A Gracious Plenty (11 page)

To the families who’ve lost relatives in the past ten years, I write notes. “Best wishes to your family,” and “May your grief become more bearable with each passing year.” Back and forth between those two, a personal touch, though impersonal—a trick I learned from Papa.

“You’ve got to treat ’em like they’re some
body
,” he said. “ ’cause they
are
somebody—even if you don’t know ’em from Adam.”

“It’s a lot of work,” I told him. He was in a wheelchair by then, and I was running the cemetery by myself. He was simply overseeing at that time.

“But it’s work worth doing,” he insisted.

So I wrote the notes as he studied my hand. “Best wishes to your family,” and I signed them, “Finch Nobles.”

“You got to write so they can read it,” Papa used to fuss.

“I can’t help it,” I argued. “That’s how I write.”

“Well, I don’t care if you have to print, you write it so they can read it,” and he’d add, “This is a
business
. You do what you have to.”

I stuff each envelope, lick it, and put it in a pile. A cat I’ve never seen before keeps guard over the stack. Another cat sits on the stamps and whines when I move him.

I address each envelope carefully, with ink that doesn’t run. The one to Lois Armour on Glass Street holds my attention for a long time. I pull it out of the stack.

“Should I do it or not?” I ask the cat. But the cat ignores me. I rip the envelope in two, take up another copy of the letter, and begin again: “May your grief become more bearable with each passing year. May you come to admit that your daughter killed herself, and may you stop pestering the police about arresting black boys who had nothing to do with her death. Best wishes to your family.”

It looks good to me when I read it. At Lucy’s request, I add, “Come soon for a visit,” and then I sign, “The Management,” to comply with the restraining order. I mail it out along with all the others.

I
’M CANNING WHEN
the phone rings, and I almost don’t answer it because I’m bogged to my elbows in stewed tomatoes. The only people who ever call of an evening are boys in faraway states trying to give me a credit card. But sometimes it’s nice to hear about the weather in Idaho.

“Hello?”

“Finch? Leonard. Turn on the news,” and the line clicks.

I wipe my hands on an old dishrag and pull out the button to start the TV. It takes a long time to get past the static, and though there’s no picture yet, I can hear the anchor say, “Coming up next—the woman we’ve come to know as the Good Samaritan—disillusioned.”

“And,” the other anchor adds, “ways to get rid of those old tires you’ve been saving in your garage. All this and more when we come back.”

I wrestle with the rabbit ears all through the commercials until I can make out the picture, and by the time I get tinfoil wrapped around the tips, I see words flash across the screen: “Kindness—At What Price?”

They review the story of Reba Baker and William Blott, even replaying bits of footage from the earlier taping. Then the camera pans a wooded area that looks more like a junkyard than anybody’s home. All around, pop-up campers and shells from pickup trucks and even a couple of little pull campers are sprinkled and wedged between trees and scrub. There’s a stove and an old sewing machine with colorful fabric draped across, a line hanging from the trees, and fancy costumes pinned up.

Then the camera turns to Reba, who is scratching her arm. She notices the microphone and begins to speak, the tears already falling: “We were given all William Blott’s belongings by his son after he died, and we were planning on using them for the youth of the church. We were led to believe that we could turn his house into a club for our boys and girls, and this is what we find.”

She spreads her arms around.

“Trash and sinfulness everywhere. He was the one who’d been stealing our underclothes off the lines, and there’s a whole trailer full of ladies’ things right there.” She points to a pop-up camper.

“And there are perverted sexual magazines and objects so vile that I cannot say them on the television; I would not have those nasty words in my mouth.”

The reporter tries to calm her, saying, “Ms. Baker, is there any chance that you’ll be able to salvage or sell
any
of his things? There do appear to be valuables on this propery. The antique vanity, for instance. Or the musical instruments?”

“I would not
touch
his
filthy
belongings. Our church will not be tainted by his sinful, lustful ways. Do you see that commode?” and she points to it, sitting between two pines. “He’d been
using
it out here, not even connected to a septic tank!” And she begins to cry again, scratching at the skin above her eye. “When the Lord is ready for us to have a clubhouse for the children, he’ll send us one. The Lord would not insult us this way.” And Reba buries her face into the crook of her arm. That’s where the tape ends.

