Cementville (33 page)

She stood outside Loretta's bedroom for a long time before pushing open the door, and still she gasped on seeing the white profile, nearly the color of the sheets. Loretta's hand was still warm.

“I'll be alright, Mother.” Wanda whispered her protest, even though her mother was giving no quarrel. “It's okay. You go on now.”

I
N THE WEEKS AFTER HER
mother passed, Wanda found herself taking on Loretta's slow, deliberate habits as if some scrap of her mother's soul had been snagged on the briars of her own, a frail shred of cloth left behind, a fragment of a lost child's garment. Drawing a glass of water became an occasion to gaze out the same window where Loretta had hovered mornings, alternately sipping water from a chipped goblet and feeding the tiny tablets of prednisone and chloroquine between her dry lips. Wanda kept Loretta's wool sweater on a nail by the kitchen door and took to slipping it over her own shoulders each morning.

Outdoors, she put one tentative foot on the garden path in front of her, careful to measure the security of its purchase before the next step, the actions of a cautious invalid or an infant learning to walk. Sometimes as she tweezed the persistent lamb's quarters from between Loretta's clumps of borage and wild comfrey, Wanda was sure she could hear her mother's weary sigh behind her, that if she looked over her shoulder she would see the once generous figure standing, spine-arched, her hand pressed to the small of her back.

But no, Wanda was alone now on the old place Poose had christened Hanging Valley, in the house he called Maiden's Rest, the four walls she and Loretta had both grown up in. This occupation by her mother's ghost did not alarm her. That is, Wanda did feel unquestionably older, dragging herself around the house and what was left of Poose's dilapidated farm; but wielding the memory of her mother was less a drain on her than the weight of her grandmother's estate. Wanda had depended on Loretta to keep the crushing yoke of being suddenly wealthy from grinding her straight into the ground.

She heard voices, one high, the other soft, deep. Carl and his niece. Their heads appeared first as they pushed their bikes up the hill. Wanda rose to her feet, her hand rising instinctively to her throat. The pulse there was steady and slow.

FIFTEEN

K
atherine and Maureen were drying and putting away the supper dishes when the call came. Maureen answered the phone and was barely able to get out hello before the high-pitched squawk emanating from the ear piece made her hold the thing a good four inches from her face. Willis could hear Lila's screech from across the kitchen where he sat at the table sipping a cup of Postum. He claimed it was one of the few healthy habits he'd picked up in Korea—he couldn't handle caffeine at night anymore, and the grain-based drink seemed to help his digestion. They'd had a new phone installed, a wall unit with a long springy cord, and Maureen wrapped herself in it like a mummy.

“Mrs. O'Brien,” Maureen mouthed to Katherine, her eyes wide in an exaggerated startle. She held out the phone and uncoiled herself from the cord. Her mother gave her a playful swat on the bottom with her tea towel.

“Lila, how are you?” Katherine said. “Hold on—slow down, Lila.” She listened, nodding and glancing occasionally at Maureen and Willis as they waited transfixed to see what new excitement—or calamity—had arrived now. “I'll be right there.”

Katherine hung up the phone and stood there a minute with her face to the wall. She breathed in, trying to put herself in Lila O'Brien's shoes. She pressed in place a strand of hair that had come loose, and she may have even prayed. When she turned to her husband and daughter, she must not have managed to smooth the apprehension from her face, because Maureen put a hand to her mouth and her eyes filled with tears.

“They've arrested Harlan O'Brien,” Katherine said.

“Oh, thank God!” Maureen yelped.

“Maureen!” Katherine was about to slap her when she noticed that Willis, his face drained of color and his cup still suspended in the air before him, had deflated. He set the cup down carefully and put his face in his hands.

Maureen burst into tears.

“What—” Katherine looked in bewilderment from her daughter to her husband.

“We thought it was Billy,” Willis said. “We figured Lem found him in a ditch somewhere.”

“Oh. No. No, it's Harley Sheriff O'Donahue has taken him in for questioning. I need to go over there. Lila is beside herself. Do you think we have any of those sedatives they sent Billy home with?”

“Seriously? Katherine, he probably ate that bottle in the first few days he was back.” Willis shook his head as he smoothed and folded his
Courier Journal
.

Katherine glared at him. What had become of the sweet, compassionate man she married twenty . . . good God, they would celebrate their twentieth this winter. Where was her Willis, the gentle father who couldn't stand to see her spank the kids, even for the gravest of childhood offenses, who tirelessly read them bedtime stories after putting in a grueling day at the shop, so that she could put her feet up and just be, with no demands from anyone?

“I will remind you one more time: It was you who signed that form the recruiter sent home saying it was okay for a seventeen-year-old to run off to this idiotic and murderous vanity they are calling a war.” She knew her voice had what Maureen called the
“demon-possession” tone, and she knew the once private arguments between her and Willis had begun to spill beyond the bedroom.

“He can't use the war as an excuse to behave like a worthless drunk forever,” Willis said.

Katherine shuddered, actually had to rub her arms to get the goose bumps to go down, from the chill in his voice. It was Willis who taught her what unconditional love—when truly lived—felt like. And now he seemed to suffer a physical revulsion at the very thought of his own son.

