Dogwood (12 page)

“That’s the way I feel about this place,” Carson said. “But no matter how much I love it, if I had your history and if the people there would rather see me dead—”

“You think that’s what they want?”

“Some of them, sure.”

I wanted to say I’d fallen in love with an Appalachian girl and that truth pushed me forward. I wanted to tell him I was a soldier on a mission, a ranger dropped behind enemy lines whose only weapon was my love for Karin and that I would leave no comrade behind. He would understand that word picture. Instead, I sat, silently listening to the unnerving quiet of his car. We had to yell at each other to be heard in every vehicle I could remember from my childhood, but this was pure silence.

“After Dad died,” Carson said, “I thought a lot about you.
How close you two were. I think he always felt bad about your foot, that he had caused it.”

“Wasn’t him. It was my cold thumbs.” I asked what the funeral service was like.

“Terrible. It’s hard enough to take it in yourself, but to hear Mama wail like that and have to be carried out to the hearse, I almost wished I was with
you
that day.”

“I could have used the company.”

“You hear about Elvis?”

Arron Spurlock was someone I’d tried to stay in contact with while I was in Clarkston. He was a year older but had been held back in the third grade. We were instant friends. I’d tried to help him with his homework, and he’d tried to get us kicked out of school.

One hot Fourth of July when it hadn’t rained for weeks, Arron lugged a five-gallon bucket full of fireworks to a field near our house. It was mostly cherry bombs and firecrackers and a few bottle rockets. He challenged a group of us to help him light the whole batch at one time, but none of us would bite. Elvis cursed us, and because of his father, he had a pretty good repertoire. He crumpled up some newspaper, set it on fire, and walked over to the bucket while we watched from the hillside.

“That boy’s gonna blow himself up,” Carson said.

He wasn’t far off. The explosion knocked Elvis back, and everybody laughed but me. The fire in the field spread quickly. By the time I got to him, his clothes were ablaze. I dragged him to the creek, coughing and sputtering through the smoke and heat. I can still hear his screams. Carson ran and called the fire department. I thought Elvis was dead because he was just lying in the trickle of water, smoldering. You could smell his burned skin from the field, and the firemen made us go home so they could care for him.

Elvis carried the scars of that day on his body. It took months for him to walk again, but he did. And every time he came around
the corner of the road, walking to our house for a pickup game of football or baseball or just to have a watermelon seed–spitting competition, he’d be singing “Hound Dog” or “Blue Suede Shoes” or “Heartbreak Hotel.” You could hear his voice ring off the mountains, a bit off-key, but still alive.

“He’s not in trouble again, is he?” I said.

“No, he just disappeared. They put out a missing person’s report on him, but there’s been no word. I’m figuring somebody gave him a recording contract.”

Carson told me where Elvis had been working and about his exploits. A DUI two years ago and a breaking and entering at his former boss’s house. (Elvis claimed the man hadn’t paid him his wages when he quit, so he broke in and took a few items for fair compensation. After Elvis returned the items and fixed the broken window, the man decided not to press charges.)

I was enjoying the conversation because it didn’t focus on me. “Any idea where he might have gone?”

Carson shook his head. “Every time I saw him at the gas station he’d ask about you and when you were getting out. Said he couldn’t wait to go fishing or hunting with you. You hear anything from him?”

“He came up a couple of times, but I don’t think he liked being inside Clarkston. Reminded him too much of what could happen.”

“It’s a big mystery around town. The Exxon station had a devil of a time finding somebody to replace him. Say what you want about his character but he was a wonder with a wrench and a socket set.” Carson exited the interstate where I remembered gas stations and the Mountaineer Opry House. There was now an adult bookstore and more gas stations.

My head ached as the light faded to the west. “Before we go home, could you run me by the cemetery?”

Carson looked at his watch and gave me a furtive glance. “Sure thing.”

It wasn’t until we were on a two-lane country road that ran deep into my history that Carson asked the third question. He mentioned Karin as “that girl you liked.”

