Old Powder Man (44 page)

Laurel said, “I think so.” Against her face the false fur smelled like dust; she held it, looking at two incongruous rhinestone buttons glittering, for eyes.

“She was fixing to throw it away cleaning out the attic,” Sarah said. “It didn't have no eyes and one leg tore up. I carried it home and sewed it, bought it those eyes.”

Laurel would like it for the baby, had not known where it was; so many times the animal had been comfort she wondered it had fur she had matted it so with tears. Sarah said, “You want it?”

I couldn't take away the eyes you shopped for, Laurel thought and said, “No.” She opened the door on a day the wind no longer disturbed saying, “I think it's going to clear.” The roses were rain-stripped; the bereft garden smelled of their final sweet scent but that smell soon would be obscured by the musky one of the leaves dead and beginning to fall. The funeral parlor had had the same sweet cold scent, only of flowers from the refrigerator. Laurel said, “Are you coming to the funeral?”

“Miss Cecilia going to carry me to view him this morning, then seem like I rather stay home with Roll-o,” Sarah said. She closed the door to dress as Laurel ran with the empty wastebasket across the sodden yard.

The Bible was small and thin. Without reason she had removed it from his room and put it in her own; an old hand had written the inscription; the thin ornate script was shaky: Frank Wynn for Perfect Sunday School Attendance. Now another church of the same denomination had supplied, after a search by Cecilia, a young minister who had never seen Son but stood speaking of his loss and his life to come. Amen, he said. Laurel raised her head to look once again about the room crowded with everyone he would have wanted to see, except Roll-o and Sarah; we're here because he's gone, not because we could do him some good, Laurel thought a numberless time.

The room's entrance was rounded and coming into it for the first time she had unexpectedly faced the casket seeing, above its rim, his profile; not meaning to, she had called to him aloud and gone slowly forward. His look had been perfect, his grin askew, as if he had played a giant trick: gone off and left them without saying he was. Why did you? she had said.

From their various distances, as quickly as possible, they had come, Martha and Will, Buzz and his wife, Mace, Holston, a woman named Scottie she had never seen who said, Honey, your daddy had the key to the sweetest music, B natural. Each, hugging her, communicated sorrow, and differences in their ages had permanently disappeared. Buzz's wife smelling of many sweet things like Kate said, Buzz said he knew if he had lost his own brother he couldn't have lost more. Buzz told Laurel, One night soon after we moved into the office together I was home and the phone rang. Frank said, What the hell are you doing? I said, I'm reading the paper. He said, Why the hell aren't you down here in Room 1403 of the Andrew Johnson? I didn't ask any questions. I just put on my coat and went. I knew somebody was there I would get a lot of business from. Frank always had his ear to the ground. He never stopped thinking of business. Then Buzz's eyes filled with tears; he went away and Laurel thought how strange it was the things people remembered to remember.

Kate had lifted the veiling, cupped her hand too late about his face. Laurel had put her hand out to touch him too and George had put out his as if to stop her. Why? she had said, having touched his shoulder before Kate put back the veiling. He said, I've never seen anything like this, it's barbaric.

It's southern, she had said. It's better than shoving people into furnaces, being afraid to look.

Holston gripped her arm too hard: That old rascal, not a day'll go by we don't miss him. People are always stopping in the office, seeing his picture, asking about Frank.

Will gave the reason: When God made him, He threw away the mold; there'll never be another like him.

Mace said, He was a ditch-digging genius.

The night had ended and they had taken pills to forget it. In the morning it had rained. She had run from the sodden yard into the house with the empty wastebasket, passing Kate who said nothing. In the dining room, Cecilia fed Roll-o. Does she know? Yes, I heard her go in there and come out as soon as I left the room, Cecilia said. I found the one hidden in the ice box and threw it away too.

They had lunch. Winston, Leila and Joe came. They crowded to the table where he was absent. Leila said, One time Frank came to our house and he and Winston and old Doc Barker drank up two fifths of whisky. I had been pickling tomatoes and Frank screwed on the tops of the jars. That winter, I started getting out jars of tomatoes and I couldn't, nobody could get the tops off. She laughed. I had to throw away almost my whole afternoon's work. I never did tell Frank that. He had the strongest hands I've ever seen.

