Four and Twenty Blackbirds (16 page)

She ignored me, or she didn't hear me anymore. "I might think that's why Rachel settled on you so hard. She knew your mother was a witch. And Malachi'd heard about you and the ghosts and he figured the worst. That might be it, right there. It's not such a far jump for a mixed-up head to make. Hey—do you hear him?"

"What?"

"I asked you, 'Do you hear him?' He's coming up now. He'll be here soon."

"Tatie?" I asked, using the title again because I didn't know what else to refer to her by.

Despite her prior admonition, she didn't object.

"Huh?" Her eyes were still closed, as if she were on the very verge of sleep. I'd never reclaimed my chair, but was still standing by my father's photograph. I left it on the shelf and approached her, crouching down almost as close as she'd first come to me. This sad bundle of wrinkles and bones was my only real link to the truth, and she was passing out before my eyes. But there were things I still needed to know. The aerosol smell of her Aqua Net hairspray made my nose itch, but I drew even closer, until my mouth was almost at her ear.

"It's not true, is it?" I asked, balancing on my toes and listening hard.

She sighed and shook her head just slightly. "Sure it's true. He killed them all three, and the baby girl with them. His boy, by one of the other women, that was your granddaddy. That's why there's still this whole line of you, coming after my money. But your other aunt, she's got no children, does she?" Eliza cracked an eye open and stared at me from it.

"No. No children."

"Good. Then you're the last of them."

But she'd answered the wrong question. I asked it more directly while I still had her attention. I wanted to draw my face away from hers but I couldn't. It might have broken the spell, and the right question had not yet been aired.

"Tatie," I tried again, "It isn't true, is it? I'm not Avery, am I?"

Despite my best efforts, my words carried a tinge of fear that made her smile. I loathed myself for requiring this weird, uncomfortable intimacy, but what else was I to do? Lulu said Eliza knew, and I had Eliza talking. She might not be telling me the truth, but she was at least giving me something to chew on.

"Malachi thinks you are," she finally responded.

"What do
you
think?"

"Doesn't matter. So long as Malachi believes you are. You're the last, and when you're gone . . ." Her words petered away. Her slitted eye closed and she exhaled, long and warm so close to my face. Then she drew in a shallower breath and her body drooped, her head lolling against the chair's winged sides. Her wrist went limp and the remaining gin and water dripped onto the floor.

"Tatie?"

She did not reply.

I stood and stretched, leaning my back to crack the kinks out and returning to the photo. I turned it over and pried the frame loose to remove the picture, fully intending to cut Rachel out of it at a later date. I deserved one picture of my father, didn't I?

When I turned around to leave, Harry was standing in the doorway. He must have seen me take the picture, but he said nothing to indicate that he planned to do anything about it.

I waved at the softly snoring old woman in the chair. "She fell asleep."

Harry nodded. "I'll see to her."

"Hey, Harry?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"There's a cemetery near here, right? A family plot?"

"Leave to your right, out of the driveway. Go up the hill—you can't miss it."

"Thank you, Harry."

"You're welcome, ma'am. Ma'am?"

"Yes?"

"She wasn't too hard on you, was she?"

I grinned, clutching the picture to my chest. "Nothing I couldn't handle."

6
Up the Road a Piece

Maybe the old coot was right. Maybe Malachi
was
on his way. I went ahead and left her there, sleeping in her oversized chair, but it wasn't because I was afraid of him. I'm afraid of some things—spiders, drowning, needles, and the like. But I'm not afraid of Malachi. He simply isn't intimidating, even with his True Faith to bolster his aggression. He hides behind God and guns, and ineptly at that. It can't have been more than luck that caused him to kill Terry. He was a terrible shot when I was a kid, and I didn't think he'd spent much time practicing his aim in prison.

It must be hard for him. He believed so firmly that he was right, and that his mission was blessed, but he failed at every turn. What did it say about him that he tried so hard? He was either very devout or very stupid, I figured. More likely a sampling of both.

I almost felt like I owed him fear. He'd worked so hard to kill me, the least I could do was be just a tad nervous. But no. I couldn't muster it. The best I could do was summon up a healthy sense of caution, and toss him a minor, grudging respect for his persistence.

Tatie would certainly tell him I'd been to see her, but I hadn't given her any indication of where I might be headed, so it wasn't as if she could point him my way. She might be able to guess about the cemetery because of my questions, but beyond the cemetery, even
I
didn't know where I was going. I was almost disappointed that my quest had ended so quickly. I hadn't found all my answers, but I had found my father. That was more than I might have expected.

As for Avery and his mysterious book, it might be better to decide that Lulu was right and it didn't matter. Let the dead who can sleep lie undisturbed.

I cast the police a backwards glance on my way out. They did not make any indication that they saw me, cared about me, or intended to pursue me. I half imagined them as uniformed ostriches with their heads in the sand: If we don't see you, you don't see us. I hoped they stayed right where they were and caught my wayward cousin-brother, if only to make a liar out of Eliza.

As for me and the Death Nugget, we headed up the hill in the dark.

The cemetery was on the right, enclosed by a low iron fence with a broken gate. I parked beside it and rummaged around in my trunk until I found the huge flashlight I kept for emergencies or for after-hours excursions.

The gate's lock could have been easily repaired, but I wasn't surprised that no one had bothered. The fence was primarily a boundary marker, altogether too stubby to have prevented anyone over three feet tall from entering; and I didn't suppose anyone was too worried about its residents trying to get out.

The graveyard was dark and silent, and held only twenty or thirty monuments that I could immediately see. Most of these could be summarized as phallic obelisks with Masonic symbols for the men and towering, virginal angels for the women. In a moneyed family grandiose markers were the order of the day; even infants who had died within a day or two of birth were graced with enormous lambs and stone lilies. Everything looked at least a century old, so I followed a gravelly path until I came to some newer, somewhat less gaudy statuary. Here were the more recent graves, with pseudo-modern slabs of granite and slate cut in nearly geometric shapes.

