Driftless (54 page)

“That would help,” said Winnie. “They’re quite good. Can they play acoustic?”

“I’m sure they can, but I’ll ask them. Gail can rent a double bass from Barry Clark’s Music in Grange. He has all kinds of instruments.”

“Good,” said Winnie. “Nothing wins over old people quicker than young people performing for them not too loudly.”

“I can lead the congregational singing if you like. Believe it or not, I have some experience doing that.”

“We have our own song leader,” said Winnie.

“There won’t be many people. He was kind of private.”

“You sound as if you disapprove of that.”

“I didn’t understand how private he was. He hid things—things he shouldn’t have hidden from me.”

“You’re angry with him.”

“July accepted me for what I was and it wasn’t fair of him not to give me the chance to accept him in the same way. He kept everyone at a distance.”

“You’re angry, Jacob. I can feel it.”

“I’m angry with myself, but I can’t explain it to you now. I was supposed to have been his friend. Friends are supposed to know things about each other. Do you think we can ever be forgiven for things we should have known but didn’t?”

Without hesitation, Winnie said, “We can and are.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am, but it would take too long to explain.”

“That would be the shortest long time in the world for me,” said Jacob.

Winnie laughed, and this time did not cover her face. “I told you not to say anything like that.”

“I know,” said Jacob. “I couldn’t help it. I’ve never wanted anything more in my whole life as to know you better. I understood that last night. July and I had different expectations about the future. He had almost none, but ever since I met you my expectations have been running wild. I mean, I’m sorry if this seems like the wrong time to talk about this, and it probably is, but how do you feel about children? Have you ever thought that you’d like to have children, because for a long time I thought I could give up on the idea of children, but it seems that . . . forgive me, these things are hard to talk about because they mean so much. It just seems as though having a family and children might be a final solution to the ghost problem, perhaps the only way to take the purely interior and personal parts of ourselves and let them out into the world. It seems—”

Jacob stopped talking because Winnie looked like someone who has discovered the door to her most private room open and all her secret thoughts revealed.

“Stop!” she said and pushed her face into an armload of flowers, inhaling deeply.

THE FUNERAL

G
OOD WEATHER, CONCLUDED WINNIE AS SHE STEPPED OUT OF the parsonage and into the churchyard: people wouldn’t be getting wet at the cemetery. Overhead, huge roaming clouds, puffy, white, and popcorn-shaped were a welcome change from the leaden skies earlier in the week.

Three cars parked haphazardly near the back of the church and she hurried down into the basement to help with lunch preparations.

“Good morning, Pastor Winifred,” sang Florence Fitch, ripping off an end of rolled white paper and taping it to a row of pushed-together tables. “Do you think scented candles would help with the mold smell?”

“I have some in the parsonage,” said Winnie.

“I’ll get them,” said Violet. “You go upstairs. Those band people want to move the piano.”

As Winnie climbed the steps she could hear single piano notes played in no particular rhythm or order, as if a bored child were trying them out on a rainy afternoon.

A head-high wall of flowers faced her from the front of the sanctuary and their thick fragrance boosted her spirits.

“We moved it,” said one of the band members, standing near the new location of the piano, checking the tuning.

“Was that necessary?” asked Winnie, breaking for the first time her early-morning pledge to be less confrontational.

“It was pushed up against the wall, blocking the soundboard. How long has it been since this was tuned?”

He tapped another ivory-veneered key and frowned into a handheld electronic meter with blinking lights. “We’re talking major dissonance here.”

The front doors banged open and two men in solid black suits
rolled a copper-colored casket inside. They were from the funeral home in Luster.

Winnie walked back and greeted them. “Please clear some flowers out of the way and put it in front of the pulpit.”

They guided the casket into the sanctuary.

“Excuse me,” said the musician. “We still have drums to bring in. Could you set the casket on the other side of the room?”

Through the window, Winnie watched a maroon sedan come to a sedate stop in the parking lot. Louis and Edith Kotter, the oldest members of her congregation, were inside. She looked up at the clock on the wall—a full hour before the service.

