A Gracious Plenty (7 page)

Her hair is bleached and loopy from rollers, her makeup on thick. She wears a sundress that clasps tight to her chest, and a little mound of fat pokes up above it in the back.

“Hey there, Aaron,” she says. “How’s your mama?” and ushers him in.

Then she looks back to the child spilling punch. “You quit that right now, Randi Flanagan,” she says.

Without transitions, she’s back to her greetings, patting each child on the shoulder. “Hey, Heather and Shereen and Stephanie,” she says. “Come on in.”

And I’m behind the sixth graders, on my way to the store, but not willing to miss an opportunity.

Lois smiles and kisses and pinches cheeks. And just when she reaches the last child, she sees me, like a bad dream, standing behind a boy I don’t recognize.

Suicide
, I mouth without sound, and walk on.

I
’VE HARDLY SWALLOWED
my lunch and gotten none of it digested when Leonard bangs on the door.

“Well, hey there, howdy,” I say. “You back for another melon?” I know why he’s here, but even
I’m
surprised that Lois has done her tattling so soon.

“Finch, I got to take you in,” he replies. His voice is quiet, almost apologetic, and I notice that his eyelids are puffed up like he’s either slept too hard or hasn’t slept in a week.

A skanky kitten leaps over from the swing onto the screen door, clawing as she climbs. She cocks her head at Leonard, like she’s showing off. “Shoo,” I say, and push her down. And when I kick the door open, Leonard backs up, surprised that I came right out.

“You’re jumpy today,” I say.

I’ve got my watering tin in hand, and I make my way around the porch rail, saturating window boxes and hanging baskets until the liquid drips from the bottom.

“See this Pathos?” I show Leonard. “Would you believe it grows two to three inches a week? I’m gonna see if I can’t get it to drape all the way around the porch like a window dressing. Wouldn’t that be pretty?”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Finch, I ain’t lying. I need you to take a little ride with me. Lois Armour’s done taken out a warrant.”

“For what?”

“Harassment,” he says, tired. “We’ll get it straightened out, but you got to come with me.”

I have never ridden in a police car before, but it’s nothing remarkable or exciting, neither one. Leonard’s car stinks of cigarette butts. He doesn’t put me in the back, though. He rides me there in the front. He turns on the radio as soon as we get in the car, but the knobs need adjusting. All the way to the station, I listen to static.

I don’t get arrested. I get “a talking-to,” where they fuss at me for aggravating a sick woman. I’m asked to sign a paper saying that I won’t go within some distance of Lois Armour—maybe fifty yards. I can’t remember the details. I’m not to call her on the phone or send her letters. And I have to sign a paper saying I understand the rules. There’s a copy of the form for the police, a copy for Lois, and a copy for me. Leonard hands me a pen and I write “Lucy Armageddon” in the space where it says “Signature.” The fools don’t even notice. An officer named Phillips tears it apart, hands me my copy, puts one in a file and another one in an envelope for Lois.

“You’re free to go,” the officer tells me. But I’m ten miles from home, with no way to travel and nobody to call. So Leonard has to drive me back. He acts irritated about it, and when he grabs my shoulder to lead me to the car, his grip is just short of a pinch.

Being touched makes me dizzy. I feel the places he fingered long after his hand has lifted.

Leonard’s mood is terrible, but no worse than mine, and when he turns the radio back on, I reach over and switch it off.

“It’s the truth,” I tell him, nearly hollering. “She
did
kill herself. And part of the reason she did it was ’cause she had no one to turn to—least of all her half-wit ma, who ain’t had a seizure in years! And it’s for Lois’s own good that she admits it.”

“Why do you care how Lucille Armour died?”

“Because she killed herself for a
reason
, Leonard.”

“We don’t know that she wasn’t murdered.”

“Read the report.”

“How did
you
read it?” he asks curiously.

“I didn’t. Lucy told me about it.”

“Goddamn it, Finch. Would you quit that shit? Would you just quit it? Even if she did kill herself, she surely ain’t talking about it now. Okay? So drop it.”

We drive on for a while, passing farms and hardware stores, going over a little bridge and a bigger one, and I mutter, “She couldn’t live with herself. She couldn’t bear another day with the secrets she was holding.”

