Great Jehoshaphat and Gully Dirt! Part 41

Mister Wes walked across the porch toward Doctor Elton. "What you think, Doc?"

Old Mister Hawk and the man he was talking with both quit chewing their tobacco and moved closer to the doctor, too. Old Mister Hawk cupped a hand behind one ear, like he thought the doctor was going to say something special. All the other men got quiet. And I stayed still, because I didn't know what Doctor Elton was fixing to tell Mister Wes.

"Y'all, this is a bad business. Death always is. A man in his prime is gone. And a sickly young widow has eight young'uns at her knees and another on her lap. Their prospects are mighty bleak. Her kinfolks will have to take them in, I reckon. But it appears that Ward's was a case where a man brought death on himself, one way or another. And I honestly doubt if an inquest would do him or anybody else any good."

"We just won't hold none then. I'm gonna go down the lane and look 'round one more time so's I can figger just where Ward was tryin' to climb over the fence when his gun went off. It's a pity the rain washed out his tracks. All a-body can see is where we've been trompin' this mornin' and all them holes Uncle Hiram punched in the ground with his peg leg."

Every one of the men, except Papa and Doctor Elton, followed Mister Wes down toward the horse lot. Some of them stopped at the wagon shelter to look at Mister Ward's automobile again. The others went on down the lane.

"I've got to get on back," the doctor was saying. "There's plenty of sickness this time of year, and folks will be calling for me. In winter I'm a popular man, you know. An old, tired, popular man! Ah, Jodie, I got called out at midnight last night, and I haven't seen my pillow since."

They stopped at the yard gate. As the doctor unhooked the latch he turned and looked straight at Papa.

"Jodie, I just hope the Good Lord will forgive me for times when I meddle in His affairs."

"You don't meddle."

"Sometimes, it's not what you do, Jodie. It's the way you say a thing, or don't, that changes matters. I'm telling you, this whole business worries me."

"It's enough to turn anybody's hair."

"Me and you might have made a mistake-mainly me. Maybe we should've reported Ward's whiskey still before we did. Maybe he wouldn't be dead today, if we had. Maybe it's a blessing he is dead. I don't know. When I think of that stillborn baby, I- d.a.m.n my tongue! Jodie, forget I mentioned a baby! My tongue slipped! I gave my word not to-"

"I already knew about the baby-Nannie and me. And we're not aiming to talk it. 'Twouldn't help Wes's daughter, nor n.o.body."

"That's the truth! Jodie, I don't know how you look at it, but as I see it, it's best now to let Ward's folks bury him and not stir up a ruckus over the technicalities of just how he died.

Far as I'm concerned, it don't make a continental how the gun went off. It's not the how of death that's of any consequence.

It's death. If there was ever anything any 'count in Ward Lawson-and there must've been at some time; n.o.body's worthless all their livelong life-it died a good while back. When, I don't know. But it wasn't Sunday at sundown when that lead ripped through his jugular vein!"

Papa and the doctor walked on through the gate into the grove of trees in front of Miss Ophelia's house, where the dozen or more buggies and wagons and saddle horses were waiting. But Doctor Elton wasn't bobbing and bouncing along the way he usually walked. He was dragging his feet, and when he got to the side of his big black buggy, he had to catch one hand on the dashboard and the other on the armrest so he could pull himself up to the seat.

Papa tugged at the bridle bit of one mare just enough to make her start backing the buggy a few feet. The doctor gave both mares a light touch with the whip, and they struck up a smooth trot. Turning halfway round, Doctor Elton lifted his hand to Papa.

When I saw Papa was going toward the barn instead of coming back to the porch, I scooted down the bare, windy hall to the kitchen.

More and more folks, most of them strangers, kept coming to the Lawson house. And it seemed that everything was going wrong and n.o.body knew what to do. I didn't know what to do either. Mama said for me just to be sweet and stay out of the way.

Uncle Dan brought Miss Ophelia's children home. But the girls didn't want to play with me. They just stood around, looking at the houseful of people. The middle girl, Sissie, never would take her thumb out of her mouth-not even long enough to tell me her real name. Eftie, the biggest one, couldn't play because she had to tend to her baby sister.

