Prayers the Devil Answers

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Sure enough, in the afternoon, people came to call, just as Preacher said they would. I sat there in the parlor—trapped—looking past the knot of visitors, feeling as if I was waiting for something. Or someone. Sometimes I would forget that Albert had died, and I would catch myself looking at the door, waiting for him to come into the parlor and deal with all these people who were trying to talk to me. I still hadn’t slept much in a long time, and, groggy as I was, I could almost convince myself that the past few days had been a nightmare, but then the cold memories would come flooding back, and every time I remembered what happened, snow melt churned in the pit of my stomach, just as it had when I realized that my husband was dying.

  I was still thinking about the funeral when more visitors arrived. I forced myself to stop woolgathering and make an effort. These people meant to be kind, doing for me what they would want done for themselves in this situation.

  I turned to the nearest visitor, a silver-haired woman in a lavender-flowered frock who had sat down next to me on the sofa and patted my hand. I forced a smile. I had seen her often enough in church at a distance, but the visitor’s name escaped me. After a few more silent moments, I asked her a question, chosen at random out of the jumble of my thoughts. “How did you come to know about our trouble, ma’am?”

  The gray lady smiled and patted my hand again. “Well, Miz Robbins, the pastor announced the sad news at services this morning after your boy went over to let him know. He knew you would need caring friends to help you through this time of grief. Oh, and Reverend McKee asked me to remind you that he will be coming over himself just as soon as he can. It’s Sunday, you know, and I imagine church business will keep him occupied until midafternoon.”

  I had clean forgot that it was Sunday. After I had sat hour after hour in the lamplight by Albert’s bedside, I suppose time, for me, had melted into one long twilight that just seemed to go on and on. It put me in mind of the world described in Genesis: no day or night until the Lord created the sun, moon, and the stars. It had been like that for me: a long twilight.

  Sunday.

  That explained the stream of dressed-up ladies gathered in the parlor. Of course Rev. McKee would have announced the news of Albert’s passing to the congregation. He would have included it in the little talk about church business he delivered at the pulpit just before the sermon. Of course he told them, and I suppose it was their business, after all. Albert had been the sheriff.

  Besides that, any pastor would consider it a kindness to let people know of the death of a church member, because most people in the congregation would welcome such an announcement. Town folk make a family out of their neighbors and church friends as well as blood kin. They would think that I felt the same as they did about the need for help and company in troubled times. I wish I did.

  I couldn’t tell anybody how much I dreaded the arrival of those well-meaning strangers; being sociable to them would take more effort than I could muster at the moment. I never knew what to say.

  Here in town people seem to call one another “friends” on the barest acquaintance, as if anybody you said two words to was your friend right then and there. Up the mountain we measured things differently, and friend was a word we used sparingly. A friend was somebody you could ask a favor from without shame; somebody whose door you could approach without needing to hello the house; and somebody who wouldn’t sell out your secrets for a few minutes of the limelight at some social gathering. When I could be sure that I could trust you for all that, I might call you a friend, but I was by no means sure of these people. I considered myself barely acquainted with our fellow church members. On Sundays I would smile and murmur a hasty greeting in the church, but that falls far short of confiding in any of them, after knowing them for so little time.

  Albert knew lots of townspeople, though.

  He had worked with dozens of men at the railroad yard and I reckon he encountered a hundred others while he served as a lawman. Barring the folks he arrested, I thought the people who knew him would mourn him sincerely. People liked Albert. I suppose the women in the congregation mostly knew him only by sight, unless one of their chickens had been stolen or some other trifling crime had sent them down to the sheriff’s office for help. The men may have been better acquainted with him, but you can bet that when word of Albert’s passing spread through the congregation, it was the church women who hurried home to search their own pantries for something to bring to us besides condolences. It didn’t matter that they hardly knew us. I didn’t think it was personal, really; it was just customary. It had more to do with how they felt about themselves than how they felt about us.

