In Memory of Junior (3 page)

“But you know, Miss Laura, Faison's problems, his whole general attitude, is bound to stem from them boys being left by their mama like they was. Bound to.

“Anyway, there at the burial service, I was too far in back of the crowd to hear anything, but I saw him holding her by the arm and pointing down to the ground talking about something. I thought it had something to do with the flowers and didn't pay that much attention to it. You didn't either, did you, Harold?”

“I wadn't there.”

“That's right. You stayed home. But Mary did have to call the sheriff out there to their house to break up a fight a few days after that. Said they fought across the backyard and into the garage—like dogs. Idn't that awful? They were fighting about the name—about what name was going on the tombstone. Mary heard them.

“After that fight is when she started in to see the preacher sometimes
more
than once a week. Once it was twicet in the same day. At the time, I didn't know whether to say anything to Preacher Gordon or not, you know, about whether I ought to visit. She had a couple of friends in the church—that Watkins girl, and Sheila Peterson talked to her sometimes—so I didn't say anything. Course I ain't known Faison Bales to set foot in a church since he was a boy. And I don't imagine you have either. I don't understand how they change so.

“Well, right many people got interested in what the tombstone would say on it. Claremont done it. And they are . . . slow. It was right big, not too thick, and dark. Dark gray. People had got interested enough, you know, to want to see what was written on it. On the stone. What name they used. First off they didn't bury him in the Bales section, they buried him in some neutral site out there amongst that little clump of trees where there ain't ever been no graves because of the roots. But they got root
cutters now just like they've got everything else under the sun we don't need. Well, anyway, there it was: John Moody, Junior, 1978-1989.

“Then it wadn't more than two days passed when here comes Mary telling me there's a
foot
stone out there, a light pink one, in
place
of the tombstone. The tombstone had been
removed.

“Me and Harold drove out to take a look. Course we didn't get out of the car—you could drive right up to it and read it without getting out. Sure enough, it said Faison Bales, Junior, with the dates. The grave was still red and fresh. The tombstone at the head was gone and there was that pink footstone at the foot. Mary says he hauled that thing out there in his truck hisself, and switched them. When I saw that name, Faison Bales, Junior, I knew it won't right. I could feel it. That boy ought to be named after his blood daddy . . . Ma'am? What did she say, Harold?”

“She said, ‘Where was they
go
ing?'”

“Where was who going? Where was who going, Miss Laura? . . . Oh, the little boy and his mama. When they had the wreck, you mean. Well, I don't know as anybody knows. She was in a hurry was all I could tell. She was going
away
from the mall. Mary did say she'd just had a argument with Faison and had pulled that boy out of the house by his arm. Then barreling through that intersection going too fast, and that boy sitting up on the edge of the backseat with his shirt off and dirt rings around his neck. It was a yellow car. If he'd been wearing a seat belt that might have saved his life. Of course the car could have caught on fire and then both of them could have got all hung up in there and burned up.”

“She was wearing hers,” said Harold.

“Oh, I didn't know that.”

“Yep. That's what Drew said—up at the rescue squad. What I don't understand is why they don't make you wear seat belts in a bus. If they're so safe. You can get thrown forty foot in a bus and still be in there.”

“What does that have to do with anything, Harold?”

“Them seats and poles and stuff in there is
hard”
.

“Well, anyway, I've never heard anything up to it. She quit coming to church and to see Preacher Gordon.

“And that house that Faison was moving, out on Lake Collier Road, has been sitting there on them blocks with that truck hooked to it, lord, for . . . how long, Harold?”

“Month or two.”

“Month or two.

“Course you know I would have thought she'd have changed that footstone back by now. It's been well over a year . . . What's that, Miss Laura? What? What did she say, Harold?”

“She says she wants a pink footstone, too.”

“You tell Faye, Miss Laura. You tell Faye. I think you're already set.”

“Maybe she can get the boy's, after it's changed again.”

“Harold.”

“Well, all they'd have to do was turn it over and put her name on top.”

“Harold!”

