Mr. Oliver had been similarly attentive to Miss Conner who had needed help with the music for the service and in deciding which suit she wanted her father to wear. She had sat out on the side porch with Mr. Oliver after the funeral and Delvin had heard the creak of the old slat swing far into the night.
When over the next few weeks nothing happened, Delvin decided he had to help the business along. He stole a few sheets of Mr. Oliver’s private stationery, along with envelopes and stamps, and wrote notes to the two women. He suggested to Mr. Oliver that he begin home visiting services, especially to the homes of those whose loved ones had been recently interred. “Seems like a funeral home ought to include such services,” he said. “It idn’t just at the grave that those poor ladies—”
“Which poor ladies?” Mr. Oliver asked. He was at the soapstone sink in the basement outside the embalming room washing his hands with the soap that smelled of lemons.
“Any of em,” Delvin said. “I was thinking especially — because they’re the latest — of Mrs. . ” And he went on to remind Mr. O of the gratefulness shown by the two substantially fixed women whose loved ones he’d just ushered into eternity.
They walked out into the backyard. A new snow had fallen, an inch of glossy powder that emphasized the lines of the old sycamore and the half broken red maple and set tiny gleaming caps on the leaves of the holly bush by the back steps.
“You’re trying to push me into something, aren’t you?”
“What if I was?”
“It won’t do any good, boy.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not fit for such folly as that.”
“Why aint you?”
“Quit saying aint. I’ve told you about it.”
“I forget. I can’t keep every instruction in my mind at all times. My mind is too full of other prospects.”
“Other than becoming a gentleman?”
“What good in this world would that do?”
“Kindness — gentleness — will always do.”
“You just changing the subject.”
“There aint no subject, boy,” Mr. O said and laughed his wheezy, pressurized laugh.
They stood a moment looking up at the fuzzy January stars. Orion’s lantern, the Sisters’ broken stroke aimed at the distant iron mountains.
Delvin went ahead with his note plan, writing in florid ink strokes a message first worked out on a scrap of butcher paper. I was most grateful to be of service. . Would you care to share a cup of tea at the Little Hummingbird cafe over on Jefferson street? If so, please. . by return. . yours. . Delvin wanted to make sure Mr. O would have to go. Of course he’d be angry but he’d get over that.
Delvin decided to write another set of letters detailing Mr. Oliver’s good qualities. I tell interesting stories, am not stingy with the pocket money, have never been a finicky eater, relish sitting out on the side porch reading good books, am a devotee of worksaving appliances, take no more than a ceremonial sip of wine (no spirits) and act gentlemanly at all times — and I have good table manners and can be counted on in a pinch. .
“That is a fine piece of work,” Delvin said to himself as he folded the prepared sheets into envelopes he’d lifted from the bunch tucked in one of the cubbyholes in Mr. O’s big secretary desk.
Replies to the invites came quickly. Both ladies said they would be delighted to join Mr. Oliver for tea. Delvin was able to determine the exact moment when the funeral director received the first answer. This by way of the loudly exclaimed cry, “What the goddamn hell!”
He also heard Mr. O tell Polly to go fetch him.
He ran out the kitchen door, through the back gate and out into the alley where Willie Burt was washing the old Crane & Breed glass-sided hearse they kept for those few who still preferred the departed to be carried to the cemetery by horse pull. The horses were in a little four-stall barn down the alley. Delvin liked to go out there and sit near their stalls. He didn’t particularly like horses but he liked the smell of the hay. He went down there now and pulled himself up on a pile of stacked bales. He pulled the little green volume of Othello out of his jacket pocket, leaned back against a bale and began to read. Iago was busy with his underhanded ways. They were nothing to what he, Delvin Walker, former child pretender to the throne of France, was up to. But maybe he shouldn’t have done what he did. Lord, I got to slow down. He had already been in one fight that morning. With a high school boy who had caught him the other day whistling at his little plump girlfriend over on Stockton street. Roscoe Blake his name was, a portly fellow with an incipient hump. Roscoe had slapped him in the face. Delvin had fallen back into the manure pile — right behind this barn. He’d got up and hit Roscoe with two chunks of crumbly manure. Roscoe came at him windmilling both fists. Delvin was amazed at how silly he looked. He ducked and poked him tentatively in the belly. Roscoe went down as if he had hit him with a bat. He rolled over three times — like he was going to roll on down the alley, Delvin thought — but then he got up. He shook his fist at Delvin and shouted that he had better leave Preeny alone or worse was coming. “Hadn’t seemed too bad so far,” Delvin said. Roscoe had walked off stiff-legged like a dog down the alley toward the bicycle he rode everywhere. He was a pretty boy and always had money.
But this episode wasn’t troubling him at the moment. I feel burdened by life, Delvin thought. He missed his mother. These days he only thought of her when he said his prayers at night. “Bless Mama,” he said as he knelt beside the bed, as he had been taught at the foundling home and required to do. Those two words were all he said. Each night they floated away on a puff of breath to where he didn’t know. No one, as far as he knew, had heard news of her. He’d better go over to the Emporium again to check if anybody over there had received word from her, or about her.