"Eat some pie, Alfred," he said.
"You and your damned pie."
"Where’s Cindy?" Sarah said. "I didn’t think she let you out of her sight these days."
"She’s comforting Momma, since you girls are doing such a bang-up job of it."
"She’s sucking up, more like it."
"Look, I don’t know what you and Marlene are scheming behind my back, but I’m man of this house now, whether you like it or not. Daddy wanted it that way."
"How do you know what Daddy wanted?" Roby said. "You were hardly ever in the same room with him since the day you turned fifteen."
Alfred’s cheeks burned red, his eyes narrowed to quick, cruel slits. He glanced at his sister, then back to Roby. "Don’t you dare say another word," he said in a half-choked whisper.
"You carry your sins inside you, whether they’re spoken of or not," Roby said. "In your heart."
"Shut up in front of her," Alfred said.
Roby looked at the half-empty jar of apple butter on top of the refrigerator. Made from Macintosh apples in the orchard that covered the slope above the meadow. Cooked down over a kettle in October, an all-day event, with taters wrapped in tin foil and tossed into the embers, pan-fried cornbread, fresh-squeezed cider.
"Don’t trouble yourself none," Roby said. "Your daddy told me all about it."
"What’s he talking about, Alfred?" Sarah said.
Alfred looked around like a mountain lion caught in a cage. He lunged forward, grabbed a ceramic urn, and flung it across the room. It bounced off the Frigidaire and fell to the floor, unbroken. A spatter of cream blurred and ran in tiny white rivulets down the refrigerator door. The murmur of conversation in the living room eased off.
"You all okay?" the widow said in her loudest voice.
"We’re fine, Momma," Sarah said. "I just dropped a cake plate, is all."
"Cake wasn’t on it, I hope."
"No. Nothing broke."
Alfred stared at the cream as it dripped to the floor.
"Get a mop," Roby said to him.
Cindy Parsons came into the kitchen and hurried to Alfred. "What’s wrong, honey? You took ill?"
"I’m all right," he said. He looked at Roby as if daring him to speak, as if the secret of Alfred’s fifteenth birthday was something he’d never shared with his lady friend. With anybody, for that matter.
Roby crossed the room, scooped up the urn, and examined it under the kitchen fluorescents. "Lucky bounce."
Sarah brought a wet dish rag and wiped down the front of the Frigidaire. Then she got on her hands and knees and began soaking up the pool of cream. Roby put the urn back on the crowded counter, then pushed the sweet potato pie toward Alfred.
"Here," Roby said. "Have a piece. Take your mind off your anger."
Alfred looked into the surface of the pie, more than half of it gone, the dull aluminum pan grease-smeared beneath the part that had been eaten.
"Go on, honey," Cindy said. "Momma made it special for the Ridgehorns. Spent half the day on it."
"I don’t want no damned pie."
"Eat it," Roby said. "You don’t want to disappoint your ma. No more than you already have, I mean."
Alfred scrambled around the counter, sweeping a bowl of green beans with bacon to the floor. He grabbed for the glazed ham, its hunk of exposed bone slick among the red meat. He raised the ham and charged Roby, wielding the weapon like the Bible’s Sampson flailing around the jawbone of an ass. Roby ducked the two blows, hearing the shallow breath squeezing from Alfred’s lungs. Roby spun, grappled at the counter, and came away with Beverly Parsons’s death pie. He shoved it into Alfred’s face.
Alfred froze, more stunned than hurt. The ham slipped from his fingers and hit the floor. Cindy squealed in panic. Sarah stood at the far end of the counter, the wet rag limp in her hand.
Alfred took two steps back, then began wiping the sweet orange goo from his eyes.
"Sorry about that," Roby said, his voice barely audible.
By now, the rest of the family had clustered in the kitchen, the widow hunched and squinting, trying to make sense of the scene. Buck fought through the group of his in-laws to Sarah’s side. Marlene let out a laugh that sounded like a pig’s last call at a slaughterhouse. Anna Beth was saying three or four things at once, none of them complete sentences and only a few of the words recognizable as English.
They all watched Alfred, waiting for his reaction. He peered through the mess that clung to his face and looked at the pie filling and ruptured crust on his hands.
"Sorry," Roby whispered.
In the silence, the sounds of the mountain dusk leaked through the windows and screen door. The cows had come down from the high pasture and bumped against the warped locust gate that led to the barn. A hound dog bayed on a distant ridge, the tolling of a death bell for a treed raccoon. The crickets had risen up in armies now, emboldened by the cool darkness. A lost gray moth battered against the wire screen in the kitchen window.
Alfred held his hands out, palms up, as if he were experiencing stigmata and wanted the others to witness the miracle.
The silence grew deeper until the room was swollen with it.
"You’re right, Roby," he finally said. "That’s one hell of a pie."
Marlene laughed for real. The widow eased forward on legs that were worn by age, each step a creaking curse on gravity. Roby felt his muscles relax and he rose out of the fighting crouch that had knotted his gut. Alfred’s tongue flicked out and licked at the pie that surrounded his lips. Then he lapped the thick substance from his palms.
The tension that had filled the house all day fell away like mist burned under a strong dawn. Everyone began talking at once, Sarah gave Alfred the towel so he could clean himself, Roby picked the pie pan and ham off the floor, collecting the larger clumps of pie. Buck took a clean plate from the cabinet and heaped it full of mashed potatoes, then broke the skin that covered the cold gravy. He dolloped some gravy on the white mound, then ladled some sliced carrots on his plate.
Cindy helped Alfred wipe himself, kissing him on the mouth before all the pie was gone, so that her lips were stained and smeared as well.
"Hope your momma teaches you how to cook that good," Alfred said to her.
Sarah got out plates for everybody. The widow was in the mood for casserole. Roby washed the ham off in the sink and put it back in its foil platter. Anna Beth carved a slice and stuck the meat between the split halves of a scratch biscuit. Marlene had a fat, out-of-round piece of Clemens sausage. Roby started a pot of tea and everybody worked on the pile of food, all standing gathered around the kitchen counter except the widow. She sat on an uneven stool, head bent forward like a minister leading a flock in some joyous ritual.
They were still eating and chattering when the car headlights first appeared as specks on the dim end of the dirt drive, bouncing like twin fireflies.
#
V
The knock was unnecessary, but Roby knew the action was meant as a sign of respect. Alfred, clean now except for a few stains on his shirt, swung open the screen door and held it as Barnaby entered. The undertaker wore his midnight blue suit, the one he wore when dropping in on a sitting. His black suit, the serious hand-tailored one, was saved for the actual viewing and interment.
Roby nodded at Barnaby. Barnaby smiled in greeting while somehow keeping the undercurrent of sorrow fixed on his face. Roby marveled at the man’s professional talent. Or perhaps it wasn’t a talent. Maybe his face had grown that way, etched by a thousand funerals, the solemn features worn and eroded like a tombstone that had weathered too many storms.