The boy named Philip wouldn't play with me either. He had a bad earache. He had been crying with it when they all came home from the schoolhouse, and he kept on crying, even after Mama heated up a skillet of salt and fixed a poultice sack for him to hold against his ear. Finally, when Aunt Vic warmed some milk for him to drink, he began to feel better.

While Aunt Vic was making biscuits, Mama and Miss Lida Belle were trying to decide what would be the best thing to do for Miss d.i.n.k.

"It's dreadful cold in that far side room," Miss Lida Belle told Mama. "Let's move her 'cross the hall to the fireplace room."

Mama sent me out to the woodpile to get Papa. He came, and together they rolled Miss d.i.n.k up in a blanket, and Papa toted her across the hall. When Papa laid Miss d.i.n.k on the freshly made bed, she sank down into the feather mattress so far I could hardly see her wrinkled face. Something had made her cheeks turn a strange yellowish color. And she wasn't laughing like she had been that day she told me and Mama how a long time ago she smeared hog lard on Miss Ophelia's seven-year itch.

"Nannie," Papa whispered as he started out, "soon's you get time, ask what clothes Ophelia wants us to use."

As soon as Mama went over to Miss Ophelia's chair and began talking to her, she started crying again.

"Them things in the big trunk is all. They're all he's got, Miss Nannie."

I didn't know what trunk or what things she was talking about till a few minutes later when I followed Mama and Miss Lida Belle into the far side room. There we found two trunks over against the back wall, one flat on top, the other humpbacked-both dusty.

Mama lifted the lid of the humpbacked one.

"It smells terrible, Mama! Just like Grandma Ming's big old trunk! That one with all them little white b.a.l.l.s in it."

"'Course, hon. All trunks have to have camphor b.a.l.l.s in them, else the moths will get in."

There wasn't a thing in the tray of the trunk except a handful of dry, shriveled-up roses. Down in the bottom, though, we saw a long white dress with lots of lace on it and a man's dark Sunday suit.

Miss Lida Belle caught her breath. "Nannie! It's their wedding clothes! Is there a white s.h.i.+rt?"

"I'm afraid not."

"This other trunk is slam empty, Nannie."

Mama pulled out a wrinkled black coat and a pair of pants and handed them to Miss Lida Belle. Then she laid the wedding dress and the dead roses back in place.

"Move your fingers, Bandershanks. This heavy lid could cut them off."

"Well, Wes's got two white s.h.i.+rts. I'll just go get one o'

them. He'll never miss it, but don't say nothin', Nannie."

"You want Jodie to take you home in the buggy?"

"Naw, naw. I'll cut through the woods. It's not more'n a quarter of a mile."

While Miss Lida Belle was gone, Mama set Miss Ophelia's ironing board up on the backs of two straight chairs and put two flatirons on the kitchen stove to heat. But she couldn't find Miss Ophelia's cake of beeswax.

Aunt Vic knew what to do. She just stepped out in the back yard and broke off a few little sprigs from a cedar tree.

"Cedar's just as good as wax when it comes to making your iron smooth," she told me as she was stacking the p.r.i.c.kly green needles on the end of the ironing board.

Mama had the wrinkles pressed out of the suit by the time Miss Lida Belle got back with Mister Wes's white s.h.i.+rt and a celluloid collar that went with it.

"Lemme run the iron over these cuffs, Nannie. Looks like the last time I ironed this s.h.i.+rt, I must've just give it a lick and a promise. Here, I thought I'd better bring this too."

Miss Lida Belle handed Mama a narrow string of a black tie.

Mama handed it to me.

"You can tote the tie, Bandershanks."

We took the tie and the suit and the s.h.i.+rt and stiff collar up to the door of the front room and handed them to Papa. Mama didn't say so, but I knew Papa and Uncle Dan were going to dress up Mister Ward.

I knew why: you have to get dressed up in Sunday-go-to-meeting things when you die and go to Heaven. G.o.d's up there, and it wouldn't be very nice to go to see G.o.d with just weekday clothes on.

Up in the middle of the day, Mama and the other women put dinner on the kitchen table. Some of the folks who had been there all morning ate; some didn't.