The door closed, the car rumbled down the gravel drive.
Jonathan stood motionless. Though Saar's fingers had barely brushed his skin, his face burned as if he had been slapped. He could hear his heart. The sound frightened him, and he hurried out of the cottage.
When the curate neared the haven of the apostate Ramona Dingley, he saw his spiritual charge hurtling in her wheelchair straight down her steep driveway toward the street. He rushed up the sidewalk to fling himself on the machine, but she managed her turn and shot past him. He noticed she was laughing.
"Miss Dingley? Miss Dingley. Are you all right?" Jonathan panted, his head bent and his hands on his thighs.
She spun around and putted back. "Perfectly. Oops, I think you dropped your glasses."
"Thank goodness. Oh, thank you. Your brakes failed? You were lucky."
"Lucky?" Miss Dingley arranged her white dress over her knees.
"Ppht! I practice."
"On purpose? Really? Oh, I don't think I would if I were you."
"Probably not." She tapped his hand and grinned. "But it does bring the color up, don't it? Aha, here's Orchid finally." A red Firebird pulled up at the curb and Orchid O'Neal opened the side door. She handed Miss Dingley her cane, and then helped her to lower herself into the seat.
"You were going out then?"
"Now, Jonathan, don't tell me I forgot a date? Yes, I see I did.
Back inside! Forgive me, my senility's acting up."
"Honestly, no. Some other time is fine. I was just coming your way."
She leaned on her elbow out the window. "You're such an awful liar, I can't help liking you, considering how good-looking you are.
How are things?"
"Mr. Oglethorpe at the academy, did you know he'd died this morning?"
"Archie Oglethorpe? Thought he died years ago. Well, well, rest him. An atheist free-thinker, Archie. Used to try to get Willie Bredforet to read Ingersoll. Useless, of course, to think you could get Willie to read anything. Not sure Willie can read. Well, well. We're dropping like leaves, us old shriveled ones. I heard the old nun passed away. The faithful and the faithless. Even-steven. God don't discriminate. I won't give you a lift. Walk do you good, a man your age. Exercise, find somebody, make love. Bring your color up, keep alive. Call me tomorrow then. Let's go, Orchid. And accelerate."
"Now, now, Miss Dingley." Her housekeeper frowned. The sight of Mrs. O'Neal with her flowered print dress, her gray hair pulled up in an old-fashioned bun, sunk in the red bucket seat with her plump hand on the floor stick, broadened Jonathan's polite smile into a grin.
"Good," said Ramona. "Laughter. Remember I told you, it's restorative. Like port." They roared away. Jonathan could feel the grin opening his face until he laughed aloud. He would right now walk around Elizabeth Circle and visit Mrs. Troyes, who had invited him over earlier to look at her vandalized patio, and who had also extended an invitation to treat him to supper. Perhaps he might have sounded brusque with her on the phone. He'd try to be helpful. Had he been helpful to…Walter? But Walter didn't need help, not really.
The curate was caught between two desires: that he should be able to give this man something, and that this man should never be so unhappy that he needed to ask him for anything.
chapter 37
Unlike Tracy Canopy's trips to Vincent's tomb, Ramona Dingley's visits to the town cemetery were custodial rather than communicative, and they were limited to two a year. As individuals, ancestral Dingleys were not exempt from Ramona's irony, but as her family tree, they were dutifully tended by her with respect. She was, after all, the last to go by the name. She called herself the janitor of the past, while confessing there was no earthly reason why she kept all the scraps of refuse tossed by time into the bin of history. Among these self-imposed familial responsibilities was the maintenance of numerous Dingley graves. As she was unable to persuade herself that any intimations of immortality inscribed on the tombs were likely to prove true, she assumed that whatever was left of her relatives had been left right there in Old Town Burial Ground, where now (along the paved back entrance) she rode in her wheelchair accompanied by Mrs. O'Neal on foot. In a hamper attached to the back of her chair were bunches of summer flowers with which they replaced the dry brown bouquets of last winter.
