The Gravedigger's Daughter

by Joyce Carol Oates

  He could not speak very clearly, paddling and splashing with his absurd water wings. Yet he kept calling to Hazel as one might call to a perverse child. “Surely you can swim, dear? Nothing would happen to you, with Peppy and me at hand.”

  Hazel laughed. “I don’t think so, Thad. Thank you.”

  “And if I gave you a gift, dear? A thousand dollars.”

  Thaddeus meant to speak in such a way that Hazel could interpret the remark as a joke, and not be offended. But the words came out awkwardly, his glassy blinking eyes stared and strained at her.

  Hazel shook her head, no.

  “Five thousand!” Thaddeus cried gaily.

  An old man’s harmless teasing. He was falling in love with Hazel Jones. Cavorting in the water, making even Peppy laugh. Paddling and splashing and kicking and wheezing like a baby elephant. His behavior was so ludicrous, so strangely touching, Hazel had to laugh.

  “My dear, don’t abandon me! Please.”

  He’d thought that Hazel was walking away. She’d gone only to examine a lattice of crimson climber roses, against a cream-colored stucco wall.

  After a few more minutes, Thaddeus abruptly ordered Peppy to haul him out of the pool. Again, Hazel Jones came to help: took the old man’s big fleshy hand, that gripped hers tightly. Hazel also brought towels, terry cloth robes for both men. Thaddeus wrapped the enormous towels about his body, rubbing himself briskly. His thinning hair that lay now flat against the big dome of his head, he dried as energetically as he might have done in his youth when his hair was thick. It was exactly Gallagher’s practice. Hazel saw this, and felt some tenderness for Thaddeus.

  In his wheelchair, wrapped in towels large as blankets, Thaddeus puffed and panted and smiled, exhilarated. The white-jacketed servant had brought him another scarlet drink as well as a silver bowl of mixed nuts which he ate noisily.

  “Hazel Jones! I must confess I’d heard certain things about you. Now I see, none of them were true.”

  Thaddeus spoke in a lowered voice. He kept glancing back at the house, concerned that his son would reappear.

  He reached out to take Hazel’s hand. She shivered but did not pull away.

  “My son is a man of integrity, I know. I have quarrels with him but in his own way, yes of course he is ‘moral.’ I wish that I knew how to love him, Hazel! He has never forgiven me, you see, for things that happened long ago. He has told you, I suppose?” Thaddeus squinted wistfully at Hazel.

  “No. He has not.”

  “He has not?”

  “Never.”

  “He complains about my politics, surely? My convictions that are so very different from his?”

  “Chet only speaks of you with respect. He loves you, Mr. Gallagher. But he’s afraid of you.”

  “Afraid of me! Why?”

  There was something furtive and sick in Thaddeus’s face. Yet a glimmering of hope.

  “You should ask Chet, Mr. Gallagher. I can’t speak for him.”

  “Yes, yes: you can speak for him. Far better you can speak for him, Hazel Jones, than he can speak for himself.” The old man’s pose of drollery had quite fallen away, now he was fully earnest. Almost, he was pleading with Hazel. “He loves me? He respects me?”

  “He thinks that your political beliefs are mistaken. That’s all.”

  “He has never said anything about�his mother?”

  “Only that he loved her. And misses her.”

  “Does he! I do, too.”

  Thaddeus and Hazel were alone on the terrace. Both Peppy and the servant in the white jacket had departed. Thaddeus sat swathed in white terry cloth, sighing. Still he continued to glance back at the house nervously. “You have no family, Hazel? No one living?”

  “No one.”

  “Only just your son?”

  “Only just my son.”

  “Are you and Chet secretly married, dear?”

  “No.”

  “But why? Why aren’t you married?”

  Hazel smiled evasively. No, no! She would not say.

  Wistfully Thaddeus asked, “Don’t you love my son? Why would you live with him, if you don’t love him?”

  “He loves me. He loves our son.”

  The words escaped from Hazel Jones as in a dream. For all her shrewdness she had not known she would utter them until that moment.

  She saw in the old man’s face an expression of shock, triumph.

  “I knew! I knew that was it!”

