The Rosewood Casket

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The Rosewood Casket Page 14

by Sharyn McCrumb


  Lilah walked with Nora Bonesteel as far as the front door, thanking her in jumbled sentences for the cookies and the visit—pleasantries that went unanswered. She stood smiling on the door stoop, and waved the visitor away down the path. When Lilah closed the door, she leaned against it and let out a sigh. “Great crown I reckon,” she said. “If that wasn’t awkward!”

  Debba frowned. “She was quiet, but she seemed okay to me. What was awkward about it?”

  Kelley came back into the room and picked up the stack of baby clothes. “Kayla’s gone back out to play. I expect we ought to wash these out before we use them. They have a musty smell. Ivory Snow or Woolite, do y’all think?”

  “Of course, you two wouldn’t know,” said Lilah, ignoring the laundry question, and sinking back down on the sofa. “But that was Mr. Stargill’s old girlfriend, from years ago. The one I told you about, that was in the snapshot album. I hardly knew what to say to her. And she kept harping on that wooden box until I thought I would scream. I mean, it’s a little late for romantic gestures, I would have thought. They’re over seventy, for heaven’s sake. I’m surprised she even remembers who Randall is.”

  Kelley smiled. “I think you’re making a big deal over nothing,” she said. “Why, they broke up before World War II. I know people back home who invite ex-wives to parties—much less old sweethearts. In a small town, you can’t afford to ignore all the people you’ve fallen out with, or they’ll be nobody left to talk to.”

  “Still, don’t you think it was odd that she showed up here with that box, about as full of the social graces as a frozen turtle, and asked that it be buried with him?”

  “Is that what she came for?” Kelley shrugged. “Sentimental, maybe. Too bad more people don’t take love that seriously these days.”

  “What’s in the box?” asked Debba.

  * * *

  The woodshop was a small, unpainted room partitioned off at the back of the barn. It could be reached via an outside door that led into the barnyard, or through a makeshift door of hammered boards that led into the main interior of the barn. One dirt-encrusted pane of handblown glass let the light in, and an electric bulb dangling from a cord in the center of the room provided artificial light. The worktables were handmade from scrap pine, and the rows of shelves, laden with paint cans and jars of rusting nails, had been assembled with two-by-fours and plywood. An assortment of old hand tools hung from pegs on the wall next to the window.

  Randall Stargill’s four sons had managed to haul the rosewood lumber down from the barn loft one piece at a time, and, considerably dirtier than when they started, they had stacked it again near the door, and carried one board into the old woodshop in the back of the barn to test it with their father’s old hand tools.

  “Should have packed old clothes,” said Robert Lee, whose gray polyester pants had a tear at the knees. “I always did ruin pants legs in this barn.”

  “I guess I can kiss these jeans good-bye,” said Charles Martin, trying to brush caked dirt from the legs of his Levis with one grimy hand.

  “I thought you rich country singers only wore a pair of jeans once anyhow,” said Garrett.

  “Naw, we’re into recycling.” He grinned at his older brother and gave him a mock salute. “It’s the American way, Major.”

  “You two stop fighting,” said Robert Lee, fanning dust motes away from his face. His eyes were watering, and he stifled a cough with his fist. “Look at the state of this place. It’s ankle-deep in dust. We have enough work to do without having you two bickering with each other every five minutes. Maybe Daddy has some old clothes in his wardrobe that we could wear for working.”

  “It’s like we’re turning into kids again,” said Clayt. “Us arguing, and you bossing us around, Robert Lee.”

  “All right,” said Garrett. “Let’s get to work, then. That’ll keep us off each other’s nerves.” He picked up a hand planer and blew the dust off it. Its steel blade had darkened with age, but the oak handle with spiral hand grips was still a polished golden brown. Randall Stargill had taken care of his tools, almost to the end of his life. “I know we have to clean things up before we really get started, but I just wanted to try a test piece here,” Garrett said. “Set that board up on the table over there.” He tested the blade of the planer with his thumb, and, satisfied that it held an edge, he bent over the rosewood plank and raked the planer against the surface of the wood. Barely a scratch appeared in the wake of his blade.

