The Gardens of Covington

by Joan A. Medlicott

  “Yes, ma’am, all of that.”

  “You think I should sit back and watch another mess like Loring Valley happen, and not even try to stop it? Just when we may have found a way to stop Anson?”

  “You found a way?” Max asked, his brows knitting.

  “We found a graveyard. Maybe it’s over a hundred years old. If I could just interest some government agency into checking it out, it would at least buy time.”

  Max let out an audible groan. “I’m not goin’ to ask you who ‘we’ is, and as for the government, don’t go threatening government around these parts. They’re an independent lot.” He heaved up from the chair and towered over Hannah. The room filled with his presence. He smiled. “Be careful, Hannah.”

  That night, as the storm raged on, Tyler lay in bed, his chest bandaged to hold his ribs secure, and shivered. Thunder scared him; lightning terrified him. Thinking of his mother, how she would come to his room if there was a storm, and climb into bed with him, and hold him, and sing to him, made him cry.

  Slowly, for his ribs hurt if he joggled them, Tyler slipped from his bed. Without the thunder, the house was silent. Emily was sleeping in Grandpa’s old room. He wished Grandpa was here. Holding one hand to his ribs, and the other to the wall of the hallway, Tyler moved along. He opened his father’s bedroom door. Snores greeted him. Tyler’s heart fell. How could Dad sleep through thunder that shook the house and such harsh, crackling lightning?

  Tyler shut his father’s door, and stood for a moment, unresolved whether to return to his room or see if Emily was asleep in her room down the hall. Ear-piercing thunder decided for him, and he moved toward Emily’s door as fast as his injuries permitted. Light under the door gave him the courage to knock.

  A small voice said, “Come in.” Emily sat bolt upright in bed, the covers held high about her shoulders. Her table lamp glowed, and a book, unopened, lay beside her on the bed.

  Tyler stood in the open doorway, uncertain, feeling small and alone. “Tyler. Once again you’ve come to my rescue. I’m scared. Will you stay with me?”

  Tyler’s shoulders lifted. He smiled, moved a bit too fast, winced, held his ribs with both hands, and walked to the bed.

  “Climb up. Take it slow now. Easy. There we are. Lean up against these pillows.” She shared her pillows. And with a sigh of relief, Tyler settled alongside her.

  She told him stories then, about being a little girl and her father taking her rowing on a big lake in Central Park, and moving to Florida and the beach, and how she made sand castles with her dad.

  “We were going to go to Florida on vacation, to Disney World. That must have . . .” He stopped abruptly, remembering.

  She knew. Amy had been killed. “Would you like to go to Disney World?”

  He nodded.

  “We’ll ask your dad, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Another clap of thunder brought their shoulders together, and when the lightning made the room glow as if a flashbulb had gone off, Emily grasped Tyler’s hand.

  She’s as scared as I am, he thought, and felt suddenly less afraid, and older, and protective.

  “Tyler,” Emily said softly. “I’m glad you came in here tonight. I was really scared. You’re very brave, and this is the second time you’ve really helped me. Thank you.” She bent and kissed his forehead gently. Another clap of thunder was a good excuse for holding her hand tight.

  The first big storm of the season left Loring Valley a shambles, with owners threatening lawsuits against the developers, who threatened lawsuits against the builders, who questioned county inspectors.

  On the hillsides, snow and ice, mud and rocks closed every loop of Loring Valley Road, isolating condominium owners for days. Little River raged. Boulders along its banks were flung across lawns, onto patios, and through glass-sliding doors into the living rooms and bedrooms of villas. All the villas, and most of the condominiums, were severely damaged by mud and water: carpets destroyed, wood floors buckled, drywall soggy and blistered, appliances ruined, furniture waterlogged. In one villa the mud was so high and caked so hard that firemen had to use their hoses to wash it inside and out. In another villa, the damage was so widespread that an owner, when he opened his oven, was aghast to see a cake of mud filling all the space.

  The morning after the storm, plows cleared Elk Road, Cove Road, and the flat area of Loring Valley Road, and departed leaving muddy deposits a foot or more high piled along the roadsides. The piles of ice and snow mixed with mud, dirt, and twigs would take many days to melt.

