Land Sakes (10 page)

By the time I got back to the suite, Mrs. Winchester was getting dressed. I didn't want her, and especially the maid, to know what I was up to until I was ready, so I slipped in my room without saying anything.

I hand-sewed the Velcro onto the pockets so they could be sealed and, to make doubly sure, got out the safety pins to pin the pockets as well.
I sure hope this works
.

Once I was done with that, the next step was to see if I could fit all that jewelry in the pockets. But before I went that far, I figured I needed to ask Mrs. Winchester if what I was doing was okay.

The phone was ringing, and when Mary answered it,
I beckoned to Mrs. Winchester. “Would you like to see what I bought, Mrs. Winchester?”

She came in my room, and I closed the door behind her.

“Can you keep a secret?” I asked. “I've come up with a way I might keep your valuables safe.”

“Oh, you needn't bother about that. Everything's insured. I probably have half a million dollars' worth of jewelry with me, but I don't care if it is stolen. A robbery would make headlines, and I don't mind being written up in the papers.”

“Well, I do! I don't want my name splashed all over a newspaper, and it would be, because I would be the prime suspect! I would wind up in the hoosegow, and, the court system being what it is, I would probably be sent up the river for the rest of my life.”

Pulling the apron out of the bag, I held it up. “Mrs. Winchester, for my own protection, I would like to use this apron to carry your jewelry on my person. Do I have your permission?”

Her mouth dropped open. “You're going to wear that?”

“Under my clothes, of course.” I fitted the apron around my waist. “See these pockets? They're big enough to hold everything you've got. Don't you see? This will work, I think.”

The idea tickled her. “Well, you go get the jewelry case, and we'll see.”

Mary was still on the phone, which made it easy for me to slip the case out of the drawer and back to my room.

Mrs. Winchester was standing before the mirror, fitting the apron around her own waist and giggling like she was having the time of her life. She handed the apron back to me.

Between the two of us, we got all the jewelry into those pockets and sealed and pinned them securely, then I slipped off my skirt and tied the apron on me.

Underneath my skirt the pockets bulged a bit. Something made a circle impression—must have been a bracelet. Anyway, it made me look like I had a big ringworm on my stomach. I tried to pat the pockets flatter. Mrs. Winchester giggled. “Looks like you have tumors!”

I laughed. “Either that or I'm pregnant with triplets!” I turned the apron around so the bulges were in back.

“Now you have a bustle,” she said, and that threw her into such a fit of laughing it looked like she couldn't stop.

“No need to get historical,” I told her. “I'm used to carrying around a caboose bigger than any bustle.”

Well, I could see that having the apron in back was no solution, so I said, “Let's see if we can't do something so they don't poke out so much.”

Well, that worked. We rearranged the jewelry, separated the big stuff between the three pockets and spread the little stuff as flat as we could. Then I put the apron on in front of me, and it worked! The pockets were flatter, and nobody would ever guess there was anything more under my skirt than my own bay window.

Of course, I'd have to get used to wearing the thing. Mrs. Winchester was so tickled she was practically rolling on the floor. “Of course,” I told her, “if some
lowlife discovers what I'm carrying, chances are I'll wake up in the morgue and the whole country will hear about the robbery.”

Still laughing, she asked, “Any last words?”

“It was nice knowing you.” I laughed too. It did me good to see her having such a good time.

Then Mary was calling us to lunch. When we came into the dining room, she looked at us like she wondered what was going on. “Mrs. Win
chus
ter, that was Mr. Pettigrew on the phone. He's bringing the car around and will wait for you in front.”

“Pettigrew?” I asked. “Does she mean Percival?”

“Yes. My staff call him Mr. Pettigrew, but you are not staff, you are my...”

“Companion?”

“More than that...” She couldn't put it in words, so I dropped it.

We sat down at the table, and I examined my plate. “What's this we're eating, Mary?”

Mary read from the menu. “It's Belgian endive salad, with caramelized apple, frissée, St. Peter's bleu cheese, and sherry hazelnut vinaigrette.”

Well, that didn't tell me much, but I figured,
If that's St. Peter's blue cheese, maybe it's okay to eat the rest of what's on the plate
. I really meant it when I bowed my head and prayed, “Bless this food.”

When I looked up, Mrs. Winchester was eying me curiously but didn't say anything. I started eating, and in a few minutes, she did too.

As we were eating, I noticed what Mrs. Winchester was wearing—an orchid-colored dress with filmy sleeves
and an amber neckpiece that caught the light in a beautiful way. The way her own natural hair was done up with a hair piece to fill it in looked nice, but I didn't say anything. By then I had come to realize that everything that woman wore would be gorgeous.

The food was delicious, and after we finished, I brushed my teeth, made a pit stop, and was ready to go. Mary handed Mrs. Winchester a hat made of different colors of orchid, lavender, and purple with a brim that dipped down over her forehead. It set off the outfit perfectly.

When we stepped off the elevator I could see the Rolls outside with Percival still waiting. Inside the car sat Lucy and Desi, ready to ride. Percival opened the door for us, and I asked him, “Where we headed?”

With his nose back in the air, he answered, “Madam, we will visit the city of Linton, twenty miles distant,” and closed the car door behind me.

Mrs. Winchester chuckled. “It's no city, hardly a spot on the map. It's where Chet Atkins is buried.”

I remembered when “Heartbreak Hotel” was popular. Chet Atkins recorded that one, as well as “Wake Up, Little Susie.” Beatrice and I liked both of them, and we used to try to sing them. Beatrice was better than me at singing, but that don't mean she was, or ever would be, a threat to any star on the Grand Ole Opry.

Mrs. Winchester knew all about Chet Atkins. “He had a distinctive way of playing the guitar,” she told me, “picking the strings with two fingers and a thumb.”

