Then Lorelei is shoved up against the wall, her face pushed into the brick building as her hands are yanked painfully behind her.
“You won’t get a dime!” she screams as Oscar locks the cuffs on her.
“Lorelei Rutledge,” Oscar boastfully calls out. “You have the right to remain silent...” He slips me a smug grin.
TWENTY-THREE
Feel It in My Bones
Grandmama’s people came from Appalachia a long way back. Taking care of the dead was the way of things.
Aunt Violet and I tie her body down to the heirloom laying board with the twine Bone Layer gives us, so her body doesn’t sit upright when the bone cracking starts. Her body is still cold after being in the hospital morgue these last few days.
I lick the tips of my fingers to thread the needle, then I dip the fine string in dove’s blood. Carefully, I stitch her frail, thin eyelids shut. Zigzagged across twice, so she can’t see her way through the otherworld or this again.
Three things I stuff inside her mouth. Cocklebur seeds, so their prickly spines bring her uncomfortable suffering for all eternity. A crumpled strip of paper cut from her Bible; Galatians 6:8. Most fitting.
“Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature
will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature...”
The last item—the heart of a freed chicken—so the Devil can welcome her home.
Four safety pins, blackened by my Sin Eater Oil, pin Grandmama’s mouth shut. When it’s time to remove her innards, we fill her with ash so her body knows exactly where her soul should stay at rest, in the fiery pit of hell. Aunt Violet stands off to the side, chain-smoking, refusing to watch as her mother heads for the afterlife.
Davis helps us move her and the heirloom laying board to the pine box Bone Layer built, something he forged many a year ago, waiting for this day.
“You ready?” Bone stands in the doorway, shovel in his hand, sweat across his brow.
The three of us manage down the short porch steps with the small pine box, Grandmama not even weighing a whole buck. The coffin itself made from thin cheap pine. On purpose, so that it won’t last past a year. That’s the way we want it, the earth to gobble her up as soon as possible.
We stand over the hole in the ground.
Deep enough to cover, not enough for forever.
It’s a patch of worthless land you couldn’t grow a garden on even if you wanted to. An unmarked grave that will eventually be consumed by vegetation and the forest, and the existence of Agnes Wilder will simply disappear.
Grave dirt scatters across the lid as I make a small prayer to the Lord that he treat her as she treated those in her life. Then I ask him to give her what the Bible promises, that ye shall reap what you sow. I’m certain my prayers will be heard. I can feel it in my bones.
From the driveway, gravel crackles under tires. Bone Layer and I both turn to see Oscar’s Bronco pull up.
“Give me a minute,” I say as Bone finishes covering her grave while Aunt Violet stands there still staring—just staring.
We meet halfway, Oscar and me, under the guarding limbs of the oak tree. There’s a measure of silence as he scans the house and yard.
“Place looks good,” he says, though I know he can’t quite put his finger on why. It looks pretty much the same but feels so different without Grandmama.
The energy lighter, calmer. Freer.
“Did you find Lorelei’s car?”
He nods. “Yeah, we did. I had the local law enforcement up there in Ohio document it into evidence. Hair and blood were found under the carriage. We’re getting it tested for human or animal. Good chance they’ll follow through with charges, once the lab work comes back. Just so you know, it was the sheriff who pushed for me—and only me—to handle Lorelei’s car. Looks like Deputy Rankin’s report after Adaire’s accident wasn’t exactly accurate.”
I truly couldn’t imagine Sheriff Johns would allow such corruption under his watch. But I also believe people with as little integrity as Deputy Rankin can be bought—bought by the likes of Lorelei Rutledge, from the sound of it.
“You said you wanted to give me something?” he asks. I wave for him to follow me inside.
“I was going through Grandmama’s closet to find something to bury her in.”
Oscar waits in the living room while I disappear into Grandmama’s bedroom.
It was weird being in her space, pilfering through her things; something I would have never dared to do while she was living. I didn’t even realize how many of Papaw’s clothes she still kept in the back of her closet. It’s amazing how something as simple as clothing could bring back such vivid memories. Like his favorite blue dress shirt he wore to church that brought out the sapphire in his eyes. Or a brown-plaid coat he used in winter when he worked on the tractor. Small things I’d forgotten over time that came rushing back at the sight of them.
I probably wouldn’t have noticed it, had it not been for the folded piece of paper sticking out of the front coat pocket. Picture of a boy tugging at my curiosity.
A black corduroy jacket, something a young boy would wear. The bumpy ridged texture like brail underneath my fingertips. My thumb rubs over the lapel’s copper button. A missing patch of fabric ripped from the cuff sleeve tells a tragic story. One I know well.
Stuffed in the pocket a funeral service brochure for a William Robert Rivers, from Blackbeak Falls, Tennessee. Called “Will” by his family and friends. He was the beloved and only son of Jesse and Lola Rivers. Taken from this world at the age of nine after drowning in the Cumberland River.
Right there, smack-dab on the front of the brochure, Rook’s big happy grin. His third-grade photo—or rather Will’s. It was the proof I needed to know that Rook was more than something in my head.
A boy did drown.
A family did bury him.
And a girl brought him back to life in her imagination.
Between him being from Blackbeak Falls and that crow feather I wished on, no wonder my mind made Rook into this spectacular creature.