  The tearoom, happily, was untouched by rain, snow, or wind. Grace tacked up a sign: WILL REOPEN AFTER CHRISTMAS. HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL.

  The Hammers, on their cruise, missed the storm, and returned after New Year’s to soggy, mildewed, and smelly carpets, water-stained walls, gobs of mud, as well as to the news that Emily had returned, and that she and Russell would be getting married. Ginger walked into her dank-smelling, mud-smeared villa and stormed out.

  “Bad things certainly all come at once. It’s just too much. I’m going to my sister in New York. Don’t call me until this place is totally refurbished.”

  On the way to the airport Ginger kept up a running diatribe about Emily and Russell and Tyler. “All that education we gave Emily, and she’s throwing it away to live in the boonies. And that child of his. He hardly said a word when we had them over for dinner that time. Depressed, would you say? They ought to take him to a therapist. I say that the cards are stacked against Emily. I can see it all now. She gives up a lucrative law practice, moves here, her income goes down, she’s got this depressed child to deal with . . .”

  “Ginger. Stop this. Bob tells me Tyler’s not depressed,” her husband tried to calm her. “He’s shy and uncertain about what’s happening with his father and our daughter. He’s a child. He’s lost his mother. He’s probably scared to death to even think of his father remarrying.”

  Ginger waved his words away. “Know where it all leads? Right to divorce court. Let’s hope she doesn’t rush to have a baby. God, imagine that, Martin.”

  And when he pecked her cheek good-bye before she boarded the plane, she admonished him, “Now you try to talk sense into Emily and if you can’t do that, I know how soft you are with her, then you just tell her to do nothing, absolutely nothing, don’t set a date, don’t make any arrangements until I get back.”

  And she was gone down the tunnel into the belly of the plane.

  The devastation wrought by the storm in Loring Valley left Hannah feeling vindicated. Now, she thought, Jake Anson surely won’t sell his land to the Bracken and Woodward Corporation.

  But as she was to learn, with environmental issues you never relax or let down your guard. The despoilers, as she had come to think of land developers, would slip away like dogs with tails between their legs, and return snarling.

  34

  Two Family Cemeteries

  During the busy and frustrating week after the storm, Amelia hired Ray Lambert, a private detective, to check on Lance. “I’m sure you won’t find anything serious or bad,” she said. “But my friends insist I do this.” Then she settled down to wait.

  Wayne called to set a date, four days before Christmas, for the inspection of the Mastersons’ and Reynoldses’ family cemeteries.

  Lingering patches of snow on pastures, and snowcaps on the higher mountains, were all that remained of the storm on the day the ladies and Mike sat in Lurina’s house anticipating the arrival of the Reynolds clan. “How many graves are there?” Grace asked Lurina.

  “Ain’t never counted. Some’s got wood markers, some stone. Pa’s is carved outta marble.”

  Station wagons and pickups lumbered across the bridge. Engines were shut off. No one came to the house, or blew a horn.

  “Joseph Elisha’s kin, five cars parked in a row like peas in a shell,” Lurina muttered as she peeked through the window. “Grace, come take a gander at this mess a folks.” She shuffled away from the window, and sat stiffly
in a firm, ladder-backed chair near the door. She wiped her brow with her sleeve. “Y’all git out there, Grace, and take ‘em up.” Lurina licked her lips again and again. “We got us a fine cemetery. Ain’t nobody goes there dumpin’ fast-food cups, an’ trash like that.”

  Mike was thrilled to be included. He walked alongside Amelia as they reached the end of the pasture and started up into thick pine woods. Ten unsmiling men and women, dressed in their church clothes and good black shoes, trudged after them. Light barely filtered between close stands of pines. Accumulations of forest debris carpeted the forest floor, making walking difficult. To avoid falling or twisting an ankle, it was essential to look down, and to concentrate on every step.

  Grace grasped Hannah’s arm, and Mike helped Amelia untangle her coat when it fastened on twigs and low scraggly bark. Just when they thought they were lost, they stepped from the pines into a clearing. Marked by a sagging split rail fence of indeterminate age, the cemetery was almost a square. Behind them, Grace heard contemptuous comments and whispers as she stepped over a rotting branch and pointed out to Hannah where pine needles hid dips and humps in the earth. “Hannah, do you want to wait here?” Grace asked.

