"A little extra," Barnaby said. "I always save some for emergencies."
Beverly Parsons made her way through the line, hugged the widow and the girls. She gave Alfred an extra special squeeze, and Roby would have sworn she had real tears on her cheeks. Leaving Cindy to comfort Alfred, Beverly went over to Roby and Barnaby.
"Got that Isenhour pie in the oven?" Roby asked her.
She looked at the undertaker, then back at Roby. "Things like that aren’t to be spoken of."
"Jacob’s pie was about the best I’ve had in a while. You really outdid yourself."
"I do what I do and you mind your own business."
"Cindy’s looking mighty healthy. Gained her weight back."
Barnaby excused himself, said that he had some matters to discuss with the widow.
"I don’t want to talk no more," Beverly Parsons said.
"I was just curious about something. If Cindy walked out of the funeral parlor and stepped out in the road and got smacked down by a dump truck, would you still be beholding to Johnny Divine? Or would it be even Steven?"
"Quit that kind of talk. Somebody might hear you."
"Oh, you mean Johnny? He already knows, ma’am. He sure enough knows."
"Hush up." She clamped her hands over her ears. "Hear no evil, hear no evil, hear no evil."
Roby leaned over her, put his mouth near her ear. "If Cindy died, would you have to bake her pie?"
She ducked away from him and rejoined the Ridgehorn family. Roby, smiling, followed her.
"Much obliged for the pie," Anna Beth said to Beverly. "Everybody’s been so nice to us. Daddy would be happy to know how much you all pitched in."
"He was a good man," the pie-maker answered.
"Real good," Roby said. "Delicious."
Anna Beth gave him a confused look. Marlene, who’d been letting Harold show his admiration for how good she looked all dressed up, moved away from the rest of the family. Harold stuck close to her, like a dog following a bucket of chicken guts.
"Are you okay, Roby?" Sarah asked. "You’re looking a little sickly."
"Yeah." The sweat on his forehead was thick enough to collect in rivulets. "I reckon I better get some fresh air."
"Want me to come with you?" Alfred asked.
"No, I’ll be fine. Funerals just get to me, is all."
"I know what you mean," Anna Beth said. "I liked to never got to sleep last night. Kept thinking I heard Daddy out in the barn. You know, Alfred, how he used to hum that little tune while he was milking the cows?"
Alfred’s eyes flicked toward Marlene, so fast that nobody noticed but Roby. "Yeah. I guess memories come in different size boxes. Because I woke up in the middle of the night and thought I heard the tractor out in the cornfield."
Buck turned from his conservation with Sarah at the mention of the word "tractor." "Didn’t nobody steal it, did they?"
Sarah grabbed Buck by the arm and pulled him toward the widow. "Don’t even get started."
Roby was hit by a wave of dizziness, as if the chapel had suddenly broken loose from the world and drifted into the clouds. The thick sweetness of the flowers made his stomach flutter. Roby grabbed Alfred to keep from falling.
"Here," Alfred said. "I’ll help you outside."
Alfred hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even snickered, as he helped Roby take a seat on the concrete steps leading into the funeral home. The evening was autumn cool, and as Roby leaned against the wrought-iron railing, his sweat dried, leaving him clammy. Two men he didn’t recognize were smoking cigarettes in the parking lot, the orange glows of their cigarette tips growing fat with each draw. Clawson’s Funeral Home sat on a small hill, and downtown Barkersville huddled below it in a tangle of utility lines, a wash of street lamps, and a stack of worn bricks.
"You got no right to nose into family business," Alfred said.
"I promised," Roby said, wiping his eyes.
"How did you find out?"
"Your daddy told me."
"Bullshit. Wasn’t nobody else there. Just me and Marlene and-"
"You didn’t hear him coming, did you? I reckon not. You were probably breathing too hard. Or maybe whispering little words in her ear. Tell me, what did you call her? Did you say, ‘Oh, Marlene,’ or did she make you say ‘sister’?"
"You bastard," Alfred said.
"Don’t worry, I won’t tell nobody."
"It didn’t happen. And don’t go messing with Marlene. You leave her alone."
"I said I wouldn’t tell anybody. Wouldn’t want Cindy Parsons to know, would we?"
"Daddy’s dead. He can’t tell nobody. And who would believe you, anyway? Everybody pretty much thinks you’re touched in the head."
"I guess we both got our secrets, don’t we?"
Alfred kept quiet while an elderly couple doddered down the steps and into their Ford. The two men had finished their cigarettes and exhaled the last of the gray smoke, buttoned their jackets, and went back inside. One of them said, "Sorry about your loss, Alfred."
"Thank you, Mr. Adams."
When the funeral parlor door had closed once again, Roby said, "There’s one way you can shut me up for good."
"Hell, yeah. I can put a Jap bullet in your brain and bury you out by a back road."
Roby almost told him to go ahead, to see how that worked out, to see whether secrets took to the grave actually stayed there. Instead, he fumbled in his pocket, touched something dry and ragged.
No. Wrong pocket.
He went inside his jacket and came out with the thing Barnaby had given him. "Here. This is for Marlene."
Alfred held the object up to the light that leaked through the parlor’s windows. "What the hell’s this?"
"Forgiveness."
"You’re as crazy as everybody says."
"I swear on God’s Holy Bible, you get her to take that, and I’ll never whisper a word to nobody."
"Take it?"
"Eat it. All of it."
Alfred held the object close to his face, then sniffed it. "Shoo, smells like dried dog shit."
"It’s pie."
"Pie?"
"A special recipe. Been in the family for generations."
"You’re crazy, Roby Snow. Crazy as a frog-fucked hoot owl." After a long minute, Alfred said, "You promise, as God is your witness?"
Roby smiled. "Cross my heart and hope to die."
Alfred went inside, into the room where the others were paying tribute to the flesh that once housed Jacob Ridgehorn’s soul.
XI
The burial was almost an anticlimax.
By Saturday, the entire Ridgehorn family was worn down by grief, missed sleep, and the burden of hosting all of those who paid their last respects over and over. Some of them Roby had seen at the sittings, dropping by to deliver a roast or casserole, then coming over a few hours later to help eat it. A few had joined the family after the viewing for a late meal.
Roby had skipped that one, as much as he had looked forward to spending time with his temporary relatives. After all, he had the Isenhours to prepare for.
Now, with the sun nearly straight up like God’s golden eye, the clan had gathered around the family cemetery. Only the immediate family had been invited to the graveside services. The rest of the mourners had been shucked back at the official chapel service in Barkersville. Barnaby Clawson was offering a few words of comfort, a garbled mix of Bible verse scraps and personal anecdotes.
"Jacob Davis was not just a loving husband and father," Barnaby said. "He was also a friend, somebody you could count on in hard times. He held to his faith in everything he did, whether he was sitting in the third row of Barkersville Baptist or standing out in the cornfield killing crows."
Alfred cleared his throat. The widow looked misty-eyed, but the shakes that had plagued her the last couple of days had gone. Her chin was tilted up, as if she were gazing into that better land she would someday share with the love of her life. Sarah and Buck sat on the far end of the row of metal chairs. Buck kept stealing jealous glances toward the backhoe that stood under the apple tree, its metal jaw ready to scoop soil over the coffin as soon as the formalities were done. The backhoe operator, dressed in a pair of blue coveralls, smoked and stared off over the meadows.