A car rolled into the driveway.
“Who goes there!?!” Tucker sprang to the door.
“Tucker, this isn’t your house.”
“Oh—yeah.” Tucker returned to Harry as Chris opened the door, letting Bitsy Valenzuela into the cooler air.
“Hi.”
“Hi, Bitsy.” Harry didn’t rise.
“A drink?” Chris asked.
“A Tom Collins would be heaven. I’ll mix it myself.” Bitsy knew the way to the bar in Chris’s house, a rounded steel bar with squares cut into the polished steel harboring lights: red, green, yellow, and blue. “Harry, you drinking?”
“Coke.”
“Such virtue,” Chris teased her.
“That’s me.” Harry hated inscribing the names.
Bitsy joined them at the coffee table. She sat next to Pewter, who stared up at her and then looked away. “I’m not up to snuff,” Bitsy observed.
“She can be snotty,” Murphy commented.
“Flies on your tuna,” Pewter grumbled, then shut her eyes.
“Where’s E.R.?” Chris inquired.
“Home for a change. He’s vacuuming the swimming pool. I told him I’d be back in a half hour. It’s his turn to cook. He’s a good cook, too. Say, if you’re hungry I’ll pick up two more steaks.”
“No, thanks,” Harry declined. “I am determined to knock out my half. I’ve got forty left.”
Bitsy picked up a card. “Bonnie Baltier. Great name.”
“Wittiest,” Chris said.
“How do you know that?” Harry asked.
“Senior superlatives,” Chris said. “I’ve studied your yearbook so much I think I know them almost as well as you do.”
“This goes above and beyond losing to Susan Tucker at golf,” Harry said.
“Well, I’m enjoying it. And to be honest, I’m hoping to meet some unmarried men through this. You never know.” She shyly smiled.
“Take E.R.,” Bitsy laughed. She loved him but she liked to complain of his foibles, one of which was the irritating habit of reading magazines backwards to forwards. “I could use a rest.”
“Any husband that cooks, I’d keep,” Chris told her.
“Amen,” Harry said.
“Anyone seen Marcy today?” Chris asked. “I thought she might drop by this afternoon.”
“I passed her on the road and waved.” Bitsy swallowed half her drink. “She looked miserable. I wish she’d come out with it and say her marriage is crumbling—we all know. I think all this stress is making her sick. Her face is drawn.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Harry’s eyebrows moved up in surprise.
“Another Deep Valley divorce.” Bitsy drained the glass. “They barely speak to one another.”
“People go through phases,” Chris blandly said.
Mrs. Murphy opened her eyes. “That’s a nice way to put it.”
“That’s true.” Bitsy got up to make herself another Tom Collins. “Chris, I owe you a bottle of Tanqueray. But how do you know what’s a phase and what’s a permanent part of character?” She returned to the original subject.
“You don’t for a long time. By the time I figured out my boyfriend was a self-centered jerk, I’d put three years into the relationship,” Chris complained.
The ice cubes tumbled into the tall frosted glass as Bitsy listened.
“What’s the story on Blair Bainbridge?” Chris asked. “I can’t quite get a fix on him.”
“He’s a model,” Harry said. “Makes a ton of money. He dates Little Mim Sanburne as well as women from other places. He’s kind of”—she thought for a minute—“languid.”
Bitsy flopped on the couch, again disturbing Pewter, who grumbled. “He can be as languid as he wants as long as he stays that gorgeous.”
“Amen, sister.” Chris held up her glass, as if toasting Bitsy.
Bitsy asked Harry, “We all thought you and Fair might be getting back together.”
“Did Mrs. Hogendobber tell you that?”
“No,” Chris answered, “but it just seemed, uh, in the cards and Fair is very handsome.”
“Fair Haristeen is the best equine vet in central Virginia. He’s a good man. He was a so-so husband. If he interests you, tell him. You won’t upset me.”
“Harry, I wouldn’t do that.” Chris blushed.
“I don’t care.”
“You do, too,” Tucker disagreed.
Bitsy took a long swallow. “Harry, no woman is that diffident about her ex-husband.”
“Uh.” Harry changed the subject. “Market Shiflett is single. He’s a nice guy.”
“Doesn’t look like Blair Bainbridge,” Bitsy frankly stated.
“If you marry a drop-dead gorgeous man you have to accept that other women will chase him and sooner or later he’ll be unfaithful. A man like Market is responsible, loyal, and true. Personally, I find those qualities very sexy. I didn’t at twenty-two but I do now,” Harry said.
“You’ve got a point there,” Chris agreed.
* * *
14
There were three reasons that people attended Charlie Ashcraft’s funeral. The first was to support his mother, Linda, who had never made an enemy in her life. Married young, dumped at twenty-one with a six-month-old baby, she had struggled to make ends meet. Like many an abandoned woman she spoiled her son—the only man who truly loved her—and she had bailed her offspring out of innumerable crises. Poor Linda could never see that she was part of the problem. She fervently believed she was the solution.
