Love and Lament Page 34

  “Could’ve been a lot of explanations. I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t remember that case. I was thirty-one years old then and living with my daddy on his farm up near Turnip. But they used to have deaf people getting hit on the tracks regular, until they macadamized the road out to the fairgrounds.”

  “But the fairgrounds is north of town, isn’t it?” Mary Bet asked.

  “Yes, they used to walk the tracks partway up there and then cut through on a trail. They’d go up there to the carnivals, and there’s a place where folks like to picnic.”

  “But would they ever have gone east?”

  “There was a roadhouse down there until it burned long about five or six years ago. Maybe he was going down there. You must’ve come across cases like this where it’s not clear what happened. How do you fill in reports like that?”

  “We don’t speculate on what might’ve happened,” she replied, “unless there’s a good reason for it.”

  “Well, I don’t either,” he said, pulling his shoulders back. “But I can’t tell you about Sheriff Meacham. They say in his last year—a year before this event here—” he tapped the report, “he was very forgetful.”

  Near the bottom of the report, the words “killed instantly” had been scratched out and “deceased on site” penned in above. “Why does it say this?” Mary Bet asked.

  “Probably he was still alive when the conductor got to him.” The sheriff hesitated, tucked a thumb into the pocket of his open vest, then said, “Maybe even after the doctor got there.”

  “I thought he was the coroner.”

  “He’s both. I expect in this case, he died shortly before or after the coroner arrived, and that’s why they didn’t take him straight off to the hospital, you see. That’s not uncommon. And you needn’t worry about the suffering—he was probably completely unconscious.”

  Mary Bet was not reassured, but she would not let herself picture her brother in agony, trying to live. Instead she thought of her father—all along he knew what was in this report and had never told her. It still didn’t make complete sense. “I can’t understand it,” she said. “Why would somebody go walking on the tracks like that and not get off?”

  “Could be he was distracted about something, or he didn’t care one way or the other what happened to him. But I know if a person doesn’t want to live, he’ll find a way to die. There was a fellow here a while back that tried to cut off his own head with an ax, and when that failed he threw himself off the railroad bridge at low water. Took him a week to die. Should’ve been at the insane asylum. Many’s tried up yonder, but they keep them from it, mostly. I’m telling you this because you seem to be in need of something, but I’m afraid I can’t give any more than stories.”

  Mary Bet started to ask him what could’ve distracted her brother, but of course he wouldn’t know. “I have to make a visit to the state hospital,” she told him.

  “I don’t expect you’ll find much out there. Old Meacham’s not even likely to know he was sheriff. I wouldn’t bother if I was you.”

  “I’m not going to see the sheriff,” she said.

  CHAPTER 29

  1918

  SHE BID THE sheriff farewell and got back in her hired car to go over to the hospital. It was hard to believe that only this morning she was waving out the window to Flora and the others who had come to see her off. During the whole trip she tried to picture her father, but she was afraid of what he might look and sound like this time, and afraid she might not even recognize him, nor he her.

  And now she had come away from the tracks convinced that Siler had killed himself because he was every bit as crazy as their father, and more. But she had to see if her father could shed any of his fading light on it. The driver pulled into the long, tree-lined drive of the hospital’s grounds, and she remembered the peaceful feeling it had inspired the first time she visited. And yet as they approached the massive hand-cut gray stone building with its august clock tower and symmetrical wings, its huge doors and small fenced-in exercise yards, she recalled that feeling of being trapped inside, of feeling desperate for air.

  She walked the long corridor to her father’s ward and opened the glass-paneled swinging door. The young nurse sitting behind the desk was new since Mary Bet’s last visit. Mary Bet introduced herself and asked if this was a good time to go see her father.

  “He’s just had his supper,” she said. “He should be reading in his room.”

  “Reading?” This was new. He had not picked up a book in years.

  The nurse flushed and smiled in a confused way. “Yes,” she said. “Well, he likes to have a book with him wherever he is.”

