The morning of the day they buried Liz was awful. Joe had stirred up some eggs to scramble, stared for a long minute down into the yellow glop in the bowl, and then just walked away.
Faye, who did actually know how to cook but who stayed out of Joe’s kitchen because she wanted to stay married, offered to cook the eggs so they wouldn’t go to waste. All she got out of Joe was “Go ahead. Just don’t cook any grits, or—“
He swallowed and she could hear the words he wasn’t saying. Or I’ll start thinking about Liz and her grits and I won’t be able to stop.
He tried again. “Just don’t cook grits. I won’t eat them.” Then he stomped outside and sat under the tree where he always sat to chip stone. She could tell that he was knocking two rocks together, but she couldn’t see that he was focused enough on what he was doing to make anything more useful than the stone chips that were flying everywhere. The ground around that tree was covered with flakes of chert that would still be there when Joe was dead.
The morning stretched out. Faye burned the eggs and had to throw them out. Michael threw a tantrum because he wanted some grits. Sly drained his tenth cup of coffee and said, “You folks must have an ax around here somewhere,” as if this observation somehow pertained to the conversation nobody was having.
“In the shed under the back porch.”
She had hardly said it when Sly was gone.
Ten minutes later, Joe was at the sink, rinsing blood off the hand he’d just nicked with a half-finished stone knife. When Joe couldn’t handle his sharp toys, Faye’s whole world was askew.
“What was my dad planning to do with that ax?”
“I don’t know. Chop something?”
A moment later, they heard the ring of an ax striking wood, again and again. Faye decided that Sly and Joe weren’t far wrong to think working with their hands might beat back grief. She got out a bowl and her grandmother’s hand mixer, with its narrow 1940s beaters and the crank on its side that made those beaters go round. It was time for her to decide what she was going to cook for the mourners at Liz’s wake.
***
Faye loved funeral food well enough to spend the morning after a long night making a mess in the kitchen. She had baked a hummingbird cake to add to the feast that would follow Liz’s memorial service. She hated eulogies and the scent of carnations and the heavy footsteps of people who were carrying sadness, but she loved the custom of gathering the mourners afterward for a communal meal.
Everyone had their funeral food specialties and she knew that people would be looking for her hummingbird cake. Liz’s mourners were Faye’s friends and neighbors, so she had known what to expect when they gathered at Emma Douglass’ house. Here were the familiar heavy casseroles, brightened by the butter and salt in their cracker-crumb crusts. Beside them were improbable combinations of fruit, nuts, and cottage cheese molded into Jell-O salads. Faye’s offering was not the only tender-crumbed cake baked from scratch. Faye wished she were hungry enough to eat some of the feast.
Emma Everett had tried, mounding food on a paper plate and putting it on the table in front of Faye with a thwack. “Eat something. You look like a runway model, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.”
Emma’s marble kitchen counters were not nearly as laden with funeral food as they had been after her husband Douglass had died. Douglass had been a prominent businessman, active in the Optimist Club. He’d been chairman of the deacons at his church. He’d lived in Micco County from birth to grave. The whole county had turned out for his funeral, and everybody had brought enough food to feed their families, and also the families of people who maybe didn’t know how to throw a casserole in the oven or (and this would always be unspoken) the people who couldn’t afford the ingredients to cook for a crowd.
Liz hadn’t had Douglass’ lifelong connection to the community, but she had lived in Micco County for fifteen or twenty years. Nobody at the funeral was quite sure how long they’d known her. Liz had appeared at the stove of Wally’s Bar and Grill in mid-life, and no one knew a thing about her past. Her status as the single mother of a son who was teenaged when she arrived proved that she’d had a life before Micco County, but she had never talked about it. She’d never mentioned a family. No relatives had shown up at the funeral, just a few dozen people saying, “I didn’t know her well, but I’m so sad to hear that she’s gone.”
There had been no publicly acknowledged lovers to prove that Chip’s father wasn’t the last man in Liz’s life. Faye had always suspected that Liz and Wally had been more to each other than an employer and the short-order cook who kept his business afloat when he was too drunk to do it himself.
Faye would never forget the day Wally died. She had caught him as he fell and his blood had covered her, pooled around her, dripped from her hands. She had sat with Wally, red-stained, looking for someone to explain to her what was happening, and she had found herself looking at Liz.
Liz had given her no answers, but for that moment the woman had worn no shield to cover her naked heartbreak. She had loved Wally. Faye had no doubt of it. And Wally had given his life to save Faye, so she too had loved him, in her way. He should have been here for Liz today, instead of lying cold and dead in the ground. But then, Liz should have been here, too.
Without Wally and Chip, the list of guests at Liz’s funeral was bound to feel scant and incomplete. A few longtime customers had come to the service, but more of them had shown up beforehand at Emma’s house with a Jell-O salad, murmuring their regrets that they weren’t going to be able to make it to the funeral.
