The Marrowbone Marble Company (27 page)

E
VERYTHING WAS ABOUT
to change.

Four men stood inside the rusted fence of the Bonecutter burying ground. Ledford, Staples, Dimple, and Wimpy. Staples had called the graveside meeting, and none of them knew why. They feared he was losing his mind.

Their eyes squinted to read the dark etchings. Hand-carved names like
Gertrude
,
Della
,
Woodrow
, dark-mossed rock lined by water. Their years marked another time:
1801…1864
.

Ledford thought of the headstones of his mother and father and brother, imagined them grown over with weeds. After they went in the ground, he'd visited the gravesite only once in his life, at fourteen. A terrible feeling had come over him, and he never went back.

“I've left detailed instructions with my brother Bob,” Staples said. He wore a toboggan knitted by Rachel. It was pulled low over his ears and eyebrows. He hadn't been out of bed in a while. “I wish to be buried right there,” he said, pointing to a corner.

The Bonecutter brothers registered no reaction at first. Then, both men nodded. That was fine with them.

Staples turned to Ledford. “I already told you about my desk drawer, haven't I?”

“Yes, you have.”

Staples turned to the brothers. “Somethin in there for him,” he told them. “I want him to take heed of me, dead or not.” He smiled and pointed his pipe at Ledford. It was always in his hand in those days, always empty. He stuck it in his teeth and kept it there a while, unlit but comfortable.

Ledford nodded. Looked away. Staples seemed so old to him. His skin was drained—no sap left. “Let's get you inside,” Ledford said.

It had gotten cold.

A black sedan came down the road. It was new, shiny. The four of them watched it pull to a stop at the gate, plates reading
C of E
before the number, blue on white. Two men stepped out in overcoats. They waved.

The goats had gotten loose again, and they ran straight for the tall man. He jumped onto the hood of his car like he'd never seen a goat before.

Dimple laughed. He and Wimpy walked over, and the other two followed.

The men had documents with them.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
, they read.
Acquisition
,
Relocation
. The tall one with the mole on his cheek said, “We wanted to give you some time to ponder all this before we put notice in the newspapers.”

Congress had approved it. The Corps of Engineers was stepping in the way of all the floods. They were going to build a dam at Lavalette and back up the forks of Twelvepole Creek. They were going to make a 2,000-acre lake.

“Marrowbone Creek don't flood but once ever two years,” Dimple said. “And when it does, we manage just fine.”

The short one nodded. His fedora was loose on his head. “I hear you,” he said. “But this is mandatory acquisition we're talking about. You won't have to clear out for a couple years, but come '69, well…” He didn't elaborate.

Wimpy wore an odd expression. “Are you tellin' us that Marrowbone will be underwater?” he asked.

“Yessir, that's what I'm telling you.”

Staples said, “I worked for the Conservation Corps.” He grunted. Stifled a cough and tried to stand straight.

Ledford had him by the arm.

Two thoughts were in Ledford's mind. The first was that it was twenty degrees and he ought to get Staples back indoors. The other was that he liked the thought of Marrowbone underwater.

“What about our kin?” Dimple looked back to the burying ground. For him, everything depended on how the two men answered this question.

The short one took off his hat and held it in both hands at his waist. “Well, yessir,” he said. “We would be happy to cover cost of excavation and reburial, make that an easy process for you.”

Dimple said, “I'd just as soon leave em where they are.”

Staples nodded his head. “Under a lake,” he said. He patted Dimple on the shoulder and laughed. “I always wanted to be buried at sea, but I reckon a lake's close enough.”

The short one cleared his throat and looked at the tall one, who shrugged and put in a stick of gum. The short one said, “I'm sure we could work something out Mr. Bonecutter.”

Staples started coughing and Ledford led him away.

Wimpy watched them go. He'd seen neither surprise nor anger on their faces at news of the damming of Twelvepole Creek. Wimpy wondered if Ledford felt what he did about Marrowbone. He wondered if the younger man regarded the chimney stack every morning like he did, knowing it didn't belong, and knowing, deeper down, that maybe none of them belonged.

The goats had walked clear up the main road. A direct, steady amble, as if they'd planned it. When they were almost out of eyeshot, they turned and stared at Wimpy.

