She said nothing. There was nothing she could say.
Roby held out the clod of pie.
"Nobody…" Her voice was like a wind over ice, brittle. "Nobody saw."
"Family secrets. We keep it in the family."
"Nobody saw."
"Somebody did. How do you think I found out?"
"Nobody saw."
"Your daddy did. And he told me all about it. Last night."
Her words were like notes played on the wet rim of a crystal glass, uneven and piercing. "My daddy was dead last night."
"I know."
"My daddy was dead and nobody saw and you’re crazy and you and your pie can go to hell." She sprang forward and slapped at his hand.
The pie flew from Roby’s open palm, parted some leaves in the underbrush, and landed in the creek with a liquid thunk. Marlene clawed her way past him, screeching. He looked at his empty palm under the moonlight, then watched her grow smaller and darker until she was nothing but a moving shadow. Then her figure was outlined in the light of the screen door. She went inside and the door to the kitchen slammed closed.
After a minute of listening to the creek, Roby walked to his truck, started it, and headed for Clawson’s Funeral Home.
VIII
The back room of Clawson’s was dim and still and clammy as a cellar. The room smelled like Barnaby, or maybe that was the other way around. Roby knew that death could get in you, worm its way through your pores, crawl down your throat and into your lungs, sneak into your eyes and inside your brain. Death could surround you and suffocate you. Death could stiffen you up. Death could swell you and then shrink you. Death could do it all, change your face, give you a tight grin, take you places, open doors.
But first, you had to shake its hand.
Jacob Ridgehorn looked good. One of Barnaby’s finest displays of talent. The cheeks were smooth and pink, the eyes closed peacefully, the lips full. Under the shop lights, his forehead shone with the faintest luster of wax. The sparse hair was combed into place, more neat than it had ever been in life.
Roby looked at the clock above the workbench, carefully ignoring the sharp tools, surgical saws, thread and glue and buttons and rubber bladders. Five-gallon plastic containers of chemicals lined the floor beneath the bench. A long stainless steel table stood in the middle of the room.
It was nearly midnight.
Roby listened to the rodents in the storage room and waited.
Jacob’s body spasmed when the clock’s thin hands both reached straight toward heaven.
"I tried," Roby said.
Jacob’s mouth had parted as the skin tightened in death. Barnaby hadn’t gotten around to running a stitch through the inside of the corpse’s mouth yet. Roby was relieved that the dentures were in place. It made Jacob seem less dead somehow.
The thing that bothered him was he could never be sure if the dead person was really dead. Or if it was a ghost.
He’d have to ask Barnaby about that one day. Or the old man at the broken-down garage at the end of the world.
As if the old man would tell him anything.
But maybe Jacob would, the way he had the night before.
"I fed them the pie," Roby said. "You never tasted such a heavenly thing."
Jacob twitched, maybe one corner of his mouth lifted in appreciation.
"It was good."
No answer except the soft settling of cloth.
"You should have seen Alfred. He was a tricky one, all right. Had to get a little feisty with him."
Jacob said something about how Alfred always was a bit stubborn, maybe he was too much like his Daddy that way. Or maybe what Roby heard was just the whisper of a car passing on the distant street outside.
"And Sarah. Fine girl, that one. She and Buck will give you some great grandkids once they get around to it. I know, I know, a little too late, but at least you can be content that your blood line will be carried on."
Jacob said he figured there were plenty of Ridgehorns in the world already.
"Anna Beth is my favorite. No, don’t get mad, I don’t mean that way, I just think she’s got spunk and will do all right for herself."
Jacob said that a father wasn’t supposed to say such things, but now that it didn’t matter what opinions he held, he could admit that Anna Beth had been his favorite, too.
"Marlene," Roby said. "Now, Marlene is a horse of a different color."
Jacob waited silently, hands folded across his waist, as patient as a saint.
"But she… she didn’t have none of the pie."
Another thirty seconds of silence passed, the tick of the clock filling the gap of missing heartbeats. Jacob looked sad, even with eyes glued shut.
"I’m sorry. But I ain’t give up yet. I just have to talk to Johnny, is all. And Barnaby. We’ll sort it all out."
And this after I told you all the family secrets, Jacob said.
"I know, I know. Don’t make me feel worse than I already do. And it ain’t just because I let you down. It’s because I’m-"
Roby looked at the clock on the wall, mad at himself for expecting sympathy from a corpse. The deceased deserved all the sympathy. That’s what this was about. Honoring the dear departed.
Jacob said it was hard to feel honored when a man’s own flesh and blood turned against him.
"I don’t think she did it out of spite," Roby said. "And maybe it ain’t my place to say, but your family got the worst grieving manners I ever did see."
Jacob said that every family was different, that you couldn’t understand unless you were on the inside. Roby didn’t know whether he meant the inside of the family or the inside of the coffin.
The family, Jacob said. Though laying stiff in a coffin was no way to spend an eternity, either. That was for them who were too unlucky or too despised to get their pies eaten. Nothing sadder than to cross over with a sack of soured deviled eggs and moldy cake and a whole pie. That was no way to meet Judgment.
"You don’t have to paint me a picture," Roby said.
You’ll have to go see him for yourself, Jacob said.
Roby pressed his tongue against his teeth. He didn’t want to go out there, not tonight. He wasn’t sure he could find the place again. Or maybe he was scared that he would.
Because he’d found it every time he looked. Or else it had found him.
And every time, whether it was midnight or sunrise, the old man was sitting there, waiting, as if the last Greyhound had rolled through forty years ago but he was still determined to catch the next.
Except Johnny Divine’s type of waiting had no end.
I know you’re scared, Jacob said, but I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat. Ha ha, that’s supposed to be funny.
Roby nodded.
See you at the viewing, Jacob said.
Roby nodded.
And bring the family, Jacob added.
"I won’t let you down," Roby said.
No, Jacob said. That’s what old Barnaby’s for.
Roby said nothing, looked at the clock and its slow countdown toward tomorrow.
A joke, Jacob said. He’s the undertaker, get it?
Roby’s sense of humor was not in the best of shape. "Sleep tight."
Jacob said he’d try his best.
Roby headed for the door, feet as heavy as gravestones.
And, Roby…
Roby turned, looked at the sallow corpse, the rigid mouth, the sunken cheeks.
Don’t forget to lock up behind you, Jacob said. Wouldn’t want nothing getting stolen.
IX
It had been dark the first time, three in the morning maybe, the hour when even the night creatures were bone lazy and dawn seemed like it was as far away as forever. Roby had taken a wrong turn down the back country, through the little community known as Mule Camp that had once been a whistle stop on the old Virginia Creeper railway. The town had died with the passing of the locomotive era, but a few people still kept up shops in the area. Roby hadn’t been through those parts in years, not since he gave up bow hunting for deer, but that night he’d been drinking and hell bent on speed.