Home from the Hill (3 page)

3

Now, after outliving herself fifteen years, Mrs. Hannah had gone to her reward—whatever that was. One wondered what she thought her reward would be. Heaven, no doubt. And then one could imagine her deliberately doing something at the last minute to insure going to hell, so as not to be separated from her Theron. Though, perhaps Mrs. Hannah thought Theron had been choiring with the angels these fifteen years. Hadn't that been her meaning in that tombstone she had had put up for him?

The first of us to get to the graveyard that morning found the two strangers—who had been in such a rush, who couldn't wait—sitting on that grass-grown mound beside the old open grave, looking quite confounded in their expectations of a back-country graveyard. We arrived just one minute ahead of Deputy Sheriff Bud Stovall, coming to check on these unusual proceedings. The Negroes that the two strangers had hired would be needed mainly to fill in the grave afterwards, but after fifteen years the walls of it had caved in and leaves and branches enough fallen down and piled up in it to make it indecently shallow to bury a body in. The two Negroes let themselves down in the hole and set to work. The two strangers got off the mound and out of the way of the dirt that commenced to fly. At first, while you could still see the Negroes' heads above the ground, the dirt was black; then they began to get below the silt and their heads gradually disappeared and the dirt thrown up was red clay.

Such was the funeral Mrs. Hannah gave herself—no ceremony, no procession, no preacher and no sermon, nothing but a bare interment. No one doubted—even before we were shown the proof—that this was as she herself had willed. She had not been one to miss such an opportunity, and besides, no one could have done it for her; she had no living kin—not even anyone to crumble in the customary first clod of dirt upon the coffin. She was having her way with us, as she had had in the matter of the tombstones.

By the time the Negroes were helped up out of the hole, most of the town was there and half the county what with the farmfolks in town with cotton at the gins. The sheriff was there now, wearing his badge of office.

The big stranger, standing at the rear of the hearse, took from his pocket a ring with what must have been fifty keys on it, all to the same kind of locks. It was then that we realized what he was. He looked like a turnkey, and as he thumbed through the keys we thought of the doors to those locks and of the wretches behind those doors. One by one the keys chinked down, and when he lifted the entire ring by the one he wanted, they jangled.

He unlocked the door and opened it, and we saw the coffin resting on the floor. The stranger turned then and crooked a finger at the two Negroes.

Perhaps they took a step; if so it was only one, for with a flicker of an eyelid the Sheriff nailed them to their spot. “Young man,” he said, “you've got us all wondering. We're wondering how we can be sure it's Miz Hannah you got in that coffin.”

“Oh, it's her, all right,” said the other fellow. The Sheriff ignored him.

Someone of us standing up close said, “Yeah. Suppose it ain't her and we let them put somebody else in that precious grave of hers!”

The big one said, “Now why should anybody want to—”

“You better provide yourself with a witness,” said the Sheriff, still addressing himself exclusively to the young man.

“She left instructions,” he replied. “She didn't want that. You know how she was. I mean, you know she was—”

“Instructions?” said the Sheriff.

“Written instructions?” said Ed Dinwoodie.

“Of course,” said the big man to the other, “they's no legal obligation to abide by any last will and testament when the deceased was legally declared—” Seeing the scowl on his partner's face, he broke off.

“This was how she wanted it—the way we're doing it. She left instructions. You know how she was, and this doesn't seem like much to ask.”

“Let's see your instructions,” said the Sheriff.

“I can't show you,” he said, and an impulse of embarrassment, annoyance, troubled his features.

“Can't show us,” said the Sheriff flatly. “Young fellow, you're making a suspicious lot of mystery.”

“I can't show you,” he said, “because they're in there with her. In the coffin.”

“In the coffin?” said the Sheriff. Then, suddenly adopting his tone of invested authority, so that he seemed to be the appointed voice of all of us at his back, “No coffin's going into this here grave till the law's been satisfied the right person's in it.”

The young man turned and looked at the coffin. It was as if he was appealing to her to observe that he had done all he could for her. At the same time he seemed a trifle ashamed, as if there was something about her which for the sake of his own pride he would sooner went into the grave unseen.