But before he could continue, I held up a hand and let him know this was the only No Trespassing sign I had erected. The hunting in the rest of the forest of my history was open, but this section was posted. “I don’t want to talk about her, okay?”

His face softened, as if some measure of understanding had invaded his heart. “You’re not holding on to that, are you? Tell me you’re not coming back for her.”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Will, she’s—”

“I know everything you know and more,” I said, the emotion welling up and overtaking the tightness. “I know, okay?”

Like a persistent lineman, he wouldn’t give up. “I’m just trying to keep you from more heartache. That girl—”

I whirled in the seat and grabbed his right arm in a death grip.

Carson overcompensated and jerked the wheel left, weaving into the next lane. A horn honked and rose in volume as we locked eyes. He finally swerved back, regaining control and narrowly missing a pickup that ran off the road and threw gravel and dust into the air.

“Are you crazy?” he shouted. “You almost got us killed.”

I stared, jaw clenched. “I’m asking one thing. You don’t have to like it that I’m here. You don’t have to pretend you’re glad to see me or make your wife keep quiet about me, which I know she won’t do. But you will
not
talk about Karin. It’s a closed subject. You understand?”

“It’s your life. You want to throw it away, go ahead. You seem to have done a pretty good job of that, little brother.”

A graveyard, particularly one in a small town, provides more than a plot of ground to place remains. It endows a history to its residents, a memorial of the past and their place in it. Years ago people came to graveyards to remember, to honor. Graveyards are not as popular today. Perhaps we’re too busy to remember or the exercise is too painful. Perhaps it’s simply not convenient for our fast-paced society. But I suspect most people don’t care as much. We have chosen to shun the pain of the past and ignore the dead, as if they can’t see what we’re doing with our lives and their legacy.

Mount Pleasant Cemetery is a small town of its own, sitting on a hill, surrounded by leafy trees that give shade and shelter for inhabitants. I remember coming here as a kid, visiting our grandparents’ graves, distant uncles and aunts and cousins taken too soon. We’d mow, weed, plant flowers, and lay wreaths. The oldest graves date to antebellum days with headstones that crumble at a hint of wind. There are men buried here from every conflict in which our country has called poor, young white men to file out of the hills and take their place in the ranks of patriots.

As a boy I quickly learned that a graveyard is no place to play. One leapfrog over a child’s headstone was all it took to send my mother flying after me, her eyes like fire. “Will, we respect the dead. We don’t dance on graves or use this as a playground. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Carson’s was the only car in the parking lot. A small, white church stood at the entrance to the cemetery, its steeple casting a cross shadow on the length of the yard. The doors to the church were closed, but I could shut my eyes and bring the smell of the wooden pews back from memory. The stained glass was still there, faded and dull now. The concrete steps had weathered and
cracked, and I imagined older men and women clinging to the iron railing running up both sides and the pastor in his suit from Sears or JCPenney.

The graveyard rose in the middle and sloped at either side. It was like walking on top of a well-baked pastry. The oldest tombstones were in the middle, flanked by the younger dead. I noticed they had cleared a patch of the woods at the end to make room for more of us, and there were several fresh graves, the ground still brown and grainy from recent burials.

I turned left and made my way to the edge of the woods, respectfully staying true to the lines and angles of the deceased. I stood before a headstone that said
Walter E. Pfelt
. Carson walked up beside me as I said, “Is this . . . ?”

“You didn’t hear?” Carson said, dropping his head. “Of course you didn’t. He passed a couple of months ago. No, just before Thanksgiving, I think it was. Just dropped dead at the A-Z and plowed into a big display of gherkins. I heard it was a real mess.”

For as long as I could remember, Carson and I had pronounced the man’s last name “Pee-felt” even though the
P
was supposed to be silent. We even said it to his face, and he never corrected us. He managed both our Little League teams, our jerseys emblazoned with the word
Dodgers
on the front and
Mohr’s Tire Farm
on the back.

“He always had a flair for the dramatic,” I said.

We stood looking at his headstone a few moments until Carson broke the silence. “Remember that stop sign you ran through?”

“I didn’t know you were there.”

