Unbury Carol(9)

“Right. Which it is.”

Lafayette seemed to consider this. “Anybody know she’s died?”

“Yes.”

Lafayette tilted her head. “Who?”

“Farrah Darrow. Our maid. Carol collapsed at her feet.”

“Kill her,” Lafayette said, without hesitation.

“No!”

“Why not?”

“I want no signs of foul play.”

“You’re right,” Lafayette said. Then she belched. “If you killed her it would only raise suspicion. I still say you smother Carol.”

“I won’t do it.”

“I could.”

Dwight felt a wave of rage. Not because Lafayette had suggested killing his wife, but because Lafayette had emasculated him. And wasn’t that exactly what Dwight was trying to bury?

“It could work,” Lafayette suddenly said, dropping the current thread and picking up the former. “Going to Manders tonight could work. But you’ve got to play the celebrity angle.”

“Celebrity?”

“Your wife would’ve wanted a private ceremony. She’s so adored, after all, and perhaps a clandestine burial would suit her wishes best. Make it about her, Dwight. Not you.”

“Yes. About her.”

“Show me.”

Many times Dwight had rehearsed for Lafayette. And yet, with the moment at hand, the pressure of getting Carol underground was enormous.

A clock ticked somewhere in Lafayette’s shack.

“I’m going to go to Manders now and—”

Lafayette raised her hand, the implication clear.

So Dwight performed the lines he would deliver to Robert Manders. And as he did, Lafayette rose from the small table, her eyes bone white in the lantern light, as she modified Dwight’s every word, coached him, even gripped him by the lapels of his jacket, slapped him, and roughed up his hair.

“There’s a lot at stake here,” Lafayette said. “And I can’t be there with you when you do it. You gotta look the part, Dwight. You gotta be it.”

Dwight went through his lines again, his many moods.

“No,” Lafayette said. And no again. “Start over.”

“Manders…”

“No.”

“Manders…”

“No.”

Their voices continued this way, echoes of themselves, for hours. Dwight rehearsed as Lafayette paced the shack.

Then without a hint Lafayette told Dwight she believed he was ready, and Dwight felt a flood of anxiety he’d never navigated before.

“It’s time,” Lafayette said, her voice like an unoiled tin joint, “for Dwight Evers to face the world for the first time as a grief-stricken, crestfallen widower.”

But as Dwight fled Lafayette’s shack, as the moon above told Dwight he’d been inside for longer than he’d realized, longer than he’d wanted, the Trail-watcher called out one last time.

“Hell’s heaven, Evers, walk with less confidence. And cry.”



* * *



—

Harrows’s one funeral parlor was a large clean home overlooking the cemetery at the very northeastern border of town. Because the home was situated at the peak of a rather large hill, winter funerals were delicate, and more than one ceremony had included the creaking of coach wheels sliding. But come summer, the trees, the grass of the grounds, and even the graveyard itself spoke more of a well-tended garden than a place of final rest. Dwight had long considered the home one of the finest in Harrows and discussed with more than one local the shame of it being used for dressing bodies, burials, and meaningless final rites. Such potential, such austerity. And yet there was a gloom about the place. Despite the freshly painted green shutters, the manicured grounds, and the clouds reflected in the many clean windows, all Harrowsers had always known the home as the house of death, it being the only place in Harrows to be buried, a place each of them would one day be laid to rest.

Perhaps it was the wooden arch, the gateway to the graveyard, that gloomed it.

The sky was dark when Dwight rode up the hill to the front steps. The white lilies framing the front walk shone.

The girl Farrah may have heard something of his and Carol’s conversation earlier. Dwight couldn’t know. But he couldn’t focus on that now. No no. That would have to come next. He’d already endured Lafayette. It was time for Manders.

How well rehearsed was he?

It was one thing to perform by Carol’s sleeping body. It was certainly another to do so for Lafayette, even on the night of Carol’s collapse. But as Dwight passed Sheriff Opal’s station for the second time in less than three hours, and as the funeral home rose in relief against the moonlit sky, Dwight felt terribly unprepared.

The feeling did not go away as he left Harrows’s Main Street and reached the spacious plots of the homes belonging to the richer men and women of the Trail. For the first time in his life, despite the anxiety, Dwight felt like he belonged up here. Thanks to Carol’s “death,” the money, of course, was his.

And some for Lafayette, he thought. But Lafayette didn’t need to know the true numbers.

Dwight steered the gray horses and followed the circle dirt drive until he was flush with the walk and the front steps. In the moonlight his black suit appeared blue, and the gray strands in his hair glowed. He looked up to the big dark house and noted that not a single lantern flickered within. There was work to be done, Dwight imagined, what with the Illness that had come to Harrows, but even the gravediggers, even the mortician, needed to sleep. Then he looked beyond the house, down the hill, and could see well the wooden arch and—beyond it—the stone and wood markers jutting up from the earth. Black shadows cut the moonlight, and lanterns flickered in the summer breeze on posts placed far apart at the wooded borders of the grounds.