She had read only a few pages of Frank’s newest manuscript before she recognized it for what it was: the dreaded autobiographical novel. Actually, she was a little surprised it had taken him this long to get around to writing it. On the first page it was established that the main character—a boy named Dean, which happened to be Frank’s middle name—was an orphan, as was Frank. Celia had never told him that she, too, was an orphan. She had never told him much of anything else about herself, either, mainly because Frank always did most of the talking, and the topic he was most fond of discussing was himself.
He had never once blamed her for his many rejection letters but kept coming back, bringing yet another stack of pages for her to read, critique, and edit, sure that this one would be a bestseller. He paid her well, but with this most recent manuscript she was beginning to think no amount of money was worth having to slog through stuff like this. She thought of the manuscript now, on her desk at home, waiting for her attention. It was in one of those thick brown expandable folders, titled importantly “From Ashes to Fame.”
Celia pulled the collar of her wool coat up tighter around her neck. Most of the people at the graveside service were standing, since Walsh’s Funeral Services had set up only a dozen or so folding chairs, in which Grandmother’s sisters and some of the other older relatives were sitting. The tent was too small for everyone to stand under, so a lot of people were huddled under umbrellas around the perimeter.
Celia leaned closer to Al. She couldn’t remember being this cold in a long time. She wouldn’t be surprised to hear later that they had set some kind of temperature record here in Georgia today.
After the last chorus of “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder” came a benediction offered by Grandmother’s pastor, who seemed to be trying to depict the concept of eternality by the length of his prayer. During the prayer Celia’s mind whirled with snatches of the things she had seen and heard today. Like Frank Bledsoe’s novels, it all lacked the quality of believability, yet, as Frank was so fond of saying, it had all “really happened.”
Sometime before this closing prayer, Uncle Buford had limped forward to recite the passage of Scripture about man’s days being as the grass of the field, and at some other point the song leader had sung another solo, a hymn called “No Night There,” which Celia remembered as another of Grandmother’s favorites. Naturally, it was talking about heaven, calling it the “land of fadeless day” and the “city foursquare” and tritely listing the “gates of pearl” and the “crystal river” among its many mythical charms.
Somewhere in there Uncle Buford had also read the verse “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” For an old man hard of hearing and half blind standing outside in the freezing cold, his voice sounded wondrously strong. He stood unsupported at the head of the grave, throwing himself into his role of Scripture reader with great fervor, giving no evidence of wishing he were at home on such a dismal day taking an afternoon nap after all his second helpings at Aunt Beulah’s house earlier.
But at long last it was over. The preacher finally wound up his prayer, and after the amen, the pallbearers came forward once more and lowered the casket into the ground. At this, Celia suddenly turned and left. It was as if a tight wire inside her had snapped. Didn’t these people have any sense of when enough was enough? She supposed they were going to stand around now and watch the clods of dirt fall against the casket, or maybe even help out by taking turns with the shovel. They wouldn’t know that this part was also out-of-date.
She had been standing behind all her aunts and uncles, off to the side a little for a quick getaway. Al caught up to her now and took her arm. He held his umbrella over her, and they walked toward his car in silence for a few moments. Then Al chuckled. “So, when the roll is called up yonder, I wonder where we’ll be, huh?” Celia didn’t answer. The trouble with all these old church songs was the way they clung like barnacles to your memory. Without wanting to, in fact trying hard not to, she heard the words of this one now: “When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound, and time shall be no more, and the morning breaks, eternal, bright and fair . . .”
She heard Aunt Beulah’s voice floating above the others in the chorus, confidently asserting that when the roll was called up yonder, indeed she would be there. “I’ll b’there” is how Aunt Beulah sang it. At the thought of her aunt, she stopped and turned around. They were all starting to move away slowly now, out from under the gray tent, back toward their cars. She didn’t care about the rest of them, but she hated to leave without saying good-bye to Aunt Beulah.
“You ready to get in?” Al said, pressing her arm. “Here’s the car right here. You don’t need to hang around for any reason, do you? I mean, hey, there’s not going to be a big reading of the will or anything, is there?” Celia could tell he was eager to get back on the road. He was probably already thinking about where they’d stop for supper. He had to be cold, too, not having brought an overcoat along as she had. At least he had on a turtleneck under his sport coat.
“No,” Celia said, not sure of which question she was answering. It was funny that she hadn’t even thought about the possibility of a will. She wondered if Grandmother had even had one. There sure wasn’t anything of value in that little house of hers. It wasn’t exactly full of antiques. There wasn’t a single thing of Grandmother’s Celia could ever remember wishing she could have—no table or chair or piece of jewelry or set of books. Not even a knickknack. Eighteen years ago she had been only too glad to wipe the dust of that cramped little house off her feet and get out of the crummy little town of Dunmore.
She didn’t even want the bed she’d brought with her when she moved in with her grandmother. It hadn’t been worth much, really—just a cheap one her parents had bought through the want ads. There was a bad gouge along the top of the headboard now where she had thrown her hand mirror one day after Grandmother had once again come into her room and turned the radio dial to the Christian station in Roswell.
