Linden Hills

by Gloria Naylor

  Luther quickly snatched it from him and gave him a paper bell. “Here, put this up. This ornament was hand-blown in Germany and hand-dipped in lacquer to achieve this unique color. My great-grandfather bought them, so I doubt that you have anything quite like this.”

  “Hey, look, I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m just saying that there are all kinds of ways to decorate a tree.”

  “Why don’t you help yourself to some more punch?” Luther nodded curtly toward the sideboard. “And would you please bring me a cup while you’re at it.”

  Lester winked at Willie again as he passed him. It was Nedeed’s third drink since they’d been there, and he’d obviously been drinking before they came in. Willie wished that Lester would stop trying to irritate the man. The sooner they got done, the sooner they could leave. There was something a little eerie about the way Nedeed kept going on about that tree. The way his eyes changed when he looked at it. And he kept staring at their hands, almost timing his so the three of them reached for the branches together. Maybe he did miss his family. Willie had to admit that Nedeed was right: this tree was going to be beautiful. But as it began to take form, it only added to his sense of frozen time. The glass icicles and beads, the wooden and paper toys. Yeah, those things meant a lot because they were passed down, but shouldn’t there be at least a few things bought this year, if not this century?

  “No, not there, Mr. Mason.” Luther stopped him from hanging a crocheted stocking. “We have to leave sufficient space for the candles, and I prefer to have the metal trinkets near them.”

  “You mean there’s gonna be candles on this tree?” Lester asked.

  “There have always been candles on our trees. I couldn’t imagine Christmas without them. And just wait until you see what that type of light does to some of these ornaments.” He spun a mirrored diamond on its string.

  Willie frowned. “But isn’t that dangerous, Mr. Nedeed?”

  “Not if you know what you’re doing. And I plan to position them all myself.”

  “You’re gonna string popcorn and that kind of stuff, too?” Lester asked.

  “When I was a child we would some years. Or there would be sugared fruit and nuts.” Luther sighed and sipped his drink. “But not this time. No, for now this will have to be enough.”

  Willie pried the lid off the last wooden box. Tiny houses were layered in cotton.

  “Ah, yes.” Luther brightened. “I had almost forgotten about those.” He picked up a log cabin complete with a stone chimney. “Did you know, gentlemen, that there’s a story behind each of these? My great-great-grandfather lived in just such a …” And he began to tell them as they filled up the rest of the tree.

  Meticulously, Willa Prescott Nedeed folded and packed away the torn books and clothes. She buttoned each blouse, snapped each purse, and arranged the scarves and hats in neat layers. When she had filled one trunk, she closed it securely and began with another. She recovered what pages were left whole from the cookbooks and diaries, smoothed them out, and stacked them away. Tiny shreds of paper left the floor, ripped photographs. She had worked steadily and mechanically for an hour, so it was almost done. She pressed Priscilla McGuire’s album on top of the last box, folded the cardboard lid slowly, and took one final look around. Everything down here was in place. Beds made, dishes washed, the metal shelves dusted, the floor picked clean.

  She went over to her child, bent down, and lifted him up. The stiffened limbs fit snugly into the curve of her body. The chin rested on her shoulder, cushioned by the lace veiling that dangled onto the floor between her knees. For a brief moment she squeezed the small back. She was so sorry for what she had done. He had barely had a chance to live. He was just learning to write his name. His father had said that he didn’t care what she called him, so she had taught him to spell Sinclair. Willa headed for the concrete steps. The kitchen was next.

  Luther was placing the final candles on the tree, their dull creaminess a pleasing contrast to the metallic snowflakes and stars. He used just enough to provide a perfect counterbalance to the array of birds, fruit, flowers, and toy houses. The deep green balsam had become a fragrant haven for his cardboard paradise. He stood back from it and nodded his head. “Now for the crowning touch, gentlemen. We position the top globe, light the candles, and our night is done.” He glanced around the floor at the scattered boxes. “Where did you put my tree top?”

  “We haven’t moved anything,” Lester said. “We’ve only handed you what was here.”