  “I was afraid of that,” said Clayt, bending over to inspect the results. “This lumber is about the hardest wood you’d ever want to work with. Takes a long time to grow, ages to season, and good luck trying to plane it! No wonder Grandaddy gave up trying to build anything with it, and let it sit up there in the barn loft.”

  “Well, it’s too good to let go to waste,” said Robert Lee. “And it’ll make a fine coffin, even if it takes a lot of work from all of us to get it done.”

  “Do we have enough wood for a coffin?” asked Charles Martin. “I’d hate to put a lot of work into this, and then come up short, and have to buy one from a funeral home anyhow.”

  Clayt took a retractable metal tape measure out of his pocket, and tossed it to his brother. “Here! Go find out how many board feet we’ve got to work with. I’ll figure out how many feet we’re going to need. Anybody got a pen?”

  Garrett handed him a ballpoint and a deposit slip torn out of his checkbook. “You can write on that. We need to know what measurements we want for height and width of the shoulders.” He looked at his brothers. “I’d say Charles Martin comes closest to Daddy in build, wouldn’t you, Clayt? You’re too tall and Robert is too fat.”

  Clayt smiled. “You want me to measure Charlie?”

  “Sure. It’ll be close enough. Unless you want to ride over to the hospital, and run the tape over Daddy.”

  Clayt walked away. “Come here, Charlie!” he called into the darkness of the barn. “I need you and the tape measure both.”

  “What do you want me to do?” asked Robert Lee, who had been poking around in drawers, looking for more tools.

  Garrett shrugged. “Clean this place up, I guess. Wood dust will make you sick enough, without adding all the rest of the dirt in here. There’s a broom over there in the corner.”

  “With my dust allergies?” Robert Lee shuddered. “I’d be sicker than Daddy if I tried to stir up dust in here. I’ll have to get a mask before I can work on the coffin with you.”

  Clayt joined them, jotting down notes on the back of the deposit slip. “He can run errands, can’t he, Garrett?”

  “Suits me. What kind of errands?”

  “More groceries, for one thing. You all still eat like teenagers. And we’ll need hardware for the coffin. Maybe a brass nameplate from Things Remembered in Johnson City. You got another deposit slip? I’ll make a list. Here are Charlie’s measurements, by the way. He didn’t care at all for being the model, either.”

  “Did you find any other planers while you were rummaging through here, Robert?” asked Garrett. “I don’t guess it matters, though. We’d need an electric one to make any headway on this wood. We could buy one, I suppose.”

  “Are you sure this place is wired for power tools?” asked Clayt. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  Garrett shrugged. “We’d be better off paying to have it done.”

  “There’s a cabinetmaker in Hamelin. Old Dalton Wheeler. He’d probably plane it for us. I could ask him.”

  “Good. See how long it will take, if we get it there by this afternoon. And how much he’ll charge us.”

  “Has to be done, no matter what,” said Robert Lee. “Deduct it from the estate.”

  “Hadn’t we better find out if there is an estate first?” asked Clayt.

  “This farm is worth a good bit,” said Robert Lee.

  “We’re taking things one at a time here,” said Garrett. “Clayt, tote up those numbers you got on Charlie’s measurements.”

  “I already
did. He’s five feet-nine, and about twenty-four inches across the back, give or take a couple. He wouldn’t hold still. So I’d say six feet in length, maybe two and a half feet wide.”

  “Shouldn’t we allow more length?” asked Robert Lee. “There’s usually a pillow under the head of the deceased, and a few inches of it sticks up beyond where his head lays.”

  “Maybe we ought to ask somebody to make sure,” said Garrett. “We can’t afford to get it wrong. Clayt, do you think Dalton Wheeler will know anything about this kind of job?”

  “I can ask him for advice,” said Clayt. “But I say we have to do the work ourselves.”

  “It isn’t going to be easy,” said Robert Lee. “Or quick.”

  “We can do it, though.” Charles Martin came back into the woodshop. “We have sixty board feet of lumber. We can’t waste much of it, but there’s enough to build a man-sized box. And I think we ought to do it ourselves, because Daddy asked us to.”

