Sins of the Fathers (26 page)

“That deputy never did bring my shoes,” Posey complained.

“I’ll get them,” Hollis volunteered.

Posey backpedaled. “Do you think it’s safe, Katharine?”

“I think so. The sniper isn’t likely to be taking shots with everybody here.”

“He’s so nasty, maybe Burch was the sniper,” Hollis suggested.

“He wouldn’t have had time to shoot us and fetch his lawyer from Darien.”

Katharine spoke automatically. Her mind was busy with another problem. She had been wondering how Burch would manage to move Agnes and her family, since she seemed to have no kinfolks, when she had remembered that Agnes’s grandfather had been a cousin of Miss Ella Bayard. Would that make Dalt Agnes’s nearest relative?

If a judge agreed, Dr. Flo hadn’t a hope of proving a claim to the land.

While they waited for the disinterments to begin, Katharine moved the SUV closer to the cemetery, in the shade of a live oak. They opened all the windows to catch what stray breezes they could, and Posey insisted they all reapply repellant. “We don’t want to get carried away bodily by these mosquitoes or come down with West Bayard Island disease.”

Around two-thirty, Mona and Chase arrived in her Mercedes and parked near the church foundations. Chase climbed out, wearing fresh khaki slacks and a long-sleeved blue shirt. Mona was celebrative in red slacks, a red-and-white-striped tank top, and a floppy red hat.

She waved to the men, who had gathered in a herd under a sycamore tree. “Hey, y’all. Give me a minute to set up, then we’re gonna have a hell of a tailgate party.” From her trunk she unfolded a small table and set out bowls of shrimp, platters of wings, platters of sandwiches, and trays of crudités. A galvanized tub in the trunk held champagne on ice.

“Martha Stewart in the marsh,” Dr. Flo muttered. “You’d think we were here to christen a yacht.”

Katharine figured Mona was there to christen a dream come true.

“Her outfit’s not as stunning as yours,” Posey told Katharine.

“Her sunglasses aren’t as expensive as yours.”

“Meow, meow,” Hollis said. “The question is, can she shoot?”

“Somebody said she’s as good a shot as her husband,” Dr. Flo told her, “but I don’t know how good he is.”

Mona contemplated her work with pride. “Okay, y’all. Soup’s on. Come get something to eat. Don’t be shy!”

The men ambled toward her like cows heading to the barn.

Posey opened her door. “I think I’ll see if I can find out where she was earlier this afternoon.” She got down from the SUV, calling, “Aren’t you Mona Bayard? I’m Posey Buiton, and I was so sorry to miss your house on the last tour.”

“Oh, Mama,” whispered Hollis in disgust.

“Don’t knock her,” Katharine advised. “Posey’s got her methods and they usually work.”

While Posey was accepting a glass of champagne and being charming to Mona, Katharine, Dr. Flo, and Hollis watched the others fill plates and glasses. The clearing had taken on the feel of a carnival.

Katharine herself was beginning to relax. She took deep breaths of marsh-laden air and looked across the slough and grassland to hammock islands on the horizon. She knew that mud and ooze, dead sea creatures and birds, plastic bottles and aluminum cans were part of the marsh’s reality, but at a distance the grass, water, and sky looked pristine and fresh.

Burch, Hayden, Major White, Mr. Sykes, and his workers carried their food back to the sycamore and continued their democratic male bonding experience. It consisted, as far as the women could hear, mostly of baseball talk. Katharine wondered what they were waiting for. Nobody seemed in any hurry whatsoever.

“Chase, take those women some food,” Mona commanded. She sent glasses of chilled champagne and plates of cold boiled shrimp, chicken wings, cream cheese and crab sandwich wedges, carrot sticks, raw broccoli, and olives.

Hollis offered a toast. “To champagne. If you gotta wait, it’s a great way to pass the time.”

They heard another car, and Nell’s gray van bumped into the clearing. She pulled up near Mona and unloaded Iola and Miranda, then jolted to a shady spot not far from Katharine where she could watch the proceedings without climbing down. Iola wore a long red skirt with a white tank top that displayed more wrinkled neck and chest than was prudent. Her hair was beauty-parlor fresh: bright yellow and cascading from her crown in those improbable curls. Miranda wore white heels and a white strapless dress that she spent the next half hour tugging up. In the time since Katharine was at the store, she had painted her nails black and applied so much lipstick, blusher, and mascara that she looked like a clown.

