The Unquiet Grave

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “Well, if you say so . . .”

  “I’m a relic of the previous century, young man—well past it, in the eyes of your generation. Now if I were an ambitious, up-and-coming Northern fellow—like you—maybe some of them might resent me, but I’m not in anybody’s way. Except my own.” His smile was warmer now. “But I do thank you, Doctor, for the compliment of thinking me sane.”

  Boozer held up one finger, qualifying his answer. “It’s only a superficial impression, though.”

  “Is it good enough to get me moved to a first-floor room?”

  “Not quite yet. Besides, there’s no vacancy there at present. Now let’s return to my original question: Why are you here?”

  Gardner sighed, and stared down at the threadbare carpet. “Because I tried to kill myself. Technically, that is a crime, but they sent me here instead of to jail. We live in enlightened times.”

  “Well, your file said as much, but I wanted to see what your side of it was.” Boozer scribbled a line on his notepad. “You attempted suicide.”

  “And you want to know why.”

  The doctor shrugged. “The conventional thinking in psychiatry is that you don’t know why.”

  “Of course I know!”

  “Well, you are no doubt aware of the precipitate cause.” A wry smile. “Not a phrase I use with most of my patients.”

  “I can well imagine.”

  “What I mean is: you probably know the immediate reason for your act, but not the underlying causes, which may stretch back many years. So that’s where we must start: many years before the act itself. Do you follow me?”

  “Of course I do, young man. You want the story of my life. But before we get to your underlying causes, I’d like to put a question to you. Where are you from, Doctor?”

  “We don’t usually share personal information with patients. Why do you ask?”

  “Because it is relevant. You are a young man, and you speak like a Northerner. I’ve no objection to telling you about my past, but if you have led a sheltered life, it may take a bit of believing on your part.”

  Boozer steepled his fingers and thought for a moment. “Fair enough. My parents came from South Carolina, and I was born there, but they moved north shortly after I arrived, so this is as far south as I can remember living. I grew up in a little village called Mount Kisco, a few miles north of New York City. My parents used to talk about South Carolina, though, and they are about your age, so perhaps that will satisfy you.”

  “And do you consider yourself down South now—in this place?”

  “Well, it sure is south of Mount Kisco.” Boozer smiled, but then he considered the question. “I suppose technically you could call this the South, but it is sadly lacking in magnolias and mint juleps. I can’t imagine plantations existing here, and surely the climate is wrong for cotton?”

  “No, cotton is out of the question, but they did have slaves once, same as their southern neighbors. West Virginia became a state in order not to leave the Union, though. That makes some difference.”

  “Yes, maybe it does. I haven’t given it much thought. Although I doubt that any qualms about slavery figured into their decision.”

  “No.” Gardner smiled. “I always took it as a sign of their dislike of highfalutin Virginians. In fact, the most rampant pro-Union supporter I ever knew had owned slaves well into the war years. We’ll get to him directly, I expect. Now, young man—college? Where did you study to be a doctor?”

  “I went to Lincoln University—still the North—just a ways outside Philadelphia, and I graduated from medical school at Howard University in 1927, where I was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha.” Seeing the blank look on the old man’s face, he hurried on, “But, look, from here on out, Mr. Gardner, you have to let me ask all the questions. Therapy is not a conversation.”

  “I thought you said you wanted to talk.”

  “Actually, I want to listen.”

  “Will you write down what I say then?”

  “I’ll make notes, yes, so that I can study them later.”

  Gardner laughed. “So I am to testify, and you will be the court reporter. I know that form well enough.”

  “Except that I can’t write that fast. I’ll rely on my memory, and transcribe the notes before I forget what the scribbles mean.”

  “But is there no one like a defense attorney to protect my rights in case I say things not to your liking?”

  “Protecting your rights?” Boozer shrugged. “I hope you will trust me, but aside from that, in my profession, it’s called doctor-patient privilege. Even if you confessed to a murder, I could not report it to the police, nor could I be made to testify against you.”

  “I know all that. And I have no confessions of murder with which to enthrall you. The worst I can say on that score is that occasionally I have failed to save someone—as his legal representative, you understand. But I am satisfied that the poor fellows I unsuccessfully defended were guilty anyhow, so perhaps it wasn’t any great failing on my part to fall short of an acquittal. But I am worried not about criminal matters but about personal ones. What if I confide things to you that convince you that I am indeed insane? Suppose you entrap me with my own confessions so that you can keep me here forever?”

  “Well, as we discussed earlier, we’re a little short on bed space. Besides, I’d be a pretty poor sort of physician if I did that to you, wouldn’t I?”

  “Oh, you’d be able to justify it very nicely, I’m sure. For his own good. To protect him and the community from harm. Pro bono publico. Suppose I said I saw the thing with red eyes and mothlike wings flapping about in the night? Why, you’d throw the key away.”

  “A lot of people here claim to have seen that creature. If reality is a consensus of opinion, then maybe you’d be crazy not to believe in it.”

