“Reckon he could work any slower?”
Ren said, “He’s doing alright Tam.”
“I’m getting my hair done this afternoon.”
“He’ll be through before long,” Ren said. “If not, me and Luth can handle it. You go on to your appointment.”
Luther raised his eyebrows at mention of his name. He pinched the front of his Hawaiian shirt and fanned his herniated gut.
“I should of known not to ask Ricky Birdsong to do anything,” Tammy said. “Never have been able to be nice to that boy.”
Ricky had a crush on Tammy-then-just-Treeborne back in high school. Him the Conquistadors star running back, her a curly-headed virgin who smoked cigarettes behind the marching band building during lunch. Tammy watched her figure and wore gaudy earrings. Her yearbook pictures made everybody else on the page look uglier than hammered shit. High cheekbones, green eyes set inside lids like halved nutshells. She was tan and tall, like her momma and daddy, and made average grades. There was no acting club or drama class at Elberta County High School, so Tammy prepared for the day she’d become an actress by watching movies at the Rampatorium every chance she got. Ricky Birdsong often saw her there. Him and the other Conquistadors sat on the far back terrace, drinking and cutting up. It wasn’t just Tammy’s looks that got to Ricky. Like everybody within earshot, he knew her plans to leave Elberta, Alabama, and admired her ambition. Would of done anything for her, and Tammy couldn’t of cared less. Ricky, she always said, was provincial. Tammy had ideas and she clung to them. No telling how many weekends she conned boys to carry her out yonder at the Ramp so she could envision herself up on that screen.
Ricky Birdsong never was one of these boys though. She didn’t date Conquistadors, and Ricky was the greatest of them all. The used-to-bes tell it took six boys to bring him down, legs yet pumping long after the referee blew his whistle. Never would step out of bounds, which helped get that scholarship from Mississippi—and also wound up doing him in. Ricky made it partway through the second summer practice then fell out while running sprints. He woke up in a hospital room with a window looking out over a cotton field bordered by pines. He felt no different, but the doctors assured Ricky that his life had changed entirely. His brain, they said, could not endure another blow to the head. Just the sloshing around caused by all those sprints had been enough to put the boy in a shallow coma. He had to be careful now, protect hisself, yet even so, the doctors said, his brain would over time degenerate.
News of this condition beat Ricky Birdsong home. When he stepped off that silver bus, the whole town was waiting with streamers and signs. The ECHS marching band, dressed out full and splendid, played the fight song again and again and again. Folks filled up the Birdsong house with casserole dishes and somebody’d strung a painted banner on the water tower: FLY, RICKY, FLY! It was like a death had occurred.
“I just want to move on from all this ugliness,” Tammy said to her brothers over the excavator’s roar. “Ren, I hope you ain’t still upset over that will.”
“Now ain’t the time Tam.” He fished a cigarette pack from his shirtpocket and smashed it twice against the heel of his hand. “If that’s how Momma wanted it, then that’s how it is.”
“She always had a mind of her own,” Tammy said. “Momma was going to do what Momma was going to do. Just ask Daddy.”
This was the second time that day Tammy’d brought up Maybelle’s will. She’d met Ren and Janie at The Fencepost for breakfast. Still tried to watch her figure, but Tammy loved a biscuit with just a dab of peach jelly and an egg so runny you’d dare not call it cooked. Truth, the will had been her doing. She’d played on her momma’s guilt and her feeble mind. Tammy felt bad that her brothers would wind up with none of The Seven. Oh, she could give them some land on down the road, but it wouldn’t be the same as if their momma did.
Ricky jammed a lever and the excavator heaved forward. The bucket came swinging down almost to the ground.
Tammy continued fussing about how long it was taking Ricky to do the job. She had on a bathing suit underneath her see-through blouse and high-waisted shorts. Summer days now long enough she might yet get to tan her legs before dark. She needed to look her best for her momma’s funeral. They were expecting a big turnout for the burial. Peach Days was just about two months away too. Tammy couldn’t afford to let herself go this time of year.
Ren said, “I’m going to see Millard down at Blessed Assurance this evening and set up a installment plan.”
“Luther told me you asked a nigger to sing the funeral.”
“I asked Lee.”
