Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(26)

“O.K. But in the future maybe mind your own business, ma’am? Like the rest of us mind ours.”

Rudely the woman turns her back on Claudia. Or maybe she has not meant to be rude, only just decisive.

Claudia returns to James’s grave but she is very distracted, her hands are trembling. Why is the woman so hostile to her? Was it such a terrible thing, to have dared to pull out weeds on a neighboring grave?

Forget her. It’s over. None of this matters—of course.

It is ironic, Claudia manages to elude friends, family, relatives who express concern for her, and worry that she is in a precarious mental state still; yet here in the cemetery, where Claudia would speak to another mourner, she has been rebuffed.

At James’s gravesite she stands uncertain. She is grateful that in some way (her brain is dazzled, she is not thinking clearly) her deceased husband has been spared this embarrassing exchange. She is still wearing gardening gloves, and carrying her hand trowel. Her leather hand bag is lying in the grass as if she’d flung it down carelessly. Why is she so upset, over a trifle? A stranger’s rudeness? Or is she right to feel guilty, has she been intrusive and condescending? A quiet woman, one of the softer-spoken teachers at her school, Claudia has occasionally been criticized as aloof, indifferent to both students and colleagues. She winces to think how unfair this judgment is.

She doesn’t want to leave the cemetery too soon for the woman will notice and sneer at her departing back. On the other hand, she doesn’t want to linger in this place that feels inhospitable to her. She dreads someone else coming to join the scowling woman, and the scowling woman will tell her what she’d discovered Claudia doing at Todd Abernathy’s grave, and what Claudia had done will be misinterpreted, misconstrued as a kind of vandalism.

High overhead is a solitary, circling bird. Claudia has been aware of this bird for some minutes but has not glanced up since she supposes it must be a hawk, hawks are common in this area, and not a great blue heron for there isn’t a lake or wetlands nearby . . .

She wants to think that it is a great blue heron. Her heart is stirred as a shadow with enormous outflung wings and trailing spindly legs glides past her on the ground and vanishes.

“Ma’am?”—the scowling woman is speaking to her.

“Yes?”

“There were potted geraniums on my husband’s grave. Did you take them?”

“Potted geraniums? No . . .”

“Yes! There were potted geraniums here. What did you do with them?”

Hesitantly Claudia tells the woman that she might have seen some broken clay pots in the grass, but not geranium plants; that is, not living plants. She might have seen dead plants . . .

“And some artificial flowers? In a pot here?”

“N-No . . . I don’t think so.”

“Ma’am, I think you are lying. I think you’ve been stealing things from graves. I’m going to report you . . .”

Claudia protests she has not been stealing anything. She has cleared away debris and dried flowers, and pulled weeds . . . Everything she has cleared away is in a trash heap at the edge of the cemetery . . . But the scowling woman is speaking harshly, angrily; she has worked herself up into a peevish temper, and seems about to start shouting. Claudia is quite frightened. She wonders if she has blundered into a place of madness.

Is that what comes next, after grief? Is there no hope?

Abjectly Claudia apologizes again. In a flash of inspiration—in which she sees the jeering face of her brother-in-law—she offers to pay for the “missing” geranium plants.

“Here. Please. I’m truly sorry for the misunderstanding.”

Out of her wallet she removes several ten-dollar bills. Her hands are shaking. (She sees the woman greedily staring at her wallet, and at her dark leather bag.) The bills she hands to the woman who accepts them with a look of disdain as if she is doing Claudia a favor by taking a bribe, and not reporting her.

With sour satisfaction the woman says: “O.K., ma’am. Thanks. And like I say, next time mind your own damn business.”

At her vehicle Claudia fumbles with the ignition key. She is conscious that her car is a handsome black BMW; the only other vehicle in the parking lot, a battered Chevrolet station wagon, must belong to the scowling woman. More evidence that Claudia is contemptible in some way, in the woman’s derisive eyes.

She is very upset. She must escape. The cemetery, that has been a place of refuge for her, has become contaminated.

A shadow, or shadows, glides across the gleaming-black hood of the BMW. Her brain feels blinded as if a shutter had been thrown open to the sun. She feels a powerful urge to run back to the scowling woman bent over her husband’s grave in a pretense of clearing away weeds. She would grip the woman’s shoulders and shake, shake, shake—she would stab at the sour scowling face with something like a sharp beak . . . .

Of course the widow does nothing of the sort. In the gleaming-black BMW she drives back to the (empty) house on Aubergine Lake.


“Claudie? I’d like to drop by this afternoon, I have a proposal to make to you . . .”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“I’ve been talking to a terrific agent at Sotheby’s, you know they’re only interested in exceptional properties . . .”

“I said no. I won’t be home, this isn’t a good time.”