Grounded (11 page)

A hush fell over the room.

“Waldo,” said Mother. “I’m sure this can wait till we—”

“No, it can’t wait, Hattie,” Uncle Waldo declared.

He cleared his throat and turned his body so that he was facing not just Mother, but the whole room. Then he continued, almost prayerfully.

“Many of you might remember that I came back from Vietnam six years ago,” he said. “Since then, I’ve spent most of that time living with my sister and helping out as best I could with the men who share her home. Some of you surely must’ve wondered why I didn’t get a so-called real job after I got back. Well, I’ll tell you.”

Uncle Waldo paused to take a deep breath. “In the war, I did things I’m not proud of. I saw things no person should ever be witness to. They’re things I’ll never be able to forget. I had a full head of hair when I went to war. This is what trauma can do to a body.”

Uncle Waldo lowered his head for emphasis. The room was silent. All eyes, even Mamaw’s, were staring at his shiny bald head. After a moment he looked up and cleared his throat again nervously. Making speeches was no more Uncle Waldo’s style than gushing about love was Mother’s.

“What Hattie and Daralynn have been through is as terrible as anything that happened to me in the war,” Uncle Waldo continued. “Psychologists have big names for what I’m talking about here, for what Hattie and Daralynn have been going through, and what I went through, and am still going through. But it’s really not that complicated. I’ve come to believe that if you live on this earth long enough, you’re bound to be traumatized by something or someone. Life can beat you up bad and kick you in the teeth. You might try to hide from it. That’s what I did. For six years, I basically hid out in Josie’s attic. It was all I could do some mornings just to get out of bed. But day by day, I got stronger.”

“God bless America and our brave veterans!” cried a voice from the crowd.

“God bless Waldo!” chimed in another voice.

Uncle Waldo paused before continuing. “Some of you probably know that I recently bought the house next to Hattie and Daralynn. Living next door to them has been the most—”

“For the love of Jesus!” cried Aunt Josie, stomping her high-heeled shoe. “If you’re asking Hattie to marry you, just come out and—”

“Josie!” interrupted Mother. “That’s not what he’s saying!”

“Well, it’s what he
should
be saying,” Aunt Josie countered.

“Ladies, please,” Uncle Waldo said firmly. “What I’m trying to say is that life is hard—for everybody. None of us gets out of here without getting our hearts broken in one way or another. You can try to make sense of it. You can try to find reasons and explanations for why these things happen. But when there’s real pain, it’s hard to find a good answer. That’s why we have to pull together and take care of one another. It’s like my sister says in her newspaper ads: ‘Everybody needs somebody to take care of them, and it’s the taking care of that makes us sweet.’ That’s
why what I’m going to ask Hattie is something very simple. And I hope it’s sweet, too, in her eyes.”

Uncle Waldo then patted the pockets of his suit coat with his hand, as if searching for something valuable he’d stored there.

“Waldo,” said Mother, now with a nervous, almost desperate laugh. “I
really
wish you wouldn’t—”

And that’s when Uncle Waldo pulled from his jacket an architectural sketch. “Hattie,” he said nobly, “I want to propose that you reconsider letting me build that breezeway between our houses.”

It turned out Clem was wanted in three states under three different names: Clovis Morris, Clive Moonross, and Clem Monroe. He was finally arrested in Thayer, Missouri, not far from the Arkansas border.

It turned out he used the same scam in every state: selling prepaid cremation plans to unsuspecting folks. He didn’t have a cremating machine or a license to cremate. If anyone happened to die while he was still in town, Clem simply dumped the body somewhere and gave the family a bag of burnt toast he’d pulverized in a blender along with a chicken bone or two. (I
knew
those ashes smelled like burnt Parker House rolls!)

It turned out Clem had pulled the same stunt in St. Louis, Missouri, Davenport, Iowa, and Alton, Illinois. If Digginsville had any claim to fame in the FBI investigation, it was that we were the only ones promised a six-passenger horse-drawn carriage. In just nine days, Clem collected more than two thousand dollars from people eager to giddyup and give a buck for the Digginsville horse and carriage.

It turned out the tooth that fell out of the catfish’s mouth did indeed belong to Gail Rowland from California. Her family was so upset, they nearly had another wreck on Highway 60 when they came to claim Miss Rowland’s body.