  “I’ll watch my step.” Hannah circled the fallen branch and plodded on, glad for the long underwear under her thick khaki pants, and the fleece socks inside her high-top walking shoes.

  A man behind them tripped and cursed.

  A woman chided him. “Ain’t proper cursin’ on the Lord’s day.”

  “I coulda been home watchin’ the game, ’stead of this,” the man replied.

  Weeds competed with dry brown grass and patches of snow in all the spaces between the three dozen or so graves. Some had wooden crosses so weather-beaten that the names of the departed were barely visible, if at all.

  “Pour Vamour de Dieu,” Amelia said. “What a mess. Miss Lurina certainly hasn’t been up here in years.”

  “I wonder if she’ll believe it when we tell her how bad it is,” Hannah said.

  Grace knelt at a grave site and brushed away fallen pine needles that clung to the headstone. “Emma Masterson Green,” she said, sitting back on her haunches.

  Several of the Reynoldses gathered about her. Some bent to look. Two men removed their jackets and found places to sit on a fallen log and talked football. A short tubby man with a light beard leaned against a high gravestone and chewed on a bit of a twig. In an effort to protect their clothing, most of the five women stood with their hands crossed over their bosoms.

  “Who’s she?” someone asked, pointing to the stone that Grace cleaned with her bandanna.

  “Lurina’s Aunt Emma.” Grace related the story Lurina had told her.

  “Hot grease,” a woman said. “Some of those old-time ways could kill you for sure.”

  “Lurina loved her aunt. Intended to be buried alongside her.” On her knees now, Grace shoved aside a layer of pine needles mixed with prickly pinecones, some small as a walnut, others the size of a small orange. Mike squatted alongside her and helped, as did a woman of middle years whose round wire-rim eyeglasses mimicked the shape of her benign face.

  “I’m Mary Reynolds Kelly,” she said. “Old Man’s my great cousin on my mother’s side.”

  “I’m Grace Singleton. Pleased to meet you.” Together they cleared the earth where Lurina expected to be buried, a small space for a small woman, with no space below, above, or alongside for another grave to accommodate a husband. And it would fall to Grace to explain this, as well as the condition of the Masterson cemetery, to Lurina.

  Grace hunkered on the edge of Aunt Emma’s grave. The picture of Lurina’s aunt had shown a small, diffident woman. Gazing at Emma’s name and the dates carved deep into the solid gray stone, Grace wondered what would happen to this graveyard when the land was turned over to the park service. Would they build a low stone wall about the place and clean it? Would they set out markers telling the history of the family, the second pioneer family to settle in what would become Covington? Would they cordon it off from visitors? Or would they let it deteriorate? They couldn’t do that, however, if this cemetery proved to be over a hundred years old.

  Springing up, Grace went from marker to marker. Hannah had told her that ruins of buildings and graves over a hundred years old would be considered historic and might be set aside, sometimes restored and preserved. “Find a grave dating from 1897 or before,” she said.

  Mike found it. “Look,” he said, waving at Grace. He cocked his head and squinted at the numbers and letters barely distinguishable on the cracked and weathered wood. “December 21, 1897-December 30, 1897. Over a hundred years.”

  “Thanks, Mike,” Grace said. “A baby. It lived less then a month.” What was she doing? She had no input into what the park service did or did not do with Masterson land, and this graveyard was small and remote, with no descendants to question what the new owners did. Tears filled Grace’s eyes. Blinking, she looked around at the barks of trees while she regained her composure.

  Later that afternoon, the Reynolds clan led Grace, Hannah, Amelia, and Mike under the stone archway, which proclaimed REYNOLDS CEMETERY. Gravestones: white and gray, tall and short, ornate and simple and all clean, stepped one below the other like ripples approaching shore. Cut low, the grass was soft as a carpet to walk on. Since the cemetery, without the shade of trees, faced south, the snow had melted. Fresh plastic daisies, roses, forget-me-nots, violets burgeoning from vases decorated every grave. To one side of the cemetery stood a long covered picnic area filled with tables and benches. All of the benches had been freshened with dark green paint.

