Chapter 19
Granddaddy Byrd died sitting up smoking a
cigarette.
“Looked the same as he always did, sitting there on
the porch while I took care of the house,” Mrs. Stone told everyone
down at the Bonnet. “Of course, it wasn’t as if I checked to see
how often he moved. He’s been sitting on that porch near fourteen
hours a day the last few years, but I always checked on him pretty
regular.”
Delia and the girls barely knew Mrs. Stone well
enough to recognize her. The woman had moved in with Granddaddy
Byrd about the time Amanda married, but no one knew how she had
persuaded that old man to let her live in the house.
“You think they’re doing it?” Dede asked Delia one
time.
“No,” Delia said. “I don’t. She needs a place to
live, and he needs somebody. Just glad it an’t me having to drag
out there and make sure he an’t taken to yelling at the cars on the
highway.”
“He’s a crazy old man.”
“Well, she’s a tough old lady.” Delia had not
wanted to talk about Granddaddy Byrd. She never did. “It’s the best
thing all around, Mrs. Stone watching him. At least it saves me the
trouble.”
Mrs. Stone was nervous when she came in to give
Delia the news, but carefully polite. M.T. said it was good of her
to come, and she replied that no one should hear about death over
the telephone. She pushed her thin hair behind her ears and took a
quick puff on her Salem when Delia sat down beside her on the couch
at the front of the Bonnet. Mrs. Stone was a big-boned woman,
though the loose skin on her neck and arms suggested she had once
been bigger still. The way she sat on the couch, it looked as if
she were trying not to put her full weight down. Used to be a whole
lot bigger, I bet, M.T. thought to herself.
“It was a good death,” Mrs. Stone said. “A good
death.” Delia nodded and took a drink of water from the little
bottle she had taken out of the icebox in the back. The smell of
Mrs. Stone’s cigarette was making her mouth go dry. Six months
since Delia had had a cigarette, and she still wanted one
desperately. Why did I quit? she wondered, and tried to focus on
what the woman was saying.
“Like I said, he was sitting up out there on the
porch in that old rocker I’d put out for him. Took me the longest
time to get him to use it and stop squatting on the steps. Always
had nail holes in his britches right in the seat. Got him in that
rocker and it made a world of difference. Think it made his knees
hurt less too, but he would never say so. You know how he was.”
Mrs. Stone looked around for an ashtray, and smiled gratefully when
M.T. handed her a souvenir glass dish from Stone Mountain.
“I’ve been there,” Mrs. Stone said, putting out the
cigarette in the dish where the peak of the mountain pushed up
against the rim. She smiled again, reflexively, pushed her hair
back one more time, and turned to Delia.
“Well, like I said. It had been a long time since
I’d seen him light another cigarette. And I’d shaken out the rugs
right by him, and he hadn’t complained like he usually did, and
that wasn’t right. I was used to him always making his harrumph
noises, spitting off to the side like I was driving him mad with
dust. Only this time he was not moving. I was starting to feel
grateful when I saw the ash fall off his finger, saw his finger was
scorched. Man had died between one drag and another. That cigarette
had burned to an ash between his two fingers.”
Mrs. Stone smiled gently. “He died right,” she
said, her head going up and down emphatically. “Man just died
peaceful and right.”
Past her shoulder Cissy could see Delia’s face, the
hollows beneath her cheekbones sucked in tight, her teeth clamped
together. She’s going to cry, Cissy thought. But Delia only shook
her head once and pushed her hairpins back in her twist. Cissy saw
her lips move then, repeating an inaudible curse.
“Goddamn,” Delia said. “If so, it’s just about the
only thing he ever did right.” She turned around to get her
purse.
Cissy drove out to Granddaddy Byrd’s
farmhouse with Delia. Dede pulled in behind them at the 1-84
junction, driving the little VW, the one she called the turnip,
that she had bought off Marcia Pearlman’s nephew Malcolm. It was
painted purple and white and had dirt crusted over the back bumper
where Dede kept ramming it into the dried mud bank of the ditch by
her trailer park.
“Got a call from M.T.,” Dede told Cissy when she
climbed out of the car. She was wearing cutoff jeans and one of the
black and white Goober’s T-shirts, emblazoned “Can Hold My Own”
with two hands drawn in so that they cupped her breasts. She nodded
at Mrs. Stone. “He died then?”
“He did.” Mrs. Stone smiled. “He surely did. Went
as easy as you please. Best death I ever saw.” She glanced once at
the T-shirt’s legend and pinked up, but kept her smile and led them
up the steps into the house.
