Under the Mercy Trees (17 page)

“It's your choice whether to share them with your family or not. I don't think pictures from 1958 bear on this case. Just don't tell Hodge unless you want everybody to know.” Wally handed the photos back to Martin.

Martin smiled. “Hodge isn't a secret keeper, is he?” He dropped the photos into his briefcase.

“That's what I like most about him.” Wally pushed the ledger toward Martin but kept the mailer. “I'll hang onto this until we find your brother. The outside's contaminated, but once we know what we're looking for, I might want to send it to the SBI lab in Raleigh.” He didn't sound very optimistic. It was all right with Martin. He didn't have a stake in being the one to break the case.

“If he mailed me things all the time, I wouldn't have brought it in, but I don't think I ever got a piece of mail from him before in my life.”

“Seems he was in a giving-away mood there at the last.” Wally opened a drawer and pulled out a tagged plastic bag. It held Leon's ugly knuckle knife. The sight of it shocked Martin, even though Hodge had told him about the sheriff confiscating it from Steven. Martin had never seen the knife without his brother attached to it.

Wally pushed it over to him. “We had it tested. All kinds of interesting things on it, but no human blood. Give it back to Steven for me when you see him.”

23

Bertie

Bertie couldn't believe her eyes when she saw Martin at church on Sunday morning. She and James got there right as the service was starting and saw him, two pews from the front, sandwiched between Hodge and Claudie Goforth on his left and Eugenia looking proud as punch on his right. He gave them a little wave. Solace Fork Baptist Church had an organ it got when the county lost its minor league baseball team. It could sound like any instrument. The organist made it sound like a bell and hit the same key eleven times to chime the hour and get things started.

After the service half the congregation went up to the front to say hello to Martin. Bertie and James went up there to stand with Eugenia and Zeb, to act like family was supposed to. Bertie knew church bored Martin, but he did a good job not showing it. He was charming to all the older people who remembered him from when he was a boy. She was willing to bet he wouldn't be back next week, but he made the best of this week.

When most everybody had shuffled away, leaving just the Owenby family and Hodge and Claudie, Martin said, “Stay here a minute. I left something in Hodge's truck I want to show all of you.” He went out the church's side entrance and came back a few minutes later holding something flat wrapped in a plastic bag. “Look at this.”

“What is it?” Eugenia nudged Bertie out of the way to look.

Martin unwrapped it carefully. “Mama's egg book.” He opened it. Nell Owenby's neat, old-fashioned handwriting filled the pages.

“Oh.” Eugenia looked disappointed.

“Leon mailed it to me in New York before he disappeared. It got delivered to a neighbor's by mistake.”

James stepped forward and touched the book. “Why in the world would Leon send you that?”

Martin shrugged.

“Was there a note with it?” Eugenia said.

“No.”

“Maybe he was trying to send you a message.” Eugenia took the book and held it up to the light that streamed in from the church's one stained-glass window. Martin winced as she bent the binding back, peeking down into the spine, looking for a clue. He gently took it away from her.

“No secret messages, Eugenia. I don't know why he sent it.”

“Can I look at it?” Bertie said.

“Sure.” He handed it to her. Bertie turned the pages. The simple entries made her want to cry.

“I can make photocopies for all of you if you want,” Martin said.

James looked puzzled. Eugenia said, “It's just an old book.”

Bertie felt for Martin. The Owenbys were not a sentimental bunch. “I'd like a copy, Martin, to keep with my clippings and other family things. I can copy it at the library tomorrow if you want.”

Martin looked grateful. “That would be great, Bertie.”

Eugenia couldn't stand it. She reached for the book. “Give it here. It was our mama's. I'll copy it.”

Before she could grab it Martin put his arm out to block her. “Bertie already offered, Eugenia. I know she'll take care of it.” He handed Bertie the plastic bag to protect it.

Bertie gave Eugenia a big smile. Martin standing up to Eugenia gave her heart a bigger lift than the whole church service had. “Martin, why don't you come home and eat with us. James can drive you back to Hodge's later,” she said.

“I'd love to.”

Eugenia's lips pursed. Bertie allowed herself a moment of un-Christian pleasure at having beat Eugenia to the dinner invitation.

