But it was yesterday’s other development that filled his thoughts. Sheriff Elmore’s twin brother Ray Junior—contrary to Locust County lore—was not missing in Vietnam. In fact, as unbelievable as it might seem, Ray Elmore, Jr., might be a deserter.
Aw, damn,Kel suddenly remembered.I was going to call CILHI and check the deserter list. Now it was Saturday and no one was at work, and it certainly wasn’t worth making someone run back into the office to check. He didn’t know what he would do with the information anyway. It didn’t appear to have any direct bearing on the Trimble case, and even if it was true, it was none of his business. That was the Elmores’ shame to bear and not his to expose. Who was he to argue with a bronze statue?
He stretched and closed his eyes again for a moment. He took a deep breath and then quickly rolled out of the bed and dressed, more casually than before, since it was Saturday. He stepped into faded blue jeans, put on an oversized white cotton shirt, and washed his face and teeth, and ran a hand through his hair, riling his cowlick even more than the pillow had managed. He wasn’t hungry; he didn’t normally eat breakfast, plus he’d been in Split Tree long enough now that his stomach had finally caught up to Central Daylight Savings Time, so it shouldn’t have been expecting anything at this hour. Still, he had over an hour to kill before the library opened. He pulled his curtains apart and looked out. The Albert Pike was up and running and the lot was filled with shiny new American-made pickup trucks and SUVs. Kel decided that he’d make his way across the street for something to drink while he waited.
It was a mistake, and he knew it as soon as he walked in the door. No sooner had he taken a booth than Jo was there with a large platter of biscuits and gravy. She had on a clean shirt and new jeans, the latter stretched more tautly across her ample hips than was comfortable to look at, and as she squared her body to him, her chest imposed into the neutral zone. “The usual,” she said with a too-friendly smile. Kel had eaten breakfast there once, two days ago, and that day’s selection now constituted his “usual.”
He smiled and thanked her.Glad Levine didn’t see that, he thought.
Despite a lack of any conscious hunger, he found that he was enjoying his breakfast. The sight of sunburned farmers in their gim’me caps, the sounds of pleasant conversations and the tink and rattle of china being served on hard-topped tables, the smell of bacon and ham and grits; it all evoked a sense of belonging that Hawaii would never be able to produce. He caught himself thinking about his sitting in his car in front of the Lab, and how each day he sat there a little longer than the day before, taking a little longer to find the resolve to continue. He chewed, and he thought.
“You doin’ just all right, Sugar?”
Kel opened the car door of his thoughts and looked up into Joletta’s face. “Excuse me?”
“Bless your heart. Did I disturb you?”
“No ma’am.” Kel smiled. “Just thinkin’.”
“A penny, then. What can I get for y’all? Need anythin’ else, or are you doin’ just fine?”
Kel shook his head. “No ma’am, doin’ just fine, thank you.”
“Well, y’all call me if you change your mind, hear me?” She turned and started to go.
“You know, Miss Joletta, you gotta minute?”
Joletta beamed. “Sure do, Sugar, and it’s Jo. No need to be such a gentleman. Now, what do y’all need?”
“I don’t recall if I mentioned to you, but my people were from around here years ago. McKelveys. Used to be quite a slew of them hereabouts. Anyway, since I’ve got the weekend free, I reckoned I’d try and do some work on the old family tree—you know? Visit my granddaddy’s property, see where my daddy grew up, hunt up some of the old cemeteries and see where some of the kin are buried, you know?”
“Sure do.” She was smiling but wasn’t sure whether Kel was asking her to accompany him or not and wasn’t quite sure how she was going to answer.
“Anyhow, I got some information that I may have some kin buried in the Wallace Cemetery—by any chance, you know where that might be?” He figured that this was one of those occasions where a little crimping of the truth didn’t cause any lasting harm. Besides, who was to say he didn’t have kin buried there?
Joletta looked somewhat disappointed and relieved at the same time that Kel hadn’t been leading up to a marriage proposition. “Now Sugar, don’t you know that I am the wrong woman to be askin’. Like I said, my family’s from Marked Tree originally. Can’t say I’ve heard of the Wallace Cemetery. Might be a small one. You sure it’s in Locust County?”