Thinking about Beatrice, I wondered when and if she would get my letter.
She'd get a kick out of seeing me now on my way to Chet Atkins's grave and riding in a Rolls-
Royce with a stuck-up chauffer, two stuck-up hounds, and Mrs. Winchester, who I have not yet figured out. If this was just me and Beatrice, I know we'd be belting out “Heartbreak Hotel” or one of them other songs we used to sing
.

The way “Speedy” Percival Pettigrew was driving, it didn't take long before we were turning off onto a rural road that we followed all the way to the cemetery. We drove through the gate under the sign that said Harpeth Hills Memory Gardens and made a couple of turns. Then it wasn't hard to find his grave; his marker was a big one.

As we were getting out of the car, the jewels clinked against one another, and I figured they were shifting about. Well, I could fix that, pack cotton in there. That would hold them in place.

To show some interest, I asked Mrs. Winchester what Chet Atkins died of, and she said cancer. “He died in 2001.” Of course, I could see that from the tombstone.

It made me a little sad being there at the grave of a man who had given Beatrice and me so much fun with the songs he played.

I guess we moseyed around there about a half hour before we got back in the car. “Now we'll go to Tammy Wynette's grave,” Mrs. Winchester said. “She's buried in Nashville.” On the way there, she lit into telling me all about Tammy Wynette's life.

“Tammy married a bootlegger when she was seventeen, and they lived in a log cabin that did not have running water, so there was no bathroom or kitchen.” Mrs. Winchester was so amazed at that, she forgot to
plop a chocolate in her mouth. “Can you believe that? No bathroom and no kitchen! Tammy Wynette had to do the cooking over a fireplace! Can you imagine that?”

Of course, I'd heard of women living up in the mountains in cabins like that, but I guess she hadn't.

“That marriage didn't last long, and he left her with three children to support.” She plopped the chocolate and took her time eating it. “In the daytime Tammy worked as a beautician and at night she sang in clubs. Have you heard her song ‘Stand by Your Man'?”

“Yes, I think everybody's heard that one.”

“Well, that song is the biggest hit ever sung by a female artist.” She giggled. “Seems Tammy didn't stand by her man, or men, I should say; she was married five times—had five husbands.”

As we tore up the turnpike, Mrs. Winchester got busy writing her Chet Atkins poem. I kept quiet so she could concentrate. Percival was weaving in and out of traffic like a football player headed for a touchdown.

It didn't take her long to finish the poem. “Here, read this,” she said, and I took her little moleskin book and read to myself.

There was no getting around it—Mrs. Winchester was a great poet. I told her, “One day your name will
become famous, and everybody will be wanting your autograph.”

My saying that must have inspired her, because she kept the little black book open to a blank page ready to write some more. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, and the minute she got that bolt out of the blue, she dashed off a poem about Tammy Wynette. She read it over once, then handed it to me and watched me while I read it.

“That's great,” I said. We were taking an exit off the interstate, and when we turned onto the street, I saw a sign, Armory Drive. Percival made a couple turns after that, and we rode on Thompson Lane until we came to the Woodlawn Memorial Park.

Percival drove us right up to what must be the main building and parked. He got out and opened the backseat door for us. I climbed out and waited for Mrs. Winchester. The graveyard stretched all around, but Percival walked up two steps of the building and opened the door for us to enter. Mrs. Winchester followed right behind me as we went inside.

It was cool in there and so quiet I could hear the jewelry clinking as I walked. Our footsteps echoed off the walls and ceiling. If this was where Tammy was at, I figured it was one of those places where the dead are
cremated and their remains put in cubbyholes in the walls. They call it a mossyleum.

Percival led us up some stairs and down a hallway and turned right where there were glass doors. He stopped, opened the doors, and once we entered, I felt like I was in church—in a stone church like the ones you see on TV. There were rows of vaults all alongside the walls, and it seemed like we ought to be tiptoeing down that hall. Percival had no trouble finding where Tammy was at. We stood there looking at her name and the dates printed on her tablet until Mrs. Winchester was satisfied. Then we left.

I never been inside a mossyleum before, and to tell the truth, it kind of give me the creeps.

Back in the car on our way to the hotel, Mrs. Winchester pulled a tissue out of her handbag and dabbed at her eye. “It's awful sad,” she said. “Here are all these people who did so much—entertainers who made music for the whole world... From what I hear, they have a hard life. They work so hard, and no matter how popular they are, once they die they are soon forgotten. They all wind up the same way—a pile of bones lying in a hole in the ground or in a mausoleum.”

“Oh, Mrs. Winchester, that's not where they wind up. The ones that have lived for the Lord are in Paradise. And as for their bones, one day the Lord will raise them up.”

I think that was something she had never thought about before. For a long time we just rode along, saying nothing, and I wanted to believe she was thinking about what I had said.

As we were rolling into Opryland, she asked, “Is that what your Bible teaches?”

“It is. One day everybody will be raised from the dead.”

She was very quiet. Then she asked me to show her where that is found in the Bible.

“Okay. When we get back to the hotel, I will.”

10

Before we went to the saloon, I showed Mrs. Winchester a few places in the Bible where it teaches about resurrection—I had her read what Jesus had to say about it as well as verses from the epistles and one from Daniel. But there were verses from Ezekiel that struck us both funny. That's the chapter that talks about dead bones coming to life, and as she was reading it, we got silly imagining them bones getting up and getting put back together. I know you shouldn't laugh about Scripture, but when you think about it, that is too funny for words. Of course, Ezekiel was talking about Israel rising from the dead to be a nation again, and since the good Lord seemed to be already doing that, it didn't take much faith to believe he will raise Chet and Tammy and the rest of us too.