A newborn lamb knelt atop the miniature stone beside Annie Ruth's. After all these years, its features had weathered smooth, but as a child, I had been enchanted by the lamb and whenever I played here, I brought it flowers or ferns or colored leaves depending on the season.
Mother hadn't known Daddy's first wife; but she was the one who planted the yellow Marshall Niel rose by Annie Ruth's grave, and she was the one who sang lullabies to Annie Ruth's babies and tried to mother her boys.
The summer Mother was dying, she walked me down the slope to show me where she wanted to lie—opposite Annie Ruth with a space left between them for Daddy some day. Her stone was over there now:
SUSAN STEPHENSON KNOTT
I WILL NOT LET THEE GO, EXCEPT THOU BLESS ME
"Were you ever jealous of her?" I asked back then.
Mother's face was serene as she looked over at the white marble marker of the woman who had preceded her in all things on this farm. "Oh, Annie Ruth and I made up our differences years ago."
"Then you were jealous."
"Use your head, Deborah!" she answered sharply. "I had her man, I had her sons, I had her place. I was alive! What cause did I have for jealousy? No, it was Annie Ruth who was jealous of me at first. But we made it up."
"How?"
My mother had answered my every question that summer, even some I didn't ask. It was as if she wanted to tell me all her secrets before she died. But not this one.
"Annie Ruth knows," she said finally, "and that's enough." * * *
"Did you love her an awful lot?" I asked Daddy now.
He didn't answer and I wasn't bold enough to ask a second time.
Suddenly a mockingbird's throat-clearing trill fell like a pebble into the pool of stillness around us. Halfway up the gradual slope between the graveyard and house stood a utility pole where generations of mockingbirds had perched to sing in the moonlight an hour or more at the time. This one seemed prepared to carry on the tradition in long liquid bursts of warbled themes. He would repeat a snatch of notes five or six times, catch his breath, and then move on to a new set of sounds. A virtuoso. In his song I heard the squeaky porch swing, a blue jay's querulous complaint, a meadowlark's clear descending whistle, the guttural cry of a cat in heat.
"Some folks faulted me for marrying your mama so quick," Daddy said at last. "Annie Ruth was a good wife for a poor man—a hard worker, careful about getting and saving, whether it was a penny or a mess of peas. She was always laying by. They had it rough back yonder in the marshes. We had it rough too; but even after they killed my daddy, there was still time for fiddling or story-telling. 'What's the good of it?' she used to ask me."
Again his fingers brushed the stone letters of her name. "No, she won't one to stand out in a field of a night and listen to corn grow. Your mama and me, we come down here the night we got married. I told her I guessed Annie Ruth must've known she wouldn't never have enough time to smell the roses, and maybe that's why she worked so hard every minute from first light to last dark. Next day, Sue carried the boys to town and let 'em each pick out a rosebush for their mama. Jack was too little to choose, so she bought this one special from him for Annie Ruth. Marshall Niel. Smells real sweet, don't it?"
"Yes," I said, wondering if he'd answered one of my questions.
CHAPTER 18
BRICK WALLS
"Brick walls are poor absorbers of sound originating within the walls and reflect much of it back into the structure. Sounds caused by impact, as when a wall is struck with a hammer, will travel a great distance along the wall."
I slept in my old bed that night and next morning, I was up early to put on the coffee so I could meet Maidie at the screen door with a mugful, sugared just the way she likes it and so milky it was pale beige. I'd also begun the grits and sausage and had the bread tray and pastry cloth laid out on the counter for her. I know how to make biscuits and nobody's ever choked on them, but it's like I can play the piano good enough for a sing-along, yet wouldn't touch a key if Van Cliburn walked in the room.
Maidie makes biscuits the way Van Cliburn plays the piano.
She's only about fifteen years older than me. I remember the summer she came to my mother's kitchen as a lanky teenager, a temporary fill-in for Aunt Essie, who had gone up north to attend the birth of her daughter's first child. Aunt Essie met a widowed Philadelphia policeman, Maidie met Cletus, and both just stuck where they'd lit.
After Mother died, Maidie continued to keep house for Daddy. Once in a while she'll start nagging me: if I'm not going to get married again and set up a real house this time, how come I don't just come on back home where I belong?
Sunday mornings are relatively peaceful, though. She only gets on my case when she has plenty of time for new arguments on the old themes. On Sundays, she's usually running behind. She has to get Daddy's breakfast, clean up the kitchen, go put on a dress and hat and be sitting in the pew at Mt. Olive A.M.E. Zion church ready to open her hymnbook at ten o'clock sharp. Doesn't give her a whole lot of time to fuss at me.
Besides, today she wanted to hear all about how Paige Byrd was the one who'd killed Carver Bannerman. When I told Daddy the night before while we were sitting on the porch swing after our walk, his first response was, "You reckon her mama'll need help with Zack's fees?"
As far as he was concerned, Paige had just saved the Knotts from having to pay a defense attorney themselves. Sooner or later, one of his sons or grandsons would have found Bannerman and beat him senseless. She simply got there first, so it was only fitting to offer to pay for Zack's services.
"I never heard nothing good about Judge Byrd," said Maidie as we finished eating, "but I reckon he raised his daughter to do right."
"Probably was her mama did the raising," said Daddy, reaching for a final hot biscuit.
"Whoever." Maidie put the last piece of sausage on my plate and carried the dish over to the sink.
I was too full to eat another crumb, so I slipped the sausage inside a biscuit and wrapped them in a piece of plastic wrap. One of my nephews would probably be rummaging in this refrigerator before the sun went down. Teenage boys always seem hungry.
As I put away the blackberry jam, the phone rang and Maidie answered. Her lips curved in an easy smile. "Doing just fine, Miss Zell. How 'bout you? . . . Yes, ma’ma she's here all right... You, too, now."
She handed the phone to me and I heard Aunt Zell say, "Deborah? I told her I bet that's where you were."
"Her who?"
"Gladys McGee. I told her I'd track you down and get you to call her. She wants you to sign an exhumation order."
"A what?"
"You heard right. She wants to dig up Ralph and have him autopsied. She's convinced he was poisoned, too."
CHAPTER 19
CHECKING AND CRACKING
"Checking and cracking describe breaks in the paint film which are formed as the paint becomes hard and brittle... Both are the result of stresses in the paint film which exceed the strength of the coating."
I had never been in Gladys McGee's living room before, but I could have described it beforehand: everything beige and rose and pretty. Every blonde oak tabletop polished, every piece of glass shining. Beige wall-to-wall, a beige couch in front of a fireplace that had never burned a single log, a rose-flowered wing chair on either side of the couch, a blonde oak coffee table in the middle, and a pink glass ashtray in the middle of the table. Polished brass candlesticks on the sidetable. Pink candles.