“Ain't that right, Miss Laura. You wouldn't mind having a used footstone, would you?”

Harold gets right ridiculous sometimes. Showing off. “Har—”

“Look, she's laughing.”

“It's not funny, Harold. Miss Laura ain't going to have a secondhand footstone. Are you, Miss Laura? No sirree. Speaking of that, me and Harold got to pick out ours one of these days. It's something you can't do too early. But. We got to be getting on now. Lord, we been sitting here over an hour. It's good to see you sitting up again, Miss Laura, and you tell Faye we come by to see you. Harold, go out to the car and get that little pretty we brought Miss Laura. I forgot it.”

Harold's knees pop evertime he stands up. And he's got so he limps. And hisses at that bird like some teenager. Harold's a something.

“Harold is just a joker, Miss Laura. Don't you pay no attention to him. Here, let me push you back up straight. You got to leaning a little bit there. Why, you're liable to be around longer than any of us . . . Ma'am? . . . No, Harold is in lectronics. He's got a lectronics shop. You know that, Miss Laura . . . No, he don't make tombstones. It's Claremont made that footstone, the pink one. They're the only one does pink ones, I think. Here. Here comes Harold with a little box of something for you—I know how much you like it—and you keep that smile on your face, and keep sitting up. We'll be seeing you—and Preacher Gordon ought to be by sometime soon.”

I was sitting in the kitchen, eating my afternoon sandwich, when they passed through, headed out.

“How's
Mr.
Bales?” Mrs. Fuller ask me.

“He bout the same,” I say. “He asleep now. Been bothered with the bedsores some.”

Miss Wilma looked around, checked out the kitchen. She
will
check up on you. It was clean and straight. The kitchen is one thing I always keep straight. That teenager that spends the night leaves crumbs and dishes sometimes.

“Well, we'll be back to see him before too long,” she said. What she always say.

See, way back, Mr. Glenn he got sick and Miss Laura she took care of him for years and years, and then she got sick too, and that's when I come to work, in the daytimes, mostly. That teenager come in at night. But she don't have to do much but baby-sit. They fired two for not looking in on them like they ought to.

When Miss Laura's daughter, Faye, come from Charlotte for a day or two, me and the night girl both get off. Faye come most weekends.

Them boys don't visit their daddy like they ought to. I don't care what the reason—but then too, my chiren don't visit me neither. Nobody's chiren visit much anymore. It's a bad sign about the times.

But I'll tell you this. I've seen days I could choke them everone—I'm talking about
these
people. They so
picky.
You know what I mean? But then too there been days I wished I was white and everything wouldn't be so hard, but most time I realize if I was white how much I'd miss out on.

Mr. and Mrs. Fuller they sit down and talk to me sometimes. They right nice. Course they talk to anybody.

See, they reasons that if Miss Laura die first, which had always seemed very unlikely, then when Mr. Glenn
die, the homeplace
would
go to the boys, and none of it to Mr. Glenn's sisters—that's Miss Bette and Miss Ansie—who have raised the boys, and who, word is, figure they deserve at least some of the homeplace, being as they worked the land all their lives and raised the boys. It would go to the boys because Mr. Glenn, they say, won't leave no will because he think that would hurt somebody's feelings. It's right complicated and I don't try too hard to understand it because it ain't none of my bidness.

Course this is just my surmising from what all Mr. and Mrs. Fuller say, but mostly I think they visit because they got good hearts. They do surmise a good bit though. Specially Miss Wilma. She really do. She surmise a
lot.
But you can't say she ain't good to Miss Laura.

I open the box and look over the different shapes of chocolate. Whitman's Sampler. My very favorite! Yes sir! My very favorite!

I always was blessed with good neighbors.

The first piece of warm chocolate candy is that boy, Faison. I swallow him—the one always stuck his tongue out at me, cussed me even. Then run away at sixteen—stole Glenn's truck with the wood saw in the back—to stay with that Grove McCord, Evelyn's brother, and ended up no-count at all.

