The Old Buzzard Had It Coming (3 page)

“Scott said the same thing.”

“Problem is the boy is underage, and it wouldn’t be him that holds the note on the farm. So my guess is that they’ll be having to pack up and leave.”

“That’s a shame,” Alafair decided. “I’m guessing that Phoebe will be broke up about it.”

“So you think Phoebe is really sweet on that boy?” Shaw asked, sounding surprised.

Alafair laughed. “I hate to admit that I didn’t know anything about it ’til this week, but from the way she turns all red and can’t look me in the eye when his name is mentioned, I’d say yes.”

Shaw sat up a little straighter in the seat. “What do we know about this boy?” he demanded.

“You know him better than I do,” Alafair pointed out.

There was a short silence while Shaw pondered. “He talks a nice story,” he said, “but I’m thinking he’s going to have enough on his mind to keep him from going and courting for a long while. Perhaps it’s just as well that they’ll likely be moving on.”

“Let’s not be making any decisions that aren’t ours to make,” Alafair warned, “nor making assumptions before we know what’s what.”

Shaw made a harrumphing sound and fell silent, and Alafair busied herself with packing up the lunch leftovers. She knew Shaw well enough to know what was on his mind at that moment. He went through this every time one of the girls cast a sidelong glance at some boy.

***

The gate at the Day place was standing open and they pulled through and started up the drive toward the house. Much of the snow had melted away, and the road was muddy and hard to navigate. It took them almost as long to drive from the road to the house as it had taken them to come from their front door to the Day front gate. They could see the house from the road, and a depressing house it was, weather-beaten and unpainted, standing in the mud.

“There’s Scott,” Shaw observed. Alafair could see Scott standing by the side of the house, looking down at something she couldn’t see but had an uncomfortable feeling about. Mrs. Day stood a bit to the side, absently patting two urchins who clung to her skirts. Alafair studied the woman as they drove up to the house and Shaw jumped down to drape the reins over the porch rail. He whistled at the hounds, who had trailed them from home, and they obediently leaped into the bed of the wagon, out of the way. After her few unsuccessful attempts to befriend Mrs. Day here on the farm, Alafair only saw the woman rarely in town. Mrs. Day was a fairly young woman still, but looked older than her years, skinny and faded, with the demeanor of a whipped pup. When Alafair tried to speak to her, she had always murmured something and scuttled away with a look of mingled fear and longing. She always had at least two or three children with her, silent, big-eyed waifs who were ragged but clean.

Alafair got down and she and Shaw walked around the house. Shaw removed his hat as they neared, and Scott moved up to take charge of introductions.

“Miz Day, you know my cousin Shaw Tucker and his wife, don’t you? I asked them to come on over and help us out.”

The woman gazed at them for a second out of eyes that registered only blank surprise.

“Why, we know Miz Day, sure enough,” Shaw replied, as though they were the best of friends. “We’re real sorry to hear of your loss.”

Mrs. Day’s bewildered gaze moved from Shaw to Alafair, and they looked at one another in silence for the space of a breath. “Miz Tucker,” the woman said, for a greeting.

“Miz Day,” Alafair responded. “I come to help you lay out your dead.” To be less forthright would have been disrespectful, to minimize what had happened.

Mrs. Day nodded. “I appreciate it,” she said. She spoke matter-of-factly, polite, deferential as befitted the difference in their social status. But Alafair recognized the dreamlike look of shock in her eyes. Alafair looked down at the two little girls, one on either side of their mother. They both returned her gaze, wide-eyed and rosy-cheeked, infinitely more curious than upset by the untimely demise of their father. Alafair tried not to smile.

“Miz Day,” Scott said to her, in his most solemn and official voice, “Doc Addison will be out before nightfall, but at this point it looks pretty straightforward to me. I don’t see why we can’t move him on into the house.”

“Yes, sir, Sheriff,” she said.

“Looks like he just lay down here and went to sleep.”

“Yes, Sheriff.”

“Me and Cousin Shaw here could probably use some help getting him inside. Where is John Lee?”

