The Marrowbone Marble Company

by Glenn Taylor

  Harold looked Ledford in the eye. He nodded. “God’s law first,” he said.

  Ledford nodded back. He took a deep breath. “I made a promise—” The door swung open. Willy stepped into the aisle, followed by Stretch. They proceeded forward, Willy on drunk legs, and sat down in the second pew.

  “Son,” Ledford said, “this isn’t for you.”

  Willy just sat there. His hair was messy, unwashed. He reeked of sweat and beer.

  “Son,” Ledford said.

  Nobody moved.

  Ledford took another deep breath. “I don’t have all night, so I’m just going to say what I have to say.” He wanted to get back to the hospital.

  “My mother used to tell me things happened, bad and good, in threes. Well, lately, it’s been all bad, and it’s been a mite more than three.”

  The men sat still in the pews. None fanned himself, despite the heat.

  Ledford said, “Don Staples guides me from the grave.” He cleared his throat. “I wrote something back to him, and I want you to hear me read it right here in this church.” A knot was building in Ledford’s throat. He spoke through it. “You all know I lost my own family when I was still a boy, and Staples was the closest I ever had to a daddy after that. And you all know I listened to him more than most did, even when it was hard to. But things being what they are, well…” He took out his daddy’s old batch book. He’d been writing in it all week at the hospital. He decided to get on with it.

  “What I have to say will take away everything Staples stood for, everything he taught me. But it would be a greater disservice to him if I didn’t speak what’s on my mind.”

  Herchel felt like he’d walked into a dream at Marrowbone. None of it seemed real, from the sight of Orb and his dead dogs right up to this moment. There was a pinching sensation behind his scar.

  Harold and his daddy sat hip to hip and listened. Both could remember their first time in the chapel. It had seemed so strange then, so foreign.

  Jerry’s notepad and pencil were in his pocket. He’d not written in it since Staples passed, and he wouldn’t start tonight. He knew what he was about to hear were not words of God.

  Fury tried not to fidget. Stretch did the same. Willy cracked his knuckles against his thigh.

  “What’s on my mind is evil,” Ledford said. His voice was steady and loud. It carried to the windows and the trusses. He spread the batch book on the lectern and looked to it. “Evil men abound in these parts. There’s no sense any longer in denying them or turning away from what they’ve done. They have set fire to a tree on this very lawn, and before that, they set fire to a home full of people. They are the same kind of men that set fire to a cross at my boyhood home.” He looked up at Mack and Harold Wells, then back at the book. He continued. “They have put their hands on my daughter.” He grit his teeth. The words were stuck in his throat. “They have struck down my son. They will pay for all of it.”

  Ledford looked at all of them then. He gauged in each a willingness to abide, and then he kept going. “In response to the acts of these evil men, some would point to the words of Jesus. They’d tell me to turn the other cheek, as so many have done in recent years, whether they were set upon by dogs or hoses or batons. And I would tell those who call for peace that they are good and righteous people. Staples was one of them. But my praise of peace and righteousness would be followed by different talk.” His head bowed deeper as he went. “Staples told me there was peace in my heart. He was wrong. There is no peace. There is only war. Right or wrong, this is the burden man must carry. And I will carry it up and down the Cut and along the ridge. I will take it to them where they hide if I have to.”

  He looked out the window. There was darkness in the ridge folds. “Women and children have got to leave here, and those who aren’t a part of what’s to come. But for those who stay, I’ll tell you what.” He looked at them. “We can stir the creek and wake up the trees. We can be a people freed.”

  It was quiet, and then, there came the sound of hooves on the chapel lawn. They stopped. There was a blow and snort, the sound of Boo the mare. Footsteps pounded up the chapel stairs. The door opened, and Wimpy stepped inside. His shirt was stuck to his skin and he gripped his rifle by the stock. “Ledford,” he said, out of breath. “You got to come see this for yourself.”

  Ledford descended the front stairs. He swung onto Boo and held fast. The rest of the men stayed behind.

  The horse came up on the gate. It had gotten dark, but Ledford could make out Dimple, standing with his shotgun at his side. He was talking to another man, and behind him, there was a long white car. Ledford squinted. It was Charlie’s Impala.