He knew they'd wanted to run for years, and now was as good a time as any to let them go. He waved a hand.

T
HE
M
ARROWBONE
A
CTION
G
ROUP
was meeting at seven inside the community center. There was to be discussion of the coming dam and lake, and a vote had been ordered to oust Noah Ball from the poverty commission. Nobody had seen Noah in months. Word was he would make a run for state senator in a year's time. The Ball cousins wanted two districts to rule.

It would be a tough row to hoe. In the year since the interim elections, things had changed. The
New York Times
had gotten wind of Wayne County. They ran an article about local corruption and called it “The War on the War on Poverty.” Don Staples was quoted: “The politicians and the businessmen can holler communist plot all they want to. We got a different name for it. Poor Power is what we call it.” Walter Cronkite mentioned Marrowbone on his show, ran a full minute of footage showing the factory and the community center and the gym. Stretch Hayes' silhouette was right there on national television—through the open gym window, you could see him shadowboxing. There was mention of Douglass High School in town, which was slated to become a community center of its own. Cronkite had said, “Theirs is not a movement for rural whites alone.” The
Charleston Gazette
ran Harold's law school graduation speech. He'd finished first in his class. He spoke of the CIP and Smalley's Cafeteria. He spoke of the power of lawful resistance.

The state road commission and the board of education took note of the attention. Marrowbone was real. Up at Poke Branch, the state rebuilt two swinging bridges. Knob Drop Road was patched and paved, and a guardrail was put in at dead man's curve. School buses started running deep into hollers.

For a short while, it seemed that the energy they'd found in Alabama would come back again. There had even been talk of a visit by Martin Luther King, whose Southern Christian Leadership Conference had noted Marrowbone's work.

But nothing much had truly changed. Staples had finally gone to the doctor, where he heard the word he'd been waiting for.
Cancer.
The war in Vietnam went on, and the poor stayed poor. Noah Ball may have been peeking at the world through his mortuary curtains, but Charlie was out working overtime, lining pockets and buying votes.

He'd been talking to Shorty Maynard about how to shut Marrowbone down for good. He wanted to own that land before the government bought it up. Charlie had gambled away the land development money, Erm's included.

Marble sales were down. The cost of natural gas was up. The factory's chimney stack needed a good cleaning.

Ledford watched the smoke cloud through the community center window. His shinbone was acting up. It was as if the pain came from inside the bone, an angry shrapnel souvenir that the Navy doc at Espiritu Santo had missed all those years ago. He propped it on a folding chair and checked his watch. Inside an hour, there wouldn't be any empty seat in the place.

He told Orb to rub his leg a while.

The television was on. They'd raised it, a ten-brick stack underneath. The newsman spoke on Vietnam like he did every night. Cue cards. Numbers instead of names.

Harold opened chairs and set them in a line. Herchel pushed a broom double-time, a cigarette stuck in his lips. Jerry taped a cord to the floor and switched on the microphone. He tapped it to the tune of “Oil It Up and Go.”

Ledford told Orb to shut off the television. “What about
Gunsmoke
at seven-thirty?” Orb asked. Puberty had changed his voice.

Ledford shook his head no and stood up. He winced. “We're having a meeting in here Son. Go on over to the chapel to watch,” he said. He pointed his finger at Orb. “Spend a little time with Staples, like you used to. Dying man needs company boy, you hear?”

Orb heard. “And don't turn the old man's set on till
Andy Griffith
,” Ledford said, and headed for the door. There was a good bit on his mind. In an hour, he'd be telling the people that he had no answers for them. That when the government told you they were flooding you out, maybe there weren't answers anymore.

Outside, it was humid. The creek was low.

The gym door opened and Willy stepped out. His handwraps hung loose at the wrist. He was shirtless. Behind him, Josephine Maynard stuck her head out the door and hollered that Huntington girls were no-good whores. She spat on the ground and stepped back in the gym. Willy walked for the creek. He didn't return his father's wave.

Stretch Hayes stood in the gym doorway and made a gesture to console Josephine. “He's just young,” he told her. “You give him some time, he'll come back to you.”

Over at Herchel and Jerry's, Bendy was packing up the last of her things. She pushed open the screen door with her backside, spotted Willy coming. “I never step foot on this land again!” she screamed at him. She had an Army duffel slung over her shoulder and a knife block in her hands. The little metal handles glinted in the sun.