“As you can see, Blott’s legacy is not what it appeared,” the reporter says to the anchors. “I’ve talked with lots of the other members of the Sunday school class, Curtis and Lynda, and they echo Ms. Baker’s sentiments exactly.”

“Did you get any comment from Mr. Blott’s son, who gave Ms. Baker this property?”

“We tried to speak with him today, but he had no comment. It’s worth mentioning that he’d had no contact with his father since infancy.”

“It’s certainly heart-wrenching to see someone like Ms. Baker, who does so much for her community, so broken by these circumstances,” one of the anchors says.

“You have to wonder if she’s not overreacting a bit,” the other anchor adds.

“She
did
say that she’d do it all over again,” the reporter tells them. “And the adult women’s Sunday school class at China Street Baptist Church out in Tredegar County will begin a new Good Samaritan project in the near future. But Ms. Baker’s plans for this land and for Blott’s belongings are, and I quote, ‘to set a fire so hot, it scorches the evilness out of the air.’ ”

I click off the TV and try to call Leonard back. But I don’t have his number. The operator gives it to me, and he answers on the second ring.

“Meet me at Blott’s land,” I say.

“What?”

“Meet me there. I don’t know how to find his campsite.”

“I’m in for the night,” Leonard says. “I don’t feel good. I’m not going back out.”

“Then tell me how to find it.”

“You won’t be
able
to find it, Finch. It’s almost dark, and it’s way back in the woods, plumb hidden back there.”

“Have you been?” I ask him.

“Yeah.”

“Then I’ll meet you at the big curve in twenty minutes.”

T
HE TRUCK
I drive used to be Papa’s. It’s big and blue, a Chevy, with round hips over the back tires and places to stand on the sides, like a fire truck. I check the toolbox to make sure I got my good flashlight, climb in the cab, and I’m off.

My truck clanks and jolts. Nobody can drive it anymore but me—not even the mechanic—because there’s a special way you throw the gears. But I love my truck and plan on keeping it for a while if the floorboard doesn’t rust through. I’ve reinforced the floor on the passenger side with a piece of plywood, then pulled the carpet back over it so that it can pass inspection. And all across the dash, I’ve got dried flowers and bits of stick and bone. There’s a cat’s tail I found chopped off by some sort of blade. I’ve tied a string to the end, and it hangs from the rearview mirror, dangling tabby. It swings slow, because slow’s the way I drive.

When I get to the curve near William Blott’s place, there’s nobody around at all, and the night so dark, it looks like the whole world’s just an echo of something bigger. I pull over to the shoulder, get out, and jump the ditch.

I wait around for Leonard, but not for long. Then I begin walking the stretch of road, looking for shoe prints and bent-over grass. If a camera crew has been in those woods, and all those church ladies, and a reporter, I know I ought to be able to find the path they made.

And I do. It takes me a while, but I do.

I follow the trampled way for a while and even still, there are briers sharp as blades and long, like nails, that catch in my hair and my clothes. They scratch worse than cats as I pass through. There is kudzu wrapped around every tree, like a logic, swallowing up what shrinks inside. It’s a jungle of a world, in July, wild and looming, and it’s not long before I lose sight of the slight path I’d found. It’d be easier in daylight.

Briers claw at my socks and vines catch beneath my chin. I feel like I’m trying to walk through a hammock, and I have to swim with my arms and twist to get through bushes. I cuss Leonard with every breath. My light is good, but the woods are dense, and one little shining isn’t enough. I wish for a miner’s hat with a spotlight attached.

Finally, I reach a place where the vines seem woven together like a wall. I push against them with my hands, and though they are flexible, they do not give. I realize I’ll have to climb over, and so I shine my light upward to see how high. At the top of the viny fence, briers stretch two rows thick, like barbed wire.

At first, I’m stunned, and then I’m tickled when I realize William Blott had built a fortress for himself, taming nature just enough to afford him protection.

