The Rosewood Casket (15 page)

“We’re not what you’d call a close family,” Debba told Kelley.

“Well, at least Randall and Clarsie made a go of their marriage, even if they did it in a hurry and she wore a suit,” said Kelley. “I eloped, but I still had a white dress. It wasn’t floor length, but it had lace on the bodice.” She blushed, and looked away. “We got divorced after ten months, though,” she said. “Guess you need more than a white dress to make a marriage take.”

“Keep looking for it,” said Debba. “Even if it is just a wool suit, it’s still her wedding outfit. That makes it a symbol of one of the most special days of their lives. Maybe we could use a little piece for the lining.”

“I might recognize it if I saw it in here,” said Lilah, piecing through the stacks of clothing. “It had shoulder pads and a straight skirt. I think it was dark green. What did you get married in, Debba?”

The silence stretched on for nearly a minute before Debba Stargill answered. “A long dress. Sort of champagne-colored with a big sash. And what they call a picture hat, like the wide straw bonnet Scarlett O’Hara wore at the garden party.”

“That sounds nice,” said Kelley.

“Well, I had wanted the long white dress and the veil, and all, but Garrett had been married before, and my minister didn’t think it was right for us to have a big white wedding, with him being divorced and all.”

“I didn’t know Garrett had been married before,” said Kelley. In fact, she knew very little about any of them, because Charles Martin hardly ever mentioned his family.

“I never met her,” said Debba. “He got married real young, and it didn’t work out.” She scooted away from the trunk, and knelt before a stack of dusty cardboard boxes. “I think I’ll look in here, while you two go through the trunk. Maybe I can find some things that belonged to Mr. Stargill’s mother and father, or some family baby things we could use.”

Kelley shrugged and turned back to the contents of the trunk. “So I guess Clayt is the only one who never married.”

“There was another brother,” said Lilah. “Dwayne.”

“Oh, right, you mentioned him. The drinker. He got killed, didn’t he?”

“Car wreck in Florida. None of us went, though, except his mother. Dwayne had been wild from the time he was fourteen. He was the next oldest after Robert Lee. Enlisted in the army after he got kicked out of high school—or flunked out, I forget which. Went to Vietnam, and got some medals for being wild. I don’t think the family really expected him to come back alive from overseas, so when he burned himself up in a car wreck on I-95, it didn’t seem to surprise any of them. Charlie and Clayt used to call him ‘Audie’—you know, after Audie Murphy, the war hero. I guess Dwayne was kinda like him. Fearless. Roadhouses and fast cars were his natural habitat. You could tell by looking at him that he wasn’t going to be around long enough to get old.”

“Did he leave any family?” asked Kelley. “Wife and kids or anything?”

“Not that we ever heard about,” said Lilah. “He may have had some cocktail waitress-type in Daytona, but if so, she never bothered to look us up. She must be long gone by now, if she ever existed at all. I’d be surprised if he ever made anything legal. Dwayne wasn’t one for legal formalities—he jumped bail often enough.”

“He was a convict?” said Debba faintly.

“Oh, no. Just a good old boy with more honor than sense. Barroom brawls was about the extent of it. He had a hair trigger when he was drinking. Robert Lee was mortified, of course. Called Dwayne the black sheep of the family. I think the other boys just laughed it off. They may have been sorry when he died, but they sure weren’t surprised.”

“Was Clayt ever married?”

“Not so far. I keep thinking he’ll settle down one of these days,” said Lilah. “He’s just having a longer childhood than usual. Not that he can afford a wife and family on the little bit he makes doing jack-of-all-trades work. Clayt came close to tying the knot once that I know of, but then he took a notion to go walk the entire Appalachian Trail—all two thousand and some miles of it; takes about six months—and when he got back, his girl wasn’t his girl anymore.”

Debba, who had been shaking out a pile of dusty baby clothes, sneezed three times in quick succession.

Lilah turned to her and smiled. “They say when you sneeze like that, there’s an angel passing by.”

*   *   *

In the office of the Wake County courthouse registrar of deeds, there was a coffee mug with Frank Whitescarver’s name on it, but he had to drink from it at the public counter, because not even an old regular like Frank was trusted with food or drinks near the precious deed books in Mrs. Oakley’s care. Today, abstaining from coffee in dedication to his task, he sat hunched over the deed book in a trance of compass measurements and legal jargon, occasionally scribbling a note to himself on a legal pad. He had draped his gray suit coat across the back of the chair, and loosened his red tie.

