Cementville (30 page)

They followed her into the kitchen. Loretta directed Carl and Maureen to sit at the table. She took a dipper off the wall and ladled out two glasses of water from a metal bucket sitting on the drain board of a long plank cabinet. A smell came off the bucket, cool rocks and watercress, and Maureen remembered hearing that there wasn't running water in Johnny Ferguson's house. Willis had said Rafe Goins had offered his Ditch Witch to lay the trenches and pipes to pump county water into the house after Johnny died. Loretta Ferguson Slidell had quietly thanked them and told them spring water straight from the earth was what she had grown up drinking, and the last day of her life she wanted nothing but to drink a tall cold glass of its pure freshness. From the looks of things, Mrs. Slidell must have dipped her drinking water out of the very same beat-up tin bucket sitting on that same old drain board her entire life.

Without a word, Loretta vanished behind a flowered chintz curtain. Maureen and Carl heard a low exchange and some more shuffling, and when Miss Wanda parted the curtains, Carl stood up. Wanda and Carl appeared to be scanning each other's insides top to bottom. Maureen was embarrassed on behalf of them both for their lack of manners. She set her flowers on the drain board near the old tin bucket. Carl stood mutely holding his bouquets. Maureen lifted them from his hands and gave them to Wanda, which seemed to break the spell. They all looked at the flowers.

Wanda seemed unable to find her voice for a bit and when she finally did the words were barely above a whisper. “They're so pretty. Thank you.”

Wanda Slidell was slender as her mother, but where Loretta was statuesque, Wanda was a gangly heap of bones, nearly as tall as Uncle Carl. The two women shared the trademark Ferguson red hair, but it was as if Wanda's had sucked all the color from her mother's and in the process the top of Wanda's head spontaneously combusted into a raging flame. She tried to keep it under control—Maureen had seen her fuss with her hair at the library when Miss Wanda thought nobody was looking, tugging and pulling it into a tight bun that sprung open like a fiery touch-me-not when she let go.

Maureen tried to make eye contact with her. Wanda began striking matches on the old black stove. She finally got one to light and held it under a teakettle so the burner hopped to life. With her back to them she said, “Well, Carl, I haven't seen you since I don't know when.”

The kettle started with a low hum that quickly rose to an awful screaming whistle. Wanda took a box of Lipton off the shelf. She whipped around with two steaming cups in her hands and set them before Maureen and Carl.

“1954,” Carl said and searched the bottom of his cup for more words. He took a careful sip, apparently oblivious to the absence of a teabag. Or maybe he was being polite; it was impossible to tell. “You and me were about to turn sixteen.”

1954, Maureen thought, when the hobo got his head caved in.

“That sounds about right.” Wanda took a butcher knife to a big loaf of black bread and put a few slices on a plate in front of him. She stared at the surface of the table as though a cryptic message at any second might arise from the wood. She kept her long slender fingers folded in front of her, laced so tight her knuckles were white.

“You're looking well, Miss Wanda.” Maureen tried on the opening lines she'd heard her mother use dozens of times. Wanda turned her surprised attention upon the girl sitting at her kitchen table as though just realizing Maureen was there.

“Why do you kids all call me ‘Miss'?”

“Beg pardon?”

“You never hear of anyone else my age being called ‘Miss' anything anymore. So I wonder, why me? It's so old-fashioned, isn't it?”

Maureen wished she could say,
Old-fashioned? Look around you! Abraham Lincoln could walk into this kitchen and be right at home!
But Maureen saw her point. Miss Wanda was not all that old. She just acted old.

Maureen sipped at her steaming cup of water and made appreciative
mmm
noises. Wanda continued to look at her as if waiting for an answer. “I'm really sorry about your loss, Mi—Wanda.”

“My loss?”

“Augrey. Augrey Ferguson.” Maureen glanced purposely toward the flowers waiting on the drain board. It dawned on her that Wanda had taken them not as a condolence offering but as some sort of romantic gesture on Carl's part. Maureen tried on the look she had seen adults use when speaking to the bereaved. “I hope they find whoever did it.”