For Cissy it was the first time she had been to the
farmhouse since they moved to Cayro, and it looked as if it had
barely changed, though Mrs. Stone must have been watering the
bushes at the sides of the steps. They were fuller and not so brown
and dry. Otherwise, the house seemed untouched, except that the
porch steps had been torn down and rebuilt, the new wood making the
rest of the place look even more worn and silvery. The pine siding
seemed almost marshmallow-soft in places, and the entry was marked
with greasy handprints and mildewed smudges shoulder-high along the
pink wallpaper surface.
“I never could get that clean,” Mrs. Stone said
when she saw where Cissy was looking. “Mr. Byrd said it was from
Luke dragging his wet self along when he’d come in late nights.
Might have been. It’s an oil stain, won’t come off.” She seemed
nervous with the three women looking around.
“He’s in there. I didn’t do much, just cleaned him
up and got him covered. That boy Jasper from the Texaco station
helped carry him in for me.” She waved toward the bedroom that
opened off the side of the living room next to the arched
fireplace. The headboard was just visible against the wall past the
door—a big dark-wood headboard whose posts were cut off ragged so
that the lighter core of the wood showed raw and dusty. The pillows
had been taken off the bed, and Granddaddy Byrd’s prominent chin
was visible where his head lay tilted slightly backward.
“Amazing how heavy he was. The dead always are,
though. I remember my husband Howard, how heavy he got.” Cissy and
Dede couldn’t help but stare at Mrs. Stone. Delia ignored her,
looking to the open bedroom and the body that lay there.
“You know this place is yours.” Mrs. Stone was
trying to get Delia to look at her. She stepped forward so that her
body blocked Delia’s view. “From your parents,” she said. “Your
daddy held the paper on it before he died. And he never left no
will. I went through everything when I was helping Mr. Byrd get the
Social Security started. No will anywhere. So it is all yours.
Always was.”
Delia said nothing. She stepped around Mrs. Stone
and headed for the bedroom. Cissy hesitated to follow her, and Dede
had already stepped over to the fireplace and the crowded
mantel.
“I did him as nice as I could,” Mrs. Stone went on.
Cissy thought she was talking about the laying out, but it quickly
became obvious she was not. “He wasn’t no trouble once I got used
to his ways. He always wanted it quiet. Said he didn’t like to hear
no hen-scratching woman talk. Well, I didn’t put up with that, you
can imagine. Told him I wasn’t going to tiptoe around while I did
my work. No sir.”
Delia finally looked at the woman. “He always
wanted it quiet,” she said.
“Well, he was old. Old men are like that.” Mrs.
Stone was nodding again.
“How old was he?” Dede’s voice was frankly curious.
“He’d never say.”
“Oh, near about a hundred for sure. When I got his
Social Security going, they were real surprised to hear about him.
Must have thought he was dead. Don’t get too many men in their
nineties going in to apply for benefits.”
Delia had turned away toward the death room again.
She walked to the doorway and stopped. Cissy was looking at Dede.
“You’ve been out here?” Cissy asked.
“A few times.” Dede’s face was guarded, her mouth
pulled back at one corner as if she were thinking something
caustic. “I come out to see him a couple of times. He wouldn’t
never say much.”
They just looked at each other. Mrs. Stone was
going on about her accomplishment—getting that old man to do the
paperwork for his Social Security. Delia looked back at the woman
briefly with eyes that had gone hot and dark. The skin around
Delia’s eyes looked tight. Cissy felt a momentary pulse of anger.
There was something Delia and Dede knew, something in their
eyes.
“Course we only got them to pay $154 a month,” Mrs.
Stone went on. “Nothing really, but with the chicken eggs and the
garden produce we would sell off the porch I managed. Managed
pretty well.” She looked pleased with herself, her face alight with
achievement.
“And he got to die at home. He got to die right.”
Mrs. Stone beamed at Delia.
They all looked at her. Her moon-wide face flushed,
and she looked hastily from Cissy to Dede.
“Well, think of the tragedy he endured. Losing his
sons. That Luke’s been in jail about all his life. And you daddy.”
She gestured at Delia and made a sad face. “So much loss,” she
said. “So much loss.”
“Let me see him.” Delia walked through the doorway,
away from the suddenly stricken Mrs. Stone. She looked back once
from the room and pushed the door closed behind her. Mrs. Stone
nodded, took out a hankie, and wiped her eyes. She turned to the
girls. “So much loss,” she said again. Cissy could see no tears,
but the grief seemed genuine.