The receptacle with the cremated remains of July Montgomery was still not inside the casket, and she hurried to the cabinet where she had put the urn several days ago.

When she opened the doors, the shelf was empty.

“Preacher, we’ve got to have more room here for the drums.”

“Do you think drums are appropriate?” said the older and larger of the two men from the funeral home.

The cabinet was empty. Winnie’s heart began beating in an uncontrollable manner.

“Pastor!” called Violet Brasso, climbing with difficulty up the back stairway. “I couldn’t find those candles you talked about. We simply must have them, and the ham sandwiches are mostly frozen after sitting all night in the refrigerator. They’re frosty, you might say, very cold on the teeth. The temperature from the freezer compartment must be leaking into the rest of the refrigerator. Land sakes, they moved the piano. Just look at that. Lyle and Esther donated the piano, you know. The last time it was moved there was real trouble. Well I declare, the casket is here. I wonder who picked out that color. Must have been a man.”

“This piano has two stuck keys. Look, Buzz, now one of ’em doesn’t even come back up.”

The side door opened and the Kotter couple inched inside, dressed in their best dark clothes. They carefully selected the third pew on the left, sat down, and looked disapprovingly around the sanctuary like diners expecting to have been served an hour ago.

Then Gail Shotwell came in carrying an acoustic double bass that was taller and wider than she was. She positioned the wooden instrument next to the wall of bouquets, beside the guitar stand. Her first trial note loosened several flower petals, which dropped to the carpeted floor. The Kotter couple leaned together as though they were in a foxhole.

“Tune flat,” said the dark-haired band member. “This piano is way off.”

“You can’t have all this music equipment here,” said the man from Luster. “We need room for the casket.”

“Who’s this?” asked Gail.

“They brought the casket.”

Another sedan, filled with more old people who did not want to miss anything, worry about finding a parking place, or be late, arrived in the parking lot. A silver dual-wheeled pickup parked on the street.

Winnie looked quickly through every place she could think of for the urn, checked the empty cabinet again, and remembered she had left the order-of-service handouts in the parsonage.

The side door opened and Rusty and Maxine Smith came inside. Rusty was smoking a cigarette and at Maxine’s insistence flicked it out into the yard, but not before inhaling a final time. “Hello, niece.”

“Good morning, Maxine,” said Winnie.

“Scented candles,” said Violet, noticing Winnie looking again in the cabinet. “They aren’t in there. The cupboards were cleaned out several months ago, if you remember, Pastor. Those old hymnals used to be in there—the ones with the green covers and the drawing of Elijah’s chariot. Maybe they were before your time. My lands, more flowers, more flowers.”

Jacob Helm walked through the side door dressed in a new blue suit and carrying an armload of mums. Winnie went to him as fast as she could without running.

“I can’t find the receptacle,”
she whispered.

Jacob deposited the mums in the back pew and returned to Winnie.

“I left it in the cabinet—you remember. It’s gone, Jacob, it’s gone.”

“Pastor Winifred! We must have those candles. They need time to do their work. Just tell me where to look.”

“Who’s in charge here?” asked the man from Luster.

“You find the candles,” said Jacob, ushering Winnie out the door, “I’ll find the urn.”

Winnie walked to the parsonage beside Violet, who earnestly recounted again how the parsonage used to be much smaller before it was added onto. And it had been added onto twice. The last time, the chief carpenter was one of the five children of Emil and Charlotte Poke, who had married a Short, one of the thick-haired twins—the fast-talking one, not the one who once fell off a roof.

Jacob paid the men from the funeral home for the casket and the use of their hearse and sent them back to Luster. Then he negotiated a compromise with Gail and the other band members about where to set up the drums.

While Jacob was installing his mums beside the other flower arrangements, he discovered the aluminum receptacle that two days earlier had contained July Montgomery’s cremains. The ashes had been emptied out and it now contained water, ferns, and two dozen freshly cut long-stemmed lilies. The card in the middle of the display read, “In Remembrance, Violet and Olivia Brasso.”

