“So?”
“So when I got here, the newspaper was on the couch, right next to where he would have been sitting to pull socks.”
“Where is it now? Did Aunt Maggie throw it away?”
“Probably not.” I checked the magazine rack, and pulled out the newspaper on top. Richard peered over my shoulder and we skimmed the front page.
“Is that how you found it?” he asked.
“Uh huh. Folded over to this article about Melanie Wilson.”
“You think Paw had this out when he was pulling socks?”
“I don’t know. Why would he have been that worried about Melanie?”
“Did he know her?”
“Of course. This is Byerly—everyone knows everyone. I suppose he would have been upset about her being missing, but it doesn’t seem like a sock-puller to me.
“Maybe he was worried on Thaddeous’s behalf. Since Thaddeous was out searching and all.”
“Maybe. Let’s hold onto this.”
“Shouldn’t we use tweezers to handle it, and seal it in a plastic bag?”
“I’m going to hit you upside the head if you don’t behave yourself,” I said, feeling oddly guilty for making even a small joke. “We may as well look around and see if we can find anything else.”
Unfortunately all I found was a dirty coffee cup and an empty Coke bottle, which I carried up to the kitchen. I returned to find Richard immersed in one of Paw’s westerns.
“Richard! You’re supposed to be looking, not sitting there with your nose in a book.”
“I thought it might be a clue.”
“Give it here.” He handed it over, and energetically looked under the sofa cushions while I replaced the paperback on Paw’s shelf.
“How about this?” he asked.
“What?”
He handed me a local road map. “It was stuck between two of the cushions.”
“So that’s where it was. Paw usually kept it in the glove compartment of the station wagon. I wonder why he had it out.”
“Did he share your affinity for maps?”
“Nope. I’m the only map freak in the family.” I unfolded it and spread it out on the couch beside me. “Paw marked on his maps,” I said in a tone of disapproval, looking at several Xs marked in various shades of ink.
“You stick pins in yours.”
“That’s different. You can pull the pin out again so you can still read the map.” I folded it back again. I never could understand why other people had so much trouble folding road maps. “I wonder if it’s all right if I keep this. I don’t have a map of the area back in Boston.”
“Careful,” Richard warned. “If Aunt Maggie sees you with that, you’ll be demoted to vulture.”
We eventually did get the den, living-room, and kitchen straightened up, but found nothing else that seemed to mean anything. By then Aunt Maggie was awake, and we went to Hardee’s to get dinner. Afterward we watched television until time for bed.
Chapter 18
I was glad we had set the funeral for early in the day so there was no time for me to dread it beforehand. By the time we showered and dressed, it was time to go to the church.
The final decision on the open casket versus closed casket service had been a compromise. The mortician brought Paw’s coffin to the church early and left the lid open for a time so that those who wished to could come pay their respects before the actual service. I decided not to go. Whatever it was in that box was not my grandfather.
Instead, Richard and I waited until after the coffin had been sealed to walk over. The church would have been comfortably filled with just us Burnettes; with all of Paw’s friends and more distant family connections, it was bursting at the seams. It did make me feel a little better to see that others were mourning him, too.
The flowers were glorious—sprays of roses, pots of carnations and begonias, and elaborate groupings of blooms I didn’t recognize. The mill had sent an impressive display, and there was a small arrangement from my company and one from the English department at Boston College.
Paw’s cousin Yancy spoke for him, of how fully he had lived and how he had given so much of himself to others. Then Aunt Nellie, Aunt Nora, Aunt Daphine, Aunt Edna, and Aunt Ruby Lee left their places and stood together like they had as girls to sing Amazing Grace. It had been Paw’s favorite hymn, and as their voices rose sweetly, tears ran down my face without my even realizing it.
For the drive to Woodgreen Acres, most of the family rode in the fleet of black Lincoln Continentals provided by the funeral home. The graveside service was simple, no more than a chance for the mourners to pray together. My aunts openly sobbed as the casket was lowered into the ground. Then each family member gently tossed a handful of earth onto the casket.
We lingered at the cemetery to accept condolences. Feeling stifled by the heat and the press of people, I led Richard to two graves at the edge of the family plot.
“This is where my parents are buried,” I said. “Alice Burnette McCrary and James Lawrence McCrary.” Their bronze plaque looked so plain, marked only with their names and the dates of their births and death. I hadn’t thought up any words for them. I didn’t remember thinking at all, not for a long time after the accident.
“When they died,” I said, “Paw never once tried to shake me out of it or cheer me up. He knew I’d get better in my own time. Now I have to get better all over again.”
Richard pulled me close, and kissed my forehead lightly.
“I should have brought them some flowers. It looks so empty,” I said.
“Wait here a minute.” Richard walked over to where workmen were moving the myriad of flowers away from Paw’s grave to begin covering it with dirt, and surreptitiously carried away a small pot of carnations. Then he returned and placed it in the center between the two graves.
“I don’t think Paw would mind,” he said.
We stood silently for a moment, and then an uncomfortable thought occurred to me. “Richard? Do you suppose whoever killed Paw came to the funeral?”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t think of that,” he said, turning to look at the people still milling in the cemetery. “If it were someone he knew, I would think there would be a good chance of it.”