And of course, Clem Monroe knew all about Doc Lake when he asked me about it that Sunday when I met him in Uncle Waldo’s backyard. Turned out he’d dumped Miss Rowland’s body in the lake the night before. That was when I first saw him from my bedroom window. He’d used Old Mary to haul Miss Rowland’s body and later, poor old Mr. Aubrey Bryant.

It turned out Mr. Bryant’s body was eventually cremated by a licensed cremator in St. Louis. Aunt Josie paid a small fortune to have his ashes scattered
over Busch Stadium, home of Mr. Bryant’s beloved Cardinals.

It turned out Mother liked the breezeway Uncle Waldo built almost as much as he liked building it. Once it was finished, I couldn’t remember a time when our house wasn’t connected to Uncle Waldo’s house on one side and Mamaw’s on the other—or a time when I didn’t set the dinner table for four.

It turned out Uncle Waldo didn’t mind doing dishes, especially when Mother let me help him. So we started eating off the everyday china during the week and Mother’s fancy wedding china on Sundays. Sometimes we even used Mamaw’s crystal goblets for iced tea.

It turned out it took only seconds for Uncle Waldo to oil the squeak out of our screen door. Mother admitted it had been bugging her for years. She even let him fix the toaster so it didn’t burn every single piece of toast she made.

It turned out I used my ten tickets to the Rialto Theatre to take Mother, Mamaw, Uncle Waldo, Aunt Josie, and me to the movies—twice—in August before school started.

It turned out that once Aunt Josie got over
having her heart broken (it took about ten days), she couldn’t read enough about Mr. Clem’s problems with the law.

“I’ve taken a subscription to the
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
,” she told me one day in late August when we were canning tomatoes at her house. “That’s where his trial will be. You think we oughta go watch? Let’s talk your mama into it, want to?”

“She won’t go on account of her motion sickness,” I said.

But it turned out she did go. We all did. Watching a jury convict Clem Monroe of seventy-four counts of fraud, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, money laundering, and tax evasion was the best entertainment any one of us had ever seen. By the end of the trial, Mr. Clem looked like the tired old snake handler who took tickets at the Traveling Reptile Museum.

It turned out the Traveling Reptile Museum was parked in front of Swisher’s Grocery when we got back from St. Louis. Aunt Josie said the day contained an embarrassment of riches. I agreed.

It turned out twenty-two years after Clem’s Crematorium came and went, Danielson Family Funeral
Home began offering cremation services for many of the same reasons Clem told Aunt Josie and me. Except, of course, for Uncle Seneca. There was no Uncle Seneca, dead or alive.

But there were at least seven women scattered across the United States who thought they were married or engaged to Mr. Clem. As far as I know, not one of them put up a fight for him, especially not Aunt Josie. After a while, she just laughed the whole thing off.

It made me wonder if the reason Aunt Josie laughed so much was because she cried so hard. Or maybe it was the reverse. Maybe life was like one big “Swap Line.” In addition to trading things with other people, you swapped feelings with yourself during tough times.

After the crash, Mother swapped being sad for being mad. Uncle Waldo swapped feeling whatever a person’s supposed to feel after a war for feeling shy. Aunt Josie sometimes swapped laughing for crying. Mamaw swapped feeling old and sad for acting young and silly. But maybe that was another kind of swap.

I didn’t have any emotions there for a while. After the crash, I guess I swapped feeling something bad
for feeling nothing at all—that is, until Mr. Clem came to town and scared me back to life.

But that’s why you have to admit that in a strange way, Clem was good for us. He was somebody for Aunt Josie to love, for Mother to loathe, and for me to investigate. He gave Uncle Waldo someone to be compared to. He gave us all a reason to keep living that first summer A.D.

Clem brought us together in a way the crash hadn’t, and for that I will always be grateful.

By the end of summer, I still divided my life into Before the Crash (B.C.) and After the Deaths (A.D.). But now I had a new, more entertaining way to divide my life: Before Clem and After Clem. And unlike the plane crash, which I could do nothing about, I could do something about Clem. And I did.

When school started again that fall, Mother let me spend a few afternoons a week at Aunt Josie’s house while she worked at the beauty parlor.

