Prayers of Agnes Sparrow (32 page)

“Bone?” Jasper called. “There ain’t no bones. She's been cremated.”

Harriett whispered to him, and he settled down. “I’m sorry, Colonel,” he said with a salute to the pastor.

Eugene lifted his cane toward the ceiling. “I told you all this would happen. I told you she was in league with the devil.”

“Calm down, Eugene,” Pastor said. He took a step down the aisle. “All of you settle down. This ain’t why we’re here.”

“I’m sorry,” Frank said. “I guess we’re all so … stunned.”

Winifred grabbed the boys. “We better get going.”

“No, sit.” I stood and went to the podium.

“Please,” I said. “Vidalia wouldn’t want this.”

A crash of thunder exploded right over the church, and a flash of lightning burst through the windows.

“Hear that?” Pastor asked. “You all quiet down and let Griselda say a few words about our friend and neighbor.”

I heard some low grumbling, but I looked at Winifred with her arms around those three little boys and I looked at Ruth dressed all in black from head to toe and I waited. I waited until I felt something stir in my spirit, something that prodded me on to speak about my friend.

“I loved her,” was how I started and I told them why I loved her without a single mention of Hezekiah or the way she died. I told them how she invited me to her house for sticky buns and coffee. How she fibbed and said she just happened to
make them when all along I knew she planned on it. I knew she made them expressly for me.

“And she was my best library patron,” I said. And that was when Babette Sturgis stood up and said in a nervous little voice, “She always helped me with my reports. I don’t see how I’ll get a good grade on my report about them carpetbaggers, now.”

“That's right,” said Nelson Tompkins. If it wasn’t for Miz Whitaker I’d never have gotten accepted into Penn State.”

There were oohs and ahs after that, because apparently Nelson didn’t tell anyone he was accepted, not even his mother who started to bawl like a baby.

Then Ivy stood up. She was a picture in her paisley print dress with her heavy bosom sticking out like two large cantaloupes. She had three gold chains hanging down and had piled her hair on top of head that morning.

“I never told none of you this, but Vidalia loved Al Capone. She always put scraps out for him and even helped me get the skunk out of him that summer, you all remember that. Poor dog.”

Then Ivy started to cry. She put her face in her hands and sobbed a second or two. “I’ll never get her out of my mind. I keep seeing her—lying there next to the flowery settee in a pool of blood.”

Fred Haskell dashed to her and let her rest her head on his chest. “He's a monster. A monster let into this town by Agnes Sparrow.”

A collective sigh swelled through the congregation. Little Tobias yanked his Mama's sleeve. “How come Nana was in a pool?”

Winifred pulled him close.

Studebaker and Boris stood at the same time, once again giving credence to the rumor that the two were somehow
attached at the hip. “She was a good neighbor,” Stu said, while Boris nodded so hard I thought his head would snap off.

After a few more people spoke, Winifred joined me. “I never liked coming home to Bright's Pond. It was the happiest day of my life when Tobias took me to Detroit. I begged Mama to come with us, but she didn’t want to leave.”

She sighed and swiped away tears. Sylvia started to play
In the Garden
again, pianissimo.

“Well, today, I can see why Mama loved it here. You’re all good neighbors.”

Then sobbing, she grabbed her mother's ashes and the three boys and fled down the aisle out the back of the church.

Ruth and I found her sitting on Vidalia's porch rocking on the swing. She still clutched the ashes. The rain had stopped and a bright noon sun shone down on our little town, drying the streets.

“Look over there,” Ruth said. “A rainbow.”

Sure enough God had sent a rainbow that day. “See that,” I said. “God planned on it from the early morning. First he had to send the storm because—”

“It's the only way to get a rainbow,” Ruth said.

Now, what happened next is—well, I’m not sure if it ever happened before. I mean I don’t know if anyone ever did what we did, but we took the kite and Vidalia's ashes up to Hector's Hill. Tobias managed to run the kite real fast and real hard and after a few fitful starts the kite soared over the town.

Ruth pulled a little baggy from her purse with two white aspirins in it. She dropped the pills in her handbag, and then I put a teaspoon or so of the ashes into the bag and tied it on to the kite string. It was a real quiet, solemn occasion. We swiped away our tears as the little bag slowly crept its way up and up and up until you couldn’t really tell what it was any longer.