Kate seemed to eat what was bitter, her face dour. Laurel thought, Tomorrow she'll be all right. Afterward they stared into closets that were full saying they had nothing to wear, then dressed appropriately. George sped them through a day dazzled by the sun, where no wind soughed, and cold was barely insistent, past heartless strangers who turned blank faces, not acknowledging their grief. Laurel wanted to cry, This day's not like another. A particular man has died and the world will never again be exactly the same. But the world went unheedingly about its afternoon pursuits. In a car next to them, briefly stopped, teenagers entwined and she told them through silent lips it was not a day for love.

The minister had said, Amen, and she raised her head. He shook their hands and Kate gave him the envelope with the amount over which she had worried. Grave and on silent feet, the funeral director drew a curtain which even the minister waited beyond. Laurel knew what was in George's mind but the rest of the family were not horrified at all: he and Joe stood behind. Cecilia said, I always thought Brother such a handsome man, and turned away with Joe. Laurel said, Was he cold? knowing he was; she only wanted something to say. Kate said, Of course, and went away too. Laurel thought, When I turn, they'll close the casket. I'll never see my father again. George's hand insisted at her elbow and this time she went, without choice.

It was heavy for old Mr. Will and drooped slightly at his corner. He spoke over it to Buzz who looked back and smiled. Aren't they going to grieve either? she thought. They bore him on who had seen him through so much else, shaking the blanket of roses, buds tight-curled against the day. Mace and Holston stepped carefully over the uneven way. Winston's face was flushed from the weight and he looked only at the ground. Joe, with regret, saw the path ahead lay over the edge of Cally's grave.

They were alone for the first time. Coming into the living room, Laurel said, “George's plane is about halfway there.”

“The night you were born,” Kate said, “I couldn't find him. I called his hotel all night. He never would tell me where he was.”

Plaintive and unanswered the question was in the room as urgent as ever it had been; being women, they still wanted to know. “Cecilia was there and Joe. The doctor and the nurses. They all knew and there wasn't anything I could do.” As pliant and soft as once it had been young, Kate's face held the same dismay until she said, “After that, I didn't look for him anymore. I didn't care where he was.”

They sat at the table and Sarah circled the empty chair and left dessert, crying. The back door slapped sharply shut behind her. I'll never make that mistake again, she had promised herself in Sarah's own room. She got up. Sarah's shoulders were soft and quite round. “Sarah, you didn't know him before. He was so strong and rough. It was terrible to see him this way and Dr. Phillips said there was nothing ahead but what was worse.”

Sarah said, “I know. But he set there that last morning so long telling me things about my sister buying her house.”

Cedars were slender spires against a sky the moon revealed full of clouds and the stars were glimmerless speckles, faint and far. Kate had come into the kitchen, seen them on the back steps and turned abruptly away. She doesn't feel anything anymore; she doesn't even understand, Laurel thought; as badly off as he had been, Kate was worse. Laurel thought how long ago it all had been; that if he had lied a moment thirty years ago, everything that had happened since might have been different. She and Sarah were cold and came inside.

This morning, no one she knew was beyond the plane's window. Staring from a taxi it had seemed beyond belief; in her life she had never ridden in a taxi in Delton before. Friends could have driven her but she would have had to tell them why and she could not explain in part. She would have had to tell it all.

Kate had said, “I want to tell you one thing. He ran my life, now you're not going to. Put all those bottles back.”

“I threw them away,” she had said.

She had planned to stay a month; Kate would have begun to adjust. She had always said she wanted to be free; now she was, and Laurel thought she would stop because the reason she had always said was the reason was gone. But she had not; she was worse. Dr. Phillips came and the house was filled with the smell of paraldehyde, like a smell of serious illness, of hospitals and operations. Kate lay in a darkened room and Laurel and Sarah unintentionally tip-toed. Even when Kate was walking again the smell clung; she went about without expression, like a corpse, and it was like the smell of death inside her. “What are you going to do?” Laurel said.

She said, “I'll be all right.”