“Daralynn, do you remember the nightmare I told you I had about getting locked in Clem’s cremating machine?” Aunt Josie asked one September day as she rolled out pie crusts. “Well, I got burned all
right, didn’t I? That’s why I never go to Hot Springs. I’d put my money on the wrong horse.”

We both laughed.

“I’m just awful glad your mama was there for me when I was taking it so hard,” she continued. “It did me a world of good when she came down and sat with me on my porch that night.”

That’s when it hit me: Mother had found someone to take care of. And it was Aunt Josie, of all people. And she had good hair, thanks to me.

“I think it helped her, too,” I said. “That night, I mean.”

“’Course it did,” Aunt Josie said, plopping the limp dough into a pie pan and then crimping the edges.

As the pie crust browned, I couldn’t help wondering what in the world Aunt Josie had done or said that made Mother break down like that. Mother, who never cried. Mother, who held everything in so tight after the crash. I was dying to know how it’d all happened.

“Emotions can take you by surprise,” Aunt Josie said a half hour later when we were filling the warm crust with sugared apple slices. “Hold your emotions in too long and you turn into a volcano, all hot and
mad, like you’re just waiting to erupt. It’s the same reason I poke air holes on the top crust. It’s so the filling can breathe while it’s cooking and not explode inside my stove.”

She popped a sugared apple slice in her mouth and handed me one. It was deliciously crisp and sweet. Aunt Josie always seemed to know what I wanted even when I didn’t.

While the pie baked, I helped Aunt Josie peel potatoes for dinner.

“Speaking of your mama,” Aunt Josie said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you a question about her, but I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“Just ask me,” I offered, cautiously.

“Well, you know I love my
Le Frenchie
haircut,” she said. “But how would you feel if I started having your mother shampoo and style it for me? Would you mind?”

“Nah,” I said. “I’ve pretty much given up my hair business.”

The truth was, I wanted to spend more time writing than fixing hair, anyway. I was thinking about writing a whole book about Clem.

“You can always help me with cleaning and
cooking if you need some walking-around money,” Aunt Josie said. “But I’d like to give Hattie another chance to do my hair, if she will.”

“She will,” I said.

And she did. Beginning that fall, and for as long as I could remember, Aunt Josie had a ten o’clock hair appointment with Mother every Saturday morning. I made a point to try to be at the beauty parlor then, too, just to hear those two talk.

“So I’ve got this new gentleman at my house,” Aunt Josie began one Saturday morning. “His name’s Mr. Harold P. Barnstubble. Would you believe he passes gas every morning at seven o’clock on the dot? Hattie, you think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. He’s like a regular rooster. I don’t even have to set my alarm clock anymore. I can hear him all the way downstairs.
Toot toot toooooooot!
It’s like a train rolling through the second floor of my house. Every morning at seven o’clock on the dot.”

Mother laughed and laughed. The sound of those two women—the strongest women I would ever know in my entire life—talking and laughing was better than any music I ever heard.

After every hair appointment, Aunt Josie gave
Mother a big hug. The first time she did it, I could tell the gesture surprised Mother. She wasn’t sure whether to hug back or not. She didn’t. But at least she didn’t flinch. And she didn’t get mad.

Mother wasn’t mad anymore. The world had changed—again.

And dare I admit the first thing I thought when I saw that hug? Bud Mosley’s cracked aquarium. Maybe some things
could
be cracked without being broken. Maybe a heart could.

Pretty soon, Uncle Waldo started coming to the beauty shop on Saturday mornings, too. He brought glazed donuts and sat in the shampoo chair, talking and laughing with them. I realized that even though it’d been a rough year filled with death and betrayal and heartache, we were just about the four luckiest people on the planet.

That’s when we formed a club: Mother, Aunt Josie, Uncle Waldo, and me. We called ourselves the Four Back, Three Unders. Over time, we became the We’re Back—Until We’re Under(ground) Club.

Uncle Waldo says we’re going to make a banner and march in the Fourth of July parade one of these years. When we do, you can be sure that Mamaw will
be right there with us, pushing her dolls in a baby carriage.

It turned out I finally just let Mamaw have all my dang dolls. Because everybody needs somebody to take care of them, even dolls.