“We were at practice at the other end of the park, and I wandered over. You got thrown out at the plate by about half a mile.”

I remembered like it was yesterday. “I just made up my mind from the moment that ball was hit that nothing was going to stop me until I got home.”

“You were flyin’,” Carson said.

“Unfortunately that kid in right field had a cannon for an arm.”

Carson laughed. “Didn’t even bounce. Threw it right to the catcher and he just stood there and waited, like a cat coming up on a mouse in a trap. Shoulda seen your eyes.”

“I was going to bowl him over like Rose did Fosse in the 1970 All-Star Game, but it didn’t work out.”

“What’d Peefelt say? He chew you out?”

I chuckled and shook my head, patting the tombstone. “He knew how bad I felt. He grabbed my arm and helped me up, then dusted me off. The other team was jumping up and down like monkeys at feeding time, hollering and falling on each other by the pitcher’s mound. Everybody else wanted to kill me.”

“I remember. I turned around and went back to practice so I wouldn’t have to claim your body.”

“Peefelt bent over so I could see into his eyes and he said, ‘You know what I like about what you just did? I like the fact that you didn’t slow down once you’d made up your mind. You threw everything you had into that. You live your life like that, Will, and you’re gonna go places.’”

“He sure was right,” Carson said with more than a hint of sarcasm.

“He made me want to be a Little League coach. All the other coaches would have yelled at me or turned and walked away, but he met me at home. It was almost like he took the pain away when he did that.”

“You still remember it.”

“I remember blowin’ most of my foot off too, but it wasn’t half as much fun as that game.” I nodded toward the grave. “So long, Mr. Peefelt.”

We moved down the row, passing familiar names that brought faces to mind. Chaney. Ullom. Hall. Black. Meadows. I could give
addresses and phone numbers for most of the families laid to rest here because they had lived in one place their entire adult lives.

Under the fading shade of an oak tree I found my father’s grave. He rested beside his mother, father, two sisters, and a brother. The final plot was for my mother—her name already etched in the stone with only the year of her death left blank. The grave was well tended, as he had done for his own parents, and I assumed Carson paid Jasper Woods to keep it. Jasper was a grizzled old man when I was a kid, with a perpetual stream of tobacco juice running down his chin and a pack of Pall Malls rolled into his shirtsleeve. He moved like a phantom around the grounds, cleaning and mowing even those graves he wasn’t paid to care for.

“Jasper’s still around, isn’t he?” I said.

Carson pointed to a small, metal trailer parked behind the outbuilding that held the mowers and garden equipment. “A bunch of us pitched in and bought him a new trailer after his other one burned. Even has a toilet hookup and running water so he can take a shower.”

“What did he say when he saw it?”

“Just mumbled a few things and spat. Same old Jasper.”

No one could understand Jasper better than my father. He was an interpreter of the strange language of the toothless, bespectacled nomad who had lived at the cemetery as long as anyone could remember. In that sense he was not a wanderer, but one look at his disheveled clothing and rattletrap truck led you to believe he was trying to escape something or someone. He lived in blessed seclusion, among the vagaries of the human mind.

I often wondered if the reason I was drawn to certain outcasts in prison was because of the example of my own father. He showed a love and compassion for Jasper, and the man returned his kindness with almost caninelike obeisance. My father was the
alpha, Jasper the pack dog. Every year my father filled in the man’s meager income on his 1040 form and mailed it, using our address. When the refund invariably came, I would accompany my father to Jasper’s trailer. Jasper would stare at the check and mutter something, at which my father would laugh and clap him on the back as if he were a professional comedian.

On Thanksgiving and Christmas my father and I would drive to the cemetery carrying plates full of turkey and ham and stuffing and cranberry sauce and all the fruits of our holidays covered with Saran wrap. We’d make the long walk, angling through the graves until we came to his place.

Jasper’s eyes would widen with excitement when I’d say, “Happy Thanksgiving” or “Merry Christmas.” My mother always fixed the best desserts, and though I could not understand many of his words, I did understand the emotion he expressed when he mumbled about her rum or carrot cake.