Mrs. Stone blew her nose and shook her head
sorrowfully. “He was all the family she had left, wasn’t he? Except
for you girls?” She clearly was not going to stop talking. It was
as if all those years of taking care of Granddaddy Byrd had left
her with an ungovernable tongue. Or perhaps she did not know how to
be around people who were supposed to be grieving but seemed more
curious than despondent.
“Oh, I heard a lot about you.” Mrs. Stone waved her
handkerchief at Cissy and Dede. “Delia’s girls. Oh my, yes. Delia’s
two pitiful girls.”
Cissy narrowed her eyes, If the old man had said
that, he meant Dede and Amanda, not her. She could bet he’d never
mentioned her.
Dede stepped over and put a hand on Mrs. Stone’s
arm. She said, “We’d like a minute too. I know you have things to
do, stuff to get together. So don’t let us stop you.”
Mrs. Stone’s mouth gaped a little. “Well, I wanted
to talk to your mama,” she said. “There are things ... well, there
are things I’d like to discuss.”
She’s going to want to stay here, Dede thought. She
probably has nowhere else to go. Dede was nodding, her hand patting
Mrs. Stone’s arm.
“Yes,” she said. “There will be lots to talk over,
but there will be time later. I’m sure you have all kinds of things
that need to be done.”
Mrs. Stone’s head bobbed fiercely. “Oh yes,” she
said. “Oh my, yes.” And headed back to the kitchen.
The girls watched Mrs. Stone walk away. When the
kitchen door swung shut behind her, they both sighed. “Big solid
butt on her,” Dede said. “How old you think she is?”
“Old enough to know better.” Cissy’s drawl was
bitter, but Dede nodded in agreement, her face pensive.
“Lord. Don’t ever let me get that desperate.” Dede
ran her palm up her neck to her chin. “Saddest damn thing in the
world.” She looked at Cissy. “What you think?”
Cissy shrugged. “You really came out here on your
own?” she asked. She watched Dede’s eyes track around the room,
cataloging junk, tools, and knickknacks. A line of ugly ceramic
dolls sat on the mantel in order of size. Each had the same painted
black face with exaggerated features, red lips, and red
aprons.
“What you want to bet those are Mrs. Stone’s?” Dede
waved at the dolls.
Cissy laughed. “No bet.”
“Yeah,” Dede said after a moment. “I came out here.
When y’all came back. Before Delia came and got us.” She looked
around the room. “Give the old lady something. This is a lot
cleaner than it was. It was awful.”
Cissy tasted dust in her mouth, but the room was
clean, more or less. The floor was swept, the rug was smoothed, the
surfaces crowded but scrubbed. Still, the air in the room tasted
old and bitter-woody, as if the grit of the pine walls had been
sifting down a long time.
“You come out here alone?” Cissy watched Dede’s
eyes. They kept moving, lighting on one thing and then another.
Something was wrong. Something was bothering her. Dede looked like
she had been drinking a lot of coffee or holding something in too
long. The muscles in her neck were jumping.
“Alone, yeah. I came alone.” Dede turned around to
face the mantel. “You don’t know. Grandma Windsor, she never would
tell us nothing. Never said more than Delia’s name and a curse.
Told me I was just like her, sinful and hard-hearted. Called me
names like you wouldn’t believe that old lady would speak, but she
would say anything to us. Anything.” She paused.
“And I heard enough. People love to tell horrible
things. Heard this old man was out here. I hitchhiked out to see
for myself who he was.”
“I can’t believe he told you anything. He was a
damn hard man. You should have seen how he treated Delia.” Cissy
grimaced, remembering the first morning she’d spent in Cayro, the
overcooked egg sandwich at the diner, and that old man with his
crooked hands and evil eyes. “Harrumph.”
Dede grinned at her. “I bet,” she said. “I can just
bet.”
On the walls on either side of the mantel were
black-and-white pictures in painted metal frames, most of them
featuring cars and people standing around cars. There were
different groupings in each photo, but the same figures recurred.
Children, a woman, a man, and in many—startling for how little he
had changed—the figure of Granddaddy Byrd. Dede pointed to one of
the photos.
“That’s our uncle Luke, the one she was talking
about. He raced stock cars for a while. He was the one I always
wanted to meet, but I think he’s been in jail since I was
born.”
Cissy stepped closer and looked at the face. “He
kill somebody?” she asked.
“Something.” Dede’s shoulders went up and down.
“The old man wouldn’t say.”
“What did he tell you?”
Dede turned to Cissy, her face squeezed into a
peculiar expression resembling awe. “He talked about Delia. He
talked about her like she was one of the Seven Wonders.”
“But he hated her.”
