The Rosewood Casket

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “I don’t reckon they ever did know,” said Charles Martin. “I never told. I had a letter from Dwayne after he went to Florida, telling me that you all had eloped one Saturday night when he was home visiting. Said he was going to send for you when he got settled down there. The wreck wasn’t long after that. I figured there wasn’t any point in bringing it up after that.” He shrugged. “I didn’t want to talk about it anyhow. I guess after all these years, I’d kind of like to know why you did it.”

  Dovey sighed. “Dwayne Stargill. You know, I can’t even remember his face clearly anymore. All I have is a couple of grainy snapshots taken at the lake. Not as clear as your album covers—or as flattering.”

  Charles Martin stood there, with his knuckles white on the handle of the shopping cart. He had waited years for the answer to his question, and he could wait a while longer. Until the store closed, if he had to.

  After a moment of silence, Dovey said, “We can’t keep standing here in the bread aisle of the Mick or Mack, Charlie. If you’re going to cross-examine me, we better go someplace else.”

  He left the cart where it stood. Dovey protested that the store would be closing soon, and that he’d better get the groceries while he had a chance, but he walked out of the market as if he didn’t even see that store full of people, with Dovey following at his heels, nagging him to slow down.

  He had started the Lexus before she even closed the door, and he roared off along the old road to Johnson City without a word.

  “Well,” said Dovey. “There’s a Kroger in Johnson City. They stay open till all hours. You didn’t forget the list, did you?”

  “Why Dwayne?” said Charles Martin. His eyes were fixed on the road ahead. Dovey watched the speedometer numbers jump ahead.

  “Slow down and I’ll tell you,” she said.

  The car eased back down toward fifty-five, just in time for a sharp curve. “Go on,” he said.

  Dovey let out a long breath. “We’re too old for this, boy,” she said. “But all right. Why Dwayne Stargill. With four-fifths of the Stargill boys courting me at one time or another, why did I choose Dwayne, who was going nowhere from the day he was born. The star-crossed Stargill. It seems strange even to me now, but back then … Dwayne was fun. He was handsome enough with those wild blue eyes, and he had charm—great charm. He made me laugh. The rest of you were all so serious.”

  “We were not! How about the time I—”

  “I’m not talking about your tomfool pranks, Charlie. I mean, you took yourselves so seriously. You were hellbent on becoming famous, and Garrett wanted to become a general and conquer the world, and Clayt was turning into Johnny Appleseed, always wandering off into the woods, mooning over some rare bird, or some threat to his precious wilderness. None of you much needed me. I would have been a nice accessory, but I didn’t come first with any of you.”

  “Don’t tell me you did with Dwayne. He never had a cause in his life except getting enough to drink and not having to work for it.”

  “I didn’t care,” said Dovey. “I guess I wanted to run away from serious matters. We were struggling on the farm. Hell, we’ve been struggling ever since I can remember, and Mama and Daddy never did get over losing Tate. Even when we were having fun, there was a hint of sadness about them, an expectation of something that wasn’t ever going to happen. You know, Mama set one too many places at the table until the day she died. Dwayne.” She closed her eyes. “That summer, I was twenty, and you had all gone off to make names for yourselves. There was Dwayne, with his fast car, and a smile like a barn on fire, and he was going to Florida. ‘Come with me,’ he says to me. ‘I’ll love you till winter.’ Then he laughed. ‘And in Florida, Dovey,’ he says, ‘there ain’t no winter!’”

  “Just hurricanes,” said Charles Martin, easing past a slow-moving sedan.

  “And car wrecks,” whispered Dovey.

  “But you agreed to go?”