Faye felt rather sorry for Sheriff Ken Rainey and his deputy Gerry Steinberg. She guessed they needed to be at the funeral as part of their investigation, in case Liz’s murderer showed up and confessed. Or, more likely, they needed to be at the funeral in case one of the guests said something they wanted to overhear. It was too bad that there was no way for the sheriff and his deputy to blend into the thin crowd. They felt awkward and it showed.
After the funeral, they had stopped by Emma’s house for a few minutes, then excused themselves. Faye took this to mean that she and her closest friends had told Rainey and Steinberg all that they wanted to hear, for now.
Most of Liz’s real mourners now sat with Emma in her living room, relaxing in the deep upholstery of her leather furniture. Faye. Joe. Sly, who was mingling with his son’s longtime friends as if they hadn’t always known him as Joe’s mysteriously absent father. Mike McKenzie, who had been retired for years, but who would always be Sheriff Mike to his friends. Sheriff Mike’s wife, Dr. Magda Stockard-McKenzie, who was Faye’s archaeological mentor and best friend. Their late-in-life daughter Rachel McKenzie, who was barely older than Michael but who was enough of her mother’s daughter to be giving Michael sage supervision in the piling up and knocking down of multi-colored wooden blocks. The look on little Michael’s face, who would never understand why Liz wasn’t around to call him the cutest little black-haired boy in Micco County, was enough to make Faye cry, but she held strong.
Faye watched Rachel bend down and say to Michael, with the exaggerated patience of an adult instructing a student driver, “I already told you! You can’t stack anything on top of that pointy block. It’ll all fall down.”
Joe, listening, elbowed Sheriff Mike. “Wonder where she got that attitude from?”
Faye saw that Joe got Sheriff Mike’s elbow in his own ribs.
“He better get used to it,” the sheriff said. “Our wives have already decided that my daughter is marrying your son. I don’t give Michael very good odds, not if he goes up against Faye, Magda, and Rachel. He might as well knuckle under and marry my baby girl. There’s worse things than that could happen to a young man.”
Faye thought of what had happened to Chip and remembered when he’d been a clumsy teenager, hardly more than a little boy. Her heart ached like a broken tooth.
Too sad to talk, she just kept people-watching as Magda walked across the room and flopped her stocky body down on the couch between Joe and Mike. She was smirking like a woman happy to deal out some insults of her own. When she made this move, Emma and Sly were left to make one-on-one conversation. Faye would have thought that the rough-around-the-edges ex-con trucker wouldn’t have had a thing to say to the widow of the richest man in Micco County.
Faye would have been wrong.
Judging by the way Sly’s mouth stayed close to Emma’s ear and the way she ducked her head and laughed, Faye thought he was probably telling her jokes unsuitable for the widow of the chairman of the deacons at the Blessed Assurance AME Church. Or maybe not so unsuitable. Emma looked like she was having a good time.
Faye tried to picture the long-ago Douglass who had wooed Emma. He had been the son of a sharecropper before he parlayed his charisma and brilliant mind into big money. When Emma had met him as a teenager, Douglass would have been in his twenties. He would have been rough around the edges, and he would have had the same testosterone-laden charm as Sly Mantooth and his son Joe.
Sly leaned in to deliver a probably bawdy punch line, gently brushing Emma’s shoulder with his own. Emma leaned further in, laughing, and swatted at his muscled forearm. Faye’s first thought was that Sly had Joe’s devilish grin, then she realized that she needed to turn that around. Joe had Sly’s devilish grin.
Faye wanted to be glad that Emma was getting a chance to enjoy a little man-woman chemistry. She didn’t think anybody ever got too old to want that. But she would feel untrue to Douglass’ memory if she didn’t worry about the thought of Emma with a man whose history included time in the penitentiary.
It had been a long time since Faye laughed, but laughter bubbled around her. Six adults and two children brought so much life to this lovely room where Emma usually sat alone. This was as it should be. Funerals should be celebrations of life. The actual service had been a drab affair, officiated in a drab nondenominational way by a drab man who had never met Liz. The attendees who were not in this room had scattered immediately after he said “Amen.”
If the funeral had been held here, with only these people in attendance, Liz would have lost only a few half-hearted mourners and she would have had a better memorial. Less religious, maybe, but more personal. These good people had come together now to remember her, and that was something, but Faye thought warmhearted Liz had deserved more.
More respect in death.
More happiness in life.
Just more.
***
Joe had cornered Sheriff Mike. He knew this wasn’t good funeral behavior, but he wanted to talk about Liz’s death with a lawman who wasn’t keeping his mouth shut because he was working the case. Besides, Sheriff Mike clearly had opinions and he wanted to share them. He looked happy to be cornered.
The retired sheriff cleared his throat. “I don’t like to second-guess Sheriff Rainey’s methods. He’s a good man, and a smart one, too.”
Sheriff Mike might indeed think the new sheriff was a good man and a smart one. Joe agreed. But he knew that Sheriff Mike was itching to second-guess Rainey’s methods anyway. He just needed to take a little time to be polite first.
“So you think he’s right to be questioning a bunch of kids?” Joe asked. “That’s what everybody’s saying. He’s rounding up teenagers with records, asking them a few questions, and letting them go.”