Mona was disconcerted to see the Stampers. “You aren’t here to protest or anything, are you?” she asked Iola.

“Would it do any good? I figure you all are gonna do what you want to with your part of the island and we’ll do what we want to with ours.”

At that reminder that outsiders owned part of the island, Katharine could see the struggle within Mona to make a sharp retort. Good manners won. “Well, come on over here and get food and a glass of champagne. Chase, carry a glass over to Nell along with something to eat.”

She ignored Miranda completely.

Miranda spotted the SUV and came over. “Hey,” she greeted them. “I didn’t know we were coming when I seen you earlier, but Granny said we might as well.”

She gave Chase a furtive look and smoothed her white skirt before she eyed Hollis’s glass. “You got champagne, too?”

“Yeah.” Hollis opened the door. “And I think I’ll get more. Come on.”

She marched Miranda over to Mona, held out her glass, picked up another glass and handed it to Miranda. “Enjoy the party.”

Miranda gave her a shy, pleased smile over her glass and took a sip, then wrinkled her nose and laughed. Hollis laughed with her.

“Looks like Hollis has picked up a disciple,” Dr. Flo said as she watched them.

Katharine had been thinking how like Hollis it was to notice that Mona hadn’t offered the girl anything to drink and take steps to rectify that.

“But that poor child,” Dr. Flo continued. “Wanting so desperately to be sophisticated, and instead looking like a refugee from a Halloween parade. Why don’t young girls put on pretty clothes and enjoy the fresh, lovely looks God has given them instead of covering themselves with all that guck? They’ll have enough years to be garish later.”

Katharine didn’t have an answer. As a teen, she had tried out various looks, and suspected Dr. Flo had done the same thing. Miranda might get it right one day.

While Chase was carrying Nell her food and drink, Mona kept a close eye on Miranda. In Mona’s place, Katharine might have done the same. When Chase started back to the car, Burch called from under the tree. “Come over here, son.” Chase ambled over to the men. Burch grabbed his elbow. “It’s finally happening, boy! It’s really going to happen!”

“Looks that way,” Chase croaked. He gave the path to the woods an anxious look.

Miranda’s eyes followed him yearningly, but he ignored her and stood watching the woods. Then he gave a start and took off toward them at a lope.

Katharine looked out her back window and saw the man named Cooter stepping from between two cabbage palms. He held Dalt Bayard by one elbow. Both men wore overalls, long-sleeved shirts, and straw hats, but Cooter’s clothes looked fresh and pressed. Dalt’s looked like he’d lived in them a while. He also staggered like a man who had done serious drinking that day.

Chase remonstrated with them, pointing back into the woods. His granddaddy threw back his head and laughed, then pushed past Chase and dragged Cooter toward the other men. Chase frowned as he followed.

When they got closer, Dalt called, “Running a bit behind, aren’t you, son? Thought we’d be late.”

“We’re about to start,” Burch called back. “Did you know Agnes was buried here?”

“Yep. Watched the whole shebang. Not much of a turnout. A few folks from town.”

“You might have seen fit to mention it to me.”

“Didn’t want to ruin the fun.” Dalt stumped toward the cemetery gate, calling over one shoulder, “Have you paid your respects to all these fine relations of ours before you start hauling ’em up?”

Burch ignored him.

Dalt gave a high-pitched cackle and informed the other men, “That boy never could abide cemeteries, ever since he nearly fell into his mama’s grave when he was six. Scared him so bad he wet his pants.”

“Oh!” Dr. Flo exclaimed in disgust.

When Burch didn’t rise to his bait, Dalt peered into the broad branches that shaded the cemetery. “Never did cotton to the notion of lying out in this godforsaken spot, myself. You plant me in town, you hear me, son? Some place where they’s a bit of life going on.”

“I’m gonna drop you in the marshes and let the fish eat your gizzard.”

