Listening to Dust (7 page)

Chapter 12

The Diner
 

Robbie looked up and behind Stephen as the diner suddenly went quiet and the bell above the front door jingled to announce that it had been opened. A big grin broke out on his face. “I’ll be...”
 

Stephen turned to see Miss Emily in the doorway surveying the crowd, her cane firm in her hand and her eye as sharp as the tongue she held. No one said a single word until Robbie jumped up and went to the door, where he promptly put his arm out for her aid. “We’re right over here, Miss Emily.”
 

“I can see that, Robbie. Stop fussing,” she said as she took his arm and allowed him to escort her to the table. She was slim, and the granddaughter of a woman that had lived and understood what the War of Northern Aggression had really been about; and even if she wasn’t a local girl, that heritage all but made her royalty among the local woman, and they damn well knew it.
 

She sat with some relief and studied Stephen as she took off her gloves, watching him over the rim of her glasses as the buzz in the place piled up around her presence. She sneered slightly when the waitress approached, ordered sweet iced tea, and then dismissed the girl with her hand. Stephen immediately took note of the gracious composure in her rebuff, and the cold confidence of her immediate command of the room. Dustin’s appraisal of her was right on the mark and came straight to mind. Miss Emily was no fawning Southern nitwit like you saw in the movies. You would do what Miss Emily wanted, and you would like it, without ever realizing how she had maneuvered you into doing her wishes.
 

When she took her eyes off of him, Stephen watched all the harshness evaporate as she turned to Robbie. “Aren’t you going to introduce us, Robbie?” she scolded him mildly.
 

“Oh, I sure am sorry, Miss Emily. I was just so surprised to see you here, I...” he stumbled and blushed before he continued. “Well, anyway. Mr. Stephen, this is Miss Emily. Miss Emily this is Mr. Stephen. He’s from U-rope.”
 

“I know where he’s from, Robbie. Thank you.”
 

She cocked her head to the side to look at Stephen closely, shooing off the waitress a second time when her iced tea was put on the table. They had seen each other in the foyer of the courthouse and Stephen had no doubt that she had assessed everything from that single glance, rather than her current appraisal.
 

“You’re a long way from home,” she said to Stephen.
 

Stephen nodded, feeling somewhat intimidated. But he knew this woman; knew of her bloodline and knew that she held more secrets and more lives in her head than most men would feel comfortable with. He was also aware that this was the woman that Dustin had run to after Stewart had cut him from the eaves of the barn. She had enough power and held enough secrets that, after she had dragged Dustin to the hospital, she had hushed up the entire incident at Dustin’s pleading insistence.
 

“He’s from U-rope,” Robbie stated again as Stephen and Miss Emily studied each other.
 

“Hush now, Robbie. Finish your food before it gets cold,” she told him automatically.
 

“Yes, ma’am,” Robbie said as he picked up his fork. “She ain’t so mean as folks think,” Robbie whispered across the table to Stephen. “’Cept when it comes to Mac’s cooking.” He giggled and took a bite.
 

Stephen glanced at him and looked back at her with a slight nod. “Miss Emily.”
 

“Something in your eyes says you know me,” she told Stephen. “Or think you do.” It sounded like a challenge from a woman that was not used to being challenged in her own element.
 

“Dustin spoke about you a bit.”
 

“Seems you’re one up on me then,” she replied. “I didn’t know anything about you until a few months ago, when Stewart put a hole through through his chest.”
 

“Miss Emily!” Robbie stammered, as his fork clattered into his plate.
 

She looked at him sharply, her silence an indication that he should mind his manners and his elders.
 

“He just found out about it now. Old Buster or Reamy must’ve told him down at the station. He didn’t know nothing. That ain’t fair, ain’t fair at all,” Robbie scolded her.
 

“Is that true?” she asked Stephen as she turned back to him.
 

Stephen nodded, a little shocked at her attack on him, but also acutely aware how much this old spinster had cared for Dustin. He had always wondered about the depth of her feelings when Dustin spoke of her, but now he was witness to the emotion contorting what he surmised would be a normally sedate and calculating face.
 

She softened, put her hands around her glass, and looked out the window of the diner, almost as if she could no longer bear the sight of him. “I owe you an apology then,” she sighed. “Dusty was a special boy. This town and all its petty bigotries killed him. And, to be fair, I haven’t taken to that too well. I hope you can understand,” she said as she glanced back at him.
 

“I...yes,” Stephen answered simply. “Yes, I can understand that.”
 

“Can you?” she asked her eyebrows rising slightly. “I spent more than two decades showing that boy what life was about, and this town spent that same two decades beating it out of him. And in the end, they killed him.”
 

“Miss Emily, these folks didn’t have nothing to do with what Pa done,” Robbie said.
 

“Didn’t they?” she asked, her voice rising. “I’ve been in this town for fifty years and taught every smart-mouthed little brat alive today. One bright, beautiful boy comes along and they make it their mission to make his life hell. That wasn’t just Stewart that pulled that trigger, Robbie; that was this whole damned town that did that,” she said and slammed her slight fist on the table.
 

