The Gravedigger’S Daughter (3 page)

Out of place, in his city clothes. In the panama hat. Making his way so deliberately through the railroad yard between boxcars smelling of cattle and chemical fertilizers.

Who is he! And why, here!

It was rare, but sometimes you’d see a man or men in suits, in the railroad yard. In the streets near the factories. Never knew who they were except they were in charge, they’d come to the site in new-model cars and they were usually inspecting something or engaged in earnest conversations with one another and they wouldn’t be out-of-doors long.

This one, in the panama hat, appeared different, though. He didn’t seem to know where he was going, exactly. Crossing the weedy terrain as if his shoes hurt him.

Rebecca walked ahead, knowing where she was going. Through oil-splotched weeds, concrete broken like jagged ice chunks. Sure-footed as a mountain goat.

Each day at Niagara Tubing was like the first: raw, clamorous, suffocating. Airless air stinking of burnt fibres. You got used to the noise by deadening yourself against it, like a paralyzed limb. No solitude. No privacy except in the lavatory and there you could not stay long, the smells were even worse. How many days she’d clocked since March first and each week managed to save as much as she could, a few dollars, a handful of change, in a secret cache in the house for her and the child if ever there was an emergency.

Worse-come-to-worst
was the expression. A married woman saves in secret, not in a bank but somewhere in her house, for that day of reckoning
worse-come-to-worst
.

Rebecca leapt over a drainage ditch. Pushed through a torn chain-link fence. Always at this point as she neared the canal, and the outskirts of town, she began to feel better. The towpath was usually deserted, the air would be cooler. A smell of the canal, and that earthy-rotted smell of leaves. She was a country girl, she’d grown up tramping the fields, woods, country roads of Milburn ninety miles to the east, always she felt exhilarated at such times. She would arrive at Mrs. Meltzer’s and there Niley would be waiting for her crying
Momma!
running at her with a look of such pained love, she could scarcely bear it.

It was at this moment, by chance, she happened to see: the odd-looking man in the panama hat, a stranger to her, appeared to be headed in the same direction in which she was headed. She had no reason to think that he might be following her, or that he was even aware of her. But she saw him, at this moment.

She saw, and chose to ignore the fact.

She crossed another ditch, that emitted a foul odor like sulphur. Nearby in the railroad yard, boxcars were being uncoupled: the noise came in sharp scimitar blows. She was thinking, in that way that isn’t precisely thinking, not deliberate and not purposeful, that the man in the panama hat, dressed as he was, would turn back soon. He wasn’t the type to walk here, on these paths used mostly by boys and derelicts.

Tignor wouldn’t like her tramping about like this, either. Like her mother years ago. But Tignor didn’t know, as Anna Schwart had not known all that Rebecca did, in secret.

Later Rebecca would recall how she’d halfway known, at this point, that it was risky to continue walking here, but she’d continued anyway. Once she descended the embankment and began walking along the towpath, she would probably be alone; and if the man in the panama hat really was following her, she wouldn’t want to be alone. And so she had a choice: she could turn back abruptly, and run toward a side street nearby where children were playing; or she could continue to the towpath.

She didn’t turn back. She continued on.

Not even thinking
I have no need to be afraid of such a man, he isn’t a man to frighten me
.

Except: in resourcefulness and cunning, for she was the gravedigger’s daughter after all, she took from a barrel of scrap metal a strip of steel about seven inches long, and an inch wide, and this she slipped into the right pocket of her khaki jacket. So quickly, she could not think that the man in the panama hat had seen her.

The piece of steel was sharp, all right. Except it lacked a handle, it resembled an ice pick.

If she had to use it, her hand would be cut. Yet she smiled thinking
At least I will hurt him
.
If he touches me he will regret it
.

Now the sky had darkened, it was nearly dusk. A sombre, sulky evening. There was no beauty in the canal now. Only at the horizon was the sun dimly visible like flame amid smoldering ashes.

The Poor Farm Road was a quarter-mile ahead: she could see the plank bridge. Her heart thudded heavily in her chest. She was desperate to get to the bridge, to climb up the embankment to the road, and to safety. She would run in the middle of the road to the Meltzers’ house a half-mile away…

Then, the man in the panama hat made his move.