“Oh. Yes. Horrifying. I didn't know her.”

“Isn't she your cous—”

“But having grandfathers who were brothers doesn't mean I knew her. In fact, I seriously doubt we ever exchanged more than ten or fifteen passing words.” Wanda sliced more black bread and pushed it toward Carl, even though he was still on his first piece. Whatever
the condition was that made this woman so withdrawn and panicky about talking to people at the grocery store or the library, it seemed to be somewhat less of a problem here in the antiquated comfort of her own home.

“Do you think whoever did it was angry about her being, you know, friends with Nimrod Grebe?” As soon as it was out of her mouth, Maureen saw it—the line that wasn't to be crossed—and she was standing wide of it, on the other side. Wanda bored a hole in the table's invisible Ouija board with her eyes.

“Will you attend the funeral tomorrow?” Maureen said.

Wanda narrowed her eyes at her.

Carl fidgeted. “I sure am glad it's summer,” he whispered. Wanda looked at him, and her shoulders sagged a good two inches when she sighed. “I prefer summertime. Give me hot weather any day.” Maybe Carl
was
trying to court Wanda Slidell.

“I bet you know all kinds of interesting things about Cementville's founding fathers, Wanda,” Maureen said, “since they were your very ancestors.”

“My ancestors are dead, Maureen, except for my mother, who I believe you've met.” Wanda looked into the clear contents of Carl's cup and her face reddened. She grabbed the Lipton box from the stove and plunked teabags into both Carl's and Maureen's cups. She shoved the sugar bowl closer to Maureen and scooted the plate of bread toward Carl. “I just baked that today. I can get jam, if you want it?”

Carl took a large bite. “Not necessary.”

Wanda jumped up and took the jam from a shelf and slammed it on the table. She sat again and placed one hand on her chest and swung her long leg in nervous arcs. She reached behind her and grabbed a spoon from the drain board and clanged it onto Carl's plate of bread, then stared at the table some more.

“Have you ever been inside the Slidell mansion?” Maureen tried, but Wanda didn't bite. Maureen already knew the answer. Everybody in town knew the answer. Wanda Slidell's grandmother had made her a very rich woman.

“Are you getting used to Cementville again, Carl?” Wanda uncrossed her legs and crossed them again so they were pointing in Carl's direction. “Things have changed a lot since you lived here.”

Maureen decided to go for broke. “How does it feel to be the last Slidell, now that Evelyn Slidell has passed on?” Katherine would have died a thousand deaths if she heard her daughter ask such a thing.

Wanda and Carl were unflummoxed.

“Long as they don't change the street names on me, I'll do all right,” Carl said.

Wanda laughed and poured more hot water into their cups. The afternoon wore on, the two of them making awkward small talk and staring into their watery tea as if they were reading a future there that didn't look half bad. Miss Wanda ignored Maureen and her questions in a rude way.

Maureen found herself feeling sorry rather than mad, walking down the steep gravel road from Buckskin Ridge, although she couldn't say sorry for what.

S
HE WASN'T LYING WHEN SHE
told her mother the next morning that she wanted to go to the library. Maureen fully intended to go to the library, to start with. She sat at breakfast behind the cereal boxes.

“The library, huh?” Katherine said.

Maureen shoveled Cheerios.

“Are we meeting someone special at the library?”

“Mother.” But Maureen had to admit, she
was
looking pretty good. She had pinned her baby-fied bangs over to the side with a tiny lady bug hair clasp and borrowed some of Katherine's mascara, which made her look at least fifteen. The lipstick was being smeared off with each bite of Cheerios. She sighed. “Eddie Miller and me might go get Cokes at Happy's.” She tried to keep her eyes on Katherine's forehead. “I mean, Eddie Miller and
I
.”

“I'll drive you.”

