What the shape of the world had to do with anything escaped me but I knew that that had been as close to an explanation as Jewel would ever get. So I gave up on that particular line of questioning and instead asked something that had me curious. “Do you suppose Jesse’s dying was why the reverend killed himself?”
“It couldn’t have helped but I don’t think that’s the reason. I saw him a couple of months before he hung himself. He sent me a message by way of his housekeeper to meet him out in the orchard. He looked awful that day, pale and sweating. He said, ‘I’ve done terrible things, Jewel. I’ve killed a man, but I can live with that. What I can’t live with is that I’ve raised a boy who’s done worse than killing.’ Then he said that I should keep Aaron away from you because there was something about you that stirred up all the evil in him. I took offense at that because it was like he was saying it was your fault. So I said, ‘Why don’t you keep Aaron away from Darcy?’ and he said, ‘I will as long as I can.’ And that was the last I ever saw him alive.”
“What could Aaron have done worse than killing?” I wondered aloud.
“I don’t know. But killing yourself is just as bad. It’s outside the natural order of things and puts a big rent in the universe.”
I rolled my eyes, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“In a way, I’m to blame for Hamilton’s dying. I never wanted to confess. I never needed to. I figured God sees everything you do, and that’s enough. But he needed to confess, and I should have let him.”
“It’s all over with now anyhow.”
“Is it? I don’t think anything is ever over once it happens. It’s just like an echo down a well. What if someone takes a notion to dig up the orchard someday looking for Jesse?”
“You don’t ever have to worry about that,” I said, unable to keep from smiling at my own cleverness. “Before I buried him, I took off his pants and jacket and I put them on and his helmet too. I’d watched him start his motorcycle a hundred times, so it wasn’t hard to figure out. I took it up on the ridge and waited most of the day until I saw Mrs. Hennessey come out. I waved to her from up there with the helmet on, so she couldn’t see my face. She didn’t wave back naturally, just walked off in a huff, but I knew she’d seen me. She don’t miss a trick. I know she told everybody she could about it. She loves to be important and knowing something nobody else did must have given her a little thrill. I left his motorcycle in back of a diner on the highway and pulled out some wires so it wouldn’t start. It looked like he’d broke down and maybe got a ride with a trucker. Then I buried his clothes and his helmet and walked back hell for leather through the woods in my slip, hoping nobody saw me. Nobody did. If the body ever does turn up, they’ll never know it’s his.”
Jewel looked at me wordlessly. “You’re scarin’ me a little bit.” She paused again thoughtfully. “You know I wonder sometimes why Aaron’s the way he is. I wonder if he was born like that or if something made him that way. Maybe the reverend beat the devil into him while he was trying to beat it out of him. It’s like what come first the chicken or the egg.”
We stopped talking after that, and as the afternoon turned to evening, I watched Jewel’s eyes close and went to pull the sheet up over her shoulders so that she wouldn’t catch a chill. She stirred. “Sit by me, Darcy,” she said, “just until I fall asleep.” I pulled up a chair and felt her take my hand to lay against her cheek. “Such warm, rough hands,” she said, and I could feel that she was smiling in the encroaching darkness. “Don’t grieve for me when I’m gone.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I’ll be too mad to grieve. It’s fine for you. Dying doesn’t mean anything to you. You don’t believe in it. But I believe in it, and when you’re gone, I’ll be left alone, all by myself, until I get so old, I lose all my teeth and can’t chew food. Then I’ll starve to death.”
She laughed softly. “You’re so dramatic. It won’t be as bad as all that. You’ll still have Luca.”
“Like hell, I will. Once you’re gone, he’ll hop on the first boat back to Italy.”
“Then tell him you love him. You do love him, don’t you, Darcy?”
I was glad for the dark. I could have never answered otherwise.
“What’s the difference? It’s all ruined anyhow. I don’t blame him. I did it. He could have loved me once. But not anymore.”
She laughed again. “All ruined? Just because the puppy dog love you might have had together is gone, doesn’t mean it’s all gone. You’ve got to be grateful for the love that’s left. It’s ruined love. But it’s still love. You still have that. I see it in his eyes when he looks at you.”
“I think the morphine is stimulating your imagination. What you think you see in his eyes is as real as that Negro by the door.”
“I pity you, Darcy, you know that. You love him from hell to breakfast, but you can’t say it and you can’t show it. Your love just sticks in your throat like a chicken bone. It must have been torture for him to be around you all these years and never know, and worse for you to be around him all this time and never tell. Why do human beings torment themselves so?”
Old Sam jumped on the bed and curled up at Jewel’s feet. He’d never done that