And Leonard hits the brakes and pulls over to the side of the road just past the Tredegar County Library. The shoulder is soft and we nearly wind up in a ditch. When we’ve been stopped for a few seconds, Leonard speaks, without turning his head toward me and without taking his hands from the steering wheel, his hairy knuckles wrapped white around it.

“Now listen,” he says. “I’ve had a real bad day. There’s things going on you don’t know. And to tell the truth, I don’t give two hoots and a damn whether Lucille Armour shot herself in the head or got blasted by a pack of gypsies. My mother is in the hospital with a nervous disorder. My father is threatening to put her in a nursing home. Them cats you gave me have little white worms wiggling out their asses and falling on my bedspread. My water heater is broke, and I got the ladies’ Sunday school class in a blue-headed tizzy over the bum that died a few weeks back.”

“William Blott?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Leonard growls. “You been talking to
him, too
?”

“Sure enough,” I claim, and he shakes his head and cranks the car again. I can’t tell if he’s more annoyed or calming down, but then he resigns himself to a hollow laugh.

“Well, when you were talking, did he tell you he was a queer?”

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” I say.

“Oh yeah,” Leonard continues. “He was as queer as they come. Did he tell you he paraded around in ladies’ panties?”

I don’t have an answer for that one.

“Did he tell you, Finch, that he was the one who was stealing women’s underpants off the clotheslines back a year or two ago? Poor old Reba Baker recognized her own undergarments in his things.”

“You sure he was the thief?” I defend. “There’s a lot of white bras and underpants for sale at Sears and Penney’s.”

“Well, we can’t exactly prosecute him for it anyway, now can we?”

“Then don’t accuse him.”

And right when we get to the cemetery, he says, “That bastard didn’t even have a house on the property. Musta had a dozen little pop-up campers back there. All of ’em old and dirty—filthy nasty. We haven’t even been through his stuff. The ladies’ Sunday school class went into one camper and found all their underthings, and that was the end of it.”

I hurry to get out, but I can’t find the door handle at first. When I finally get it open, I’m red in the face and about to start cussing.

“Shoot,” Leonard says. “If you talk to William, ask him if he had anything to do with the break-ins over on China Street.”

I slam the door hard and head for Lucy’s stone.

T
HE DEAD HAVEN’T
come in from their day’s work, and I haven’t got the energy to meet them. I wait at Lucy’s grave for a bit, and then I make my way across the hill to admire the Blott memorial. It doesn’t even need a tree or a shrub planted to beautify the place. It’s regal all on its own.

And I’m not meaning to eavesdrop. I’m really not. I’d been thinking William was out conjuring a breeze—forgetting that he’s not light enough yet to leave the surrounding area.

I’m not meaning to snoop. Most of the Dead know me already and know that while I can’t reach them, I’m sometimes with them. But William has taken what the Mediator said too literally, perhaps. She’s told him that the living world walks a contiguous plane. He hasn’t been around long enough to learn there are always exceptions.

And so admiring his tomb, I happen to see him holding baby Marcus in his arms, rocking. I happen to see William Blott nursing Marcus with bright blue ninnies. He’s cut a spongy football in half and locked his ninnies into place with a maternity bra. And baby Marcus, who always cries, baby Marcus, who screams each time the mayor or his wife or even Leonard passes through the cemetery gates, the baby is sucking, content. He reaches to William Blott’s cheek and touches it with a small dirty hand.

T
HE FALLING RAIN
makes the night seem cooler than it is. I usually spend damp evenings in the house, but tonight I’ve got things to talk over with Lucy. Already my dungarees are soppy, my shirt drenched through. And though my hair, as a rule, grows up and out like a bush, on this night, there are curls coiling in front of my eyes. I wipe the water from my face, one side smooth, one side pruned, and give Lucy an earful. “I’m telling you he had
ninnies
. And that baby was sucking.”

“Did he see you?” Lucy asks.

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I ran.”

“Why’d you run?”

“Just because,” I spit. “ ’Cause what else could I do? He’s a
man
, and that baby sucking …”

“Marcus isn’t crying anymore,” Lucy says.

“I know.”

“I haven’t heard him cry all day. It’s been a long time since Marcus quit crying.”

“I know.”

