Decoration Day (8 page)

Marsh said that the town had not owned slaves because of its servant class, but it now seemed that the servants were slaves that just hadn’t come from Africa. He walked toward some of the stones butting against the church foundations. The lettering on these stones had passed the test of time better. A simple stone, rounded at the top like a stereotypical tombstone, read
Nahum Fernwell, b. 1800
. No death date was present. David stared at this for a little while. He had met Nahum Fernwell, but it wasn’t possible for him to be the one supposedly buried there. The next stone in line bore the name E. Hollingsworth and a date of 1815. This headstone didn’t look two hundred years old. Instead, it might have been there for about forty years. Beside this a monument with a decorative design like an all-seeing eye bore the name Ernest Greenbough with the date of 1785 only. Just to side of this ancient fellow, David read a stone that said “Gregor Armstrong 1768, ascended a new plane”.
 
He thought back to the day he met the elders and they talked of their ancestors being in this place. It seemed that they might have a different view of death, not as an end but as something where they lived on. It was Christian idea, but he’d found that few Christians actually thought like that. Their ideas of death felt refreshing to him. He thought that he might like preaching in this town despite some of the doubts he had.
 

A car horn blew. It echoed off the limestone of the mountain and the hewn stones that formed the church. He jumped around to see Marsh’s Lincoln idling at the entrance gate. Thomas sat behind the wheel, looking straight at him. The horn echoed out again. David waved his hand toward the chauffeur and made his way across the graveyard, careful not to trip over any of the stones.

The car felt pleasant when David sat in the backseat. The window between the front and back was open to let the air conditioner blow its cool air to him. For the first time that morning, he didn’t feel like he was trapped in a grave with hundreds of pounds of dirt bearing down on him.

“I’m supposed to take you to the market,” Thomas said in flat tones.

“Yes. I’m sorry to have to bother you with it, but my car broke down.”

“Master Marsh told me about it. I towed it to the filling station. I ought to be fixing it instead of this. You could do your own shopping.” Thomas turned the car onto the road heading toward town.

“Again, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to inconvenience you.”

“Nothing but inconvenience my whole life.”

David leaned toward the window. “Don’t you like your job?”

“I’ve done the same thing for a hundred years. Always the same, no different.”

“I guess if you are stuck in a rut, it might seem like a hundred years or a million,” he said. “I know that’s how my job felt after my wife died. Now I’ve found this place, and it’s given me hope.”

“Scared you too, I’d bet,” Thomas drove past the library toward a part of the town David hadn’t been to.

“I won’t disagree with that.” He leaned back afraid Thomas might slam on the brakes and his face against the glass. “You seem awful defiant this morning.”

“Why not? Sunday, Decoration
Day, is almost here. Nothing’s going to change, and it’ll be another year until we have another one.”

“I didn’t realize that Sunday was so important to the people of the town. You hold your history very highly.”

Thomas huffed what sounded like a sarcastic laugh. “History, indeed.”

The car pulled into the parking lot of a very old-looking supermarket. The other spaces were empty. David leaned down to peer out of the windshield. No one appeared to be milling around in the store either.

“Not a very popular place? I guess once people realize the road is blocked, they’ll empty it out.”

“Everyone already has what they need. They get it when the truck first comes in. No one wants last year’s products,” Thomas said. “Can you get out without me opening the door for you?”

“Of course.” David did so. He walked toward the entrance but stopped by the driver’s-side window. Thomas rolled it down. “Do you have a last name?”

“Marsh.”

“You and Alistair are kin?”

“All servants have their master’s last name, unless their masters are dead. Then they have no last name,” Thomas said.

David nodded and headed into the grocery store. The usual smell of baked goods and produce didn’t hit him when he stepped inside. Instead the air smelled stale and slightly metallic. He glanced around. There were only seven aisles. No freezers or coolers lined the walls. Neither bins of fresh produce nor racks of bread were in evidence. A frail woman in clothes sized for a woman much larger than herself stood behind an old-fashioned cash register. Her skin almost looked like it was falling off the bones. It was as if she had been a rotund woman and suddenly had all the fat under her skin removed.

“Where is the bread?” David asked.

“Don’t have any. Canned goods only.”

“No milk?”

“Powdered or evaporated only.”

“Is there another market in town?” He thought anything would be better than this place.

“This is it, like it or lump it. Ain’t much of anything you’d probably want anyway. Most of the good stuff’s been bought up. Reckon you can pick over and see what will suit you.”

David took a hand basket and walked down the first aisle. Canned black beans and field peas lined the shelves. The labels only had the picture of the food and black-and-white words identifying the product. No brand name dazzled him. He went down the next aisle and found canned fruit, but not peaches or pears. Plums and currants lined the shelves. He found the jars of preserves, but again, they were made from fruits most Americans didn’t eat.

He started collecting cans of the least offensive foods. On the meat aisle he lucked out and found generic Spam and Vienna sausages. He liked both of those. Despite no fresh loaves of bread, the place had lots of saltine crackers. Meals might be like those eaten while camping, but it would suffice until the road to the highway was cleared and he could find a Walmart, Winn-Dixie or even a Piggly Wiggly.

The checkout counter was just that, a counter. No conveyer belt ran the goods closer to the clerk, and certainly no barcode scanner rested in the middle. The old lady punched the price into the ancient cash register. She shoved each item into a brown paper sack she’d opened beside her. No care was given to the order of the sacked items. David felt lucky that the store didn’t have bread or eggs because they would have been demolished by her carelessness.

“Why isn’t there any bread or fresh meat?” David asked as the woman punched in the price for the crackers.

“Can’t eat it fast enough,” she said, cramming the crackers into the bag.