The only thing from her childhood that she still had was her mother’s cedar chest, which she had taken to college and kept ever since. She had it in the living room of her apartment now and used it for storing blankets and sweaters. She thought of the furniture in Grandmother’s house, all of it unmatched secondhand stuff. She’d hate to fall heir to any of it. And she’d also hate to be the one stuck with the house itself, to have to put it up for sale. Maybe a deaf person would consider buying it. Or maybe somebody who worked for the railroad. Maybe they could get the train to slow down as it passed the house so they could hop on and off and thereby have a free ride to and from work every day.
She knew Al was wishing she would go ahead and get into the car so they could be first leaving the cemetery. With all these cars, there was sure to be a bit of a bottleneck getting out. Walsh’s Funeral Services had furnished only two black limousines, which hadn’t begun to accommodate the family. So most of them had driven out in their own cars and parked along the little single-lane road that wound through the cemetery.
But she really wanted to tell Aunt Beulah good-bye before she left. It surprised her that she wanted it so badly. Then, amazingly, in a development as luckily timed as those in all of Frank Bledsoe’s bad stories, Celia saw her aunt Beulah break from the graveside crowd and head straight toward her, hanging on to Uncle Taylor’s arm, pulling him along and waving a hand. “Celia, honey! Wait! I need to see you before you leave!”
Celia left the shelter of Al’s umbrella and walked back to meet her aunt. She heard Al heave a sigh behind her.
“I have something for you,” Aunt Beulah said. “Sadie told me to give it to you after the funeral was over. She was real particular about that part. She said it had to be after it was all over.” Aunt Beulah’s eyes were red, and she patted at them with her handkerchief, then smiled. “Your grandmother always did have things planned out a certain way, you know, and you couldn’t do step two before step one, or she’d get real upset.”
<
br /> Celia nodded and fell into step beside Aunt Beulah. Nobody had to tell her about Grandmother’s insistence on doing things a certain way. Uncle Taylor tried to extend the umbrella to include her, but the mist seemed to be swirling up from the ground. Celia could feel that her bangs had gone limp, could see them drooping into her eyes. She looked down at her feet and scolded herself again for wearing her new shoes that had cost far too much. The suede trim was going to be ruined, of course. She should have thought about the possibility of tromping through a muddy cemetery.
Al had already gotten into the car and started the engine. No doubt he had the heater turned on full blast. She could see him rubbing his hands in front of the vent, trying to thaw out. As they approached his car, Aunt Beulah stopped and opened her large pocketbook, which was made of a woven strawlike fabric more suitable for July than January. From it she took a book-size package, neatly wrapped in a brown Piggly Wiggly grocery sack and tied with string. She handed it to Celia.
On the top Celia recognized Grandmother’s bold script: “To My Granddaughter Celia. Read This.” Celia knew exactly what it was. She had seen the tattered book in Grandmother’s lap hundreds of times. How like Grandmother to wrap it and tie it all up as if it were something precious and breakable.
Aunt Beulah stepped forward and hugged Celia. “I’m so glad you could come, Celie. I know how happy Sadie would be. I wish you’d come back and see us sometime. With Martha Sue and Jerry both in Mexico, I get so lonesome I could just sit down and cry.” Celia had almost forgotten about Aunt Beulah’s two children, both of whom must be in their fifties by now. Both of them had served for years as missionaries in different parts of Mexico. Martha Sue and her husband, David, had gone first, right out of Bible college, and then several years later when Martha Sue’s brother, Jerry, went to visit them, he met a Mexican girl who attended their small church near Torreón and ended up marrying her, then staying in Mexico and starting another church farther north, near Delicias.
As Aunt Beulah hugged her, it struck Celia that her aunt, whom she had always thought of as a tall woman, wasn’t much bigger than she was herself. No bigger than a minute, she thought. That’s what her aunt Bess had always said about small thin people, in fact about Celia herself. “That girl’s no bigger than a minute. We need to fatten her up, put some meat on her bones!” As a teenager, Celia had gotten tired of hearing it but had gradually learned to ignore it, finally figuring out that Aunt Bess, being portly herself, wanted everybody else to be fat, also.
Before releasing her, Aunt Beulah pressed her cheek against Celia’s. Celia felt its cool slackness and couldn’t help thinking how the funerals among Grandmother’s siblings would start piling up now. Grandmother’s was the first, but the others would come fast.
“Thanks, Aunt Beulah,” she said. “It was good to see you.” She opened the car door, and Al raced the engine ever so slightly. “Well, we’ve got to get back on the road now. Tomorrow’s a work day and all.”
Aunt Beulah nodded sadly. “Everything’s so busy nowadays.”
Celia got into the car and set the package in her lap. “I’m glad I got to see you before we left. I wanted to.” She closed the door and waved at her aunt and uncle.
Aunt Beulah said something through the glass, and Celia rolled down the window a crack. “So he’ll probably be sending you something in the mail,” Aunt Beulah said.
“Who’s that?” Celia said.
“Buford. He’s the one who’s settling up all your grandmother’s affairs.”