  Luther began to rummage through the cotton and tissue paper. “Well, it must be around. It was packed with all the rest. A round globe with webbed edges—the thing is huge. You must have seen it.”

  They helped him search through the clutter.

  “See, Mr. Nedeed, it’s not here,” Willie said.

  “Well, then where is it?” He glared at them as if they’d hidden it.

  “Look, Mr. Nedeed,” Lester said, “we haven’t left your sight since we’ve been here. Maybe you just forgot it when you brought in this other stuff.”

  “I brought seven boxes down from the storage room. Each year everything is packed away in exactly seven boxes.”

  “Well, there’s only six boxes here.” Willie’s eyes scanned the floor again.

  Luther counted behind him, and then searched under the sofa and wing chair. “Yes, you’re right. How could I have made an error like that?”

  Lester smirked. “Too much punch.”

  “It better be upstairs.” Luther spoke while staring at the top of the tree. “It just better be upstairs.” He headed for the door to the kitchen. “Wait here.”

  Lester whispered, “Ya know, Willie, I think you were right. That guy had murder in his eyes. Did you see the way he looked at us? Who’d wanna steal any of this old-fashioned junk? And if he’s cooked this up just to get out of paying us, I’ve got news for him.”

  “No.” Willie sighed. “It’s just that those things mean the world to him.”

  “Damnation!” They heard Luther rattling around loudly in the kitchen.

  “Just listen to that.” Lester shook his head. “He doesn’t even curse like other people.”

  Luther hurried back into the den. “The bulb’s blown up in the storage room and I can’t find my flashlight. I’m going to need your help. You, sir,” he said, pointing at Willie, “bring two candles.”

  As he followed Luther through the door into the kitchen, Willie shrugged his shoulders at Lester, who pointed to his head. At the end of the room were two adjacent matching doors. The right one was bolted and the left was flung open.

  “Hand me one candle,” Luther said, “and then you follow behind me with the other. Hold it high so there will be enough light.”

  The narrow, twisting stairwell was only wide enough for one adult body. There wasn’t even space to form shadows as Willie tried to maneuver up the steep wooden steps, each one high enough to reach his kneecap. When they reached the top, as short as Luther was, he had to stoop in order to move around in the storage area. Willie’s candle sent quivering shadows across the dusty overcoats, work boots, fishing gear, and boxes. Luther finally found what he was looking for.

  “Yes, here it is. I had forgotten how large this packing case was. This will take a little strategy.”

  He told Willie to blow out his candle and back up a few steps. Then Luther inched the box down the staircase toward him, and each of them lifted one end. “Now, if we coordinate ourselves, we can get this down. Each time I move, you move back one.”

  Tightly clutching his end of the crate, Willie began to descend the steps slowly.

  Willa’s foot touched the bottom of the concrete stairs. She began to climb, feeling each joint in her knees as they lifted her closer to the door. She held on to the child tightly as each step took her farther above the stale air in the basement. There was no doubt about her path. It was coded into her being: twelve steps to the door, then into the kitchen. After cleaning that room, she would start on the den
. Then up the hall toward the staircase to the bedrooms. She would begin with hers, move to Luther’s, and then on to the child’s.

  But first each step was bringing her closer to the kitchen and the disorder whose oblivion was now inextricably tied to her continuing existence. Each step, repeated a million times and millions of feet away on much lusher ground as the wingless queen amidst a horde of army ants trudged on, watching the deadly tarantula, the sleeping crocodile, the rifle-bearing hunter eaten away in front of her eyes. While the only thing stopping Willa was simply a bolted wooden door.

  Willie stumbled on the next to last step and felt his body flying through the door into the kitchen. “Oh God!” Instinctively, he grabbed onto the box and it was snatched from Luther’s hands and went down the steps with him. He tried to turn and cushion the crate with his body, but its sharp edge jammed into his sides as he rolled and hit his head against the sink. When his eyes cleared, Luther was standing over him.

  “You fool.” The evident pain in Luther’s voice softened his words as he knelt over the crate, tearing away at the cover.

  “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry, Mr. Nedeed. I’m really sorry.”