  “I married him,” said Dovey. “Told Mama I was going to Myrtle Beach with Mary Louise, who really was going, and she covered for me. Dwayne and I eloped that weekend to Dillon, South Carolina, and got married before a justice of the peace. I was wearing a strapless yellow sundress, and Dwayne had on a Gatlinburg T-shirt. Afterward we ate Kentucky Fried Chicken at the motel, and—and the next morning we came on home. I had him drop me off at the mailbox, so my folks wouldn’t see his car. Three days later Dwayne left for Florida. I kept living at home with Daddy and Mama, ’cause Dwayne wasn’t ready to have me come join him yet. It would have about killed Mama to know I’d eloped instead of having a church wedding, but I never got pregnant, so she didn’t have to know. I kept the secret and I waited. And then one day your mama told mine about the wreck. Said she was going down there to see to his ashes. I could have told everybody then. Could have gone with her. But I didn’t want to.”

  “Do you really think he would have sent for you?” asked Charles Martin. “Dwayne?”

  “The question I keep asking myself, Charlie, is: would I have gone?”

  “And you never married again. After all this time…”

  Dovey shook her head. “That wasn’t Dwayne’s doing. My heart’s not in the grave or anything. Folks tried to fix me up with dates every now and again, but all I ever seemed to get were fat farmers who were divorced, or boys like Dwayne, but without his charm. Losers, basically, who stayed up here because they didn’t have the brains or the ambition to go anywhere else. Oh, there are some nice guys around, but they’re all married, and I never wanted a husband bad enough to steal one. I figured I was better off alone.” She took a deep breath. “I hear you finally found somebody, Charlie.”

  It took him a few seconds to remember Kelley. Then he said, “Oh, yeah. We’re not married, or anything. She’s a redhead—really pretty. Met her in Nashville. She’s from a small town in Kentucky, but she had the sense to get out.”

  “And look where it got her,” said Dovey softly.

  Charles narrowed his eyes, but she was not smiling, and there was no sarcasm in her voice. “Well,” he said. “She seems happy enough.” He had intended to add, “I know I am,” but he heard himself asking, “How come you wanted to see me tonight, Dovey?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Boys, we have to fight! Sell your lives as dear as possible.

  —DANIEL BOONE

  Charles Martin Stargill ran his hand along the newly planed board. The heavy musk of rosewood weighted the air, and made his eyes tear. “I guess we might as well get started,” he told his brothers. “This is taking longer than I figured on.”

  “It’ll take even longer if we screw it up,” said Garrett.

  They had been working on the coffin for two days now. Clayt had retrieved the planed boards from the cabinet maker three mornings earlier, and they had spent most of that first afternoon making sketches on the back of a grocery bag, and arguing about the design of the coffin. Robert Lee favored making a straight-sided wooden box, which he said they could assemble easily in a few hours, using power tools. Charles Martin countered with remarks about “indecent haste,” insisting that a proper coffin had to be triangular at the head and taper down to straight sides. After much discussion the brothers agreed to make a traditional coffin, using hand tools, but they agreed that if they met with time constraints or other difficulties, they would take short cuts.

  They had finished the bottom of the coffin on the previous afternoon.

  “We’re not really going to use hand tools for sanding, are we?” asked Robert Lee, dabbing at his nose with a crumpled tissue. “That stuff was clogging me up before we even started working with it. If we keep fooling around with handsaws, and then try to use panes of glass for scrapers, I’ll be dead before Daddy.”

  Garrett sighed. “Let’s just take it as it goes, all right? Robert, get you some pills or something. And a box of tissues from the house. I don’t want to listen to you sniffling for another twelve hours. Yesterday was bad enough.”

  “I’ll measure, and you cut,” Cla
yt told Charles Martin. From the pocket of his plaid jacket, he took out a metal tape measure and the stub of a pencil. He nodded toward the handsaw. “Let’s give that a try. We can always switch to something fancier if it gives us trouble.”

  “Can we have a radio in here?” asked Robert Lee.

  “Oh, god, no!” said Charles Martin. “I can’t listen to radio anymore. It gives me heartburn. I don’t want to know who these yahoo deejays think are the stars of country music. I’d rather listen to Robert Lee sniffle, and that’s saying a lot.”

  Breakfast that morning had been cold cereal and skim milk, because—as Lilah had explained—no one had slept well enough to want to get up at five a.m. and start cooking.

  Clayt, who had got up at five a.m. for his morning walk, finished eating before the others, and made the call to the hospital to check on his father’s condition. Randall Stargill remained unchanged.