He shrugged. He climbed in and loosened the toggle bolt which held down the lid at the end of the coffin. Then, crouching, he duck-walked down the side, loosening the three bolts there, working his way towards the cab. He swung each bolt up out of its socket as he went. At the head of the coffin he unscrewed the last bolt and without saying anything, squatted beneath the window that looked into the cab.

The Sheriff hauled himself in and the big fellow at once stationed himself at the door, as if on guard to keep the rest of us out.

The Sheriff squatted and raised the lid, which swung back on its hinges noiselessly.

Thirty-five years in office, plus a temperament initially suited to the job, had given to Sheriff Tom a face as stolid as an Indian's. He had seen most everything. Yet what he saw when he looked into that coffin caused his eyes to widen. For a while he stared at what must have been the body. Then slowly he turned to look at the face.

“Well?” said the young man, his voice coming muffled from away back in there.

We outside waited, breathless.

“Well?”

The Sheriff continued staring. It seemed he had forgotten that the young man was there.

“Well, are you satisfied it's her?”

The Sheriff looked up, slowly, not at his questioner, but outside, at us. His face satisfied our curiosity not at all; he seemed to have forgotten that we were there, too. He looked back into the coffin again, then finally up at the young man. Even then for a moment he still did not answer.

“It's her, all right, isn't it? Just like I told you.”

We thought he had answered and we had not been able to hear: sounds came out of there strangely far-away and muffled. Then he spoke:

“I can't be sure.”

“Can't be sure?”

The Sheriff stirred himself. He waddled back to the door and let himself down, pushing aside the husky stranger as if he was no bigger than a boy. “It's a long time since I last seen Miz Hannah,” he said. “We better bring her out here for everybody to have a look. Many of these folks remember her. Maybe one of them'll recognize her.”

He turned to the crowd. “Men. A little assistance here.”

But eager as everybody was for a look, not just everybody was eager to be one of Mrs. Hannah's recruited-on-the-spot pallbearers, nor a party in any active way to this unnatural service. Which made those who
were
more eager than ever, but shy to let it be seen. Finally five or six stepped forward, and some got inside to push (the young man had meanwhile lowered the lid) while some stood with the big fellow at the door to ease her down. Then we noticed something strange about the hearse, though for a moment we could not quite guess what it was. Then we understood why the sound of talk and of the coffin lid being raised had been so muffled. The walls were padded.

The big man, observing our expressions, laughed and said, “Yeah, boys. That's right. This old buggy does double duty. We fetch em in it and we haul em away.”

“Dry up,” said the young fellow.

The big one laughed. “'Smatter, Doc? Don't like this part of your job?”

“Dry up.”

The big fellow mugged at us, cocking his head and jerking his thumb towards his partner and laughing.

We set the coffin on the ground and stood back, and there were some moments when it was a question who was to raise the lid. At last the Sheriff stepped forward. Seizing the upturned middle bolt, he heaved, then without looking in, stepped aside. Not one eye was upon the coffin; all were watching the others. When, by that exchange of looks, all had pledged complicity, we moved in in step.

The dress she lay in had been a sequined evening gown, once gold, now tarnished green, in the flapper style of the 1920's. It was sleeveless and the hemline was above the knees, the waist around the hips. The flattened bust, once modish, now accommodated her. Many of the sequins hung away upon their slackened threads, and a sprinkling of them had shed like moulting feathers and lay loose upon the pink satin lining of the coffin.

