— Yes, sir.
— Well, what, did you work for Mr. Earl, then?
She didn’t say anything for a moment, then she nodded.
— Yes, sir, she said, I worked for him, out at the house. I did. And Miss Birdie. Work in the house.
He looked at her, wondering what she was doing there. Maybe she wanted to view the corpse but didn’t feel like she could come to the funeral, though black and white were always welcome at a funeral.
— The funeral isn’t set till day after tomorrow, he said then. You could visit Mr. Earl then. I’m afraid he’s not been prepared for viewing, just yet.
— Yes, sir, she said, and stood there.
— I was just going to bed, Parnell said.
— Yes, sir, she said, I didn’t want to see Mr. Earl. I needed to get something from him.
Parnell thought, What in the world. He saw the jar in her hands then.
— What do you have in the jar, there?
— It’s a empty jar, the woman said.
— I can see that, Parnell said. Thinking, what? Some piece of jewelry or something? Did she think Earl Urquhart owed her money and come now to collect it in what looked like an empty preserves jar? Colored people. You couldn’t figure them.
— It’s late. What did you say your name was?
— Creasie Anderson, she said. -I keep house for Mr. Earl and Miss Birdie.
— Well, Creasie, why don’t you come back in two days and attend the funeral, I’m sure that’s what Miss Birdie would want.
The woman stood there, didn’t move, just staring at him with those eyes. He was about to shut the door when she spoke again.
— She say to tell you she knows about the government bodies. She said to tell you she knows old Clint what helped your papa sell them bodies to the government, and if I said that to you that you would let me in.
Parnell lost his hearing there for a long moment, and his vision seemed to tunnel down to a small round area within which this strange little brown woman with a kerchief on her head stood on the home’s veranda. Then through the roaring he heard something plaintive.
— What are you talking about? he said, though he was whispering now, without even thinking he needed to whisper, some automatic response to alarm. -Old Clint who used to work here? Who said?
He heard something again. Selena’s voice, from up at the top of the stairs, out of sight.
— Parnell, what is it?
He stepped back and motioned the woman to come in, and put a finger to his lips.
— Nothing, my darling, he called up to Selena, his voice sounding strange in his ringing ears.
— Parnell? Are you coming up? Selena’s voice carried like the quavery notes of some strange wind instrument down the stairs. -Come up to see me?
— Wait for me, Selena, he called, shooing the colored woman ahead of him down the hallway toward the door to the basement stairs. -I’ll be up soon, sweetheart.
— I’ll be waiting on you, Selena’s voice floated down, playful now, enticing.
He whispered to the colored woman when they reached the door to the basement stairs.
— Shhh, now. We can talk down here.
He watched the woman go slowly down the narrow stairway, holding to the rail, and tried to gather what she was saying into his brain. After his father had died, Parnell had been going through his papers when he saw a packet of official-looking letters, unmarked as to their origin. They were cryptic but seemed to suggest his father was involved in a project of some sort and that this involved those people and maybe more he didn’t know of who’d disappeared from the home but whose funerals had gone on as planned. And then one evening about a year after his father died another strange man came calling on his father, and when Parnell informed the man his father had died an unexpected death, along with his mother, the man nodded and stood there a while.
— Did your father tell you anything about activities on his part to assist the federal government, sir, in a study of some sort?
— No, Parnell said after a pause.
— He did not inform you in any way of his cooperation with a very important government project involving matters of national security, sir?
— No, sir, Parnell said, his heart racing. -Perhaps you can inform me, sir.
The man looked at him. Then he looked him slowly up and down, as if appraising him. Then the man said, — I’m sorry for your father’s untimely death, Mr. Grimes. Then he turned and walked away and got into a black car with plain hubcaps across the street and drove away.
For a while Parnell had been convinced that the government had something to do with his parents’ death. That whatever his father was involved in must have endangered him, he must have known something he wasn’t supposed to know, and so some strange espionage-like death was concocted for him. And for a long time after that he had worried that they believed he knew something and would one day be coming for him. But he never heard from them again. His mind was now reeling with the absurdity of the whole business now coming up again in the form of this dumpy little auntie standing there beside him at the empty preparation table, still in her old ragged coat, holding the jar in her two hands in front of her and just waiting.
— Miss V — and she stopped. -She say—
— Who is this she? Parnell interrupted her. He heard a tremulous quality in his own voice and realized he was beginning to perspire.
— Say we got to have the poor man’s heart, she said then, not looking at him.
— What? Who’s heart? Earl Urquhart’s heart? You are telling me you want this man’s heart? To put in that jar there?
Woman just nodded. She looks worse scared than I do, Parnell thought.
— This is insane! he almost shouted. He started to take her by the arm and rush her out the back door then, but she said again,
— She say to tell you old Clint know about your papa and giving the government them bodies. She say we got to have Mr. Earl’s heart in this here jar or she going to tell about it.
— Who says? he fairly hissed, throwing his arms up in the air.
— Mr. Grimes, I can’t say! she said, looking at him now and he could see tears in her eyes now, beginning to run down her big cheeks.
A thought tickled up to the front of his brain as if released from some little air bubble in the back of it somewhere. That this woman was an emissary of Birdie Urquhart. This was the man’s widow asking him to give her maid her husband’s heart in a goddamn mason jar, for God’s sake. Earlier that evening a drunken woman had telephoned him, said she was Earl Urquhart’s sister, and that she wanted him to do an autopsy (she’d ripped out the word in her slurring speech) on the man because in fact he’d been murdered (ripping that one out, too). He’d hung up on her, thinking it a vicious, foolish prank. And now a chill settled into his blood. Mrs. Birdie Urquhart. He felt a strange and ridiculous momentary sense of relief that maybe this actually had nothing to do with his father and the bodies but it was too confusing and his thoughts wheeled into chaos again.
My God, he thought then. This woman he’d worshiped from afar for much of his life, who looked like the movie stars he’d idolized as a child, who seemed some sort of essence of feminine allure to Parnell, about whom he’d fantasized in the earliest mixings of his contorted desire.
Standing there in the dim room lit by the auxiliary lamp in the corner looking at this frightened colored maid he felt a calm move through him as if he’d been administered a drug. It was the calm of the man who has resigned himself to a terrible turn of events in his life, say a murderer of some sort, whose deed is done and he resigns himself to the way it is and does not acclimate his mind to the anxieties of the lawful majority. He let go of the colored woman’s arm then and went over to the locker, opened it, and wheeled the gurney with Earl Urquhart’s body on it out, and turned the overhead lamp on and pulled back the sheet from his stricken face. He heard the woman catch her breath.