  The women had been inclined to drink coffee and linger at the table, but none of the Stargills could ever sit still for long, so when Garrett muttered an excuse about the hours of carpentry work that lay ahead of them, the others gulped the last swallows of their coffee, and were at his heels before the back door could close behind him.

  Now they were congregated in the small, cold woodshop at the back of the barn, picking up where they left off at twilight the night before. Some of the planed boards had been measured and cut.

  “There’s something we need to talk about, boys,” said Robert Lee. He had been waiting for an opportune moment to bring up the subject, and this was not the time, what with Charles Martin humming and Garrett swearing at Clayt over the last measurement, but the suspense was giving him heartburn, and so he blurted it out to ease his anxiety.

  “Now what?” said Garrett, who did not look up from his task.

  Robert Lee licked his lips. “What are we going to do about the farm?”

  “That again?” Charles Martin groaned. “Haven’t we already told you to wait until Daddy’s cold, before you start divvying up—”

  “We need to decide sooner than that,” said Robert Lee. “Unless you boys want to sit around here for another couple of weeks after the funeral settling the estate. We’ve had an offer.”

  Clayt looked up. “What do you mean, an offer?”

  “Couple of days ago, a real estate fellow stopped by to say he was interested in the farm. I didn’t say anything about it because I figured Daddy was due to pass on any time now, and then we could discuss it, but he’s lingering, and we need to start making some decisions. I mean, even if he doesn’t die, he can’t come back here and live by himself, can he?”

  “Well … that’s a point,” said Charles Martin.

  “Of course it is. He’s old and frail. If he lives, we’ll want him to have the best care, and that takes money.”

  Clayt scowled. “A real estate man—they’re as good as the buzzards at smelling death coming. What kind of offer did this man make to you, Robert? Does he want to farm up here?”

  “Well, no, Clayt. Nobody in his right mind would want to farm up here these days. The money is in selling luxury homes with a view. This Whitescarver is a developer. He wants to buy the farm and put one of those planned communities in here.”

  “Out of the question,” said Clayt. “It would spoil the whole ridge. Ruin the habitats of scores of species. And it makes me want to vomit just thinking about it.”

  “Well, we ought to think about it,” said Garrett. “I’m not saying we should accept right off, but Robert Lee has a point about Daddy not being able to live here anymore. And we have to do something with the land.”

  “Why?” said Clayt. “We’ve done without it all these years. We don’t really need the money—wouldn’t be all that much, divided four ways. Why don’t we just deed it to the National Park Service, on the condition that it be kept a wilderness area?”

  “Maybe you can sneer at money, Mr. Hippie, but some of the rest of us have Daddy’s medical bills to worry about, and positions in the community to maintain.” Robert Lee’s face was red with indignation. He hated people who pretended that there was something indecent about practicality. It wasn’t as if he wanted a bunch of money to buy sports cars and take Caribbean cruises. If there was anything reprehensible about wanting to pay down a mortgage, settle some bills, and build up some savings in case he became disabled when he got older, he’d like to hear it. The very people who liked to pretend that money didn’t matter were always the first to step over you when you no longer had any.

  “Well, I see Clayt’s point,” said Charles Martin. “It would be a shame to mess up such a pretty stretch of mountain with a bunch of brick houses. And I’d kind of hate to think of our family home disappearing.”

  “I know,” said Garrett. “It’s a funny thing about family land. None of us would ever want to come live here again—we couldn’t, even if we did want to—but we just want the place to be here, never changing, to remind us of who we are. I like knowing that the farm is here on the mountain, just the same from one year to the next. It kind of makes me free to go out and try other places, other jobs—because I know I have roots somewhere, and I could always come back.”

  “This farm has been Stargill land for close on two hundred years now,” said Charles Martin. “It wouldn’t be right to let it go.”

