The Grave Tender Read online

  3

  That night, Hadley walked up the stairs to her mama’s room, running her hand along the bannister as she went. The aged, oiled wood was smooth under her fingers. She loved this house, when she slowed down enough to think about it. It was a member of the family, part of who they were.

  Nestled into a curve in the woods that ran along the Neches River, the place had an air of timelessness. A weathered grace that said, “I’ve seen it all, and I can handle whatever you’ve got, kid, so come on in and make yourself at home.”

  Hadley knocked lightly on her mama’s door.

  “Come in,” Winnie called over the sound of the radio. It was tuned to the country station out of Cordelia, and her mother was singing along. Hadley opened the door, and entered her mama’s world.

  Winnie was sitting at her vanity, massaging cream into her cheeks.

  “Hadley, honey,” she said. “You’re just in time to help me set my hair.” Winnie’s reflection smiled at her in the mirror, and Hadley knew it had been a good day.

  “Sure, Mama,” Hadley said, and pulled up a stool so she could take the big, two inch rollers out of Winnie’s hair. She loved to watch the auburn curls bounce out of their rollers, soft and loose before Winnie teased them up and froze them in place with her big blue can of hairspray.

  “It’ll be a packed house tonight, darlin’,” Winnie said, her eyes shining.

  “Standing room only,” Hadley said, as she let down her mother’s curls, one by one.

  There were a lot of things Hadley tried not to take for granted. Simple things.

  Gran said Winnie hadn’t always been this way, but she had been for as long as Hadley could remember, so that meant little to her. Occasionally, she wondered if it was an inherited thing, something that would come up on her all of a sudden. If she’d wake up one morning with the crazies, like the red welts that came with the chicken pox she’d had when she was five. But most days Hadley didn’t worry about it.

  Winnie didn’t leave the house much. Or ever, really, except to wander the woods by the river at night. People in town said she was a bit touched and shook their heads for the little girl being brought up with a mama like that. Hadley ran her hands through her mother’s hair. She knew Mama loved her, in her own way.

  When Winnie was on an upswing, she and Daddy would dance in the kitchen on bare feet.

  “Come on, Hadley,” Walker would say, and grab her in a spin, pulling her into their circle.

  It wasn’t always bad. But as the years picked up speed, Winnie had drifted further and further away from the world, until only a fragile web kept her feet bound to the earth and her family.

  The crazy came and went. For months at a time, things were almost normal. And if, in the middle of the night, while the rest of the house slept, Hadley sometimes woke to the haunting sounds of a voice coming from the pines, singing old blues songs about loss and pain and grief, well, it could have been worse.

  But then, without warning, things would come unspooled. Winnie’s songs turned to silence and she’d lock herself in her room for days. Hadley’s room was below her mother’s. She’d hear her pacing the floor boards at night.

  Sometimes it sounded like Mama was praying. Sometimes she cried, as if a billion tiny knives were cutting her open from the inside.

  That was bad.

  But nothing was worse than the screaming.

  On the screaming nights, Walker went through his wife’s bedroom door and held Winnie tight while she screamed like the fires of hell were surrounding her. Maybe they were.

  Once Winnie’s beautiful voice was ripped up and her body was drained, she’d give in to exhaustion, the silence stretching tight as a wire.

  When Walker would emerge from her room, his eyes red from crying tears of his own, Hadley was sure he’d somehow found a way to take all Winnie’s pain into himself, leaving his wife empty and spent.

  But it came back the next day to fill her up again. It always came back.

  Shaking off the melancholy thoughts, Hadley hugged her mama, then kissed her cheek.

  “Goodnight, Mama.”

  Winnie smiled vaguely at her daughter and ran a hand down Hadley’s hair.

  “Night, love,” she said, then turned back to the mirror, and the task at hand.

  It wasn’t much, maybe, but as Hadley let herself out of her mama’s room, closing the door on the powdery scents and twangy music, she was grateful it wasn’t a screaming night.

  These things were all she’d ever known. She didn’t spend a lot of time asking herself why her mother was the way she was. She just was.

  Hadley’s world was a small one, here in Whitewood. But she had a little time yet, before she’d begin to suspect that.

  4

  Friday

  It was called recess, but felt more like punishment.

  The kids of Mrs. Huffman’s fourth grade class claimed any available shade. But shade couldn’t do anything about the humidity that made the air too thick to breathe.

  It was October. Heat weary, the residents of east Texas waited for summer to give up and die, but it held on like a leech, sucking the life out of the place, getting fat.

  “I could be the (slap) Lone Ranger and you (slap) could be Tonto.”

  “Why am I (slap) the side (slap) kick?” Slap, slap.

  The sharp sound of playing cards punctuated the exchange, lending a strange staccato rhythm.

  “Because it was my idea, (slap) and besides, I’m black.” Slap

  Jude waited for Hadley to throw out the next card. When it didn’t come, she looked up at her friend’s bemused expression.

  “What?” she asked.

  Hadley shook her head. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Well, I can’t be your sidekick. It’d make you look like a racist cracker. So you have to be mine.”

