Mr. X

    'There must have been a lot of resentment.'

    Clarkhesitated again. 'You know how it goes. Get too high, they slap you down. Omar married a woman from New Orleans name of Ethel Bridges and settled down a bit. Still and all, one morning he left the house we're sitting in right now, and someone shot him deadwhile he waswalking to his carriage. Sylvan heard the shot and got outside just in time to see a man on horseback galloping down the street. That man was never brought to justice. Don't you think he could have been identified? If it was supposed to go that way?'

    I nodded.

    'Sylvan married his brother's widow, built a house outside of town, and moved in. He and Ethel had some kids, three, four, nobody knows for sure.'

    'There must be records.'

    'You're forgetting thetime, and you're forgetting theplace. Those babies were all born at home, and the Dunstans didn't care to use midwives or medical men.'

    'Why not?'

    Clarkmomentarily lost his sneer, but his natural garrulousness won out over discretion. 'A long time ago, an old-timer told me the Dunstan brothers never knew if their babies were going to come out deformed in some way medicine never heard about. Like with a huge big head and a body no bigger than a pin. Or a thing with gills under its ears and no arms and legs. Or worse than that. Nearly all those babies died, he told me, but the few that lived were kept in the attic.'

    He glanced at me. “If you ask me, one or two of Ethel's babies took a wrong turn in the oven, and Howard, the oldest child in the family, overheard more than was good for a little boy. Which could explain why the man became so wild and squandered his money. Howard did considerable damage, all in all. Toward the end, I believe he was plumb out of his head. You'd have to say he was in a kind of dream world.'

    I thought all of it had come from the dream world, specifically the dream world invented in the rumor mills of a small town. 'Which brother was my great-great-grandfather? If Howard was the oldest child of the next generation, I guess it was Omar.'

    'What I heard was, the brothers shared everything. I don't think they knew which one was Howard's father.'

    I said something, but I couldn't tell you what it was.

    Clarkdisplayed a sneer of magnificent worldliness. “I'd pick Sylvan. Omar was the steadier of the two. Sylvan kept on romancing the ladies even when he was living in that house with Ethel and their kids. When Howard came of age, he acted the same way, except more so. Which counted against him, because by that time Edgerton wasn't the way it used to be.'

    “It got respectable,' I said.

    'What happened was, Howard needed an Omar of his own, and because he didn't have one, he ran to seed. The Hatches and theMiltons took advantage of his weakness.'

    The stairs creaked, andClark straightened up in his chair. 'Best not go into this around Nettie.'

 • 29

 • Registering suspicion at a change in the daily pattern, Nettie lowered her eyebrows atClark. 'Surprised to see you up so soon.' She turned her attention to me. 'How was your night's sleep?'

    'Good enough.'

    'From what I heard, you thought the Devil was after you. All of us are so worried, it's a wonder we can sleep at all.' Nettie billowed to the stove and turned on the gas flame beneath a cast-iron skillet. She took a carton of eggs and a package of bacon out of the refrigerator, slapped the bacon into the skillet, and, like a chef, neatly broke five eggs into a glass bowl with her right hand. 'My feeling is that we are going to see some improvement in your mother.'

    “I hope so,' I said.

    Nettie whisked the eggs, turned the bacon over in the pan, and took a transparent bag filled with okra from the refrigerator. Soon, about a third of the okra was simmering in another skillet. When the bacon turned brown and crisp, she arrayed the strips on a thick length of paper toweling. She poured the eggs into the skillet and gave them another whisk. The toast had been slathered with butter, sliced diagonally in half, and set at the edges of the plates. She sprinkled pepper and dried parsley into the skillet, gave the eggs another stir, and divided the okra between the plates.

    'Do you eat this kind of breakfast every day?'

    'Sometimes we add home-fried potatoes, and sometimes we have chicken livers, but today I don't want to take the time. Is the coffee still hot?'

    “I'll warm it up,' I said, and turned on the flame under the percolator.

    The doorbell chimed. 'There's May,' Nettie said. 'Would you let her in, son?'

    A UPS driver in a summer uniform stood on the porch, holding a box wrapped in butcher paper. 'Delivery for . . .' He looked at the name above the address. 'Ms. Star Dunstan?'

    I saw anEast Cicero return address in the top left-hand corner of the box. After I signed the pad, I carried the package into the kitchen. 'UPS,' I said. 'Star must have sent some of her things before she came here.'

    Nettie flapped her hand at the package. 'Put that on the floor.' I placed it against the wainscoting. Nettie divided the scrambled eggs with a spatula and slid them out onto the plates. The doorbell rang again.

    I went back through the living room and opened the door. Resplendent in a flowered hat, Aunt May extended a gnarled paw. 'Help me over the doorstep, Neddie. I'm on the late side, but I thought I'd say good morning to Joy. Any chicken livers today?'

    'Aunt Nettie thought they would take too much time.'

    'Chicken livers take only a little bitty time.'

    May clung to me on the way to the kitchen. I held her arm as she lowered herself into her chair. She made a show of admiring the overflowing plate before her. 'Truthfully, chicken livers would have been too much for me today.' She handed me her cane.

    I sat down between May and Nettie underClark's ripe gaze. The sisters pitched into their breakfasts. The telephone rang. May dabbed her mouth with a napkin and said, 'Perhaps Joy has had another vision.'

    Shaking her head, Nettie got up from the table and lifted the receiver. 'All right,' she said. She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “It's that doctor with the big head and the little red mouth.'

    Within my skull I felt a lightness like a reduction of gravity. I leaned against the counter and said, 'Dr. Barnhill? This is Ned Dunstan.'

    Dr. Barnhill informed me that my mother had experienced another stroke thirty minutes earlier and that the efforts to revive her had been unsuccessful. He also said a lot of other things. It sounded as though he were reading them off a sheet of paper.

    I hung up and saw their faces staring at me, suspended between hope and what they already knew to be the truth.

3

 HOW   I   NEARLY WAS   KILLED

• 30

 • Neither Nettie nor Clark had seemed heartbroken when I told them not to expect me for dinner.Clarkhad spent the afternoon sulking over having been kept from checking his traps, and Nettie had not forgiven me for the crime of squandering far too much money on a coffin. After the sales pitch in the display room of Mr. Spaulding's Heavenly Rest Funeral Home, she drew me into a corner for a lecture on the subject of sensible behavior. Still under the illusion that my decision had to be sensible because it was mine, I reminded Nettie that I was spending my own money on my mother's burial. She couldn't argue with that, could she? I should have known better.

    Mr. Spaulding's ambassadorial presence filtered in and out of view, andClark shifted his shoulders in his