“He's been home four months, Will. Four. That is hardly
forever
.” She had tried to get him to read articles about the new studies being done on war fatigue and stress and trauma. His response was always the same: It's not as though men have never gone to war before. But she couldn't deal with Willis now. She had to get over to the O'Briens' house. Lem was waiting till she got there before he drove to the jail, not wanting to leave Lila alone. Outside, the sun was already gone and there was a nip in the air.

“Maureen, would you get my sweater, the navy one with the pearl buttons?”

She watched Maureen run upstairs, knowing it would take her a few minutes to dig the sweater out of her closet.

“Will.”

He looked up from the paper.

“Do you want to go over there with me? Lemuel would probably appreciate you riding to the jail with him. Maureen will be all right alone for a while. Carl will be home from Wanda's soon.” Katherine tried for a smile; she needed to lighten the air in the room.

Will took the bait. “Sure.” He stood from the table and at the same time they reached for each other. “I'm sorry,” he said into her hair.

“I know,” she said. “Me too.” She was glad when Maureen came downstairs and caught them in an embrace. They hadn't done this enough lately, shown the kids how important family was, in good times and bad. Katherine nearly wept with the flood of relief, and her husband held her tighter.

* * *

T
HE LAST OF THE SUN
washed a ribbon of gold over the ridge across the valley. Willis could just make out the roof of Johnny Ferguson's old place, where Carl was probably wiping the crumbs of his dinner from his chin. He was glad for Carl that the meek flame he'd once carried for Wanda Slidell seemed to have been relit. In the least case, she would make a nice friend; a bit peculiar for his own taste, but probably perfect for Carl.

“Nice night for a walk,” Willis said, his heart suddenly full with the realization of his unlikely luck, walking across the spine of land his family had called theirs for seven generations, including Maureen, and yes, Billy. They were bathed in this pink twilight, they were good people, a good family that was meant to be here, not the type who moved here or there whenever the slightest breeze blew them around. They would survive this—this thing, whatever it was—that had befallen their community; all of them, even Carl, would survive. Willis's wife strode along so upright and pretty by his side, her kind, strong face not minding the chill of the evening wind.

“There's a little bite in that breeze,” he said. Katherine murmured agreement and held his hand and Willis wondered whether it was already time to light the furnace. He hated to, what with the cost of heating oil now.

They knocked on Lemuel's and Lila's door, even though they didn't really need to, being back-door neighbors all these years. Lem took them to where his wife lay on the couch in the front room. Lila started to struggle up, saying, “Let me get you all something, coffee, iced tea . . .” but Katherine was able to calm her down, and Lila fell against the arm of the sofa and daubed the wad of tissue at her eyes, trying for half a minute to be dainty, but then pulling several fresh Kleenex out of the box at her elbow and weeping freely into them.

“Now, Mother,” Lemuel O'Brien said helplessly. He wagged his head at Willis and Katherine.

This was Willis's least favorite thing in the world to do. He was glad Katherine was comfortable offering succor, because he was woefully ill-equipped for the task. Not to mention, he had harbored thoughts of his own about Harlan, thoughts he never dared mention to Katherine, knowing where she stood on the subject. But Willis had seen Harley walking back up the hill in the dawn hours this summer. He had heard the stories, that people had seen Harlan O'Brien talking with Jimmy Smith's wife at the river, always before sunup. Which made the whole thing appear sneaky, when really they may have just been talking about things they had in common. Dalliances like that happened, Willis figured, people got entangled with each other, he understood it could happen without anyone ever intending anything bad. You could wake up and find yourself enmeshed or—or just as easily, separated or lost—without the first notion of how you got there. But objectively speaking, Willis wondered, could Harlan have murdered someone? Sure, he could have.

“Will, why don't you and Lem go see how things are coming along with Harlan?” Katherine said, and the two men lost no time heading out to the garage. Willis turned around once to see if he could spot her at the window, but the O'Briens' house sat stolid on the ridge, yellow-stained by the dying light.

“I expect Harlan'll be riding home with us,” Lem said. “It's not as though they have anything specific on him. O'D said they're talking to a lot of men here in town, just gathering information.”

“I'm sure that's so,” Willis said. “They've got to gather information.”

“I can't even recall when was the last murder in these parts.” Lem kept both hands on the wheel, eyes ahead. Willis had known Lemuel O'Brien all his life. His friend was not a man given to provocation, so Willis didn't suspect him now of callously picking at old wounds. He wasn't trying to get Willis to talk about Carl, or the long-ago death of a vagrant.

“Me neither,” said Willis.

But Lem was methodical, his years operating the sawmill and then working carpentry making him keen with numbers and solving loose ends. “Oh yeah, it was that Stubbs, or Stobbs . . .”

“Stubblefleld,” Willis said. “1954.” He did not need to look at Lem O'Brien to know that the man was blinking into the windshield, aware suddenly that he had transgressed. The last two blocks to the jail rolled under them, the only sound the calm ticking of Lem's watch.

Mickey O'Donohue's new deputy waited for them.

“Lem. Willis.” He shook both men's hands and directed them to the creaky church pew that marked the raw space as a waiting room. It was familiar, the walls bare but for a few Wanted posters. The rickety table with ancient yellowed magazines. The rough plank floors Willis had paced several times this summer, having driven here in the night to get his own son out of another scrape. The last time Billy was in for public drunkenness, Willis had left him in the tank overnight, and Katherine didn't speak to him for two whole days.

“Alden in there with them?” Lemuel said, and the deputy nodded.