  James Gardner laughed. “Why, you might have made a lawyer, boy. That is as downy a snare as ever I’ve seen. I will watch my words as carefully as if I were on the witness stand. But it can’t do any harm to talk about my past, I suppose—up to a point. How old do you think I am, Doctor?”

  “I’m no judge of faces. I think we have you down as being in your early fifties. That seems about right.”

  “I am fortunate in my looks. I take after my father in that, I think. Anyhow, I was born in 1867. My father was a doctor, among other things.”

  Boozer blinked at this unexpected piece of information. “Was he white? Or from the North?”

  “Neither of those things. Born a slave in ol’ Virginny. I don’t suppose you’d consider him a genuine physician, young man, not with your fancy degrees, but he was all the doctor that a lot of our folks had to rely on back in Greenbrier County. I guess you’d call him a root doctor. Tonics, salves, poultices.”

  “Delivering babies?”

  “Mostly not. Midwives handled that. A lot of women don’t think a man knows much about childbirth. Still, he did a power of good. He was a smart man.”

  “I believe you.” Boozer smiled. “After all, his son became an attorney.”

  “I was the youngest of five, and none of the rest were conspicuously successful, but my father encouraged me to get an education. I worked my way through Storer College up in Harper’s Ferry. It’s a teachers college, but it served me well. After that, I read law and passed the bar.”

  “Your father must have been proud of you.”

  “I think he took it for granted that I’d make something of myself. He expected nothing less, so he wasn’t effusive with praise over my accomplishments. Besides, he wasn’t one to sit back and let the younger generation take over. After my mama died, my father rang in the new century, at the age of eighty-one, by getting married again.”

  “Well, that’s not unheard of; elderly men often need a caretaker when they become infirm. Understandable.”

  Mr. Gardner laughed. “They had a baby a year later. That little boy must be close to your age by now.”

  “Really? Well . . . wow . . . whatever those tonics
were that your father was handing out, I’d like a case of them.”

  “He always said it was in the bloodline. The Gardners make old bones, which is why I don’t expect to die in here. I’m only sixty-three. I don’t suppose you think there’s any only about it, though.”

  “You wear your years well, Mr. Gardner. Maybe if you would talk about whatever put you in here, we could send you back out into the world to live a long, long life.”

  Gardner laughed. “I tried to kill myself, and you’re trying to entice me with a long, long life?”

  “I’m hoping that I can make you want one again.”

  “There are some things that even doctors can’t fix. Too bad you can’t bring back Alice again.”

  “Alice?”

  “My late wife. Second wife, to be exact. The second wife I lost to death, and it was just too much to bear. I thought I’d follow her to the grave.”

  “How?”

  “I told the doctor I was having trouble sleeping, and he gave me a bottle of pills. I took all of them. Left a note, too. In hindsight, I know I should not have done that, because afterward it meant I was wasting my breath trying to convince them that it was an accident.”

  “If you took the whole bottle, I don’t have to guess what happened.”

  “You surmise that I took too many pills, sir?”

  “I think you must have. That amount of sedatives probably congealed into a big old lump in your stomach, and your body would have coughed them up like a hairball.”

  “Noted.” Gardner inclined his head. “I shall remember that for next time.”

  Boozer held up a warning finger. “Don’t you think like that. I wouldn’t want that on my conscience if we were to let you out.”

  “I’ll keep my own counsel about it then. I think I can promise you not to make any further attempt on my life with nostrums, anyhow. It is not a reliable method.”

  “No. Overdosing is a chancy business. I suppose you were none the worse for the experience, but if all you did was sleep and vomit—not necessarily in that order—you ought to have been able to conceal all that, so somebody must have found you before you had time to recover.”

  Gardner scowled. “Somebody did. A foolish interfering woman from the church wondered why I wasn’t in my pew that Sunday morning. I had done it on a Saturday night in order to make sure I should not be missed at the office, but I had reckoned without predatory old biddies who see widowers as fair game.”

  “Tracked you down, did they?”

  “The most persistent one of the pack. Sniffed me out of my lair like an infernal bloodhound. I had forgotten to lock the door, and she just barged right in, and found me in my bed, still insensible and soiled from my . . . miscalculations. It might have been all right even then if she hadn’t spied the note I’d left propped up on the bureau. The game was up then.”

  “She raised a hue and cry, of course?”

  “Yes, under the mistaken impression that she was preserving my life, and the even more mistaken impression that I should be grateful to her for doing so. But instead of a rescue, she had delivered me into the hands of more interfering do-gooders, who sent me here to recover my wits.”

  “Well, I can’t blame her for pursuing you,” said Boozer, leaning over to light a cigarette. “An unattached attorney must be quite a catch in a small town.”

  “A young, unmarried physician would be a better one. Shall I give her your particulars, Doctor?”

  They both laughed, but Boozer said, “Funny, but not quite accurate. I have a wife, or I did.”

  “Then why are you living here in a small room in the asylum?”

  The doctor shrugged. “Well, the marriage didn’t quite take. Dorothy is a nice girl—a doctor’s daughter that I met in Huntington two years ago: whirlwind courtship, pretty country girl lands a New York doctor—but we just ended up being too different for it to work. She’s gone off to Beckley to teach school now, and I came here.”