“No ma’am, can’t say that I am,” Kel replied. He looked at his watch. “I’m really kinda killin’ some time until the library opens. I figure they must have some kind of listin’ of local cemeteries. Sign on their door says they’ll be open in about fifteen minutes…and speakin’ of which, I reckon I’d better be gettin’ my bill.”
Jo picked up his empty breakfast platter and balanced it on her left forearm while she wiped her free hand on her thigh. She smiled and said, “Let me go and get that rung up for y’all.” She returned in a few minutes with the check and a handful of red-and-white peppermints that she broadcast on the table like bird seed.
Kel counted out his bill and added a tip, and then, waving across the room at Jo, he left, returning to the Sleep-Mor’s parking lot to get his car. He rolled down the window and allowed the warm air to vent before getting in. A few minutes later he was parked in front of the Split Tree Library. It was already open.
The room smelled of little cloth-wrapped sachets of dried flowers and fresh tea. Old-woman hot tea rather than iced. In addition to him, there was only one other soul in the library, a tiny, heart-shaped woman in a bright green dress that made her look like a springtime redbud leaf. She was sitting behind a desk that doubled as the checkout counter and library office, drinking her tea very precisely from a thin, white china cup. She smiled as Kel walked in the front door, setting a pair of small brass bells to ringing as he did so. He estimated her age at somewhere in the broad vicinity of eighty. Her hair was silver white and her face was a cobweb of intersecting lines etched into a skin the soft, cream color of handmade paper.
“Good morning,” she said. “How are you this morning?”
“Fair to middlin’, ma’am, and how are you today?” Kel replied.
“I’m doing but real fine. Is there anything I can help you with? You’re certainly free to go and look yourself around, but if I can help you with anything…”
“Thank you, ma’am. If you don’t mind, I’d like to use your genealogy room, if I might. Is that it yonder?” he replied as he pointed at the room labeledFAMILY TREE CENTER .
“Why yes, sir, it is. Be free to help yourself.” Her diction was conscious, and she tended to it as precisely as she drank her tea. She seemed focused on finishing off her words properly rather than following the east Arkansas habit of dropping the final Gs and Rs—the way Kel habitually did.
He smiled and thanked her as he walked past her desk and through the doorway into the small room that held the library’s genealogy records. He paused and signed in at a guest book on a small table near the door; smiling as he wrote his address asHonolulu, knowing that it would provide a source of endless speculation for the room’s usual patrons. The room wasn’t much larger than the desk and two chairs that occupied the center, and there wasn’t much in the way of records. He quickly spotted what he was after. Along the back wall were two old red-oak bookcases, their shelves drooping with exhaustion, or perhaps boredom. The one on the right, nearest the window, had a small hand-printed sign that identified it as the location of “County Vital Statistics.” The shelves contained several dozen books bound in blue and red and green, all vanity press from what he could tell. Some were family histories with self-possessed titles likeA Noble Breed: The Rumseys in America orThe Kings of Cotton: The Pate Family Tree, but what caught his attention were several multicolored books stacked alone on the third shelf and entitled such things asA Ga
zetteer of Locust County Cemeteries andLet the Dead Bury the Dead: A History of Local Cemeteries .
Kel emptied the shelf and found a small table where he could sit and review the books. It was time-consuming. Most of them were set in large print, but they were poorly indexed, requiring Kel to go through each one, page by page by page. It took the better part of two hours. None of them mentioned a Wallace Cemetery, though he did run across a McKelvey Cemetery that distracted him for the better part of almost thirty minutes. He made a note to visit it before he left the area.
But no Wallace.
Kel leaned back in his chair, tipping it onto two legs. He closed his eyes and arched the muscles of his back and thought. The Wallace Cemetery didn’t appear to be located in Locust County. Plan B would require going through similar books for nearby Lee, Phillips, and Monroe counties—to start with. Fortunately, the library seemed to have copies of all the materials he would need. He was about to sit up and get started when he heard a voice.
