The Rosewood Casket (18 page)

“Did you find any other planers while you were rummaging through here, Robert?” asked Garrett. “I don’t guess it matters, though. We’d need an electric one to make any headway on this wood. We could buy one, I suppose.”

“Are you sure this place is wired for power tools?” asked Clayt. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

Garrett shrugged. “We’d be better off paying to have it done.”

“There’s a cabinetmaker in Hamelin. Old Dalton Wheeler. He’d probably plane it for us. I could ask him.”

“Good. See how long it will take, if we get it there by this afternoon. And how much he’ll charge us.”

“Has to be done, no matter what,” said Robert Lee. “Deduct it from the estate.”

“Hadn’t we better find out if there is an estate first?” asked Clayt.

“This farm is worth a good bit,” said Robert Lee.

“We’re taking things one at a time here,” said Garrett. “Clayt, tote up those numbers you got on Charlie’s measurements.”

“I already did. He’s five feet-nine, and about twenty-four inches across the back, give or take a couple. He wouldn’t hold still. So I’d say six feet in length, maybe two and a half feet wide.”

“Shouldn’t we allow more length?” asked Robert Lee. “There’s usually a pillow under the head of the deceased, and a few inches of it sticks up beyond where his head lays.”

“Maybe we ought to ask somebody to make sure,” said Garrett. “We can’t afford to get it wrong. Clayt, do you think Dalton Wheeler will know anything about this kind of job?”

“I can ask him for advice,” said Clayt. “But I say we have to do the work ourselves.”

“It isn’t going to be easy,” said Robert Lee. “Or quick.”

“We can do it, though.” Charles Martin came back into the woodshop. “We have sixty board feet of lumber. We can’t waste much of it, but there’s enough to build a man-sized box. And I think we ought to do it ourselves, because Daddy asked us to.”

“I agree,” said Clayt. “Two hundred years ago, when our people settled this valley, they tended to their own needs, without buying help for anything. They delivered their own babies, grew their own food, and buried their dead in homemade coffins. We were the West back then! We were the pioneers. Have we lost so much of our heritage that four grown men can’t build one simple box without hiring professional help?”

“I can,” said Garrett. “Thanks to the army, I’m as fit as any pioneer you’d care to name. It’s the rest of you I’m worried about, with your time limits and your manicured hands.”

“Don’t fret over me,” said Charles Martin. “Being a musician is no desk job, believe me. I can pull my own weight in this.”

“I’m the only one of you who has done this before,” said Robert Lee.

They heard the shouting then, and Debba Stargill jerked open the door to the barn and stood there screaming for her husband. Kelley, pale but calm, pushed past her and ran to the open door of the woodshop. “You all better come inside,” she said. “There’s something in there you need to see.”

*   *   *

Jane Arrowood’s white house on Elm Street reminded people of an English cottage, and its well-tended garden, bright now with early tulips and daffodils, was in keeping with that image. The house was larger than it looked, though. Much too big a place for an aging widow whose only living child was a grown man with a place of his own. She kept the place because it held the memories of her children and her moderately happy marriage. Her oldest son, Cal, had been killed in Vietnam in 1966. She felt that if she ever left this house, she would lose even the memory of her lost boy. She kept it, too, because she thought the place might be hard to sell, and there was nowhere else in town that she wanted to live. An apartment would be more convenient, but she would miss her garden and her neighbors.

Jane knew, though, that the main reason she kept the white house was because her son Spencer wanted his old homeplace to stay the same. He fretted at any little change she made: the upholstery on a sofa, or new kitchen curtains. He wanted things to stay exactly as they had been when he was growing up. It was exasperating, but endearing, too, Jane thought, that he would value so much his memories of the home she had made for him. She indulged him by remaining, the curator of the museum of Sheriff Spencer Arrowood’s childhood. He did not want to live there himself anymore, but it gave him a feeling of groundedness to know that his old home was there, unchanged, and that at any time he could walk into it, and be “home.” She understood that, but it worried her sometimes. “What will he do when I’m gone?” she would ask herself. Perhaps find another place that would be home to him, she supposed. He had tried that once, long ago, when he married his high school sweetheart, but the acrimony of that union seemed to have soured him on trying again. She hoped he would outlive the bitterness. Marriage wasn’t perfect, she knew that firsthand, but it was a comfort when the world around you seemed to be growing younger and more alien with each passing day.