She heard a sound like breaking glass unexpected close behind her: footsteps in dried leaves. At once she panicked. She did not look back but ran blindly up the embankment. She clutched at briars, thistles, tall grasses to help pull herself up. She was desperate, terrified. In a flash came memories of trying to pull herself up onto fences, or roofs, as her brothers did so easily, and she could not. She heard the man behind her speak, he was calling after her, she began to fall, the incline was too steep. Her ankle twisted, she fell heavily. The pain was shocking, sickening. She had partly broken her fall with the fleshy edge of her right hand.

But she was fallen now, helpless. In that instant her vision darkened, like an eclipse of the sun. Of course she was a woman, this man sought her as a woman. He would be on her, now.

“Miss, wait! Excuse me! Please! I won’t hurt you.”

Rebecca was on her haunches, panting. The man in the panama hat approached her, with a pained expression. Cautiously, as one might approach a snarling dog.

“Don’t! Don’t come any nearer! Get away.”

Rebecca fumbled for the piece of steel in her pocket. Her hand was bleeding, numbed. She could not force it into her pocket.

The man in the panama hat, seeing the expression in Rebecca’s face, had stopped dead in his tracks. Concerned, he removed his tinted glasses to peer at her. There was the strange thing about him Rebecca would long remember: his curious, staring, naked eyes. They were eyes of wonderment, calculation, yearning. They appeared to have no lashes. Something about the right eye looked damaged, like a burnt-out filament in a lightbulb. The whites of both eyes were discolored as old ivory. He was a young-old man, a boyish demeanor in a creased face, weakly handsome, yet something fading about him, insubstantial. Rebecca saw, such a man could be no danger to her unless he had a weapon. And if he had a weapon, by now he would have shown it.

She was flooded with relief, what a fool she’d been to so misjudge this stranger!

He was saying, awkwardly, “Please forgive me! I didn’t mean to frighten you. That was the last thing I mean, truly. Are you hurt, dear?”

Dear!
Rebecca felt a tinge of contempt.

“No. I’m not hurt.”

“But�may I help? You’ve twisted your ankle, I think.”

He offered to help Rebecca to her feet, but Rebecca gestured for him to keep his distance. “Mister, I don’t need your help. Get away.”

Rebecca was on her feet, shakily. Her heart was still pounding. Her blood was up, she was furious with this man for having frightened her, humiliated her. She was furious with herself, even more. If anyone who knew her saw her cowering like this…She hated it, the way the stranger stared at her with his queer lashless eyes.

He said, suddenly, yet almost wistfully, “It’s Hazel�yes? Hazel Jones?”

Rebecca stared at the man, not knowing what she’d heard.

“You are Hazel, aren’t you? Yes?”

“Hazel? Who?”

“‘Hazel Jones.’”

“No.”

“But you look so like her. Surely you are Hazel…”

“I said no. Whoever it is, I am not.”

The man in the panama hat smiled, tentatively. He was at least as agitated as Rebecca, and perspiring. His checked bow tie was crooked, and his long-sleeved shirt was damp, showing the unflattering imprint of his undershirt beneath. Such perfect teeth, they had to be dentures.

“My dear, you look so much like her�‘Hazel Jones.’ I simply can’t believe that there could be two young women, very attractive young women, looking so much alike, and living in the same region…”

Rebecca had limped back to the towpath. She tested her weight on the ankle, gauging if she could walk on it, or run. Her face was flushed with embarrassment. She brushed at her clothes, that had picked up crumbly loose dirt and burrs. How annoyed she was! And the man in the panama hat still staring at her, convinced she was someone she was not.

She saw that he’d removed the panama hat, and was turning it nervously in his hands. He had crimped-looking gray-blond hair that looked like a mannequin’s hair, molded, hardly disturbed by the hat.

“I got to go now, mister. Don’t follow me.”

“Oh, but�wait! Hazel�”

Now the stranger was sounding just subtly reproachful. As if he knew, and she knew, that she was deceiving him; and he could not comprehend why. He was so clearly a well-intentioned man, and a gentleman, unaccustomed to being treated rudely, he could not comprehend why. Saying, courteously, with his air of maddening persistence: “Your eyes are so like Hazel’s, and your hair has grown a little darker, I think. And your way of carrying yourself is a little harsher for which,” he said hurriedly, “I am to blame, frightening you. It’s just that I had no idea how to approach you, dear. I saw you on the street yesterday, I mean I believed it was you I had seen, Hazel Jones after so many years, and now today…I had to follow you.”