  “I agree,” said Clayt. “Two hundred years ago, when our people settled this valley, they tended to their own needs, without buying help for anything. They delivered their own babies, grew their own food, and buried their dead in homemade coffins. We were the West back then! We were the pioneers. Have we lost so much of our heritage that four grown men can’t build one simple box without hiring professional help?”

  “I can,” said Garrett. “Thanks to the army, I’m as fit as any pioneer you’d care to name. It’s the rest of you I’m worried about, with your time limits and your manicured hands.”

  “Don’t fret over me,” said Charles Martin. “Being a musician is no desk job, believe me. I can pull my own weight in this.”

  “I’m the only one of you who has done this before,” said Robert Lee.

  They heard the shouting then, and Debba Stargill jerked open the door to the barn and stood there screaming for her husband. Kelley, pale but calm, pushed past her and ran to the open door of the woodshop. “You all better come inside,” she said. “There’s something in there you need to see.”

  * * *

  Jane Arrowood’s white house on Elm Street reminded people of an English cottage, and its well-tended garden, bright now with early tulips and daffodils, was in keeping with that image. The house was larger than it looked, though. Much too big a place for an aging widow whose only living child was a grown man with a place of his own. She kept the place because it held the memories of her children and her moderately happy marriage. Her oldest son, Cal, had been killed in Vietnam in 1966. She felt that if she ever left this house, she would lose even the memory of her lost boy. She kept it, too, because she thought the place might be hard to sell, and there was nowhere else in town that she wanted to live. An apartment would be more convenient, but she would miss her garden and her neighbors.

  Jane knew, though, that the main reason she kept the white house was because her son Spencer wanted his old homeplace to stay the same. He fretted at any little change she made: the upholstery on a sofa, or new kitchen curtains. He wanted things to stay exactly as they had been when he was growing up. It was exasperating, but endearing, too, Jane thought, that he would value so much his memories of the home she had made for him. She indulged him by remaining, the curator of the museum of Sheriff Spencer Arrowood’s childhood. He did not want to live there himself anymore, but it gave him a feeling of groundedness to know that his old home was there, unchanged, and that at any time he could walk into it, and be “home.” She understood that, but it worried her sometimes. “What will he do when I’m gone?” she would ask herself. Perhaps find another place that would be home to him, she supposed. He had tried that once, long ago, when he married his high school sweetheart, but the acrimony of that union seemed to have soured him on trying again. She hoped he would outlive the bitterness. Marriage wasn’t perfect, she knew that firsthand, but it was a comfort when the world around you seemed to be growing younger and more alien with each passing day.

  It was a warm afternoon, and Jane was outside in her khaki gardening pants and one of Spencer’s old sweatshirts, tending the mint bed. It was a weed, really: early up in the spring, the better to take over the entire flower bed, if you didn’t keep it in line. Sometimes, in a fit of exasperation at seeing another clump of pansies engulfed, she would be tempted to root out every stalk of mint in the garden, but Spencer liked it. He said there was nothing like fresh, homegrown mint to flavor iced tea in the summertime. Jane sighed at her martyrdom to mint, and kept on weeding.

  “Good afternoon, Jane.”

  “Why, Nora Bonesteel! You scared the life out of me. I was humming, and didn’t hear you come up. Can I get you some tea?” Jane tried to mask her surprise with offers of hospitality. Nora Bonesteel seldom came to town. She had no car, and it was a good seven miles down the mountain. Jane’s first guess would have been illness, but the old woman looked fit enough. She was wearing her blue wool church dress, and a hand-woven shawl, and she looked more troubled than Jane had ever seen her. She ushered her visitor into the house, making small talk about gardening, because it wouldn’t do to question a guest standing out in the front yard.

  When Nora had been settled in the red Queen Anne chair next to the living room fireplace, and Jane had put the kettle on in the kitchen, she sat down on the loveseat, and said, “Now, I’m delighted to see you, but I can’t help wondering if there is anything the matter, because you’re not exactly a frequent visitor. How did you get here?”

  “My neighbor down the hill was kind enough to give me a ride in his pickup.”