  Worriedly Hazel said, with the air of one who has confided too much, “He can’t know that I’ve told you, Mr. Gallagher. He can’t bear the thought of being talked about.”

  Thaddeus said, panting, “I knew. Somehow, seeing you. I did know. Hazel Jones: this will be our secret.”

  A blind, dazed expression came over the old man’s face. For some seconds he sat silent, breathing hard. Hazel felt the terrible pounding of his heart in that massive body. Thaddeus was deeply gratified yet suddenly very tired. Cavorting in the pool had exhausted him. This long scene had exhausted him. Hazel would summon one of the servants to help him but Thaddeus continued to grip her hand, hard. Pleading, “You won’t stay for dinner, Hazel? You don’t think that Chet could be talked into changing his mind?”

  Gently Hazel said no. She didn’t think so.

  “I will miss you, then. I will think of you, Hazel. And of�‘Zacharias Jones.’ I will hear the boy play piano, when I can. I will not push myself upon you, I understand that that would be a tactical error. My son is a sensitive man, Hazel. He’s also a jealous man. If�if Chester ever disappoints you, dear, you must come to me. Will you promise, Hazel?”

  Gently Hazel said yes. She promised.

  In a sudden clumsy gesture Thaddeus lifted her hand to his lips, to kiss. Long Hazel would feel the imprint of that kiss on her skin, the fleshy, unexpectedly chill sensation.

  The fat dimpled spider, the gravedigger’s daughter. Who might have predicted!

  28

  The wound was such, Gallagher would not speak of it initially.

  In silence they drove back to Vermont. Gallagher’s face was still unnaturally pale, drawn. Hazel surmised he’d been sick to his stomach vomiting in one of the bathrooms of his father’s house and he was deeply ashamed.

  She did love him, she supposed. In the man’s very weakness that filled her with a wild flailing contempt like a maddened winged creature trapped against a screen she loved him.

  The remainder of the day passed in a kind of dream. They were uneasily aware of each other without speaking, nor even touching. They had dinner with Zack and some others. By quick degrees, Gallagher recovered from the visit at Ardmoor Park. He was very much his usual self at dinner, and at a reception following that evening’s symphony concert. Only when he and Hazel were alone together in their hotel room did Gallagher say at last, in a genial tone to allow Hazel to know he was bemused and not angry: “You and my father got along very well, didn’t you! I heard you laughing together. From the window of my old room I saw him wheezing and splashing in the pool like a deranged elephant. Something of a couple: Beauty and the Beast.”

  Gallagher was brushing his teeth in the bathroom, the door ajar. Spitting into the sink, harshly. Hazel knew without seeing that he was grimacing into the mirror.

  She said, “He seems sad, Chet. A lonely old man fearful of dying.”

  “Is he!” Gallagher spoke flatly, yet wanting to be appeased.

  “He seems hurt by life.”

  “By me, you mean.”

  “Are you all of ‘life’ to your father, Chet?”

  It was an unexpected response. When Hazel Jones said such things, Gallagher seemed often not to hear.

  Later she slipped her arms around his chest. She held him tight, gravely she intoned, “‘My son is a man of integrity, I wish that he would let me love him.’”

  Gallagher’s laughter was startled, uneasy.

  “Don’t try to tell me my father said that, Hazel.”

  “He did.”

 
“Bullshit, Hazel. Don’t tell me.”

  “He has prostate cancer, Chet. He has colon cancer.”

  “Since when?”

  “He doesn’t want you to know, I think. He made a joke of it.”

  “I wouldn’t believe anything he says, Hazel. He’s quite the joker.” Clumsily Gallagher moved about the room, not-seeing. The staring vacant look had come into his face. “That crap about the ‘Jew York Times’�he’s got a feud going, the Times wins Pulitzer Prizes every year and the Gallagher chain wins a Pulitzer every five years if they get lucky. That’s what’s behind that.” Gallagher was incensed, close to tears.

  “He loves you, though. Somehow, he feels ashamed before you.”

  “Bullshit, Hazel.”

  “It may be bullshit, but it happens to be true.”

  In bed, in Gallagher’s ropey-muscled arms, Hazel felt at last that she might tease him. She felt the heat of her lover’s skin, she lay very still against him. He would forgive her now. He adored Hazel Jones, always he was looking for plausible ways to forgive her.