Mrs. Day’s bemused expression didn’t change. “He ain’t got back from town yet, Sheriff.”

Something sharpened in Scott’s expression. “He ain’t?”

Mrs. Day didn’t seem to be aware of the subtle shift in Scott’s attitude. “Reckon we got a load of relatives to notify, Sheriff.”

“That so?” Scott responded, mollified. “Well, I expect we’ll manage, though he’s probably pretty stiff by now.”

Alafair’s eyes widened at Scott’s casual tone.

“He’s pretty dirty, too, ain’t he?” Scott was saying. “Looks like he rolled around in the pig sty a mite before he decided to have a nap.”

Mrs. Day dispassionately looked over at the earthly remains of her husband. “Yes,” she said, as though she rather expected that was exactly what happened.

Scott looked toward Shaw and Alafair and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head, acknowledging that questioning the woman right now was probably useless. Shaw moved forward, and Alafair stood aside with Mrs. Day and the girls as the two men hunkered down on either end of the body. They hefted what was left of Harley Day, Shaw at his head and Scott at his feet, and followed the widow up the porch steps and into the house.

Mrs. Day had already cleared the table, and the men deposited Day on the warped and well-scrubbed surface.

“You want me to send for the undertaker?” Scott asked, and Mrs. Day looked up at him.

“No, thank you, Sheriff. I reckon we’ll just keep him in the shed ’til I can get a hole dug in the plot out back.”

Scott nodded. He hadn’t expected that she could afford the services of Mr. Lee, and the weather was still very cold, after all. “The county will provide you with a box, if you like,” Scott told her.

“Me and some of my folks would be proud to help you with the grave digging,” Shaw added.

She looked relieved. “I’m obliged, Mr. Tucker,” she admitted. “It would have been hard for John Lee to do all by hisself.”

“Now, you men just go out on the porch and wait for Dr. Addison,” Alafair ordered, “while we do what we have to do. Girls,” she said, looking down at the two little clinging bundles of curiosity, “y’all go outside with Mr. Tucker and Sheriff Tucker and let your ma and me get to work.”

All tasks allocated, the men withdrew, each with a little girl by the hand, and left the two women to the grim and intimate task of preparing the body.

It took the women a few minutes to tug Harley’s stiff limbs out and arrange him supine on the table.

Alafair rolled up her sleeves as Mrs. Day removed the big pot of water warming on the stove and brought it to the table. They worked in silence for several minutes, straightening the body and drawing off the wet, muddy clothing. Alafair turned her back as Mrs. Day tugged off the long johns and decently draped Harley’s privates with an old dishtowel.

Alafair took a wet cloth and lathered it well with lye soap, then began washing the greasy black hair as Mrs. Day started at the feet. Alafair noted with distaste that this was probably the first bath that Harley had had in quite some time. The clothing they had removed from the body was amazingly filthy, as if he had indeed been rolling in some very black mud. The whole right side of his body was coated with a thick layer of it, from tip to toe. His clothes had been well-mended, though. Mrs. Day probably did the best she could under bad circumstances. Alafair glanced at the silent woman.

“Where’s the rest of your children, Miz Day?” she wondered.

“Harley’s sister from over north of Boynton come and got most of them just a little while ago,” she replied. “Mattie and Frances wanted to stay. Naomi is around here, somewhere. I swear, that girl is always going off by herself, lately. The others will be back tomorrow, probably.”

“How many kids you got?”

Mrs. Day looked up at her, perplexed, and Alafair thought that the woman was not used to someone being interested in anything she might have to say. “They’s seven still alive and at home. Oldest girl run off last year. Got married, I believe. I ain’t seen her since, but I hear she’s still around here somewhere. Three other kids died when they was pretty little, back when the whooping cough was going around.”

Alafair nodded while squeezing her already blackened rag into the bucket. “None of mine are married. Their daddy says they’re way too particular, but really, we’re both glad.”

“I married up with Harley when I was thirteen,” Mrs. Day commented dispassionately. “He weren’t so bad when I first met him. Always was full of vinegar back then, and big ideas, looking for ways to make himself rich. Seems like all he could ever find was ways to get himself in trouble. John Lee come along directly.”