Jacob surrounded the aluminum container with other floral arrangements. When Winnie returned, he said he had found the urn and taken care of everything. Winnie touched his arm and looked relieved, placed the order- of-service notices on the entryway table, and carried her Bible and notes up front.

Four more old people from her congregation came inside and sat in the pews on the left side of the room.

Winnie became concerned that all her regulars were sitting on one side—farther away from the band—and Florence Fitch agreed to greet people as they entered and direct them to both sides. Since no family members were coming, only one pew, for the pallbearers, had been reserved.

The small parking lot soon filled up and later-arriving cars parked along the bean field, where the wind insulted the men’s pant legs and the women’s dresses and hair.

Even after being seated on the right side of the room, the regular
members of the Words Friends of Jesus Church joined their friends on the other side, where they were joined by their neighbors and friends from other area churches. Soon, the community of churchgoers was more or less segregated by the wide center aisle from the more casually dressed unchurched, who walked warily into the building and looked as though they expected to be asked by a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation how much taxable income they had reported last year.

Seated on a small bench behind the pulpit, Winnie looked through her notes. The words swarmed together like black bees. A tightening in her chest and dizziness in her stomach slowly overtook her thoughts, and just before she was about to faint she discovered she was holding her breath. She breathed deliberately several times and the overhead lights stopped looking like clouds.

As more people continued to arrive, Jacob set up folding chairs in back.

Wade Armbuster carried in two pies and was directed down to the basement by Violet. When he came back upstairs, Violet sent him home for Olivia, who, she said, wasn’t accustomed to keeping track of her own time, even though her new job selling cheese three days a week was forcing her to become more aware of it.

Grahm Shotwell and his children sat in the pew next to Winnie’s uncle and aunt while Cora headed for the basement with a cake pan and a bowl.

The pew in front of Rusty Smith filled with a row of Amish in black hats and bonnets. Behind Maxine sat a man in a T-shirt reading SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL GUN DEALER.

Folding chairs were placed in the foyer.

Winnie couldn’t remember ever having such a large crowd—more than two hundred, she estimated.

The band began to play quietly, the drummer using wire brushes and the piano player soft-pedaling the foot irons. The music drew the attention of the room to Gail. In her red coat, and surrounded by a sea of flowers, she looked like a cardinal in a spring apple tree.

Jacob joined Winnie on the bench behind the pulpit. “Are you all right?” he whispered. “You look perfect. That dress is ideal.”

“I thought you said there wouldn’t be many people.”

“I was wrong. You want a glass of water or anything?”

“No. Please stop talking to me. I’m going over my notes.”

“Sorry.”

“Now go sit down. You can’t be sitting here with me.”

Downstairs, Cora arranged a platter of fresh vegetables: carrot sticks, pepper slices, celery stalks, broccoli heads, and clumps of cauliflower with a cream dip in the middle.

“Rice goes well with lamb,” said Rachel Wood, sprinkling chives over the top of an enormous bowl of potato salad.

“That’s what I told her,” said Cora. “You’d think people who used to live on a farm would know something about food.”

“Not necessarily,” said Rachel. “They’re both lawyers?”

“Our personal attorneys, actually. Leona clearly has the brains of the outfit, though. Tim’s practically useless compared to her.”

“Most men are.”

“We’re going to have more children,” said Cora. “As soon as we get around to it.”

“Really.”

Upstairs, the band played “Power in the Blood” at about half speed, with a slightly altered cadence. The overall effect was ponderous, balladic and sad. Near the end, Gail played a solo on the double bass; but as so frequently happens with bass solos, about half the audience lost the thread of the tune, became distracted, and started talking to each other.

Wade came in the back of the church with Olivia on his arm, wearing a dress that glowed black, in heels and a top with bold white letters: SAY CHEESE. She looked twenty-five, if that, and sat next to Wade on the folding chairs in the foyer.