The Gardener's Son (13 page)

Y
OUNG
M
AN
Did your sister remember Bobby?

She looks up at him. She looks at him very quietly for several minutes and then she looks down. She picks at the hem of her gown.

Y
OUNG
M
AN
I didnt mean to . . .

She looks up again.

Y
OUNG
M
AN
Mr Bolinger told me . . . I never knew very much about it. Miss McEvoy. My mother has the old Bible and it’s about the last thing in it. My grandmother moved to Charleston right after the . . . She even took the monument. When Mr Bolinger told me that you were . . . that you were here I just... It was just a family story. It was like something in a book. It didnt seem like real people.

M
ARTHA
I know you now.

Y
OUNG
M
AN
I didnt come here to make you feel bad.

M
ARTHA
I dont feel bad.

Y
OUNG
M
AN
I just wanted to talk to you. You’re the only one who knows what happened.

M
ARTHA
I dont even know where he’s buried at. Daddy never told us. He never put up no marker. Just a nameless grave somewheres. He was afraid they’d come and dig him up. Them doctors. They’d come and dig up anybody like that and get they head. They’d take it and study it. Daddy said that God would know where to hunt him. Mrs Gregg moved all her dead from Graniteville Cemetery. She took em over to Charleston.

Y
OUNG
M
AN
She was a bit eccentric. Toward her old age.

M
ARTHA
She was a bit what?

Y
OUNG
M
AN
Eccentric. She was a bit peculiar.

M
ARTHA
No she wasnt.

Y
OUNG
M
AN
Well, she . . .

M
ARTHA
Peculiar. She wasnt peculiar. She used to make gingerbread horses and she’d have all the young’ns up there and she’d give us lemonade of a summer. She took a lot of pains about that cemetery. She had my daddy up there all the time to see about first one thing and then anothern. They used to be a stone up there it just said “the little boy” and she would have flowers on it all the time. Just some little boy that they had took off the train down there and he’d died they wasnt nobody knowed who he was nor nothin. I wonder if God has names for people. He never give em none. People done that. I wonder if people are not all the same to him. Just souls up there and no names. Or if he cares what all they done. I dont know why Bobby done what he done. Once people are dead they’re not good nor bad. They’re just dead.

Y
OUNG
M
AN
Mr Bolinger spoke highly of your father.

M
ARTHA
He always said we’d save up and go back to Greenville. I say Greenville but it was really Pickens. Pickens South Carolina. But we never done it. I reckon he’d made a start but them lawyers got it all. We’d had a farm up there—what we called it—it wadnt nothin. I’d never seen a whole dollar fore we come to Graniteville. After Bobby . . . Daddy just never did come out of it. Never after did he ever hold his head up on this earth. I remember bein glad that Mama was dead. I never thought I’d ever be glad anybody was dead, least of all my Mama, but I remember bein glad that she was dead and that was the only thing I could think of. I wanted to get her pitcher took but Daddy wouldnt have it. He said he didnt want to remember her dead. I have a pitcher of Bobby.

She fumbles an old purse from among the folds of her skirts and opens it and takes out an old yellow tintype.

M
ARTHA
Me and Mama went back up to Pickens about a year fore she died. I was just a young girl. Went up on the train. We’d had this horse and his name was Captain and I used to ride him just everwheres and he’d foller me around like a dog and I remember whenever we got ready to leave from up there why they sent me over to Mamaw’s because the feller was fixing to come and get him. They had done sold him, you see. But me and Mama went up there. We went up there and we was in Greenville that Saturday afternoon and I looked and there in the street was old Captain. He was harnessed up in an express wagon standin there in front of a store and whenever I seen him I just run across the street and throwed my arms around his neck and kissed him and I reckon everbody thought I was crazy standin there in the middle of the street and me about growed, huggin and kissin an old horse and just a bawlin to beat the band.

She looks down at the picture in her hand.

M
ARTHA
Sometimes I wish I’d not even kept it. That lawyer said that the image of God was blotted out of his face. That’s what he said about Bobby. I ort not even to of kept it. I think a person’s memory serves better. Sometimes I can almost talk to him. I caint see him no more. In my mind. I just see this old pitcher.