“You looking for property again, Frank?” asked Dallas Stuart, a local attorney, who had come in to do a title search. “When are you going to buy a new house for Betty Lou? Seems to me with all those fancy homes you’re putting up all over creation, you two ought to be living in style up on Boone’s Mountain instead of in that same brick rancher you’ve had since Ford was in the White House.”

A plaster smile was the best that Frank Whitescarver could manage. He took himself seriously—always had, even as a child—and affronts to his dignity stung him. It was one thing to have to be friendly to everybody on account of his work, but quite another to have to take guff from them. People didn’t like Frank much, and beneath his amiability, he returned the sentiment, but he was always courteous, and, by god, he expected folks to return the favor.

“Oh, we’re simple people, Dallas,” he said, shrugging. “And we have no children, so a little house suits our needs. I keep telling Betty Lou I’ll build her one of those French chalet things up on a hill somewhere, but she just shudders and says, ‘The idea of having to pack up and move all your junk makes me want to crawl under the bed and never come out.’” He had the answer pat. It had served him well for many years, although Betty Lou could not remember ever having said it.

“Just looking for land for other folks to buy, is that it?”

“That’s right, Mr. Stuart.”

“Well, I can’t say that I approve of all this new building going on around here. Taking perfectly good farmland and woods, and turning it into another set of bedrooms for Johnson City, but I guess people have to live somewhere. And there are some people around here who need the money, Lord knows. Land for development fetches a pretty price nowadays. Makes me wish J. Z. Stallard would sell that farm of his, before the county takes it for taxes.”

Frank Whitescarver waited two beats, so as to seem unconcerned, and then he said, “Stallard. Up on the ridge next to the Stargill place?”

“That’s right. Wasn’t ever much of a farm anyhow, my daddy used to say. All the good land is bottomland, and the folks up on the mountain took the leftovers, and got ’em cheap. Used to be a joke, you know: ‘The folks in the valley look down upon the folks up the mountain.’”

The realtor smiled politely. “Of course, these days the ridge runners may be having the last laugh on the valley people. Those with mountain land own the views now, and that’s worth a good bit more than flat grazing land for Holstein cattle.”

“Well, that’s true,” said Stuart. “The new people want fancy homes, and most of them couldn’t grow a tomato in a tub of manure. They want a pretty view from the picture window and the wraparound cedar deck. How much do you reckon a place like Stallard’s would be worth on today’s market, Whitescarver?”

“It’s hard to tell. I can’t say that I’m all that familiar with the property, although I know exactly which farm you’re talking about. I could take a ride out there, though, and talk to Mr. Stargill, if you think it would help.”

“Wish I could say I thought so,” said Dallas Stuart. “J. Z. can be the most pigheaded man alive when it comes to that farm of his. Never mind that he’s no youngster any more, and all the help he’s got is that daughter of his, Dovey. I don’t say she’s not willing, and capable enough, but I’m of the old school, Whitescarver, and I say running a farm is no job for a lone woman. Why, it would dry her out like a pippin. She’d be old at forty-five, with scraggly hair and skin like the cover of a Bible.”

“And you say the Stallards are having tax problems?”

“Of course, they are! They lost their barn last year, and they’ve had livestock problems. They came to me to see if I could get some kind of waiver for them on taxes, on account of all the setbacks they’d had, but the best I could do for them was to get them a six-month extension, and to talk the bank into giving them a loan. They don’t have the cash to pay high land taxes. None of the farmers around here do. All their money is in land and equipment, but the damned government wants to be paid in cash on the barrelhead. Every year.”

“It’s hard on farmers,” said Whitescarver. “And I expect it’s going to get worse. Now that folks are building fancy homes out in the rural areas, the land values are bound to go up for everybody. Which means even higher taxes, even for those folks still trying to farm.”

“It’s a damned shame,” said Dallas Stuart.

“Better to sell the farm for a tidy sum than to see it auctioned out from under you for unpaid taxes,” said Whitescarver.

“It’s still a damned shame.”