  Mary Bet nodded and went on down the hall to her father’s room. It was the same room he had been in since he moved here, but there was now another bed with another patient. Two years earlier, Cicero had asked if he might have a roommate, and after a couple of failed attempts, the staff had found a gentleman of about Cicero’s age, a former miller from Asheville who was blind in one eye and had lumpy arthritic hands. The last time Mary Bet visited he’d said very little, except every now and then he’d stirred in his chair, where he sat covered by blankets, and murmured, “The good Lord looks after the child.”

  She went in and greeted them both. “Hello, Daddy,” she said. “Hello, Mr. Cane.” They were sitting side by side in Adirondack chairs, the tilt of the seat and back providing little incentive to get up. Cicero held a book, his glasses far down his nose, his lips moving. He glanced up, then kept on with his reading. Mr. Cane, who looked more withered and shrunken since last time, his white beard more patchy, stared at her and smiled. He said, “I can’t see a thing.”

  “Maybe it’s the light,” she said. “I’ll see if I can get them to adjust the lamp in here.” She glanced up at the sconce on the wall and saw that it was lit by an electric lightbulb and so could not be adjusted.

  Mr. Cane shook his head. “They won’t do it.” Then he stared out into the hall and said, “I can’t see a thing.”

  “There’s not enough daylight to read, Daddy,” she said. “Do you want me to read to you?”

  Cicero looked up at his only daughter, his eyes bleared and glassy, his neck a ruin of cords and turtle skin. He said, “I had nine children, and all of them perished in a fire.”

  Mary Bet shook her head. She perched on the edge of the closest bed, its white counterpane draped neatly over the end. The men wore overalls, because belts and suspenders were not allowed, nor were any sharp or heavy objects, and so the room was a soft, muted nest of hollows and curves and lines that met in distant corners. Even the windows, high on the wall and as vertical as castle loopholes, were part of the illusory effect, their thick, unopenable panes casting a dull yellow light as though from a distant sun. Heavy drapes could be drawn to adjust the light. She felt suspended in time here, as if she were at the far edge of the world where the normal rules of physics did not apply, and to keep herself from the despair of the place she had made her visits shorter over the years. Oh, people told her, your father won’t care either way. But he does care, she thought, he does.

  “Daddy, it’s me,” she said, “Mary Bet, your daughter. Do you want me to get you a pillow for your back?”

  He shook his head.

  “Daddy, I’m sorry I haven’t been out lately. My work at the courthouse has kept me busy. Are you getting my letters?” It was just something to say; she knew the nurses read him her weekly letters.

  “They told me you were coming,” he said.

  Then he knew who she was. She felt encouraged enough to say, “Yes, I wanted to see you. I wanted to ask you something important.” His eyes caught hers and widened a moment as though in recognition—though of her meaning, her identity, or simply her existence, she was not sure. “I wanted to ask if you remember me telling you about a girl Siler was going with, a girl named Rebecca Savage. She was Jewish, and he was afraid of telling you. Did he ever say anything about her to you?”

  Cicero shook his
head. He slumped into his shoulders and seemed to retreat back into himself, no longer making the effort to understand.

  “It was a long time ago, Daddy. Sixteen years, but it’s important to me, you see, because I think he may’ve thrown his life away. There was something he couldn’t live with and I need to know what it was.”

  Cicero cleared his throat and tried to say something. Then, “That boy was the cleverest of all my children. He couldn’t hear a sound, not even a train whistle right in his ear. His mother called him God’s child. Not just deaf, though.” Cicero regarded his brown-spotted hands, folded on the blanket covering his lap, as though marveling at their crepey texture, forgetting that he was old.

  “Not just deaf?” She leaned forward so that she had to catch herself from slipping off the bed.

  “The Lord saw fit to take all my children. I believe there was eight of them, or nine. In a fire. And I expect to go in a flood.” He paused, rubbing his dry, withered lips together for moisture, his mouth sunken over nearly toothless gums.

  “What was the matter with Siler,” Mary Bet insisted, “besides his deafness?”

