No Way Home (6 page)

“The funeral is tomorrow,” said Lillie. “There will be no viewing. That’s all we know right now. I’ll call you with all the arrangements.”

“Okay,” said Jordan. “I’m over at my mother’s.” He looked from Brenda to Grayson, who had edged over to Lillie and were surrounding her like sentries. “I better be going.”

“Give Miss Bessie my love,” Lillie said stiffly.

Jordan nodded. “Her only grandchild.”

“Don’t,” said Lillie, holding up a hand as if to stay him.

The back door opened and Pink came in. He stopped short at the sight of Jordan Hill in his house. The two men stared at one another, neither one sure whether to offer condolences or to accept them. Jordan broke the silence.

“Do we know anything yet?”

“They haven’t caught that bastard yet,” said Pink, “if that’s what you mean.”

“So the sheriff’s pretty sure it was Partin,” said Jordan.

“Of course it was Partin, for chrissakes,” Pink muttered.

An uneasy silence fell over the room. Lillie glanced up at Jordan. “We’ll be in touch with you,” she said stiffly.

Jordan nodded and turned to go. Then he looked back at Pink. “You always took such good care of her, Pink,” he said. “She always said so.”

Pink looked as if he wanted to lunge at the other man’s throat. “What’s that? A sick joke?” he cried.

Jordan shook his head wearily and looked back at Lillie. “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll be at my mother’s.”

Lillie could feel his eyes on her but she did not look up. She understood what he meant. He had only been trying to console Pink. But there was no point in trying to explain it. His words of consolation were not welcome here. She thought how old and haggard she must look to him right now and was relieved when she heard the door close behind him.

A STEADY DRIZZLE BEGAN BEFORE DAWN
on Tuesday morning, and it was still coming down as people gathered outside the River of Jordan Baptist Church, patiently waiting their turn to be seated inside for the funeral service. It was a chilly rain, the first harbinger of autumn in Cress County, and it seeped under the collars of the waiting mourners, as church elders, soberly dressed in dark suits, directed the crush of people into the church and tried to figure out how to accommodate them all.

Allene Starnes solemnly approached the crowd of teenage boys and girls who were huddled under their umbrellas on the church lawn. She hugged a couple of the other girls who were already crying. The boys stood apart looking uncomfortable in their ties. All the high-school students had been officially excused today, and it looked to Allene as if half of Cress County had taken the morning off from work to attend the funeral. Allene’s stomach was in knots. She had agonized over what to wear. She didn’t own anything black because her mother said it was too sophisticated. She had settled on a navy-blue Sunday dress, which her mother assured her was suitable. It was just so important to her to show her sorrow for Grayson. She hadn’t known Michele too well. Michele was kind of quiet, and her girlfriends were not as popular as Gray’s crowd. But it twisted Allene’s heart to think of the anguish of losing a sister. She could not even imagine it.

After she had heard about the murder she had been almost too afraid to call. She wanted desperately to help him, to comfort him, but she didn’t think she could find any words that would be right. Finally she had screwed up all her courage and ridden her bike over to the house to see him. He answered the door with a haunted, wary look in his eyes, and her heart ached for him. She tried to get him to talk to her but he went into his room and just sat on the edge of his bed, playing his radio and gazing vacantly past her, as if he were all alone. Her young body strained frantically toward him, as if she were a divining rod and Grayson were some hidden stream, but she could not touch him. He stared ahead, drumming his fingers to the music. Her mother told her, when she came home disconsolate, that everyone handled grief in their own way.

Now Allene stood among her friends, scanning the crowd for that beloved blond head, but she did not see it. She noticed, as she looked around, that a pretty girl with hair as dark and glossy as sealskin had walked up and was standing at the edge of the teenage group. Allene recognized her. It was a girl new this fall, a junior transferred from Chicago, named Emily Crowell She looked uncomfortable and out of place. No one was speaking to her. It was nice of her to come, Allene thought. She excused herself from her friends and walked over to where the new girl stood. On a day like this, she thought, you have to remember how short life could be, how important it is to be kind to one another.

The service was due to start at ten, but because of the size of the crowd, extra chairs were being set up in the aisles and in the parish hall, where the service could be heard over a loudspeaker. From the kitchen in the church basement, the smell of warm ham and cooking greens wafted up through the building as the women of the congregation prepared food for the mourners. The knell of the funeral bells in the steeple seemed to urge haste.