  Hazel whispered in his ear how shocked she’d been, to discover that Thaddeus Gallagher was an invalid in a wheelchair!

  “He is? An invalid?” Gallagher squirmed and twitched beneath the bedclothes, staring toward the ceiling. “Christ. I guess he is.”

  29

  Hazel Jones: this will be our secret.

  For the remainder of his life he would send her small gifts. Flowers. Every four or five weeks, and often following a public performance of Zack’s. Somehow he knew, he made it his business to know, when Gallagher would be gone from the house, and timed deliveries for those mornings.

  The first came soon after Hazel returned to Delaware Park, Buffalo, to the house Gallagher had bought for them near the music school. Numerous red climber roses, small-petalled roses, in a thorny cluster that was awkward to fit into even a tall vase. The accompanying note was handwritten, as if in haste.

  August 22, 1970

  Dearest Hazel Jones,

  I have not stopped thinking of you for a single momment since last week. I had a (secret!!!) tape made of Zachiaras playing at the music festival, truly your son is a suberb musician! So hard to believe he is only 13. I have photographs of him, he is so young. Of course in his heart he is no child is he! As I at 13 was no longer a child. For my heart was hardened young, I knew the “way of the world” from boyhood on & had no illusions of the “natural good” of mankind etcetera. Dear Hazel, I hope I am not offending you! Your husband must not know. We will keep our secret will we! Tho’ I think always of you, your beautiful dark kind eyes that forgive & do not judge. If you would be so kind Hazel you might call me sometime, my number is below. This is my privvate line Hazel, no one will pick up. But if not dear, I will not be hurt. You have brought into the world the remarkable boy. That he is my grandson is our secret (!!!) & I will meet him sometime but in secret. Do not fear me. You have given me so much I did not expect or hope. I will not be hurt. I will think of you always. Chester is a good man I know, but he is weak & Jealous as his father at that age. Utnil another time, dear

  Your Loving “InLaw” Thad

  Hazel read this letter in astonishment, distracted by the numerous spelling errors. “He’s crazy! He’s in love with her.” She had not expected such a response. She felt a pang of guilt, if Gallagher should know.

  She threw the letter away, she would not reply to it. Never would Hazel Jones reply to Thaddeus Gallagher’s impassioned letters, which became more incoherent with time, nor would she thank him for the numerous gifts. Hazel Jones was a woman of dignity, integrity. Hazel Jones would not encourage the old man, yet she would not discourage him. She supposed that he would be true to his word, he would not confront her or Zack. He would admire them from a discreet distance. Gallagher seemed never to notice the gifts in the household: vases of flowers, a heart-shaped crystal paperweight, a brass frame for a photograph, a silk scarf printed with rosebuds. The old man was discreet enough to send Hazel only small, relatively inexpensive and inconspicuous gifts. And never money.

  In March 1971 there came by special delivery a packet for Hazel Jones that was not a gift, but a manila envelope with the return address GALLAGHER MEDIA INC. Inside the envelope were photocopies of newspaper articles and one of Thaddeus Gallagher’s hastily scrawled letters.

  At last my assistant gathered these matrials, Hazel. Why it has takken so long I frankly DO NOT KNOW. Thought you would be intriguing, Hazel Jones. “Only a Conincidence” I know. [THANK GOD THANK GOD this poor Hazel Jones was not you.]

  There were several pages more, but Hazel tossed them away without reading them.

  In an upstairs room of the Delaware Park house where no one was likely to disturb her, Hazel removed the photocopied material from the manila envelope and spread it out on a table. Her movements were deliberate and unhurried and yet her hands shook slightly, she seemed to know beforehand that the revelation Thaddeus Gallagher had sent her would not be a happy one.

  The newspaper articles had already been arranged in chronological order. Hazel tried to keep from glancing ahead to learn the outcome.

  Yet, there it was:

  GRISLY DISCOVERY IN NEW FALLS

  FOLLOWS DOCTOR DEATH

  Female Skeletons Unearthed

  And,

  DECEASED NEW FALLS M.D.

