Chapter 15 The Burial
The Burial
Kate Shaw
“Am I obligated? Is Birdie’s note binding in some legal world?”
I pour mint tea in two mugs, open my tin of oatmeal cookies, and place it on the roughhewn bench I use as a coffee table.
On this heartbreaking Saturday, Eli has come to my cabin a second time.
He sits in the middle of the lumpy sofa where the ends of the cushion rise like thick wings.
Grief envelops my friend who can be annoying at times but who is mostly kind.
At my question, he stops the cookie halfway to his mouth. “I thought you’d be honored.” He eats the first cookie in two bites, hardly tasting it, then reaches for a second.
“I’m not honored and I’m not worthy. I don’t feel excited or even hope I can make sense of them.” My tone is hard like a stale biscuit. “What good will Birdie’s books do me or anyone?” My hand trembles from emotion so I put down my mug.
“Aren’t you curious?” He slurps his tea noisily. “Curious what would pique Birdie’s interest enough to write it down?”
“You mean like butt boils?” I say cynically.
“Why’d you say that?” He looks up with interest.
“It was in the book beside her cot, the page marked with a blue feather.” I point to the book on the table, and he reaches for it and thumbs through it. Maybe butt boils are of more concern around here than I can imagine.
“Take it with you. I glanced through it hoping she left a clue about what happened last night, but I didn’t find anything helpful.”
My eyes wander to the window and the bright sunshine that now speckles the forest floor. After two days of rain, the leaves move in the breeze like broken marionettes.
“You asked if I was curious, and I am a tiny bit,” I admit. “But this is happening so fast. I’m still struggling with the shock that she’s dead.”
What I don’t confide is my sadness that I’ll never have another chance to prove myself to the mountain woman.
She was my compass in this high place, and without her I’m not sure which direction to turn.
Today I fit more poorly here than I did when I came.
Maybe it’s a good thing my job is ending. But now there are those blasted books…
“She’s gone, Kate, and those books will be left unattended after her funeral tomorrow.
They’ll be in danger from the elements and nosy souls or the frightened who want to destroy them.
Surely you agree that they were too precious to Birdie to risk being damaged. You and I are the logical caretakers—”
I interrupt, flooded with relief. “You’ll help me?”
“Of course I’ll help.” His enthusiasm ratchets up.
“When school is over on Friday, we can use that space. We’ll move student desks and put up sheets of plywood on sawhorses for worktables.
Bring in extra light so we can see better.
In the meantime, after the funeral, we’ll take them to the school storage closet and lock them in for safekeeping and hope nobody goes looking for them. ”
“Thank you, Eli,” I say, genuinely relieved to know he’ll help determine what to do with all these pages that mattered to Birdie. But will they matter to anyone else?
Eli stands and moves to my cabin door. He puts on his raincoat he doesn’t need now that the sky has cleared. I follow him outside. “See you at the funeral. Should start around one.” He tips his hat and limps down the mountain.
How will this ceremony work? Is there neutral ground between Birdie’s beliefs and Eli’s faith?
Was her funeral something she discussed with Eli?
Or is a funeral to comfort the living left behind?
I see Eli left behind the butt boil book, and I feel mean-hearted the way I’ve handled this bizarre day.
It’s been about my feelings, my shortcomings and my losses. I feel my usual guilt.
The mystery of her perfectly planned death is the real puzzle. How does a person do that? Was her destiny written in one of her books, to die in the early morn of June 6, 1980? Did she live life on a different plane with different rules?
Under blazing clouds of orange and gold with blunt slashes of red, I listen to a bizarre chorus.
It’s coming from a half mile off, outside Birdie’s old trailer.
Crows cry. While the sun’s brilliance drains from the sky, I listen to their lament until it’s dark.
Even when I go inside and close my door, I hear them. The next morning, it’s silent.
At one o’clock, I walk to her trailer and join the gathering crowd.
Buck and Sadie Dillard are there with their three children.
Little Loretty looks lost. She stands beside the totem pole and runs her finger over the carved snake that winds around the core.
Birdie told me that snakes stand for rebirth, that they are the gateway to new beginnings, but I’ve killed two copperheads in my woodpile without a drop of remorse.
Mooney’s here from the Rusty Nickel, and Irma Jolly from the boarding house with her brother-in-law Lester rumored to grow the best corn for moonshine.
Mr. Turner the mailman, and Harlan and his Uncle Jerome stand in a line beside Tattler, who built her coffin.
Luke and Jimbo are with their parents Annie and Montel.