“Maybe.” Dede shrugged. “If he did, he was proud
too. He was a strange old man.”
Cissy looked back at the photos. In the center of
the display there was one with a smudge on the bottom of the frame.
A scorch mark showed on the wallpaper beneath the frame as if a
candle had been held too close to the image. It was a family photo
with everyone leaning against one of those fat-looking old cars
with rounded bumpers. A woman held an infant in her arms while two
little boys leaned into her skirt. Next to her was a handsome man
with a tiny girl up on his shoulders, her knees jutting out around
his chin. Just to one side of them all was an almost smiling
caricature of Granddaddy Byrd, looking just enough like himself for
Cissy to recognize the face.
“He talked to you,” she whispered.
“A little. I had to be patient. You couldn’t ask
him no questions or he’d get all mean and clam up. Didn’t bother
me, though. I had grown up with Grandma Windsor.” She laughed
harshly. “Granddaddy Byrd had nothing on her.”
Cissy shook her head. She tried to imagine
Granddaddy Byrd sitting on his porch talking to his
great-granddaughter like a real person. It was beyond her. She
looked again at the photo—the old man had either just smiled or was
about to smile when the picture was snapped. The shape of the mouth
was proof.
Her eyes tracked across the other people in the
photo. The woman was laughing. She had hair that looked to be the
exact shade that Cissy’s hair turned in late summer, light, almost
blond, but the face looked like Delia’s. Cissy looked sideways at
Dede. No, the face looked like Dede.
“She looks like you,” Cissy said to Dede.
Dede stepped close to the picture. “Maybe.” She
frowned. “More like Delia, I think.”
“No.” Cissy shook her head. “Like you.”
Dede pursed her lips and shrugged. “That’s them,
you know. The lost family.” Her finger tapped each figure. “Delia’s
mama, our grandmother. The daddy, Granddaddy Byrd’s prize son. And
the boys. And Delia herself.” The finger stopped on the little
girl. “All of them.”
Cissy stared at the woman and the boys. “They
died?”
“All of them, yeah.”
“Damn.”
“You knew.” It was something between a question and
an accusation.
Cissy frowned. What did she know? She looked again
at the little girl, at Delia. The relaxed, easy face of a child who
was happy to be where she was. The open mouth that was ready to
smile, and it looked as if she smiled a lot. The small-framed body,
thin face, big eyes, a girl no more than seven or eight. The boys
had bruised knees, sharp elbows, and big smiles. The baby was
cuddled up to the mama’s neck. All of them were leaning into each
other, a happy family. Delia’s family.
Delia had been raised by Granddaddy Byrd, that was
what Cissy knew. The family had died somehow. The story had been
passed over, whispered or mumbled. She remembered Delia’s face
stern with grief and pain. Not crying season, some earlier time,
some terrible story had been told and buried. Or had it ever been
told at all? How had they died? A car wreck? Cissy looked at all
the cars in the pictures. Then she looked again at Granddaddy Byrd
with that almost smile.
The bedroom door swung open. Delia stepped out, her
face wrung dry. Cissy flinched, seeing the bones of that little
girl in her mother’s narrow features.
“I’ll have to talk to Reverend Hillman,” she said.
“Or maybe Michael. Maybe Amanda would prefer I asked Michael.” She
ran one hand through her hair and looked back at the kitchen door.
“And I need to talk to Mrs. Stone, settle with her.”
Delia’s shoulders slumped as she moved toward the
kitchen. She’s getting old, Cissy thought. She looked back at the
picture and the little girl. How long since it was taken?
Thirty-five, forty years now? She thought about the old man on the
bed, her great-grandfather, and the man in the photo. Little laugh
lines around the mouth, crinkled eyes. Part of the happy family.
Behind him the grinning dark-headed uncle leaned in over the
bumper, one leg up, and he too was laughing. Part of the family she
didn’t know. Cissy did not know any of them. She shuddered.
“They all died,” she whispered.
Dede was at Cissy’s elbow. “Happens,” she said.
“Terrible things happen all the time.” She crossed her arms over
her breasts and clamped a hand down on each shoulder. “Let’s go
out. I need a smoke.”
Cissy looked toward the kitchen, but Delia had gone
through the door. She turned and followed her sister, still
thinking about the photos. They belonged to Delia now, along with
the house and everything else. Cissy trailed one hand along the
stain on the wallpaper in the entry. All this had belonged to
Delia’s parents, to the family.
