The Unquiet Grave: A Novel

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “Anyhow, she was a respectable married woman, apparently trusted and well liked in the community. The fact that the white folks called her Aunt Martha ought to tell you both that and the fact that she was too old to cause anybody’s heart to flutter. Mostly, they meant it as a term of affection and even respect.”

  Seeing Dr. Boozer’s upraised eyebrows, he added, “It was a different time. A different century. I suppose they lived up to the light they had, most of them. I don’t suppose she minded it, though I’m thankful that no one except my sisters’ children has ever ventured to call me uncle.”

  Boozer was smiling. “I can’t imagine it happening, Mr. Gardner. You’re not a comfortable sort of person. Do you wish you were?”

  “No. I should hardly know how to respond.”

  “Just as well, then. So, to return to the tale of your murder case. You were saying that Mrs. Jones’s husband worked on a nearby farm, and that the son in question ran errands and did odd jobs. Was that enough to support a houseful of children, or did she work, also?”

  Mr. Gardner thought for a moment and shook his head. “I think she did, but I forget—if I ever knew. But remember that three of those children were adults themselves. The Jones family was quite large—then. I’m sure that they all kept busy earning a living. Mr. Jones worked on a farm. And the others? Doing chores for white folks, I guess. Laundry, cooking, mending, cleaning houses. I can’t think what else any of them would have done in that time and place, but it’s likely that I did not bother to ask. I wasn’t concerned with the family members personally, except as possible witnesses for the case, because the Joneses were neighbors of the Shues, and because their son had found the body. Trout Shue had only lived in the community for a few months, but the Joneses lived close, and they should have known Trout and his bride as well as anybody. So I had to find out what they knew.

  “I must have looked like a peacock in a hen yard in that little backwoods settlement that afternoon. I wore my good dark suit, a new white shirt, and a red silk necktie. I was going out among strangers, and I never wanted anybody to mistake me for a laborer. It must have given Martha Jones quite a turn to see me there at her front door, for when she opened it, she stared at me as if I were an apparition. She was a short, stout, dark-skinned little woman, wearing a white apron over a long blue dress. She was holding a colander of peeled potatoes, so I surmised that I had disturbed her dinner preparations. She peered out at me with dark eyes as expressionless as marbles, waiting, I suppose, to see what bad news I brought, for in her world, men in suits nearly always meant misfortune of some kind.”

  “Good afternoon, madam,” I said as pleasantly as if I had been effusively welcomed.

  “My husband ain’t to home right now.” She looked as if she were about to close the door. “He’ll be working over to the farm until sundown.”

  I forced a smile. “That’s all right. I am not bringing you any troublesome news. I’d just like to talk a bit, if we may. My name is James P. D. Gardner.”

  She stared at me. “That’s a mouthful, for sure and certain. What do folk call you?”

  “Mr. Gardner,” I said, and then, thinking that she might consider my truthful response officious and uncivil, I finished lamely, “Or just plain Gardner, if you prefer. I wonder if I might have a word with you, and with your son if he is on the premises.”

  She studied me carefully, still as blank-faced as a sphinx. “Is you selling Bibles?”

  Mr. Gardner broke off his narrative here and looked at his companion. “I won’t attempt to render the dialect of her speech overmuch, Dr. Boozer. It isn’t necessary to the tale, and I find there is too much mockery made of that dialect by comedians these days, in blackface and otherwise. She was a simple, careworn but dignified woman who spoke in the normal patterns of her time and place. Perhaps she would sound comical to you, Doctor, but I did not find her so then.”

  James Boozer nodded. “I understand. They never did get South Carolina off my mama’s tongue, either, but she was no less sharp and genteel for that. Tell me, though, how is it that you don’t speak that way yourself? You are Southern-born, and surely your parents were born into slavery?”

  Gardner considered it. “Partly my training at Storer College and partly determination, of course. My father was a freedman, and he educated himself. Good at anything he turned his hand to. Raised horses, did some rudimentary doctoring. He taught me to read and to use books, and he encouraged me—pushed me, really—to become whatever I wanted to be. Not that I needed much pushing. I craved position—respect—like some fools crave opium. Did your people push you, Doctor?”