Folks stand warily beneath wind chimes and dream catchers interwoven with bleached bones and mirrors.
More people keep coming through the woods.
Silent strangers who knew Birdie least stand on the far side of the creek or further back in the trees.
At Eli’s signal, the pine casket is carried by Tattler, Buck, Jerome, and Harlen, and they head around back of the trailer to a trail that’s been cleared through the kudzu.
We shuffle past a shell of a cabin brought down by determined trees rising up.
Birdie left a note for Eli asking to be buried outside the stone wall. She even marked the spot, and men dug the hole on Saturday as superstition dictates. To dig a grave on Sunday would mean another grave would be needed the coming week. Why take chances on dark folklore when a witch is involved?
A wall two feet high surrounds the ancient burial site.
Lichen and moss and old candle wax lay on the flat top stones, likely from ceremonies during the full moon or the solstice.
Birdie would celebrate such bizarre things.
Three worn headstones poke up from the ground inside the wall, with unreadable names and dates.
That ground has heaved, and tree roots have riddled the soil.
Eli waits beside Birdie’s grave outside the wall.
He holds his worn Bible against his chest like a shield. He signals everyone to come closer.
Absent today, as every other day in recent years, is Prudence Perkins, Eli’s bitter sister.
She has cut herself off from the living and has become a recluse to be pitied or forgotten.
That sour woman was the first Baines Creek resident I laid eyes on ten years back.
I remember thinking it was the hard living of this place that had damaged Prudence Perkins.
Now I know her damage is self-inflicted.
Also missing is Marris Jones, Sadie’s aunt, who’s become infirm yet still does good deeds.
Two sides of the same hardscrabble coin.
Eli announces a reading from the Song of David, Psalm 18: My God is my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation.
All heads are bowed with eyes closed except mine.
I watch Eli in his well-practiced role as comforter.
Across the clearing of wild grasses, Samuel the crow sits in the midst of other crows at the edge of the woods.
The field is scattered with upright boulders that today look strangely human, shoulders curved, rounded tops bowed in respect.
A family of deer watches inside the distant shadow line.
And then I see them. Ten lights, floating deep in the leafy dark where daylight doesn’t reach.
They are the angel lights I first saw a week back, but today they don’t look dangerous, not when I’m in a crowd and the sun is shining.
They shimmer like a mirage in a desert. Standing among the lights is a wisp of a girl with red hair surrounded by black-cloaked figures.
When Eli says Amen and heads are raised and eyes opened, the lights and the images vanish.
Everyone leaves, and Eli asks Harlan, Tattler, and Eddie to help us move Birdie’s books.
He saw fear in some folks’ eyes over Birdie’s written words she left behind.
More than one person asked could spells be let loose if the covers of her books were opened.
Eli fears someone may torch her life’s work to be rid of her magic.
The books will be safer in the locked closet at school.
“Her eight-sided star is missing,” I say. “The one that hangs beside her door. The one she touches every time she enters. When did that happen?”
Eli says wearily. “Maybe the storm blew it off.”
“No, that nail was bent to keep it there,” I add, but Eli isn’t interested. “She’d be upset to see us touching her books, moving them.” I observe. “She didn’t want them to leave her trailer.”
“Really, Kate? We have no choice. These are extraordinary times, and we are now the caretakers.”
Carefully, the boys fill cardboard boxes and baskets, and Tattler says, “Seventy-eight books, Miz Kate.” The boxes are piled on the sled that had carried her casket. The boys leave and it’s only Eli and me in the yard. He says, “Did you see the wooden chest?”
“No. Where?” I had stayed outside her trailer while the books were boxed.
“Near her cot, covered in a scrap of quilt.”
We enter and shuffle toward the empty cot and pull aside the quilt. “What in the world?” I whisper.
It’s a glorious chest, etched with exotic markings. An intricate inlay of a crow is on the lid. It belongs here as much as fine bone China or the queen’s jewels. I try to lift the lid, but it’s locked.
“I saw a brass key on her table,” Eli says and walks the length of the trailer, his head six inches lower than the ceiling. “Got it,” he calls out, then returns. Half teasing, he says, “Maybe it’s a treasure.”
“And what would Birdie be doing with a treasure?” I argue. “She didn’t care about earthly possessions. She didn’t even own a cup that wasn’t chipped.”
He hands the key to me and I slip it into the keyhole. It turns effortlessly as if it’s used often. Together, we lift the heavy lid unprepared for what we’ll find. Eli reaches out a trembling hand and whispers. “Sweet Jesus. Is that silver and gold?”