“Fine.” Maureen drained her glass of orange juice then stared
at the clock so she would have somewhere to look besides her mother's face. Twenty after nine. She needed to get Katherine into the car. Her mother hadn't let her ride her bike into town since they found Augrey, and she seemed to have lost her enthusiasm for Carl as bodyguard. “I promise to call you when we're done.”

Katherine stared at her daughter for a few yearlong minutes with that X-ray vision mothers have that slices around inside a person, then she said, “Your hair looks pretty styled that way. Maybe it's time we let those bangs grow out. You're getting a little old for a pixie.”

“
Thank
you,” Maureen said. “I hope you'll remember that the next time you go waving your scissors around.”

“You and Eddie walk together from the library to Happy's. And stay on Council Street. I mean it, Maureen. I don't want you going anywhere alone. And call me when you're ready to come home.”

“Yes, ma'am.” All these years, she had no idea lying was so easy.

K
ATHERINE DROPPED HER OFF IN
front of the library. Maureen felt her mother watching as she climbed the steps. She waved Katherine off and went inside and without thinking pulled
The Outsiders
off the shelf and took it to the checkout desk.

“Haven't you read this twice?” Mrs. Cahill said.

Minutes later Maureen was walking across the Slidell Bridge carrying
The Pigman
and
Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones
, along with strict instructions from Charlene Cahill that Maureen make it clear to her mother that the books came
without
her recommendation.

Maureen ducked into the alley behind the Duvall Funeral Home and snuck around front. Roddy Duvall had hoisted the flag at half-mast in the middle of May when the dead soldiers came home. Now, three months later, it still hung there, limp and faded, the red washed to a pale pink. A few men stood in a circle near the flagpole, smoking and doing that low-talking thing men do in groups, hands in their pockets, eyes on the ground or pinned on a thing in the distance that nobody else sees. She hid behind the wrought-iron railing where the broad veranda
jutted from the corner of the building and scanned the group, hoping Levon wasn't there. The men all carried that family resemblance, same hair on fire, same big eyebrows. They could all be Augrey's brothers, as far as Maureen could tell, standing around in sport coats that seemed to have been grabbed at random out of a bag, and nobody had ended up with one that fit. They huddled, round-shouldered, as if protecting their hearts from a cold wind. But it was a hot August day and at ten o'clock in the morning the air was thick and still. A few cupped their cigarettes in a half fist and brought them to their mouths so they looked like they were about to tell a secret no one was meant to repeat. She didn't see Levon, but the other brother, the one Billy said was a draft dodger, burst out onto the veranda and sat heavily in a rocking chair only a few feet from the railing where Maureen was hiding. The men were blocking the entryway to the funeral home. Maureen sucked in a breath and drifted nearer. She sat on the low stone wall, hoping they would break up their little party soon.

Mumble mumble
, one of the men said. He spit on the ground and they all looked over at her at the same time. A boy broke off from the group and came to where Maureen was sitting. He stood there a while, the smoke from his cigarette curling around his face and making him squint.

“Maureen Juell,” he said.

She didn't know where to put her eyes.

“Ain't you Mo Juell?” He was staring at the top of her head in a way that made her reach up and touch her hair. The ladybug hair clasp slipped into her hand. She tried to smooth her bangs over but could feel them sticking straight out from her forehead like a hat bill.

“I thought for a minute you had a bug in your hair,” he said. Another of Augrey's brothers—Tony, she thought he was called. The cigarette didn't disguise the fact that the boy was close to Maureen's age, nor did it hide his red-rimmed eyes. “You know Augrey?” The tone in his voice said nothing would convince him that could be true. He sized her up. “You come to gawk, didn't you? Don't worry, you ain't the first.”

Straight into her face he blew three perfect smoke rings at which Maureen silently vowed not to blink or cough. She waited for him to turn away, bored with her, and rejoin the men.

“Well, come on then,” he said. “I'll take you to her.” He cut through the circle of men and headed up the steps and into the Duvall Funeral Home. She slinked after him.