Cementville (13 page)

Byard jumped at the sound of a Pekkar Platter Deluxe clattering on the table in front of him. The Spalding girl tallied his check and tore it from her pad. She didn't thank him or wish him happy eating. She didn't check on whether everything met with his satisfaction.
She took up a sentry position behind the bar and gazed distractedly out at the otherwise empty restaurant.

He knew that people assumed he ran off to Canada to get away from the draft and, as long as he was hiding out in the Canadian hinterlands, it had never been in Byard's interest to disabuse them of that notion. Other than Byard himself, his big brother was probably the only person in town who knew that what he had been running from all along was Levon.

* * *

T
HEY STREAM TOWARD THE
D
UVALL
Funeral Home by various means: On foot if they live nearby; in taxi cabs if they are from outlying communities or are too old or drunk to drive; by Greyhound if they happen to be of the original mountain stock who chose to stay in Appalachia; in dilapidated trucks borrowed from neighbors, the cargo loads of which consist of children, most of whom wear shoes scrounged from somewhere and an outfit suitable for the occasion. The extended Ferguson clan is impressive, if for nothing but its size, numbering close to a hundred.

The women wear the dresses they save for the weekly grocery trip, their hair done up high on top and sprayed into unyielding helmets. Adolescent girls slink around in miniskirts and fishnets and bored looks that avoid the taciturn, barely caged scrutiny of the men. Young boys hide their diffidence behind swaggers and spit, taking turns pulling a comb from a back pocket and running it through their flawless and gleaming hair. They have not adopted the new style of collar-length locks or longer, they are no hippies, no studious sensitive types. They brook no trade with the anti-war talk that lately flavors the air. They have come to pay respect to their fallen brother, cousin, friend, to one of their own cut down for God and country and to stay the yellow horde.

Arlene Ferguson in a Valium haze is guided up the front steps of the old house that Malcolm Duvall and his wife converted to a mortuary some years ago, an antebellum behemoth set off to the east by the Slidell mansion and by Judge Freeman Hume's Victorian manor to the west. Like a house herself, Arlene is similarly bolstered, each elbow held by a son. Levon, the older, on his mother's left, has this afternoon grudgingly put on a suit of blue serge purchased for him by his beleaguered wife Virginia. (Three days ago, Ginny had gone back to Levon—yet again, and against the advice both of her cousin and of her neighbor, Katherine Juell—but it is Ginny's dance, not theirs, Byard thinks.)

Byard holds Arlene by her right arm. His own gray suit hangs on him, belonging not to him but to Rafe Goins, a considerably larger man. Behind him the assortment of relatives have finished greeting one another and, still mumbling last bits of family news and expressions of sadness, assemble into something of a procession to follow the wretched and drugged mother into Duvalls'.

The retinue, once inside, is reduced to stunned quiet. The dark elegance of the parlors on either side of the great hallway, the sweeping staircase that recalls glamorous Civil War movies, only serve to call attention to their motley clothing and brassy hair. Eyes adjusting to the dimmer light, they discern which room contains the casket. The other room appears to be for less formal sitting and visiting. The men pointedly look through Byard and filter off from the women and head toward the latter, a paneled parlor where, after an appropriately respectful interlude, thin bottles will appear from back pockets, the ubiquitous half pint that, once empty, has the power to shear in two a grieving man's heart. But as soon as one bottle is gone, another is produced, and after a while the soft drone of the men's voices gets loud enough that someone from the office comes to politely suggest they move to the broad veranda where they'll be more comfortable in the numerous rocking chairs and gliders. It is suggested that the men can enjoy a smoke without discomfiting the women across the hall.

Arlene and her sister Bett are squeezed together on a velvet settee near Daniel's coffin, two large and uncomfortable women clutching their purses on their laps. Arlene's grief bestows upon her a rare grace. Levon stands behind his mother. When Byard and Levon catch each other's eye there is a cautious hatred that Byard knows is kept at bay only out of respect for Arlene's public moment. The brothers have not been alone together since Byard's return, and he dreads that moment coming. Maria Louise has made clear she would rather it not happen at all. She won't come to the funeral home until later tonight, insisting that Byard have this time with close relatives, an excuse to delay her having to face the sobering fact that she has married a Ferguson. He wouldn't blame MaLou if she showed up as drugged as Arlene.

Mac Duvall cuts silently through the space of the bereavement room, nodding at one woman, touching the shoulder of another. His years in the business have honed him to a fine shining blade of reserve. He accomplishes an elegant gloom in his trim black suit, knows all the right expressions for the situation, what to murmur, when a simple nod will do and when a pat on the back is appropriate. The man makes of anguish something that is handsome and noble.

Levon steps forward. “War's been good to you, ain't it, Mac?” he blares, and the women all look up from their sniffling.

Mac Duvall's arm reaches out for a handshake, a motion that must be instinctual for a man in his position. “Levon,” he says, but Levon keeps his arms locked tight across his chest, rocks on his heels and nearly loses his balance.

In the deep pockets of Rafe's gray suit, Byard clenches and relaxes his fists. Clenches and relaxes and glares at Levon. But Levon's attention is already engaged elsewhere, busy with his own dark judgments. Byard follows the line of his brother's scrutiny and realizes that Levon's eyes are trained on their sister Augrey

Her hair a careless tangle, her skirt impossibly short, she leans against the jamb of the enormous door to the parlor, the strap of a straw purse dangling off the shoulder from one hooked finger. Her
other arm is tightly wrapped halfway around her, articulating the tiny waist and still-boyish hips. Their mother had asked Byard to talk to Augrey “She's acting up,” was how Arlene put it, “and it can't hurt to have a man talk to her, I mean, a man who don't want something from her.” Arlene didn't need to say anything else for Byard to sense the deep worry, that his mother saw her girl following the same path she herself had taken, an unthinking child reckless with what little she owned of herself. He looks at his sister now and tries to imagine what other men see, but he can't. Augrey's skinny hips, the fishnet hose that sag at the knees, make her look like a little girl playing dress-up, only instead of the glamour of mom's classy heels, she's borrowed her role from a fifty-cent novel.