Out back in Herchel's garden, Willy knelt and smelled the marijuana plants. They were a good foot shorter than the stickweeds around them and from far off they looked like rattlesnake ferns. Willy had been picking at the camouflaged buds for four years. He knew that Herchel knew he did it, but neither had ever said a word.

At the big garden, Mary walked the rows, her mother trailing behind. Each woman had her hands clasped in back, head bowed to the ground. They were inspecting, eyeballing leaf holes. Categorizing by size and shape, discerning what manner of critter had been into the seedlings this time.

“Slugs are feasting,” Rachel said.

Mary nodded. She took note of yellow-edged mustard greens and ugly broccoli stalks. “We need Mrs. Wells and her death traps,” she said. Mary thought of Harold then. She looked to the chicken coop. It was quiet, a thin swirl of dust along the gate. The clouds above covered the sun and Mary shut her eyes and imagined Harold was there, walking the grounds in his undershirt, wise beyond his years.

“Is this cat poop?” Rachel asked.

“No.” Mary walked on down the row, her eyes unfocused, her bare feet marking a trail.

They passed each other at the middle. Rachel regarded her daughter. “Are you all right Mary?” she asked. Rachel's head was cocked, her eyes squinted.

“I'm fine.”

Twice in the last week, Rachel had peered through the keyhole of Mary's bedroom door. Each time, she could make out the top of her head, so still where she sat on the floor. Next to her, the projector ran, its rolling clicks a dull lullaby. Its beam cast a picture on the far wall. Rachel could only make out bits and pieces. Orb mouthing “Amazing Grace” onstage. Staples on his soapbox. Harold, smiling.

Mary bent next to a cabbage seedling and took a handful of salt from her gardening belt. There were holes along its front, the potato sack material unraveling. There was no need for pepper any longer. The cats had abandoned Marrowbone. Mary held the salt over a fat brown slug. She opened her fist and the salt poured in a thin line across its back. The slug twisted into a U shape, its feelers reaching for its tail. Mary poured the rest and watched the slug's sheen disappear, replaced by a thick film of white.

Her mother stood above her, watching. “Are you sure you're all right?”

“I'm fine,” Mary said.

Above the Cut, high on the ridge, Dimple and Wimpy bellied dirt and passed the binoculars back and forth. They were watching Shorty Maynard, who was two hundred yards off. He stood on top of Big Shoe Rock and looked through his own binoculars at something down below. It was the third time in two weeks they'd seen him spy.

“What's he trained on?” Dimple said.

“Can't tell.” Wimpy was hungry. He sighed, rubbed his sore neck. At the clearing, Shorty decided to have one more look before calling it a day. He rolled the wheel with his pointer finger and watched Ledford step back into the community center. Chickens darted across the lawn, chased by a dog. He rolled it again and watched his daughter step from the boxing gym. She was moving funny. Shooting her arms like something had upset her. Josephine had a flair for the dramatic.

It was two weeks prior that Shorty had gotten the anonymous letter.
Your daughter is dating a Marrowbone boy behind your back
, it read. Nothing more. Shorty suspected the strange Russian woman had penned it, and he suspected the boy she referred to was Willy Ledford. He wanted to see for himself.

Shorty had steered clear of Marrowbone ever since Ledford's shoeless visit to his house. But Charlie and Noah Ball had lately been getting in his ear. They said he ought to seize full ownership of the Maynard Coal and Coke tract, to strong-arm old man Paul if he had to. Charlie was in the business of land development, dam or no dam, and he was promising money to Shorty. He told Shorty to bust the Marrowbone people on something, to seize their land, to use the old bogus property deed he kept in a safe deposit box in town. “Where there's land, there's money,” Charlie had said.

Shorty had friends in the state police. He knew a county magistrate who issued warrants on next to nothing. He could smell the office of sheriff. He could smell all that money.

There was a rustle in the trees down the hill. He looked, then put his eyes back in the binoculars. It took him a minute to relocate Josephine. What he saw made his throat seize. He rolled the focus wheel again to be sure. A black boy had stepped from the gym. He wore nothing but a pair of cutoff blue jean shorts, and Josephine walked straight to him where he stood on the lawn. She put her head to his chest. He wrapped his arm around her.