It was a warm afternoon, and Jane was outside in her khaki gardening pants and one of Spencer’s old sweatshirts, tending the mint bed. It was a weed, really: early up in the spring, the better to take over the entire flower bed, if you didn’t keep it in line. Sometimes, in a fit of exasperation at seeing another clump of pansies engulfed, she would be tempted to root out every stalk of mint in the garden, but Spencer liked it. He said there was nothing like fresh, homegrown mint to flavor iced tea in the summertime. Jane sighed at her martyrdom to mint, and kept on weeding.

“Good afternoon, Jane.”

“Why, Nora Bonesteel! You scared the life out of me. I was humming, and didn’t hear you come up. Can I get you some tea?” Jane tried to mask her surprise with offers of hospitality. Nora Bonesteel seldom came to town. She had no car, and it was a good seven miles down the mountain. Jane’s first guess would have been illness, but the old woman looked fit enough. She was wearing her blue wool church dress, and a hand-woven shawl, and she looked more troubled than Jane had ever seen her. She ushered her visitor into the house, making small talk about gardening, because it wouldn’t do to question a guest standing out in the front yard.

When Nora had been settled in the red Queen Anne chair next to the living room fireplace, and Jane had put the kettle on in the kitchen, she sat down on the loveseat, and said, “Now, I’m delighted to see you, but I can’t help wondering if there is anything the matter, because you’re not exactly a frequent visitor. How did you get here?”

“My neighbor down the hill was kind enough to give me a ride in his pickup.”

“Thank goodness for that. I was afraid you had walked. Of course, I’ll drive you home when you’re ready.”

Nora Bonesteel smiled. “That may not be necessary,” she said. “But I do wish you would call the hospital in Johnson City, and ask them how Randall Stargill is doing.”

The hospital. Jane stared. She knew that her friend had no telephone in her house on Ashe Mountain, but it seemed strange for her to come all the way to Hamelin to make a phone call. She had never heard Nora mention Randall Stargill, either. Perhaps they were kinfolks. “Would you like me to take you to Johnson City to visit Mr. Stargill?” she asked.

Nora shook her head. “He’s not up to seeing anyone. But I would like to hear how he is.”

Jane heard the whistle of the teakettle in the kitchen. “I’ll just fill the teapot,” she said. “And while it’s steeping, I’ll make the call. Can I get you anything else?”

“A Bible.”

“A
Bible
?”

Nora looked apologetic. “I know it well enough,” she said, “But I haven’t got it by heart. A large-print one, if you have such a thing. And a paper and pencil.”

Jane nodded and went to her bedroom to fetch her King James leather Bible from the drawer of her nightstand and a pad and pen from beside her bedside telephone. She began to wonder if Nora had suffered a stroke. She was quite unlike herself today. But the old woman seemed alert and in good spirits when Jane returned and handed her the things she had asked for. As she hurried to the kitchen to make the tea, Nora Bonesteel began to leaf through the Old Testament, running her finger down a line of scripture with a practiced hand.

Jane made the call from the wall phone in the kitchen. “He’s in critical condition, but stable,” she announced, as she came back into the living room with the tea tray. “You were right about his not receiving visitors. He is in a coma.” She paused to gauge her friend’s reaction to this news, but Nora Bonesteel said nothing. She continued to consult the Bible, and to make notes on the pad.

Jane set the tray on the coffee table in front of Nora’s chair, and glanced at what the old woman had written.
I Kings 4:22. Judges 5:25.
It seemed an odd time and place for Bible study, Jane thought, but she decided that Nora might be distraught over Mr. Stargill’s grave illness.

“Was he a close friend of yours?” she asked. “Or a cousin?”

Nora Bonesteel closed her eyes. “A long time ago, I almost married him. Randall was a handsome man in his officer’s uniform.” She smiled. “He knew it, too.”

“Were you afraid that he wasn’t coming back from the war?”

“No. I was afraid he was. And that would mean leaving my house on the mountain to live on Stargill land. Randall loved that place, more than he loved me, even. He wasn’t ever going to leave his farm, except feetfirst. It’s a fine place, I reckon, except for such as I.”

