The Rosewood Casket

by Sharyn McCrumb

  LeDonne stood up, and stumbled toward the opening of the passage. He had to get out of here now. He could feel his throat tighten, and his stomach begin to heave. It wasn’t over. He knew that it would be happening again often enough. Every time he closed his eyes for a long, long time.

  * * *

  Clayt Stargill’s arms ached, and the cold mountain air chilled his lungs, but he had made it. He could see the lights of the farmhouse in the distance. He straightened his shoulders. Kayla was still sleeping, mostly from exhaustion, he’d decided. He could feel her warm breath on his neck, and every now and again she’d give a little moan that might have meant a bad dream. “It’s over now, honey,” he murmured, trudging on toward the lights. “I got you home.”

  Kelley Johnson opened the door herself. He wondered if she had been staring out the kitchen window, waiting for some sign of her daughter’s fate. Her cheeks glistened with tears, and she held out her arms without a word.

  “She’s heavy,” whispered Clayt. “I’ll take her up to bed.”

  “No. Not yet. Can you put her on the sofa. I—I want to look at her.”

  He smiled. “Sure.”

  She followed him, taking a lap rug from the armchair, and spreading it over the sleeping child. “Should we call a doctor?”

  “Nothing wrong with her that a bath won’t fix, but it can wait. I’d let her sleep now.” He looked around. The house was quieter than it had been in days. “Where is everybody?”

  “Gone,” she told him. “Lilah came in and made some cocoa—it’s on the stove if you want some—and then she went back out in the barn with Robert Lee. Charles Martin took Debba to the bus station. She’s going home, and then he was going to—oh!” Her eyes widened, and she looked up at him with fresh tears. “You don’t know.”

  “Tell me.”

  “He was going to the hospital. Your father passed away.”

  Clayt sat down on the sofa beside the sleeping child. He took a deep breath, and straightened the comforter around Kayla’s shoulders with exaggerated care. At last he said, “Well, I guess he’s at peace now.”

  Without replying, Kelley went into the kitchen and poured him a cup of cocoa. She handed it to him, and sat in the armchair beside the sofa. “What happened out there?”

  He shrugged. “It isn’t over yet. Or it wasn’t, when I started back. She’s hiding in a cave where we used to play as kids. I found her, and she sent Kayla back with me. Maybe she can get away when it’s morning.”

  She could tell from the way he said it that it wasn’t going to happen that way. “You didn’t tell them where she was?”

  “No. I kept thinking I’d bring Kayla back and then go out again and try to talk her into coming out, but it wouldn’t be any use. I said all there was to say, and she wouldn’t listen. She never would.”

  Kelley nodded. “At least you tried.”

  “Yes. I tried for a long time.”

  “I know how that is,” said Kelley. The silence went on for a while. “Thank you for getting my baby back, Clayt.”

  He smiled and touched the child’s tangled hair. “She’s a great kid. Smart as all get-out.”

  “She likes you, too.”

  “Yeah, she’s got a real feel for the woods, you know. Like she belongs here. She’s learning her bird species faster than I did. I wish—”

  Kelley waited for him to finish the sentence, but he never did. Just sat there looking down at the sleeping Kayla, as if he had forgotten she was there.

  * * *

  Nora Bonesteel had not been five years old in more than seventy years.

  Tonight she was alone in her house on the mountain. It was past midnight, and she had been awakened by the familiar sound that she had grown to dread. The knocking. She stood still in the dim light of the front hall, with her hands pressed against the lock of the front door.

  The knocking began again.

  “You can’t come in, Fayre,” she said softly. “I know you’re lonesome out there, but—it won’t be long now.” She sighed, picturing the tiny fair-haired girl she had once befriended, and said, as she had said so often over the years, “I can’t play with you anymore.”

  Grandma Flossie had told her that if she left Fayre alone, the dead child might find the way to wherever she was meant to go, but it had not happened. Every now and again—Nora could never find a pattern in it—the child would come back, wanting little Nora to come out and play.