Alafair looked up sharply. Eleven kids in nineteen years, and the woman couldn’t be much over thirty. Alafair was filled with compassion and a nameless anger, quite unaware of any irony that might be inherent in the fact that she had borne eleven children herself, and was two years shy of forty. She, at least, could afford to feed and clothe her happy brood, and had been fully compliant in the conception of every one of them.

“I got nine living,” Alafair told her. “I lost a couple of little fellows when they were babies. It’s hard.”

Mrs. Day shrugged without looking at her. “Sometimes it’s God’s mercy.”

For an instant, Alafair was shocked at the comment. She hadn’t felt the hand of mercy when her boy had choked to death in her arms, blue and staring, as she ran for the doctor. But the shock abated when she admitted to herself that she did not think life so horrible that she would have been grateful to see her children spared the experience.

“What do you plan on doing now?” Alafair wondered.

Mrs. Day didn’t answer right away, just dipped her cloth and washed, dipped and washed, until Alafair wondered if the woman had heard her. But she had heard. She straightened suddenly. “I ain’t thought,” she managed. “I expect I have to plan, don’t I?”

A sob escaped her, and tears spilled down her cheeks in a flood. “He’s really gone, ain’t he?” she choked out, her voice full of wonder.

Not for an instant did Alafair imagine that Mrs. Day was overcome with grief at the realization of her loss. It was not grief that had overcome the woman, but profound, unspeakable relief.

Alafair dropped her cloth and went to Mrs. Day’s side. “You just cry, now,” she soothed, gripping Mrs. Day by the shoulders. “He’s truly gone. He can’t bother you no more.”

Mrs. Day’s eyes widened at Alafair’s perception, and she succumbed to more sobbing that took a few minutes to subside. Finally she wiped her face with the corner of her apron. “I expect you think I’m evil,” she said shyly.

“I do not,” Alafair assured her. “Folks have to earn the love of others. I expect you done your duty by him and more than your duty. It wasn’t your fault that God decided to take him and free you and your kids.”

“I could have gone looking for him.”

“Phoo!” Alafair puffed her disdain. “He could have stood away from the corn liquor. Don’t you go berating yourself for anything, any more.”

Mrs. Day gazed at her warily for a long minute before a small, unaccustomed smile formed on her lips. For a moment, she looked as young as she was. She began bathing her husband’s cold limbs again. “Maybe my Maggie Ellen, my gal that run off and got married, will come visit me now that Harley has gone. Me and the other kids miss her awful. Maybe I’ll pack up and head back to Idabel. My folks can’t take us in for long, but my ma’s a Chickasaw, so I’m half. I expect the Nation will watch over us ’til I can get on my feet.”

“You won’t be trying to stay on here?”

She shrugged. “I miss my folks.”

“So you’ll be selling.”

Mrs. Day looked surprised. It hadn’t occurred to her that she now owned something. “Why, I reckon I could,” she managed. “I’ll have some money then, won’t I?”

If you can find a buyer before the bank forecloses, Alafair thought. “My husband can help you,” she offered, struck by sudden inspiration. Why not? The Day place adjoined theirs. It had buildings and woodland, one good plowed field, and Bird Creek ran right through it. If she knew Shaw, he had probably already considered buying, and would pay the widow a good price for it, too.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Day was saying. “I don’t know nothing about them things.”

Mrs. Day had finished washing the entire front of the body while Alafair was still working on the filthy hair and grimy face. “How’d Harley get this black eye and bruised jaw, here?” Alafair wondered. It hadn’t been apparent under all the dirt.

“Oh, he was always getting in some scrape,” Mrs. Day told her dismissively. “Him and Jim Leonard from up the road a piece just had a set-to the other day.”

Alafair pushed the head to the side so she could get to the back of the neck. She scrubbed a bit of black crud under the left ear, perplexed at its hardness. Her hand barely hesitated when she saw the dirt take on a rusty hue as it came off on the cloth. She stopped washing and straightened.