  The man Dimple spoke to was Erm.

  They dismounted. Ledford regarded his old friend, who smiled. His teeth bridge was missing—nothing but emptiness. His eyes were hollow. His suit stitching was pulled out in spots, hanging loose on his frame.

  “Hey Ledford,” he said. “I know you’re mad at me for the land deal, but I didn’t know that your property was—”

  “Isn’t my property,” Ledford said. “Belongs to the Bonecutter brothers.”

  “Right,” Erm said. He looked at the brothers, nodded.

  He’d never cowered like this. He’d never shown such respect.

  “Is that Charlie Ball’s car?” Ledford craned to see the inside.

  “Yes it is.” Erm turned and walked through the half-open gate. They followed him.

  He swung open the driver’s door and folded the bench seat forward. On the floor was a green wool blanket. He pulled it back. Charlie Ball was in a prone position, stuffed between the backseat and the front. His mouth, hands and feet were duct-taped. He kept his eyes on the upholstery in front of his face. Breathed hard through a clogged nose.

  “Found him at his foul-mouthed girl’s place in Charleston,” Erm said. “I followed him there once, couple years ago.” He shook his head.

  “Son of a bitch is gone two weeks at a time, his wife doesn’t blink an eye.”

  Ledford looked at the Bonecutters. It was clear they’d already seen what was in the car. He looked at Charlie again. “Cover him up,” he said.

  Erm did so and slammed the door shut. “It’s a wonder a man so fat can fit back there,” he said. “Listen, Ledford—”

  “Can we fit the Impala in the crib barn?” Ledford called.

  Dimple said they could.

  “Let’s get the car in here, then get him up to the chapel.” Ledford looked up the main road. It was dark and quiet. “Nobody tailed you?” he asked.

  “Nobody.”

  “You know he’s on the news—they’re searching for him.”

  “I found him first,” Erm said.

  They got the car in the barn, rolled Charlie up in the blanket, and carried him up the Cut, a man on each end. He swung like a hammock between them.

  In the chapel, they dumped him in the aisle with a thud. Everybody stood from the pew and looked.

  Fury nodded to his father, who smiled at him, toothless and grateful for the phone call.

  Ledford unrolled the blanket and Charlie grunted and seized on the floor. The church lights confused him and he shut his eyes tight.

  “I’ll be damned,” Mack said.

  “Is that Charlie Ball?” Herchel was the first to approach him. He knelt and looked at the man on the floor, as if some species he’d not encountered before. Herchel poked him in the cheek where the tape stretched, peeled at the edge by sweat. “Pee-yoo,” Herchel said. “I believe he’s pissed himself.”

  Dimple stood in the open chapel doorway. “Runs in the family,” he said. He turned his head and spat tobacco juice down the stairs. “I’m going back to the gate just in case.” He was gone.

  They sat Charlie in the back pew. He’d yet to open his eyes.

  They gawked and mumbled on his predicament. Then, Willy bolted for him. He stopped a foot away, planted his feet and swiveled his hips. He brought everything he had in a roundhouse right, and it landed at Char
lie’s cheekbone. Things broke, in face and hand both. It was an awful sound, amplified by all that empty wood. Charlie fell to the floor and Willy hopped in a circle, clutching his rebroken hand and cursing.

  “Let’s get a handle here,” Erm was saying, and everybody stayed frozen where they were. He looked at Charlie, who’d crawled under a pew.

  “You boys need to calm down.” He pulled a flask from his jacket pocket and held it aloft. “Takers?” he asked.

  Ledford stepped forward and took it from him. He unscrewed the cap and stuck it to his lips. Turned it over and looked to the trusses. They watched his Adam’s apple bob.

  After a while, Erm gathered the men in the front pews and asked questions about all that had happened—the Ringer match, the hit-and-run, the disappearance of Shorty and the Ball cousins. Fury hadn’t elaborated on the phone.

  Erm looked at Ledford. “I’m sorry this has happened,” he said. He stood and walked down the aisle. He locked the chapel door and checked Charlie on the floor. “Still sawin logs,” he said.