  “I did the best I could for you,” Nora whispered. “When I knew that Randall was dying, I even took a ladder and went to the cave to get you, so that you and Randall could rest together.”

  The knocking came again. “Nora! Are you there? It’s Jane Arrowood. Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

  “Well,” said Nora Bonesteel. She opened the door and saw her friend standing on the porch, shivering in her rumpled black coat. “Jane! What are you doing on the mountain at this time of an evening?”

  “I didn’t want to go home to an empty house,” said Jane. “I’ve just come from the hospital. Spencer has been shot.”

  Nothing in Nora Bonesteel’s expression indicated whether or not the news came as a surprise to her. Finally she said, “I’m so sorry, Jane. Come inside. I’ll make us some tea while you tell me.”

  “He’s going to be all right,” Jane said, following her into the kitchen. “I waited at the hospital until he was out of danger. He lost his spleen, but the doctor says you can live just fine without one.”

  Nora nodded, filling the kettle as she listened. “He’s in Johnson City then? Tell me how it happened.”

  Jane explained about the eviction, and the searchers who were combing the valley for Dovey Stallard. “Oh, and something else, Jane. When I was leaving the hospital, I saw Charles Martin Stargill, the singer, going in. Somebody said that his father had just died.”

  “I’m glad it’s over for him,” said Nora. “He had a good life, I think, after his sorrows early on. And Spencer is recovering well, you say?”

  Jane Arrowood’s voice was filled with relief for her son, her only living child. Despite her exhaustion, she talked on happily, explaining the circumstances of the shooting, and the operation that followed.

  Nora Bonesteel nodded encouragingly to keep her talking, but her thoughts were elsewhere—outside, on the dark mountain, where tonight there was only silence. She wondered if a little girl had at last gone home.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  We must submit to Providence, and provide for the Living, and talk of our Lands.

  —DANIEL BOONE

  Spencer Arrowood was squinting at a copy of Sports Illustrated, still indecipherable at arm’s length. He must remember to ask his mother to bring his reading glasses to the hospital. He was still a bit weak from surgery, but the recovery had been uneventful. After two days he was feeling well enough to be bored. He had a view of the mountains, though, from the window of his room, and he found it pleasant to stare at those green shapes in the distant haze. It would be full spring when he got out into the world again.

  “Are you receiving visitors?”

  Nora Bonesteel stood in the doorway of the hospital room, holding a mason jar full of yellow jonquils. In her gray dress and her handwoven crimson shawl she made him think of maples on the hill, with their slender, silvery trunks and their red-tipped branches.

  The sheriff smiled and motioned for her to come in. “I’m glad to see you,” he said, laying aside the magazine. “You look like springtime, and I’m weary of my own company. I haven’t had this much idleness in years.”

  “Time isn’t always a blessing, is it?” said Nora. She put the flowers on the bedside table, and sat down in the plastic chair beside the bed.

  “I feel guilty lying here doing nothing, when LeDonne has to police the whole county by himself. Martha will be back next week, though, and that will help some.” He was watching her as he spoke Her solemn expression told him that this was not entirely a social call. He waited a moment to see if more small ta
lk was needed before they got to the point. When she said nothing, Spencer said, “Was there something you wanted to see me about?’

  “Randall Stargill passed away,” she said.

  She said it as if he had been acquainted with the old man, but Spencer couldn’t place him. “I’m sorry to hear it,” he said. Then he remembered. “That’s who you wanted the bones buried with, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. If you’re willing to release them now, I’d be grateful.”

  “LeDonne came by yesterday. Told me that the medical examiner’s report had come back. No discernible cause of death. And he figures the bones have been out there a long time.”

  She bowed her head. “That’s so.”

  “He told me something else, too. When he went into the cave on Ashe Mountain after Dovey Stallard, he found a ladder in a pit in one of the chambers. They checked it out later when they were retrieving a flashlight, and found the remnants of a little girl’s dress, so old that it tore like paper. Beside it were some scattered seeds and chicken bones. I thought there might be a connection.”