  I would try to be grateful for their kindness, for it was well meant, but all the same, I hoped they wouldn’t stay long. I would have liked more time alone for my own mourning. As it was, I felt trapped among strangers in my own parlor. I wondered if they would expect me to remember their names. More strangers to contend with at a time when I was least able to manage composure. I smiled and murmured thanks, and wished I could go back to the bedroom and shut the door.

  Albert found it easier to be around strangers than I did, so mostly I had let him do the talking for both of us. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have tried harder to get acquainted with these people who were now our neighbors. Now I was thrown into their society with no one to help me out. It had been easy, though, to let Albert be all smiles, so that I could stay quiet around most folk. No one seemed to mind a small woman who smiled but seldom spoke. But now I would have to learn another way to deal with acquaintances.

  Just as my thoughts turned again to what must be done about the funeral, I realized that the silver-haired woman beside me, still toying with the white gloves in her lap, had kept on talking. I honestly couldn’t remember if I had replied to anything she had said or not.

  Then I began to fret about whether to offer the guests a cup of coffee and something baked—a cake or sugar cookies—but grief was taking all of my attention, leaving no time to worry about the conventional courtesies of town folk. Besides, I had neither the time nor the provisions to prepare anything. But apparently they had anticipated that, because before I knew it one of them was in the kitchen seeing to the refreshments. I could hear her talking, trying to keep her voice low, while she dispensed coffee and slices of cake to the visitors. They had brought the food with them, of course. I should have expected that.

  The woman on the sofa was still talking. I dragged my attention away from the kitchen chatter and willed myself to listen.

  “If there’s anything that the county government can do for you, dear, you’ve only got to ask. As I told you, my Vernon is a county commissioner, and, if you want me to, I will certainly ask him to see what can be done for you.”

  I smiled and mumbled a thank you, but I did wonder if the commissioner’s wife realized what a futile remark she had made. You’ve only got to ask. Me? Born and bred in a mountain settlement far from town? Not a one of the folks from up there would ask for anything—not food if they were hungry, not a rope if they were drowning. I was raised that way, and I didn’t think I could ever change.

  That must have occurred to her—maybe my expression told her—because then she smiled. “Well, you wouldn’t ask for anything, would you dear? Pride is a fine thing, but it doesn’t fill your stomach, you know. I suppose that if there is a way to help you, dear, then I will have to think of it myself. I worry about those boys of yours, poor lambs. I will see what can be done.”

  “It’s kind of you to offer,” I mumbled. And it was.

  “Well, I hate to see a woman with children left on her own, with no means of support and no family to help. As Mr. Kipling says, we are sisters under the skin.”

  She was kind, but she was also a commissioner’s wife, so maybe she felt that her social position obliged her to look after people in need. And maybe the fact that I had two little boys to raise alone now obliged me to swal
low my pride and accept the help she offered. She was right: pride doesn’t fill your stomach.

  “Albert Robbins was a good sheriff, even though he didn’t hold the job for long. The commissioners were impressed by him. When we heard of his passing, I told my husband, ‘A fine, upstanding man who faithfully served our community deserves to have his family taken care of. Two little boys, now without a father. It’s a pitiful shame.’ ” She sighed and shook her head. “I declare, sometimes I wonder if the Lord knows what He is doing.”

  chapter six

  By the time Sheriff’s Deputy Falcon Wallace heard the sad news and went calling to pay his respects to the widow, the little parlor was crowded with ladies, some of them still in their church outfits, murmuring softly among themselves, as if loud talking would wake the dead. The widow sat with leaden stillness, silent, staring at nothing.

  Falcon stood for a moment in the hall doorway, taking in the scene, and suddenly hoping that no one would make him go in. His old Sunday school teacher was in there, and probably a spinster schoolmarm as well. He wasn’t afraid of steel-eyed old ladies; it’s just that they always made him feel ten years old again, with lessons forgotten and a frog in his pocket.

