The Good Neighbor (43 page)

“Do you recognize this man?” asked the woman. “Mr. Hart?”

The prisoner nodded, his wrinkled neck lost among the folds of orange cloth that swathed him. His voice trembled with emotion when he spoke.

“Yeah, I know him. Hello . . . Colt.” “Hello,” said Colt.

“Well,” whispered the old man. “Well, well.” He sat back down again and leaned forward, rubbing his eyes. Colt noticed, for the first time, that he was in handcuffs.

“To the younger Mr. Hart, I am addressing myself,” said the woman. “Was there anything you wanted to say in this matter?”

Colt stared at her, mute, overwhelmed. “Mr. Hart?” she prompted him.

“Ah,” said Colt, “anything I wanted to say?” He could feel the eyes of the room upon him.

“Yeah, I have something to say,” he said. “Where should I start?”

31
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A Historical Digression

(concluded)

O
n a balmy May afternoon in 1888, Marly Musgrove was walking across the yard of Adencourt from the kitchen to the

pump, carrying an empty bucket in one hand and her grandson, Lincoln Flavia-Hermann, who was less than a year old, in her other arm. Marly’s Bavarian son-in-law, Kloot, had just bought a new horse, a dun-colored, two-year-old mare that stood about fourteen hands high. The horse was nervous. To relax her, Kloot was giving her a brushing, but his efforts only seemed to make her more skittish. She’d been uneasy about moving in the first place, he recalled later. She’d seemed calm enough as he was leading her away, but as they approached Adencourt, her nostrils grew wide and she began to dance from side to side, as if she smelled a preda tor. Kloot thought a good brushing-and-currying would calm her down and help her get used to her new surroundings, but stupidly he hadn’t thought to tie her reins to the hitching post. He would later blame himself for the consequences of this careless omission; for, as the horse grew more spooked, he was having a harder time

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holding her—until finally she ripped free and tore across the lawn, racing, Kloot would later explain in his mangled English, “like the Devil himself was licking her rear.”

Marly had just finished drawing a bucket of water for washing dishes. Lucia had been after her for the last couple of years to in stall indoor plumbing in the house, but Marly wouldn’t allow such a luxury, even though she had been granted a war pension for the Captain’s service; plumbing seemed to her like something that belonged only in the homes of the very rich. As the horse was speeding across the yard, Marly was distracted by the small boy in her arms, her first and only grandchild. The bucket dangled loosely from her fingertips, and as she stumbled over a stray piece of firewood, water sloshed against her leg.

“Would you look at what Granny did to herself?” Marly cooed to the baby, oblivious to the seven-hundred-pound animal run ning blindly toward her—Lucia would later say she had suspected for some time that Marly’s hearing was going bad, and had urged her to see the doctor about it, but Marly applied the same logic to her body that she did to her house: any improvements made to the basic structure of things was vanity. Even so, no one could understand why she didn’t at least feel the vibrations of the hoof beats, for even a small horse can set windows and plates to trem bling when it runs. Marly set the bucket down to get a better grip, still holding the little boy. Kloot Flavia-Hermann had already be gun to scream her name as the horse bore down upon her, but— again inexplicably—Marly either didn’t hear him, or simply didn’t have time to respond.

It was all over in a moment. The horse passed over the two of them and continued on down the road. She would later be found back in her stall at her former owner ’s farm, shivering and rolling her eyes. In her wake, she left two human bodies: one sitting up right, too stunned even to cry, and the other lying prone in the dirt yard, blood seeping from her ears, one eye shut, the other open and grotesquely turned back into her skull. Piecing every

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thing together later from what was left of the outlines in the dirt, curious neighbors and the traveling doctor would determine that the horse’s hooves could not have missed the little boy’s head by more than half an inch. That he was alive was a gift; that he was unharmed, a miracle.

But those same hooves had crashed into Marly’s head with the force of sledgehammer blows, and her skull was crushed practi cally into powder along the right side and top of her head—so much so that the undertaker later had to remove her brain en tirely, in order to prevent it from leaking out of her ears.

Once again, the scattered Musgrove children were summoned by telegram. The gathering this time was much more subdued than it had been for the Blessing of the Stones. Marly had only been in her fifties, and no one had expected her to go so soon; al though, being a Musgrove, Hamish would think later, what they
really
ought to have said was how lucky she was to have lived as long as she did. Olivia and Margaret showed up with their Philadelphia husbands once again, and once again Hamish and Ellen took the train in from Pittsburgh, arriving at the house in a hired wagon.

Marly lay in a coffin in the outer living room, having already been dressed, washed, and laid out by the undertaker and his staff. Her children and the neighbors from several miles around kept up a vigil that lasted through most of the night. Toward sunrise, the neighbors went home to rest, and the children filed into their old bedrooms with the docility of trained pets returning to their cages. The Philadelphia husbands did not give any thought to keeping their wives company, but settled for bunking together in one of the empty bedrooms, for comfort—though neither would admit it, both of them were terrified of the old house, and were sure it was haunted. It went without saying that no one would sleep in Marly’s bed, though it was the most comfortable.

In the morning, Lucia was the first to rise. She brewed pots of coffee and fried ham steaks and eggs, and soon, awakened by

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these delicious smells, the others began to drift downstairs. Ellen was the last to get up. When she came into the kitchen, where the others had been eating in shifts at the small table, her appearance gave her sisters a shock. Her face was smeared with dust, and her dress, which she had not bothered to change out of before bed, was torn along the sides, as if she had been dragged for some ways down the road.

“Ellen!” Lucia said. “What on earth happened to you?”

Ellen looked bewildered. She smoothed her hair back self consciously and stared at everyone staring at her.