  Boozer thought about it. “No. They knew I was bright, of course. Seems to me like I just fell upwards. How did you manage?”

  “It’s true that the village in which we lived was populated by simple country folk, but remember that it also boasted a fine, exclusive resort full of wealthy, well-traveled people.”

  Boozer nodded, with a knowing smile. “Who wouldn’t give you the time of day, would they?”

  “Oh, some of the most aristocratic ones were kind enough. They thought they outranked everybody, so from the heights of their eminence they could discern no appreciable difference between me and a local working-class white man. And they were generally civil, because they had no fear of anyone scaling their castle walls, socially speaking—it simply couldn’t be done, regardless of your creed or color. It’s mostly fear makes people rude, and as they had not the one, neither did they have the other. I don’t say they hailed me as a brother in humanity, but they found no sport in humiliation. Or if they did, they practiced it on more pertinent targets: the social climbers and the pretentious nouveau riche of their own race.”

  “So those aristocrats constituted your finishing school? How did you get close enough to study them?”

  “I worked some at the hotel there when I was a boy, and I listened. Those people were my Bible, and I learned chapter and verse of their speech and manners.”

  Boozer looked at the old man sitting ramrod straight on the weatherworn wooden bench. He might have been in the witness box or meeting with the governor, so formal was his speech and demeanor. Looking at him, one felt that he missed a necktie the way other people would miss trousers. “You didn’t feel like you were being phony?”

  “Phony?” James Gardner shook his head. “I was young. And once I learned, I never spoke or acted any other way, not around anybody. I found that people treated me as the person I presented myself to be. It soon became second nature, and not long afterward I was that person. There was no one else that I could be anymore. That mold was set forty years ago. By now it is unbreakable.” He looked around at the other patients shuffling across the lawn, and at the dark shape of the brick building on the slope above them. “Even in here.”

  “But your speech and your demeanor made you a stranger to your own people. You just told me that the countrywoman Aunt Martha Jones asked if you sold Bibles.”

  Mr. Gardner shrugged. “At least she didn’t mistake me for a field hand. I would choose respect over camaraderie any day.”

  “But being so isolated can contribute to despair, which may be part of the reason you ended up here. Don’t you want people to like you?”

  “Doesn’t matter what I want. They generally don’t like me, so I’ve learned to settle for respect. If I tried to be hail-fellow-well-met with all and sundry, then you would be justified in branding me a phony.”

  “All right. Have it your way. I don’t know that I’m in any position to disagree with you. I am particular about my status as well. I introduce myself as Dr. Boozer, even to store clerks and small children.”

  The two men shared a brief smile of perfect understanding.

  Boozer took another sip of his coffee. “So you were saying that when you went out to question the neighbor of your client, she mistook you for a Bible salesman. What did you say to that?”

  The old man settled back in the chair by the window, and cradling his coffee
cup in both hands, he took up the tale again.

  When I recovered from the unexpectedness of the question, I replied, “Why, no, ma’am, I’m not selling Bibles, nor anything else. And since you strike me as a God-fearing woman, I doubt that you are in need of one.”

  “Can’t none of us read, mister, excepting Margaret, though Samuel and Sarah be learning. But we all know the scriptures well enough, just from going to preaching.”

  “I’m sure you do, but religion is not my vocation. I am an attorney from Lewisburg.”

  She stiffened a little at that, and I think she would have preferred a Bible salesman, because in the battle between good and evil, those in the legal profession are generally thought to represent the other side. Attorneys bearing pieces of paper often augur incomprehensible bad news.

  Her expression became mulish. “You got no call to put us out of this house, sir. We pay our rent, smack on time, every month we can.”

  “You and your family are not in trouble of any kind, Miz Jones.” (I had learned to say “Miz” to keep from having to decide whether a woman is married or not, and especially to spare her feelings if she ought to be married but isn’t.) “I have come to talk to you about Mr. Edward ‘Trout’ Shue. You may be aware that he is charged with murder. He will be on trial for his life in June.”

  “Well, if that’s all you’re after, I guess I can talk about that.” She opened the door a little wider and nodded for me to come in. “You’re letting all the heat out,” she said, to temper the cordiality of the invitation. “I reckon you better come in. Sit at the table there while I finish peeling the rest of these potatoes.”