That was all it took. In Shorty's mind, from that moment forward, it wasn't Willy Ledford that Josephine was dating behind his back. It was Stretch Hayes.

He let the binoculars fall to his chest. He wondered if he ought to stick his finger down his throat to rid himself of this sickness. Then he wondered if he ought to come right down the mountain and shoot Stretch Hayes in the face.

It was the second idea that took.

Wimpy watched him unsling his rifle and start down the hill. “He's got his gun out,” he told Dimple. “He's on the move.”

They followed, their boot soles quiet against the ground.

Fifty yards down, Shorty found the source of the rustling sound. High up the trunk of a giant black locust tree, a family of black bears played. Shorty counted four young cubs. They circled each other, playing peek-a-boo around the thick tree's middle. Behind some leaves, on a sturdy limb, their mother sprawled, tired in the shade. Her balance was magnificent. Shorty reckoned she must have weighed four hundred pounds.

A sow that size would make a prize kill.

He raised his rifle.

Up the ridge, Dimple and Wimpy had stopped moving when Shorty did. “What's he looking at now?” Dimple asked.

It took ten seconds for Wimpy to locate the bears in his own eyepiece. By that time, Shorty had raised his weapon. “Oh hell,” Wimpy said. He dropped the binoculars to the ground and unslung his Winchester. As best he could through the tree cover, he centered the ivory bead on Shorty Maynard's head.

“Hold on a minute,” Dimple whispered.

In Wimpy's mind was a singular question. Could he rightfully kill a man over that man's aim to kill a bear? It took only a second to know. If that bear was a mother of four, the answer was yes. Wimpy put his finger on the trigger.

“Hold on,” Dimple said. He'd picked up the binoculars and surmised the situation. “He lowered his gun.”

It was true. At the moment Shorty Maynard was about to squeeze his trigger, just before the moment Wimpy would have squeezed his, something had happened. The big sow had moaned and scratched at her eye with a paw. The way she sounded, the way she moved, somehow matronly and not unlike his own mother—it unsettled Shorty, and then it settled him back again. For a moment, his anger went missing. The smallest cub made its way to the sow. Shorty couldn't fire. He didn't have it in him.

He slung the rifle back over his shoulder and hiked up the ridge, where he'd crest and go down the other side, the picture in his mind playing over and over again—Stretch Hayes wrapped around his only daughter. He took out a half-pint of Old Grand-Dad and drank, fast.

Coming down the other side, Dimple and Wimpy didn't speak. They'd decided to leave the bears be, though both had wanted a closer look.

Wimpy was on edge. Every chipmunk scurry pricked his neck hairs. Every birdsong rang sinister. They were halfway down when he said, “I believe I ought to have kilt Shorty Maynard just then.”

Dimple regarded the hillside creek. Its bed was the color of rust. “That ain't the smartest thing you've said.”

“Well,” Wimpy answered. “Might've saved the world some trouble, if I had kilt him.”

“Might've,” Dimple said.

 

O
RB WAS THE
first to spot one. He was following the dogs as they sniffed the edges of the newly planted field. Tug wandered to the base of a nearby maple tree and started snouting something he'd found there.

The dog sneezed and shook his head. When Orb walked over to see what it was, he noticed that the tree trunk was covered in what looked like wood roaches. But these were a lighter brown, and they weren't moving, except for one. He leaned in close. They were empty shells, split husks of some creature he'd never encountered. High up, one pulled itself from its shell and emerged a sickly pale color. It was red-eyed and cripple-winged.

Orb craned his neck. Up the trunk there were more, but these weren't pale in color. They were black with golden wings. Their eyes were red as blood. Up higher, they were everywhere.

Orb had read Exodus. He'd listened to Staples preach on Moses stretching his hand over Egypt. To him, these bugs meant hell was about to break loose.

He ran and whistled for the dogs to follow.

Dimple was down the hill, working the foot pedal on a grindstone. He took swallows from a tin cup and spat water in a line to the sandstone. He touched the blade of his axe there and ground a new bevel. When Orb came running his direction, dogs trailing, Dimple laid off the pedal.