Oral History (9781101565612) (38 page)

Who knows what went on in his head?

Some said he was jealous, and had got it in mind that the baby was Billy's, not his—and who knows but it might've been? When you get right down to it, who knows? Life is a mystery and that's a fact. Anyway, most said he was crazy with grief at Pearl dying, and he was just a high school boy to begin with, and you know he was crazy period. Life is one big mystery, as I said.

The murder took place one month to the day after Pearl died of complications.

Now Pearl's was the saddest burial I ever went to, and the smallest.

Pearl was buried on a February Sunday, cold and cloudy, up on Hoot Owl Mountain. That little Jennifer was not there—Ora Mae had sent her right back to the upholsterer, and I must say I can't blame her—and the upholsterer was not there either. We stood out there in the wind, me and Roy, all hugged up tight together, and the wind blew so slow and steady it was almost like you could see it, like it was a real, gray
thing
sweeping across that flat wet grassy bald. The clouds had covered all the mountains, had filled the gorge. They rolled in gray and scary out of Kentucky. A young minister none of us knew—he was in the Junior Toastmasters with Al—said the words, and when it was over, it started to rain. Not a thunderstorm, or a
good
rain, the kind you don't mind being out in, but a slow rain like the saddest rain you ever saw. They put Pearl next to Mama, which was fitting. The clouds from Kentucky had rolled in so far that you couldn't even see the graves on down the hill at the edge of the burying ground next to the cliff, even if you knew who was buried down there anyway, which I don't.

And don't care!

I held on tight to Roy.

It was Pappy and Ora Mae, Al and Debra—Maggie couldn't be there, it cost too much to fly, and Billy wouldn't get out of the rocker—and Roy and Davy and me. Lewis Ray, of course, couldn't make it. And Donnie Osborne's mama would not have let him come.

After the preacher said the words we went back to the cars, and that was it. The preacher had a pickup truck and he and Roy got to talking about trucks, or something, and then Davy came up to say he was ready to drive Ora Mae and Pappy down the mountain—them being, of course, naturally too old to drive by now—but they couldn't find Ora Mae.

“Can't find her!” I said. “Well, where could she be?”

There's noplace in the world beyond the grassy bald at the top of Hoot Owl Mountain, there's nothing left but sky.

“You keep Pappy in the car,” I told Davy. “Don't let him out in the weather and get sick. I'll find her,” I said.

Then out of the corner of my eye I spied something moving down at the cloudy edge of the cliff near the gorge. I knew in my bones it was Ora Mae, and I also knew, right after I thought of it, that she would never jump. It's not in her to jump, I thought. She thinks she's too important. Crazy old woman! But I was dying to see what she was up to. So I just took off down the burying ground, ruining my shoes entirely if they weren't already ruint by then, I guess they were anyway, and snuck up on Ora Mae from behind.

In her long dark coat she looked right spooky, there in the clouds at the edge of the cliff. She looked like a rock or a tree, something that belonged there.

Ora Mae! I was just about to holler, but I did not.

Something made me stand still and watch her. Ora Mae was fishing around in one of the pockets of that big dark coat of hers—I'll swear she's had that same coat, and this is no lie, for fifty years.

I stood still and watched her.

She pulled something little out of the pocket, pulled it out slow and painful, the way she does everything, and then she let out the awfulest low sad wail I ever heard. It did not sound like a person at all. It sounded like something right out of the burying ground, some rising up of age and pain. She fiddled with what she had—I'd guessed what it was, by then, and I'll bet you have too—and she got one of them in each hand and held them up, I watched her, for a long, long moment, to her own ears. That old, old ugly woman! It was just about the worst and saddest thing I ever saw. And I've seen some things. Then she slung both arms straight out and threw the earrings into the swirling clouds in the gorge and they went down, down, I guess, to the river so far below, and I guess that's where they are now, thank God.

Gone.

Ora Mae had the right idea.

But she stood there with her arms flung out, like a big black statue in a church or something, for the longest time.

She gave me the creeps.

Then she lowered her arms real slow, and while I watched, she shrank back from whatever she was to old Ora Mae again, so old she can't even drive. I took her arm and helped her back up the burying ground to the cars and she didn't say one word, never mind thanked me, her eyes rolled kind of back in her head like she was in a trance, both of us soaked through by then from the rain.

“It beats all, don't it,” I said to Roy, “her holding them up to her ears?”

“It does and it don't,” Roy said. Roy is getting stoop-shouldered now, his hair gone gray, but he's the finest figure of a man I ever saw. And the nicest, a man like an old sweater, the older it gets, the more comfortable.

“Is that all?” Roy said.

“Well, it's time to eat,” I told him—I'd been fixing a pot roast, cooking while I told it—“so I guess it is.”

And just as soon as I got it on the table, wouldn't you know in came my grandson Roger, the one with the smart mouth, he eats over here all the time. Roy gets a kick out of Roger. So Roger ate with us, and then he left, and finally I got Roy where I wanted him, alone in the bed with me after the ten o'clock news, and I propped his cast up real nice on three pillows and we were just fooling around when all of a sudden Roy busted out laughing. He's got this big, big laugh.

I was a little put out.

“What's so damn funny?” I said.

“Well, if you didn't laugh you'd have to cry, it's like you said,” said Roy, “and all of that, and now it's all come down to Ora Mae and Pappy and me and you and Al and Debra and those three kids of theirs, the only ones connected, still around I mean. Good Lord, Sally. You've had a life, old Sal.”

“Well, it's not over yet!” I said.

Roy started laughing. He likes to get a rise out of me.

“That's the
past
,” I said. “It's nothing to talk about now. Now it's you and me. It's what happens after this, and if Roger gets into college or not, and if Rosy ever gets married again, and if Al gets to be a double ruby or whatever the hell else it is he takes it into his mind to do next, or if those men buy the land and put that ski run up Hoot Owl Holler, or who knows what will happen in this world? It's not over yet,” I said.

“And you?” Roy said. “Old Sal?”

He reached over and put his hand on my breast where it fits.

Then he got real tickled.

“Tell me your dreams,” said Roy.

“Thank you ever so much.” Al mimics her from the door. “
Shit.
” He comes out drinking a beer. Jennifer finds herself backing down the steps but she won't let him know how she feels, he's her uncle after all, she won't let him know she feels scared. The wind is still rising, it whips her hair around her face and into her eyes. But Jennifer holds her ground.

“Oh, nothing much,” he says finally, affecting elaborate scorn. “That chair was just rocking, that's all, nothing much, all by itself in there, and when I went by it to get
that
thing—” he walks over and jabs at the tape recorder in Jennifer's arms like it's something awful, and she grabs it before it drops—“ when I went over there to get that thing, I felt a cold chill come over me and I got goosebumps all over.”

Jennifer feels cold all over. The rain has slowed now, drumming softly on the roof.
“What
will I hear?” she asks.

“Jennifer, honey, you come back real soon, you hear?” Little Luther calls from the swing. “And if you was to put
me
on that tape recording machine, why that would be all right with me.”

Al leans over her, big and dark, breathing beer down into her face. “Because
nobody knows
, that's why. People don't know everything. But I'll tell you one thing. It was your own mother had to do with it, and that high school boy, and it wasn't from pneumonia your mother died, neither.
Hell
no.”