The second reason people came to the funeral was to see who else was there—namely, were there any teary-eyed women? Surprisingly, there were not.
The third reason people came was to make sure he was really dead.
A lone reporter from The Daily Progress covered the event but Channel 29 sent no cameras to mar the occasion. Then, too, the station manager had had his own brush with Charlie and enjoyed denying the egotist coverage of his last social event.
As people filed out of the simple Baptist church, Harry leaned over to Susan and whispered, “Did you notice there were hardly any flowers?”
“I did. Maybe people will give to charity.”
“More than likely they’ll give to an abortion clinic. That’s where most of his girlfriends wound up.”
Susan gasped, choking on a mint, and Harry patted her on the back. “Sorry.”
Thanks to her beautiful voice, Miranda Hogendobber, a stalwart of the choir of The Church of the Holy Light, was invited to sing a solo at the funeral. Linda Ashcraft asked her to sing “Faith of Our Fathers,” which she did. Walking out of the back of the church, her choir robe over her arm, she caught sight of Harry and Susan.
“Unusual,” Mrs. Hogendobber said under her breath.
“Uh-huh,” the two friends agreed.
They walked up the hill, the church cemetery unfolding in the deep green grass before them. Ahead walked BoomBoom, Bitsy, and Chris.
“Maybe they knew Charlie better than we thought.” Susan kept her voice low.
“BoomBoom’s tugboats. They’re missing Marcy Wiggins, though. H-m-m.” Harry thought a minute. “Boom probably called in tears saying she needed support since he was her first high-school boyfriend. Amazes me how she manages to be the center of drama.” She stopped as they neared the gravesite.
Linda, already at the grave, was being supported by her brother-in-law. The poor woman was totally distraught. As they gathered around the opened earth, Harry, in the back, scanned the band of mourners—if one could call them that. Apart from Linda, the mood was respectful but not grief-stricken. Meredith McLaughlin, Market Shiflett, and Bonnie Baltier were there, all from their high-school class.
Big Mim Sanburne attended, Little Mim was absent. Who was there and who was not was interesting, and Sheriff Rick Shaw and Deputy Cynthia Cooper had attended just to study the gathering.
Although they were too discreet to make notes at such a time.
“Why don’t we slip
away before Linda comes back through the crowd?” Rick put his hand under Cynthia’s elbow, propelling the tall woman toward the church.
Harry, noticing, left Susan and Miranda to catch up to Cynthia and Rick. She said, “Sad. Not because he’s dead but because nobody cares other than Linda. Can you imagine living a life where nobody truly loves you and it’s your own damn fault?”
“A waste.” Cynthia summed it up.
The three stopped before a recent grave festooned with flowers. The granite headstone bore the inscription Timothy Martin, June 1, 1958 to January 29, 1997. A racing car carved at the base of the tombstone roared from left to right. At the corners of the grave two checkered flags marked Tim’s final finish line.
“I didn’t know they’d done that.” Rick remembered picking up what was left of Tim after he spun out on a nasty curve coming down Afton Mountain. He turned too fast on Route 6 and literally flew over the mountainside. He raced stock cars on weekends, was a good driver, but never saw the black ice that ended his life.
The flags fluttered. “It’s nice that his family remembered him as he lived. He’d love this.”
“They keep him covered in flowers,” Cynthia remarked. “I hope someone loves me that much.”
“Someone will—be patient.” Rick smiled as he flicked open his small notebook with his thumb. “What do you think, Harry?”
“I’d question whoever isn’t here and should have been.”
He smiled again. “Smart cookie.”
The crowd was dispersing from the gravesite.
“Let’s forgo the reception. This is hard enough for Linda Ashcraft without two cops at the table.” Cynthia headed toward her own car. They hadn’t taken a squad car, and since the body was carried directly from the church to the cemetery there was no need for a police escort. Rick and Cynthia were uncommonly sensitive people.
Moving at a slow pace, Miranda, choir robe folded over her arm, and Susan came over the rise. They waved to Harry, who waited at the back church door.
Miranda exhaled, focusing on Harry. “I’d like a word with you.” The two walked under the trees as Miranda encouraged Harry to take in a boarder, namely Tracy.
* * *
15
Like many doctors, Bill Wiggins, an oncologist, was accustomed to getting his way. “Stat” was his favorite word, a word meaning “immediately” in hospital lingo.
Sitting on his back deck surveying his green lawn, not one dandelion in sight, he also surveyed his wife.
“Marcy, you’ve lost a lot of weight.”
“Summer. I can’t eat in the heat.” She watered the ornamental cherry trees at the edge of the lawn.
“You need to get a thorough checkup. I’ll call Dinky Barlow.”
