Cavedweller

by Dorothy Allison

  “Like I said, he was sitting up out there on the porch in that old rocker I’d put out for him. Took me the longest time to get him to use it and stop squatting on the steps. Always had nail holes in his britches right in the seat. Got him in that rocker and it made a world of difference. Think it made his knees hurt less too, but he would never say so. You know how he was.” Mrs. Stone looked around for an ashtray, and smiled gratefully when M.T. handed her a souvenir glass dish from Stone Mountain.

  “I’ve been there,” Mrs. Stone said, putting out the cigarette in the dish where the peak of the mountain pushed up against the rim. She smiled again, reflexively, pushed her hair back one more time, and turned to Delia.

  “Well, like I said. It had been a long time since I’d seen him light another cigarette. And I’d shaken out the rugs right by him, and he hadn’t complained like he usually did, and that wasn’t right. I was used to him always making his harrumph noises, spitting off to the side like I was driving him mad with dust. Only this time he was not moving. I was starting to feel grateful when I saw the ash fall off his finger, saw his finger was scorched. Man had died between one drag and another. That cigarette had burned to an ash between his two fingers.”

  Mrs. Stone smiled gently. “He died right,” she said, her head going up and down emphatically. “Man just died peaceful and right.”

  Past her shoulder Cissy could see Delia’s face, the hollows beneath her cheekbones sucked in tight, her teeth clamped together. She’s going to cry, Cissy thought. But Delia only shook her head once and pushed her hairpins back in her twist. Cissy saw her lips move then, repeating an inaudible curse.

  “Goddamn,” Delia said. “If so, it’s just about the only thing he ever did right.” She turned around to get her purse.

  Cissy drove out to Granddaddy Byrd’s farmhouse with Delia. Dede pulled in behind them at the 1-84 junction, driving the little VW, the one she called the turnip, that she had bought off Marcia Pearlman’s nephew Malcolm. It was painted purple and white and had dirt crusted over the back bumper where Dede kept ramming it into the dried mud bank of the ditch by her trailer park.

  “Got a call from M.T.,” Dede told Cissy when she climbed out of the car. She was wearing cutoff jeans and one of the black and white Goober’s T-shirts, emblazoned “Can Hold My Own” with two hands drawn in so that they cupped her breasts. She nodded at Mrs. Stone. “He died then?”

  “He did.” Mrs. Stone smiled. “He surely did. Went as easy as you please. Best death I ever saw.” She glanced once at the T-shirt’s legend and pinked up, but kept her smile and led them up the steps into the house.

  For Cissy it was the first time she had been to the farmhouse since they moved to Cayro, and it looked as if it had barely changed, though Mrs. Stone must have been watering the bushes at the sides of the steps. They were fuller and not so brown and dry. Otherwise, the house seemed untouched, except that the porch steps had been torn down and rebuilt, the new wood making the rest of the place look even more worn and silvery. The pine siding seemed almost marshmallow-soft in places, and the entry was marked with greasy handprints and mildewed smudges shoulder-high along the pink wallpaper surface.

  “I never could get that clean,” Mrs. Stone said when she saw where Cissy was looking. “Mr. Byrd said it was from Luke dragging his wet self along when he’d come in late nights. Might have been. It’s an oil stain, won’t come off.” She seemed nervous with the three women looking around.

  “He’s in there. I didn’t do much, just cleaned him up and got him covered. That boy Jasper from the Texaco station helped carry him in for me.” She waved toward the bedroom that opened off the side of the living room next to the arched fireplace. The headboard was just visible against the wall past the door—a big dark-wood headboard whose posts were cut off ragged so that the lighter core of the wood showed raw and dusty. The pillows had been taken off the bed, and Granddaddy Byrd’s prominent chin was visible where his head lay tilted slightly backward.

  “Amazing how heavy he was. The dead always are, though. I remember my husband Howard, how heavy he got.” Cissy and Dede couldn’t help but stare at Mrs. Stone. Delia ignored her, looking to the open bedroom and the body that lay there.

  “You know this place is yours.” Mrs. Stone was trying to get Delia to look at her. She stepped forward so that her body blocked Delia’s view. “From your parents,” she said. “Your daddy held the paper on it before he died. And he never left no will. I went through everything when I was helping Mr. Byrd get the Social Security started. No will anywhere. So it is all yours. Always was.”