In the backseat of the car across the road from the church, Lillie, Pink, and Grayson watched in silence. The hearse was parked in front of them. As they stared out the smoky windows they saw a long, silver-blue Cadillac with a Texas license plate pull up in front of the church and Pink’s older brother, Haynes, and his wife, Elna, emerged from the front seat. When Haynes and Elna showed up at their house the night before, Haynes was wearing ostrich-skin cowboy boots and a turquoise ring with a nugget the size of a walnut. Haynes Burdette had made a fortune in the automobile business in Houston. He and Elna and their three children lived in a mansion with a heated swimming pool and a gazebo. Pink rarely saw his brother, but when he did it always had a bad effect on him, Lillie thought. He would talk compulsively for a few days about how smart and successful Haynes was, and then a period of depression was sure to follow.

“Look at that jacket,” said Pink. ‘That’s Ultrasuede. Doesn’t he see it’s raining?”

Who cares? Lillie thought wearily, but she didn’t say it. It just seemed so completely trivial. She watched Haynes precede Elna up the steps to the church. In the rental car that pulled up behind the Cadillac Lillie saw her mother, Jo Evelyn, and her stepfather, Ron Henkle. They had flown up from Florida, where they lived in a condo at Cocoa Beach. Jo Evelyn was perfectly coiffed and turned out as always. People often flattered her by pretending to believe she was Lillie’s sister, and Jo Evelyn never doubted their sincerity. Ron held an umbrella protectively over his wife’s blond head as they climbed the steps. The crowd was somehow being squeezed into the country church and Shirley Lynch, Felton’s female undertaker, decided it was time to start. She walked back from the hearse to the family’s car and tapped on the window.

“I think we’ll get started,” she said gently. “Y’all ready?”

Pink looked at Lillie, who sat motionless, swathed in black. “Honey?”

Lillie nodded.

Shirley Lynch gave the car hood a thump, as if of encouragement, and returned to the hearse. The driver pulled it slowly around to the front of the church and then walked around to open up the back. Lillie watched as the young pallbearers assembled and the coffin was rolled out.

There had been no wake. The coffin had been kept closed. It was not that the fatal blows had so devastated the appearance of Michele’s head. There had not been much blood at all. And Shirley had skillfully, painstakingly concealed the bruises. The deadly damage had been internal. But despite her pride in her cosmetic skills, Shirley had advised, in her kind, matter-of-fact way, that they keep it closed. “People are curious,” she had said with a shrug. “It’s human nature.”

Shirley’s advice had been unnecessary. Lillie had already decided that no one would have a chance to gape at her baby.

“Let’s go,” said Pink. He got out of the car and helped Lillie out. Grayson, his face drawn and tight, still looked stunning in his dark blazer, his blond hair bright against the gray sky. He crossed the street with his parents, and they all waited at the foot of the church stairs as the pallbearers lifted the coffin and bore it up the steps. From inside the church, the sad strains of “Precious Memories,” sung by quavering voices, drifted out to them.

Lillie’s gaze was fastened on the coffin, but she became aware of Grayson shifting restlessly at her side, muttering angrily. At first she tried to ignore it, but his words were like a persistent street noise, awakening her from sleep. She turned a blank face to him. “What?” she said.

“What do they think they’re doing here?” Grayson demanded. “I don’t believe this.”

Lillie turned and looked. The family of Ronnie Lee Par-tin was approaching the church. Ronnie Lee’s brother, Dwight, dressed in his Sunday clothes, held his aged mother, Ora, by the arm. Dwight’s wife, Debbie, who was little older than Michele had been, walked beside them with her eyes downcast, holding together the front of a lavender raincoat that did not quite close around her stomach, distended by pregnancy. The Partins, including Ronnie Lee when he was not incarcerated, lived together in a trailer outside of town and were considered by many to be white trash, although Dwight held down a respectable job as a furniture delivery man, despite his lack of formal education. Dwight was a burly young man with an amiable personality. Unlike his brother, he had never been in trouble with the law, and most folks in town liked him. He was leading his family now, with a look of grim determination, toward the doors of the church. He pretended not to hear Grayson’s remarks, although his wife looked up fearfully.

