Chapter Eight

Police Investigate Suspicious Activity at Elm Grove Memorial Cemetery

On Saturday, October 27, police were called to Elm Grove Memorial Cemetery on Route Z by a motorist reporting a suspicious person or persons. Sheriff Boyd Reed reported that Ms. Alice Zimmerman was briefly taken into custody after she was found in possession of a magnum of champagne, wearing a party hat and blowing a kazoo. Ms. Zimmerman appeared to be inebriated. Sheriff Boyd stated “Ms. Zimmerman, the perpetrator, was intoxicated and therefore taken into custody for her own safety.” The investigating officer reported that Ms. Zimmerman was dancing on the grave of Barber “Rebarb” Zimmerman. Barber Zimmerman, the former husband of Alice Zimmerman, died on October 1 in a tragic fishing accident involving hip waders and a trolling motor. The officer removed Ms. Zimmerman for her own protection due to the instability of the ground in the immediate area. Ms. Zimmerman was released into the custody of her minister, the Right Reverend Andrew Horstman. No charges are expected to be filed.

Grace slid into a pew in the back of St. John’s Catholic Church on Sunday and watched the mass as an observer. The church had changed little over the years. She refused to allow herself to be pulled into the drift of childhood memories today. She listened to the mass with a jaundiced ear, waiting for the priest to reach out and speak to her. The father, a nameless octogenarian, chanted the Mass in English these days, but still it did not seep into her soul. The incense was familiar, the robes of the priest drifted around his bent shoulders, candles still flickered at the altar, prayers for the dead and dying, wishes cast in red glass. She wondered if she should light a candle for her mother, who had cast her eternity into question by suicide, the ultimate sin. Years after many candles had been lit in prayer to ease Marjorie Phillips’ torment, Grace did not think it would change her mother’s fate.

As Grace sat and watched the service and worshippers before her, she sensed in herself less the need for Mass and more the need for community. But she didn’t find that welcoming spirit of community emanating from these devoted worshippers whose children played soccer together and attended the local parochial school. Grace knew Catholics who disagreed with Church doctrine and could barely mutter “Vatican II” without grumbling; those same Catholics kept their views to themselves and stepped up to receive blessed communion every Sunday.

Grace walked across the parking lot for coffee and doughnuts served by the local Boy Scouts in the small church annex. Boxes of fritters, glazed and raised donuts filled the air with a sugary wave. She searched for a plain cake doughnut which she could cut in half to dip in coffee. That could hardly be as deadly as the cinnamon twist that oozed grease onto the box but looked divine. She’d save herself for Darla’s apple fritters instead. Grace had come here to find a familiar face or a welcoming smile but had been greeted with quizzical looks and a few whispers. If this was a “Sunday Welcome Breakfast” as the bulletin stated, her reception was not one of open arms.

“You know yourself that Alice Zimmerman has never had a drink in her life, so I could hardly believe it when I read it in the paper.” Though quiet, the comment from across the table was still audible.

“If I had been married to Rebarb Zimmerman I would have smacked him over the head with that bottle instead of waiting to dance on his grave. Poor Alice always was a mouse. He walked all over her while he slept with half the women in town and spent every dime they had. I still remember the sheriff catching him and that woman in the parking lot of the shoe factory. And Alice Zimmerman just sitting at home waiting for him.” This parishioner didn’t bother to lower her voice, willing to make her opinion known across the room.

Grace dawdled before the breakfast offerings, pretending to consider her choices as she listened to the women gossip. She picked up a plastic knife and cut a cinnamon twist in half, but before picking it up, she hesitated and moved back to the plain cake doughnut she had chosen earlier. The conversation continued.

“Alice just married her daddy all over again, that’s the problem. He was a mean one. That woman has spent a good portion of her life cowering in the corner waiting for the other shoe to drop. Not enough backbone. No spunk.”

There was a small chuckle, “Sounds like to me she’s got a lot of spunk now.” Both speakers laughed quietly.

Grace remembered when Alice Gerding had married Barber Zimmerman at St. John’s, twenty-four years before. Her Granny had commented “Now there’s the ugly duckling turned into a swan. What she wants with that good-for-nothing Rebarb is beyond me.”

Grace had always thought of Alice as pretty in an unassuming way. Alice’s auburn hair might be considered mousy by some but when she walked down the aisle that June morning it had been a magnificent mass of thick waves covered by a circlet of flowers with a flowing fingertip veil. The girl’s shy smile filled with light and the hope of what was to come in her yet-undecided life. Alice was just weeks past her eighteenth birthday, still a child, on her wedding day all those long years ago.

Barber Zimmerman, named for his late uncle, had been known as Rebarb from the day he could toddle. The day of the wedding, he had stood at the altar, a huge bulk of a man, in his powder blue tuxedo. His thick neck turning red inside the confines of the tight collar, perspiring already. Even back then, Rebarb had alternately charmed and dismayed the people of Franklin Hill with his antics.

That day he had been devoted to Alice and that devotion shone in his eyes as he looked down the long red carpet of the church and the small, smiling girl walking toward him. The two had leaned against each other as the priest held up the rings, a glint of light touching those gold bands through the saint’s windows.

Grace thought at the time that perhaps God was blessing this marriage of two young people with no thought for their prospects and no desire to move beyond the city limits of Franklin Hill.

She puzzled over what seemed to happen after people married. Ellie and Katy had both married fine men, and both had married young, delivering honeymoon babies nearly on the same day. Katy had given Christopher another child just four years ago, adding to the brood. Grace wondered if a tolerance must exist in some women that she did not see in herself. Timothy and Christopher, her brothers-in-law, were quiet, hard-working providers who still looked at their wives like they hung the moon and the stars. But living in the city, removed from the small-town existence had taught her one thing and that was that living with another person could be sometimes trying and frequently just plain difficult.

She had shared an apartment and a house with a man briefly and the assumption that she would cook, clean and shop for him all the while working more hours than he did, and keep their lives organized had been overwhelming.

Alice Zimmerman had tried and failed to live that life after Rebarb Zimmerman had saddled her with two children and a falling-down house on the far side of town. Then he became an ugly, bitter man who shouted at his children without reason, belittling Alice, begrudging any joy she found in motherhood, jealous of the two children that she raised. Grace did not ever want to walk in Alice Gerding Zimmerman’s shoes.

Grace watched the elderly priest walk amongst his parishioners, shaking hands and greeting them. He squinted at her but made no move toward her. The priest’s frame was so bent she put his age at close to ninety, if he was a day. His hands were stiff and gnarled with severe arthritis, thick glasses gave him a fish-eyed look. The breeze from the open door of the annex blew in gently past the dark-robed cleric, bringing with it the distinct smell of mothballs. Grace discarded the doughnut and walked quietly out the side door of the annex.