Love is a Wounded Soldier (6 page)

“Have you seen Moses around?” I asked
shortly.

“He’s upstairs,” Garth nodded toward the
stairs leading to the rooms above the saloon.

As I turned to head up the stairs, Garth
said, “I wouldn’t be botherin’ him.”

I didn’t break stride. “I gotta talk to
him,” I replied. The edge in my voice betrayed my brewing anger.

“Bobby!” Garth half yelled. I stopped in
front of the steps, turned around, and fired a look over to him that said,
“What? This had
better
be good.” I was ready to vent my frustration on
him.

“He knows,” Garth said, modulating his
tone.

“Huh?” I said.

“He knows,” he repeated, and I understood
what he meant. Moses knew Ma had died. Everyone knew by now.
Then why the
hell is he still here?
I stood at the mouth of the stairwell and my mind
felt like it had been soused in a vat of vitriol. I had the almost
uncontrollable urge to befriend the nearest barstool, go upstairs, and tag team
Moses with it. I must have stood there for a minute, wrestling my emotions
down. The wrath that intoxicated me seemed to dissipate a little with each deep
breath I took. There was no sense in making a scene, or doing something that
could get me locked up when Ma’s funeral was tomorrow. I still had lots to
plan. Maybe he was just sobering up and would come back home when he was ready.
I noticed my fists were balled up by my sides, so I relaxed them and unclenched
my jaw.

The boys from out of town were gawking at
me, and sheepishly looked away as I mowed them down with a look I hoped to be
disdainful. Teetotaler Tommy obliviously continued telling himself a story from
his childhood, laughing to himself and patiently listening for the story to end
so he could one-up himself. Garth rested against the counter, rag in hand, as I
walked back outside.

My next stop was Schlepsky and Smith Law
Office. Mr. Schlepsky examined the will and said it was valid. He then began
the process of placing the farm in my name. I didn’t really follow what he was
doing, and just signed whatever papers he shoved across the desk.

Then I stopped by Jacob Stokes’ funeral
parlor, which was located inside of his home. I paid him out of the roll of
bills I had. He said Preacher Moore had said he’d take care of getting the
coffin made, so that was one less thing to worry about. He took me into the
back so I could see Ma. He’d cleaned her up nicely.

“I’m thinking tomorrow at two o’clock for
the funeral,” I told him.

“OK, that should work,” old Jacob rasped.
“You holdin’ it at Tobacco Road Baptist?”

“Yes, sir,” I confirmed. “And we’ll bury
her in the cemetery there, too.”

I studied Ma’s body, her thin eyelids, like
those of a baby bird, the hands clasped together in front of her, still exuding
strength.

“Did the coroner figure out what killed
her?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he nodded, “he said a brain
aneurysm, but the concussion didn’t help things, either.” I nodded in silence.

“She looks mighty fine, handsome woman,”
said Jacob, his hands in his pockets, his slight frame bowed over the body with
his pointy little beard stabbing at his chest.

“She was so young,” was all I could manage,
and I turned and moved toward the door as I felt a tidal wave of emotion ripple
through me. I had to leave before I let it ravage the shaky house that was my
outward stoicism.

I untied Shake and pointed him toward home.
We stopped in at the Moores to pick up Shiver. The preacher was at the church,
but Joseph showed me where Shiver was tied, and I thanked him for taking care
of him.

“Pa said he pounded in stakes to mark
the—the . . .” he stumbled, not sure how to tell me.

“The grave?” I helped him. He nodded, a
little relieved.

“He also said I should give you a hand with
the digging,” he added. I paused and watched a lone cardinal dot the empty sky
as I thought.

“No, I should be fine, Joseph. Thanks for
the offer, though,” I said, giving him a little shove on the shoulder like he
was the kid brother I’d never had. He just nodded and returned to the house. I
wasn’t sure how much help a skinny kid like him would be, but mostly, I wasn’t
sure how I would handle digging my ma’s grave. I wanted to be alone for that.

