Rock of Ages (6 page)

“Maybe. But I'd still have done the right thing.”

“Well, people—or at least, most of the ones I know—don't want to be beholden. They don't want to think that they're begging somebody for something they don't want to willingly give.”

“So, if they thought I didn't want to do anything about Jenny, they would just not call me at all.”

“They might.”

“But that just hurts Jenny. I could've done something.”

She remembers another phone call, one she got less than three months before her father died. It was from Jenny, who was still healthy, still delivering meals and paying visits to shut-ins all over the eastern half of the county. She saw Littlejohn, her uncle, at least once a week.

This call had come at a particularly bad time. Georgia was packing for a trip to Europe. Justin was 15 and was behaving badly because she and her boyfriend weren't taking him. And here was Cousin Jenny telling her, in that flat, irritating country accent that Georgia had tried all her life to escape, that they needed to do something about her father.

“He forgets things sometimes,” Jenny said. “Important things. I'm afraid he's going to hurt himself.”

Georgia told her that she had already bought non-refundable plane tickets and was going to be out of the country for the next couple of weeks, that she would call her father and go see him when she got back.

Georgia tried to assure Jenny and herself that Littlejohn McCain would never let strangers look after him.

“I'm not talking about strangers,” Jenny said, and there was long silence. Finally, Georgia lied. She told her cousin that she had a meeting to go to in 30 minutes and had to get dressed.

They are already at the steps to Kenny Locklear's back porch when Georgia remembers her sunglasses. She had them on against the afternoon glare, then laid them down on a hacked-away flat spot on the Rock of Ages. She has left her regular glasses next door—she's proud that she still has 20-40 vision and doesn't really need them, except for driving, movies, television, and a few other things.

“I'm sorry. I've left my shades out there.”

“Want me to come with you?”

“No. I know right where they are.”

“Well,” Kenny says, “come on in when you get back. I'll fix you a drink. Coke? Beer? Something stronger?”

She tells him a beer would be nice.

She's been gone 10 minutes, and Kenny wonders if she needs help in the fast-dying day. He gets a flashlight and is opening the door to his porch when he sees Georgia coming toward him through the gloom.

She seems about to walk past the door entirely when he calls to her. She jumps and turns, then corrects her path.

“What's the matter?” He shines the light on her face. “Couldn't you find them?”

She looks down as if surprised that her hands are empty.

“No. I know where they are, though. I'll get them in the morning.”

“Well, come on in. You look like you could use that beer right now.”

He insists that she take the best chair in his living room, a recliner that she falls into gratefully.

He hands her the beer, in a cooler cup, and notices that her hand is shaking. When he turns on the light beside her, she looks pale.

“What's the matter?” he asks, moving close and feeling her forehead the way he used to check Tommy's when he suspected he was running a temperature. Georgia's skin is cool and clammy.

Georgia is not a superstitious woman. She wonders how she really can be, in good conscience, since she isn't even really religious. If I can't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, with all those disciples and such witnessing on his behalf, she said to Phil once, how can I believe in poltergeists and hobgoblins?

She thinks now, though, that ghosts might be the most positive spin she could put on the situation. The logical conclusion, the one she'd rather not consider, is that she is losing her mind.

Maybe, she thinks, I can believe in just one ghost.

A mist was starting to rise as she walked briskly back across the yard. The sun had already gone down, and she was admiring the pinks and oranges just above the horizon.

In Kenny's back yard, the long-abandoned pea and bean rows have never been completely flattened, giving the land an almost undetectable rise and fall that can trip the unsuspecting. Georgia stumbled as her toe caught the slightly higher ground of one of those phantom rows. When she looked up again, now no more than 100 feet from the rock, he was there.

Georgia stopped, not daring to move, the way she had acted the time a deer somehow found its way into their Montclair back yard while she was coming out at sundown with thistle for the bird-feeder.

The figure in the near distance did not seem to notice her. He was leaning against the rock, hands in his pockets, facing 90 degrees away from her, toward the lush land now owned by Annabelle and Blue. She was marginally aware of the low, mechanical hum of traffic from the interstate.

He sat like that for at least 5 minutes, neither he nor Georgia moving.

Then, he eased up to his full height and turned toward her as if he'd known she was there all along. The light was almost gone, but she was sure she could see him smile. He might or might not have motioned to her.

Georgia croaked his name out, once, and the figure moved slowly behind the rock. The only sound, other than the distant traffic, was a beagle barking in the next field.

She moved a few steps closer but could not work up the courage to go farther and retrieve the sunglasses.

She knew the posture, the shy grin, even the shirt and overalls.

She called his name again, and when there was no answer, she turned and walked fast, chilled to the bone now, forcing herself not to run.

“You're still cold,” Kenny says. “I probably ought to get you some coffee, something warm. Want a blanket?”

Georgia shakes her head.

“What is it? Did something scare you?”

She takes another sip of beer.

“Kenny, do you ever see anything—anybody—out there at the rock? I mean, just standing there?”

He gets up and walks halfway across the room, his back to her, then turns around.

“You know what they say about it, Georgia?”

She shakes her head.

“They say that you can see just about anything you want to see out there. At least 10 times a year, people, almost all Lumbees, will come here—usually they ask me first—and spend the night out there by the rock. You saw where the grass was worn down around it? That's from the people spreading out on blankets and waiting out the night, thinking they'll see their ancestors.”

Georgia puts down the beer.

“And do they?”

“See their ancestors? Some say they do. Some say they didn't see anything. And there's always kids around here, raising Cain, sneaking down there and trying to scare folks who are already half-sure they're going to see a ghost.”

“How about you? You live here all the time. Have you ever seen one?”

“Ghosts? Nah, not really.”

“Not really?”

