Automatically, I turned toward home as I left the parking lot. But after a block, I realized I really didn’t feel like seeing anyone right now. Perhaps I wanted to sulk awhile; maybe roll in a little self-pity. Sometimes I surfaced from my life to look at it in wonderment and irritation and also a certain amount of bafflement. I should have ended up in a house like my mother’s, married to someone like Charlie Gorman, a perfectly nice boy I’d dated in high school. Charlie had always made class vice president; he was the salutatorian; he just missed being handsome. He would have been a good father for, say, two little girls; he’d done well in computers since he’d graduated from college. If I’d married Charlie, I would never have known anyone who died of murder; I would never have seen a dead person. We’d go to Walt Disney World, I dreamed, and we’d camp out…
Well, maybe that was going a little far.
But I still didn’t feel like seeing anyone I knew, just at the moment.
I went where I often go when human companionship seems undesirable; to the Lawrenceton cemetery. I always park by my great-grandmother.
A narrow gravel driveway makes a figure eight inside the cemetery fence, to allow for parking at funerals and for easier access to the graves. My great-grandmother is one of the few people buried between the encircling driveway and the fence. She was from a farming family; maybe she wanted to be close to the surrounding fields.
Shady Rest is an old cemetery, maintained by a coalition of Lawrenceton’s white churches. The segregation of death is much stricter than segregation is in life, now. The black cemetery, Mount Zion, is on the southern edge of town, while Shady Rest is a little out in the country on the west.
Shady Rest is a very ordinary cemetery, traditional, none of this flush-with-the-lawn marker stuff. The earliest tombstones date about twenty years before the Civil War, when Lawrenceton became more than a tiny settlement. There are live oaks and other hardwoods, there is close-clipped grass covering the gently rolling ground. Tiny iron fences interrupted by little gates surround some of the older family plots. There is a high, fancy, ironwork fence enclosing the whole cemetery; but there is no gate to close over the main entrance, though the two other back entrances are gated and usually locked, except during a funeral. There has never been vandalism at Shady Rest, though I’m sure some day there will be. Every now and then, someone donates a cement bench to sit beside one of the two narrow drives that cross through the graves, though I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone sit on them but me.
After nodding to my great-grandmother, I go sit by Mr. Early Lawrence, most times. Naturally, he was the man Lawrenceton was named after, and he earned it by hustle; an early entrepreneur, was Mr. Early Lawrence. Though his descendants don’t like to talk about it, somehow Early held on to his money and increased it after the War. Even today, none of the Lawrences are poor folks.
Early Lawrence had a magnificent tombstone, perhaps ten feet tall because it was topped with a stone angel whose hands were outstretched, palms up, pleading-perhaps urging passersby to feel sorry for Early? To remember to mow the grass? I had never quite understood that beseeching gesture, and I often pondered it when more immediate things gave me pain or anxiety.
After the heavy rain of the morning, the ground was soggy. I pulled out the old towel I kept in the trunk of my car, since the bench had a damp look. I picked my way to my chosen spot, spread my flowered towel, and sat down with a sigh.
Close to the center of the cemetery, the green tent was set up over the hole dug to receive Jack Burns, I noted approvingly; Jasper Funeral Home was on the ball. The chairs for the family were unfolded and ready with green covers slipped on. Artificial turf discreetly covered the mound of dirt at the back of the tent. The artificial green was gleaming with water droplets.
I wandered over to have a closer look, and found that the lowering device was in place over the grave, the green webbing stretched across to receive the casket. I wondered which of the levers on the side released the webbing to let the casket descend, but I was certainly not about to experiment. Sheer interest in the mechanism kept me there for a few moments, until I recollected that into this hole would descend the body of a man I knew, and I beat a shamefaced retreat to Early Lawrence.
I looked up at the angel, again studying that calm face for some trace of a clue as to its intent. I wondered who had sculpted it; did he churn them out, or make each one as it was commissioned? He’d enjoyed doing the wings, I could tell… they were full and beautiful, as feathery as stone could look.
I thought the usual thoughts-what would they say, all these dead Lawrencetonians, if they could see the town now, look over the horizon and see Atlanta approaching, encroaching? What if my maternal grandmother, whom I could faintly remember (she was over there close to Great-grandmother, but within the driveway), could give judgment on her daughter’s successes and her grandaughter’s peculiar life?
We were not a fertile family; I was the only child of an only child, and according to the specialist, I could not even have that one my mother and grandmother had been granted. I’d known now for two months; but sometimes I still cried when I thought about it. I had to get over that. I began counting my breaths, slow and even; in, out, one, two, three, four… self-pity was a drug. I must not become addicted. Self-pity is like chocolate; as you get older, you can only afford a little bit.
I heard a robin, then a mockingbird. Bees did their thing among all the flowering bushes and a few premature Easter lilies, set by gravestones. Here and there was a red foil-covered pot filled with shriveled remains of poinsettias, but on the whole folks took better care of their dead than that.
So peaceful. I deliberately took off my watch and dropped it in my purse. After a while, my tears dried and I cut loose from my worries, letting my mind drift. It was as though the countless religious ceremonies held here had drenched the soil not with anguish, but with calm detachment, thoughts of eternity. Every now and then I’d see a car go by; Shady Rest was perilously close to one of the new housing developments.
When at last I rose I’d achieved peace, or at least calm.
I really wouldn’t have had Charlie Gorman on a platter.
I was making my way back to my car, taking my time and reading headstones, when I actually began to think. It seemed to me I hadn’t been asking the right questions. I’d been asking why these bizarre things were happening, who could be doing them, instead of how.
I was convinced that all the events of the past couple of weeks were related: the murders of Jack Burns and Beverly Rillington, the murderous attacks on Shelby and Arthur Smith.
Jack Burns had been dumped from an airplane, so the killer had to know how to fly. Jack had been killed by a blow to the head (last night’s local paper had said), as had Beverly Rillington, so the killer was strong and not afraid of violence.
Since somehow the killer had approached Shelby, who still had no memory of the attack, either (for convenience’s sake I’d term the killer male) he was someone known to Shelby, someone Shelby had no reason to fear; or he was used to stealth.
And if the stabbing of Arthur in the middle of a crowd was any indication, this person was getting increasingly reckless. The stabbing had to have been impulsive; the weapon was probably a lowly pocketknife, if the gossip I’d heard had been correct. So someone in the crowd around Arthur had been overwhelmed with fury so sudden and devastating that he’d risked all to injure Arthur.
And somehow, somewhere, he’d concealed the weapon so that none of the police on the scene had been able to find a trace of it. Could a pocketknife be swallowed? I wondered wildly. We’d all been searched. Where the hell could it be? This was a crucial how. How had it been concealed?