Shiver in tow, I rode home. I located a
spade that seemed to have some measure of sharpness, and rummaged through our
dilapidated shed until I found a pick ax. It was rusty, and tangled in a nest
of baler wire, but it still looked solid. Then I rode off to dig my ma’s grave.

The graveyard looked stark and bare like an
empty room. The sun shone brightly, too brightly, as though it lacked proper
reverence for this most somber day. I edged the sod around the stakes and
string the preacher had placed to mark the grave, removing them once the
outline was etched.

So that’s what I did on that pleasant fall
day, shoveling, and picking, and scooping, and sweating. I thought about what I
should be doing on a day like that. Until then, the thought of Ma calling me
for supper after an ordinary day of plowing or cutting wood or mending fences
hadn’t seemed like such a grand way to pass the time. But now and then I’d
think about it, and how I’d never get another day like that again, and my
insides would mash one another, and I’d assault the ground with my pick and
shovel as though the earth itself were responsible for the ocean of sorrow I so
aimlessly bobbed in.

The sun was dull when I finally finished. I
threw my implements over the edge of the hole and hoisted myself out. I was no
stranger to hard work, but my back ached, my legs were stiff, and my arms felt
like their joints were fused at the elbow, like a wooden puppet’s. The rough
pick handle had worn a few of my calluses off, and there were several tender
areas on my hands where blisters had popped, leaving raw, dirt-crusted wounds.
The two pieces of buttered bread I’d brought for lunch had been depleted of any
nutritional value, and my stomach’s growl began to sound more like a
threatening snarl.

Shake had spent the afternoon alternately
grazing and lazing beneath a nearby tree, and was a little sluggish getting
going, but we eventually found our way home.

After the animals were cared for, I came in
and washed my hands, gingerly dabbing at the periphery of my open sores. I sat
at the table, feeling quite woebegone, eating supper—cold ham and one of the
last pieces of dry bread in the breadbox. And I waited for Moses to come home.

Moses didn’t come home that night. I spent
the evening stewing over the future, and brewing a cauldron of rage in my mind.
After working myself into lather, I came to the conclusion that I had to be a
man about it. There was no place now for fear or immaturity. It was a time to
put away childish things, to be calculating, and not allow emotion to
commandeer my actions.