Robbie looked shocked. He had likely never heard her curse, and from the look on his face, it seemed he believed that he never would. When Stephen glanced around the diner he noted the open mouth stares and the cinched hostility in the faces of those at the surrounding tables. It seemed her indictment had hit home in more than a few places and he had no doubt that in addition to the stress of the loss of Dustin, she was also worrying over her attempts to keep Robbie from prison, or the chair, as Robbie had alluded to.
 

Her hand slipped up to the pearls around her neck as she flushed for a moment. “Forgive my manners, but I am too old for this, Stephen, too old. That boy cried in my lap more times than I can count because of this town and I am just too old to have watched him be put in the ground.”
 

“He spoke very fondly of you, Miss Emily,” Stephen said.
 

She glanced at him and gave him a hollow nod as her face lost a little more of its composure. “He used to sit in my back picture window as a boy with his nose in a book and his dirty socks smudging up the window panes,” she said as she managed a weak smile. “He would just read and read. He wouldn’t go on the porch, always the window. Never wanted to go home once he got his nose in a book.” She smiled a bit more at the memory; remembering the sandwiches she’d placed next to him and how his hand would reach out absently without his eyes ever missing a word. “I’ve still got all his books,” she said to no one. “And all those questions... he wanted to know so much.” Her face fell a little, perhaps as her memory drifted back behind the stark reality of his death; at the innocence that was wasted for the sake of propriety and the god these heathen people claimed to worship.
 

She took a deep breath and looked directly at Stephen. “I’d like you to take his books with you. Give them new life. I won’t be around much longer and they’ll just go in the dump once I’m dead.”
 

“Oh Miss Emily, you ain’t going nowhere anytime soon,” Robbie interjected.
 

She looked over at him and lifted her hand to cup his cheek. Stephen could see all the weathered years on the back of her hand as she held it there, and didn’t doubt her words. “I’ll be around long enough, Robbie, but I’m getting old and I’m more than weary. It’s just about time for me to see my Daddy again. You understand?”
 

Robbie glanced down at his plate, looking slightly disturbed at the idea. “Yes, ma’am.”
 

“Things will be all set up for you,” she told him. “It’s already been arranged.”
 

“What things?” Robbie asked.
 

“Never mind, Robbie. When the time’s right I’ll explain it a little more, okay? Now’s just not the time.”
 

He nodded again. “Yes, ma’am.”
 

“Good boy,” she said as she patted his cheek and turned back to Stephen. “Could you do that for me?” she asked him. “With the books? I’ll pay the expense of shipping them.”
 

Stephen choked a little, his answer lost somewhere in his chest. “I...I guess I could. How many are there?” he asked her.
 

“Twenty years’ worth,” she said. “I used to buy him one every week, sometimes two.”
 

“That’s a lot of books,” Stephen answered, a little more than shocked at the thought of all those books, likely a small library’s worth. What would he do with them? They certainly wouldn’t fit in his little cottage in Aix, and he’d given up the flat in London. “Wouldn’t you want to donate them to the local library, or something?” he asked her.
 

“No. I wouldn’t,” she told him immediately. “They’d never appreciate them here and they don’t have the room for them. I’d like you to take them and if you don’t have room for them yourself, maybe you can find a home for them and donate them in Dustin’s name. There are still books in there he hasn’t read, books I bought when he was overseas, with you. It’s not all children’s titles.”
 

He nodded cautiously, unsure if he wanted to commit himself to it. “I’ll see what I can do.”
 

She nodded her head in return and took a sip of her iced tea. “He was such a beautiful boy, Stephen, so full of spirit and energy and passion,” she said absently, staring at the glass as she put it down in front of her. “Every time he came back to me he was hung up in all the labels hammered into him rather than in the beauty of what he could be. He had so much to offer.”
 

She looked up and straight into Stephen’s eyes. “Every time he came back to me wounded like that, except when he came back from you.” Her eyes misted over. She fished a laced handkerchief from her purse and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.
 

“I...” Stephen tried as pinwheels rolled around in his gut, but he was caught speechless once again.
 

“You changed him,” Miss Emily said. “You opened him up to what I could only show him in books. When he left I was afraid the service would only harden his heart, but you showed him what it was actually for. There aren’t many people that can do that to a person such as he was.”
 

Stephen closed his eyes for a moment as a barrier against her words. “Miss Emily, I didn’t
give
him anything. He already had all that. If anything, he gave to
me.
”
 

“There’s having and there’s owning, young man. And what you just said only reaffirms what I’m telling you,” Miss Emily stated firmly. “Accept it.”
 

Stephen simply nodded. There was no arguing the point. Dustin was dead, and what he may have found and what he may have lost were of absolutely no significance now.
 

“You don’t understand, do you?” she asked him gently.
 