  Delia said nothing. She stepped around Mrs. Stone and headed for the bedroom. Cissy hesitated to follow her, and Dede had already stepped over to the fireplace and the crowded mantel.

  “I did him as nice as I could,” Mrs. Stone went on. Cissy thought she was talking about the laying out, but it quickly became obvious she was not. “He wasn’t no trouble once I got used to his ways. He always wanted it quiet. Said he didn’t like to hear no hen-scratching woman talk. Well, I didn’t put up with that, you can imagine. Told him I wasn’t going to tiptoe around while I did my work. No sir.”

  Delia finally looked at the woman. “He always wanted it quiet,” she said.

  “Well, he was old. Old men are like that.” Mrs. Stone was nodding again.

  “How old was he?” Dede’s voice was frankly curious. “He’d never say.”

  “Oh, near about a hundred for sure. When I got his Social Security going, they were real surprised to hear about him. Must have thought he was dead. Don’t get too many men in their nineties going in to apply for benefits.”

  Delia had turned away toward the death room again. She walked to the doorway and stopped. Cissy was looking at Dede. “You’ve been out here?” Cissy asked.

  “A few times.” Dede’s face was guarded, her mouth pulled back at one corner as if she were thinking something caustic. “I come out to see him a couple of times. He wouldn’t never say much.”

  They just looked at each other. Mrs. Stone was going on about her accomplishment—getting that old man to do the paperwork for his Social Security. Delia looked back at the woman briefly with eyes that had gone hot and dark. The skin around Delia’s eyes looked tight. Cissy felt a momentary pulse of anger. There was something Delia and Dede knew, something in their eyes.

  “Course we only got them to pay $154 a month,” Mrs. Stone went on. “Nothing really, but with the chicken eggs and the garden produce we would sell off the porch I managed. Managed pretty well.” She looked pleased with herself, her face alight with achievement.

  “And he got to die at home. He got to die right.” Mrs. Stone beamed at Delia.

  They all looked at her. Her moon-wide face flushed, and she looked hastily from Cissy to Dede.

  “Well, think of the tragedy he endured. Losing his sons. That Luke’s been in jail about all his life. And you daddy.” She gestured at Delia and made a sad face. “So much loss,” she said. “So much loss.”

  “Let me see him.” Delia walked through the doorway, away from the suddenly stricken Mrs. Stone. She looked back once from the room and pushed the door closed behind her. Mrs. Stone nodded, took out a hankie, and wiped her eyes. She turned to the girls. “So much loss,” she said again. Cissy could see no tears, but the grief seemed genuine.

  Mrs. Stone blew her nose and shook her head sorrowfully. “He was all the family she had left, wasn’t he? Except for you girls?” She clearly was not going to stop talking. It was as if all those years of taking care of Granddaddy Byrd had left her with an ungovernable tongue. Or perhaps she did not know how to be around people who were supposed to be grieving but seemed more curious than despondent.

  “Oh, I heard a lot about you.” Mrs. Stone waved her handkerchief at Cissy and Dede. “Delia’s girls. Oh my, yes. Delia’s two pitiful girls.”

  Cissy narrowed her eyes, If the old man had said that, he meant Dede and Amanda, not her. She could bet he’d never mentioned her.


  Dede stepped over and put a hand on Mrs. Stone’s arm. She said, “We’d like a minute too. I know you have things to do, stuff to get together. So don’t let us stop you.”

  Mrs. Stone’s mouth gaped a little. “Well, I wanted to talk to your mama,” she said. “There are things ... well, there are things I’d like to discuss.”

  She’s going to want to stay here, Dede thought. She probably has nowhere else to go. Dede was nodding, her hand patting Mrs. Stone’s arm.

  “Yes,” she said. “There will be lots to talk over, but there will be time later. I’m sure you have all kinds of things that need to be done.”

  Mrs. Stone’s head bobbed fiercely. “Oh yes,” she said. “Oh my, yes.” And headed back to the kitchen.

  The girls watched Mrs. Stone walk away. When the kitchen door swung shut behind her, they both sighed. “Big solid butt on her,” Dede said. “How old you think she is?”