  I followed her into a small room with a rough pine floor and beadboard walls. A small woodstove warmed the space tolerably well, though the warm weather made it an easier task. A young woman and an adolescent girl, both resembling Mrs. Jones, were in the little parlor. The younger sister was on her knees, a dozen straight pins held tightly between her lips, hemming a long dress that the older one was wearing. The garment was evidently under construction, as one sleeve was not yet attached and some lace at the neck was stitched only on one side. They stared at me for a moment, when I came in, and I ventured a reassuring smile.

  “These are my girls Margaret and Sarah. Their older sister, Mary Ellen, is getting married the first week in May, so we’re getting the wedding clothes together. Margaret is the maid of honor, and I reckon Sarah will be the bridesmaid.”

  She paused, and I suppose she expected me to express congratulations, but I was too preoccupied with my witness questions to rise to social pleasantries. Finally I murmured, “A happy occasion, I’m sure.”

  That seemed to satisfy her, because after a short pause, she went on, “Mary Ellen is out working this afternoon. The two older boys are on the farm with their daddy. Sarah, put down your sewing, and take this gentleman’s hat and coat.”

  I removed my overcoat and handed it over along with my new felt hat, hoping that they would be returned to me in the same pristine condition in which I surrendered them. The house was tolerably clean, and if it was somewhat untidy, that was not to be wondered at, because it was a small dwelling to contain so large a family.

  Sarah gave me a shy smile as she accepted my coat and hat.

  “Thank you, Miss Jones,” I said, and she giggled as she hurried away with my coat. She was about fourteen, and I knew from the behavior of my own sisters that she was still young enough to be flattered to be called Miss instead of her first name.

  “Mr. Gardner here is a lawyer from Lewisburg, Margaret,” said Mrs. Jones, addressing the older daughter in meaningful tones.

  The young woman’s response was a quick nod, but although she glanced at me with somewhat more interest, she did not speak. She looked to be well past twenty, not that much younger than myself, in fact, but I did not inquire as to why she still resided at home. She seemed a nice enough person, but she was plain and apparently on her way to becoming the spitting image of her mother. I became even more circumspect than ever, if that is possible, because I did not wish to encourage any matchmaking instincts among the Joneses. I was not vain of my own attractiveness, but I knew full well that a bachelor lawyer would be a pearl beyond price to a laborer’s family with several spinster daughters.

  At a nod from her mother, Margaret Jones picked up the sewing box and some scraps of material and carried them into some other part of the house. I followed Mrs. Jones through an open doorway and into the kitchen area, where the rest of the potatoes for their supper sat upon a scarred pine table.

  “Mind the young’un,” said Mrs. Jones, and then I noticed a chubby, wide-eyed child in a homemade calico dress sitting on the floor near the stove, on which a big pot of soup beans bubbled merrily. In front of the child sat a bowl of freshly plucked brown feathers, probably the by-product of the chicken that would constitute the evening meal to come. The child—I could not tell its sex, for all small children back then were dressed more or less alike—had a smear of honey on the palm of each pudgy hand, and it was engaged in transferring a brown tail feather from one hand to the other and back again, so rapt in concentration that it did not even look up when I passed.

  “That’s our sweet baby,” said Martha Jones, nodding toward the child. “No trouble at all.”

  I tried to think of something to say. Mrs. Jones looked fifty if she was a day, and her daughters were all unmarried. I did not like to ask whose child it was, so I simply said, “A pretty youngster. What is its name?”

  She beamed proudly. “Reuben, same as my husband. I done birthed eight young’uns myself, and we are blessed to have most of ’em still alive, and all under our roof—at least until Mary Ellen weds her sweetheart, Lomie, in a few weeks’ time. You’ll meet the menfolk directly. Samuel and Anderson will be back close to nightfall, same as their daddy. You may as well take a chair there and talk while I get on with my work.”

  I sat down as bidden and waited until she settled in again and began to attack the potatoes with a paring knife before I took out my pen and my notebook, preparing to make a record of the interview.