  Willie was totally unheard as Luther, perspiring and his breathing labored, unwrapped the globe.

  “Mr. Nedeed, really, I’m so—” Willie grimaced, holding his side as he got to his knees.

  Luther was visibly trembling. “It’s all right,” he whispered as he slowly turned the globe. “It’s all right.” Then he focused on Willie. “Forgive me.” He stood up. “But you have no idea what you almost did.”

  “Oh, I do.” Willie was trembling as well. “And I’m so sorry. But those steps are so steep and—”

  “Let’s forget it. Bring the box.” Luther’s eyes never left the globe as he headed for the den.

  Quickly, Willie picked up the crate and cotton, his bruised head pounding. He shut the storage door with his foot. Since his arms were full, he braced the crate against the two doors. Reaching under it, he felt the metal bolt slide toward the left as he turned, rushing to follow Luther. A slow chill breeze trailed behind him from the basement door as it crept open.

  Miraculously, the bolt slid back when Willa reached for the knob, saving her from crushing her face into the door. She shifted the child in her arms and pushed it open. The brightness of the kitchen was blinding and she leaned against the sink, squeezing her eyes shut to ease the pain. Red and yellow sparks burst under her lids, and she waited patiently for them to subside. She took deep breaths so her lungs could become accustomed to the air, feeling the warmth seep as far down as her trembling stomach muscles. Slowly the shapes became clear to her watery eyes as she batted them rapidly, bringing in the smeared cherrywood cabinets, the greasy, porcelain double-sink, the chrome faucets, the crumbs and dirty dishes on the counter-tops and kitchen table. By the time the room had focused down to the spotted tiles on the floor, the crumbs on the table had already vanished under a wet sponge. One arm was wrapped securely around the child, while the other methodically attacked all the grease and dirt within its reach. Plates and cutlery slid into the racks of the dishwasher; the damp mop, wedged up into one armpit, snaked over the tiles. Accustomed to working quietly so she wouldn’t disturb any activity in the next room, she moved through the kitchen, leaving every surface wiped clean. Finally, satisfied that there was nothing else to do there, she straightened up and headed for the den.

  “Now you gentlemen can turn around.” Luther’s globe was in place and lit on the tree. A short fat candle sat in its center, the light radiating through the webbed spokes in dazzling bursts of color. Surrounded now by candles, the tin snowflakes and stars rotated on their silver threads in the heated air as the golden edges of the cardboard ornaments melted into their lacy trims. “And you will finally see what I meant.” Luther’s eyes shone under the light.

  But when Willie turned around, he saw what Willa saw. There in the mirror next to the open kitchen door was a woman, her hair tangled and matted, her sunken cheeks streaked with dirt. Her breasts and stomach were hidden behind a small body wrapped in sheer white lace. The wrinkled dress was caked under the arms with dried perspiration, the sagging pantyhose torn at the knees and spotted with urine.

  “Luther”—her voice was cracked and husky as Willie’s hand went toward his tightening throat—“your son is dead.”

  Luther spun around to the kitchen door. As the woman crossed the threshold, dragging the lace between her legs, Willie wanted to scream. It wasn’t terror or shock; he just needed desperately to open his suffocating windpipes and scream so he could breathe again. Reality is based solely on the senses. And he could feel the tissues in his mouth and nasal passages drying up from a lack of air, depriving him of taste and smell while, in that split second, he was also being forced to surrender faith in his eyes. And when Luther turned back to them, face muscles immobile, voice incredibly even, “Gentlemen, thank you for your help. Your checks will be in the mail,” he lost total faith in his ears as well.

  Suspended in a world where reality caved in, Willie now stood out on the front porch, the raw wind biting into his body, with no memory of how he had left that house.

  That same blankness was reflected in Lester’s bewildered face. They neither touched nor spoke as the wind shrieked between them, carrying the silent questions behind their widening eyes. Even if they felt they could now trust their voices, there would have been nothing to say. Where were the guidelines with which to judge what they had left behind that door? They stood there frozen in a space of time without a formula that lost innocence or future wisdom could have given them. There would have been no question of smashing in that door if their world were still governed by the rules of cowboys and Indians, knights and dragons—black and white. But their twenty years immobilized them in a place where they were much more than boys, but a long way from being men. There was no way of telling exactly how long they might have stood still in that cutting wind if they hadn’t heard the crash.

