'I know what you mean,' Anna Beth said. 'I liked to never got to sleep last night. Kept thinking I heard Daddy out in the barn. You know, Alfred, how he used to hum that little tune while he was milking the cows?'
Alfred’s eyes flicked toward Marlene, so fast that nobody noticed but Roby. 'Yeah. I guess memories come in different size boxes. Because I woke up in the middle of the night and thought I heard the tractor out in the cornfield.'
Buck turned from his conservation with Sarah at the mention of the word 'tractor.' 'Didn’t nobody steal it, did they?'
Sarah grabbed Buck by the arm and pulled him toward the widow. 'Don’t even get started.'
Roby was hit by a wave of dizziness, as if the chapel had suddenly broken loose from the world and drifted into the clouds. The thick sweetness of the flowers made his stomach flutter. Roby grabbed Alfred to keep from falling.
'Here,' Alfred said. 'I’ll help you outside.'
Alfred hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even snickered, as he helped Roby take a seat on the concrete steps leading into the funeral home. The evening was autumn cool, and as Roby leaned against the wrought-iron railing, his sweat dried, leaving him clammy. Two men he didn’t recognize were smoking cigarettes in the parking lot, the orange glows of their cigarette tips growing fat with each draw. Clawson’s Funeral Home sat on a small hill, and downtown Barkersville huddled below it in a tangle of utility lines, a wash of street lamps, and a stack of worn bricks.
'You got no right to nose into family business,' Alfred said.
'I promised,' Roby said, wiping his eyes.
'How did you find out?'
'Your daddy told me.'
'Bullshit. Wasn’t nobody else there. Just me and Marlene and-'
'You didn’t hear him coming, did you? I reckon not. You were probably breathing too hard. Or maybe whispering little words in her ear. Tell me, what did you call her? Did you say, ‘Oh, Marlene,’ or did she make you say ‘sister’?'
'You bastard,' Alfred said.
'Don’t worry, I won’t tell nobody.'
'It didn’t happen. And don’t go messing with Marlene. You leave her alone.'
'I said I wouldn’t tell anybody. Wouldn’t want Cindy Parsons to know, would we?'
'Daddy’s dead. He can’t tell nobody. And who would believe you, anyway? Everybody pretty much thinks you’re touched in the head.'
'I guess we both got our secrets, don’t we?'
Alfred kept quiet while an elderly couple doddered down the steps and into their Ford. The two men had finished their cigarettes and exhaled the last of the gray smoke, buttoned their jackets, and went back inside. One of them said, 'Sorry about your loss, Alfred.'
'Thank you, Mr. Adams.'
When the funeral parlor door had closed once again, Roby said, 'There’s one way you can shut me up for good.'
'Hell, yeah. I can put a Jap bullet in your brain and bury you out by a back road.'
Roby almost told him to go ahead, to see how that worked out, to see whether secrets took to the grave actually stayed there. Instead, he fumbled in his pocket, touched something dry and ragged.
No. Wrong pocket.
He went inside his jacket and came out with the thing Barnaby had given him. 'Here. This is for Marlene.'
Alfred held the object up to the light that leaked through the parlor’s windows. 'What the hell’s this?'
'Forgiveness.'
'You’re as crazy as everybody says.'
'I swear on God’s Holy Bible, you get her to take that, and I’ll never whisper a word to nobody.'
'Take it?'
'Eat it. All of it.'
Alfred held the object close to his face, then sniffed it. 'Shoo, smells like dried dog shit.'
'It’s pie.'
'Pie?'
'A special recipe. Been in the family for generations.'
'You’re crazy, Roby Snow. Crazy as a frog-fucked hoot owl.' After a long minute, Alfred said, 'You promise, as God is your witness?'
Roby smiled. 'Cross my heart and hope to die.'
Alfred went inside, into the room where the others were paying tribute to the flesh that once housed Jacob Ridgehorn’s soul.
XI
The burial was almost an anticlimax.
By Saturday, the entire Ridgehorn family was worn down by grief, missed sleep, and the burden of hosting all of those who paid their last respects over and over. Some of them Roby had seen at the sittings, dropping by to deliver a roast or casserole, then coming over a few hours later to help eat it. A few had joined the family after the viewing for a late meal.
Roby had skipped that one, as much as he had looked forward to spending time with his temporary relatives. After all, he had the Isenhours to prepare for.
Now, with the sun nearly straight up like God’s golden eye, the clan had gathered around the family cemetery. Only the immediate family had been invited to the graveside services. The rest of the mourners had been shucked back at the official chapel service in Barkersville. Barnaby Clawson was offering a few words of comfort, a garbled mix of Bible verse scraps and personal anecdotes.
'Jacob Davis was not just a loving husband and father,' Barnaby said. 'He was also a friend, somebody you could count on in hard times. He held to his faith in everything he did, whether he was sitting in the third row of Barkersville Baptist or standing out in the cornfield killing crows.'
Alfred cleared his throat. The widow looked misty-eyed, but the shakes that had plagued her the last couple of days had gone. Her chin was tilted up, as if she were gazing into that better land she would someday share with the love of her life. Sarah and Buck sat on the far end of the row of metal chairs. Buck kept stealing jealous glances toward the backhoe that stood under the apple tree, its metal jaw ready to scoop soil over the coffin as soon as the formalities were done. The backhoe operator, dressed in a pair of blue coveralls, smoked and stared off over the meadows.
An Astroturf rug had been placed over the dirt so everybody’s fine shoes would remain spotless. Roby looked across the brown field at the barn. He caught Marlene looking in the same direction. Their eyes met. Neither of them had any tears.
'Jacob was a man of the earth,' Barnaby continued. 'But he was also a man of heaven. As we give him back to the dust from which he was formed, we also deliver him back to God. As we mourn his passing, we also rejoice in his new eternal life. Let us pray.'
Roby’s attention wandered as Barnaby reeled out one of his stock send-offs. The high hills were a splendor of red and yellow, and in the distance the wall of mountains rose like gray skyscrapers. The clouds were thin and far apart. The air smelled of harvest and earthworms. Jacob’s horse, Old Laddie, had come up from the cool banks of the creek and now stood at the fence, watching the proceedings with curiosity.
Alfred and Cindy sat together, holding hands. Harold was at the far end, away from Marlene, his hands clean today. Anna Beth stood near the head of the closed casket, wiping her nose with a shredded wad of tissue. The casket gleamed in the sunshine, suspended by canvas straps over the deep rectangular hole in the ground, a pile of flowers perched on the casket’s slick belly.