Everyone was there. Even, against their wills, Ramona's Catholic grandmother Bridget and visionary father, Ignatius, both of whom had always disliked being surrounded by Protestants. Everyone was there except Ramona's uncle Charles Bradford Dingley IV, misplaced in the second battle of the Marne, who was there only in granite, larger than life in dress uniform, hand on sword, naked Honor mourning at his feet. Actually, all the male Dingleys in the direct line had been lost at war, but only he had never been recovered and returned home. Ramona now distributed flowers among the heroes, from Elijah, lost in King William's War, 1689, and his son, Thomas Laud, lost in Queen Anne's War, 1710, to Timothy, lost fighting for his King, only a year after his estranged son Cutler died for the Revolution at the battle of Long Island. Pausing while Orchid pulled away weeds that covered the words, Ramona motored among the softening stones. Philip Elijah, lost under Perry at the battle of Lake Erie, father of Charles Bradford Dingley, lost under Zachary Taylor at Buena Vista. Charles Bradford II and Charles Bradford III, shot within feet and within hours of each other at Gettysburg. And so the old woman went along the lineal path, to Beanie's father, Charles B.
Dingley V, lost in Hawaii, December 7, 1941.
"Bunch of idiots," Ramona told Orchid O'Neal, as she always did. "Walk down this path, and there it is, scratched into stone for you: civilization. Ppht! Well, Orchid, Jesus wept, but I suspect somebody was laughing."
They stopped at a small gray slab where Ramona's mother, Emily (1868–1910), lay with her infant son. "From earthly sorrow free /
Called home to sleep with Thee."
"Poor woman," said her daughter. "Well. Well. Dingley. There's the whole batch addressed by that name. Except for me. And I'm up to my knees in the dirt already."
"No such thing," said Mrs. O'NeaI. "God above willing."
"Willing or not. Negotiate about the date. That's all."
They turned back, passing on their way the Dixwell family plot, where, high on a slope above urns, angels, and marble blocks, glistened in the sun Vincent Canopy's multicolored metal and chrome monument, built from abandoned Buicks by Louie Daytona. Miss Dingley stopped her chair. "Never will understand why the overseers here didn't tell Tracy flatly to throw that junk in the town dump where it belongs, and then cover her husband with something decent. Come on, Orchid. Ransom Bank, now. Death and taxes this morning. All you can count on."
"Summer and babies," said Mrs. O'Neal.
"Pphht!"
Ramona waited on the sidewalk while her housekeeper climbed the steps of Ransom Bank to bring its president out. With some satisfaction the old woman surveyed from her wheelchair the town whose name she bore. No vandal had scrawled on the wood buildings or chiseled away at the stone ones. No natural disaster or economic blight had frightened the life out of her town and left it a ghost. The streets were clean, the green was green, people walked in and out of offices and stores. She nodded. Dingley Falls would last awhile longer, it would outlast her. She took some comfort in that. Given the world's limits, this little town was no worse than most places, and better than many. It had lived three hundred years, like the huge copper beech towering over the green that Elijah Dingley had planted when he founded the town. Elijah on his pedestal flecked his sun-dappled stone grin at her. All right, she agreed, three centuries was a drop in the bucket, but in the long run, so were the pyramids, so was the planet. Meanwhile, she, the last of the Dingleys, would leave the town behind her. It was something.
She spotted Winslow Abernathy as he walked, stooped and preoccupied, into the circle. "Winslow. Winslow!" He was waved over with the cane she kept folded on her lap. 'What's this about you and Beanie? Sorry to hear it."
The lawyer fr
owned while smiling, a habitual gesture. "Who told you?"
"Half a dozen people. Don't say you're surprised."
"Just surprised it hasn't been announced on the radio." Winslow began fastening the button on his shirt pocket.
"Don't be an idiot. Well. Where'd she go? And what are you planning to do about it?"
"Nothing. But as a matter of fact she's in New York. I'd been really worried, of course, but she called late last night."
"And now?"
"Now?" He remembered Beanie had said he always fastened buttons on his clothes when he didn't want to communicate with her.
He folded his arms.
"Still worried, I hope. Stand still, Winslow. You can spare a minute."
"Sorry, I didn't mean…Of course we're going to talk about things. She's taking a train back this afternoon."
"Going to talk? Not encouraging. What do you want? Want to talk?"