  SUSPECT IN UNSOLVED 1950S ABDUCTIONS

  Property Searched by Police, Skeletons Found

  Both clippings included an accompanying photograph, the same likeness of a genially smiling man of middle age: Byron Hendricks, M. D.

  “Him! The man in the panama hat.”

  Both articles, from the Port Oriskany Journal, were dated September 1964. New Falls was a small, relatively affluent suburb north of Port Oriskany, on Lake Erie. Hazel told herself sternly It is over now. Whatever it was, is over now. It has nothing to do with me now.

  It was so. It had to be so. She had not given a thought to Byron Hendricks, M.D., for eleven years. Virtually all memory of the man had faded from her consciousness.

  Hazel turned to the first of the articles, also from the Journal, and dated June 1956.

  NEW FALLS GIRL REPORTED MISSING

  POLICE, VOLUNTEERS EXPAND SEARCH

  Hazel Jones, 18, “Vanished”

  This Hazel Jones had attended New Falls High School but had dropped out at the age of sixteen. She had lived with her family in the country outside New Falls and had supported herself by “babysitting, waitressing, housecleaning” locally. At the time of her disappearance, she had just begun summer work at a Dairy Queen. Numerous parties had seen Hazel Jones at the Dairy Queen on the day of her disappearance; at dusk she had left to ride her bicycle home, a distance of three miles; but she had never arrived home. Her bicycle was subsequently found in a drainage ditch beside a highway, about two miles from her home.

  Apparently it was not a kidnapping, there was no ransom demanded. There were no witnesses to any abduction. No one could think of any person who might have wanted to harm Hazel Jones nor did Hazel Jones have a boyfriend who might have threatened her. For days, weeks, eventually years Hazel Jones was the object of a search but she, or the body she had become, was never found.

  Hazel stared at the girl in the photograph. For here was a familiar face.

  Aged seventeen at the time of the photograph, Hazel Jones had thick wavy dark hair that fell to her shoulders and across her forehead. Her eyebrows were rather heavy, she had a long nose rather broad at the tip. She was not pretty but “striking”�almost, you might say “exotic.” Her mouth was fleshy, sensuous. Yet there was something prim and even sullen about her. Her eyes were large, very dark, untrusting. For the camera she tried to smile, not very convincingly.

  How like Rebecca Schwart at that age, this Hazel Jones! It was unnerving. It was painful to see.

  Former New Falls classmates said of Hazel Jones that she was “quiet”�“kept to herself”�“hard to get to know.”

  Hazel Jone
s’s parents said she would “never have gotten into any car with anybody she didn’t know, Hazel wasn’t that kind of girl.”

  A subsequent article depicted Mr. and Mrs. Jones posed in front of their “modest bungalow-style” home on the outskirts of New Falls. They were a middle-aged couple, heavy-browed and dark-complected like their daughter, staring grimly at the camera like gamblers willing to take a risk though expecting to lose.

  The fake-brick siding on the Joneses’ house was water stained. In the Joneses’ grassless front yard, debris had been raked into a mound.

  The next several articles were dated 1957, from upstate newspapers in Port Oriskany, Buffalo, Rochester and Albany. ( The Rochester and Albany papers belonged to the Gallagher chain, coincidentally.) In June 1957 another girl was reported missing, this time from Gowanda, a small city thirty miles south and east of Port Oriskany; in October, yet another girl was reported missing from Cableport, a village on the Erie Barge Canal near Albany, hundreds of miles east. The girl from Gowanda was Dorianne Klinski, aged twenty; the girl from Cableport was Gloria Loving, aged nineteen. Dorianne was married, Gloria engaged. Dorianne had “vanished into thin air” walking home from her salesclerk job in Gowanda. Gloria had similarly vanished walking home from Cableport on the Erie Canal towpath, a distance of no more than a mile.

  How like Hazel Jones of New Falls these girls looked! Dark-haired, not-pretty.

  In the several articles about Dorianne and Gloria there were no references to Hazel Jones of New Falls. But in articles about Gloria Loving, there were references to Dorianne Klinski. Only in later articles, about girls missing in 1959, 1962, and 1963, were there references to the “original” missing girl Hazel Jones. It had taken law enforcement officers, spread across numerous rural counties and townships through New York State, a long time to connect the abductions.