Dede squatted on the front steps and shook out a
Camel. She lit it with one of the Day-Glo lighters she kept in a
stand by the cash register at the store. The piercing blue color
went opalescent as she turned it in her hand, then back to a
shivery sapphire. Dede was always getting in new lighters, buying
them for herself, and losing them everywhere she went. She tossed
this one from one hand to the other and then laid it down on the
steps.
Cissy dropped down beside her. The dimensions of
the yard seemed to have altered. The sky had gone dark, and a wind
was picking up. “It’s going to rain,” she said.
“Maybe.” Dede looked at Cissy and then back out
across the yard. “Nolan wants me to marry him.”
Cissy turned to her. “What?”
“Marry him. Nolan wants me to marry him.” Dede’s
face was pinched. She seemed angry.
“Well, don’t you want to marry him?”
“I don’t want to marry nobody.” Dede kicked her
feet hard on the steps. “Not Nolan, not anyone.” She rocked her
body forward and back fiercely while her fingers did a complicated
spinning trick with the cigarette in one hand. She took a drag and
then shot the smoke out in a long stream. “Goddamn.”
“Don’t you love Nolan?” Cissy said it carefully,
but not carefully enough.
Dede jumped up. “Hell. Course I love him.” She
strode back and forth, waving the cigarette like a pointer in the
air. “But marriage. Marriage screws things up. Think about it. Who
do we know married and happy?”
“Amanda?”
“Oh! Amanda! Amanda an’t happy.”
Cissy watched the bright blue lighter rocking on
the step’s edge.
“Dede, you love Nolan.”
“Love has got nothing to do with it. Marriage is
what’s wrong. I’d sooner tattoo Nolan’s name on my butt than marry
him.” Dede paused in her furious march, her face breaking up into a
grin that Cissy had never seen before, half glee and half outrage.
“I would too. Damn sight better to wear a tattoo than a wedding
ring.”
Cissy nodded. Dede would do anything, that was
sure. Maybe it was the old man dying, but Cissy suddenly realized
that Dede had been tightening up for weeks. She had thought the
cause was Emmet, who had started hanging around Delia again. M.T.
said Delia was having long lunches with him, something Dede had
complained about the week before. The funny part was that Cissy
knew Dede liked Emmet. It was just the idea of Delia liking the man
too much that seemed to get Dede so upset. But Nolan? Dede loved
Nolan, and Nolan surely loved Dede. Where was the problem with
that?
“It’s going to go to hell,” Dede said.
Cissy looked at her sister. Dede was standing there
with her head tilted back looking up at the storm clouds rolling
high in the sky. Her eyes were red and visibly wet. She flicked her
cigarette butt out into the grass.
“It’s just all going to go straight to hell.” Her
tone was unequivocal and sadly defeated.
Oh God, Cissy thought. Don’t let her do something
stupid. Please God. Please. Let Nolan tell her he doesn’t want to
get married, that it was all a joke. She put her hands over her
ears and pressed tight, listening to her teeth grind. Nolan had
been so happy lately, so happy. He’d gone down to Atlanta and done
his audition, and had just grinned wide when Cissy asked him about
it.
“We’ll just have to wait and see,” he told Cissy.
“Just wait and see. Dede and me, no telling what we might
do.”
He doesn’t understand, Cissy thought, not sure she
did either. The look on Dede’s face was pure misery. That Cissy
could understand. Dede was hurting. Dede was scared and hurting
bad.
Granddaddy Byrd’s funeral was at Holiness
Redeemer. Michael brought Amanda, who barely acknowledged what was
happening, not even bothering to chase little Michael when he ran
over to Dede and Nolan. Jean and Mim stood with Cissy. Mrs. Stone
had brought them the old white Bible from the farmhouse, but Delia
pretended not to see it. Michael tucked it under one arm and pulled
his boys up on his lap for the prayers. When they all walked away
from the graveside, Delia remained standing by the massed pile of
flowers. She came back to the Terrill Road house an hour after
everyone else and went out to sit under the pecan trees out back.
When he saw her back there, Michael took the boys out to her. He
didn’t speak, just nodded and took a seat on one of the chairs
Delia had been planning to refinish. He kept Gabe on his knee while
Michael ran back and forth from his father to the farthest tree.
Gabe kept waving his arms and making “mmm mmm” sounds. After a bit
Delia lifted one hand and waved it in Gabe’s direction. Happily he
tried to catch her hand. On the third try, he managed it and was
transferred from his daddy’s knee to his grandmother’s arms. She
pressed her face into his hair and hugged him close. Michael stood
up and walked over to the tree where his oldest son was piling up
pecans. He didn’t return until well after he heard Gabe start to
giggle and Delia finally laugh.