  “Thank goodness for that. I was afraid you had walked. Of course, I’ll drive you home when you’re ready.”

  Nora Bonesteel smiled. “That may not be necessary,” she said. “But I do wish you would call the hospital in Johnson City, and ask them how Randall Stargill is doing.”

  The hospital. Jane stared. She knew that her friend had no telephone in her house on Ashe Mountain, but it seemed strange for her to come all the way to Hamelin to make a phone call. She had never heard Nora mention Randall Stargill, either. Perhaps they were kinfolks. “Would you like me to take you to Johnson City to visit Mr. Stargill?” she asked.

  Nora shook her head. “He’s not up to seeing anyone. But I would like to hear how he is.”

  Jane heard the whistle of the teakettle in the kitchen. “I’ll just fill the teapot,” she said. “And while it’s steeping, I’ll make the call. Can I get you anything else?”

  “A Bible.”

  “A Bible?”

  Nora looked apologetic. “I know it well enough,” she said, “But I haven’t got it by heart. A large-print one, if you have such a thing. And a paper and pencil.”

  Jane nodded and went to her bedroom to fetch her King James leather Bible from the drawer of her nightstand and a pad and pen from beside her bedside telephone. She began to wonder if Nora had suffered a stroke. She was quite unlike herself today. But the old woman seemed alert and in good spirits when Jane returned and handed her the things she had asked for. As she hurried to the kitchen to make the tea, Nora Bonesteel began to leaf through the Old Testament, running her finger down a line of scripture with a practiced hand.

  Jane made the call from the wall phone in the kitchen. “He’s in critical condition, but stable,” she announced, as she came back into the living room with the tea tray. “You were right about his not receiving visitors. He is in a coma.” She paused to gauge her friend’s reaction to this news, but Nora Bonesteel said nothing. She continued to consult the Bible, and to make notes on the pad.

  Jane set the tray on the coffee table in front of Nora’s chair, and glanced at what the old woman had written. I Kings 4:22. Judges 5:25. It seemed an odd time and place for Bible study, Jane thought, but she decided that Nora might be distraught over Mr. Stargill’s grave illness.

  “Was he a close friend of yours?” she asked. “Or a cousin?”

  Nora Bonesteel closed her eyes. “A long time ago, I almost married him. Randall was a handsome man in h
is officer’s uniform.” She smiled. “He knew it, too.”

  “Were you afraid that he wasn’t coming back from the war?”

  “No. I was afraid he was. And that would mean leaving my house on the mountain to live on Stargill land. Randall loved that place, more than he loved me, even. He wasn’t ever going to leave his farm, except feetfirst. It’s a fine place, I reckon, except for such as I.”

  Jane considered it. “You mean, you—saw things—at the Stargills?”

  Nora sighed. “It’s best left alone,” she said. “It will end soon. Now I’m keeping you from your work. You’ll be wanting to make lunch for Spencer, won’t you?”

  “Spencer? He never comes home for lunch.”

  Nora Bonesteel settled back in the armchair, the Bible in her lap. “Well, Jane, when he calls, tell him I’m here.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  If we give way to them now, it will ever be the case.

  —DANIEL BOONE, letter to Colonel Henderson, April 1, 1775

  Robert Lee hurried into the house ahead of his brothers. Garrett was attempting to calm his shrieking wife, and Clayt and Charlie were talking to Kelley, who was at least making sense. Where was Lilah? Robert Lee didn’t quite know what he had expected to find in the house. A medical emergency perhaps. Lilah had smoked in her youth, and, now that she was past the change of life, her weight made her a possible candidate for a heart attack. He wondered if anyone had called the rescue squad. He could feel his own heart pounding as he stumbled up the back steps, fearing the worst.

  He found his wife in the living room, calm and not stricken by illness. She was holding a polished wooden box, lid closed, and staring at nothing with a solemn, frozen look that made him think of church. She looked up when she heard him come in, smiling gently in his direction.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, heaving the words as he tried to catch his breath.

  “Sit down, Robert,” said Lilah. “The girls just had a fright is all. Young people lead such sheltered lives, don’t they?”

 

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