He'd tried to talk to her last week, ran into her on Council Street, bought her a Coke at Happy's. She had thrown back her head and laughed and then pinned him with a way-too-old look that said she found it both flattering and funny that he wanted to save her, that he thought he could tell her a goddamn thing about the dangers of this world.

The way Levon is staring at her now, it's obvious he has a thing or two of his own he would like to tell his sister. Byard can only hope Levon will keep it to himself long enough to spare their mother more suffering today.

“Do you want to get out of here for a little while?” Byard asks Augrey. She shoves the strap of the purse onto her shoulder and follows him out to the parking lot. There's a tree at the far corner, a patch of lawn next to some ditch lilies, their orange blooms harkening summer with bright abandon. Byard sits and leans against the tree and pats the grass next to him. Augrey sprawls on the grass several feet away and slips off the cheap T-strap heels and rubs her toes.

“These things are killing me,” she says.

“Come here,” Byard says, but she doesn't move.

He has no right to expect her to trust him. She was so young when he left Cementville. He hears the discordant trills of a pair of woodpeckers and his eye follows their gangly flapping in the tops of
pines across the way. Their red crowns bob comically as they hammer for bugs. When he turns to tell Augrey—Look! Pileated woodpeckers! (because it's not every day you get to see those)—she has scooted closer to him. She leans toward him now and he shrinks from her, but she puts her head on his chest, and in seconds he realizes she wants only comfort.

“Danny was the easiest of us to love,” she says. “Mama's not going to get over this one.”

He gives her hair a tentative stroke. It is softer than it looks, long and gently wavy. He looks down at the top of her head, her small nose with its wash of freckles. She is quite beautiful, her lips parting to let go a labored sigh; he hadn't known her to be capable of crying. She's like their mother in that, stoic. He looks out over the parking lot. Only a lattice fence separates it from the formal gardens of the Slidell mansion next door. Through diamond-shaped holes Byard can see the rows of manicured boxwoods, the carefully placed statuary, the orderly brick walkways. A nice place to sit, he imagines. In Canada, in the Bow Valley, he had found places to sit, wild places that would put this tamed garden to shame. His landlady, a rich-girl, free-love hippie who'd left Montreal to open a remote refuge for American war resisters, had taught him how to meditate. TM she called it. By the time he left Canada, he could sit for nearly an hour straight.

“Levon—” he starts to say, but Augrey goes taut, as if a volt of electricity has shot through her. “If you ever want to talk or anything.” But why would he think he's equipped to handle whatever it is that has happened to this girl, that he can help her? Strong as the pull of shared blood can be, he doesn't know her either; she is another sad, pretty girl whose life is going to get steadily worse. Byard has neither the wisdom to guide his little sister nor the courage to save her, and truth be told, if he could walk out of this place right now, he'd do it.

Augrey's breathing is steady. The rise and fall of her against his chest and the slackening of her shoulders, the weight of her head, tell
him she has fallen asleep. Byard continues to stroke her hair. Can you do more for the people you are supposed to love, he thinks, than to wish them well?

T
HE FAMILY SCATTERS BETWEEN THE
funeral wakes of the afternoon and evening hours to find something to eat. They trail off to Happy's or Pekkar's Alley, or buy a loaf of bread and a heel of bologna and assemble sandwiches by the river. A number of them gather in Bett's front yard for hot dogs. Someone has brought a watermelon, and the smaller children are stripped to their underwear for a slice, the juices dripping down their unembarrassed bellies. Their mothers will wash them at the spigot, button up their good clothes, and get them ready to go back to Duvalls'.

MaLou comes into the funeral home with Martha and Rafe Goins. She walks toward Byard, near-angelic in the navy-blue dress she wore to marry him. He takes Augrey's hand (she has stuck close to him all afternoon), and pulls her toward his new wife. When he introduces them, the two females blush and stammer and he thinks for a minute that both might begin to cry and after a moment they do. MaLou takes Augrey into her arms and they go out together into the hallway. There is a quiet lounge adjacent to the Ladies Room, and Byard imagines MaLou there, making over his little sister, washing the girl's face.

He pulls a chair to his mother's side.

“I am glad you're here,” she says. Her face is immeasurably older, this woman who is not yet fifty. She had been almost pretty, with a buxom figure, the kind French painters loved to paint a century ago. He had never thought about whether his mother was smart, whether she expected things of herself. She might have hoped to get out of here, build a life somewhere else. Once he left home, he had not thought much about any of them. “It means a lot to all the family,” his mother was telling him. “You coming back. How long will you stay?”

“I don't know, Mama. Long as you need me, I guess.”

“Careful what you're saying,” she says, almost with a laugh.

And then Levon is standing above them, looking at them with those flat, blank eyes. “Yeah, careful what you're saying, little brother.”

“Levon, honey, fetch me a glass of water, will you? I expect it's time for me to take my pills.” Arlene's voice turns into a whine around Levon, as if she must become helpless to temper his cruelty in advance, to keep him from running her over. It was a habit that developed when he was still an adolescent. Levon purses his thick lips at their mother now and Byard, unsettled, wants to hit something.

“How many of those have you had, Mama?” he says when Levon has gone for the water.

“However many it takes.” Arlene pats his hand.

SEVEN