  “I can tell you now,” said Nora. “Randall is dead. The little girl was his sister Fayre.”

  “Go on.”

  “His half-sister, really. She was born on the wrong side of the blanket, before Randall’s mother married Ashe Stargill—Randall’s daddy. After a couple of lean years on the farm, Ashe went off to the city to find work and left his wife and the two younguns with his mother. She was a hard woman. I remember her, though I wasn’t much more than six myself. She had dark dead eyes and a mouth like a drawstring purse.”

  Nora Bonesteel was staring out the window at the green haze of mountains. He thought she had forgotten him entirely. She was far away from him now—more than seventy years in the past. Spencer waited for her to continue, knowing better than to remind her of his presence by prompting her.

  “My mother used to talk about old Mrs. Stargill. Said she didn’t like having a stray child about the place, an extra mouth to feed. And times were hard. So—” The old woman took a deep breath, and her voice quavered. “So one day she took the two children for a walk in the woods, and she came back with only one.”

  “Wasn’t the child reported missing?”

  “They searched. My daddy and my uncle Roy took the hunting dogs and combed that mountain.… Randall just said that he and Fayre had gone to play in the woods, and that she’d wandered away from him. I want to think he lied because he was afraid of that old woman. But I don’t know. I don’t know. He was so little. If she’d offered him a bag of candy to keep the secret…”

  “Mrs. Stargill put the little girl in the cave?”

  Nora nodded. “In the pit, where she couldn’t climb out. I think she’d hurt herself falling in, but she didn’t die—not right away.”

  “And they left food for her?” asked Spencer, remembering the seeds and chicken bones.

  “No,” whispered Nora. She twisted her hands in her lap. “No. The old woman just left her there. It was Randall who took her the food. He used to save some of his dinner, steal food from the kitchen, and take it to her, but he was little. He couldn’t get her out. And it was cold and damp in that cave. She took sick, of course. He could hear her coughing and crying for her mother. And after three or four days he went in, and he didn’t hear anything at all.”

  The sheriff tried to put the image out of his mind—a little girl in a dark cave, eating table scraps, and waiting on a cold, slow death. Alone in the dark. He gritted his teeth. “Did Randall tell you this?”

  Nora Bonesteel turned to look at him. “I was told,” she said. “But it was too late then.” It was not Randall who had told her. It was Fayre. But Spencer Arrowood wouldn’t understand such things. It didn’t fit into the world as he knew it. She would not tell him of meeting the little girl in the woods, of befriending her, before she understood.

  “Why didn’t you tell anybody?”

  “I was a child,” said Nora. “Not even school age. Who would have listened?”

  You won’t tell on Randy, will you? the blond child had asked her. Her eyes were dark and sad, and they held such a look of sorrow that Nora wanted to cry just looking at her. They’ll whip him for sure if they know what he did. And she will hurt him, too. You won’t tell?

  I promise, Nora told her. I promise I won’t tell. Cross my heart and hope to—

  “It all happened before I was even born,” said Spencer. “Surely when you brought the bones in, you could have explained.”

  “It wasn’t over. Not while Randall was alive. He might have recovered, and then there would have been questions. I didn’t want to put him through that. He had suffered enough for it, I reckon. But he loved her—more than anybody else ever, I think. And they need to be together again.”

  Spencer nodded. “All right. I’ll have LeDonne take the remains to the funeral home.”

  “They’ll be having the burial at the homeplace.”

  “All right. I’ll tell him. Are you going to the funeral?”

  “I have said my good-byes.”

  “But what are we going to tell the family about the bones? The truth?”

  Nora shook her head. “Not all of it. They need to remember their father in a better light than this. No need to sully his memory. Say that the bones have been identified as Fayre Stargill. That she got lost in the woods, and now she needs to be buried in consecrated ground. It’s true enough.”

  “The truth but not the whole truth,” said Spencer.

  The old woman sighed. “The whole truth is something very few of us want to hear.”

  * * *

  Randall Stargill’s funeral took place on a sunny morning in late March. Clarsie Stargill’s flower beds were a glorious riot of color, with early tulips, crocus, and daffodils all trying to outshine each other.

  Randall looked waxen and gaunt in his black Sunday suit, hands folded on his chest. He was wrapped in the grave quilt fashioned by his daughters-in-law and lying in the gleaming rosewood casket built by his sons. Tucked into a corner of the coffin, beneath the squares of the quilt, lay a smaller wooden box, containing a collection of tiny brittle bones. It would be a double funeral, really, but the Stargills had decided not to mention that fact to those assembled. Robert Lee declared that it was nobody’s business.

  The simple parlor had been scrubbed and polished with beeswax so that the scarred old furniture shone like the coffin itself, and an assortment of food was spread out on the dining room table.

  Robert Lee Stargill stood at the door, receiving the visitors, and Lilah hovered nearby, ready to take the meatloaf or the homemade pound cake into the kitchen to join the other offerings of food brought by church members and neighbors. Garrett was there in his dress uniform; Charles Martin wore an Armani suit; and Clayt had on a navy blue blazer and gray pants, which was the extent of formality allowed by his wardrobe.

  Reverend Will Bruce arrived just as Lilah sailed off into the kitchen bearing aloft a macaroni and cheese casserole.

  “Good of you to come, Parson,” said Robert Lee, looking mournful. “We’re about ready to start the services. Charles Martin wants to sing ‘Peace in the Valley’ to start off, if that’s all right.”

  “Certainly,” said Will. He was unable to stop himself from glancing about to see if any country music stars had come to the funeral, but the occupants of the room were all familiar to him, mostly residents of Ashe Mountain. He wondered why Nora Bonesteel was not among them.

  Before he could say anything consoling to Robert Lee, more people appeared at the door, and Will found himself handed over to a pretty redhead who introduced herself as Kelley Johnson, explaining that she was a “friend of the family.” “Ex-fiancée,” she said, with a little smile.

  Will Bruce wondered whose ex she was, but he didn’t think this was the time to ask. She seemed cheerful about it, though.

  Kelley led him into the parlor to view the deceased. “He looks peaceful, doesn’t he?” she said softly, looking down at
the face of the man she’d never met.

  “Yes. Yes, he does,” said Will.

  “He had a good life here on the farm,” said Kelley. “He was lucky in that way. I love it up here. I don’t see why any of them ever left.”

  “Well—jobs. Nobody can really afford to be a small-time farmer anymore.”

  “Clayt says he’d like to try,” said Kelley.

  “You’re not selling the farm? I thought—”

  “Well, they are and they aren’t,” said Kelley. She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, and steered Reverend Bruce to the relative privacy of the dining room. “Robert and Lilah needed the money for their old age, and Garrett may be getting a divorce, so he wants to sell, but Charles Martin and Clayt were all for holding onto the land, on account of it having been in the family for so long. So they just decided to split it—like Solomon did with the baby. You know.”

  “I do know,” nodded Will Bruce. He decided not to correct her on the Bible story, but he wondered if the farm would fare as well as the baby had.

  “The real estate man bought the land nearest the road for his new development, and Clayt kept the woods and steep part of the mountain. He wants to build a house there—or maybe a double-wide, at first—and run some cattle. Of course, he’ll still keep his regular jobs.”

  Will almost smiled at hearing Clayt Stargill’s various attempts at wage-earning referred to as a “regular job.” It was anything but that. Instead he said, “What about Charles Martin? Surely he can’t devote much time to farming with his music career going strong in Nashville?”

  “No. But he doesn’t need the money too awful bad, so he’s going to hire somebody to look after his part for him.” She glanced around, and then whispered in his ear. “It’s Mr. Stallard. He lost his own place, you know.”

  Will nodded, thinking of the sad funeral he had performed the day before. Clayt Stargill had been present at that simple ceremony, but his tight lips and red-rimmed eyes had warned the minister not to engage him in conversation. Suddenly he realized that this young woman must be the mother of the child who had been kidnapped. Later, perhaps, he would ask her how the little girl was doing.