  “Old enough to know better.” Cissy’s drawl was bitter, but Dede nodded in agreement, her face pensive.

  “Lord. Don’t ever let me get that desperate.” Dede ran her palm up her neck to her chin. “Saddest damn thing in the world.” She looked at Cissy. “What you think?”

  Cissy shrugged. “You really came out here on your own?” she asked. She watched Dede’s eyes track around the room, cataloging junk, tools, and knickknacks. A line of ugly ceramic dolls sat on the mantel in order of size. Each had the same painted black face with exaggerated features, red lips, and red aprons.

  “What you want to bet those are Mrs. Stone’s?” Dede waved at the dolls.

  Cissy laughed. “No bet.”

  “Yeah,” Dede said after a moment. “I came out here. When y’all came back. Before Delia came and got us.” She looked around the room. “Give the old lady something. This is a lot cleaner than it was. It was awful.”

  Cissy tasted dust in her mouth, but the room was clean, more or less. The floor was swept, the rug was smoothed, the surfaces crowded but scrubbed. Still, the air in the room tasted old and bitter-woody, as if the grit of the pine walls had been sifting down a long time.

  “You come out here alone?” Cissy watched Dede’s eyes. They kept moving, lighting on one thing and then another. Something was wrong. Something was bothering her. Dede looked like she had been drinking a lot of coffee or holding something in too long. The muscles in her neck were jumping.

  “Alone, yeah. I came alone.” Dede turned around to face the mantel. “You don’t know. Grandma Windsor, she never would tell us nothing. Never said more than Delia’s name and a curse. Told me I was just like her, sinful and hard-hearted. Called me names like you wouldn’t believe that old lady would speak, but she would say anything to us. Anything.” She paused.

  “And I heard enough. People love to tell horrible things. Heard this old man was out here. I hitchhiked out to see for myself who he was.”

  “I can’t believe he told you anything. He was a damn hard man. You should have seen how he treated Delia.” Cissy grimaced, remembering the first morning she’d spent in Cayro, the overcooked egg sandwich at the diner, and that old man with his crooked hands and evil eyes. “Harrumph.”

  Dede grinned at her. “I bet,” she said. “I can just bet.”

  On the walls on either side of the mantel were black-and-white pictures in painted metal frames, most of them featuring cars and people standing around cars. There were different groupings in each photo, but the same figures recurred. Children, a woman, a man, and in many—startling for how little he had changed—the figure of Granddaddy Byrd. Dede pointed to one of the photos.

  “That’s our uncle Luke, the one she was talking about. He raced stock cars for a while. He was the one I always wanted to meet, but I think he’s been in jail since I was born.”

  Cissy stepped closer and looked at the face. “He kill somebody?” she asked.

  “Something.” Dede’s shoulders went up and down. “The old man wouldn’t say.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  Dede turned to Cissy, her face squeezed into a peculiar expression resembling awe. “He talked about Delia. He talked about her like she was one of the Seven Wonders.”

  “But he hated her.”

  “Maybe.” Dede shrugged. “If he did, he was proud too. He was a strange old man.”

  Cissy looked back at the photos. In the center of the display there was one with a smudge on the bottom of the frame. A scorch mark showed on the wallpaper beneath the frame as if a candle had been held too close to the image. It was a family photo with everyone leaning against one of those fat-looking old cars with rounded bumpers. A woman held an infant in her arms while two little boys leaned into her skirt. Next to her was a handsome man with a tiny girl up on his shoulders, her knees jutting out around his chin. Just to one side of them all was an almost smiling caricature of Granddaddy Byrd, looking just enough like himself for Cissy to recognize the face.

  “He talked to you,” she whispered.

  “A little. I had to be patient. You couldn’t ask him no questions or he’d get all mean and clam up. Didn’t bother me, though. I had grown up with Grandma Windsor.” She laughed harshly. “Granddaddy Byrd had nothing on her.”

  Cissy shook her head. She tried to imagine Granddaddy Byrd sitting on his porch talking to his great-granddaughter like a real person. It was beyond her. She looked again at the photo—the old man had either just smiled or was about to smile when the picture was snapped. The shape of the mouth was proof.