“No, Miss Emily, I don’t. I don’t understand any of this. I don’t understand why he could leave me for... this; why he would come back; why he would stay. If they hated him so bloody much, why would he come back? Why?” he whispered softly. Robbie couldn’t be the only answer, there were ways around that predicament; they had discussed them together, argued over them.
 

At that moment, Stephen understood only that Miss Emily had been the person that had reinforced the idea within Dustin that he had been a good and decent person; that who he was did not depend upon the opinion of man or god, just as Colette had done for him once upon a time.
 

Chapter 13

Aix en Provence
 

Colette and the still young Stephen were at their neighbor’s house attending a late afternoon anniversary celebration in the dwindling light of the evening sky. It had been seven months since the death of his parents and Colette had thus far been unsuccessful in drawing him from his anguish. And though she hadn’t said anything directly, she was becoming increasingly worried that she had not been able help him find the vibrancy of his life once again. She knew it would take time but the boy seemed to be moving back into his grief instead of out and away from it. Even a promise that they would attend that September’s Bénédiction des Calissons d’Aix had not pulled a reaction from him, despite the fact that he had been asking about it every summer since he had been old enough to visit her on his own.
 

Their neighbors, the Dominès, were a simple young family who had inherited the land beside Colette’s cottage and had a romantic notion of raising their young family among the lavender and thyme that surrounded the small estate. They had two very small children, a boy and a girl, and a phalanx of friends that came by to fill their celebration with food, warmth, and laughter.
 

But twelve-year-old Stephen hadn’t wanted it, any of it. Despite the Dominès’ best attempts, he had shunned their affections and felt more than a little jealous that their children still had parents in their lives. He was not proud of that feeling, but he couldn’t help it either.
 

And so he had wandered from the jovial group, slightly bitter with the thought about how he would have curled up with a shy smile beside his Mum during such a celebration and watched the antics until he felt comfortable enough to participate. He had pushed his way along the edge of the lavender field until he had come upon the old granite barn Mr. Dominè planned to restore and turn into a rental property.
 

The decision that came upon him when he opened the door to the barn wasn’t something he had considered before, at least not in depth. He had wished death upon himself many, many times since his parents died. But when he saw the rope and looked up at the still solid oak beams, he just knew that the time was right. But the beams were too high for him to reach at that age, so he had spent a good deal of time trying to figure out an alternative. When he did, and just as he was about to slip the noose over his head, he heard a noise behind him and spun around to find three-year-old Danièle teetering at the door.
 

“Stephen,” she had chirped as she started toward him on her small, fat legs.
 

Stephen dropped to one knee to meet her at her own level and held his arms out to scoop her up, suddenly feeling desperate for one last hug; even if that hug came from a child that he resented for not sharing his own parentless existence. But she stopped her approach suddenly and looked up at the rope he’d strung. She looked at it curiously for a moment then dropped her gaze directly back to his eyes as she slowly closed the gap between them; a deep penetrating gaze that seemed to question his intentions with profound unverbalized hues that were well, well beyond her years.
 

The shock of her recognition stunned Stephen. She was obviously too small to understand the implications of the rope. But she came right up to him, put both of her small hands on each side of his face, and stared deep into his eyes without saying a word. She held him for a solid minute, her gaze as powerful and silent as it was bizarre. He couldn’t move.
 

Colette poked her head into the barn a moment later and broke the spell with a shrill intake of breath. The adults were all out looking for the child, and since she had seen Stephen wander in this direction, she thought she might check on him as well.
 

Danièle seemed to sidestep out of the way as Colette instantly realized Stephen’s intent and rushed to him, dropping to the floor beside him as Stephen fell to both knees with an uncontrollable howl of agony. She pulled him into her embrace as he buried his face in his hands, rocking him back and forth as he was wracked with the sobs of definitive knowledge and guilt.
 

Mr. Dominè came in shortly after and quietly collected his daughter as Stephen’s story spilled out of him. He and his mate had been caught in the loo together. Stephen knew it was naughty and wrong, but that attraction had always been there, and his mum had said that there was nothing wrong with it. But the teasing had begun from a few of his old mates, and the headmaster had pulled him into the office and warned them both, he and his mate, that terrible and wretched things happened to boys who did things like that.
 

One week later he’d been called to the headmaster’s office again. Colette was there and completely distraught, ready to whisk him to France and away from the horror of the death of his parents. When she had begun explaining the reason for her presence, and had reached for a necessary tissue, he understood. The look on the headmaster’s stern face told him everything he needed to know. He had caused their death. He had killed his own parents, and the nod from the headmaster only reaffirmed the fact.
 

“I’m so sorry, Mémé. I want them back, please,” Stephen wept. “I won’t do it again. I promise.... Pleeease.”
 

Colette picked Stephen up and carried him home, cradling her to him as the men at the party tried to unburden her of an inconsolable child that weighed almost as much as she did. She would not hear of it, no matter how much she struggled, no matter how much they argued with her. She would not let Stephen go as he wept, and never again would she allow anyone to put so poisonous an idea into his head. Never.