When they got home, Bobby's truck was in their driveway. He and Cherise came for Sunday dinner after church every week, whether Bertie and James invited them or not. When Bertie and James walked in with Martin, Bobby and Cherise were on the couch, watching a car race on television. James and Martin went to wash their hands. Bertie set Martin's ledger on top of the microwave and put an apron on over her good clothes. The roast she'd put in the oven before they went to church was just right. She took it out and put it on a plate with the carrots and potatoes she'd cooked with it. She set the table and took four little plates out of the refrigerator, each with half a pear sitting on lettuce, with a maraschino cherry in the middle. She lifted the plastic wrap off. Martin could have the one she'd fixed for herself. “Dinner's ready.”

Bobby and Cherise came into the kitchen. Bobby was in a good mood. He kissed Bertie on the cheek, something he almost never did anymore, and when Martin walked in Bobby let Martin choose a seat first, before he and Cherise plopped down and started filling their plates.

“Look at this, Bobby.” Bertie took the egg book out of its bag and showed it to him. “It belonged to your grandmother Nell. Leon sent it to Martin right before he disappeared, but he just got it recently.”

“Leon mailed it before he went missing?” Cherise's eyes seemed to glitter. Bertie didn't like that girl. Cherise was always conniving about something.

Bobby turned a few pages of the ledger. “Why'd it take so long to get there?”

“The mailman took it to the wrong apartment,” Martin said.

Bertie wrapped the book back up and put it in a cabinet to keep it safe.

James came in and they started eating. While Martin told them about his job at the community college, Bobby and Cherise ate without saying anything. Cherise chewed with her mouth open, picking her maraschino cherry up with her fingers to pop it in her mouth. James's plate got low, and Bertie cut him another piece of beef without him asking. When everybody was done Bobby leaned back and burped real loud.

“Bobby, show some manners,” James said.

“That's how the Eskimos say they liked a meal,” Bobby said.

“You're no Eskimo,” James said.

Bobby reached over and put his arm around Cherise's fleshy shoulder. “You ready to tell them, Cherise?”

“Fine with me.”

Bobby leaned back in his chair. “We've got an announcement.”

Bertie could see he enjoyed saying it like that. Bobby hadn't had many things to announce in his life. A feeling of tired knowing seeped through her body. She looked at Cherise's face, puffier lately than it used to be. Bertie knew what Bobby was going to say, and she didn't want to hear it.

“Cherise is pregnant. We're going to have a baby.”

Bobby had a big grin on his face, proud to have proved his manhood by knocking Cherise up. Bertie could feel James's stillness beside her. A clock ticked in the living room.

“Congratulations,” Martin said.

“When are you due?” Bertie asked Cherise.

“End of March.” She was further along than Bertie had thought, carrying the baby high so her regular fat hid it.

“Are y'all going to do the right thing?” Bertie could hardly ask the question. Bobby ought to marry the girl, but the thought of him stuck with Cherise made Bertie sick.

“Not right now,” Bobby said. “There's no hurry. We'll get around to it.”

Cherise picked potato skin out of her teeth. Martin folded his napkin into a square, studying it.

“You don't have a job, Bobby,” Bertie said.

The smile faded from Bobby's face. “That's just like you. You ought to be happy for me, and instead you shoot me down.”

Bertie looked to James for help.

“Son, she's just saying you need a steady job to raise a child,” James said.

“Your daddy could keep a job,” Bertie couldn't help saying.

“I will have a job by the time Cherise has to stop working.” Bobby pushed his chair back from the table. “Come on, Cherise.” They left without thanking Bertie for the meal or even taking their dirty plates to the sink. Bertie felt her eyes tear up.

James laid a hand on hers. “Bertie, I know it's disappointing.”

Outside, Bobby's truck tires squealed as he pulled out into the road. Disappointing. That's what it was.

Martin cleared his throat, changing the subject. “Have you heard anything from the sheriff about Leon's medical bill?”

“Not yet,” James said.

“Whatever he had done at that place, it was expensive, so it must have been serious,” Bertie said.

“Maybe that's why he sent me Mama's ledger. So I'd have it if he died,” Martin said.

At the word “died” James's face got all pink. Martin touched James's arm. “Forget I said that.”

James just shook his head. “I'm going to go lie down for a minute.” He got up and left.

Martin helped Bertie clear the dishes and wipe the table. He found Bertie's cigarettes on the counter and took one, passing the pack to her. She reached up in the cabinet for his mama's book, and they sat back down at the table to smoke.

Bertie opened the ledger, turning pages to find the date of the last entry. “Your mama kept on writing in here, up until just a few days before she died, weak as she was.”

Martin looked at the page she'd found. “How bad was it for her?” He asked the question like he wanted to know but was afraid to at the same time.

“You mean there at the end?”

“Yes.”

