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She frowned, but she pushed open the screen and stepped onto the porch. I headed for the ladderback chair, to leave the smaller one for her, but she reached out a bony hand and stopped me. “That-un’s mine,” she said. “You can sit in Thomas’s there.” She settled into the big chair and launched a series of huge, swooping arcs.
“You sure do get the good out of those rockers,” I said.
She never wavered. “Rock your troubles away, that’s what my mama always told me.”
“Does it work?”
“Don’t know. Ain’t never tried not rocking. Gives you something to do while you worry, leastwise. Keeps you legs strong, too.”
I laughed. “Reckon I better buy me a rocker when I get back to Knoxville.” I tried to find a rhythm in the spindle-backed chair, but I’d no sooner get some momentum in one direction than I’d hit the flat spot heading back the other way and grind to a halt. “I think maybe this one needs a tune-up. I can’t seem to get up a head of steam.”
“Thomas, he ain’t much for rockin’. He kindly goes through the motions, but his heart ain’t in it.”
“What’s he do with his troubles?”
“Prays ’em away. Preaches ’em away. Coon hunts ’em away. Everbody’s got their own ways.”
“Tell me about Leena.”
Her white hair bobbed up and down with her arcs. “Leena was my sister Sophie’s girl. Leena was a Bonds, not a Kitchings, but she was still my blood kin. Her daddy was one of them Bondses over to Claiborne County.” She seemed almost entranced by the rhythm of the chair. “Leena come to stay with us when her mama and daddy died. Our boys, Orbin and Tom, was three and five then. Sometimes she was real good with ’em, sometimes not. Leena was what you might call high-spirited, which ain’t far removed from mule-headed. But she was good-lookin’, just like her mama, I’ll give her that.”
“Tell me about her mama — Sophie, you said her name was?” The old woman gave an oversized swing of her head. “Sophie was your sister?” Another big nod. “Older or younger?”
“Younger. Three years? No, four.” She looked down at the spotted hands clutching the arms of the rocker. “Sophie always was the pretty one of us two. I think Thomas really fancied her, but when she took up with Junior Bonds, Thomas started courtin’ me. Reckon he figured if he couldn’t have Sophie, he’d make do with me.” I recalled what O’Conner had told me of the preacher’s sternness, and I felt sorry for the woman who had been his second choice in a wife.
“How’d Leena’s parents die?”
“House fire. Chimney caught one night after they was asleep. Leena jumped out the window, only thing saved her. Sophie and Junior wasn’t so lucky.”
“How old was Leena then?”
“Thirteen, fourteen, maybe. Leena was kindly a late bloomer, but when she finally started to blossom, she was a beauty. If they was a church social or a wedding or even a funeral, you couldn’t fight your way through the boys around her.”
“Was one of those boys Jim O’Conner?”
She cut me a quick look. “Well, sure. He weren’t the biggest feller around, but he was good-lookin’, and he had a lot of gumption. Like a little banty rooster, struttin’ around the barnyard, but somehow you didn’t mind it.” She smiled, briefly and sadly. “He was real sweet back then. He’s turned a mite hard since, but I can’t say as I blame him. Maybe all of us do, once we get some hard lessons in the way of the world.”
She paused — verbally and physically — and I waited awhile before asking my next question. “Mrs. Kitchings, were she and Jim O’Conner sweethearts? Serious sweethearts?”
She began rocking, and nodded. “Yes. Yes, they was. They was talking about getting married once he come back from Vietnam.” She put the stress on “Nam,” making it rhyme with “ham.”
“And how did you feel about that?”
“Oh, I thought that would be all right. I liked Jim, and I could tell she was crazy over him. Not too many girls up in these mountains gets a man like that. It’s pretty slim pickins, and you take what you can get, or else you make your peace with being a old maid.” It sounded like she was talking about herself now. “I wanted Leena to have a good life and a good husband.”
“So you and your husband gave them your blessing.”
There was a momentary hitch in her rocking, but she quickly found the rhythm again. “Well, we would have. I cain’t say Thomas had took the same shine to the O’Conner boy what I had. Thomas was like a daddy to that girl, so for him, no fella was ever going to measure up.”
I knew what I needed to ask, but not how to ask it. “Did he try to discourage her? Or him?”
Her pace quickened. “They mighta been a discussion or two. Thomas has always spoke his mind straight out. Not one to mince his words. He could be right sharp, and he said some strong words about the O’Conner boy to her once.”
“And how did Leena respond?”
“Why, that girl lit into him like—” She ceased rocking and turned a suspicious eye on me. “Why you asking me these things? That’s thirty years ago, and we ain’t never seen her since. Not since she got herself in trouble and run off. Never heard from her, neither — not so much as a by-your-leave or fare-thee-well or thankee-kindly. That girl made her bed, and I don’t know who she laid in it with, but it weren’t us. So good riddance, I say.”
Inside the house, a phone began to ring. It was a harsh, metallic jangle, the likes of which I hadn’t heard in years. I expected to hear an answering machine pick up, but the phone rang without ceasing. The longer it rang, the more nervous I got about who might be calling Mrs. Kitchings, and what might ensue if she said she was talking to me. She began worrying at the fabric of her housedress, and I could tell she was about to answer the phone. I didn’t want to risk staying through the conversation, so I pushed myself up from the flat-rockered chair. “Sounds like somebody re
ally wants to talk to you. Reckon I should let you go do it.”
She looked startled at the swiftness of my departure. It was customary down South to spend a half-hour or more saying good-bye, but I myself had never embraced the extended leave-taking, what I called the “Southern good-bye.” I thanked her for her time and hustled down the stairs.
She hesitated at the screen door, as if to make sure I was really leaving. As I turned back to wave, I noticed something I’d missed earlier. A faint path led from the back of the house, which probably contained the kitchen, a back door, and a utility porch. The path hugged the treeline at the base of the hill, and it led straight to the blasted entrance of the cave.
CHAPTER 31
District attorney Bob Roper looked like he hadn’t slept in three days. Burt DeVriess looked like he’d just won the lottery. We were convened in the chambers of Judge Barr to review the exhumation results. “Gentlemen, let’s proceed,” said the judge. “This is most unusual, but given that Mr. Roper asked for this conference, and Mr. DeVriess agreed, I’m willing for us to have an informal discussion about this case. I’ve got a hearing in ten minutes, so we need to cut straight to the chase.”
DeVriess was happy to oblige. “Your Honor, I think the exhumation results speak for themselves,” he crowed.
“Then why are you talking, Mr. DeVriess? Kindly be quiet.” I suppressed a grin, or at least tried, halfway. “Dr. Brockton, I’ve read your report, along with Dr. Carter’s; thank you for your quick and thorough examination.” I nodded, figuring I shouldn’t speak unless asked to. “Mr. Roper, have you read the report?” Roper nodded miserably. “And what is your response? Does your forensic anthropologist take issue with Dr. Brockton’s conclusions?”
Roper hedged. “Your Honor, much as we respect Dr. Brockton and Dr. Carter, there is other evidence in this case that strongly corroborates the state’s case.”