“Maybe he died hungry, Finch. Maybe he just needed to be nurtured, and if William Blott is the one who can do that, then more power to him. Maybe now Marcus’ll begin to lighten. He can’t tell his story when he’s screaming.”

“Well, he sure can’t tell it with his mouth full of ninny. Styrofoam ninny, too!”

“Finch,” she calls. “You’re judging him.”

“I might be, but I can’t believe what I saw,” and I shiver.

Then Lucy lays the blow: “You’re judging him the same way people have judged you all your life.”

And what she tells me makes me mad, because it’s not the same thing. Not even close. “I’m
surprised
, that’s all,” I fuss. “You got to give me a minute to get over being
surprised
. I thought he was a
man
.”

“He
is
a man,” Lucy says, then adds, “It’s okay. You’ve had a shock. I’ve known other cross-dressers, so it doesn’t upset me.”

“Hmmph,” I snort. I hate it when she acts high-and-mighty with me, like she’s been all around the world and knows all that there is to know. I almost remind her that all the knowing she did landed her in a grave before her time, but I catch myself and unclench. I reckon she does have a point. Sometimes when the Dead piss me off, I have to keep myself from bragging that I’m alive and they’re not. But it’s not anything to feel superior about. Not really.

I roll over to my back and let the rain beat at my face. I can’t feel it on the thickest scars, but I feel it on my eyelids. Rain washes the smells down off the leaves, out of the clouds. I breathe that smell, sweetly woody, and thin as a lung. In the dark, on cloudy nights, there’s not much more than smells and textures. I pull a stick from beneath my back and toss it to the side.

“Your mama tried to have me thrown in jail today,” I tell Lucy, readjusting with my mouth on soil so she’ll hear me clearly. “I spent half the day at the police station.”

“What?”

“Accused me of ha
rass
ment.”

“That’s insane,” she says. It’s what I want her to say.

“That’s what I told Leonard Livingston, but he took me to town anyway. Put me in handcuffs and threw me around …”

“That son of a—”

“Nah. I’m kidding. Leonard’s all right.” I slide my lips against each other, feeling the dirt gritty there; the dirt so damp and rich and buried like a treasure in the grass; the grass tickling against my good cheek, like Ma used to tickle me with her eyelashes. “Butterfly kisses,” she called them. I blink into the grass, wishing Lucy could feel those tickles. And I give her the story of what happened with her mother, without much minding anymore that I’ve been to jail.

“Tell me everything,” Lucy begs.

“Not much to tell. Your ma was serving refreshments to the Bible school children, and she was in her front yard, welcoming them one at a time.”

“She’s such a hypocrite,” Lucy bitches. “Won’t even go to the church. If she really had the faith she claims, she’d know that church would be the
best
possible place to have a seizure. Like she’s really going to
have
one.”

“I stood right at the end of the line with the Bible school class. I reckon it’s a good thing my spine grew crooked, ’cause I didn’t look much bigger than them sixth graders. And when Lois had reached the last child, she looked up at me, and I mouthed,
Suicide
, and then I left.”

“Did she cry?”

“I don’t know. Last time I saw her, she was just standing there with her mouth open. Stricken. She looked stricken, I guess.”

“Did she turn pale?”

“I reckon she did. A little bit.”

“What was she wearing?”

“I don’t know, Lucy. What difference does it make?”

“Just wondered,” and she paused. “How’d you say it?
Suicide
. How’d you pronounce it?”

“Regular.
Suicide
.”

“Slow or fast?”

“Slow,” I tell her impatiently. “And without a sound.”

“That’s good,” she replies. Then, “Thanks.”

Above us, there’s thunder, and I ask Lucy who’s working this evening, making weather on this night. She tells me that the Poet rigged it up earlier in the day.

“He’s got a string tied to his belt,” she says. “If he rolls over in his sleep, another storm will come.”

After a while, I tell her I’m going to seek cover. It’s late, but I’m wanting hot tea and a shower. There’s too much grit in my mouth.

“One favor,” Lucy says as I rise. “Next time, tell Mama to visit.”

“Your grave? You want her to come
here
?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Tell her to visit next time you see her.”

My bones creak and ache as I walk away. My heels hurt even though I haven’t been standing. My backside throbs on each side of my spine, the clothes on my body so wet and weighing me down. When I’m on the porch, I peel them off like skins and leave them behind.