Bertie stubbed her cigarette out. It seemed disrespectful to smoke while talking about Nell Owenby. “She was in a lot of pain, I can't lie to you. She'd got to where she couldn't eat or drink. That's how it is, you know.” She checked Martin's face, to make sure that what she was telling him wasn't hurting him. “Your daddy finally got Dr. Vance to come and give her something for the pain. That last day, me and Eugenia were both with her in the bedroom. I had one of Nell's hands and Eugenia was holding the other.” That was back when Bertie and Eugenia were close, before Bertie left James and Eugenia wrote her off as a sinner. Bertie rubbed the back of her own hand, remembering the sharp, still bones beneath Nell Owenby's dry skin. “Her breathing got slower and slower, until it was just a few times a minute. We sat there listening for it in that quiet room. And then she finally expired. It was a peaceful passing, Martin, really it was.”

Martin nodded. “Thank you.” He tapped his mama's ledger with two fingers, drumming out a rhythm.

“You're welcome,” she said. His hair had fallen over his eyes. Bertie reached over and pushed it aside with one finger, as if he were still the boy he'd been when she first joined the Owenby family.

24

Ivy

I love my little house. Nobody else's dirt fills the cracks, a nice change after my life of cleaning motel rooms. An eat-in kitchen with a bay window out to the backyard, so I can watch my bird feeders. Sun jumping in everywhere. I keep it perfect. It still smells of fresh paint and carpet glue. When Steven or Trina comes they smoke outside to help me preserve the smell. And the aloneness of it, not having to share it with some man, nor most of the time with the ghosts, who don't care for its newness, its cleanness, the shortage of upsetting memories. Except that sometimes in the middle of enjoying the house an if-only thought catches me. If only I could have provided such a house for my children, and my sadness calls up Shane. There he is now, in his windbreaker and favorite tennis shoes. Ducks into my clean bathroom and flushes the toilet, runs the water. I hurry my step but can't catch him.

When Shane lived at home with me and my boyfriend Ricky Ball, he slept fully dressed, with quarters in his shoes, in case he had to run down to the Piggly Wiggly on the corner and call 911. I should have put an end to it but didn't. Ricky took such a load off me. The money, for one thing, and also when we fooled around, I could be in just one place, ghost voices not intruding, it was such a grand relief. I needed Ricky to help me sort out what was real and what wasn't. Ricky's explosions could clear a room of spirits.

My children tiptoed around Ricky the way I tiptoed around the ghosts. His mood could change in a minute, like the weather up on Spivey's Bald, clouds rolling in without warning, flash floods suddenly crashing down on what had been a sunny day. Sometimes I'd feel it building up, the way pressure builds inside a house right before a big storm, and it was a relief when it finally blew. Sometimes I provoked him on purpose, when the kids weren't home, to have it over with. Shane took it hardest. He took everything hardest. He pulled out all his eyebrow hairs, until the skin was two pale, raw strips. The kids didn't bring friends home, because they couldn't tell when Ricky would be at work or when he'd be stretched out on the sofa with a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, yelling orders until he got mad enough to get up and go after whoever had made him ill. It was his trailer. The lease was in his name. The alternative was for me and the children to live in my car.

Shane has left the toilet lid up. I spray cleaner on a sponge and wipe the rim out of habit before I put the seat down. I think about the time Ricky put me in the hospital with a cracked vertebra after he knocked me down and then jumped on me. While I was still in the emergency room, Social Services came and loaded up my children. They let me have supervised visits at McDonald's every other week. Sometimes the social worker didn't bring them and said the mix-up was my fault for not having a phone. When they did come, Trina clung to me the whole visit. Steven cried, asked me when he could come home. At first, Shane tried to be a man and said everything was fine. As time pressed on he began to disrespect me or didn't even bother to show up.

This time I couldn't get my children back. Social Services gave me a long list of things I was supposed to do. Take parenting classes twice a week, go to counseling twice a week, but still somehow get and keep a job. And stay away from Ricky Ball, which I did, which kept me from meeting one more requirement, keeping a stable home. I cleaned toilets at different motels in exchange for a room. In court every three months, the social worker stood up and told how the visits upset the children, how I had missed this or that appointment, and recommended that my kids stay in foster care. Social Services is a locomotive. Once it gets rolling it doesn't stop, and it carried my children clear away.