“They’ve got a nerve,” Grayson said. “Coming here.”

“Grayson, hush,” said Lillie.

Dwight Partin’s broad face flushed red, but he ignored the words. A stillness descended on the people outside the church. Pink, who was shaking hands with a couple of the other men, turned and looked as his son left Lillie’s side.

Grayson approached Dwight Partin and stood in his path. Dwight gripped his mother’s frail arm and looked into Gray’s ice-blue eyes.

“You shouldn’t be here,” said Grayson. “If it weren’t for your brother, my sister would be alive.”

A little gasp rippled through the onlookers. “Grayson, stop it,” Lillie demanded. But the boy remained stubbornly in Dwight Partin’s path.

“You heard me,” he said.

Dwight did not reply. His mother tried to pull him along but Grayson moved sideways to block their progress.

“Pink,” said Lillie, “get him back here.” But Pink was staring at his son as if fascinated and, at the same time, a little frightened. At that moment Jordan, his mother, Miss Bessie Hill, and his older sister, Jeni Rae, who had taken the bus up from Chattanooga, approached the cluster of angry people. Miss Bessie immediately walked up to the elderly Ora Partin and took her by the arm, speaking gently to her. Grayson was momentarily flustered by the friendliness of the two old women, who appeared to be ignoring him. Jordan spoke quietly into Grayson’s ear.

“Let’s try to get through this without any trouble,” he said.

Grayson turned on Jordan. “Don’t you try and tell me what to do,” he said, his handsome face pale with anger.

Sheriff Ansley, who had just arrived with his son, stepped in. Tyler hung back, looking ill at ease and hung over. His dark, unkempt hair curled over the collar of a torn leather jacket.

“What’s the problem here?” Royce asked.

Pink was standing at Grayson’s elbow. “There’s no problem. Let’s go in,” he said to his son.

Grayson answered the sheriff in a quavering voice. “They don’t belong here. Not after what his brother did.”

“I told you we shouldn’t come,” Debbie Partin wailed.

“Just…hush, Debbie,” said Dwight. “He don’t know what he’s talking about.”

“You keep your accusations to yourself,” Royce said severely to Grayson. “These people are here to pay their respects. You just let them be.”

Pink took Grayson by the arm and started pulling him away.

Grayson flung back an angry look at Dwight Partin and then straightened the sleeve on his jacket where Pink had tugged at it.

Lillie’s teeth had begun to chatter as she watched them. It was partly from the rain, which ran like a cold finger down her back. Mostly it was her nerves, vibrating like the strings on a fiddle, and it took all her effort just to stand still. She had refused to take a tranquilizer. She had a vague idea that it was imperative to feel everything, to be alert, to suffer everything, as if that would somehow keep her closer to Michele. Now, as the beleaguered Par-tin family resolutely mounted the steps to the church, she felt strangely pitying of them. It had taken courage to come here today. They must have known what people were saying about them.

Pink was speaking in a low voice to the sheriff as the last of the mourners was ushered inside. Lillie noticed Allene Starnes edging reluctantly into the church, her eyes bathing Grayson in a tender gaze of sympathy before her red head disappeared into the dark vestibule. Royce Ansley turned and gave his son a grim, meaningful look that seemed to propel the recalcitrant boy forward to where Lillie stood shivering.

“Sorry, Miz Burdette,” Tyler mumbled. Royce’s gaze was fastened on his son as he nodded at Pink’s words.

Lillie looked sadly at the boy with his sickly complexion, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. His manner was gruff, almost rude, but he had an air of secret woe about him that touched her heart. Losing his mother at such a young age had wounded him badly, Lillie thought. It must be awfully difficult for him to attend another funeral. Kids that age were frightened of funerals anyway. She put a hand out and squeezed his. His hand was ice-cold. He jumped at her touch and looked up at her with fear in his dark, bloodshot eyes.

“It’s all right, Tyler,” she said quickly. “Thank you for coming.”

The boy looked away. He nodded briefly to Grayson and Pink and retreated behind his father.

“Let’s go in,” said Pink. The people huddled in the vestibule parted to make a path for the family. Lillie leaned gratefully on Grayson’s sturdy young arm and they walked slowly down to the front pews. As she went to sit down she looked across the aisle and spotted Jordan seated between his mother and Jeni Rae.