  “I had a deaf boy, that’s right. He was afflicted like me. He seemed all right, but he was troubled in his mind. Not until he was grown did I see it. I thought it was just his deafness. He cut himself with a saw, just stood there watching the blood on his arm like it was a red spring. I saw him do it, and I came to him and scared him off. He died on the railroad tracks.” Cicero started moaning and rocking back and forth, gripping his upper arms, and now there were tears edging from his eyes.

  The young nurse came in and stood in the doorway. “Is everything all right, Mr. Hartsoe?”

  “I can’t see a thing,” Mr. Cane said. “I want some water.”

  “I’ll get you some. Miss Hartsoe? Do you need anything?”

  “We’re fine,” she said. She didn’t want to upset her father, but if there was anything else he had to say, she wanted to know what it was. There might never be another such chance in her life. It seemed as though the suspended time of this place had suddenly budded open, like a moment expanding into a million smaller moments, each one of which contained a message of great importance. When she and Leon had kissed in the car, she had felt a similar opening up of time, a desire to fall into the place where nonexistence joined with existence, and all the lost moments that had surrounded her and tried to suffocate her with her nonexistence had finally given way and let her breathe as freely as when she was little and did not know that death was not the thing to fear, but memory.

  She looked at her father, his mind all but annihilated, and she saw that that was something to be feared as well. The knowledge jerked her from the edge. Remember this always, she told herself. Remember this as a gift, and don’t throw your life away because of what you remember. “Was he afraid, then,” she said, “of losing his mind?”

  Cicero shook his head. The nurse came farther into the room, twisting her hands together now as if undecided whether to intervene. Mary Bet ignored her.

  “Do you think Siler was afraid, Daddy?”

  “There were two named Siler. She wanted to do that. I didn’t think it was a good idea, replacing one with another. And he was deaf, and I told her it was a judgment.”

  “It wasn’t a judgment, Daddy. It was just bad luck. All of it, all the sickness.”

  “I’ll just go get the doctor,” the nurse said, and hurried out.

  And then Mary Bet saw as through a membrane her father throwing the glass at his reflection, God yelling at God and pointing his finger, “Shut up,” and all she could think to do was run out into the pasture and step between the rails of the fence and go into the woods where it was quiet in her head. There was a baby rabbit, and it sniffed her hand.

  It was alive.

  It was alive. But it could die.

  There was a big rock beside the burrow. She picked it up with two hands and held it above the rabbit. Its ears twitched, and it sat very still. What was it afraid of? She held the rock high and dropped it. The rabbit made a little whimpering noise. It did not move, but it was still alive. She could see it breathing hard. And now she was more afraid than she had ever been in her life. She dropped the rock again, and again, and again. Each time she picked the rock up, she saved the rabbit and was amazed at what it could survive. Finally it made no more little noises. It had crumpled onto its side, and its eyes were closed.

  She stared in awe at what she had done. She threw the rock into the high weeds and found some leaves to cover the rabbit with—because its mother had left it uncovered—and then she went running back up to her house, pausing every few steps to look around behind her. When she got to the pasture, she stepped through the rails and slowed to the slowest walk she could, and she thought that if she walked even slower she might never have to get back to her home and to her self.

  It wasn’t until that night that she cried. She thought she might choke on the tears, it was so hard to keep quiet; she coughed and her sister asked if she was all right, and she nodded in the dark and said, “yes,” and then came the sound of O’Nora’s heavy sleep-breathing and Mary Bet prayed quietly for God not to send her away to the Devil but to take her quick to heaven.

  “I killed a rabbit,” she said now to her father. He looked at her through glassy, uncomprehending eyes as though trying to fathom what she was saying. And suddenly she realized that all the years she had dammed back the memory she had been mistaken. She had thought she was eight and had connected the killing of the rabbit with the death of Ila and the memory of her mother dousing her father’s head. But, no, she had been much younger.

