Chapel of Ease (28 page)

Then Gerald put his head down on his arms atop the nearest fence post. I quickly went to him and said, “Are you all right?”

He looked up, and I saw tears in his eyes. “This used to be Rayford's job. Growing up, he was the one who always fed the pigs. He'd slop 'em with table scraps every night after dinner. He wasn't no shirker, but he purely hated them pigs.”

I was taken aback by this sudden emotion from a man who'd been so solid and taciturn. All I could think to say was, “I'm sorry.”

He wiped his eyes, leaving dirty smears on his face. Then he held up his big, meaty hand. “He was my first little baby. I remember when he was born, he was so tiny and red, I was afraid he'd slip right through my fingers. My daddy told me, ‘Ain't nothing like seeing your own flesh and blood there before you,' and he was right.” He gestured at the yard. “He used to run around here in his damn diaper, chasing the dogs and the chickens; you couldn't keep pants on him.” He laughed, then began to sob.

I put my hand on his shoulder.

“I loved that boy,” he continued. “I didn't understand him, but I sure did love him.”

“He knew you did,” I said.

“But I didn't get him. His whole thing with musicals, with wanting to go to New York. Tufa don't leave, or at least they don't stay gone. I warned him.”

I looked everywhere but directly at him.

He gazed out across the rolling mountains. “I hope he was a good man to y'all Yankees. I hope he didn't forget what I tried to teach him. Be good to your friends. Listen to their songs. Try to leave things better than you found 'em.”

Now I was crying, too. “He sure did that, Mr. Parrish. Everyone who knew him loved him because he made us all feel special.”

He hugged me then, probably the most enveloping, all-encompassing hug I'd ever experienced. His big, solid body shuddered as he cried. I hugged him back as best I could, but felt spindly and spare compared to his masculine strength. I realized this was probably the first time his grief had come out, and he could only show it to me, a stranger whose presence wouldn't be around to remind him of it later.

He withdrew, wiped his eyes with one big forearm, and without looking at me said, “Thank you, son. I apologize for that.”

“No need to,” I said, and dried my own eyes with my shirttail.

He turned away and started back toward the barn. “Got some stuff to attend to. Tell Ladonna not to hold dinner for me, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

He walked with heavy, defeated steps down the hill to the barn. The scale of what had happened hit me then. I'd never lost a parent, and my brother was still alive; some friends had passed away over the years, but I'd avoided any loss that was so deep, so devastating.

Then I heard him sing. His voice was eerily similar to Ray's, but deeper, and raspier.

Oh, the deacon went down

To the cellar to pray

He found a jug

And he stayed all day.…

I stayed there by the pen, no jug in hand, listening to the pigs happily chow down and gazing out over the mountains.

How could a race of fairies exist like this? I mean, every single one of them I'd heard sing or play was an extraordinary musician. Certainly Ray was, and Thorn seemed to have inherited the same talent. Ray had made it big in New York, and if he hadn't died, he'd have been the toast of the theater scene; so why didn't any of the others try? Why did they live in poverty, isolated from the world? Why had Gerald said, “Tufa don't leave”?

I found Thorn noodling on her guitar on the front porch, a laptop open next to her. I stayed back and watched her for a while. She would try out a chord, change it, and then write it down when it was right. Finally I cleared my throat; she looked up and said, “Hi. Out of sorts without C.C. to drool over?”

“No, I'm fine.”

“Have you been crying?”

“What? No. Just some hay fever, I think. I'm just curious about something. Can I talk to you?”

“After last night, it'd seem rude to give you the cold shoulder.”

I ignored the comment. “I wanted to ask you something about the Tufa.”

“Yes, we like monster truck shows. Nothing like the rumble from an alcohol-burning 575 engine, I tell you what.” She shivered happily, and I wondered whether or not she was kidding.

“No, not that,” I said, and gestured around me. “It's … why do you live like this?”

“In a house?”

“In a…” I lowered my voice. “In a run-down shack in the middle of nowhere. Like you're…”

“Poor white trash?” she finished in an exaggerated Southern accent.

“Your words, not mine. But yeah.”

She rested her chin on the edge of the guitar's body. “How do you think we ended up here? We didn't start here. We come from a place called Tír na nÓg. Ever heard of it?”

“No.”

“No reason you would have. We all lived in a forest, and were watched over and protected by the woodsman. Well, one day he made a bad bet, and somehow our queen found out and wanted to see the outcome. Normally it would have been no problem, but with the queen watching, the woodsman got nervous. He lost the bet, and as a result, the queen banished him. She flung him across the sea, and since he was our leader, we all got flung with him. We traveled west until we ended up here.” She smiled, a kind of sad and tender look I'd never seen on her face before. “You believe that story?”

“I believe you believe it.”

She chuckled. “You charmer, you. So yeah, here we were. And then people started showing up. The Native Americans were no trouble, they left us alone and we left them alone, except for friendly relations. But then the Europeans came in, and they fucked up everything. They killed anyone who didn't look like them, took all the land because they didn't believe the Indians were actual people, and essentially acted like assholes to a whole continent. Then when they started bringing Africans here as slaves, they noticed that we—the Tufa—looked like we might have some African in us, too. So they tried to include us in their view of the world. Well, we weren't too happy about that, so we just pulled back into our little hills and hollers. That made us both dangerous and scary to them. And that's pretty much how they still see us today.”

“Are you?”

“What, dangerous and scary? We can be.” She strummed a chord and added, “Does that answer your question?”

It did, at least for the moment. “What are you working on?”

“A new song about love.”

“A love song.”

“No, that's different. Want to hear what I've got so far?”

“Sure.”

She strummed her guitar a couple of times, finding the right chord, then began.

He was a black-haired boy with a smile like the sun,

And he knew there was someone for him.