"Naturally, Ramona. There're a great many things Beanie and I need…"
"Shouldn't butt in. I'm aware of that. Old spinster, what do I know? Her and Sammy, though, only family I've got."
"Yes, I appreciate that. You don't have to apologize."
"Might be for the best anyhow, Winslow. True."
"What might be?" But then Orchid O'Neal returned, followed by Ernest Ransom's secretary.
"Mr. Ransom's engaged just now, Miss Dingley. May I help you?"
"No," replied the invalid. "Irene, you go tell Ernie to disengage himself because as much as I'd like to sit out here and get a tan, Orchid's corned beef is on the burner at home and I haven't the time.
You remind him it was my family's dirty money pulled his family out of all those panics in the old days by the skin of their good-looking teeth. Remind him that bank wouldn't be there otherwise."
"He's in conference with Dr. Scaper, but I'll just see." Irene fled.
Ramona wheeled her chair around. "Don't look so disgusted, Winslow. Age has some prerogatives. Let me throw my weight around if I want to. Something the matter with Ernie's health?"
"Not that I know of."
"You know, somebody, I think Arthur, told me Otto wanted to have a conference with the selectmen, too. What's going on?"
"It's probably this new theory of his. I've got to get going, Ramona."
"Wait. What theory? Why don't I know about this?"
"Well, it's probably nothing. Some mysterious toxic substance or other he thinks is polluting Dingley Falls."
"What?! Is he serious?"
"Well, he said he wanted to get a town meeting going to discuss it. He wants to bring in federal investigators. According to Arthur, now."
"Dingley Falls investigated? By Washington? Don't suppose Otto's going senile, do you? Hate to think so. Makes me wonder about myself in another ten years." And here Otto is, she thought, claiming the town's been poisoned. And here I am, driving out to look for atom bombs in a swamp. She shook her head. "Work's too much for Otto now. Five years now since that young Dr. Fredericks left him. He ought to get another partner. Did you hear how he lost Archie Oglethorpe?"
"Yes, afraid so. And apparently yesterday the mailman collapsed at the post office and died before Mrs. Haig there could get help.
Horrible thing for her to have to go through alone."
"Alf Marco? Sorry to hear that." She straightened her back. "He wasn't sixty yet. Decent man. Well. Explains why my mail was late and most of it addressed to Evelyn Troyes. Soap Opera News.
Intrigued me."
"I'd better get going then."
"Plan to change my will, Winslow. Want you to write it up. And you tell Beanie to use her head. No. Never mind. Give her my best."
At the post office Sammy Smalter found Judith Haig in black, seated behind her window. He offered his condolences about Alf Marco, then nodded to where, behind her, a sullen, overweight woman jabbed letters into pigeonholes as if they were knives. "They sent someone to help you?"
"Yes, from the Argyle main office. Mrs. Lowtry will replace me here as soon as we can manage it. I'm told there's some chance they'll close this branch entirely."
"Surely not. Ah, I dropped by because you mentioned yesterday trying to locate the Vietnamese girl who works—"
"Yes. Thank you. I got in touch with Miss Lattice."
"Ah, good. Pru had called me, in fact, well, to ask if I could give her anything to help the girl get some sleep. Hot milk and/or Scotch is what I always answer." The small pharmacist smiled. "Well, anyhow. If, I don't want to pry, but if there's any problem you're trying to help her with that I could be of assistance—"
"Thank you, but—"
"Please believe me that I'd like to, very much, if there is something."
"That's kind of you. But I'm afraid there's nothing really."
"Ah, well. Good. Please don't hesitate though, if something should, well…Back to work then." He tapped his hand on the counter. "Mrs. Haig. By chance, I spoke with Arthur Abernathy yesterday about getting something done about those dogs. In the meantime I'd be glad to furnish my yellow sewing machine of a car again to give you a ride home."
"You're very thoughtful." Judith smiled, frowning. "But someone is picking me up. Mr. MacDermott's wife. Thank you though."
"Good. Well, if ever. I'm at your disposal."
Don't be, her eyes told him, please don't be. "Thank you. Goodbye then," she said.
"See you tomorrow. Good day."