The old man cackled again and hobbled into the cemetery. With Cooter’s hand to steady him, he wandered along the rows of graves.

“Hey, Dalt,” Major called. “Some folks claim they got shot at earlier this afternoon in your cemetery. Wasn’t you who shot at them, was it? You been huntin’ today?”

“Been hunting for my liquor. Mona hid it and I had the dickens of a time finding it. They didn’t get hit, did they? We gonna get to bury bodies as well as dig ’em up?”

“Forget it, Daddy!” Burch burst out. “Nobody got hurt.”

The others resumed their desultory conversation. Dalt shuffled back through the cemetery, out the gate, around the fence, and climbed over the tabby wall. “These here don’t belong to us,” he said loudly to whoever might be listening. “I’m sayin’ it and I’m sayin’ it real loud. These folks have nothing to do with us. You ever hear of any Guilbert’s around here, Cooter?”

He gave it the French pronunciation.

His companion bent to peer down at Marie’s stone. “Nossir, Mr. Dalt. Never heard of anybody with that name ’round here. Sure didn’t.”

“I’ve got champagne, Dalt,” Mona called. “Come get you some. You, too, Cooter.”

Dalt’s head shot up and quivered. “Is she offering me a drink? Hurry, Cooter, before she changes her mind.” He staggered out at an impressive speed, but as they passed the obelisk, he glanced down, saw the name, and stopped. “Mallery? Well, I’ll be. I been coming to this cemetery all my life and never saw a name on that shaft before.”

Chase glowered. “I told you Tuesday that those women found Mallery.”

Dr. Flo and Katharine exchanged a look. Chase spoke like it was a familiar name.

“I thought you were funning me, boy. Or maybe I was too drunk to listen good.”

“What’s new?” Chase kicked a twig buried in Spanish moss and sent it high into the air.

“Dalt, are you coming or not?” Mona held out a bottle that glinted in sunlight.

“I’m coming.” He shuffled across to the impromptu bar.

When she gave him a glass, he raised it to the sky. “To Mallery. We’ve had real hell
raisers
in this family, but that’s one who deserves to burn there.”

Posey drifted back to the car to report. “Mona’s so keyed up about moving this cemetery, she can’t talk furniture right now, but I did find out she’s been driving around alone all day picking up food. She could have stopped by here long enough to shoot at us.”

Dr. Flo opened her door. “Looks like we’re fixing to start, anyway.”

Ned was driving his backhoe off the truck.

“We’ll move those graves over yonder first, then these women can leave,” Burch called over the motor’s clatter.

Katharine started to object that they had better not move Agnes without somebody’s permission, but she bit her tongue. That was none of her business and wouldn’t matter to Agnes. As her mother used to often remind her father,
You cannot fight all the battles in this world, only those you are given
.

The three women positioned themselves at one edge of the Guilbert plot where they had a good view of the proceedings. Hollis elected to stand with Miranda and Iola by Nell’s van.

Ned maneuvered the backhoe into position to take down enough tabby wall to get to the graves. His partner brought four wooden boxes and laid them outside the Guilbert plot with their lids open. “Sometimes there’s not much there except dark soil, after so many years.” Mr. Sykes sounded like he was apologizing for that. “But we bury the soil where they were, just the same.”

Katharine sipped tepid champagne and wished it were ice water. Sweat tickled her skin as it rolled down her torso. Her hair lay hot and heavy on her neck. She checked her watch. Three o’clock.
Three more hours to Jekyll and a swim
, she promised herself, hoping it was true.

As the backhoe chomped its first bite of wall, she regretted that one more piece of the region’s history was being erased. On the other hand, she was fascinated by the transformation in Ned. Walking around, he was a chunky man of little grace. On his backhoe he was as delicate and precise as a ballet dancer, moving the machine and its scoop with a skill that was beautiful to watch.

She would have appreciated his performance more if she hadn’t been wondering which of the others had been taking shots at them earlier.