“Well, when the presumption is that a person got killed during a robbery gone wrong, then yeah. You look for juvenile delinquents, and you look for repeat offenders who have been committing crimes since they were juvenile delinquents. Ain’t nothing wrong with that, unless you’re not keeping an eye out for an unexpected motive, something besides a regular, everyday robbery. Besides, we don’t know that Rainey’s only talking to kids. Just because the only names you’ve heard from the rumor mill belong to kids, that don’t mean he’s not talking to anybody else. Rainey don’t answer to you nor to me, except when it comes time for us to vote.”
Joe saw Faye looking their direction. She was sitting next to Magda, but she wasn’t talking.
“So, as a man who used to be sheriff and isn’t anymore, what do you really think?’
“I think I don’t have a clue what happened to Liz. Yeah, I’d be talking to the delinquents if I was in his shoes, but I keep picturing Liz at the end of that dock, looking out into the Gulf. There’s a lot that goes on out there. A lot of people are out there doing things they don’t want anybody to see. If I was him, I’d be wondering what Liz could’ve seen that she wished she could unsee.”
Joe saw Magda say something to Faye. Neither of them laughed after she said it and that felt wrong. Funeral or not, when Faye and Magda got together, the room was full of woman-laughs. That’s the way Liz would have wanted it. She had her own raucous woman-laugh, and Joe was going to miss it.
The sheriff was watching them, too. His face said he didn’t think things were quite right, either. “You gotta remember, Joe, that Liz owned that marina. Her and the bank owned it, anyway. Boats come in and out of there all the damn time. Anything could be on those boats. Anybody could be on those boats. And it’s not just that Liz could’ve seen something she shouldn’t. She could’ve been doing something she shouldn’t. You know she was always hard up for money. It could have been as simple as somebody paying her to look the other way. Then maybe she stopped looking the other way. Or maybe she wanted a bigger cut. These things happen and Sheriff Rainey knows it. He’d be a fool if he’s just talking to delinquent kids, and he’s no fool.”
Faye and Magda were talking, but Magda wasn’t as soft-spoken as Joe’s wife. He could hear her plainly as she said, “What has that crazy dude Oscar been saying lately?”
Faye launched into an inaudible tirade that involved more words than he’d heard her say in the past four weeks, combined. She and Magda beckoned to Emma, who joined them on the couch. The three of them put their heads together as Emma, with her own quiet voice, began to wave her hands and speak inaudibly.
His wife and her two best friends were an impressive sight—tiny Faye with her sleek black hair and quicksilver motions, broad-faced and blunt-spoken Magda, and the very patrician Emma with her crown of tight black-and-grey curls. They looked like a posse having a final meeting before going out for vengeance.
Joe wished he knew what they were planning. More to the point, he couldn’t believe that he didn’t already know what they were planning. Joe knew no one by the name of Oscar.
Joe had lived on an island with Faye for a decade. They worked together. They slept together. They did everything together. Their social life largely consisted of the people in this room.
Joe was a homebody who only left Joyeuse Island when it was absolutely necessary but, in recent weeks, even Joe’d had more interaction with the outside world than Faye. So who was Oscar and why was Magda calling him crazy and why did Faye’s shadowed eyes grow even darker at the mention of his name?
***
Sly was back in the woods with his ax as soon as they got home from the funeral. When it got dark, he came inside looking for a lantern. At bedtime, Joe and Faye could see its distant glow from the window near the foot of their bed, and they could hear the rhythmic blows of his ax.
“You think he’s planning to do that all night?” Even as she asked the question, Faye wasn’t sure she cared about the answer. She doubted she’d be sleeping much, and she liked the sound of Sly’s ax hitting fresh wood. It would be okay with her if he kept swinging the ax all night long.
“I don’t think that lantern’s battery will go all night. I don’t know what Dad’s thinking. He’s gonna need a lot of trips with a wheelbarrow to bring the firewood he’s splitting back here to the house. We got trees way closer to the house than that. He’s just making work for himself.”
Faye had a notion that Sly was working far away so that the noise wouldn’t bother them. She also had a notion that he didn’t mind making work for himself because work made him feel better. He wasn’t dim-witted enough to think that this was an efficient way to chop wood for heating the house.
The lantern’s battery lasted late into the night. After the ax was silent and the lantern went dark, Sly built a campfire and just sat there a while. Faye knew he did this because she could see a soft reddish glow on the undersides of tree branches deep into the distance.
Joe must have seen the glow, too. After a time, he went outside, his big feet padding softly on the floor. It was his habit to commemorate the dead with a time of fireside meditation. She knew that he liked to mark the occasion by burning purifying herbs. He could probably find those herbs in the dark by their fragrance, gathering them along the path that took him to Sly and his fire.
It was a long time before the two men came back in the house. A single footfall and the slight creaking of an old door were the only things Faye heard as Sly passed. Joe moved with his usual utter silence. He merely eased into the bed beside her, his long black hair smelling like warm sage and smoke.
Faye knew all these things because she wasn’t sleeping and had no hope that she might.