When he came back down, two officers arrived wearing black, fleecy uniform coats. The older one had a coffee and chuffed white steam as he sipped. The younger took off his cowboy hat and black leather glove and reached out his hand. Kit recognized him as Caleb, the young man with the shy squint who had been so nice to her at the spaghetti supper. They had crossed paths in town on occasion. He would wave or tip his hat, but she always rushed on by. It didn’t matter he was only a cop in training; she was uneasy about his getting a good look at her. Today, though, she had called the police herself. She didn’t know what was supposed to happen with the body, but she was at least clearheaded enough to know that not calling the police would look shady. She hadn’t expected Caleb. He looked so friendly and she was so worn out from crying and carrying Eleanor and missing her, so worried about where she would go next, that she shook his hand and noticed a strange desire to be hugged by him.
“Hi, Kit,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry about Miz Eleanor. Officer Jackson gave me a heads-up he was coming to take her away and let me come along.”
The older cop nodded to Kit, then went upstairs with the coroner. Caleb stayed downstairs.
“How are you doing?” he asked, real sweet, like he genuinely wanted to know.
She shook her head and felt too sad to answer.
He smiled in an understanding way. “It couldn’t have been easy on you, finding her there. I was the one who found my daddy.”
Kit remembered Eleanor mentioning his father had died. She kept her eyes on him to show she was listening.
“I don’t know if you want to hear about this—”
“I do,” Kit said. She was glad for a distraction from her grief.
“He fell in the shower,” Caleb said. “I heard the sound. He was a big man, and the weight of him coming down on the bathtub . . . well, I don’t have to tell you the rest, but it was something awful.”
Kit nodded. “Something so awful you couldn’t feel it,” she said.
“Exactly,” he said, and he lit up. “Like I was watching it on a screen, like I wasn’t really a part of it.”
There was a pause between them. Kit was comforted to hear him put words to a feeling she had had so many times before.
“Was he a good dad then?” Kit asked.
Caleb let out an uneasy chuckle. “Naw,” he said. “He was a sonofabitch.”
Kit smiled. She had such a peculiar feeling talking to Caleb. At first, she thought there wasn’t much to him, just a nice, simple, white-bread kind of guy. But he was also very steady and reassuring, more than she would expect to look at him. And he had been through hard times, too.
The stairs inside groaned under heavy, cautious steps as the men brought down the gurney. When they got to the bottom of the stairs, the coroner released a latch and extended the gurney’s wheeled legs. He handed Kit a clipboard with some paperwork and a pen.
“Here’s where you release the remains to me,” he said, gruff and detached. “You read it through and sign anywhere you see an X. You can say your goodbyes now.” He unzipped the body bag just past Eleanor’s face. He pulled out another cigarette, offered one to Officer Jackson, and went back to the van to smoke it. Caleb stepped away to allow Kit a moment with Eleanor.
Kit pulled the sides of the body bag open to get a better look at her aunt. Even in the half hour since Kit had last seen Eleanor’s body, it had changed. Her spirit was gone. Her eyelids were sunken and her skin had lost the last of its color. There was nothing of her personality left, only the traces of the life she had lived. Kit stroked Eleanor’s fine, long hair to feel her again, and still, nothing. It was a hollow goodbye. She wished she could go back to the night before, when Eleanor, in her long, blue flannel nightgown had poked her head in Kit’s room and told her to “take out the damn garbage and tie the bag tighty-tight or the mice will be here to stay.” Then she had shuffled in her too-big house slippers and dropped a loud fart and laughed at herself all the way back down the stairs.
The sleepy cemetery director allowed it, one less digger to pay, though not without chiding her for the late stage of her pregnancy. It was the very least she could do for Eleanor. The orange clay soil was dense and unyielding, and Kit took plenty of breaks to let the little one rest. But her palms were full of blisters by the time the work was done. Perhaps it was better, she reasoned as she cleaved the earth with her shovel, that Eleanor never knew how wicked she had been. Her aunt had died in peace, she hoped, among family, with the happy promise of a new baby. Wasn’t that a good thing?
A great many people showed up, some tearful, some not. Pastor Tom spoke a few words and called her Ellie when he said goodbye. Caleb was there and cried when Beulah went up and sang “I’ll Fly Away.” Her child’s voice, which sounded so silly when she spoke, was angelic in song. The service was simple and elegant, the only hiccup being that Sugar Faye, whose pregnancy was on display in a revealing black dress, wept and snorted and blew her nose in a conspicuous show of grief, her sons in the near distance playing tackle tag among the gravestones. Kit thought Eleanor would have gotten a kick out of it.
When the service was over, Kit took up her shovel and covered the coffin with dirt. Each time she dug her shovel in, her chest tightened, her throat twisted like someone was wringing it. Her hands began to shake, and she rested on a knee to gather strength and calm the gale that was stirred up inside her. There was no time to grieve. Her belly was large and heavy in her hips, and the feeling that she had to pee just never went away. She had to find a place to live before she was due. Baby would not bide.
Now that her only connection to this place was gone, Kit couldn’t see any use in staying. Six months in Pecan Hollow and she was still an outsider. She could feel the stares and whispers at her back whenever she went to town, and the longer she stayed the more she’d craved the feeling of a fresh start. About a hundred fifty dollars was all the money she’d saved, but it was enough to buy a bus ticket and get a cheap room while she looked for work. It wouldn’t last long, but there was surely something for her in Houston. Yardwork, cleaning.
She was so deep in thought, she hadn’t noticed the man standing behind her. When he said hello she nearly took his head off with the shovel.
The booze-bloated man in a dated blazer with wide lapels held a hand to his neck and took a long step backward, cleared his throat.
“C. Lewis Vaughn, Esquire, Miss Walker. I was your aunt’s attorney.”
She leaned on the shovel’s handle and let him continue while she waited for her hackles to go down.
“I’m sorry to catch you at a sensitive time, but your aunt requested her final wishes be delivered to you.” He smiled tightly, showing teeth with coffee stains of deep amber.
“Now?” she said, feeling cornered.
“No time like the present!” He sat down on a nearby bench and patted the seat next to him. Kit approached but remained standing. When he took off his hat there was a band of sweat around his head, stray hairs glued in curls at his temples. He straightened his bolo tie and read aloud.
This was the first time she had thought about Eleanor’s will or anyone else’s for that matter. It felt strange to be included in such an official event.
“The last will and testament of Eleanor dah dah dah . . . prepared by yours truly . . . et cetera et cetera . . . okay, here we go: