A Comedy of Heirs (7 page)

Eight

New Kassel Lake is situated about a mile out of town. It was frozen over completely solid. It wasn't a large lake, but it was too large to be considered a pond. Fishing was tolerable in the summer, but mostly the lake was used for swimming by the local teenagers. I stood in my ice skates on the edge, waiting for Mary to get her skates laced up. It was about eight o'clock at night and a large portion of my reunion-going family were in attendance skating or sitting on the sidelines by the bonfire talking.

The snow fell lightly, just giving the trees a dusting. This wasn't a serious snow, yet. The lights around the lake turned the snowflakes a bluish color as they came down out of the sky.

The sheriff sat under an awning that the Rotary Club had built the spring before last, with my mother right next to him. He wouldn't be caught dead ice skating. At least he had come to watch, though. I looked down at Mary. Her coat was Christmas red, and her mittens were white. Well, they were white when I bought them. She looked up and smiled at me, her cheeks nearly as red as the hood on the coat.

She was a much better skater than I was, but then she took lessons once a week and I rarely skated. I'd had an accident on my grandparents' farm when I was about six. We thought the ice was frozen, but it wasn't and it broke, plunging me into the muddy abyss below. My cousins, who were also only about five or six just stood there frozen in shock as I bobbed up and down. There was no time to yell; every time I surfaced I gulped another breath in time to sink again. Eventually the mud and muck just sucked me down farther. The only thing that saved me was that my father, who happened to be outside chopping wood for his mom and dad, came around the corner of the house and saw what was happening. I remember this very large hand appearing out of nowhere and raising me out of the muck and saving my life. Those same hands then beat the living tar out of my cousins.

So, needless to say, frozen ponds hold a certain level of fear for me, but I try not to pass on my fears to my children. I figure they're going to come up with their own set of fears and phobias, why should I add to them. So, here I was, standing on a frozen body of water ready to ice skate.

Rudy and Rachel were already on the ice. They waved at me from the middle of the lake. Mary stood, ready to skate. We moved out onto the ice, and Mary and Rachel instantly started some sort of romantic make-believe stuff on ice.

Damon Sneed, my favorite male cousin, came swooshing by and nearly spun me around with his g-force, he was skating so fast. “You think you're something,” I said to him with my hands on my hips. He did a little flip thingy, an axel of some sort, and then came over by me.

“Wow, Damon,” I said, impressed. “When did you learn to skate like that?”

“That is the result of two years in Canada,” he said. “My wife and I skated every weekend.”

“Cool,” I said. I loved Damon. When we were kids I used to call him Demon Seed, instead of Damon Sneed. God he hated that. He was always trying to come up with something to get back at me with, and it was just never as good. He was tall and slender, with black hair and syrupy brown eyes. His complexion was olive and he definitely took after our grandmother, who was French.

“You got a great town, Torie,” he said. “I've been here two days and I don't think I've ever had this much fun.”

“Well, it's not my town,” I answered him and fumbled on a bump in the ice. “I just live here.”

“You do much more than just live here,” he said and smiled. “Wish I could have come back in ninety-one.”

“Yeah, where were you again?”

“That was when we were in Canada.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. Damon lived in Arizona now and I'd gone to visit him once. Couldn't believe it could be so hot and not have one mosquito.

“Hey Damon,” I said. “What do you know about our great-grandpa?”

“Not much,” he said. He was Aunt Charlotte's son, so I knew that what information he had would come filtered down through his mother. “My dad never liked him too much.”

“Really?” I asked. “Why is that?” I was surprised by this. People never went around praising Nathaniel Keith, but I can't say that I actually heard anybody put him down either.

Damon shrugged his shoulders. “Can't think of anything specific,” he said. “Just that he was a drunk and that he liked to chase women.”

“Well, that's pretty specific if you ask me,” I said. His words didn't really mean too much to me, because getting drunk and being a womanizer seems to be the thing that people of days gone by tacked on to anybody that they didn't like.

“I don't know,” he said and shrugged again. “Why do you ask?” He turned around backward on his skates and skated in front of me, facing me.

“I'm working on a scrapbook type of thing and wanted little anecdotes or personality traits to put with each ancestor,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “Then you don't want the bad stuff.” He looked around his shoulder to see if he was going to run into anybody else on the ice. I was having difficulty in keeping up with him. He was a flawless skater and I was having to work at every stroke.

“If that's what he was, then that's what I'll put in the scrapbook,” I said. I was lying, of course, about the scrapbook. I seemed to do that a lot lately.

“Let me see if I can think of anything that I've heard that was good,” he said. “You should really ask Uncle Jed or Aunt Ruth, even Uncle Isaac. They were adults when he died. All I can give you is secondhand stuff.”

“I'm going to,” I said.

“Um,” he said and stroked his chin, deep in thought. “I think I heard my mother say something one time about him being in a swimming accident…”

“Hunting accident,” I corrected.

“No, swimming. He was a young man and saved some boy's life—from drowning or something like that,” he said.

“Oh,” I answered. I hadn't heard that one. “Do you know how he died?”

“No,” he said. “How did he die? Wouldn't you, Miss Genealogist, already know that?”

“Oh, I know,” I said. “I just thought I'd see what you knew about it.”

“I don't know anything,” he said. “How did he die?”

“Hunting accident,” I said. My nose was numb from the cold and my lips moved slower than normal. Which I'm sure was a relief to Damon. I outtalk most anybody. There was a shirt at the mall I was thinking about buying for myself. It said
HELP, I'VE STARTED TALKING AND I CAN'T SHUT UP
. Anybody who knows me in the least knows that is perfect for me.

The Doublemint twins skated by, each one holding on to the other one for dear life. That made me feel better. They were Wendy's kids and not perfect at something. Damon winked at me and went off to chase the twins. Their squeals could be heard all the way into town, I'm sure.

Rudy skated over to me and grabbed my hand. “How are you doing?” he asked.

“Oh, fine,” I said. I really needed to tell him about that blue stick at the doctor's office. He smiled at me and gave me his cutesy look. The one that declared that he was lovable and that I couldn't resist him in the least. He wore a brown leather coat and one of those toboggan hats that had a ball of fringe at the very end of the yard of material. His hat literally came down to his butt. It looked like one of those long turn-of-the-century sleeping hats. He was just too cute for words.

“Hey,” he said. “How'd your doctor's appointment go? Do you have mono?”

“No, I don't have mono,” I said in a vague tone of voice.

“Oh that's good,” he said. Suddenly a serious look crossed his face. I guess he just thought that maybe I had something worse than mono. I suppose, depending on the angle you took, being pregnant could be worse than mono. I had a cousin once who wished for a tumor when she thought she was pregnant. She was pregnant.

“It's nothing real serious,” I said to appease his sudden uneasiness. “Well, I guess that depends.”

“What?” he asked. We had made it to the side of the lake where my mother and the sheriff were. They waved to me and I waved back feeling like I was eight years old.

“Well, see…” I began. “There was this blue stick at the doctor's office—well, actually it was white when it began but it turned blue halfway through it—”

“What are you talking about?” he asked and laughed. “Sometimes I think you deliberately think of the most difficult way to say something just so you have more time at talking.”

“I'm pregnant.”

At that Rudy fell face first on the ice. He yelled out in agony as I heard him go thunk. “Oh my God, Rudy,” I said. I looked down and then I saw the ice turn red. Rudy came up holding his nose, blood soaking his gloves. He gave a real low painful-sounding moan and his eyes watered.

“You're what?” he said through the glove. “You're pr … pr … did you say you were pregnant?”

“God, Rudy. Shut up and get over here and sit down.”

The sheriff came walking out onto the ice and all of my family started to gather around. Rudy's wide-eyed stare never left my face as the sheriff and I helped him walk off the ice. Every now and then his eyes would involuntarily cross. God, that must have hurt.

He sat down on one of the bleachers and immediately put his head backward. “Oh, don't do that,” I said. “You want to lean forward a little. Not too much, though.”