I shined my tube of light on each one, wincing at the reflected glare.

At the end of the row, occupying half of a married couple's headstone, I found Arthur Henson Eller Dufresne. August 3, 1945–January 11, 1979. Beloved father and husband.
And lover,
I might have added for spite, but I didn't know how true it was to say that Leslie loved him, considering she fled from him the last months of her life. Besides, it seemed unkind to speculate when I considered that half the marker was still blank, waiting for his devoted wife to join him. "Till death do us part" had become "Till death reunites us." Too bad, Rachel. My mother got him first.

I left my light trained on her name. Rachel Bostitch Dufresne. May 23, 1948, and then the anticipatory spot where her demise would be marked. I bet to myself that she wouldn't return to claim Macon as her resting place, not if she'd been gone this long. Poor Arthur. Even after he was dead, the women in his life kept running away from him.

But if I were in Rachel's shoes I wouldn't want to spend eternity next to the man who'd cheated on me twice—once with a woman and once by taking his own life and leaving me. Malachi would have been young then, but not so young that he wouldn't have had a good idea what was going on. I didn't know exactly how old he was, but I was guessing he was maybe twelve or thirteen in 1979. I was also guessing that it was around that time (or shortly thereafter) that he came to live with Eliza. No wonder he was such a nut job.

I sighed. Should I have brought flowers?

No. What would be the point? I doubted Arthur had ever set eyes on me, and I doubted even more that he would have cared that I'd come by. He was obsessed with my mother, not with me.
I
was little more than an inconvenience.
Our problem.
That uncomplimentary phrase still itched in the back of my head, hard as I tried to exorcise it. The argument could easily be made that ultimately I had cost him the relationship he had with her.

I'd been about two years old when he died. Had he ever
tried
to see me?

Not likely. If he had, Lulu or my grandmother would have guessed who he was—taking Lu at her word and assuming they didn't already know. So why was I wasting my time hanging out at a stranger's grave? I shifted my light around and watched my feet part the grass as I navigated a trail between the stones. About halfway back to the road I sorted out a separate set of footsteps crunching through the grass, moving a split second slower than mine and taking a longer stride.

I turned off my flashlight and stood still. Another voice called out.

"Hello?"

Hot damn, Eliza had been right.

I didn't answer, but I hopped off the main path and set my back against one of the pillarlike monuments.

"Hello? Is someone there?" He was not shouting, not even raising his voice above a hard whisper. I did not have to see him to know I should hide from him. I doubted he was armed, but there was no sense in taking chances.

"I . . . I saw a car up by the road. Is there someone here?"

Malachi had not been to see Eliza yet, otherwise he might have guessed whose car it was. My breath came a little faster, and my heart beat a little harder. Should I head for the car? Call out? I wasn't too far from the house at all; if I yelled, the cops down the hill would likely hear me.

He stood as still as I had, nearly on the same spot where I'd been a moment before. I could have reached out and pulled his hair. He was nervous, but he was wanted by police in several states so I decided not to judge him a coward for his shaking. His shoulders were square and high, his neck craned forward, and his hands were held out and empty—not even a flashlight.

Speaking of flashlights, my own was heavy enough to brain him with if it came down to it. I fondled the metal-and-glass instrument with both hands, but did not leap out to ambush him . . . yet. I wanted to know what he was up to.

Reassured by the silence, Malachi's shoulders drooped back into the sloped posture I remembered, and his hands went into his pockets. No, he was no threat. I relaxed too, and followed him with my eyes, then with careful feet. I made my steps match his, staying a few stones back. I was not afraid of losing him. I knew where he was going. We both stopped near his father's grave.
Our
father's grave.

Even in my head, I didn't like the sound of that.
His
father, then. My sperm donor.

He sat cross-legged in front of the stone, holding his chin in his hands. I was glad he had no light—he might have noticed the freshly bent grass where I'd trampled the same spot.

Malachi ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it out of his face, and returned his chin to his palms. I half expected him to start talking, either to himself, his dad, or to God, but he did not indulge. Instead he sat there with his head cocked as if he was paying very close attention to something I couldn't hear.

Now I was annoyed with us both—me for following him and not leaving sooner, and him for sitting there like an idiot.

Suddenly his head jerked up. "Where?" he asked, his voice louder than before. He swiveled his storklike head, nose in the air. "Where?" he asked again. "I know, but . . . I can do it. But. But. Okay. Not now." Then he bolted back towards the fence, hopping over it with a spindly-legged leap and disappearing down the hill.

My eyes were wide. He had successfully creeped me out.

I shook my head and flipped my light back on, making to leave as well. The bulb flickered and sputtered, then fizzed. I knocked it against a tombstone, but this only offended it more, and it died altogether. Oh well. There was light enough to see by the moon, at least to get myself back to the car. Despite my confidence in the lunar illumination, I got myself turned around and ended up farther down the hill, away from the gate but still within sight of my vehicle. I grumbled at myself, slung one leg over the fence and brought the other down behind it, dropping my shin down on something very hard that was hidden in the grass just outside the ironwork barrier.

Cursing all the way, I sat on the ground and lifted my jeans enough to see that I wasn't bleeding so badly that I should worry. I rolled my pants leg back down and felt around in the grass until I located the source of my pain.

The weeds were high outside the family plot. In the dark, there was no way I could have seen and avoided the little stone. This was another marker, a grave set beyond the elitist dead of the Dufresne clan. I held the grass away and ran my fingers over the worn carving. With a bit of patience, I made out the inscription.