“Didn’t your mamma ever tell you that you’ll bust your noggin leaning back like that in your chair?” It was the old woman. She was standing in the door looking at Kel. When he opened his eyes he saw that she was smiling broadly and had meant her comment as a joke rather than a scold.
Kel laughed and assured her that his mother indeed had raised him better, and that he did in fact know better. He returned his chair squarely back onto its four legs.
“You look right stumped. Anything that I can help you with? Lived here my whole life, not much that I haven’t seen…problem is, there’s not much that my poor old brain can remember, either.” She was joking again, but as Kel sized her up, he realized that there was, in fact, probably very little that shedidn’t remember.
“Yes, ma’am, you just might.” Under normal circumstances, he would avoid asking directions or asking anything, for that matter, until he had completely exhausted his attempts to solve the problem on his own. In this case, he was not stumped to that level of desperation yet, but his watch told him the library would be closing soon and it wouldn’t be open tomorrow. “I’m lookin’ for a grave. A burial. From what I’ve read, it’s located in the Wallace Cemetery, but I can’t find any mention of it in any of the Locust County books. By any chance, do you know of a Wallace Cemetery? Is it in this county?”
The old woman looked at him for a long time. So long, in fact, that Kel began to reassess his opinion of her brainworthiness. Finally she spoke. “You got kin buried in that cemetery?”
“No ma’am, not directly. I’m sorta doin’ some research for a friend.”
She studied him at great depth again, then she slowly nodded her head. “Yes, sir, it’s in Locust County. But, Lord of mercy, I’ve haven’t heard it called the Wallace Cemetery for”—she paused as if adding up some great number—“well, for probably close to seventy years.” She smiled at Kel but didn’t elaborate, simply looked at him with a strange smile.
“It’s still around, though?”
She nodded again. Slowly. “Cemeteries don’t usually move around too much.”
Kel smiled at her again. “True,” he said, “but sometimes the land-graders don’t give them much choice. I gather you know where it is? I can’t seem to find it in any of these.” He closed the last book and added it to a stack that he had searched.
“No, I suspect not. Not under that name, anyhow. You’d have to be a very old resident of this county to call it by that name. Fortunately for you, I happen to be a very, very old resident of this county.”
“What name would I be likely to find it under…if I was to start all over again in these here books?”
“Elmore,” she said.
“Elmore?” Kel now straightened up in his chair. “Elmore? As in your current Sheriff Elmore? That kind of Elmore…the same kind of Elmore?”
“That’d be the name I’d look up…if I was you—or if I was your friend.” She smiled again and turned, walking back to her desk and teacup.
Kel sat, staring at the empty doorway for a moment, thinking that she had simply gone to retrieve something. She hadn’t, and when he finally realized it, he hurriedly turned his attention to the stack of books in front of him. He remembered seeing an Elmore Cemetery in one of the books—but which one? It had caught his eye because of all the talk about Big Ray and of course the discovery that Ray Junior wasn’t missing in Vietnam. He’d looked at it briefly—hunting up Big Ray’s listing—but otherwise had passed it by. It accounted for a good four or five pages worth—but in which book? He fanned them out on the tabletop as if they were giant playing cards. Which one was it in? Which one? He looked at his watch again; five minutes until closing, assuming they closed on time. He looked at the books. He’d been about midway through his reading when he’d seen it, so he could probably rule out the first two books. He picked up the third one, the blue-covered one entitled simplyLocust County’s Historical Cemeteries, and began quickly thumbing through it. No luck—or at least he didn’t see it as the pages flickered past. He cracked the fourth book,Comprehensive List of East Arkansas Tombstone Inscriptions: Lee, Locust, Monroe, and Phillips Counties. There it was. The Elmore Cemetery, Locust County. It covered several pages, 27–32, and there were a good three dozen entries by quick count.