  “I’m not a racist!” She didn’t argue the cracker part.

  “I know, but think about how it’d look.”

  “That’s stupid. Besides, you’re only half black. When Mrs. Huffman chose parts for the play, you got Pocahontas because you told her you’re Indian.”

  “So. I am Indian. My Nana on my mama’s side is full-blooded Choctaw.” Slap.

  “Maybe so, but you can’t pick and choose whenever it suits you.”

  “Course I can. I’m not lying, am I? My Nana’s Choctaw, my mama’s Creole, and my daddy’s black. Just the way it is.”

  An image of Joseph Monroe flashed through Hadley’s mind. He was laughing. He was always laughing.

  “You’re daddy’s full of horse shit, is what he is.”

  “True enough,” Jude said. Slap “But he’s still black. Not my fault your whole family’s plain old vanilla.”

  Next to Jude, with her gold dust skin, Hadley looked like a coloring page that someone had forgotten to color in. All pale skin and dark hair, with eyes a little too big for her face. Another kind of girl might have been jealous. Even at ten, everybody knew Jude was destined for beauty.

  But the girls had been friends too long for that, their faces as familiar to one another as an old pair of shoes. And the appeal of male attention was only a distant specter somewhere in the fog of someday, maybe.

  Slap.

  “I win,” Jude announced, scooping up the deck of cards.

  “Tonto was an Indian,” Hadley pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Jude said. “But it’s Halloween. You be the Indian, and I’ll be the cracker in a white cowboy suit.”

  “Stop calling me a cracker.”

  “I’m not calling you a cracker.”

  “Not this time, but you just did.”

  “I said that’s what people’d say! I’m trying to do you a favor.”

  “Just hand ‘em over. I’ll shuffle,” Hadley said.

  No point in arguing. She kind of liked the idea of dressing up as Tonto. But she wasn’t telling Jude that.

  As Hadley deftly handled the worn deck of cards, her ears pricked at a sound drifting a
cross the schoolyard. Glancing at Jude, she saw her friend’s nose lift and her head turn.

  Without a word, the girls were up and running, the playing cards abandoned in the dirt. Before they’d made two steps, they heard the universal battle cry of savage children everywhere.

  “Fight!”

  The crowd was gathering by the time they pushed their way into the circle, the chant of fight, fight, fight filling the air.

  Hadley could make out little more than limbs and sneakers rolling around in the dirt.

  “It’s Cooper,” Jude said in her ear, trying to be heard over the din.

  “That’s no surprise,” Hadley said, craning and shoving to see around the bigger kids.

  “And Sam!” Jude said.

  “Sam?”

  Sam Brooks and Cooper Abbott were friends, but you wouldn’t know it, the way they were pounding on each other.

  Sam seemed, at first, to have the upper hand, but even as she thought it, Hadley saw Cooper land an elbow to the bigger boy’s eye then break free as Sam tried to pin him down.

  Scrambling to his feet, Cooper ran straight at Hadley, who’d managed to push her way to the front of the crowd.

  “Hey!” she shouted, as Cooper grabbed her shoulders and positioned himself behind her, using her as a shield. For all his swagger, he wasn’t much bigger than she was.

  Grinning, Cooper laughed. “Help me out here, he won’t hit you.”

  Sam came toward them. His eye was starting to swell.

  “That’s chicken shit, Coop,” he sneered. “Hiding behind a little girl.”

  “Who you calling little, Sam Brooks?” Hadley asked. Cooper was ducking and weaving behind her with a grin on his face.

  Sam, who’d shot up almost a foot over the summer, had to lean down a bit to look Hadley in the eyes.

  “You, shrimp.”

  Ever since Hadley was little, she’d had a temper that ran deep and low. It didn’t show itself much. But her daddy said he could see when it was about to break though. Her face would get rigid, her nostrils flaring, just before it reared up. He called it her ox face.

  Jude saw it coming. Sam didn’t.

  Not until a pale, bony fist flashed, connecting with the nose he’d unwisely placed within her reach.

  Blood spurted, Jude gasped, Sam howled in pain, and over it all, Cooper’s manic laughter rang like calliope music at the fair.

  “Hadley Dixon!” The strident tone of Mrs. Huffman gave away her irritation at being forced to cut her conversation with Coach Bagley short. The two were presumably monitoring their young charges, but there had been heavy flirting happening, and she wasn’t a happy woman.

  Hadley’s ear was wrenched in the teacher’s grasp, and where your ear goes, so does the rest of you. She was dragged off toward the principal’s office.

  “But Mrs. Huffman, I didn’t—“

  “Hush it, young lady. I don’t want to hear about what you didn’t do. I saw you punch that boy in the nose.”

  She called back over her shoulder, ear still firmly in her grip, “You too, Mr. Brooks. First to the nurse’s office, then the principal will want a word with you as well.”

  Sam trailed sullenly behind them, his hands still on his nose. Jude watched them go, but the rest of the onlookers had scattered to the winds at the first sign of authority, including Cooper Abbott, who’d no doubt started the whole thing.