*   *   *

Kayla had awakened to a quiet house. She dressed herself in tiny jeans and a red sweatshirt from her canvas suitcase and went downstairs, calling out for her mother, but all was quiet. Kayla was not particularly disturbed by this. Until recently, her mother had worked changing shifts at a twenty-four-hour dry cleaners in Nashville, catering to people in the music business, who kept odd hours themselves. Since night shift child care was almost impossible to find, much less afford, Kelley had dispensed with it on the weeks she worked eleven to seven, reasoning that Kayla might as well sleep in her own bed, and that the money would be better spent on food and clothes for the child. Kayla was used to waking up alone. She rummaged through the refrigerator, and found orange juice and homemade jam. The bread was in a wooden box at the back of the kitchen counter, but by dragging the chair over to the counter, she found that she could reach it and the toaster beside it.

While the toast was browning, Kayla walked along the countertop, opening the hanging cupboards and taking down a small plate and a cartoon jelly glass for her orange juice. Toast and jam was about all she wanted for breakfast anyhow, and with the grown-ups gone, she could eat in the living room and watch
Mr. Rogers,
or whatever was on here at this hour. Kayla wasn’t particular.

By the time she finished breakfast, there was nothing on the tube but boring talk shows, so she went out into the yard to play. The cars were all there, which meant that the folks were around somewhere—maybe the barn, or up the hill for a walk—but she didn’t feel like looking for them. Grown-ups never had time to play with you anyhow, and they had an annoying habit of thinking up things for you to do that weren’t at all what you had in mind. Besides, Kayla’s mother was always so grateful when she looked after herself. She would smile in relief, and say, “She’s just a regular little lady.” Kayla liked that.

First she explored the yard. There were some little purple flowers growing wild here and there in the grass. They looked sort of like hair curlers growing on a short stalk, no longer than her finger. There was a tree with white flowers, too, and along the side of the house a tall hedge blazed with tiny yellow star flowers. It would have been fun to crawl into the hedge to make a fort, but the branches were too thick together to let her in.

She wished she had brought some toys along. She had Sally, but her mother had been careful to explain that Sally came all the way from Germany, and that she had cost Charles Martin a lot of money, so she wasn’t an outside toy. She had to stay clean and new looking.

Kayla wondered if there were any discarded toys stored in the old house, and if her mother would let her ask about them. Surely, with so many boys in the family, there would have been a wagon, or a toy train, or something. And none of them seemed to have any kids to pass the toys along to. Kayla didn’t much like the toys little boys played with, but they were better than nothing.

She went into the barn, in search of yard cats or baby chickens, but the place was dark and musty smelling, and she heard voices from the loft. Charles Martin and his brothers, arguing about something. She slipped out again, half wishing that she could hang around with Clayt, who seemed pretty nice, but she was sure he wouldn’t be any fun today, because he was busy acting old with the rest of them.

She peeked into all the outbuildings, but they were muddy and empty of all life, except spiders. Kayla knew better than to get dirty when they were off visiting. Her mama wouldn’t want to have to do emergency laundry right now.

Kayla walked up to the top of the hill, but the wind up there made her shiver, despite the sunshine. She lingered among the gravestones, trying to read the weathered inscriptions, but the dates and the word
Stargill
were all she could manage. She recognized that from the record albums and concert posters Charles Martin had in his den. Kayla’s mother had taught her the alphabet, and she could recognize some words by their shape—like
McDonald’s
and
Coca-Cola
—but she couldn’t really read yet.

Back in the yard, Kayla tried turning cartwheels, then walked a little way along the top rail of the fence, before she fell off into the damp grass, crushing purple flowers, and sending a bee droning off for a more peaceful feeding spot. She had been exploring the farm for half an hour, when the old woman appeared at the front gate.

She was standing on the flagstone walk, holding a wooden box with something in aluminum foil set on top of it, and she looked really sad—the way Kayla had expected Charlie to look with his father dying and all, only he hadn’t. She was a tall woman, with a smooth big-boned face and her hair pinned up in a bun, strands of dark hair mixed in with silver. She wore a dark blue dress, which looked like an outfit for church, and a gray wool shawl to keep away the wind. Kayla wasn’t afraid of her, exactly, but she felt that this was somebody that people were quiet around.