Mrs. Lowtry came over to the window, gnawing dirt from beneath a fingernail. "That a dwarf that was talking to you?"
"I don't believe so." Judith turned her back and began to sort letters.
"Kind of turns my stomach, I can't help it. So do the ones that are, you know, all crippled. With the shakes. I feel sorry for them and everything, but it's just the way I feel. I guess I just can't help it. Just a natural response. See what I mean?"
"Yes. Our first delivery arrives here at 9:30, as I said. If you'll step back here with me, I'll show you how we've arranged the sorting."
Mrs. Lowtry decided Mrs. Haig was a cold fish.
The sounds of slamming doors bounced through the library. Coleman Sniffell at the periodical shelf disgustedly shut Time as he watched Lance Abernathy in tennis shorts stride up to the librarian at the main desk and shout, "Sidney! Get that lily-white ass in gear.
Outside, man. Move! Drive you to the Club for a set, treat you to lunch, and spot you three games. Whaddya say?"
"Keep your voice down, how about?" whispered Mr. Blossom.
"You know, I don't think I've ever seen you in here before, Lance. It's like somebody dropped a beach ball on a chessboard."
One tan hand on each end of his racquet, Lance swung it over his head. "I'd go nuts in here. Let's go."
"Thanks for the offer, but I have a job."
"What? I don't see you doing anything much. Come on."
"Sorry. Never can tell when the whole town could rush in here to check out The Great Gatsby because they saw it at the Hope Street Cinema last week."
"Yeah, I went. Bunch of junk. I didn't get the point of it all."
"Neither did the hero, that was the point."
"Huh? Oh. Never mind, listen, if it's no go, I'm gonna beat it.
Maybe old Katie'll play with me."
"It's no go, Lance. Ask her. So, see you tonight over at her place, I guess."
"Right. I'm bringing a girl along."
"Never would have guessed. Please, don't slam that door."
"Hey, what a fairy." Lance grinned, his teeth twinkling like an advertisement. "Does Katie know what a fairy she's getting mixed up with?"
"Omnia vincit Amor."
"What's that mean, winks at what?"
"It means the proof's in the pudding."
"Heyheyhey!"
The Vietnam War had come between Lance and Sidney—the former going to fight it to get out of school, the latter staying in schools to get out of fighting it. For years they hadn't been able to speak without an argument over their nation's morality. Now that
the war was over, they were more or less friends again as they had been since childhood, though for no other reason than that it was taken for granted that they were friends. It was one of those friendships with a life of its own, quite despite the taste, judgment, or desires of the two people involved.
The maroon Jaguar leaped around Dingley Circle. It flew past the pharmacy, where Luke Packer and Polly Hedgerow stood in the door. "Jeez." Luke whistled. "Look at that car!"
Polly frowned. "So what? What's he trying to prove?"
Abruptly, Luke agreed. "Yeah, some men feel like they have to use a car or a gun for a phallic symbol. That's one thing I like about Ben Rough's detective, Roderick Steady. He just takes the bus."
In the center of the semicircular drive, gravel white as a crescent moon in the lawn of the Dingley Country Club, two African Americans stood beside an old Rolls-Royce. One, Lance noticed, was female. She had a very attractive body. "Hi there. Bill Deeds! What you up to?" Lance flung his bare leg over the door of his car and jumped out.
"This your daughter? How do you do, don't think we've met."
"Granddaughter. Ruth, this is Mr. Abernathy's boy."
"Lance." Lance grinned. "Waiting for somebody?" She was, he appraised, thirty at the most, really nice outfit, lot of poise, that fantastic high rear end they can have. "How about me?"
"Mr. Bredforet just stepped into the men's room," explained Ruth Deeds, who then got angry at herself for avoiding Lance's eyes, then held his glance too significantly, then got angry at herself for that. She didn't have to hate him, she reminded herself. Just let it ride.
Nice voice, thought Lance. Were there any rules that blacks weren't allowed in the Club? Not likely, since as far as he could recall there weren't any blacks in Dingley Falls, except Bill Deeds. Of course, there were a few in Madder, but nobody white in Madder belonged to the Club either. "Come on, Bill." He waved. "Let's all go in and have a drink."
Michael Malone Page 32