“Thought I was supposed to put my head back,” he said and moaned in agony again.

“No, it's forward.”

“No, I'm pretty sure it's back.”

“Fine, stubborn,” I said. “Put it back and see what happens.”

He put his head back and left it that way for a few seconds. He abruptly gagged and put his head forward. I took his toboggan hat off his head and folded it and stuck it under his nose. There was nothing else for me to use.

“The blood ran down the back of your throat, didn't it?” I asked.

He just waved a hand at me. Yeah, yeah, I was the wife and I was right, no use in actually declaring it. Suddenly his head snapped back up. “Did you say—”

“Hush,” I said. I didn't want the sheriff and the umpteen cousins that had gathered around to hear this way that I was pregnant.

Sheriff Brooke had remained quiet until now. Rachel and Mary made it off the ice and were walking over to the bleachers through the grass that was slowly but surely turning white from the snow.

“Did you trip on your lace?” Sheriff Brooke asked.

Rudy just glared at him.

“We need to get you over to Wisteria General,” the sheriff added. “You could have broken it.”

Now Rudy glared at me.

“What?” I asked Rudy. “I didn't do anything.”

“You could have waited until we were in front of a cozy fireplace or something,” he said through the toboggan hat. “Did you have to tell me that then? Right then and there?”

“Well, you asked,” I said. “And I've known for a day or so and I was beginning to feel guilty keeping it from you. You asked.”

His glare grew more intense. Just as I was about ready to fear for the longevity of my marriage, his eyes crossed again and I cracked up laughing. I stopped fairly quickly, though. He was clearly not a happy man.

“If I hadn't told you, you would have thought the worst—”

“This is the worst!” he yelled.

“Or you would have just badgered me until I told you anyway. I wasn't planning on telling you on the ice. You asked me.”

“Asked what?” Sheriff Brooke asked.

Rudy and I simultaneously said, “Nothing!”

“Fine,” the sheriff said and held up his hands. “Rudy, you need to get over to the hospital.”

“I don't think it's broken,” he said.

“How would you know?” I asked. “Did it make a crunch sound?”

“Of course it made a crunch sound. I landed on my nose on the ice.”

The sheriff and I looked at each other. “It's broken,” I said.

“Look,” Rudy said and held his hat out. “It's already stopped bleeding.” Blood had run all the way down to his chin and when he tried to smile at me, I could see the blood gathered in between his teeth. It made me a little queasy.

“Yeah, but that doesn't mean it ain't broke,” the sheriff said.

“Daddy, Daddy,” the girls yelled. Rachel immediately stopped short when she saw all the blood and scrunched her nose up, distorting her face. “Ooooh that is just so gross, Dad,” she declared.

“Thanks, Rachel,” he said.

Mary, of course, went right up to him. “Neato,” she said. “You're going to have to wash your hat now.”

“What happened?” Rachel asked, her face still distorted in disgust.

“Your dad fell on the ice, I think he broke his nose,” I said.

Rachel gave a little giggle, then Mary began laughing out loud. Rudy's irritation at their obvious insensitivity to his situation was evident on his face. It didn't seem to bother the girls, though. They continued to laugh.

“Sheriff,” I said. “Would you make sure that my kids get home okay with my mother? I'm going to take Rudy to the hospital for an X ray.”

“Sure thing,” he said. “Not a problem. Be careful, though. I think the snow is coming down a little harder.”

Why was he being so nice to me? Normally he'd be wishing that I would hit a patch of ice.

“Okay,” I said. “Come on, Rudy. Let's get you to the hospital.”

He stood up and looked down at me. “Are you really … you know?”

“The blue stick says I am.”

“Wow,” he said. He followed behind me like a little lost puppy in total silence as we walked to the car. About an inch and a half of snow now covered the grass and it crunched beneath our feet. It was the only noise I heard, except the distant skaters and the occasional moan that Rudy would make.

I unlocked the door for him and went around to my side of the car. He spoke to me over the hood. “Really. You're really pregnant.”