The church, not large to begin with, was packed. The celebrant, Father Greene, preceded the pallbearers wheeling the caskets into the church. The families of the dead men followed like hushed sheep. My arms around Mark and Sister, I walked down the aisle with them, faces leaping out at me from the crowd: Davis; his wife, Cayla; their son, Bradley, looking awkward and fidgety in a suit; Ed and Wanda (who had fortunately decided to bypass her Elvis regalia); Ivalou Purcell, frowning at us; Steven Teague, a look of professional sorrow on his face, standing with Eula Mae. One corner held my library contingent of Itasca, Florence, and even Gretchen, and I felt touched they were here. Candace’s parents sat in a row near the family reserve. Junebug’s clan was absent, still maintaining their ceaseless vigil at the hospital.
When we settled into our seats, the front left pews were full of Shiverses from near and far, while the right front pews held Sister, Mark, me, assorted relatives of ours, Candace, Hart Quadlander, and the Kinnards. I saw Nola shoot Sister a particularly venomous glance at one point, but Sister didn’t notice. Nola caught me looking and defiance crossed her face. She stared down into her lap, a lock of loose brown hair dangling over her forehead.
“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord,” Father Greene began as we joined in, prayer books in hand, those not used to the service fumbling to the correct page. I mumbled along, trying to convince myself I was actually saying these words for Trey and Clevey. My throat felt molten-this was the beginning of goodbye.
“O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered. Accept our prayers on behalf of thy servants Clevey and Trey, and grant them an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of thy saints-” Father Greene implored, and I thought: Trey will find the fellowship of saints quite dull. A cousin of Clevey’s rose and stepped to the pulpit to read the usual passages from Isaiah and Lamentations. “The Lord is good unto them that wait for him,” he said, and I thought of minutes stretched into hours, into days, into years that we had waited for Trey.
Mark sat between Sister and me, my arm around him, my hand on her shoulder. She held her purse stiffly, staring straight ahead, ignoring both prayer book and Bible, her sunglasses hiding her marred face. I couldn’t see if tears moistened her eyes. Mark’s neck felt rigid against my arm. I watched Truda Shivers; she sat between her sisters, her head held high. She would see her son off in dignity.
I risked a glance over my shoulder. Hart Quadlander had a comforting arm around Nola Kinnard, who was dabbing at her tears with a wad of tissue and making snuffling noises. Scott held her hand and his eyes met mine. Oddly, he smiled shyly, then looked down again at his mother’s lap. It suddenly struck me that they had known an entirely different Trey than I had; a man with a family he’d abandoned, a past he’d just as soon not acknowledge. I wondered if he was happy with them, or if he was ever lonesome for his own child when he played with Scott, or missed the soft press of his wife’s arms when he hugged Nola. They were probably decent enough folks, but I didn’t think they were worthy substitutes for Sister and Mark. I admit to personal bias.
Hart caught me looking and I turned back toward the pulpit. While psalms were read, I thought again about what Thomasina Clifton had told me: Hart Quadlander was one of her clients, and she remembered at least one time when Rennie had gone out to the Quadlander farm to help her clean. I wondered if he knew the girl, or remembered her. But then wouldn’t Trey have known her? He’d always maintained Rennie was a stranger to him.
We stood for the Gospel and were duly told that in our father’s house are many mansions. I didn’t pay much attention to the service, having gone through it by rote too many times. I felt guiltily glad Sister and the Shiverses had declined to have Communion at the service. Before I knew it, we were standing, ready to continue the service with the Committal at the grave sites. We stepped out into kind sunshine, a welcome break from the drizzly rains of the last several days.
Clevey’s burial came first. I hung back from the crowd, conscious of Davis and his family near me. I listened to the calming tones of Father Greene and tried not to think about the gap-toothed carrot-top I’d grown up with who would lie moldering in that casket. I started when the dirt hit the coffin. Slowly, people walked toward their cars, to head to the Quadlander farm. Louis Slocum, Trey’s father, was buried there and we’d arranged for Trey to be buried next to his father.
Louis Slocum had been interred near the creekside oaks where he’d gotten rip-roaring drunk so many nights. I sometimes wondered if he’d favored the quiet company of the leaves and the breeze and the trees more than of people, He had teen terribly neglectful of Trey, and I’d always thought him a low fellow because of it. Now Trey was coming home, and would share his father’s company forever. Death conducts every final reunion.
We stood again by a grave, the second ceremony seeming like an eerie echo of the first, as though Clevey’s burial had been a dress rehearsal and Trey’s was the true performance.
“Thou knowest, Lord,” Father Greene intoned for the second time that day, “the secrets of our hearts; shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer…” The secrets of our hearts. I glanced at Sister, with her terrible secret, her bruised face a badge of deception. Why wouldn’t she tell me the truth? Who could she be protecting? Candace’s hand closed around mine and I squeezed it.
The sun shone bright, the clouds having retreated to a bluish-gray smudge near the horizon, but the day was still chilly. I saw Mark shiver as Father Greene cast earth upon his father’s coffin. Mark did not look at his mother or at me. He stared down into his father’s grave like it was some distant mirror. Candace leaned against me and I wrapped my arm around her, feeling her comforting warmth.
This was the legitimate goodbye, I thought. The goodbye to Trey was never said before because he walked away from us. Was he watching us now, a slight smile on his face that his wife and his son were-
“Bitch,” a voice softly said, barely breaking the drone of Father Greene’s somnolent voice. I had almost thought I’d imagined it until the word repeated, harder, more forcefully. “You bitch, you killed him!”
At one corner of the grave Nola Kinnard stood, her hands clenched into fists, her upswept, overmoussed brown hair not moving in the breeze. Tears mottled her angry face. She was too close to the edge of the grave and a rain of pebbles and muddy clods rained down on the casket.
“Nola, for God’s sake!” Hart seized her arm and pulled her back from the open ground.
She wrenched free from him. “I can’t stand here while the bitch that murdered him stands there and watches him put in the ground! Look at her! Look at her face!”
Scott seized his mother’s arm and tried to hush her. “Mom, please, don’t! Don’t!”
“We all know you did it! You hit him! You told him to stay away from your precious brat! And when he didn’t want to, when he wanted to see his boy, you killed him! You killed him!” She broke into heaving sobs, cradling Scott’s head in her arm as he struggled against her.
Hart shot me a look of distress and tried to steer Nola and Scott away from the grave. She jerked away from him, releasing Scott, and launched herself at Ed Dickensheets, burying her face against his shoulder. Embarrassed, he held her awkwardly, trying to stroke her hairsprayed helmet of hair in comfort. Wanda gaped at Nola, not knowing what to do under these funereal circumstances. Ivalou was more inventive, yanking on Nola’s arm, calling her a mean-faced little hussy in a sharp whisper.