  Her eyes tracked across the other people in the photo. The woman was laughing. She had hair that looked to be the exact shade that Cissy’s hair turned in late summer, light, almost blond, but the face looked like Delia’s. Cissy looked sideways at Dede. No, the face looked like Dede.

  “She looks like you,” Cissy said to Dede.

  Dede stepped close to the picture. “Maybe.” She frowned. “More like Delia, I think.”

  “No.” Cissy shook her head. “Like you.”

  Dede pursed her lips and shrugged. “That’s them, you know. The lost family.” Her finger tapped each figure. “Delia’s mama, our grandmother. The daddy, Granddaddy Byrd’s prize son. And the boys. And Delia herself.” The finger stopped on the little girl. “All of them.”

  Cissy stared at the woman and the boys. “They died?”

  “All of them, yeah.”

  “Damn.”

  “You knew.” It was something between a question and an accusation.

  Cissy frowned. What did she know? She looked again at the little girl, at Delia. The relaxed, easy face of a child who was happy to be where she was. The open mouth that was ready to smile, and it looked as if she smiled a lot. The small-framed body, thin face, big eyes, a girl no more than seven or eight. The boys had bruised knees, sharp elbows, and big smiles. The baby was cuddled up to the mama’s neck. All of them were leaning into each other, a happy family. Delia’s family.

  Delia had been raised by Granddaddy Byrd, that was what Cissy knew. The family had died somehow. The story had been passed over, whispered or mumbled. She remembered Delia’s face stern with grief and pain. Not crying season, some earlier time, some terrible story had been told and buried. Or had it ever been told at all? How had they died? A car wreck? Cissy looked at all the cars in the pictures. Then she looked again at Granddaddy Byrd with that almost smile.

  The bedroom door swung open. Delia stepped out, her face wrung dry. Cissy flinched, seeing the bones of that little girl in her mother’s narrow features.

  “I’ll have to talk to Reverend Hillman,” she said. “Or maybe Michael. Maybe Amanda would prefer I asked Michael.” She ran one hand through her hair and looked back at the kitchen door. “And I need to talk to Mrs. Stone, settle with her.”

  Delia’s shoulders slumped as she moved toward the kitchen. She’s getting old, Cissy thought. She looked back at the picture and the little girl. How long since it was taken? Thirty-five, forty years now? She thought about the old man on the bed, her great-grandfather
, and the man in the photo. Little laugh lines around the mouth, crinkled eyes. Part of the happy family. Behind him the grinning dark-headed uncle leaned in over the bumper, one leg up, and he too was laughing. Part of the family she didn’t know. Cissy did not know any of them. She shuddered.

  “They all died,” she whispered.

  Dede was at Cissy’s elbow. “Happens,” she said. “Terrible things happen all the time.” She crossed her arms over her breasts and clamped a hand down on each shoulder. “Let’s go out. I need a smoke.”

  Cissy looked toward the kitchen, but Delia had gone through the door. She turned and followed her sister, still thinking about the photos. They belonged to Delia now, along with the house and everything else. Cissy trailed one hand along the stain on the wallpaper in the entry. All this had belonged to Delia’s parents, to the family.

  Dede squatted on the front steps and shook out a Camel. She lit it with one of the Day-Glo lighters she kept in a stand by the cash register at the store. The piercing blue color went opalescent as she turned it in her hand, then back to a shivery sapphire. Dede was always getting in new lighters, buying them for herself, and losing them everywhere she went. She tossed this one from one hand to the other and then laid it down on the steps.

  Cissy dropped down beside her. The dimensions of the yard seemed to have altered. The sky had gone dark, and a wind was picking up. “It’s going to rain,” she said.

  “Maybe.” Dede looked at Cissy and then back out across the yard. “Nolan wants me to marry him.”

  Cissy turned to her. “What?”

  “Marry him. Nolan wants me to marry him.” Dede’s face was pinched. She seemed angry.

  “Well, don’t you want to marry him?”

  “I don’t want to marry nobody.” Dede kicked her feet hard on the steps. “Not Nolan, not anyone.” She rocked her body forward and back fiercely while her fingers did a complicated spinning trick with the cigarette in one hand. She took a drag and then shot the smoke out in a long stream. “Goddamn.”