“Oh, okay.” Celia waved again, closed the window, and they pulled away. She wondered for a moment what it was Uncle Buford would be sending her. She sincerely hoped Grandmother hadn’t left unpaid bills behind. She wondered about the funeral expenses. Surely they wouldn’t ask her to help with those.
“Hey, maybe your grandma had money stuffed in her mattress,” Al said. He was driving down the winding little road a lot faster than he needed to be, considering the rain and the fact that it was in a cemetery. “Maybe she left it all to you.”
“Grandmother didn’t have money,” Celia said shortly. She could hear the edge in her voice. “Granddaddy left her in debt when he died. She had to close their store and sell everything just to break clear. She lived off her social security check.”
“Store? What kind of store did they have?”
Celia gave a short dry laugh. “Not much of one. It was one of those little neighborhood grocery stores. About the size of a storage shed.”
Which was exactly what it had turned into when they closed it up. Celia could barely remember the store as it had been before that. She had been only four or five at the time her grandfather died. She did recall the cold bottles of pop in the big cooler with the sliding top, the little packages of peanuts clipped to a red wire rack, and the freezer where the Popsicles and ice cream sandwiches were kept. She also remembered the old coal heater and the tin can that sat beside it on the floor, into which her grandfather, with deadeye aim, had spit tobacco juice while he whittled little objects out of sticks.
“What’s that you got there?” Al asked, nodding toward the package in her lap. “A book?”
Celia tossed it into the backseat. “Yep, that’s my inheritance.” She sighed and looked at her watch. Four o’clock already, which meant they wouldn’t get home until almost eight, probably closer to nine if Al stopped to eat, which no doubt he would. She knew this would be a good time to thank him for taking the day off work to drive her here, but she couldn’t force the words out of her mouth. More than anything she wished she were already home right now, that she didn’t have to endure several hours of riding in a car. She hoped Al didn’t plan to keep talking.
To give him a hint, she closed her eyes and adjusted the back of her seat until she was reclining. Al turned on the radio and finally found a station playing jazz. This was another thing that irritated Celia about Al. He thought he was a terrific jazz saxophonist, which he wasn’t. He was a decent enough saxophonist, but he didn’t have the keenness and security and creativity of a jazz player. As with any art, you had to know the rules before you could break them, and Al didn’t know the rules. Besides that, anybody could play the saxophone. Everybody knew it was the easiest wind instrument to play.
She listened to him hum along with a trumpet rendition of “Tuxedo Junction,” followed by a jazz arrangement of Bach’s “Musette,” of all the unlikely things. It was actually quite cleverly conceived, however, with some trading off between passages of vocalization and clarinet improvisation. She wondered if she could have ever gotten that good on her clarinet if she’d kept at it. Maybe she should get it back out and start practicing again. Maybe the community orchestra in Greenville or Anderson needed a clarinet. At least she could start getting in shape for the summer band that gave park concerts in Spartanburg.
* * *
Right before she fell asleep, she was in the process of remembering the concerto she had played as a high school junior, the one she had memorized for the state competition, the winner of which was invited to perform with the Georgia All-State Orchestra in the spring. It was a difficult piece, but she had played it flawlessly that day in Atlanta when her music teacher had driven her down for the final runoffs. Carl von Weber’s Concerto no. 1 in F Minor for Clarinet and Orchestra—it was the pinnacle of her clarinet studies.
She had placed first and had played with the All-State Orchestra that year. She was something of a local celebrity for a while, since students from Dunmore didn’t usually win statewide competitions. Her clarinet teacher had cried as she sat on the front row of the auditorium listening to her performance at the final concert in Atlanta. Later, during her senior year, her clarinet teacher had cried again when Celia stopped practicing and dropped out of band. Oh, the disappointed, droopy-faced looks she had suffered from adults that year! She hadn’t quit the tennis team, though. For some reason she had hung on to that, maybe because she liked the feeling of pounding something as hard as she could.
As she was slipping toward sleep with the sounds of a jazz ensemble ripping through “American Patrol” on the radio, Celia remembered the ride back to Dunmore with her grandmother that Sunday almost twenty years ago now. “You played pretty,” Grandmother said at last, her eyes on the road and her hands firmly clutching the steering wheel. She had greeted Celia after the concert with her customary businesslike nod, had helped her get her things into the car, said a word to her clarinet teacher, then consulted a road map before starting the car. She hadn’t spoken of the concert until they were out on the interstate.
“You sure did,” Grandmother said again. She even reached over and gave Celia’s hand a single pat, something she rarely did. Then after a brief silence, “But I like the songs you play at church a lot better than that one.” It wasn’t that her grandmother disliked classical music. She just liked hymns better.
The last thing Celia saw before she fell asleep was the look on Grandmother’s face as she would watch her play her clarinet at church, sometimes during the offering and sometimes right before the preacher’s sermon. It wasn’t a look of pride or great rapturous joy, but was closer to something like assurance or confirmation, as if she were thinking, “There, that’s a good song. I sure hope people are thinking about the words to it.”
No Dark Valley Page 6