Unbury Carol(95)

Wolfe’s visit was perhaps too right.

Yet he believed nothing birthed by his fissured imagination could sour the incredible sense of coming relief, the arms of happiness that would surely envelop him when his wife’s casket was finally lowered into the earth.

He’d fallen asleep to thoughts and images like these; feelings he hadn’t known in a long time. Freedom from Carol.

But there was still the horrifying reality of the inevitable transference; the handing off of Carol’s body at the funeral home; the one moment in which Carol must be out of his control, when Manders and his staff would have her body to themselves.

Sleep still fading from his mind, Dwight cursed the unfairness of life. Even a man with a righteous, foolproof plan had to worry. Everything accounted for, everybody fooled, all holes filled, he still had to worry.

It wasn’t right.

He looked once across the large front lawn before examining Carol closer. She looked good. She certainly looked dead. He touched her arm and then her neck and thought, yes, the cold night air had done its job. Then he turned back to the house and (what if she woke right now?)

entered the house and walked upstairs.

In the master bedroom he put the final touches on the look he ought to have for the burial. There wasn’t much to do; he had slept outside. But it was a look he’d considered many times, even named; the Numb Widower. Using Carol’s vanity, he purposefully ruffled the appearance of the Numb Widower even more.

How terribly sad, he thought, mimicking the voices of the townspeople. Evers is so distraught he forgot to comb his hair.

Dwight had explicitly asked that there be nobody at the funeral. But you couldn’t be sure with a woman like Carol.

People liked her…so very much.

And still, there was Manders to see. Possibly Opal. And certainly those he might encounter soon after Carol was buried.

Buried.

The word sounded sweet. Like dessert.

He splashed water under his eyes and tugged on the flesh of the Numb Widower’s face. He rehearsed a handful of expressions in the glass. This was the Numb Widower recalling a private moment with his wife; a half-blind distant gaze, his chin to his neck, his lips fishlike and unsmiling. This was the Numb Widower recalling a favorite joke of hers, something clumsy she had done perhaps. And this was what he looked like accepting the severity of the ceremony, her departure; a humorless granite stare into the future, years to be spent alone, without the love he’d so cherished.

Satisfied, Dwight rose and split the drapes covering the nearest window. He could see the coach below in the drive.

“Do not wake,” he said. “Please, Carol, do not wake.”

Then, after forcing himself to inhale and exhale steadily for a minute, he left the master bedroom, the second story, and the house.

On the ride to the Manders Funeral Home, Dwight wondered if the black providence watching over him might continue this very important morning. The shroud who woke him, the imaginary doctor visiting the very real sheriff. Would this ghastly fortune persist? Might not this helper be there when the apex came, the moment of deliverance, the handing off of her body?

Hide your lady.

Indeed. But what advice would the shadowy savior give him when he couldn’t hide her? When he had to carry her out under the bright sun for all to see?

If Smoke hadn’t stopped Moxie, if Moxie were somehow alive in Harrows (now), Dwight would need all the black magic he could get.

He cracked the reins.

These thoughts persisted, yet none of them were quite powerful enough to crack the ecstasy of the momentous occasion ahead.

“Do not wake!” he called over the thunder of the hooves. “My dearest, my love…today is your burial!”…



* * *



—

…Carol did not wake. But her heart beat three times a minute. And the wheezing creature slumped on the bench looked out the coach window, not as if observing the passing landscape, but as though able to see much farther, to all of Harrows itself, even into the detectable hearts of all those in town…



* * *



—

…After disposing of the man who had been tracking him, Moxie rode under the cemetery arch and stood at the head of the funeral home drive. He’d wait, here, for Carol’s casket. When it was brought up the street, he would remove his gun, introduce himself, and tell them to open the box. If they didn’t, he would shoot them.

But long before anything like that happened, a woman called his name.

From the far side of the graveyard, beyond the view of the funeral home windows, a woman’s voice traveled the wind like dust, like flakes of skin, like ash.

Rinaldo, hiding in the woods, did not indicate that he heard it.

Moxie, his eyes still reflecting the dying flames as if they’d reached a new zenith, took his gun from his holster and turned to where the voice came from.

His face was black with soot.

“James,” a woman called from far across the markers. “Come here…”

Moxie led the horse toward the sound, back under the arch.

“Moxie,” Rinaldo called, “where are you going?”

“Jaaaaaames…come…come here, Jaaaames…”

The tombstones obstructed his view, but Moxie thought he saw her waving, the outline of a woman, black hair tousled by no wind.