He was a singer and dancer from a faraway land,

With no idea how this song would end.

They looked at each other and the meaning was clear

Two men with one heart between them

And when they first touched, all the questions were answered

Each could see that the other perceived him.…

When she was done, she looked at me for a reaction. I said, “I bet I know where you got the idea.”

“I bet you do, too. That last line of the chorus needs work, though. Maybe ‘believed him'?” She strummed and sang it softly, trying out the new words.

“If you play that around here, won't it make things a little awkward for C.C.?”

“Do you think nobody knows? Here's a secret:
Everyone
knows. And nobody cares. It's not like he's the only gay Tufa. He's not even the only gay Tufa on this farm.”

That took a minute to sink in. “Wait … you?”

She grinned. “Surprised? Imagine the look on my parents' face when they find out.”

“They don't know?”

“I haven't made it official. But they know I don't date, and I have a couple of girlfriends I'm
very
close to.”

“But when you first asked to come with me to New York, you offered…”

“And I would've paid up. That's how bad I want to get out of here. But that doesn't change who I am. We don't buy into your attitudes about sex.”

“Mine?”

“Non-Tufa in general. If we like somebody, or something looks like it might be fun, we do it. We don't worry about labels. And we don't feel guilty later.”

“That must be a great way to live.”

She half shrugged. “It's not bad.”

“The outside world isn't that way. I'm not sure you'll like it.”

“You mean you're not sure I'll fit in.”

“That, too,” I admitted.

“I'm willing to take that chance. I can't be who I really am here, and it's got nothing to do with who I like to fuck. I need to see what the world is like.”

Just then C.C. came around the house, wiping his hands on a rag. He had one smear of grease on his cheek. “So what are you two talking about so seriously?”

“Music and love, what else is there?” Thorn said.

“I'm going home to clean up,” C.C. said to me. “I have some calls to make. I'll be back about sundown. You be ready?”

I was a little disappointed that he didn't ask me to come with him. I'd love to help him shower. “Yeah, I'll be waiting.”

“Good.” He started to turn away, then stopped. “Remember: if this looks too dangerous, we'll walk away.”

“Whoa, what are you two up to?” Thorn asked.

“We're going back to the chapel,” C.C. said. “Matt's bound and determined to find out what's buried there.”

“Are you sure that's a good idea?” she asked seriously.

“Not really,” I said.

“I think it's stupid as hell,” C.C. said. “But damn it, now I'm curious, too.”

“Even if someone gets hurt?” She looked from C.C. to me.

“No one's going to get hurt,” I said.

“Except a few Durants,” Thorn said with a sly smile. “Right?”

“No, not even them,” C.C. said. “They're already mad at us; we don't need a real feud after all this time.” He looked at me. “We have to live here after you're gone, you know.”

“I'm not arguing with you,” I said.

“Okay. See you soon.”

I watched him walk away. Thorn leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, then took her computer and guitar inside. I took out my phone and looked at it, expecting the
NO SERVICE
notification. Yet to my surprise, I saw that I actually got a solid signal.

I didn't hesitate. I dialed Emily first, but got her voice mail. Then I called Neil.

“Hello, Matt,” he said seriously when he answered. “How are you?”

“Okay.”

“Still coming back tomorrow?”

“Yes. I'm going out tonight to resolve our little mystery once and for all. I have some locals helping me.”

“That's good.” He paused a long moment, and I got a sinking feeling, the way you do when your subconscious knows that bad news is coming. My first thought was that the show had been canceled for some reason, possibly some legal snag since the writer/composer was dead. But I turned out to be totally wrong.

“I'm guessing you don't know this,” he said. “Remember Ray's girlfriend, Emily? Well, she's dead. She killed herself yesterday.”

My legs grew weak, just like the cliché. I sat down on the porch steps. “What happened?”

“She jumped out her window. Note said she couldn't live without Ray. I had no idea they were so serious, they'd only been dating a little while.”

I recalled the way she'd behaved that day in his apartment. “Oh my God.”

“The cast took this hard. They really need you to come through for them, Matt. They need to know this secret.”

“You said it wasn't important.”

“It wasn't before. It is now. They'll see it as a sign from Ray that he's watching over them.”

“If he's doing any watching, it hasn't been very much help so far.”

“That is true enough. Any more tragedy, and we'll be the new Scottish play.”

He meant the superstition that all productions of
Macbeth
were cursed, especially if you said the play's title anywhere but onstage. Although we were all professionals, I knew how the cast felt, and how it could affect the show. Even after the ecstatic reviews, bad word of mouth from the first paying audiences could end our run as easily as bad press, and a sad, depressed cast couldn't help but be disappointing.

“Like I said, I'm going tonight,” I told him. “By tomorrow morning, I'll know. I'll send you pictures.”

“Thanks. And I'm very sorry, Matt. I know she was your friend even before she started dating Ray.”

“I appreciate it, Neil.”

I hung up and sat there, staring at the ground. First Ray, then Emily …

“I'm sorry I wasn't there,” I whispered, hoping Emily's spirit could hear me.

Ray had said, “Women who fall in love with Tufa men have a very hard time if we go away.” Was this what he meant?

I was too cried out to muster fresh tears, but I sat for a long time, letting the emotions roll through me. C.C. wasn't sure if our budding relationship would send me into such despair, but did I dare take the chance? Or hell, was this how it manifested, with this almost unbearable compulsion to find out what was buried in the chapel? Deep down, was it all just to stay near C.C.?

I still had my phone in my hand, and I opened the photography app, intending to call up pictures I had of Emily. Yet the first one that came up was one I'd taken at the cemetery, near Byrda Fowler's grave.

I stared at it. Something was there, but I couldn't quite see it. I turned the camera around, tilted it, squinted at it.