Dinky Barlow was an internist at the hospital. He was unbelievably thorough.
“Honey, I’m fine.”
“I’m the doctor.” He tried to sound humorous.
“Probably need a B-12 shot.” She smiled weakly. It would never do to tell Bill what was off was their relationship. They rarely communicated other than simple facts—like bring home milk and butter. Bill, like most doctors, worked long hours under great stress. He never quite adjusted to his patients dying, feeling in some way that it was a blot on his skills.
Marcy needed more. Bill had nothing left to give her.
Then again, he didn’t look inward. As long as supper was on the table, his home kept in order and clean, he had nothing to complain about.
His silence, which Bitsy and Chris interpreted as hostility in their friend’s marriage, was really exhaustion. He had little time for chatting up his wife and none for her girlfriends, whom he thought boring and superficial.
Bill flipped open his mobile phone, dialed, made an appointment for his wife, then flipped the phone so it shut off. “Next Tuesday. Eight-thirty A.M. Dinky’s office.”
“Thank you, honey.” She hated it when he managed her like that but she said nothing, instead changing the subject. “You didn’t want to go to Charlie Ashcraft’s funeral?”
He swirled his chair to speak directly to her. “Marcy, the last place I ever want to go is a funeral,” he ruefully said. “Besides, he was an empty person. I’ve no time for people like that.”
“But doesn’t it upset you just a little bit that someone in your class was killed? Murdered?”
“If it were anyone but him, maybe it would.” He sat up straight. “You know what gets me? Death is part of life. Americans can’t accept that.”
“But Charlie was so young.”
“The body has its own timetable. In his case it wasn’t his body, it was his mind. He brought about his own end. Why be a hypocrite and pretend I’m upset? As I said, my dear, death is a part of life.”
“But you get upset when a patient dies.”
“You’re damned right I do. I fight for my patients. I see how much they fight. Charlie squandered his life. I wish I could give my patients those hours and years that he tossed aside.” He glared at Marcy. “Why are we having this argument?”
“I didn’t think it was an argument.”
“Oh.” Confused, he slumped back in his chair.
She continued watering, moving to the boxwoods, which were far enough away to retard conversation.
* * *
16
The 1958 John Deere tractor, affectionately known as Johnny Pop, pop-popped over the western hay fields.
Bushhogging was one of Harry’s favorite chores. She would mow the edge of the road, all around the barn and then clear around the edges of her pastures and hay fields.
The hay needed to be cut next week. She’d arranged to rent a spider wheel tedder to fold the freshly cut hay into windrows. Then she’d go back over the flattened, sweet-smelling hay with an old twine square baler.
Hard work in the boiling sun, but Harry, born to it, thrived.
Today she chugged along in a middle gear, careful not to get too close to the strong-running creek.
The horses stayed in the barn during the day in the summers, a fan tilted into each stall to cool them and blow the flies off.
Mrs. Murphy and Pewter were hanging out at the spring house. The cool water running over the stones produced a delightful scent. The mice liked it, too.
Tucker, sprawled in the center aisle of the barn, breathed in and out—little no-see-ums rising and falling with each breath—like an insect parasol opening and closing.
Harry loved this patch of Virginia. She had great pride in her state, which boasted two ancient mountain ranges, a rich coastline fed by three great rivers, and a lushness unimaginable to a Westerner. But, then, the Westerner was freed from the myriad gossamer expectations and blood ties inherited by each Virginian. So much was expected of a Virginian that ofttimes one had to escape for a few days, weeks, or years to rejuvenate.
A poplar tree downed in an early-summer storm loomed ahead. Harry sighed. She had to cut up the big tree, then drag the sections and branches to those places in her fence line that needed repair. Poplar didn’t last as long as locust, but still, it was for free, not counting her labor.
She cut off Johnny Pop and dismounted. The spotted tree bark remained home to black ants and other crawlies. Although flat on its side, roots exposed, the crown of the poplar was covered in healthy green leaves.
“Life doesn’t give up easily,” she said aloud, admiring the tenacity of the desperately injured tree.
She bent over the creek, cupped her hands and washed her face. Then she let the tumbling cool water run over her hands.
It suddenly occurred to her that her feelings about Charlie Ashcraft as an individual were irrelevant. The swiftness of his end sobered her. Security was a myth. Knowing that intellectually and knowing it emotionally were two different things.
She shook her hands, enjoying the tingling sensation. The sensation of death’s randomness was far less pleasant.
“Given the chance, I’ll fight to the end. I’ll fight just like you.” She patted the thick tree
trunk before climbing back onto the tractor.
* * *
17
“Smells okay.” Tucker twitched her nose.
“You rely on your nose too much. You have to use your other senses.” Pewter sat impassively on the sofa, watching Tracy Raz carry a duffel bag over his shoulder.
Pawing Through the Past Page 9