“Well I can’t believe Aaron just let him out thataway,” Tammy said. “A murder and only kept him in jail one night? That don’t seem right.”
“Nobody’s calling it murder Tam.”
“Well, nobody ain’t either,” she said. “And what about Daddy? Does he not matter?”
“Daddy’s been dead ten years.”
“Eleven,” she said.
“Lee’s always been good to this family.”
“Good, hell. He’s liable to’ve led her off in them woods and—”
“Don’t Tam.”
She glanced at her niece, who, looked like, was squatted down peering at the dirt. The girl was odd. Always had been and now her with that bizarre doll Hugh’d made. Ren’d said Janie hadn’t let the thing out of her sight these last two days. Even slept with it. “Sister,” Tammy said, “what’re you doing toting that filthy thing around?”
“I like him,” the girl said.
“She ain’t hurting nothing,” Ren said.
Janie stood up and wandered down the other end of the barn where her uncle Luther had laid back in an old claw-foot tub. His arms and legs dangled over the sides. She set Crusoe on his lap then stepped over a tangled roll of barbed wire and began picking through water-damaged boxes filled with foggy green jars meant for canning vegetables. Sometimes the girl could find a pearly snakeskin down in bottom of one, maybe a dry-fly shell clutched ahold the rim. She collected things like this and kept them on a windowsill in her bedroom.
She heard her uncle Luther talking to the dirt boy. In the corner of her vision she watched her uncle pull a blue-green bottle out from the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt then drip two clear droplets underneath his bulbous tongue. He offered the dropper to Crusoe, chuckled, then slouched back down, staring up at the underside of the roof, where swallows slung a universe of mud and straw nests. Before long Luther’d dozed off. Janie stood over him and watched the hula dancers on his shirt sway with his wheezy exhalations. She picked up Crusoe and rejoined her daddy and her aunt.
“Momma wasn’t always in her right mind,” Tammy was saying. Ren lit another cigarette and jammed it between his pursed lips. He’d smoked probably an entire box of Blue Mountains over the last forty-eight hours. “None of us wanted to face it,” Tammy went on. “We believe whatever’s easiest to believe, you know.”
“I reckon so,” he said. “She just always told me the land’d be split up between the all of us. I don’t know. I reckon it don’t matter.”
“I’ll give you your piece of the land Bubba,” Tammy said. She rubbed his shoulder, causing the ash-end of the cigarette to break off. “Right after we take care of this funeral mess. Then you ought to clear it like Woot and me are fixing to do. Timber’s high right now. You could take Nita somewhere with the money. Y’all ain’t took a trip since your honeymoon have you?”
“It ain’t about money Tam.”
“That’s nearly always what it’s about Bubba,” she said.
Their conversation was interrupted when, all sudden, the excavator revved then groaned like it might come apart. The arm folded and the bucket crashed into the partially dug grave. Ricky Birdsong helplessly jammed every lever he could as the machine violently shook beneath him. Tammy ran thataway and Ricky nearly took her out when he managed to get the bucket raised again. Mixed with dirt and grass clods was splintered wood. Tammy hollered, waved her arms. When Ric
ky saw her he shut off the engine, stuck a half-chewed cigar behind his ear, and asked what was the matter.
She didn’t bother answering as she peered down into the grave. Through a hole smashed in a coffin she saw her daddy’s face. Lips stitched into a grin and big-old ears shrunken like fruit left out on the countertop. She could see the lapel of his navy-blue suit and the knot of a red tie she’d bought for the occasion of his death.
The racket had woken up Luther, who strolled over and stood graveside with his sister and brother. “Looks like he didn’t die but yesterday.”
“I sure wasn’t expecting to see him again so soon,” Ren said.
The brothers snickered and Tammy gave them a look. When Ricky Birdsong saw what he’d done he hollered, “Lord Jesus forgive me!” Ren told the boy it was alright, an accident, but this did little to soothe him. “Lord Jesus forgive me!” Ricky bellered again and again while the others just stood there looking down at Hugh Treeborne as if he was going to rise on up and say, How y’all been? Of course he did not. But there rose up in his place a muffled sound, kindly like a boot being pulled loose from deep mud, and a terrible terrible stench.
“Shew,” Janie said, covering her nose and mouth, “something’s rotten.”