By now, they formed quite a crowd, but not a soul wore a guilty expression. Burch was keyed up—a man finally getting what he wanted. Major White and Hayden Curtis remained under the sycamore, settling in for a boring afternoon. Mr. Sykes strode around the perimeter of the cemetery rubbing his palms together like the coach of a winning team. Nell sat in her van in the shade while Iola, Miranda, and Hollis leaned against the front fender, apart from the others, yet very present. All three Stampers wore the expressions of those who are attending a public execution because it’s the weekend entertainment in town.

While Ned positioned his backhoe to dig up Françoise’s grave, Dalt stumbled around to the other side of the cemetery and got his first glimpse of the Stampers van. “What you doing here?” he shouted. “Burch, did you know the Stampers bitch is here with her brats? They ain’t family. I told her then and I’m telling her now, she ain’t family. Git out of here!” He waved a hand as if to shoo flies, lost his balance, and toppled in a heap. “Now look what you made me do,” he complained.

“You always were more attractive prone,” Iola called from beside the van.

“Hush your mouth, woman. I ain’t taking no notice of you.”

“You did once.”

“Never did and never plan to. Now git out of here.
Git
!”

Iola placed both hands on her hips. “We ain’t goin’ nowhere, Dalt, ’til we get what’s owed us. That woman over there ain’t the only one with a claim on this island. Nell’s owed a piece of it, too.” She expanded her audience to include the rest of them. “Look at her! Just look at her! Who does she look like? I ask you that.” She flung out one hand toward Nell in the driver’s window of the van. Nell’s face was white, her eyes wide and disbelieving. But it was an oval face with wide cheekbones and blue chip eyes. A Bayard face. Bayard eyes.

Katharine hadn’t noticed the resemblance before. Shocked, she did the math. Nell was what, four or five years younger than Burch? Born before his mother died, certainly.

Had he ever looked at Nell before? Not the way he was looking now—from her to his father and back again. “Daddy?”

“She’s not owed a blessed thing,” Dalt insisted, still on the ground. “I gave her a store and a prime piece of land for that youngun. She’s not owed another thing. Cooter, help me up.”

“I’ll knock you down again!” Burch raised a fist and headed for his daddy.

Mona dragged on his arm to hold him back. “Get him out of here,” she screamed at Cooter, who was helping Dalt up. “Get him out of here!”

“You’d better!” Veins stood in Burch’s neck like wisteria vines, “or so help me, I’ll kill him!”

“I’ll kill him first!” Iola jerked Miranda by one arm and pulled her into the van. Hollis jumped out of the way as Nell started the engine. As they pulled away, Iola stuck a rifle out the window and fired at Dalt. If the van hadn’t hit a rut and lurched at that moment, he could have died. Nell gunned the motor and they roared away.

“Get her! That was attempted murder!” Dalt yelled. “Don’t you let her get away with that!”

Major White took this shooting seriously. He lumbered toward his cruiser as fast as an overweight, out-of-shape deputy can run in sand.

“I ain’t hurt,” Dalt shoved Cooter away and stood unsteadily to his feet. “I’m fam’ly and this is a fam’ly event. Don’t need all these—these strangers around.” He waved toward Hayden, Dr. Flo, Katharine, and Posey. He hadn’t noticed Hollis.

Hayden, still under the sycamore, had turned his back and was staring over the marsh like he’d never seen one before. Mr. Sykes was advising the man who was setting Françoise’s headstone beside one of the wooden boxes. “To make sure the right stone gets on the right grave,” he called over to Dr. Flo as if he were giving a lecture in mortician’s school.

“We appreciate it,” she told him.

He gave her a small bow. “We try to do the best we can for your loved ones.”

Somebody needed to do something for Chase. He was staring at his grandfather with an ashen face.

“Come on, son.” Mona joined him and jiggled his elbow. “They are starting to dig, and I want us with your daddy if he watches. You know how he feels about cemeteries. Burch, you do want to watch, don’t you?”

“Not particularly, but I will.” He moved to stand beside his wife and son.

“Why, let’s all pretend nothing happened here,” Posey drawled softly to Katharine.

As Mr. Sykes had predicted, the machine uncovered nothing in Françoise’s grave but a patch of soil that was darker than sand. Nevertheless, that soil was carefully gathered and deposited in the wooden box. When the lid was secured, Mr. Sykes copied the name from Françoise’s stone onto the lid of the box in permanent black marker. Katharine wondered what a future archaeologist would make of that.