Against the pink cushion under the head the face stood out with a mortal pallor, untinted, unretouched, denied the undertaker's merciful arts: the last defiant abjuration of a woman who knew she never had been pretty. Already the spreading bluishness of stilled blood suffused faintly from below the drawn translucent skin of the forehead, the cheekbones, around the pale lips. She had met with a kind of determined rigidity the last great relaxation. She had relinquished nothing; she was still herself. The jut of her mannish jaw had not been slackened nor the deep creases from the nose to the corners of the mouth been smoothed. It was as if she cherished still the pains that had carved her living flesh like knives—the old outrage to her pride, the consciousness which marriage had promised to erase, and had instead intensified, of her unfeminine awkwardness, the years of wedded celibacy, the bitter reward of her devotion to the boy, the tragedy, the dead years waiting for death. She had refused any last-minute serenity; she was taking it all with her. Her hands were not folded with peaceful resignation on her breast, but, arms extended, clenched tightly into fists at her sides, and upon the ring finger of her left hand was a blue line like an old bruise. Perhaps the corpse had been robbed. But there was a suggestion of readiness in her pose, the same as in her face, as of one whose earthly preparations had long been made, which prompted another explanation: she herself had removed it, seeing the term of her sentence draw near.

To her breast was pinned a scrap of paper. On it, in pencil, was written:

DIRECTIONS FOR MY BURIAL

Feeling at last the approach of death, I have dressed myself as I wish to meet it. Call it the whim of a crazy woman, but humor it, and bury me just as you find me. Do not embalm my body nor put it on view. Bury me as soon as possible and without hymns or sermon or services of any kind. My grave will be found in the family plot, marked by a stone with my name,

Hannah Hunnicutt

Together we drew our heads away, and after a moment's stillness, in a common impulse, five of us placed hands upon the coffin lid. Seeing the others' hands there, each hesitated; then together all five lowered the lid. As we did so, we were aware, in the air forced out of the coffin, of the first faint breath of decomposition. One by one we locked down the bolts, and at last Mrs. Hannah was alone.

We slid the ropes under the casket, held it above the hole and all said
O.K
. in a whisper, and commenced to lower it. The young stranger stood at the head of the grave, overseeing. We had it just below ground when he said:

“Wait!”

We stopped—we very nearly dropped it.

“Pull it up,” he said.

“Take it out,” he said. “Put it down.”

We did; we set it on Theron's grave.

He turned to the crowd. Now it was his turn to be suspicious. He looked as if he thought we were all in cahoots to put something over on him. But he said nothing, and so for a minute we could not understand what was wrong: in fifteen years we had all gotten used to it. Then we realized he had just then for the first time taken real notice of the three bottom lines on that tombstone:

DEPARTED THIS LIFE

MAY 28, 1939

AGED 39 YRS

“Never you mind,” said Sheriff Tom. “That's where she goes, all right. Hasn't no other coffin been taken out of there, if that's what you're thinking. That hole's been empty all these years, waiting for her. She had it dug herself. Don't think we didn't think it was just as funny as you do.”

And somebody else said, “That was when we sent for your outfit to come get her.”

“And another thing! Why don't it say wife to him?”—nodding towards the Captain's stone—said the stranger, his suspicions at once aroused by more than just the date, and looking now at the first two lines on that red stone. It makes no mention of any husband. Instead it says:

Hannah

MOTHER OF THERON HUNNICUTT

“That's just what we said,” we told him. “That was when we sent for you people.”

4

It was on the first Graveyard Cleaning Day following the tragedy.

Mrs. Hannah was supposed to have recuperated. We had watched her recovery, from afar yet closely. We knew from the house Negroes, Chauncey and Melba, as well as from her mother, who was still alive at the time, of her breakdown following the catastrophe. We had heard how, for weeks afterwards, fits would come upon her and she would try to do herself harm, that she had had to be kept under restraint and sedation, and we knew that the town doctors had called in mental specialists from Dallas. But then we heard that the crisis was past, that she would recover, and—early that summer—that she was beginning to take a hand in running the house once more. Mid-summer came, and we began to wait for her to erect a monument over her husband's grave. The town had given the Captain the biggest funeral in its history. We had high expectations for his tombstone.

But summer passed and the leaves were on the ground, and even on Graveyard Cleaning Day, with everybody home for it, even those whose families moved away generations ago—for home, we say, is where you bury—she still had done nothing about it; his grave was still unmarked. His exploits were then still very fresh to us, and had been on such a scale that we must have supposed Mrs. Hannah to have been impressed in quite as impersonal a way as we were. Certainly we were surprised, and even a little disappointed, to learn now that she had felt an ordinary wife's resentment of his escapades.