“You go, Vidalia,” Ruth called. “You keep going higher and higher because ain’t nooooobody who deserves a better spot in heaven.”

Winifred gathered her boys around her like a mama hen and she cried so hard it rivaled the rain that morning. Tobias cried even though I wasn’t quite certain he understood what happened yet.

I don’t know who got the idea first to soar the ashes. It might have come to all three of us at the same time. Ruth said it came direct from Vidalia, but Ruth was like that. In the long run it didn’t matter. The important thing is that Vidalia soared with us that afternoon. Vidalia was with us for what was the second of many kite-flying escapades.

We stayed up on the hill until another rack of dark clouds moved in and Ruth said she saw lightning in the distance.

R
uth and I stopped by the café before going home. Winifred wasn’t interested and claimed she needed to get the boys to nap and start sorting through her mother's belongings. I offered to help but she turned me down. “Nah, I kind of want the time alone.”

The café was packed, but that wasn’t unusual for an ordinary Sunday, let alone one as special as that one.

“I looked for you at church,” I told Zeb as he poured coffee into my cup.

“Ah, I know, I just couldn’t go. I decided to make some extra meatloaf and pie. Figured on a big crowd.”

“You were right.”

Zeb leaned close. “They’re still talking about Agnes. They’re saying she's lost her powers. Frank Sturgis even said she might have started praying against us, seeing as how Cora died and that Frank lost his temper and clocked Janeen with
a loaf of bread. Even Jasper is worried that the Commies have taken over the town.”

“This is preposterous. How could Agnes have caused all this?”

That was when Ruth moaned a little. “I—I didn’t want to say anything but my stomach's been hurting.”

“Stomachs hurt for lots of reasons, Ruth.”

“I know, I know, I just was thinking that maybe my bleeding ulcer is coming back now that Agnes has lost her powers.”

“Agnes hasn’t lost any powers. She never had any to begin with,” I said, but it was no use. Everybody had their minds made up.

I sipped coffee and tried to listen in on conversations, but I didn’t hear too much until Studebaker and Boris walked in.

“We’re glad you’re here, Stu,” called Nate Kincaid. “We want to know how you and Boris feel about this.”

“About what?” He and Boris took a booth just vacated by the Flatbush family.

“Well, I reckon I’m thinking along the same lines as all of you. It's horrible what happened to Vidalia. Imagine having a killer living right here in Bright's Pond for nearly four months and nobody knowing it.”

“That's just it,” Nate said. “We never had a killer in town before. Not until that—that Hezekiah fella strode in and started charming his way around. How ’bout that Agnes letting it happen? She started the whole thing.”

“Now hold on—” I said, while Zeb poured coffee. “Thank you, Zeb. You can’t go blaming Agnes.”

“But Agnes is the one we went to,” Harriett said. She wiped some lingering lemon pie from Jasper's cheek. “We trusted her with everything, all our most private thoughts and needs.”

“Even our lives—” Edie Tompkins said, “—our very lives and now—” She blubbered into a napkin and blew her nose so loud it sounded like a train had pulled into town. “Now Vi … Vi …”

Fred took her arm. “Come on, honey, let's get home.”

“I want to go past her house,” Edie said. “There weren’t no viewing, so I’d at least like to walk past her house and pay my proper respects.”

“Sure, honey, come on now.”

Stu spied me and invited me to join him and Boris, who was as tight-lipped that day as I had ever seen him.

“He wants us to sit with them,” I told Ruth.

“That's fine, but my stomach is not feeling good at all, not good at all.”

“Come on, Ruth, you’re fine. You come home with me.”

Zeb wrapped Ruth's pie and some for Agnes and then we joined Stu and Boris for a little while. Boris clicked his tongue a few times and grumbled about the cost of the road sign, while Stu told folks to simmer down and stop blaming Agnes.

When I got up to leave, Stu took my hand. “You tell Agnes I ain’t angry at her, okay, Griselda?” He looked into my eyes. “She couldn’t know that Hezekiah was a—killer. She couldn’t. Could she?”

I
half expected to see an angry mob armed with torches and pitchforks out in front of the house, but it was eerily quiet and dark when Ruth and I got there. The bottom-heavy clouds had gotten darker, and I heard thunder rolling over the mountains. Rain would start soon.

“I hate leaving Agnes alone for so long, Ruth, but I had no choice.”