“But you won't be,” Laurel had said. Yet they went about their days as if she would, not knowing what else to do. They shopped, bought black dresses and new shoes for the baby; friends came and they went out to lunch. Laurel waited, knowing it must be the way he had waited; it had been his problem, now was hers. She wanted him to know she had accepted it. Dr. Phillips said he had brought something from the hospital. Thinking of Kate, Laurel had not asked what. She had wandered into the empty bedroom and on the bed saw a rumpled brown paper sack, curious, opened it. She was too horrified even to cry. Mutely, the contents seemed to say: this is the sum, and she arranged them on the bed, shoes together, sleeveless undershirt, undershorts, very lightly stained, he had worn the night he died. She stuffed them suddenly back into the sack and left it. That moment, going quickly from the room, she swore her own life would come to something more. He had sat seeing nothing ahead, done nothing about it, but she would not. His other clothes Kate sent to the sisters in North Carolina to be distributed among husbands, sons, fieldhands. Laurel mentioned only these, said how strange it was to have your clothes outlast you: remembered the day he had come home proud of the suit he was buried in, never dreaming he would be. Another day, going into the bathroom, she saw his toothbrush and threw it away.

A young Negro came for the oxygen tank; Laurel had seen him when he came to refill it. Carrying it crosswise, he stopped at the door. “Where Mr. Wynn at?” he said.

She stuttered to begin and said, “He passed away.”

Abruptly, he went down the long hall and out the front door, fast. Laurel followed wondering why she had said, “passed away,” an expression she had never used before in her life, wanted to correct herself, to say, I mean, he died. He turned not to see her, storing the tank. She had made a mistake but there was no way to turn back. He got into the truck, his eyes sliding past her. She said, “Were you the one who always came?”

“Yes.” He started the motor, not wanting to talk. “Mr. Wynn sho was a nice man,” he said, and backed out before she could reply.

She had wanted him to say it had not been the way she knew it was: his bringing the tank the most important interruption in a day of silence. She had wanted to hear every detail of the times he had come but could not have asked. She would never forget the look on the young Negro's face, wondered how long he would remember. She felt separate from everything, turned back to the house, lonely, remembered he had always tipped the boy a quarter, wished she had.

They should not have gone out to dinner but Kate would not let her refuse. Offered cocktails, surely she would refuse; but she did not. By the following evening, Sarah said, “There's one hid in the lettuce leaves.”

Laurel wondered who she was hiding it from. On Sunday, Kate woke and there was no more in the house. In the middle of the morning, she called. She sat in bed in disarray, one hand to her throat. Laurel came in and she said, “You'll have to do something. I'm sick. I'm so sick.”

“What's the matter?” Laurel said.

“I drank my perfume,” Kate said.

Laurel felt as dispassionate as if it were happening to someone else. As if panicked, she moved; but she was not. Beneath the surface of things she did, telephone, pour out the news, she felt only outrage at being in such a position, brought to this. Dr. Phillips said to take her to the emergency room and Laurel said, “Get dressed.”

Kate said, “I'm so sick.”

“Get dressed,” Laurel said. She put on her coat knowing she was past guilt, not responsible if Kate ruined the rest of her life. She was no longer the girl who had shilly-shallied from one thing to another: could set a course and follow it: had been able to from the moment she determined Kate was not going to the funeral if she had been drinking. “Get dressed,” she said.

In the emergency room where he had been declared dead she said, “This lady drank perfume.”

The nurse, taking information, said, “Why did you do that?”

A summoned intern having come said, “It's alcohol, isn't it?”

None of it touched Kate who only sat, looking sick. The intern said there was nothing to do, take her home, and went away. Laurel stared furiously at his retreating back, wanted to tell the nurse she was a fool for having had to ask. She was outraged that she had to pay five dollars for having entered the room, only to be insulted. Twice she had to tell Kate to come on, who seemed not to understand nothing was going to happen. Walking out, Laurel understood why he had come so close to defeat. Going along the corridor, past the lounging intern who gave them a knowing smile, she drew on a strength she knew she had inherited. Tough, she thought. Hell, you had to be.