She sat in the hearse, waiting for the others, and I wanted to go to her. I wanted to say something kind and comforting, but I couldn’t think of anything Mrs. Evans would believe. I hopped on my bike and coasted down the hill. Myron loved his cats, I said to myself. That was something. The road blurred in front of me.
I think Daddy might have forced himself to go back to work on Monday if Willis hadn’t been hit with another tragedy. Bad luck comes in threes, folks said; the fire and the hanging just weren’t enough. “The devil’s got to have his due.” I must have heard that a dozen times.
Arlen and Les and their kids were swimming at Moon Lake when the devil took his third delight. They saw the whole thing, watched the plane lose power and go into a dive, straight into Moon Lake at the deepest part, watched the waves suck it down, a tin toy in a whirlpool.
When Arlen busted through the front door to tell us about it, Mom and I were sitting in the living room in front of the fan with nothing on our minds but that hot wind. Daddy had just ventured down the stairs for the first time all week.
“You won’t believe this,” she said. “You will not.” Her hair had dried in twisted strands and shook like a head full of water snakes. “I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.” She saw Daddy standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking like his own ghost. “Mercy me, Dean, you are going to broil wearing that flannel robe in this heat.”
“Mind your business, Arlen,” he said.
“How dare you tell me to mind my business? I saved your life, Dean Macon, and I could have just kept to myself.”
“Please,” Mom said, “not again.”
Daddy sat down on the last step and tightened the belt of his robe. I was glad he stayed clear of the wind of the fan. He had the weeklong smell of sickness. When I took him the breakfasts he didn’t eat or the suppers he barely poked, I left the tray on the nightstand and slipped out of the room as fast as I could. Mom refused to sleep with him though he begged not to be left alone in the dark. At first she pretended it was accidentaclass="underline" she fell asleep in the chair in his room or on the couch downstairs; but now she slept in Grandma Rose’s room every night, and I didn’t blame her. Still, I believe I would have slept on the floor before I slept in the bed where a woman died.
“I think it was a two-seater,” Arlen said.
“What?” said Mom.
“The plane. I’m telling you about the plane we saw go down in the lake. It was such a little thing, like a piece of folded paper. It circled wide at first, real high, a kind of loop-the-loop. Then it started spinning, tighter and tighter, heading straight for the water. We all sat on the beach — laughing and clapping. We thought it was a show. Any minute we expected the pilot would pull back. But all of a sudden, there wasn’t a sound. The engine stopped dead. The wind stopped too, and the plane fell out of the sky like a bird with a bullet in its belly. Dead duck. Hit the water like a duck too, that flat splat. It sat on the surface for a couple of seconds, bobbing; then it sank so fast I thought I’d had a dream and none of it had happened.”
I looked over at the stairs to see how my father was taking it, but he was gone. This past week he’d gotten so quiet it scared me — no more clomping or banging, no more yelling or snoring. He was slipping out of the world, it seemed to me, and I wondered if you stopped hearing a person before he disappeared for good.
“Well?” Mom said.
“Well, what?”
“The pilot, did he get out?”
“Now, this is the truly strange part, if you ask me. I swear on my dear mother’s grave I saw someone swimming away from the wreck. Les and the boys just laughed at me. They said the crash would have knocked him silly; he didn’t have time to get out, and even if he did, he’d be in no condition to swim from the middle of Moon Lake to the shore. They said I saw driftwood or a piece of the plane rocking on the waves, but don’t you think I know the difference between a man and a piece of wood?” She laughed. “Well, sometimes it’s harder to tell than others, but this time I’m sure: there were arms moving. There were legs kicking. Someone’s alive and we should find him before he’s not.”
“Did you call the sheriff?”
“That worthless dog? He’s barely moved all week. Won’t wear his badge either. Sits in his office, panting from the heat. Brokenhearted over Myron Evans, I hear. You’d think they were sweethearts. Anyway, I tried to get Les to drive around the east shore, just to see, but he said I was on the verge of one of my hysterical fits and he was taking me home. He thinks I’m in my room, right this minute. He locked the door himself, thinks I’m sitting on the bed waiting for Dr. Ben to come give me a tranquilizer. That man could have been a fine horse doctor the way he can put a person to sleep. Whatever ails you, he thinks the best cure is to knock you out for a day or two. Never mind. You know how I escaped?” She was getting the giggles, and I began to think Uncle Les might have been right about that hysterical fit. “I climbed out the window and slid down the rain gutter. Me. Forty-eight years old. Spry as a girl. Young heart.” She gave my arm a slap. “Bet you couldn’t slide down no rain gutter, Lizzie.”
“Don’t give her ideas,” Mom said.
“Anyway, somebody’s alive,” Arlen said. “I hope they find him in time.”
I believed her at first, but as soon as she told us how she escaped from her room, I began to think my uncle Les had had a good idea calling the doctor. She thought Jesse was alive too — for days — even though we’d all seen his eyes flung open, wild with surprise. We’d all seen Nina breathing into him, the only one who thought to call him back, but it was hours too late. And we’d all seen the sheriff wrap him in a sheet after the doctor said, “Been dead since two o’clock.” It was well past five. Still Arlen didn’t believe it, and Les had to hold her back when Caleb Wolfe drove away with the soaked sheet making a dark spot on the backseat of his car. At the burial she wailed: Take my baby out of that box. Reverend Piggott waited for her moaning to stop before he said: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust … And then, raising his hands to God, Weep not for him who is dead, nor bemoan him; but weep bitterly for him who goes away, for he shall return no more to see his native land.
My grandmother dreamed of water the night she died. “I was caught in an eddy,” she told my mother, “spinning in the cold river. My head was about to go under, but I woke before the water could suck me down for the last time, and I’m still alive.”
Grandma Rose must have known how close she’d come to the rocks, that they waited for her on the other side of her closed eyelids. But my mother said, “Hush now, hush now,” and pulled the knotted sheet from her crippled hands. When my grandmother slept at last, Mother slipped away.
In the morning, my mother found Daddy in Rose’s room and almost scolded him for waking her. But he was on his knees, his head resting on her bed, quiet, so quiet. He had uncovered the old woman’s feet and was staring at them. He caressed one, touched her toes with his fingertips, so tender, full of awe, as if he touched the feet of Jesus. “I had a dream,” he said. “I saw her swirling in dark water, but I couldn’t reach her, you see? I didn’t get here in time.”
23
EVERY NIGHT Daddy called me to his room. And every night he asked me to read the paper, the Rovato Daily News, just the parts about the plane crash. I did, despite the fact that Mother had forbidden it. She didn’t like my going to his room at all. She said, “If we stay away, maybe he’ll take a bath.” That was all she had to say concerning my father.