attention. I tucked my purse under my arm and opened my mouth to say a firm good-bye.
“I kind of like you,” he said suddenly.
I wondered if the steam coming out of my ears was visible. I took a deep breath to suck my temper back in. “I don’t care,” I said in a low, deadly voice, goaded into absolutely sincere rudeness. I was furious, and I was also terrified that any moment a curious churchgoer would wander up to be introduced.
Luckily, the rest of the congregation was in line to shake hands with Aubrey, all anxious to get out into the beautiful weather and go home to prepare Sunday dinner. They were also providing a welcome cover of conversational buzz.
My mother was talking to Patty Cloud. The detestable Patty was looking absolutely appropriate, as always. By a
So I was safe for the moment; but any second now, Mother’d look around and then the questions would begin when she called me later, about why I was sharing a pew with one of the objectionable men she’d met at Bess Burns’s house, and what he was saying to me.
“I got the punching bag out of the airplane for you,” was what he was saying.
I gaped at him.
I finally managed to say, “How did you know?”
“I was watching. With binoculars. From the top of that ridge between the airport and the road. An experiment your reporter friend thought of, huh? Incidentally, we think she’s right; that’s probably how Jack Burns landed in your yard. In that little plane, all the pilot had to do was lean over, open the passenger’s door, bank the plane, and out he went.”
“You were watching,” I said, unable to believe my ears. I recalled my long struggle with the bag going down the hill, the grueling process of getting it into the hangar and up into the plane, how I’d sworn and sweated.
“Yep. That was my job, till my bosses decided Jack’s landing in your yard was incidental. After that they withdrew O’Riley and put me watching the Andersons. But I liked watching you better; I never know what you’re going to do. Getting that bag down the hill was pretty hard.”
“Then why the
It was the only thing I could think of to say, and I spun on my heel and stalked off down the aisle, the last to shake Aubrey’s hand. He looked surprised at my expression, which must have been a picture. I said good-bye hastily and hurried out to my car, praying Mother wasn’t waiting for me in the parking lot. I love my mother, but I just wasn’t up to her today.
Somehow Dryden had gotten to his car quicker than I had, and he was pulling out of the parking lot as I unlocked the driver’s door. The car felt oppressively warm and damp inside; I stood by the open door for a minute or two to let the atmosphere clear out.
I needed the time myself. I was stunned and shaken by Dryden’s revelation. The thought of being watched when I thought myself unobserved gave me the cold creeps and a hot anger. Dryden must be good; I could believe I’d never spotted I was being followed, but I could scarcely believe Sally hadn’t suspected.
But then, why on earth would she?
I quickly considered Dryden cast in the role of Angel’s crazy admirer. I had to discard him, though only with great reluctance, after a little reasoning. But Dryden hadn’t met Angel until he’d come out to the house to “interview” me.
At least as far as I knew.
Angel’s past was largely unknown territory to me. Angel was not a great one for talking about herself. I knew she’d grown up in Florida, that she’d met Shelby when he paid a condolence call to her folks. Shelby had been a Vietnam pal not only of Martin, but also of Angel’s much older brother Jimmy Dell. Jimmy Dell had met his Maker after the war and far away from Vietnam, in the mountains of Central America.
Shelby had waited a few years for Angel to grow up, then he’d married her. They’d always been happy together, as far as I could see. Even the day or two Shelby had doubted Angel’s pregnancy was his work had not, in the end, disrupted their relationship.
Maybe somewhere along the way she’d met Dryden. Maybe they’d both been acting cleverly the day I introduced them.
But what would have been the point in that?
Oh, this was all so confusing.
I looked at my watch. Martin had had plenty of time to pack up the invalid and take both Youngbloods home. The funeral wasn’t until two. I turned the key in the ignition and put the car into drive.
Automatically, I turned toward home as I left the parking lot. But after a block, I realized I really didn’t feel like seeing anyone right now. Perhaps I wanted to sulk awhile; maybe roll in a little self-pity. Sometimes I surfaced from my life to look at it in wonderment and irritation and also a certain amount of bafflement. I should have ended up in a house like my mother’s, married to someone like Charlie Gorman, a perfectly nice boy I’d dated in high school. Charlie had always made class vice president; he was the salutatorian; he just missed being handsome. He would have been a good father for, say, two little girls; he’d done well in computers since he’d graduated from college. If I’d married Charlie, I would never have known anyone who died of murder; I would never have seen a dead person. We’d go to Walt Disney World, I dreamed, and we’d camp out…
Well, maybe that was going a little far.
But I still didn’t feel like seeing anyone I knew, just at the moment.
I went where I often go when human companionship seems undesirable; to the Lawrenceton cemetery. I always park by my great-grandmother.
A narrow gravel driveway makes a figure eight inside the cemetery fence, to allow for parking at funerals and for easier access to the graves. My great-grandmother is one of the few people buried between the encircling driveway and the fence. She was from a farming family; maybe she wanted to be close to the surrounding fields.
Shady Rest is an old cemetery, maintained by a coalition of Lawrenceton’s white churches. The segregation of death is much stricter than segregation is in life, now. The black cemetery, Mount Zion, is on the southern edge of town, while Shady Rest is a little out in the country on the west.
Shady Rest is a very ordinary cemetery, traditional, none of this flush-with-the-lawn marker stuff. The earliest tombstones date about twenty years before the Civil War, when Lawrenceton became more than a tiny settlement. There are live oaks and other hardwoods, there is close-clipped grass covering the gently rolling ground. Tiny iron fences interrupted by little gates surround some of the older family plots. There is a high, fancy, ironwork fence enclosing the whole cemetery; but there is no gate to close over the main entrance, though the two other back entrances are gated and usually locked, except during a funeral. There has never been vandalism at Shady Rest, though I’m sure some day there will be. Every now and then, someone donates a cement bench to sit beside one of the two narrow drives that cross through the graves, though I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone sit on them but me.
After nodding to my great-grandmother, I go sit by Mr. Early Lawrence, most times. Naturally, he was the man Lawrenceton was named after, and he earned it by hustle; an early entrepreneur, was Mr. Early Lawrence. Though his descendants don’t like to talk about it, somehow Early held on to his money and increased it after the War. Even today, none of the Lawrences are poor folks.
Early Lawrence had a magnificent tombstone, perhaps ten feet tall because it was topped with a stone angel whose hands were outstretched, palms up, pleading-perhaps urging passersby to feel sorry for Early? To remember to mow the grass? I had never quite understood that beseeching gesture, and I often pondered it when more immediate things gave me pain or anxiety.
After the heavy rain of the morning, the ground was soggy. I pulled out the old towel I kept in the trunk of my car, since the bench had a damp look. I picked my way to my chosen spot, spread my flowered towel, and sat down with a sigh.
Close to the center of the cemetery, the green tent was set up over the hole dug to receive Jack Burns, I noted approvingly; Jasper Funeral Home was on the ball. The chairs for the family were unfolded and ready with green covers slipped on. Artificial turf discreetly covered the mound of dirt at the back of the tent. The artificial green was gleaming with water droplets.