“Well, there was one time. It's been at least 4 years ago. I was out trying to get one of my dogs back. I turn 'em loose to run rabbits, and sometimes they decide they'd rather run half the night than eat. Then, they come back here about midnight, sit under my window, and howl until I feed 'em.

“Anyhow, this one night, I was walking out there, between the rock and your family's old graveyard, the one where your daddy's buried, whistling for the dogs. And I saw a man—I'm sure it was a man, kind of old and slow-moving, walking away from the rock, away from me. I called out to him. He looked back, and then—and this was the strange part—despite the fact that he seemed kind of old and creaky, he somehow put distance between me and him. The last I saw of him, he was headed toward the woods over on Blue's land.”

“What did he look like?”

“I don't know, Georgia. I don't even know if I saw anybody or not. It was almost dark, and I'd had a few beers after work. I was not what you would call a reliable witness.”

“Did he look like anybody you knew?”

“It was too far to tell.”

Georgia refuses another beer, and Kenny sees her to the door.

“Sure you won't stay and talk? I can rent a movie or something.”

“Rent a movie? On a Friday night?” Georgia laughs. “Maybe I did get some bad information about you.”

“Don't believe everything you hear,” he tells her as she walks down the front steps.

She laughs, but after Kenny closes the door, she feels the goose bumps. They run up her arms to the back of her neck, up to her scalp. They don't go away until she is back inside her late father's house, breathing hard.

CHAPTER FIVE

October 31

Georgia removes the hymnal from its rack and thumbs her way to No. 47, “Sweet Hour of Prayer.”

The last few years in Montclair, she never went to church, except sometimes on Christmas or Easter, and then just for the pageantry and nostalgia. She and Jeff had taken Justin. They had even been moderately, disinterestedly involved themselves—drafted into the choir, or helping to coach a youth basketball team.

All that changed with the divorce. It was all up to Georgia after that, and she just didn't have will or faith enough to keep going.

She went to Geddie Presbyterian for homecoming two weeks ago because she thought she might see old friends, back visiting from some other city, shamed there by aging parents. There were a couple, but none of the ones she really wanted to see. Mostly, there were older people she had never really known that well, the ones who would come up and say, “I'll bet you don't remember me.”

The morning of Halloween, though, brings a strange craving to go back. Getting to the 11 o'clock service is no problem; she's been awake since 4:30.

The monkey has been riding her harder than ever the last two nights. She retrieved her sunglasses yesterday morning, and there were no footprints she could discern other than hers and Kenny's, but there had been a brief shower Friday night.

She knows she stands an almost 100 percent chance of seeing Forsythia Crumpler if she goes to church, and that's part of the pull, she supposes. One more chance.

Justin and Leeza rise at last and come downstairs at 9. Georgia asks them without any expectations if they'd like to come with her, and after they surprise her by saying yes, she wonders what all the church ladies are thinking about Leeza's little coming attraction. It doesn't bother her that much that her first grandchild's parents are not married. But what about the congregation of Geddie Presbyterian Church? She can't ask Justin and Leeza to lie. And the ones at the funeral probably know, anyhow. Finally, she realizes that her stock can't fall much lower among her father's old friends and neighbors, and that she is a hypocrite for worrying about it in the first place.

Justin's idea of church wear is a blue shirt and leather jacket, no tie. His Top-Siders look as if they won't last out the fall. Leeza has on a loose-fitting everyday dress that accentuates her pregnancy. Georgia chose the one item she brought along in her hurried packing that fits her idea of church clothes, a jewel-necked, rust-colored Ann Taylor dress with long sleeves, almost new.

“Believe it or not,” she tells them, “this is what people used to wear when they went to church.”

“Back in the day,” Justin says, laughing.

Geddie Presbyterian sits on the south side of Old Geddie Road, a graying piece of asphalt that long ago was the main road to Port Campbell. The church is equidistant from East Geddie and the mostly black community of Old Geddie. The two towns, and Geddie itself, to their north, inch closer together every year but stubbornly resist merging.

Now, there are houses on both sides of the brick church, mostly black on the west side, mostly white on the east. A cluster of more expensive homes, aimed at city people yearning for two acres of land and 2,500 square feet for under $150,000, as long as they don't mind putting in their own wells and septic tanks and hauling their own garbage to the dump, winds around back of Old Geddie.

Any new blood that has infiltrated the area has either flowed to the Baptist church near the center of town or to the AME Zion church half a mile to the west. Georgia counts 36 worshipers this Sunday morning, including the three visitors. At least 25 are past retirement age. Of those, only two are men.

Well, she thinks, you don't have to live on pork fat for the wives to outlive the husbands. Happens everywhere.

The choir is the saddest thing of all. When Georgia was a girl, there were a dozen members, and most of them were competent. Her father sang bass, and five other men, all with voices that filled the old church, were also regulars. Her mother was usually among the women, harmonizing well, a team player. The choir would rehearse on Wednesday nights, and there was a certain amount of jollity, even horseplay, involved, something not easy to sustain in a country Presbyterian church. She heard the story many times of how her parents had their first date after a choir practice.

What stands before her now, moving turbidly through “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” is something else entirely. There are four of them, and three were choir members when Georgia was in high school. Alberta Horne and Minnie McCauley are both nearly 80, stooped over so much that they seem in danger of tumbling down into the pulpit, where Reverend Weeks sits looking off into space as if willing himself somewhere else, perhaps in a church with two full choirs and an organ instead of a barely tuned piano. The only man, Murphy Lee Roslin, is older than either of the women. His voice is weak and reedy, and he has to hold the hymnal so close that his face is obscured.

The one younger woman is the minister's wife, referred to by all, even the women more than twice her age, as Mrs. Weeks. Her voice is the best by far, but it has no connection with the other three. She seems to be trying to drown them out.