  Mr. Gardner regarded him thoughtfully. “You seem to be bearing up well under the loss.”

  “Well, I’m a happy fellow. I figure there are more fish in the sea. But you’re not as easygoing as I am. You were truly grief-stricken over the loss of your wife, weren’t you? That’s why you did it?”

  Gardner shrugged. “I suppose I couldn’t imagine life without Alice. She was a fine woman. Handsome. Educated. She taught school, too, there in Mercer County before I married her, and she was everything the wife of a successful attorney ought to be.”

  “You make her sound like a Rolls-Royce, Mr. Gardner.”

  “Perhaps I do, but I can’t help that.”

  “And you say she was your second wife?”

  “I was in my fifties when I married Alice. My first wife, Eliza, was just a simple country girl, sweet and capable in domestic matters. She was the wife of my youth, and I regretted her death, of course I did, but I was only in my midforties when she died. Perhaps I wasn’t a young man, strictly speaking, but given my father’s robust example, I thought I had half my life still before me, and I recovered from the loss tolerably well. The young are resilient.”

  “I suppose we are. We still have time to fix things.”

  “I felt that at the time. And I did recover. My law practice in Bluefield prospered, and after a while I met Alice. But when she died, I knew I hadn’t the heart to start over.”

  “You’ve no children, then?”

  “No. That might have made a difference. As it was, I saw long years of loneliness ahead of me, and I didn’t want to live through them.”

  “But why should you be alone? You said yourself that a church full of old biddies were in hot pursuit of you. And look at the example of your father. How old did you say he was when he remarried? Eighty-something? Maybe there’s more to come in your life.”

  “Well, you may be right. Grief makes cowards of people sometimes. I wasn’t thinking clearly then. But now I have hope.”

  Dr. Boozer was silent for a few moments, watching his patient. “Do you mean that, or are you just saying what you think I want to hear so that I’ll think you’re cured?”

  James P. D. Gardner smiled. “Now, would I do that, Doctor?”

  eight

  GREENBRIER COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA

  1896–1897

  I WASN’T KEEPING A WATCH on the time, but it seemed like an hour before we heard the rattle of the wagon that told us H. C. had returned from his errand to Livesay’s Mill. I ran to the front door and flung it open, knowing that my cousin Sarah would understand my eagerness to see Zona and not give a thought to the propriety of a guest presuming to open a door. I hurried out onto the porch, and waited while H. C. helped his sister down out of the wagon seat. He lifted her out as if she weighed nothing at all, and set her gently in the grass next to the hedge.

  Zona was pale, but then she always was, even in summer, so that was no proof of anything amiss, although I fancied her cheekbones stood out sharper than when I had seen her last, and she didn’t look as lively as I was used to seeing her. All the bubbling happiness from her wedding day was gone.

  She was wrapped up against the cold in her heavy brown coat and woolen gloves, with H. C.’s blue knitted scarf covering her up to the tip of her nose. She pushed it down when she saw us waiting on the porch, and looked up at us with an uncertain smile. What did that smile mean? I wondered. Was it polite tolerance of the fuss made by her overly concerned relations, or embarrassment at having neglected to visit us, or even a forced smile that she summoned, hoping it would cover up a bad situation, something she didn’t want to talk about?

  We hustled her into the parlor and unwound her from the coat and scarf. She hugged Sarah and me, murmuring a word or two about being thankful to see us. I thought she felt like skin and bones under that heavy winter dress, but I didn’t say anything about it. Her eyes were clear and there was no feverish look about her, and she hadn’t coughed a single time, not even when she came in out of the cold. Pale as she was, I didn’t think she wa
s suffering from consumption, and that’s what I had feared, for it’s a death warrant for young and old alike. It had been a foolish worry, though. She’d only been gone for a couple of weeks. Consumption takes longer than that to do its work.

  When we had settled her under a lap quilt close to the fire, H. C. said he was going to unhitch the horse and turn it out to pasture for an hour or two, until we needed the wagon again. Then he was going to hunt up Cousin John in the barn, or wherever he was, and see if there was anything there that needed doing. I waved him away, knowing that he was as afraid of women’s talk as any other man, and that he would have been glad to split rails or slop hogs rather than have to listen to our chatter.

  “Don’t you stay away too long,” Zona called after him. “I have to be getting back well before dark.”

  H. C. nodded, barely pausing, and slipped out the front door. We heard him clattering down the steps, and then silence.

  I had heard the worry in Zona’s voice when she talked about getting home on time. “But your husband knows you’re here, though? You told him that?”

  She nodded. “I said you were bringing us some fried chicken and apple pie for supper, and that I’d be carrying it home with me. That cheered him up. I hope to the Lord you did bring it, Mama. I promised him.”

  “It’s right in the kitchen there, in a basket. I’ll make sure you remember to get it before you go.”

  “Good.” She smiled, and it looked more like relief than happiness. “I never saw such a one for doting on food as that husband of mine. He’s like a starving dog. I’ll bet he’ll eat that whole pie in one sitting.”