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“I do, too. You liar! All you do is lie, lie, lie.”
She gave me her most pained expression. “Wheeze,” she said.
“Don’t call me Wheeze! I’m a person, not a disease symptom.” It would have sounded more impressive if my voice hadn’t cracked in the middle of the word disease.
Caroline laughed. She acted as though she thought I had meant to be funny. When she laughed, Call laughed. They looked at each other and hooted with pleasure as though something enormously witty had been said. I propped my forehead on my elbowed hand and steeled myself for the cackle from Auntie Braxton and the laugh, which reminded me of an exuberant tuba, that would come from the Captain. They didn’t come. Instead, I felt a scratchy arm about my shoulder and a face close to my ear.
“Sara Louise,” he was saying gently. “What’s wrong, my dear?”
God have mercy. Didn’t he know that I could stand anything except his kindness? I pushed back my chair, nearly knocking him down as I did so, and fled from that terrible house.
I never saw Auntie Braxton again, until she was laid out for her funeral. Caroline reported to me regularly how happy both the old woman and the Captain were. She and Call visited them almost every day. The Captain always asked Caroline to sing for them because “Trudy loves music so.” He seemed to know a lot about this old woman that most people who had lived all their lives on the island didn’t.
“She can talk, you know,” Caroline said to me. “Sometimes you can’t understand, but he always seems to. And whenever I sing she listens, really listens. Not with half her mind somewhere else. The Captain’s right. She loves it. I never saw anyone who loved music so much, not even Momma.” When she would say things like this, I’d just bury myself more deeply in my book and pretend I hadn’t heard.
On the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, Auntie Braxton suffered a massive stroke and was rushed to the hospital by ferry in the middle of the night. She was dead by Christmas.
There was a funeral service for her in the church. It seemed ironic. Neither she nor the Captain had been to church for as long as anyone could remember, but the preacher in those days was young and earnest and gave her what was warmly regarded as a “right purty service.” The Captain wanted our family to sit with him in the front pew, so we did, even Grandma who, I’m glad to say, behaved herself. The Captain sat between Caroline and me. While the congregation recited the Twenty-third Psalm—“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for thou art with me…” Caroline reached over and took his hand as though he were a small child in need of guidance and protection. He reached up with his free hand and wiped his eyes. And, sitting closer to him than I had in months, I realized with a sudden coldness how very old he was and felt the tears start in my own eyes.
Afterward my mother asked the Captain to come home and have supper with us, but when he refused, no one pressed him to change his mind. Caroline and Call and I walked him to the door of what was now his house. No one said a word along the way, and when he nodded to us at the door, we just nodded back and headed home. As it turned out, it was a good thing he had not come home with us. Grandma went on one of her worst rampages to date.
“He killed her, you know.”
We all gaped in astonishment. Even from Grandma this was strong stuff.
“He wanted her house. I knew soon as he moved in there this was bound to happen.”
“Mother,” my father said quietly. “Don’t, Mother.”
“I reckon you want to know how he did it.”
“Mother—”
“Poisoned her. That’s how.” She gazed about the table in triumph. “Rat poison.” She took a large bite of food and chewed it noisily. The rest of us had stopped eating entirely.
“Louise knows,” she said in a sneaky little voice. She smiled at me. “But you wouldn’t tell, would you? And I know why.” She broke into a child’s singsong jeer. “Nah nah nah nah nah nah.”
“Shut up!” It was Caroline who yelled what I could not.
“Caroline!” both our parents said.
Caroline’s face was red with rage, but she pinched her lips together.
Grandma continued unperturbed. “Ever see how she looks at him?”
“Mother.”
“She thinks I’m only a foolish old woman. But I know. ’Deed I do.” She stared at me full in the eyes. I was too afraid to look away. “Maybe you helped. Did you, Louise? Did you help him?” Her eyes were glittering.
“Girls,” my father was almost whispering. “Go to your room.”
This time both of us obeyed immediately. Even behind the safety of our door we could not speak. There were no more jokes or excuses to be made for the silly, grumpy old woman we’d known from birth. The shock was so enormous that I found my own puny fear of exposure melting into a much larger darker terror that seemed to have no boundaries.
“Who knows?” the voice from The Shadow asks. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” Now we knew.
Much later, when we were getting ready for bed, Caroline said, “I’ve got to get away from here before she runs me nuts.”