This just destroyed Ren and Luther Treeborne. They laughed till they cried. Janie stepped back from the grave. She’d never seen her daddy and uncle laugh so hard. Their faces looked like busted tomatoes. It was a little frightening to witness.
“Bunch of damn fools,” Tammy said. “All of you lost your everloving minds!”
After the brothers calmed down, they found a piece of tin and fit it over the hole in the coffin. Ren screwed the tin on tight. Tammy had gone on to her hair appointment. With some encouragement, Ricky Birdsong climbed back on the excavator. Dug a little more to the side this time, talking to somebody who the others could not see while he finished the job.
After Ricky left, Ren and Luther went to the house. Prepared food was coming by the carload, the kitchen given life again. But the brothers had decided to fix peach and mayonnaise sandwiches, like when they were boys, and have coffee before heading over at Blessed Assurance, where Maybelle’s body was being kept.
“Hungry Sister?” Luther asked.
“Nah,” the girl said. She grabbed Crusoe. “We’re going to play.”
Big yellow grasshoppers clung to weedstalks shooting up between Hugh’s assemblies. This was the first time Janie’d been on The Seven since the day they found her grandmomma. It felt the same, looked the same. This bothered the girl deeply. Nothing stopped, nothing changed, except it had—MawMaw May was gone. The grasshoppers buzzed in flight ahead of Janie and Crusoe. The girl took off running till the whole entire junk garden hummed as if it’d been rigged with electricity and a brown mass of insects swarmed above her head.
“Seen this?” Crusoe asked, holding up an assemblie done on a round lid. It showed a bridge and, underneath the bridge, stacked peaches. A man was smashing the fruit and painting handprints on the pillars with innards and juices.
“Nuh uh,” Janie said.
He set aside the assemblie then fished out another one.
“You can’t move that.”
The dirt boy ignored her and continued his work.
An hour passed. Crusoe had moved the assemblies he’d chosen into the edge of the woods above the spring when a chain saw started up across the clearing. Janie ran thataway and found her uncle Wooten. The chain squealed as he pushed the saw through a sweetgum tree with his good hand. The top of the tree got caught on the way down and Wooten had to section the trunk where it hung. The chain saw spewed white smoke into his face. He kicked uneven pieces out of the way then started into another tree. Birds lifted up from branches and sweetgum balls rattled loose. Wooten used his elbow to brace the chain saw up against his leg. The second tree he let lay whole where it fell. The one after that gave him trouble. Sawblade got bound up, and when he let go the motor died.
Maybe that’s it, Janie thought. Maybe he’ll quit.
She knew better.
Wooten wouldn’t quit.
He worked the saw loose, fixed the chain, then laid into the tree from the other side. When it crashed down, Janie felt the earth beneath her shake.
* * *
Two men from Blessed Assurance Funeral Home had pitched a canvas tent next to the gravesite and lined up folding chairs in its shade. Lee Malone stood in the sun though, next to Hugh and Maybelle’s headstone, the guitar he called Rosette slung on his shoulder and Buckshot by his side. The dog panted, tags on his collar jangled. Lee’d considered not showing. He’d packed a bag, thinking to light out for the Gulf of Mexico then work his way down Florida like he did back when he played the chitlin’ circuit. Sheriff Guthrie had warned him against leaving town till the exact cause of Maybelle’s death could be determined. Foot, he wasn’t worried about no fucking Aaron Guthrie. Wasn’t the threat of jail—or worse—that made staying in Elberta, Alabama, unimaginable, but the thought of Maybelle Treeborne no longer in it. Besides, Lee thought, Ren would of hunted him down. He could hear the boy where he sat in the tentshade saying, over and over, Monday’s a good day for a funeral ain’t it? And Nita, his wife, squeezing Ren’s big fingers and telling him, Uh-huh sugar, it sure is.