Kel scanned the pages in frustration. There was no apparent organization to the names; not alphabetically, not chronologically. It read as if someone had simply driven out to the cemetery and written down the tombstone inscriptions as he encountered them—which, of course, was most likely what had happened. He ran his finger down the listings. Not all were Elmores; there were a fair number of Wallaces, a couple of Rumseys and Davidsons, even a “Loving Son and Devoted Father, Pleasant R. McKelvey.” He saw Big Ray’s epitaph again:Raymond Sallis Elmore, Sr.; July 4, 1916 –November 12, 1987, U.S. Navy, World War II, Shriner, “Correct me, Lord, but only with justice—not in your anger, lest you reduce me to nothing.”A page later he found one forElla Mae Elmore, Loving Wife of R. S. Elmore, Sr., Aug 31, 1917 –Aug 12, 1989, “She Rests With The Angels.”
Kel looked at his watch and then back to the page. It was twelve-fifteen, already past closing time. He read on. There were a number of tombstones that apparently had been too weathered to be legible and were listed as a mixture of letters and question marks; an author’s notation following each entry provided an estimate of the burial year. Some must have been so water-worn that none of the inscription remained readable; these were entered as simply “Grave Marker, date unknown.”
His finger passed over it the first time, but luckily his eye was lagging behind and caught hold of it. It was on the third page, sandwiched between two Wallaces whose markers dated to the late 1800s. The entry read:Luke 15:31, but the compiler’s note indicated that this stone was set “probably sometime after August 1966 and before June 1967.” How the author came to that temporal estimate, Kel didn’t have a clue, but John Doe’s burial permit was signed on September 25, 1966. So far, Luke 15:31 was the only entry in the right time frame. He continued scanning the pages but found no others that fit a late September to early October 1966 burial date.
“Well, Luke, how do you do?” he said.
Kel quickly searched the room, tracking down a scrap of jotting paper from a small cardboard box on one of the shelves. There also was a small, stubby yellow pencil like the ones used at miniature golf courses. He was beginning to write the entry down, verbatim, when he heard her voice from the other room.
“I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid it’s time to close up for the weekend. Are you about finished?” He could tell by the volume of her voice that she was walking toward the Family Tree Center. She soon appeared in the doorway, smiling as before. “Find what you were after? Was I right about the Elmores?”
“Yes ma’am, you sure were. Got it right here.” He stood up and waved the little fragment of paper. “Now all I’ve got to do is find the cemetery—the book here,” he nodded to the one still open on the desk, “seems to assume that the reader knows his wa
y around these parts.”
The old woman canted her head to the side. “And you’re not from around here?”
He smiled and paused, considering his answer. “No ma’am…I’m not from around here.”
“Now, young McKelvey…what would your daddy think about you saying that sort of thing?”
“McKelvey?” he asked. Then a smile broke. “You know who I am? How?”
“Of course I know. You’re Robert McKelvey’s youngest boy, aren’t you? Atlas McKelvey’s grandson? This is Split Tree, Mr. McKelvey, Split Tree can be a very small place at times.” She turned and started to walk away. “My own grandson will be here any minute…if you’d like, I can show you the Wallace Cemetery.”
Kel quickly reshelved the books and followed her into the library. “Yes ma’am, that’d be wonderful…I mean…if you’ve got the time. I hate to take up your afternoon.”
The old woman had walked to the window and was leaning forward, peering out to the street in front of the library. She seemed to not hear Kel. “Here he is now,” she said.
A minute later, the front door of the library was opened by a tall, whip-thin young man in his early twenties. The small brass bells jingled. He wore an Arkansas Travelers baseball cap over his sandy crew-cut, and he grinned lopsidedly at the old woman. “Hello, Gran’ma…you ready to git?”
The old woman turned to Kel. “Mr. McKelvey, this is my daughter’s youngest son, Bradford Wayne.” She looked at her grandson. “Bradford, this is Mr. Robert McKelvey. His folks used to live around here. Long time ago now.”
“Drink,” the boy said, stepping forward and taking Kel’s hand. It was a make-um-squeal type grip. Kel didn’t, but it took biting his tongue to avoid it.
“Drink?” Kel said.
“Yup. People here call me Drink—most people, that is. Not all.” He gave a quick nod to his grandmother. “Good to meet you, Mr. McKelvey.”
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