  Mary Reynolds Kelly moved close to Hannah. She spoke with pride. “Come September, our family gathers from here and yonder. We clean up the place, put new flowers and all. Then we have a mighty fine picnic. Last gathering Old Man roasted us a right good pig. We had us a fine dinner.”

  Last year in September, the ladies’ apple orchard had burned, and Wayne brought Hannah here and insisted that she accept the gift of sapling apple trees he raised, and then he had offered to help her replant her orchard. Hannah had seen, but not been on, the grounds of this cemetery, and Old Man had told her of a gathering that had just taken place. Now, Hannah looked carefully at the graves and noted that the flowers were too bright to have been placed here in September, not with all the rain and snow they had had. It appeared that the Reynolds family had spruced up the cemetery especially for this occasion, which seemed a bit unfair to Lurina, yet, it would take more than a few flowers and some paint to transform the Masterson cemetery from shabby to well groomed.

  “It’s a lovely spot, Wayne,” Hannah said to the young man standing beside her. She favored this site. Old Man had told her that his parents had died in a fire shortly after he himself had become a husband. Old Man related how scared he had been when he became responsible for rebuilding the farmhouse and outbuildings, working the farm, making a living, and being freshly married, the babies coming one after the next.

  “I done it. The Lord don’t give a man more’n he can manage,” Old Man had said. Then he had pointed to the mountains. ‘Tennessee. Kin live over yonder.”

  Hannah’s eyes had followed the humps and dips of tall hills. “Over which mountain?”

  Old Man waved an arm. “Over yonder, stand atop of that there mountain, and you can spit in Tennessee.”

  Now, Hannah met the relatives from Tennessee, since five of those family members were hosting this visit to their graveyard that afternoon: Mary Kelly and her husband, Ted, and Wanda and Wilma, Old Man’s nieces, who were twin sisters as well as spinster ladies from Johnson City, Tennessee. These four drove across the mountain every third Sunday of the month, weather permitting, to visit Old Man. There was also Wayne’s second cousin on his father’s side, Freddie Reynolds, a blacksmith living over in Barnardsville. He was the short tubby man who had leaned on the tombstone in Lurina’s family’s cemetery and chewed on a piece of twig.

  Wayne was saying, “Old Man says the
dead need a right pretty view, since they can’t get up an’ go no place.”

  “View of pastures and meadows filled with wildflowers in springtime. Wouldn’t mind being buried here myself,” Hannah replied.

  Wayne looked thoughtful. “Where they gonna lay you to rest, Miss Hannah?”

  She shrugged, sliced the air with her palm. “Who knows? Probably be cremated and buried under a rosebush.”

  “ ‘Tain’t fittin’, Miss Hannah. You need a proper restin’ place.”

  Old Man leaned against a tall, double marble stone topped by a small angel that seemed to perch on Old Man’s shoulder. “This here’s Pa and Ma. Right good folks, they was. Passed in a fire, just after the cows was taken to market. Fire started in the barn, burnt the hog pens, an’ the house. Doc said they passed in their sleep, never felt a thing.” He moved on, naming relatives, telling how they’d died, one from a ruptured appendix, and too far to get him to a doctor, another from heat stroke, another stomped by a bull. Old Man shook his head. “Never get you between a bull and cow come matin’ time.”

  Finally it was over. When Old Man bade them goodbye, he took Grace’s arm. “Now, Miss Grace, I’m dependin’ on you to tell Lurina what y’all done seen. Tell her she’d be right happy to lie a-restin’ in this here pretty place.”

  Grace had an idea. “Pictures,” she said. “Amelia, do you have your camera?”

  “It’s in the car, why?”

  “If I show Lurina both cemeteries, it may be easier.”

  “I have my camera, also,” Mike said, and he and Amelia walked down the hill to the car and returned with their equipment. How nice, Grace thought, to see Mike and Amelia working together again. Lance’s absence was a blessing, affording Amelia time to mend fences with Mike, to realize how stress-free she was without Lance Lundquist. And yet, Grace also understood Amelia’s attraction to Lance.