  “Well, it’s going to go anyhow!” said Robert Lee. “I never heard such hogwash in my entire life. What do you think this is, a lost episode of Bonanza? This farm isn’t some storybook spread that takes care of itself while you’re gone away living your lives. You don’t just turn off the television when you leave here, and have time stop until you tune in again. The farm goes on without you, and it sure as hell changes. The paint peels, the roof starts leaking, the pastures go to seed, the fences rot. Somebody has to be here to feed it sweat and money, or the mountain will just creep in and turn it right back into wilderness.

  “When Daddy’s gone, who do you think’s going to keep the home fires burning up here? Do you want to see this place fall in from termites or vandals or dry rot, just because none of you has the time to take care of it, or the guts to turn loose of it? Grow up, why don’t you!”

  “We’re just trying to do the right thing, Robert,” said Garrett. “No need to get all het up about it. We just hate to see this land spoiled, that’s all. Maybe we can find somebody who does want to own a farm up here. Lots of city people don’t know any better.”

  “If a landowner had a second income, like a job at the university, this farm probably wouldn’t be so hard to keep going,” said Clayt. “You could farm for the exercise instead of for an income. Still, I wouldn’t want to make the commute in winter. Has your developer thought of that, when he’s talking about putting houses up here?”

  “He’d fix up the road,” said Robert Lee.

  “That would cost a fortune, and it wouldn’t be good for the environment up here, either,” said Clayt. “It would change the drainage, maybe cause erosion. Why, we’ve got endangered wildflowers—”

  “It’s going to happen anyway, Clayt, so stop whining about it! Now either we cash in or we throw away a chance to profit from all this, but you can’t stop it.”

  “Speaking of profit,” said Garrett. “We’d timber the land before we sold it, wouldn’t we? I was remembering what Clayt said about those walnut trees being worth five thousand dollars apiece.”

  “No way,” said Clayt. “Timbering those trees would be an obscenity. Now hush! I want to hear what Robert Lee was saying. What do you mean, it’s going to happen anyway?”

  Robert Lee’s features seemed to shrink to a point in the middle of his red face. “I don’t know that I’m allowed to divulge that information,” he said primly.

  “He means the Stallard place,” said Charles Martin. “I ran into Dovey a couple of nights ago, and she told me about it.”

  Clayt scowled. “What do you mean, she told you?”

  Charles Martin looked away. “I saw her in the grocery store, and we
got to talking about old times. She mentioned that some developer is after their land, and they’re about to lose the place for taxes. She wanted me to help them save the farm. Lend them some money.”

  “Did you?” asked Garrett.

  Robert Lee’s laugh was bitter. “Charles Martin isn’t that forgiving,” he said.

  “It wasn’t that,” said Charles Martin, scowling. “If you ask me, Clayt is the one whose nose is still open over Dovey Stallard.”

  “But you didn’t lend her any money,” said Garrett.

  “I don’t keep a lot of money sitting around in the bank, for god’s sake! I tried to explain it to her. I have expenses, investments. I have a tour bus, and a back-up group, and costumes to buy every whipstitch. Everybody thinks country singers are rich, but, believe me, the money goes out just as fast as it comes in.”

  “Yeah, you’re driving a good chunk of it,” said Robert Lee.

  “I can’t believe she asked you for help,” said Clayt.

  “Well, little brother, who else was she going to ask?” Charles Martin’s smile was bitter. “You? If locomotives were selling for a dime apiece, all you could do would be to run up and down the track, yelling, Ain’t that cheap?”

  “So she went crawling to you, and look where it got her,” said Clayt.

  “It’s definite then?” said Garrett. “The Stallards’ farm is going to a developer?”

  “Looks that way,” said Charles Martin. “The Stallards can’t afford to fight it. And that means we have to decide what to do about this place, because if the mountain gets zoned residential, the taxes will eat us alive. Maybe we should talk to this developer.”

  “Maybe we should try to help the Stallards,” said Clayt.

  “Write them a check,” said Robert Lee. His eyes sparkled with malice. “That ought to buy them a doorknob, or two. And I know she’d be grateful to you. Don’t expect the rest of us to pitch in, though. We have a monster hospital bill coming at us. You’d better think about those medical expenses, too, before you get on your high horse about preserving the farm.”