  He felt guilty that he had not come by sometime during the past week. In hindsight, it seemed thoughtless and unkind to have stayed away, but although he and Roy knew that their boss was ailing, it never crossed their minds that he was deathly ill. He would have to apologize for that. If Mrs. Robbins had needed anything while her husband was sick, she should have sent for them, but he knew she wouldn’t. The sheriff might have summoned him or Roy, if he’d been able to, because he knew them well, but they were barely acquainted with his missus. She might be shy about asking for favors, or, more likely, she had not been expecting her husband to die, any more than they had. Falcon hoped that the widow would not be angry with them or feel slighted by their absence. The sheriff was dead. He still couldn’t take it in. If he felt bewildered and stricken, what must poor Mrs. Robbins be feeling? He wouldn’t ask her if she needed help, because she would say no. He would have to figure out on his own what the sheriff’s family needed, and then he would do whatever it was without being asked.

  He peeked into the parlor. It looked like a henhouse in there. It was nearly three o’clock. Most of the married ladies present must have gone home from church to serve dinner to their families before setting out again on the condolence call. (Duty must be done, but charity begins at home.)

  A stout silver-haired woman whom Falcon recognized as the wife of County Commissioner Johnson, still decked out in her flowered church frock and Sunday hat, was sitting beside the sheriff’s widow, dwarfing her as she huddled on the horsehair sofa, pale and silent. Occasionally when someone came near and addressed the widow directly she would nod and try to smile, but Falcon didn’t think she was listening.

  Four younger women, more scrawny than slender, were sitting in straight-backed wooden chairs that Eddie must have dragged in from the kitchen. Two of these matrons had fretful babies on their laps. The babies’ scrunched-up red faces suggested that they were likely to erupt into howls at any moment. Falcon shuddered. Crying babies.

  A few others, whose store-bought Sunday finery proclaimed them to be the wives of important men (Falcon recognized the missus of a railroad foreman and the widow of a banker), had congregated in one corner of the room, talking among themselves in low voices, as if their very presence conferred condolence, without there being any need for them to give any attention to the bereaved herself. After all, they hardly knew the poor woman. Their presence was a tribute owed to her husband’s standing as a county official. Perhaps once he had been buried his wife would be nobody again.

  Falcon knew most of the women present, at least by sight, but none of them well enough to make him feel less uneasy. He hadn’t arrested any of their kinfolk that he knew of.

  A few of them had glanced up when he came through the front door, and then, dismissing him as irrelevant, they went back to talking among themselves. Beyond a grave nod of recognition none of them took any further notice of him, as if grief were women’s work, too delicate for the likes of men. Falcon agreed. He wished he could hurry away and leave them to it, because, while he was left unmoved by the tears and anger of someone he was arresting, that same outburst from a distraught and blameless woman always made him sweat and wish he were elsewhere. He generally tried not to look at weeping wives and mothers when he handcuffed the family’s lawbreaker and took him off to jail. It was their man’s fault that they were made to suffer, not Falcon’s, but their accusing stares made him feel guilty anyhow.

  It was worse to have to knock on someone’s door and tell the unsuspecting householder that a loved one had been killed—usually a wreck, but sometimes a knife fight or gunplay down at the roadside tavern just outside town. He knew why the kings in ancient times wanted to kill the messenger, and if that would make his tidings somehow untrue, many people probably would. As it was, he delivered the bad news with as much haste as he decently could, and offered to fetch their minister or a neighbor to help them through the crisis.

  In both cases, though, arrests and condolence calls, his presence was a duty, and despite personal discomfort he meant to see it through. Right and wrong mattered to him; that’s why he took to the law, he supposed. He wondered, though, where his fellow deputy was—not in church, Falcon was sure of that. Probably still asleep from a Saturday-night bender. Roy Phillips was a good-enough deputy, but nobody would ever mistake him for a saint.

  Maybe Roy didn’t even know yet that the sheriff was dead. Falcon had been alone at the office when Eddie appeared that morning with the news, solemn but dry-eyed. He had hurried away again before Falcon could find out anything else. Maybe there wasn’t anything else yet. It was probably too soon for funeral plans and such to have been made.