  Luther Nedeed made two mistakes that cost him his life: he thought Willa was leaving the house, and he read the determination in her eyes as madness. She was heading for the piles of boxes and loose paper in the corner by the hall door. But she kept walking when he called her, walking when he touched her, so he blocked her path with his body. That brought them face-to-face. He had never encountered the eyes of a lone army ant, marching in defiance of falling rocks and rushing water along the great Amazon, the wingless queen who cannot fly from danger, blindly dragging her bloated egg sac as long as at least one leg is left uncrushed; so the dilated pupils in front of him registered insanity. Her fist lashed out and caught him across the Adam’s apple, making him bend and choke. As she brushed past him, he sprang up, grabbed her tightly behind the shoulders, pulling her away from the door. He was trying to force her down into the chair. But that leather chair was back toward the kitchen, and the kitchen led to the basement door, and the door opened on twelve concrete steps leading to the morgue. She had cleaned those rooms. Every cell in her body strained against his hands and he found himself being pulled toward the hall.

  Then he reached for the child. The moment his fingers touched the wrapped body, making a fraction of space between it and Willa, her arms loosened for one to shoot around his neck, the other his waist, and the three were welded togther. Luther tried to wrench free, but they breathed as one, moved as one, and one body lurched against the fireplace. The trailing veil brushed an ember, the material curling and shrinking as orange sparks raced up its fine weave. There was no place in her universe to make sense out of the words, “My God, we’re on fire.” No meaning to his struggle except that it was pushing her back into the kitchen. And now no path to the clutter by the door except through the lighted tree. They went hurling against it, the top smashed a side window, and the December wind howled in.

  “Something’s happening in there.” Willie grabbed Lester’s arm. “We’ve gotta do something.”

  “What are we gonna do,
Willie?” Lester snatched his arm away. “Just tell me that, huh?” His whole body was trembling, and the tears in his eyes didn’t come from the wind. “He’s not gonna let us back in there.” Lester turned and kicked the door viciously. “Son of a bitch!”

  “We could call the cops.”

  “And tell them what? Who’d believe us? Christ, I don’t believe it myself.”

  “But she’s in there, Les.” Willie took him by both shoulders. “Don’t you understand? She’s in there.”

  “I know, Willie, I know,” he whispered, not knowing anything except that the look on Willie’s face had turned him into a stranger.

  “Come on, we can tell them that Nedeed killed the kid.” Willie jumped over the banister and down onto the lake.

  “But he didn’t kill him.” Lester swung over after him. “You know that.”

  “I don’t know nothing, but we’ve gotta do something.”

  They ran, skidding and sliding across the frozen water. They had just reached the edge when they heard a dull roar and, glancing back, saw smoke billowing from the side of the house as the den draperies went up in flames.

  “Oh my God, the place is on fire!”

  “That fucking tree. There’s no fire alarm down here. We’ve gotta get up to Tupelo Drive.”

  But Willie had already started back across the lake.

  “No, White!” Lester pulled him back.

  “What do you mean, no?” Willie shoved him in the chest. “She’s in there.”

  As he ran toward the house, the den window shattered and flames shot out, crawling up to the porch roof. An arm grabbed him around the neck and he fell to his knees. He smashed his elbow back into Lester’s stomach, twisted around, and threw him against the ice. “Get your hands off of me!” When he was tackled from the front, he beat at Lester’s jaw and mouth. A blow to the side of Lester’s nose split it open, but the next one slid across his cheek because it was now covered with blood. It took a knee up into his stomach to send Lester flat on his back. Willie was free and he charged toward a porch that was totally consumed in flames. A weight slammed against his spine and he spun crazily across the ice with Lester riding him. Willie’s right arm was wrenched up and his chin forced back into a hammerlock.