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er had been found in her bed, she’d been dead for several days. The heat in the farmhouse had gone off, and she was frozen solid, though people said she’d probably died of natural causes and only froze later.
We drove up to her funeral on Tuesday. Tom and I had to miss school. She was laid out in a metal coffin on the table in the dining room of the farmhouse. The coffin was lined with puffy, silver satin, and Grandmother was so light that she floated on top of the material, barely denting it, the way a water bug rides on water. Grandmother’s four other children were there, along with lots of people from the town.
Tom and Bunny and I were standing apart when one old man came over. Thick puffs of gray hair like cotton balls sprouted from his ears, and more gray hairs were sticking out of each nostril. He ignored Bunny and me and talked to Tom. “I asked her to marry me, but she turned me down for Arthur Stoneham, heh, heh.” He had a faint, raspy laugh. Tom scowled at him, and the old man looked confused.
“I bet you were a pretty good catch yourself,” said Bunny.
He brightened again. “Up until fourteen years ago, you could have asked my wife that, but she’s dead now.” He again turned to Tom for encouragement, but Tom was still scowling, so the old man shuffled away.
“That was Tim Butterick,” said Bunny. “Grandmother said she turned him down ’cause he was sickly. Now, he’s outlived them all. You just can’t ever tell.”
The coffin was closed, and we drove it down the road to a little cemetery that had been carved out of a pine woods. The frozen needles crunched under our feet as we marched to the burial site. The night before, a bonfire had been built so the ground would thaw and a grave could be dug. Grandmother’s sons lowered the coffin into the hole with ropes, and the minister read a prayer. It was a sparkling bright day, but very cold, and his breath floated in beautiful, pure-white clouds, framed against the dark green of the pines. When he finished, everyone walked by and threw dirt on the coffin, using a small, black spade. Afterward, we left quickly, and Bunny hardly said a word to her stepbrothers and stepsister.
Later that winter, the farmhouse burned down. It had been empty since Grandmother died and vandals finally got to it. Bunny only learned of the fire several weeks after it had happened, but she insisted that we drive up for one last look. All that was left was the stone foundation, covered with soot and charred wood. I was shocked. I had known a huge, creaky, slightly frightening house. The flat, square foundation that remained looked terribly small, like a child’s thing, hardly larger than a hopscotch game we’d draw on the sidewalk with chalk. Lying now in Sissy’s bed, I remembered standing on the damp, cold lawn on a miserable March day and staring at the black scar in the top of the hill. “There goes home,” Bunny had said.
The midnight whistle blew at the KTD. Several people walked down Oak Street, their heels clicking in the quiet air. After a while, a vehicle drove by, then stopped just down the street. The engine shut off, but the tinny sound of a car radio trailed on in the night. Someone was sitting there, listening, with the windows open. The sound kept up for about twenty minutes, the tinkling, distant lilt of the songs alternating with the staccato jabber of the disc jockey. The tunes, the words were unrecognizable, but familiar. When the radio was finally turned off, the night seemed empty.
Five minutes later, there was a very light bump on the side of the house below Sissy’s window. I crawled down the bed and pulled back the curtain. Elro Judy was outside, standing on a ladder. His head was just below the windowsill.
“What are you doing?” I hissed through the screen.
“Visitin’.” He was holding a bottle of beer.
“Go away!”
“Come on, just a little,” he said. “It’ll be fun.” He took another step up the ladder, which ground against the side of the house.
“Are you crazy? They’re going to hear you.”
“So what?” In his drunkenness, he forgot to lower his voice. The loudness of his words amused him, and he laughed.
“Please, Elro, go away,” I begged. “I’m already in too much trouble.”
“You come out then,” he said, talking in a whisper again. He thought for a moment. In his condition, it appeared to take some effort. “We’ll go to the fair.”
“It’s not open yet.”
“This is the best time—before it opens. They stay up all night partyin.’ My brother’s workin’ there, and he says they got great stuff this year. They got a wrestlin’ bear, and, oh, a two-headed baby in a glass jar. The heads come out of its shoulders like a V-8 engine.” He waved his bottle, took a drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and took another step up the ladder. Putting his lips close to the screen, he whispered, “You know you want to come. You know you do.”
“Shhh!” Someone was at the bedroom door. I pulled the curtains shut and scrambled down the bed and under the sheet. The doorknob rattled and the door opened a crack.
“Martha?” Mrs. Vernon called out softly. “Martha, are you all right?” She stepped into the room, her slippers sliding over the wood floor.
“Who’s there?” I tried to sound half asleep.
“It’s me, dear. You must have had a nightmare. You’ve been talking in your sleep. I could hear you all the way down the hall.” She came to the bed and leaned over me. The scent of talcum powder was so strong that it was hard to breathe. She was wearing a light-colored robe that she clutched together at the front with one hand. I’d never seen her in bedclothes before.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Oh, don’t be sorry. Should I turn on the light?”
“No, thanks. It’s all right.”
She was silent for a few seconds. I imagined her studying me and the room. Finally, she said, “Well, why don’t I just sit here until you fall asleep again. When Sissy was a little girl, she used to have nightmares, and I’d come and sit with her, right there in that chair.”
“I don’t think you need to stay. I’ll be fine now.”
“Are you sure? You sound a little jumpy.”