Ren and Nita were good together. They’d grown up on the same end of town. The Dautrives worked for The Authority, and for the telephone company over in Poarch County. Ren played for the Conquistadors in school and Nita, while she didn’t have the guts to go out for cheering, never missed a ball game. What else would you do Friday night in Elberta? Fall chill beating down from the hills, whole town dark but for multitudes of headlights trained on a hundred-some leveled yards of rich green grass. Ren would pick Nita out of the crowd before kickoff and give a secret wave. They married at sixteen and honeymooned in a cabin Nita’s cousin Bennie owned in the Smoky Mountains, brought back boxes of saltwater taffy and postcards with black bears and such foolishness on them. Janie too, birthed nine months later, a wet-lunged eight-pound pink thing with a smear of black hair going down the backside of her pretty head. They were good together, Ren and Nita—till they weren’t. It was impossible to point where this began. Spring before his momma died, Ren had started sleeping at the dam. At first he blamed it on work. To cope, Nita ate and she ate. Time of Maybelle’s funeral, the blame could no longer be mislaid. Ren wanted to fix things. He simply lacked strength. Now, with his momma dead, he was surely sapped.
The mourners spread across the pasture. Some gathered underneath the pole barn to keep out of the summer sun. Brother Goforth joined Lee Malone at the grave, a Bible held in his tattooed hands. His sermon would not save a soul that day, but Brother Goforth preached as if this would be the crowd’s final chance at salvation. As if Death would not return to Elberta, Alabama, and they would not reconvene to remember this truth.
When the sermon ended the men from Blessed Assurance moved the flower arrangement onto the headstone then began lowering the coffin into the grave. Lee stepped forward and sang, Oh, Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder … drawing out the words toward a chorus that, when he got there, Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee … sounded like all he could do to keep his voice from busting up. Everybody else could stand to cry though—and did. At one point Ren lunged out of his chair and knocked on the coffin four times, like he wanted to be let in there with his momma. The crowd did not gasp at this final goodbye. The son’s gesture, it was later said by many, was sweet. Nita calmly led Ren back to his seat, where he sang along to the hymn at the top of his lungs.
When the coffin hit bottom the men from Blessed Assurance yanked out the ropes from underneath it and wound them around their arms. Lee hushed singing and picked guitar quieter. “Close your eyes now,” Brother Goforth said. An occasional sob rose up from the mourners as Brother Goforth thanked The Good Lord then thanked everybody for being here today. “There’ll be food for the family at the house,” he said. Nobody ate so well as they did com
e a death in Elberta. Red velvet cake, butter beans with smoked ham, chicken dressing, butter biscuits, purple-eyed peas, collards, fried chicken. “Amen.”
Folks milled around the pasture. Janie hunted for Jon D. Crews among them. She saw Pud Ward leaning against the black hearse his daddy’d loaned for the funeral. A nicer one than what Millard Andrews owned. The fat boy Pud had made baloney and cheese sandwiches on the hood, letting them rest there till the orange cheese melted. As Janie made her way through the crowd she hugged necks and accepted smooches to the cheek and forehead from mourners. The men from Blessed Assurance began shoveling dirt into the grave. Janie saw her daddy excuse hisself and take a turn with the shovel. The clods landed with a hollow thud. It was just so unexpected, so surprising, the mourners repeated, exactly the way they were supposed to. Janie couldn’t find Jon D. anywhere. She was stopped again and again by folks saying they remembered her in diapers. Even the most distant Treebornes had come to see Maybelle buried: Idis, who kept pictures of his bird dogs in his billfold; Savannah, who wasn’t a Treeborne by blood but had married enough to count; Dan, who rented an apartment with somebody all the adults called “that boy.” Janie’d had enough and returned to her seat.
She watched her aunt stroking her uncle’s bad hand the way you do an anxious dog. Though the girl didn’t know this at the time, Tammy had been married once before to a sailor she met when she waited tables down at the Gulf of Mexico. It wasn’t Hollywood, but no woman in Elberta acted thataway back then. Single, off to live alone on the beach. The marriage ended when the sailor left town. Tammy soon left too, coming home to Elberta, where she met Wooten Ragsdale one day while checking the water meter in front of his daddy’s chickenhouses and slaughter facility. This job for the county how come Tammy toted a pistol in her purse—in case a snake was curled up around a meter when she opened the lid. She had buried a bullet into many scaled heads and draped yet-twisting bodies on the nearest fenceline, way her daddy’d shown her, to bring on the blessing of rain. Wooten was tall and substantial, favoring men in her family, and covered in downy black feathers from the chickens he’d killed that morning. He stopped her as she was leaving, said he had a question about the water payment.
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