I couldn’t possibly sleep, so I sat once
again in Ma’s rocking chair, and I picked away at Moses’ banjo that he hadn’t
touched in years. It usually came alive beneath my fingertips, but tonight was
not a night for frivolous jingles. I played songs without names, notes that
rambled uncertainly one after another, and random chord progressions which I
could probably never duplicate. It began to rain, and it was almost as though
the shriek and wail of the wind’s crescendo played in concert with the
maundering melody from the banjo’s strings. And my heart sang the sad, sad
lyrics.

~~~

Dawn didn’t break, it skulked. The murky
light percolated slowly through sullen gray clouds until the whole landscape
wasn’t so much light as not dark. I had finally corralled my scattered thoughts
long enough to catch a few hours of restless sleep. Moses still hadn’t come
home, and I really didn’t care if he never did. It was Saturday, and I kept my
body occupied with tasks in the barn and house in the hopes my mind would get
involved, but my thoughts remained fixed on Ma and the dread I had of burying
her.

Shortly after noon, Mr. Howard Derby, who
looked after the cemetery and church grounds, pulled up and asked if I wanted a
ride. I’d planned on riding in on horseback, but he was willing to wait for me
to get dressed, so I put on my thin black suit and rumpled white shirt, and
slicked down my hair. The ride to the church was quiet. I was thankful for
that.

The service wasn’t too long, but I’ll be
darned if I remember a word the preacher said. I looked around a few times to
see if Moses had slipped in unannounced, but was disappointed, though not in
the sense that I wanted him to be there. He not being there gave me reason to
heighten the resentment toward him that I was feeding off of.

There were only a few dozen people there,
church folk and a few others from town one might be magnanimous in calling
friends.

A few fellows from the church and I carried
the casket out to the cemetery. The rain that had spat periodically throughout
the day diminished, but the ground was still spongy, and the wind was
relentless and cold. The trees around the cemetery stood naked and shivering.

The preacher said a few words and a prayer,
and we lowered the coffin slowly into the hole with ropes, until it settled
beneath on the boards that had been laid down. One of the men handed me a
shovel, and I threw a shovelful of dirt on the coffin. The sound of each
cluster of clods bouncing off the casket resonated with everything that was
hollow and wooden inside me. Even with the frenzy the wind created, the thud of
dirt hitting wood seemed deafening, ominous, final.

Someone started singing “In the Sweet By
and By,” as more men took shovels and did their part. The wind snatched the
music from the mouths of those singing, carrying away a line here, muffling a
word there, as though trying to maliciously orchestrate a chorus of
discordance. Its stinging blast made my eyes tear, and I fought back, because I
didn’t want anyone to think I was crying. I buried my mother without a snivel.
Women and girls were crying, and some men wiped away stray tears with the backs
of their hands, but I kept my composure and shoveled until the hole was filled
and mounded. I felt so alone. Ellen Moore said that was the day she fell in
love with me.

The little group remained ringed around the
grave for a moment, hunched forward against the cold, noses burrowed in behind
collars, hands buried in coat pockets. Finally, a few turned to leave the
huddle, and the rest soon followed to the church for the funeral meal prepared
by the ladies of the church. Mr. Derby started collecting the shovels and was
the last to leave.

“I won’t be needing a ride home,” I told
him. “Thank you, though.” He just nodded understandingly as he left, the
shovels clanking together as he dragged them behind him.

I just didn’t want to endure the awkward
meal, sitting alone, with everyone wondering whether they should leave me alone
to grieve, or risk offering unwanted words of solace. People, however
well-meaning, were not something I wanted to deal with at that moment. I spent
10 minutes standing there like a stump. Where do I go from here, I thought.

I went home. Incline and wind impeded my
progress, but once I had walked myself warm, I really didn’t care if I ever got
home, or if I just kept walking until I fell over dead.

As I walked, I rehearsed in my mind a
thousand possibilities and variations of what I was going to do and say when
Moses finally did come home. I was fuming. My potential actions ranged from a
few words of anger to blowing his head off.
What kind of stinking scum
doesn’t even show up to his own devoted wife’s funeral?
But, I was well
aware there was a danger in kindling his rage. Moses was a scrapper, and had
always held his own. His arms were bear-like, with hammers for fists. One time
when I was seven, he’d roughed Ma up so bad I thought she’d died, knocked her
out cold. I was so angry at the time, if I had been able to reach the shells, I
would have tried shooting him. His abuse had been sporadic and always induced
by alcohol, but that incident especially clung to my mind like the smell of
stale cigarette smoke to clothing, and I refused to wash my mind of it, or the
thoughts of my eventual revenge.

It took me the better part of an hour to
get home, and I was happy with my timing, since the rain began to spatter again
as I got close. I crested the rise on our driveway, and there, haphazardly
parked in its usual spot, was our Tin Lizzie. Immediately, I could feel my
palms sweat and my face flush. Anger, apprehension, and a trace of fear. All
the distinct, prefabricated scenarios my mind had devised became a hodgepodge,
so I couldn’t remember what I would say, how he’d respond, and how the whole
thing would conclude. But what I did determine is that I wouldn’t back down.
There would be no cowering, no compromise. I was right, he was wrong, and when
I was done, he would know it.

I yanked the front door open as though
opening a chute for a bucking bull, and walked inside, not quite stomping, but
certainly treading more heavily than usual. Moses was sitting at the table,
looking at the ream of legal documents I’d left lying there. He didn’t even
look up. I tossed my coat on a hook and walked into the kitchen. He finally
looked up at me.

“What the hell is this?” he asked, jabbing
at the papers with his thick fingers. He smelled like a brewery. I pulled out a
chair across from him, sat down, folded my hands on the table, and leaned
toward him.