I drop to my belly and wiggle beneath, just like the children who come onto the cemetery grounds without permission.

And then I’m in. I dust myself and circle the place with the flashlight. It looks as if those campers had to be dropped from the sky, with the living fence forming boundaries all around. They must have been there for years for the woods to grow up around them that way. I work the perimeter with my light, shining on the overgrowth and shining on the campsite. At the opposite side of my entry, I see that somebody has broken through the fence with a hatchet or scythe. They’ve made a rough door for the camera crews and ladies, but they didn’t bust through the top levels of briers.

But the inside is miraculous—like being inside somebody’s head. It feels like a privilege to see it all.

There’s a camper shell designed to fit onto a pickup standing upright and supported from behind by two pine trees. William Blott has made a clothes rack in that camper shell, using a young sapling stripped to its trunk as the bar. He’s slipped the narrow tree through holes on either side, and his clothes hang on regular hangers, here in the woods.

There are other clothes on a line—costumes and boas and sequined gowns swinging from the rope, just above the dirt, like ghosts. His bras appear to be different sizes, and it startles me to see them hooked around sawed-off stumps. In the night, with just the light shining in one place at a time, it’s like headless nymphs wear those bras. I discover them individually, behind me, ahead, to my side. Each one makes me jump.

There’s a small pull camper, no bigger than a horse trailer, and when I see that it has no door, I lean inside and shine the light around. It’s his bedroom—complete with a bed, though dirty and unmade. I shine my light on a nest at the far corner of the crumpled bed, and then a bird comes flying at me, black and squawking. I lunge and fall against the camper’s moldy side, jostling it hard. And inside, an alarm clock falls and begins to ring.

Before I know it, I’m on the other side of the campground, my back against a tree, swallowing to keep my heart from jumping out my throat, the ring piercing my ears.

And in the dark, I hear a rustling, then “Yo,” a voice calls from deep in the woods. “Finch? You in there? What the hell’s going on?”

It’s Leonard, and I catch my breath and shine my light in the direction of the sounds of feet crunching through moss and mulch. He comes in through the door in the fence, dressed in coveralls and a cap, though the evening is hot. It’s clear he’s been here before.

“It’s just a clock,” I tell him. “I knocked it over.”

“You wanna turn it off?” he growls.

“No,” I say, and he nods and chases down the sound.

The bird comes flying at him, too, and he runs out saying, “God Almighty damn. Why didn’t you tell me there was a bird? Are you laughing?”

“I thought you weren’t coming,” I answer, ignoring his questions.

Then he points to a camper I haven’t been in. “You seen this yet?”

I shake my head.

“Come on.” He leads me to a pop-up with a beaded entranceway, and when I push through, it’s like something you’d see in a movie. It’s got red poofy pillows with tassles and a daybed covered with silky sheets. There’s the dressing table with makeup still sitting out, little sponges in the shapes of triangles darkened with the liquid. My flashlight hits the mirror and bounces off, and in the reflection, I can see the shelf along the top lined with wigs and foamy ninnies.

I do not wear makeup myself. There was never any chance I could cover up my faults, and so it seemed pointless to bother with painting my lips. But being in William Blott’s dressing room makes me feel little and silly, and there’s a part of me that wants to do my face.

“Creepiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Leonard says. “Let’s go.” He trips over a pair of heels, massive and gold.

I take a tube of lipstick, stick it in my pocket, and follow Leonard through the streaming beads.

“What’re you doing here anyway?” he asks, leading me to the hole in the living fence.

“Collecting William’s valuables,” I say. “And don’t you try to stop me, neither. If Reba’s got plans to burn this place—and you know that she just might—then I’m gonna take some of his things back to his grave.”

“You are
not
,” Leonard tells me. “If I have to put you in handcuffs, you’re not taking things away from here. We’re leaving. We’re leaving
now
.”

And he walks on out into the woods, but I dip behind another camper and then inside. This one’s full of books, and most of them stink like mold. I pick up a book of photographs—photographs of misfits—and the pages are warped from rain or other liquid.

“Finch?” Leonard calls, looking for me. “Damn it, you’ve seen it now. Come on.”