The floor of the courthouse where they heard my case was always crowded, the hall outside full of screaming children and grandparents trying to wrest custody away from Social Services on behalf of some no-good child or other. To pretend like there was privacy, they pulled a partition across to separate the courtroom from the room full of people waiting for their cases to be called, but from the outside you could hear what they said behind the partition. Whenever it was my time to go inside, the seats in the back would be full of lawyers and social workers, all gossiping and rolling their eyes, and interpreters for the Mexicans and once even for some deaf people who couldn't hear their baby crying so didn't feed it. That wasn't much privacy to my way of thinking. Not that I ever had privacy, because the ghosts were there, too, wayward girls in old-fashioned clothes who passed through the partition, clutching still bundles in their arms and looking lost.

The judge gave me one court-appointed attorney after another, always some child fresh out of law school, who put their name on the list out of fear of not being able to earn a living otherwise. My case always came up in front of the same judge. I asked one of my lawyers, couldn't we get a new judge, and he hemmed and hawed about continuity. By then the court's file on me was a good three inches thick. I think the state only appointed the lawyers to make it look like it was being fair. There wasn't anything the lawyers could really do. Every time we lost, they filled out their fee sheets to give to the judge before we left the courtroom, set on getting paid above all else. One after another they wrote me letters saying they weren't doing that type of work anymore. One of them, a young man I really liked, was honest enough to use the words “burn out.” I was burned out, too, but nobody would let me off the list. I was on it for good.

My brooding has issued an invitation. Alma and Missouri have come to call. Before me in my living room they play out a scene. For once Missouri abandons her youthful beauty, and Alma lets go of her age. Missouri appears as fifty, causing mischief in her daughter's ordered household. In middle age, Missouri's hair has gone from red to a striking gray, as thick as before. She wears black, not to be proper but because she knows she looks good in it—it offsets her hair. The skin on her face has thinned and dried, too much sun for her coloring. Her figure is still fine under sober clothes.

The younger Alma's face is pretty, her teeth are white. She has married early to get away from her mother. Her husband is a shiftless man named Zeno, a grandfather I never met because he fell drunk off of Rendezvous Falls before I was born. It is hog-killing time. I hear the death squeals outside. Zeno's brother has come to help and Missouri is sowing trouble.

Missouri winks at me and sidles up to Zeno where he stands bloody in front of Alma's stove, shoving biscuits in his mouth. Alma and the brother are in the smokehouse, making sausage.

“A pity you get biscuits when Alma has slipped the sweetbreads to your handsome brother.” Missouri's own hands are clean, no bloody work for her.

“What?” Zeno speaks with his mouth full, spitting crumbs on the floor he has soiled.

“Keep an eye on your wife if you're wise,” Missouri says. Zeno wipes his hands on his front and starts fast for the door.

Missouri is pleased with her joke.

“You ought not to lie on her like that,” I chide.

“I'm only having a bit of fun. Nobody could suspect Alma of being unfaithful, not even one as slow as him.”

Alma steps through the door. Zeno has busted her eye. Pigs' blood from his fist outlines the bruise. Missouri didn't plan this part. She reaches for Alma's face in spite of herself. Alma grabs her wrist before she can touch her. Alma's jaw is set, her face now more like the Alma I know. “I'll take being hit for a domain of my own. You will leave here tomorrow.”

I have never before seen Missouri contrite. She raises her hands and it is night. We all three stand over Zeno's bed. He stinks of moonshine, his snores pull air. In one hand Missouri holds up a pig's privates. In the other the iron forceps used to snip them off. She jabs the forceps into Zeno's crotch, hard enough for him to wake up yelling. He sees her holding the hog's manhood in her fist and thinks the jewels are his. He screams and stumbles from the bed, a hand on what he thinks is missing. Off he goes, a howl into the night.

Alma, her proper old age again, tries out the denim love seat in my living room, puts her thin legs up on my ottoman and eyes her mother. “You did that?”

Missouri lowers her arms. “Daughter, I would do it again.”

For the first and only time, it is a smile and not a sneer that reveals Alma's teeth, three of them the blue of cloudy opals.

Outside on my porch I hear Shane's step. After he died, my other two children raised so much hell and ran away so many times, the social workers finally gave in and let them come back to me. We did all right. With children, I got government help with my rent. Steven and Trina shared a paper route for pocket money. At least I had them for those years, though the three of us were pitiful, holding hands in a circle game around the hole Shane left, trying to keep each other from falling in.

I open my front door. Bird feeders swing, set in motion by an idle boy's touch.

Steven's truck pulls up to the front of the house. He gets out and walks toward me, a big grin on his face. Leon's knuckle knife dangles loose from his fingers.