This generation of humans buried earth in wooden boxes marked with hieroglyphics of undetermined meaning.

“That wasn’t bad at all,” Posey whispered.

Katharine said nothing. The backhoe was scooping Marie’s grave. What had the day been like when the woman was buried? Who had attended? Had they come to mourn, or simply to make sure that she was good and buried? Had Claude made the trip back from Atlanta?

Again, nothing turned up except dark earth, a few scraps of black cloth, one shoe sole, and a string of crystal beads on a golden chain. When Dr. Flo didn’t move, Katharine stepped forward. “I believe that ought to belong to Dr. Flo.”

“It may be gold,” Mona objected.

Burch touched her arm. “Let it go, hon.”

Nobody else spoke as Katharine retrieved the jewelry from the backhoe before the dirt was lowered into a second box. Mr. Sykes copied
MARIE GUILBERT
onto the lid.

“Thank you,” Dr. Flo said softly. “It looks like a rosary.”

“Marie must have been Catholic.”

Posey passed them a small bottle of hand cleaner. “Use this. Some of that stuff on your fingers might not be dirt.”

Katharine cringed. She scrubbed her hands and wiped them on a tissue, but as Ned moved toward Claude Gilbert’s grave and carried his tombstone over beside the two boxes, she found she was wiping them once again down the side of her pants.

Claude had been buried in a metal casket. The backhoe dug a hole around it, then Ned and his assistant jumped into the hole and shoveled out the sand around it. Carefully they lifted one end and inserted a chain, then repeated the procedure at the other end. The chain was attached to the backhoe, which lifted the coffin and gently placed it beside Claude’s tombstone.

Posey gave a little puff of relief. When Katharine raised a questioning eyebrow, she gave a little shrug. “Okay, I’m silly,” she whispered, “but I’m still glad there haven’t been any bones.”

Ned turned his bucket toward the obelisk. “Do you want this one, too?” he asked Burch.

“It’s just a stone,” Dalt called, stumbling a little as he headed toward the backhoe. “Yank it out and don’t bother digging.”

“Nonsense,” Burch objected. He lifted one hand toward Katharine and Posey. “You all can go now. The rest are ours. Mr. Sykes will take care of your relatives for the weekend, then put them wherever you arranged for them to go on Monday. The rest of this is family business.”

“That one is mine, as well,” Dr. Flo said as Ned’s backhoe bit the dirt.

“No, it’s—” Burch began, but his daddy interrupted.

“Don’t make such a fuss over it, y’all. It’s nothing but a marker.” Dalt jerked his head and one grubby thumb toward the marsh. “Carry it over there, Neddie, and dump it in the slough.” He shuffled closer and peered blearily at it. “I’d a done that before, except I didn’t know where it was. Granddaddy never said. Not inside the fence, though. That figures.”

“It has a pirate on it, Papa Dalt. Did you see that?” Chase circled and pointed to the back of the shaft. He was clearly uneasy and kept darting anxious looks at the women.

Dalt inched around to have a look. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“Very likely,” Posey murmured. Katharine coughed to cover her laugh.

Burch looked from his son to his father, puzzled. “What are you two talking about?”

“Mallery,” the old man said.

“Who’s Mallery?” Mona demanded.

He leered at her. “Burch didn’t tell you about the fine family you married in to, gal? Didn’t describe all the skeletons in the family closet before you signed on?”

Her nostrils flared.

“I don’t think you ever told Daddy, either,” Chase told him.

“Lotsa things I never told your daddy.”

“Obviously,” Burch muttered, not looking at him.

Mona whirled to glare at her son. “Do
you
know what he’s talking about?”

He shrugged. “Sorta. A bit of it.” Again he slid a quick look at the women.

“Mallery was a pirate,” Katharine called across the plot. “Down in the Caribbean.” Then Dr. Flo gasped and Katharine stared.

The backhoe had carefully lifted the obelisk from the sand. It had sunk deeper than any of them had realized. As it rose into the air, the name appeared not as one line, but two:

MALLERY

BAYARD