  He called Willy, Stretch, and Harold to the back, and they came and stood with him. He pointed to Charlie Ball. “One,” he said. Then he pointed to the three of them. “Two, three, four.” He pointed to himself. “Five.”

  They looked back at Erm, blank.

  He put a hand on the pewback and leaned. “Two of five are dead men,” he said. “One, inside a week, the other a year.” He let it sink in. “But you three are boys.” He pointed at the men up front. “Harold,” he said. “Your old man was a boy once, but he went to Germany and came back a man. Willy, yours wasn’t even a boy when he went overseas, and he sure as hell wasn’t one when he came back.” He looked at Stretch. “I don’t know about you.”

  Stretch said, “My daddy’s in prison and my brother broke parole. I just beat a assault rap against Shorty Maynard.”

  “Enough said.” Erm liked the young man. He looked at Harold.

  “This isn’t law school.” He looked at Willy. “And it isn’t the racetrack. This is something you don’t come back from.”

  They said they understood. He led them to the front pews.

  Erm sat down on the risers in front of the men. He was tired. This would be his last hurrah. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I was just telling the young ones that they were looking at a dead man.” He took off his shoes and rubbed his feet. “But there are some things in this shit life I’m good at, times when I know what to do.” He looked Ledford in the eye. “This is one of those times.”

  “I’ve got to get back to the hospital,” Ledford said. The whiskey had both settled and frightened him. He couldn’t look in Willy’s direction, and he could feel Don Staples through the church wall.

  Erm nodded. “I’ll put this thing together quick if you fellas will give me a hand.”

  Mack was uneasy. He wished Harold had never come back to Marrowbone.

  “Listen,” Erm said. He sensed he was losing them. “Some men you can put in the ground and nobody notices. I’ve known those men, and I’m one of em.” He was free to tell the truth about killing. His own coming end had made it that way. “Another kind of men,” he went on, “you can’t just make them disappear and expect your life to go on.” He motioned toward Charlie down the aisle. “You have to plan,” he said. “You have to know what you’re doing.”

  Ledford knew that Erm was right.

  They listened to him talk. Then Erm asked them questions. None could understand his reasons.

  “Who knows about cars?” he asked.

  Mack and Stretch raised their hands. “Who knows someone in Charlie’s pocket, maybe Shorty Maynard’s too?”

  Ledford raised his hand. “Good,” Erm said. “Let’s get down to brass tacks.”

  THE GREEN BIRD respirator clapped and hissed. It had sung Rachel to sleep in her chair again. Her hand was wrapped tight around Orb’s, her arm accustomed to the discomfort of extension. She’d not miss the squeeze she knew was coming.

  It was dark in the hospital room. One tube light above Orb’s head. Moonlight through windowblinds was scarce. Mary sat in the corner chair. She’d bought her mother a new pair of size-six knitting needles and was waiting for her to wake up. The needles were wood, not bone, but Wimpy had made a case for them that Rachel would surely like. It was a carved rosewood fish, its head the screw-off cap. Mary thumbed the sanded gills, ran her fingers over the tiny scales. She listened to the respirator. She would not look up from her lap. She would not look at Orb anymore.

  Ledford came through the door. He walked to the bed and put his hand on Orb’s forehead. There was heat and there was swelling, and though a machine did the boy’s breathing, Ledford bent to him anyway, and he put his head to Orb’s nose and listened. “That’s a boy,” he whispered. He kissed him where the wrap revealed tiny black hairs, sprouting new. They’d shorn his whole head for the surgery. “I love you Orb,” Ledford whispered.

  He straightened and looked at Rachel, who slept sitting up, her mouth open. He whispered that he loved her too, and then he walked over to Mary in the corner and kissed her on the forehead. “I used to sit in the driveway of the house where you were born,” he said. “I used to watch your mother hold you and kiss that little head.” He almost smiled, and then he left.

  Mary couldn’t be sure, but she thought she’d smelled liquor on his breath. She thought she’d seen tears in his eyes. Both were firsts, and she didn’t know what to make of her daddy then. She rubbed the wooden fish and hummed “Amazing Grace” and tried not to think at all.

