ Curl talking about how my mother read too many books and no good could come from that. Mrs. Lincoln blotted a nonexistent tear from her eye. “She was a good woman. You know, I remember how much she loved to garden. Always outside tendin’ her roses with her tender heart.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

The closest my mom ever came to gardening was when she sprinkled cayenne pepper all over the tomatoes so my dad
wouldn't kill the rabbit that kept eating them. The roses were Amma's. Everyone knew that. I wished Mrs. Lincoln would try that “tender heart” comment to Amma's face. “I like to think she's right up there with the angels, tendin’ that old, sweet Garden a Eden now. Prunin’ and trimmin’ the Tree a Knowledge, with the cherubs and the —”

Snakes?

“I've gotta go find my dad, ma'am.” I had to get away from Link's mom before lightning struck her — or me, for wanting it to.

Her voice trailed after me. “Tell your daddy I'm gonna drop him off one a my famous ham ’n’ apple casseroles!” That sealed the deal. I was getting the blue ribbon for sure. I couldn't get away from her fast enough. But at All Souls, there was no escape. As soon as you made it past one creepy relative or neighbor, there was another one right around the corner. Or, in Link's case, another creepy parent.

Link's dad slung his arm around Tom Watkins’ neck. “Earl was the best of us. He had the best uniform, the best battle formations —” Link's dad choked back a drunken sob. “And he made the best ammunition.” Coincidently, Big Earl was killed making some of that ammo, and Mr. Lincoln had replaced him as the leader of the Cavalry, in the Reenactment of the Battle of Honey Hill. Some of that guilt was here today in the form of whiskey.

“I wanted to bring my gun and give Earl a proper salute, but Dammit Doreen hid it from me.” Ronnie Weeks’ wife was generally known as Dammit Doreen, sometimes shortened to DD, on account of that's all he ever said to her. He took another swig of whiskey.