I shivered despite the heat. Maybe the killer was still here, expressing polite sorrow to my relatives. As I inspected the group of people, trying to decide who could be a murderer, Thaddeous walked toward us.
“Laurie Anne? The car’s getting ready to go.”
Richard took my hand, and the three of us walked to the waiting car and rode back to the church.
Chapter 19
After the funeral, all of us Burnettes and a fair number of family friends gathered at Aunt Nora’s house. I knew Aunt Nora had volunteered her house so that Aunt Maggie wouldn’t have the bother, but all I could think of was that it was the first family gathering I had ever been to that hadn’t been at Paw’s house.
Aunt Nora and Aunt Daphine managed to fit most of the vast quantities of ham, chicken, barbecued pork, casseroles, macaroni and cheese, potato salad, and fresh baked biscuits that half the town had sent on the dining-room table, and covered the kitchen table with the cakes, pies, and cobblers from the other half.
Despite myself, I joined the crowd lining up for food, covered my paper plate with a respectable meal, and ate every bite of it.
“There’s something about funerals,” Aunt Daphine said with a small smile. “They just make people hungry.”
People wandered to and fro, chatting, hugging, even laughing when some distant cousin’s little girl escaped her mother during diapering and ran buck-naked through the house.
“They almost seem to be enjoying themselves,” I whispered resentfully to Richard.
“It’s always like this,” he whispered back. “A funeral is such a strain, and it’s such a relief when it’s over that it almost seems like being happy.”
“I guess you’re right,” I admitted, and then said, “I’ve b
een so upset, I didn’t even think about how anyone else felt. He was their grandfather and father and brother, too. Everyone loved Paw.” I squeezed his hand. “You loved him.”
“Yes, I did. I love you, too.”
“I’m going to go talk to people,” I said determinedly.
I soon lost track of which aunts, uncles, and cousins I had spoken to. I admired Vasti’s dress, brought Sue a footstool, and even managed to laugh politely when Linwood asked me how many Yankees it takes to screw in a light-bulb. After hours of hugging necks and exchanging sympathy, I noticed the crowd was beginning to thin.
When Aunt Daphine got ready to go, I walked her to her car. “I suppose you and Richard will be heading back up to Boston tomorrow,” Aunt Daphine said.
“Actually, I think we’re going to stay in town for a few days.” There was a promise we had to keep.
“Good. Maybe we’ll get a chance to talk before you go. Why don’t you come by the beauty parlor tomorrow and I’ll take you to lunch? About one?”
“I’d like that.”
Aunt Daphine leaned back to study my face. “Laurie Anne, I know what Paw meant to you. We’re going to miss him, but don’t you forget that we’ve still got each other.”
“I won’t.”
“We all love you. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” I watched Aunt Daphine drive off, and then went back inside.
Aunt Nora was in the kitchen stuffing dirty paper plates and cups into a trash bag.
“Let me give you a hand,” I said.
“That’s all right. There’s not that much to do.”
I helped for a while anyway, and then collected Richard to head back for Paw’s house.
Chapter 20
Aunt Maggie had driven her own car to Aunt Nora’s so she was already at the house when we got there.
“Good, I’m glad you’re here,” she said when she saw us. “I meant to make sure we had some time alone before the others get here, but I forgot to tell you. You two sit down and I’ll be right back.” She bustled upstairs.
“What’s going on?” Richard asked.
I shrugged. “With Aunt Maggie, there’s no telling.”
A few minutes later, Aunt Maggie came back down the stairs carrying a grey, metal strongbox.
“Laurie Anne, I’ve got something to tell you before the rest of the crew gets here, and I want y’all to promise to keep it to yourselves.”
“I promise,” I said.
“You, too,” Aunt Maggie said to Richard.
“I promise,” he said.
“All right then. Laurie Anne, Ellis always was better than me when it came to showing his feelings, so I don’t have to tell you how much he thought of you.”
“I know Mama was his favorite.”
Aunt Maggie looked at me sharply. “You think that’s why Ellis told everybody who would sit still long enough about what good grades you got in school, and how you won that scholarship for college, and what a good job you got up North? Because you look like your Mama? Lord, child, he was so proud of how you made something of yourself that he wouldn’t have cared if you were as plain as a mud fence.
“Now Ellis loved all of his grandchildren, but I think he thought you were the most like him. You did the things he wished he could have. That’s why he didn’t try to talk you out of moving to Boston, even though it liked to have killed him when he had to come home to this empty house. He knew you’d never be satisfied working at Walters Mill.”
“There’s nothing wrong with working at the mill,” I protested.
“I’m not saying that there is, but you know doggone well you wouldn’t have been happy working there. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I admitted.
“Ellis knew that, too, and he knew when to let go. The only thing he was afraid of is that he’d lose you for good, that you wouldn’t remember where home was.”
I squirmed a bit at that, remembering just how few and far between my visits had become.
