molasses. Maybe it was some old Appalachian tradition. He’d never heard of it, and he was big on tradition himself. He made sure the lid was secure on the bowl of Cole slaw and slipped it into the refrigerator before the mayonnaise turned.
That Anna Beth was a silly girl for being in her late teens. She wasn’t like her daddy at all. She was still breathing, for one thing. And she and Roby didn’t have anything in common except this house and this wake and this monumental tribute of food. They certainly didn’t share any Ridgehorn blood.
Roby took a knife from his pocket, eased out a sliver of Beverly Parsons’s pie, and slid it into his mouth. As good as her other death pies, molasses and all.
He swallowed, wiped his hands, put away the Saran Wrap, and went into the sitting room to hear tales of the late Jacob Davis Ridgehorn’s honorable and God-fearing life. Every sinner got to be a saint, at least for the three days between departure and burial. Yet every saint rotted just the same.
From the inside out.
From the heart first.
Roby would offer what comfort he could. He knew there were worse things than losing a loved one, and there were worse things than dying. His knowledge of those things made him swallow again. The bite of pie went down like a stone.
II
Widow Ridgehorn sat stiff and unyielding by the television. It was a big boxy RCA, a relic from the era of vacuum tubes. A fine layer of dust lay on it like loose skin. The decedent’s photograph leaned backward on the top of the television, framed by a corroded gilt rectangle. Jacob’s celluloid eyes were hard and dull, the face severe, like a mortician’s handiwork done twenty years too early.
Roby sat across the room on the sofa, where Alfred had eased over. Alfred’s polite gesture not only gave Roby room, but it also moved Alfred closer to Cindy, daughter of the famed pie-maker. Alfred’s eyes were suitably haunted, edged with dark lavender, but something about the lines on his forehead gave the impression that he was unsure of his emotions.
The widow wiped at her nose with a tattered handkerchief. 'Shame about the timing of it, but I reckon there’s no good time to meet the Maker,' she said. 'When the Lord calls, and all.'
'Late harvest was coming up,' Alfred said. 'Corn first. Daddy always looked at home up there in the seat of the Massey Ferguson, his hat pressed down to his ears.'
'What about the tractor?' Marlene said. She had taken the chore of sorting things out, scheduling arrangements, seeing to the practical matters. 'You going to sell it, Momma?'
The widow looked at the photograph on the television as if seeking advice. 'Don’t hardly know yet.'
Sarah, the middle sister, stood with a rustle of her patterned dress, a sleeveless rayon thing from off the rack at Rose’s Discount. It was a spring dress, really, not fit for early September, all light blue and yellow and pink. Roby felt sorrow for the family. In these parts, people couldn’t afford to go out and invest in an entire wardrobe of black just for a short period of use. They mourned in their best. How come their best was never good enough?
He supposed that maybe all that really mattered was how you felt inside your heart.
'Let’s not worry about that kind of thing,' Sarah said. 'It’s like grave-robbing, to start splitting up the goods before Daddy’s even in the ground.'
Buck, her husband, nodded in agreement. Buck had twenty acres on the back side of Elk Knob, four of it cleared for crops. He could use a tractor. He’d been making do with a walk-behind tiller, the kind that fought you when the tines hit a rock.
Buck had asked Roby about the procedure for getting a tobacco allotment. All Roby knew about it was that the government was involved, told you how much to grow and how much not to grow, and the allotment could be passed on down as an inheritance. It was the same government that had sued the cigarette companies for millions. Damned if Roby wanted any piece of such nonsense, and had shared that opinion with Buck.
'Reckon the will spells all that out,' Alfred said. 'Who gets what, and all.'
'If you don’t mind a lawyer getting a big fat chunk of it,' Marlene said.
The air in the room was heavy with perspiration and cheap perfume. Marlene’s blonde hair clung to her neck in damp strings. She was a natural blonde, all over, Roby had been told. She didn’t meet his eyes, as if she were somehow aware of his secret knowledge.
'Well, there’s the whole funeral thing to pay for,' the widow said, wringing her leathery hands.
'Bet that thing there cost a hundred bucks to rent.' Alfred pointed at the maple lectern at the room’s entrance. It had a brass-plated lamp and on its slanted surface was a notebook filled with thick, creamy paper. The guests had signed their names, a keepsake book. As if this were a time to be remembered, picked over at some future date to share laughs and what-could-have-beens.
Roby had signed it himself, in his looping, swirling death hand, the florid signature reserved for these special times. He had almost written 'good pie' after his name, but he didn’t know the widow well enough. He thought of all the lonely nights waiting ahead, an empty space beside her in the bed where Jacob Davis Ridgehorn’s shape had pressed a hollow over the years.
He knew all about lonely. In life, you had to give your heart to somebody. When you died, all you left behind was the love you thought you had given. And when you died, that was all you got back.
Roby had nobody, no family. Except, for the next few days, these Ridgehorns. And he wanted them to appreciate what they had lost, and what they were gaining. 'Now, your pa deserves nothing but the best, so don’t skimp on the arrangements.'
'They ain’t much money,' Sarah said. 'Daddy worked for himself all his life, pretty much hand to mouth.'
'We’ll work it out.' He nodded to the widow. 'I’ll help you straighten out the papers, ma’am. And I know old Barnaby real well. I’ll make sure he does you right.'
Barnaby Clawson had been the county’s sole undertaker for forty years until a corporate chain had set up shop five years back. But Clawson still got the local trade based on brand loyalty. In the tradition of morticians everywhere, he’d found a woman who could put up with hands that caressed the dead. He had two sons by her before she decided she could no longer bear the smell of formaldehyde. She up and moved to California, some said with a Bible salesman, others said with nothing but a suitcase and a scalpel.
Roby had felt neither sorrow nor joy for the undertaker’s luck. Barnaby was under the impression that Roby had a solid streak of Clawson in him, maybe a cousin twice removed, and had even offered Roby a job. But Roby didn’t enjoy that end of the aftercare process, the closed-door operations, the mutilation, the obvious deception. He didn’t have the heart for such casual treatment of the departed. Besides, he was spoken for.
'Barnaby called this afternoon, wanted to bring the rest of the flowers over,' Anna Beth said.
'Probably just wanted to eat again,' Alfred said. Roby could tell the boy was trying to act like the man of the house to make his mother feel more secure. Or maybe Alfred was ashamed of having wept when he heard the news and now was making sure everyone knew he was tough and suspicious.
'I don’t think you ought to sell the tractor right off,' Buck said. 'You ought to think it over some.'
'We might keep it,' Alfred said. 'Somebody’s got to get the crops in, and there’s always next year. ‘Course, if old Barnaby Boneyard takes us for every penny, we might be selling the farm, too.'
A warmth rushed through Roby, not anger exactly, but a tiny trill of nerves. 'I said I’d talk to him. He’s a fine Christian gentleman. You ought to be grateful somebody knows how to tend to all the little details. What would you have done without him?'
Alfred sat forward, a hand on Cindy Parsons’s knee. She looked at his hand as if it were a spider crawling up her skirt.
'Daddy always said, ‘Just toss me in the pond and let the sunfish nibble on me,’' Alfred said. 'If he was done and buried, he’d be rolling over in his grave at all the waste of it. How much was that coffin? Two thousand? Two- and-a-half?'
Widow Ridgehorn’s face collapsed, shriveled. The first sob came like a giggle, dry and nasal.
Go to her, Roby silently commanded. For the Good Lord’s sake, comfort the poor woman.