Rebecca stared at him, deliberating. It did seem to her that this earnest man was telling the truth: the truth as he saw it. He was deceived, but didn’t appear to be deranged. He spoke with relative calmness and his reasoning, granted the circumstances, was logical.

He thinks I am her, and I am lying
.

Rebecca laughed, this was so unexpected! So strange.

She wished she could tell Tignor about it, when Tignor called. They might have laughed together. Except Tignor was inclined to be jealous, and you don’t tell a man with such inclinations that you have been followed by another man wanting to think that you are another woman beloved by him.

“Mister, I’m sorry. I’m just not her.”

“But…”

He was approaching her, slowly. Though she’d told him, warned him, to stay away. He seemed not to know what he did, and Rebecca wasn’t fully aware, either. He did seem harmless. Hardly taller than Rebecca, and wearing brown oxford shoes covered in dust. The cuffs of his cream-colored trousers were soiled, too. Rebecca smelled a sweet cologne or aftershave. As he was a young-old man, so he was a weak-strong man, too. A man you misjudge as weak, but in fact he’s strong. His will was that of a young coiled-up copperhead snake. You might think the snake was paralyzed with fear, in terror of being killed, but it was not; it was simply biding its time, preparing to strike. Long ago Rebecca’s father Jacob Schwart the gravedigger of Milburn had been a weak-strong man, only his family had known of his terrible strength, his reptile will, beneath the meek-seeming exterior. Rebecca sensed a similar doubleness here, in this man. He was apologetic, yet not humble. Not a strain of humility in his soul. He thought well of himself, obviously. He knew Hazel Jones, he’d followed Hazel Jones, he would not give up on Hazel Jones, not easily.

Tignor would misjudge a man like this, for Tignor was affably blunt in his opinions, and never revised them. But this man was a man with money, and an education. Very likely, family money. He had a bachelor look, yet a cared-for look. His clothes were of good quality if now slightly rumpled, disheveled.

On his right hand he wore a gold signet ring with a black stone.

“I don’t know why you deny me, Hazel. What I’ve done to so alienate you. I am Dr. Hendricks’s son�you must recognize me.”

He spoke half-wistfully, insinuatingly.

Rebecca laughed, she knew no one named Hendricks. Yet she said, as if to bait him, “Dr. Hendricks’s
son
?”

“Father passed away last November. He was eighty-four.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. But�”

“I’m Byron. You must remember Byron?”

“I’m afraid, no I don’t. I told you.”

“You were no more than twelve or thirteen! Such a young girl. I was just graduated from medical school. You perceived me as an adult. An abyss of a generation separated us. Now, the abyss is not so profound, is it? You must have wondered about us, Hazel. I am a doctor now, following my father’s example. But in Port Oriskany, not in the Valley. Twice a year I return to Chautauqua Falls to see relatives, to look after family property. And to tend my father’s grave.”

Rebecca stood silent. Damn if she was going to respond to this!

Quickly Byron Hendricks continued, “If you feel that you were mistreated, Hazel…You, and your mother…”

“I told you no! I’m not even from Chautauqua Falls. My husband brought me here to live. I’m married.”

Rebecca spoke hotly, impatiently. Wished she’d worn her ring to shove into this man’s face. But she never wore her pretty ring at Niagara Tubing.

Byron Hendricks sighed. “Married!” He had not considered this, it seemed.

He said, “There is something for you, Hazel. Through his long and sometimes troubled life my father never forgot you. I realize it’s too late for your poor mother, but…Will you take my card, at least, dear? If you should ever wish to contact me.”

He handed her a small white business card. The neatly printed black letters seemed to Rebecca a rebuke of some kind.

Byron Hendricks, M. D.

General & Family Medicine

Wigner Building, Suite 414

1630 Owego Avenue

Port Oriskany, New York

tel. 693–4661

Rebecca said, furious, “Why the hell should I contact you?”