  “So you’re wanting to talk about Mr. Edward Shue,” she said, shaking her head. “A most peculiar man. Are you fixing to convict him at this jury trial?”

  “That would be the task of the county’s prosecuting attorney, Mr. Preston,” I said, hoping I would not have to explain the intricacies of the legal system to a farmwife. “But anyone accused of a crime is entitled to have someone represent him to offer a defense. The jury will listen to both sides, and then decide on his guilt, or lack of it.”

  She looked at me scornfully. “I don’t imagine they’ll have to think too long and hard about that.”

  “I couldn’t say. But perhaps I ought to tell you that I am representing Mr. Shue. That is, we will be defending him in court.”

  “Oh, are you?” Martha Jones scowled at me and hacked at the potato. “You think it’s all right to go around murdering wives, do you?”

  I had been a defense attorney long enough to be ready for that question. When tempers run high about a case, people are always quick to blame lawyers for defending someone unpopular. “Since the man is on trial for his life, everyone wants to gather as many facts as possible so that we can all rest assured that justice is done.”

  “Fair enough.” She scraped at the peel of another potato.

  “But from your question, I take it that you think he is guilty?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t see him do it, mind you. But he was acting mighty peculiar after it happened. Wouldn’t let nobody go near that lady’s body. I offered to help with the laying out and dressing the corpse, same as any neighbor would, but he insisted on doing it all hisself. I never saw the like of it. Acted like he was all tore up with grief over her death. But then we saw him two or three days later, and he was grinning and cracking jokes like he didn’t have a care in the world. Mighty strange if you ask me.”

  “So it sounds,” I murmured, trying to think of a counte
rargument in case this should be brought up in court.

  “And the day it happened, Mr. Shue was dead set on Andy going over to see if Mrs. Shue wanted any help. Stopped by to ask him three different times. Now Andy has been known to be forgetful, but I was here. I would have reminded him and made sure that he went. Mr. Shue was never that particular before. It was my boy that found Mrs. Shue at the foot of the stairs. Well, I expect you know that. It’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

  “Partly.”

  She half rose from her chair, wide-eyed and alarmed, and I saw that her old mistrust of my profession had returned. “You’re not going to try to say my boy did it, are you?”

  “No,” I said quickly, more to allay her fears than from any certainty about the strategy of Dr. Rucker’s defense. It seemed far-fetched, though. “I think you knew Mr. and Mrs. Shue as well as anyone else in the area, didn’t you?”

  “We live close, that’s all. We obliged now and then.”

  “Were either of your older daughters by any chance friends with Mrs. Shue? Would she have confided in one of them?”

  Mrs. Jones laughed. “Mrs. Shue wasn’t a great one for having lady friends, black or white, and if she had been, she wouldn’t have chosen my Mary Ellen or Margaret as a chum. My girls didn’t have much in common with Mrs. Shue. Thank the Lord for that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Mrs. E. Z. Shue was a pretty little lady—didn’t she know it!—and she was civil enough to me, but I met her before the rest of the family did, and right off I had my doubts about her.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, first of all, because the pair of them got hitched in such a tearing hurry. It didn’t seem fitten to me. They hardly knew one another. And then she took sick a couple of weeks after she and Mr. Shue got married. Since he had to work—not that men are any use in a sickroom, anyhow—he asked me to look out for her. I went over one morning in December to see how she was faring, and to give her some soup. I went in and did a little tidying up in the kitchen and gave the floor a lick and a promise, because we all knew how particular Mr. Trout Shue was about housekeeping. I did that, and then I took her up some chicken broth and a slab of bread I’d baked that morning. While she was eating the soup, I sat there with her, just making conversation to cheer her up because I could tell she had been crying. I didn’t say nothing about that. Figured she’d tell me if she wanted to. But I did ask her if she thought her illness might be the sign that she was starting a baby. Oh, no! she says. I know what that feels like. She blushed, and changed the subject real quick after that, and I think she was sorry she had let it slip, but I knew then that she wasn’t the innocent young bride she wanted folk to think she was. She had a past. I don’t say I hold it against her, like some people would, but all the same, I thought there might be trouble coming from it someday. I don’t say I expected what did happen, though. No, sir, I never figured on that.”