Aunt Maggie noticed my discomfort, and patted my leg. “Now don’t act like that. You done right by Ellis. You wrote letters all the time, and called every two, three weeks, and came down when you could. That’s not what Ellis was worried about. He wanted you to know that this is home.” She sighed. “I’m not telling it right.”
“‘Where we live is home, Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts,’“ Richard said.
“That’s right. That’s what I’m getting at.” She pulled a key from her blue jeans pocket, used it to open the strongbox, and fumbled around in it.
“What play was that from?” I whispered to Richard.
“Oliver Wendell Holmes, actually. I couldn’t think of one from Shakespeare.”
Aunt Maggie finally found what she was looking for, and held up a folded document. “Do you know what this is?”
“No, ma’am.”
“It’s the deed to this house, and the land around us. The Burnettes have owned this place for five generations. You know we used to own acres of farmland all around. My daddy had to sell off most of it during the Depression and it hurt him worse than just about anything. The day he signed the papers, he came home and pulled out the family Bible and made every one of us children put our hands on that Bible and swear that we would never sell this house. He said that unless we were pure starving to death, we should never let it go because it’s that much a part of us. Ellis and I and all our brothers and sisters swore to that.
“Now we knew the house was going to go to Ellis because he was the oldest, but Daddy made us all swear because he figured that as the oldest, Ellis would be the first to go. Of course God had different ideas, and Ellis and I had to bury four brothers and two sisters. I’m the only one left, and Ellis left me the house.”
I nodded, but I still didn’t know why she had to get me alone to tell me this.
She went on. “Ellis told me he was doing it this way several years back. I told him that was fine, because I still remembered our promise. The problem was, what should I do with it after I was gone? I never could find a man I could stand to be around for any length of time, so I never had any children. I told Ellis I wanted to leave the house to one of his children or grandchildren, but I didn’t know which one. He asked me to leave it to you.”
I could only stare at her. I never would have guessed that she was leading up to this. “But shouldn’t it go to one of the aunts?” I finally said.
“The girls all have their own homes, except Nellie, and Nellie wouldn’t have it for long with all the fool stunts she and Ruben pull.”
“I don’t even live in Byerly anymore.”
“Ellis said the distance didn’t matter. You’re a Burnette, and this is the Burnette house. That’s all that matters.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say, not one word.
“Now there’s a condition,” Aunt Maggie continued. “You’re going to have to make that same promise Ellis and I made all those years ago. Do you know where the Bible is?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Go get it.”
I went to the oak bookshelf in the corner that held Paw’s photo albums and scrapbooks, pulled out the tattered, leather-bound book, and carried it back to Aunt Maggie.
“Put your hand on it,” she instructed.
I obeyed.
She looked into the distance for a minute. “You know I can’t remember birthdays or anniversaries to save my life, but I can remember what Daddy made us promise like it was yesterday. Repeat after me: I promise that I will never sell this house as long as I live, and to make sure that when I’m gone, it stays in the Burnette family forever.”
I repeated her words, and she nodded. “That’s good enough.” She looked at Richard. “I asked Ellis if I should make you swear, too, but he said he trusted you to do the right thing. You better, or dead or alive, I’ll come after you.”
The threat would have sounded ridiculous in almost any other circumstance, but Richard took it as it was inte
nded and nodded.
Aunt Maggie put the deed back in the strongbox and locked it back up. “Now do you know why I made you promise not to tell anyone else?”
“Not exactly,” I admitted.
“Well, I don’t want to name names, but some of your cousins might not be too happy with the way we’ve set things up. Neither Ellis nor I wanted any hard feelings at a time like this, so we thought it would be easier this way.”
She looked at the clock. “Lord, look at the time. I need you two to run up to the store and get some Coca-Colas. The whole crew is going to be here in an hour or so, and I’ve got things to do.” She trotted upstairs before we could say anything.
I looked at Richard. “I don’t know what to say.”
“What’s to say? Like Paw said, you’re a Burnette and this is the Burnette house. Now we better change and get moving, or Aunt Maggie will get us.”
I looked around as I followed him upstairs, wondering if I should feel some of that pride of ownership people talk about. I didn’t. It still looked like Paw’s house to me.
Chapter 21
Richard and I quickly changed into jeans, and drove to the grocery store. When we got back with as many cartons of Coke as we could carry, we found Sue in the midst of claiming the recliner. She pushed it back so her feet were elevated. “I hope you don’t mind me taking the good chair,” she said, “but my feet are swollen something terrible, what with the heat and all.”
“No problem,” I said. “Where’s Linwood?”
“He’s down in the den talking with Clifford.” Then, with an unusual burst of perception, Sue said, “The house don’t seem right without Paw.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I agreed.
“I think what I liked best about Paw was that he always treated me like one of his own.”
“We all think of you as one of our own,” I said. She had started dating Linwood so long ago I tended to forget that she wasn’t a Burnette.
Sue snorted. “Loman and Edna sure don’t. I don’t know why I bother to take the kids to see them anymore. When we went last Sunday, all Edna did was fuss about us not coming to church anymore and as soon as we got there, Loman went into his den and slammed the door behind him. He didn’t come out until Conrad called, and he left the house not long after that.”
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