“What does that mean?”

The last item was a can of mushrooms. She slammed her fingers on the register tabs. It sounded like bone hitting bone.

“We can’t get it all eaten by Decoration Day. Distributor won’t give us a small enough supply. They say it ain’t profitable.” The total rang up. “Your total is $24.50, correct change only please, no checks, and certainly no credit cards, so don’t even ask.”

David dug a $20 and $5 bill from his billfold. He gave it to the clerk. “Keep the change.”

“I was going to anyway.” She heaved the sack of groceries onto the counter and flopped the ribbon of receipt in with the purchases. “Have a good day, preacher.”

David took the heavy sack of cans and left the grocery store. He opened the door with his hip and hoped he didn’t drop the sack on his foot. With the road still blocked, a broken foot might be something that the
local
doctor couldn’t handle. Thomas opened the car door for him when he approached. He placed the sack on the bench seat and shoved it across as he crawled in. The chauffeur closed the door just as if David were his master. A thought struck him when he saw the old checkout woman step out of the store onto the sidewalk—she’d called him preacher. He wondered how she knew that. As far as David knew, neither Marsh nor any of the other elders had announced his arrival. She looked like one of the servant class with less fat, so she might have heard it word of mouth. Innsboro was the smallest town he’d ever found himself in.

“Thomas, how did the checkout lady know that I was the new preacher? Has Mr. Marsh made an announcement?”

“Doesn’t have to. Word travels fast.”

That affirmed what David thought. He reached into his sack and took out a can of Vienna sausage. It had been a long time since he’d had them: probably the last time he’d gone fishing, which had to be nearly ten years. A juicy steak would be better than anything he had in his sack. Even scrambled eggs could beat oversalted canned meat. At least they had Spam and not sardines. If all he’d had to eat were sardines, weight loss would be no problem. Marsh had served kipper the first morning David had come to town. Nothing at any of the meals he’d eaten with the man had been fresh. The vegetables were canned, the mashed potatoes instant, and the ham had been Dak or the black-and-white-labeled equivalent, no doubt.

“Why is there no fresh food in the market?” he asked Thomas.

“There’s not enough time to eat it all,” the driver answered.

“That’s what the clerk said, but it doesn’t make sense. Why can’t you finish it?”

“Not enough time before Decoration Day,” Thomas said.

David rubbed his temples. The circular thinking of these people gave him a headache. “But why does that matter?”

“We can’t eat it after Decoration Day,” Thomas said as if this were completely logical and he’d never thought it a strange thing.

“You can’t eat fresh food after Decoration Day?”

Thomas reached behind him and closed the window between the front and rear seats. David tapped on the glass, but the driver ignored him. The preacher leaned back and decided to enjoy the ride to the church. Once Thomas decided to clam up, he wouldn’t be able to pry a word out of him with a crowbar. Never had he encountered such stubborn people. At least none of the town officials need worry about loose lips sinking ships in Innsboro.

The ride was short, sweet, and silent. Thomas remained in the car, forcing David to get out and close the car door without dropping the heavy sack of groceries. The walk down the small steps to his apartment proved a challenge as well, mostly because David kept looking over his shoulder for the purple glow. The rain started again as he put his canned goods away.

The idea of no one eating fresh food after Sunday worried him. Nothing logical could explain this behavior. The only thing close was the idea that perhaps the town was abandoned after Decoration Day and reinhabited shortly before. It would explain why the previous preacher only gave one sermon and supposedly stole the refrigerator. David hoped that wasn’t the case. He hated the idea of having a new preaching job for only one day. God had told him to come to that place and revived his faith just for that purpose. The feeling of revival filled him to the brim. Inspiration whispered in his ear. He knew how to continue his sermon but could not work in that cell. God told him to go to the cemetery and write. The air would do wonders for his abilities. If it still rained, God said the better to wash away the bad ideas.

David grabbed the legal pad from the bed and a pen from the table. He didn’t need his Bible because God was going to tell him what to write. The air outside felt cooler, and the rain had stopped. The grass in the cemetery remained wet. He sat in an open spot despite this. The water began to soak his backside. David wrote.

It took only a few minutes for his divine inspiration to finish the first page of the legal pad and move him to the second. The words flowed like nothing he had ever experienced in his time as a minister. Everything came to a crashing halt when a burst of purple light in his side vision grabbed his attention.

David looked in the direction of the light. Instead of the nightmare glow, a woman stood over a headstone. He had no idea how she had slipped past him into the cemetery. The patch of ground he sat on was near the gate.

The woman wore black with a veil over her face. A white handkerchief clasped in her hand trembled as if in a breeze, but the air was still. The woman cried. David stood, brushed off the back of his pants, and let the legal pad fall to the wet grass along with his pen.

“Are you okay, miss?” he asked.

The woman looked toward him, then back down at the headstone. David took a step toward her. As he watched, she evaporated into violet mist. He rubbed his eyes and blinked as hard as he could. Nothing of the woman remained.

David began to think that he was hallucinating. The stress of everything had to be getting to him. To indulge his curiosity, he walked to the headstone. It looked as old as many of the others, but the letters etched into the rock had held up better than most. He recognized the name, but the date bothered him. It read
Louisa Marsh, 1832–1864, Beloved wife and mother
. David glanced at the smaller stone beside Louisa’s grave marker. The fading words said
Henry Marsh, 1856–1864
.

He looked up at the church. Once again, the purple flame moved around the sanctuary past the windows. Someone definitely carried it this time. The woman in black who had disappeared at the grave moved back and forth, waving the hideous light as if to tempt David back into the building.

The preacher ran inside, trampling his sermon underfoot as he passed. The woman carried an invisible candle topped by the purple flame.