“Well, that's right, Griselda. You had to go to the after-church service, and we had to fly the kite and go to the café. It was only proper.”

“I know you’re right, but I still feel so bad about leaving her.”

Ruth stopped me just as my foot landed on the porch. “Today was Vidalia's day. Agnes knows that.”

I brushed the little sparrow on our door, a cold and constant reminder of what she used to represent to so many who grieved as they passed through our door. They knew my daddy would take good care of their loved one.
The Shoops Local
even did a feature story on Daddy and the Sparrow Funeral Home a couple of years before the train wreck. They said people
used to talk about how they’d turn the little Sparrow and hear sweet chimes like heaven was behind the doors.

I swallowed hard when I thought of Vidalia's body getting burned to ashes. Winifred said it was her desire, but it didn’t sit well with me. I remember from when I was child how folks appreciated being able to touch their loved one or slip a note into their pocket like I did when my daddy died. I put his fishing license and a picture of us in the rowboat into his breast pocket. Viewings certainly never mattered to the deceased but they meant an awful lot to those who mourned.

“I’m home, Agnes,” I called from the entryway. “Ruth is with me. We brought pie.”

Ruth and I stopped near the radiator and removed our coats and rain boots and Ruth shook out her plastic scarf.

“Is she in there?” Ruth said. “I didn’t hear her say anything.”

“Of course she's in there, Ruth. What do you think, she got up and went out for the day?”

“Now don’t go getting all in a snit, Griselda.”

“I’m sorry. You go see her. I want to change my clothes.”

“Sure. Maybe I can bring her some pie and tea.”

“That's a good idea. Just don’t tell her that the people are talking about her like it's her fault that Vidalia—” I took a breath. “I’m gonna wait for it to all blow over.”

“Oh, I won’t, Griselda, you can count on me.”

I started up the steps and felt an odd relief when I heard Agnes's bed springs creak.

Arthur met me in my room. A bloody mouse hung out of his mouth. He dropped it at my feet. I opened the window and tossed it to the crows. They swooped from the trees, and I watched as two fought over the tiny carcass.

“I hate those birds, Arthur. They’ve got no respect for the dead.” Rain started again as I changed out of my Sunday clothes.
“More rain, Artie. The backyard will probably flood.” Thunder rumbled directly overhead. It sounded like galvanized trash cans getting blown down the street in a windstorm. “Is there anything left to do? Hezekiah's been caught, and Winifred is getting ready to leave and Vidalia—well, she’ll be going to Detroit with Winifred.”

I sat on the edge of my bed and pulled on a pair of white sweat socks, the long, tube kind with no seams. Then I cried until my stomach hurt.

B
y the time I got back downstairs, Ruth had told Agnes all about the kite-flying ceremony.

“And she went up and up and up and—”

“No kidding?” Agnes said.

“She just soared to heaven,” Ruth said. “She soared. Oh, that sister-in-law of mine will never believe it when I tell her.”

“Why are you gonna tell Vera?” I asked.

“I thought she might mention it on her radio show, seeing as how Vidalia was one of the best neighbors this town has ever known, except you, of course, Agnes. I don’t care what folks are saying right now.” Ruth waved her hand like she was swatting a fly. “I just don’t care.”

“What?” Agnes said. “What are folks saying?”

“Ruth, I told you not to say anything,” I said.

Ruth patted Agnes's hand. “Oh, those bumpkins down at the café are saying it's all your fault for sending Hezekiah to Vidalia's when he first came to town. They’re saying Vidalia would still be alive if it weren’t for you. They’re saying you lost your powers and God ain’t gonna answer your prayers anymore, they’re saying—”

I watched a blush start at Agnes's neck and then creep into her cheeks. “My fault?”

“It's not as bad as all that, Agnes,” I said. “People are just upset over what happened to Vidalia.”

Agnes sent Ruth for more pie.

“But what if they’re right, Griselda. What if it is my fault?”

“That's nonsense.” The doorbell chimed. “Now who could that be?”

“Only one way to find out,” Agnes said.

Studebaker stood on the porch, looking like he had lost his best friend.

“You won’t believe this, Griselda,” he said. “All those folks down at the café said they don’t want the sign anymore, they don’t want people coming to town looking for Agnes. They’re afraid she might invite another killer in.”