  Falcon cursed himself for not hunting up Roy and the other deputies before coming to pay his respects to the sheriff’s widow. He should have thought of that, mostly because the deputies had a duty to be here, but also because he could have used an ally. Being the only man in this overheated henhouse made him feel not only as if he had two left feet, but two heads as well. At twenty-four he was still unmarried, and, given his shyness around females in general, that wasn’t likely to change anytime soon. Whatever this group chose to talk about would be Greek to him, and he dreaded having to think up things to say. But the ladies ignored him, having no more to say to him than he to them.

  He knew he ought to make his way through the chirruping crowd and offer his sympathies to Ellendor Robbins, but he thought he would wait awhile, in hopes that some of the guests might leave. Right now the new widow had enough to contend with, and he told himself that joining the crowd around her would not be doing the poor woman a kindness. He wondered what would be.

  Falcon was acquainted with the sheriff’s wife, of course, from when she stopped by the office on some errand or other, and even though her husband had been in charge for only a few months, he was tolerably sure that she knew which deputy he was (Deputy Wallace, not Deputy Phillips, Aldridge, or Madden), but since she had as little to say as he did, there had been no conversation between them past a murmured hello. She seemed shy around people, as if she wasn’t one herself, but some trapped animal put on display and hating it. Falcon was sorry for her, but he had even less to say to her now: her grief shut out the voices, and he could think of no words beyond, “I’m sorry,” which didn’t seem like enough. Maybe if he waited awhile longer, something else would come to him.

  Where the devil were Roy, Tyree, and Galen?

  Finally one of the babies began to howl, and as its mother hurried out so as not to disrupt the gathering, she noticed Falcon hovering in the hall. With an exasperated sigh, she shooed him into the kitchen, pointing him toward the well-scrubbed pine table holding the food they had brought as tangible sympathy. Falcon gathered that the ladies thought men we
re to be fed rather than conversed with. He hadn’t brought anything, but, being male, no one expected him to. He stared at the array of pies, cakes, potato salad, and deviled eggs, wondering how they managed to have food prepared on such short notice. Heretofore, all of Falcon’s experience with wakes had been occasioned by the death of a relative, and the formalities of bereavement had not concerned him. But this was a social occasion, however solemn. Should he ask permission to eat something?

  He was greeted by Mrs. Thompson, the grocer’s wife, the woman who had taken charge of the kitchen for the afternoon. She took a long look at him, and then, without asking Falcon what he wanted, she handed him a slice of pound cake on a paper napkin, much as she would have given a dog a treat to make it behave.

  When his mouth was full so that he could not reply, she whispered, “It’s a terrible thing about the sheriff, isn’t it? We were all sorry to hear about it, especially with . . .” she nodded toward the sheriff’s youngest son, and trailed off into silence.

  Falcon swallowed the last bit of cake. “Yes, ma’am, it is a pitiful shame. He wasn’t with us for long, but he was a good man, fair and honest. He worked as hard as any of us. Not all sheriffs are like that.”

  “I expect you’ll miss him all the more then. What happens now? Will they appoint one of you deputies to take his place?”

  She probably had no idea who “they” might be, and he wasn’t sure he knew either. “It isn’t up to me, ma’am. I reckon somebody who outranks the likes of me will tell us that pretty soon now.” Falcon had wondered about it, too, though, more than he was willing to let on. It seemed impolite to be concerned about official business and moving on when the poor man wasn’t even dead a day yet, but he couldn’t help but worry. Sometimes new sheriffs, like new brooms, swept away everything that had been there before. Mr. Robbins, when he took office, had kept the deputies on, saying that he’d appreciate their opinions on things, but his successor was almost sure to be a political choice, and he might have different ideas about how to run the department, and friends to parcel out jobs to. Falcon couldn’t be sure of his post past another week or two.