“Why, I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“You’re filthy! And your dress!” Lucia cried. She went to her sis ter and spun her around, pointing to the tears in her clothing. “Were you sleepwalking?” she asked.

“I—yes, I must have been,” Ellen said quickly. “I think I remem ber waking up in the barn.” She gave a faint smile.

Hamish looked skeptically at her bare feet, which were clean. Had she been walking around in the barn at night, he thought, she would have certainly had to step through the manure that Kloot Flavia-Hermann rarely bothered to clean up.

“First time I’ve ever heard of a sleepwalker stopping to put on their shoes,” he remarked.

“Now, Hamish, you know very well that sleepwalkers do strange things,” said Lucia. “And Ellen has often walked in her sleep before. Remember the time Mother heard a noise, and found her on the porch roof?”

Hamish did remember that time, and so did Ellen; she also re membered that she hadn’t really been sleepwalking, but had merely crept out of bed to explore the house at night, something she did often, though she had never been discovered before that time. Marly’s assumption that she was sleepwalking was a chari table one, made for her own peace of mind, for girls who left their beds at night to amuse themselves could not be trusted in the slightest; it was easier for Marly not to believe such a thing. Oth

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erwise, she would have had to tie Ellen into bed.

“
I
remember that,” said Olivia. “Though I am rather mortified to think that she hasn’t grown out of it by now.”

“
Et moi aussi
,” said Margaret, sniffing.

“Ellen hasn’t sleepwalked in years,” said Hamish. “It’s being back home under these trying circumstances that’s doing it to her.”

There was a general murmur of assent and understanding— Hamish could always be trusted to come up with the right expla nation in a pinch. Thus diagnosed, Ellen shot her brother a grateful look, and scurried back upstairs to clean herself up and change her dress.

❚ ❚ ❚

The funeral was held that afternoon. The same minister who had consecrated the graves the year before arrived around one o’clock, in a black surrey drawn by two black horses. Since after breakfast, the mourners had begun to gather once again in the living room to bid farewell, and by noon their numbers had swelled to more than a hundred. Marly had not been the most outgoing of women, but she had been respected in the community. Laid out now in her black dress, a silk kerchief tied under her chin to keep her mouth closed and to hide the worst of her injuries—ruined head propped on a small pillow, hands folded at her waist—the adult Musgrove children could scarcely believe how small death had made her. In their memories, she would always loom as the largest figure any of them had ever known, eclipsing even their frightening military fa ther, whom Olivia and Margaret barely remembered—but now they suddenly noticed that she was really only a tiny woman, barely five foot four, and that whatever spirit, had possessed her mortal self and lent it such stature had fled for good.

The minister intoned a blessing over the casket, which was then closed. As Marly’s face disappeared from view for the last

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time, Hamish felt a terrible tightening in his chest, and he sensed that the floor was falling away beneath his feet. Ashamed of him self, he had to be supported by the Philadelphia husbands until he regained his equilibrium. His sisters, unrestrained by the dictums of manly comportment, set up a collective moan that grew into a low wail as the coffin was transported out of the front door.

Hamish recovered enough to assume his position as one of the pallbearers. The men moved a step, then paused, then took an other step, then paused. In this solemn manner, accompanied by the periodic thud of a muffled military drum that had thought fully been provided, as a tribute to her war-widowship, by the lo cal militia, they headed around the house and toward the family plot. The mourners fell into line behind, forming an undulating black-clad dragon of grief, the head of which had already stopped at the open grave site just as the tail was leaving the house.

When all had gathered, the minister spoke for a lengthy time. He reminisced about Marly’s girlhood, of which he had known nothing, and spoke of the great sadness and hardships that she had endured in her life, but that were now coming to an end, as she was laid to rest among the little ones who had left her too soon. The minister once again read the names of the dead Mus- grove children aloud, and the living Musgroves cast an anxious eye at Ellen, dreading a repeat of last year ’s performance. But, to their mixed relief and surprise, Ellen remained calm, even dry- eyed—almost detached. It seemed to the others as if, in her mind, the funeral was already over, and she was back home in Pitts burgh. When the service was over and the coffin lowered into the ground, each of the children threw a shovelful of dirt on top of it, and then stood back as each of the mourners did the same. By the time they were done, the hole was nearly filled in. The under taker ’s men had only a small job to finish, and then there was a new grave at Adencourt.

It was, the children knew, to be the last. Though they hadn’t discussed this with each other, each of them had a fervent wish

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not
to be buried at Adencourt, although for very different reasons: Olivia and Margaret because it was too unfashionable; Hamish because he intended never to return to this cursed place again, ei ther in life or in death; and Ellen because, in addition to the rea sons she shared with Hamish, she couldn’t bear the idea of sleeping side by side through all eternity next to the little brother she had drowned. It was enough, she felt, that her soul would be tormented in hell for all eternity—it was too much to think that her very bones would be made restless, too. Lucia was the only one who wouldn’t have minded. She had rarely left Adencourt in life, and saw no particular reason to leave it in death, either. But then again, being of an unspiritual mind-set, Lucia didn’t believe that
where
a person’s remains lay made any particular difference. She would be happy to be buried next to her husband in the Lutheran cemetery closer to town, when her time came.

The funeral over, all the mourners went back into the house for supper. Then they bid farewell to the siblings and went home in their wagons. As the dust settled in the driveway, the women set about cleaning the place once more. They scrubbed it from top to bottom, beginning in the attic and working their way down to the basement. They had not planned to do this, it being a strange end to a day of sadness; but they found themselves at a loss, and fell to work as a substitute for conversation.