  AT A QUARTER to midnight, on July 20th, in the kitchen of W. D. Ray, Charlie Ball sat in a schoolroom chair with no desktop, a .45 pressed to his temple. Ledford held the gun steady. He watched W.D. read numbers off a scrap of paper. The old man forced his fat fingers into the holes and dialed.

  He held the receiver to his head, and after a while, he hung it up. “No answer at the second one neither,” he said.

  “Well, then dial the third number,” Ledford said.

  “The emergency one?”

  “I’d say this qualifies,” Ledford said. “Wouldn’t you Charlie?”

  Erm leaned against the icebox and smoked.

  Charlie kept his mouth shut. He couldn’t figure what they were up to. They’d had him for a week. At first, he was tied in the crib barn next to his car, taped, fed water and bread twice a day from the hands of the Bonecutter brothers. But after four days, they’d loosed the knots and peeled off the tape. Erm had walked him at gunpoint to an empty Marrowbone house. In the bathroom, he’d told Charlie to strip and shower.

  “Scrub good,” Erm had said. “Get all that tape residue off.” Someone had laundered Charlie’s clothes, and he re-dressed and slept in the empty house under watch of revolving guards. It occurred to him that maybe they wouldn’t kill him after all.

  On the third ring, there was an answer. “Shorty?” W.D. said. He was wide-eyed, looking from Ledford to Erm.

  “Just say what we practiced,” Erm whispered.

  It was Noah on the other end. He asked W.D. what he wanted.

  “I’ve got something,” W.D. said. He was talking loud, like a child might to a tin can phone. “Something big that’s goin to get you all off the hook on this hit-and-run thing. But I’ve got to see Shorty in person. Can’t talk about this on the telephone.”

  Charlie opened his mouth as if to shout warning.

  Ledford stuck his .45 inside.

  Charlie pissed himself again.

  Erm nodded at W.D., let him know he was doing just fine. “Charlie’s here now…yes,” W.D. spoke into the receiver. “No, they’ve all gone to Charleston for the weekend. Ledford, Mack, all of em. Some other benefit up there at the Capitol for that other killed Kennedy boy.” He nodded. Gave Erm a thumbs-up. “All right. I’ll see you soon.” W.D. hung up the telephone.

  TEN MILES AWAY, in Elmwood, Noah Ball and Shorty Maynard gathered themselves. They shuffled in the dark to find their shoes. Empty Mason jars were everywhere. Canned pea
ches and green beans and tomatoes polished off. Shorty kicked one over reaching for his gunbelt. Glass shattered. “This better be good,” he said.

  The room smelled like a cave. It was a secret room, a bomb shelter Noah had dug out in 1951. Its doorway was hidden behind a bookcase in his basement. The smell of embalming fluid was embedded in its walls. He’d stocked it sufficient with food and water and liquor.

  They’d been living inside for two weeks, emerging only to empty piss and shit buckets in the mortuary sink. Their second day inside, they’d listened as the Bonecutter brothers searched the basement, mumbling and scooting equipment across the floor.

  Shorty got his gunbelt buckled. “We’ll take my car,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” Noah scratched at his neck stubble. It had grown in every which way. “We could take my—”

  “We’ll take my car.” Shorty unlatched the shelter door and pulled it open. He pushed hard on the back of the bookcase.

  They’d hidden the squad car under a tarp in a locked garage down the street.

  In the shadows of the old trees lining Elm Avenue, they ran there.

  ERM PATTED W.D. on the back. “You were perfect,” he told him. “Now go on upstairs and lock the door behind you. You remember how to turn on the television?” Erm had bought the old man his first set the day before.

  “I remember,” W.D. said. He walked up the stairs, greasy yellow cat at his heels.

  Erm looked at Ledford and Charlie. “Keep that gun on him,” he said. “I’ll be back.” He walked through the living room and out the front door.

  From the porch, Erm pointed his flashlight to a wide patch of gravel alongside Knob Drop Road. He pushed the button three times, on and off.

  Inside the Packard, Stretch said, “That’s it. Let’s go.” He sat in the passenger seat. There was a toolbox at his feet, and next to it, an old kerosene blowtorch.

  Willy fired the ignition. Before he drove away, he stuck his own flashlight out the driver’s window. He aimed it west, up the road toward Marrowbone. He switched it on and off three times.