Jane considered it. “You mean, you—saw things—at the Stargills?”

Nora sighed. “It’s best left alone,” she said. “It will end soon. Now I’m keeping you from your work. You’ll be wanting to make lunch for Spencer, won’t you?”

“Spencer? He never comes home for lunch.”

Nora Bonesteel settled back in the armchair, the Bible in her lap. “Well, Jane, when he calls, tell him I’m here.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

If we give way to them now, it will ever be the case.

—DANIEL BOONE, letter to Colonel Henderson, April 1, 1775

Robert Lee hurried into the house ahead of his brothers. Garrett was attempting to calm his shrieking wife, and Clayt and Charlie were talking to Kelley, who was at least making sense. Where was Lilah? Robert Lee didn’t quite know what he had expected to find in the house. A medical emergency perhaps. Lilah had smoked in her youth, and, now that she was past the change of life, her weight made her a possible candidate for a heart attack. He wondered if anyone had called the rescue squad. He could feel his own heart pounding as he stumbled up the back steps, fearing the worst.

He found his wife in the living room, calm and not stricken by illness. She was holding a polished wooden box, lid closed, and staring at nothing with a solemn, frozen look that made him think of church. She looked up when she heard him come in, smiling gently in his direction.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, heaving the words as he tried to catch his breath.

“Sit down, Robert,” said Lilah. “The girls just had a fright is all. Young people lead such sheltered lives, don’t they?”

“I suppose,” he said. He wondered if the angelic Rudy was mixed up in this; in fact, he caught himself glancing around the room as if his wife’s angel might be lounging in a corner watching the excitement with a bemused, seraphic smile. Lilah claimed that she never saw Rudy, but he was always afraid that
he
might. “What set them off, Lilah? I thought you’d had a stroke or something, the way they carried on.”

Lilah shook her head. “An old friend of your father’s dropped by,” she said. “Nora Bonesteel, her name was.”

Robert Lee swallowed hard. Everyone in these parts knew about Nora Bonesteel. Were scared of her, too, the way she knew things. She went out of her way not to bring bad tidings, but it made folks uneasy, anyhow, wondering what it was she knew about them. “Did she say anything about Dad?” he whispered.

“No. She knew that he had been taken ill. Well—let me take that back. She seemed to fear the worst. She brought us this box, and said that Daddy Stargill would want to be buried with it. Isn’t that extraordinary, Robert?”

“I guess it is,” he said. “But Miz Bonesteel is an unusual sort of woman.” He was ashamed at the relief he felt. Far better for Daddy to die quickly now, without suffering, than to fight his way to a tenuous, helpless recovery, only to require constant nursing or to succumb weeks or months from now, forcing Robert to take off from work all over again.

“I recognized her, of course,” said Lilah, with a complacent smile. “She was that dark-haired beauty that your father used to run around with before the War. There are pictures in the family album, though why Clarsie let them stay there is more than I can guess.”

“That was a long time ago, honey,” said Robert, patting her shoulder.

“Well, that’s what Rudy said. I was working my way up to telling her that Daddy Stargill’s illness was a family matter, and that she
wasn’t
family, when Rudy said, just as plain in my head, he said: ‘Lilah Rose, you got no call to go sticking your damned nose into what went on before you were born and doesn’t concern you now.’”

Robert shifted uneasily. “
Damned?
He said that?”

“He did,” said Lilah, nodding emphatically. “He’s a dirty-talking angel, sometimes, when he’s worked up.”

“And Nora Bonesteel left this box to be buried with Daddy. That’s strange, all right. I don’t ever remember them so much as passing the time of day together at church even.”

“No. Your father did his courting when he was young, and when that was over, he had nothing left to say to women in general,” said Lilah. Her conversations with her father-in-law had been perfunctory and few.

Robert sat down beside his wife, and took the polished box out of her lap. “It’s heavy enough. Good workmanship. What’s in it? Love letters?”

“That’s what
we
all thought,” said Lilah. “Open it.”

Robert started to lift the lid, but he was distracted by the rest of the family, who came trailing into the room. Debba was still making snuffling noises, and hanging on to Garrett’s arm, and Kelley, still whey-faced, murmured that she had to check on Kayla, and fled.