I finger another little hunk of chocolate, with a nut of some sort in it, I bet. I eat it. Oh, it's got a crunch. It's that Grove McCord. And who—Harold?—said he heard
he's coming back here to
die?
Somebody heard it. Nobody wants him back here.

I eat that other boy, Tate, that ran from me, wouldn't mind a thing I said. At least he went to college.

A lumpy piece. Evelyn. The one that left Glenn. I eat her. She deserted those boys.

Now, that awful Grove, Evelyn's brother. Did I just eat him? I'll eat him again. This is good candy! My very favorite!

Then I lick a pretty little piece, a piece that is my warm daughter, Faye. Born of Elliot. Sometimes I wish so hard that Elliot had lived. Sometimes I wish so hard. My Faye takes care of me, pays for the nurse, won't put me in no nursing home, stands between me and the whole black ocean full of snakes and alligators and those two ugly, mean boys. Glenn can't do nothing for me no more. Lord, he's worse off than ever and I can't help him. I'll eat him in a minute. I lord spent every ounce of energy I had left in the whole world tending to him all those years and bless Faye, she was right to insist on that joint ownership of this farm. I said it didn't make any difference. She said it did. She knew what was right. So that I don't get left out in the cold when all is said and done.

Oh, my, I remember the times Glenn fell in the bathroom and I couldn't get him up and had to go call them boys and not one word of thanks from anybody. Those sisters of his have everything. They have health and they complain all the time. I never complained once in my life—changing his diapers, standing him up in his slippers, feeding him.

I lick Faye until there's not much left of her. Then I eat her. She'll get the homeplace. I'll outlive him. I've
got
to.
I eat the nurse, Gloria, next. She's short with me sometimes. I eat one of these little tiny pieces wrapped in gold aluminum foil—Florida. Poor thing. I eat poor Florida.

I look over the piece that is my poor sick husband, Glenn. Faye—did I eat her?—Faye kept saying, Take him to a rest home, Mama, and I finally did but lord, lord, he cried and cried with his hands on top of his head before I even took him out of the car and I couldn't stand it, and Faye won't ever understand until she has to face the same thing. If she does. I hope she don't. But if she does, she'll bring whoever it is back home, too.

Glenn. I eat him.

I can't think of anybody else to eat except my Sunday school class. But they all look like the same one: Mrs. Loftis - Barnes - Poole - Tinkner - Smith - Darnell - Simpson - Rhymer. I eat her. Then I eat the church choir—all the rest of the candy, piece by piece. The sopranos, basses, those others. It makes me warm.

I always believed, in secret, that as soon as I married him I could wean him from his family. But it never worked. The more I tried to wean him the more glued to them he got. There was something about them all that was so . . . so close it didn't make sense. I came to realize, see, that Glenn would jump up on a horse and run after any one of them—his mama, papa, sisters, brothers, with them on a runaway horse and him trying to save them, while I was sinking in quicksand, calling out to him, Glenn, Glenn, save me, I'm sinking. His eyes would have been back over his shoulder, looking at me, but he would be galloping full steam after any one of the others. I decided to love him anyway, because he was Glenn. And his gift to me was
that joint ownership, and that was because I'd worked to the bone taking care of him, because those boys had turned out so bad, so much against me, so cold-shouldered, because their mama run off, especially that Faison, and everybody knew how it was—how much work I put in—so that if Glenn had left anything to those sisters and those boys, then there would have been talk, and I know that if there was anything Glenn feared and dreaded all his life, it was talk of family discord, disharmony. That fear was something he ate every day. It was sticky and he ate it just about every day—that fear of discord and disharmony. Why did Glenn do that? Discord and disharmony could have been fresh, like lemon.

I do wish I wasn't sick, but I love my candy.

Tate was about to get into his new airplane to ferry the seller home—fellow named Pillner, I think—when we heard the crash at the Mount Station bridge. Had to be a truck. It happens about once a year. They need to dig out that road some more. Then we heard a little aftershock—a little thump after the crash. I asked Drew about it next day and he said somebody called it in on a car phone that a truck had hit the bridge out there, but when they got out there they'd left the scene.