  “It was after Annie’s death,” she said. “I must’ve been five.” Old enough to know better, she thought, but a much younger child than her mind had told her for so long. Why had she accused herself all this time? Because I’m guilty of killing a living thing, and it doesn’t matter how old I was. And yet, hadn’t she wanted to suffer more and more over the years, to make it a worse crime than it was? There is nothing worse than hurting a defenseless creature, and then hurting it some more … and not wanting it to make another accusing noise on this earth, and knowing that I could silence it forever by pounding it with the rock until it stopped.

  Was it not pity that she had felt, had taught herself? Or was it only a primitive fear? Maybe they were the same thing at their roots. She could feel the tears hot on her face now, and she wiped them away and said, “Daddy …” She had started to ask his forgiveness. But she got off the bed and, kneeling by his side, took his hand. She knew it was pointless to tell her father anything at all, much less something as important as what she had to say. But of all the people in the world, he was the one she most needed to confide in.

  “Daddy,” she said, “didn’t you want to punish God? I know you did. Didn’t you ever just want to do back to him what he had done to you?”

  Mr. Cane called out toward the hall in an agitated voice. “I can’t see a thing.”

  “You can see fine,” Mary Bet told him.

  He glared at her, then softened and asked, “Will there always be water?”

  “Yes, Mr. Cane,” she said, “there will.”

  Cicero squeezed her hand and said, “Don’t leave me just yet.”

  “I won’t, Daddy,” she said.

  The doctor came in now—a tall, lanky man with sloped shoulders and a drooping face to match—followed by the nurse. Mary Bet rose to her feet and went over to introduce herself. “I want to thank you for taking such good care of my father,” she said. “You might check and see if he has enough blankets. His feet get cold at night. And he might could use another pillow to prop up in bed.”

  The doctor nodded in agreement, giving the nurse a droll smile that said, “I’ll let it go this time.”

  “Is he eating all right?” she asked. “He’s lost two more teeth, looks like.” The doctor assured her he was getting the proper nutrition, having his food mashed properly and fed to him, and that he was still wa
lking up and down the hall without assistance. He wasn’t getting outside so much anymore, because it seemed to upset him.

  “Well,” Mary Bet said, “I wish there was something y’all could do about that, because I think the fresh air would help him. But I know you’re doing all you can.” The doctor and nurse seemed like honest people, and in such cases it was always best to be complimentary and so encourage their better natures to prove you right.

  The nurse said, “I think we could try him again now it’s not so hot out. He won’t tolerate the muffs, or anything on his hands. But we could try him again.” The doctor nodded in agreement, and Mary Bet felt only a little guilty for showing up here just to order them around.

  “Here’s a necklace he made in crafts this week,” the nurse said. “He’s right proud of it, aren’t you, Mr. Cicero?” She showed Mary Bet the string of what looked like long insect legs alternating with blue celluloid beads. “They make those by snippin’ out oval shapes from magazines, then rollin’ ’em up and shellackin’ ’em. Then they string ’em with the beads, like ’at.”

  Mary Bet went to the window with the beads so that she could see them better. The sun was going down behind the swooping profiles of Tablerock and Hawksbill off in the far distance, and over to the left she could make out the central tower of the deaf school, rising above the trees. She heard a train coming, the low rumble just audible, with the tracks a mile away. Out there, just over the trees—that was where he had decided. For she told herself that it was in a moment that he had made the decision, no matter what he had been thinking about in the days before. It was but a moment.

  That night in the tiny guest room, Mary Bet began writing a letter to Rebecca Savage. She didn’t know the street address, of course, but Wilmington wasn’t likely to hold more than one Rebecca Savage. What could she say to a person she’d never met, a person her brother may’ve loved more than anyone on earth? Could she say, “I don’t know you, but when Siler died I thought I couldn’t go on—I loved him more than I expect to love anybody again.” Surely she could not say, “We have to trust in God’s mercy. If he wants us to burn in hell for eternity, he’ll let the Devil have us. If he wants to redeem us from hell, it’s his choice. Everybody has a conscience and everybody has to be judged.”