  …

  Hadley was sitting on a bench outside Mr. Gilmore’s office when she saw her father walking up the hall.

  “Daddy, I—“

  He held up a hand. “You’ll get your turn, but not yet,” he said, taking in the sight of Sam sitting silently next to her, drops of dried blood marring the collar of his t-shirt.

  The two kids hadn’t spoken, and didn’t still, while they waited for Mr. Dixon to come out of the principal’s office.

  When the door finally opened, Hadley kept her eyes on the floor. Walker squatted in front of her and waited for her to meet his gaze.

  “Your turn, Hadley. Did you punch this boy?”

  She’d had so much she planned to say, but her indignation evaporated under her father’s stern eyes.

  She nodded.

  “Did he hit you first?”

  Hadley saw Sam stiffen beside her, listening, but he stayed silent.

  She thought for a moment about lying, but knew she couldn’t. Not to her daddy. Not with Sam sitting there taking in every word.

  “No, Daddy,” she said.

  “Why’d you hit him, Hadley?”

  “He… he called me little.”

  Walker’s eyebrows arched.

  “He called you little?” he asked, and Hadley could hear how ridiculous that sounded.

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “Hadley Dixon,” Walker said, shaking his head. “I hate to break it to you girl, but you are little. At least on the outside.”

  He stood.

  “Apologize to Mr. Brooks.”

  She whipped her eyes upward, but there was no give in her daddy’s face. With a long suffering sigh, she turned to Sam, knowing her father would expect her to do it right.

  “I’m sorry I punched you in the nose, Sam,” she said. “I hope your mama can get the stains out of your shirt.”

  Sam looked down, and quickly mumbled, “S’Allright.”

  Hadley could tell he wanted this whole thing over nearly as bad as she did.

  With a nod to Sam, Walker held out a hand for Hadley to take, and that was that.

  Except for the switching she got when they got home.

  5

  Saturday

  The next day Hadley stayed close to her room. Her butt, and her pride, were still sore.

  Midmorning, Gran knocked on her door, then came inside carrying a stack of laundry. Tossing aside her sketchbook, Hadley rose to help her put it away. For a moment, the two worked in concert, under the hum of the ceiling fan.

  “Your daddy said he’s thinking of driving into Cordelia today,” Gran said.

  Under normal circumstances, Hadley would have jumped up, run down the stairs immediately, and pestered her father to let her tag along. Cordelia was the closest thing to a real city in fifty miles, much bigger than Whitewood, and infinitely more interesting. Instead, she bit her lip.

  “Probably enjoy the company,” Gran said with her back to her granddaughter, as she put a stack of socks away in the dresser drawer.

  “You don’t think he’s still mad at me?”

  Gran’s smile was soft when she turned, then ran a hand down Hadley’s hair.

  “Your daddy was never mad at you, honey.”

  “You really don’t think he’d mind?”

  “What I think is that if he wanted to go alone, he would have left, instead of making a point of telling me his plans just as I was heading up the stairs, then fiddle farting around in the kitchen over another cup of coffee he doesn’t need.”

  Hadley grinned.

  “Now get a move on, before he gets tired of waiting on you to make up your mind.”

  …

  “Can we stop at the bookstore before we go home?” Hadley asked, licking the ice cream that was creeping down her cone, making a sticky path toward her hand.

  Walker ruffled her hair. “You think it’s your birthday or something?”

  Hadley shook her head, but held out hope. A book was usually an easy sell, and it’d been a good day. No mention of yesterday’s events. If she let herself, she could almost pretend it hadn’t happened. Until she sat down.

  “Not today.” Walker ruffled her hair as she tried, and failed, to hide her disappointment.

  “I have something else in mind.”

  …

  The fat tubes lay side by side in their tray. There were 16 of them, untouched and full of promise. Each one was marked with a saturated hue, like a badge of rank from a faraway place. Vermilion, burnt umber, ultramarine. Even the words felt exotic. Elegant, like red, orange and blue, but all grown up and dressed for the opera.
>
  “But… my art teacher… we haven’t gotten that far. He said I need to master the basics of form and perspective before I start with paint.”

  Walker rolled his eyes.

  “Hadley, sometimes it’s okay to take a chance. The world is full of color, lady bug. Reach out and grab some of it.”

  Walker winked and Hadley’s head was suddenly reeling at the possibilities. She felt like she had when the training wheels came off her bike, thrilled at the idea that she could move faster and farther than before.

  “All I ask is that you put your heart into this. And not into handing out bloody noses.”

  Hadley realized that nothing had been forgotten. She hugged the paints to her chest, chastised, even as a whole new world waited in that little box.

  6

  Sunday

  “I don’t understand what we’re doing.”

  “I told you, I’m looking for the right subject.”

  “But why do I have to be here? I don’t want to watch you paint. That’s boring,” Jude said.

  “I’m not going to paint the whole thing, just sketch it out.”

  “But—“

  “Hey, wait up!”

  Jude and Hadley turned to see Cooper running across the field toward them. Sam trailed behind at a slower pace. The Abbotts lived just across the gravel road from the Dixon’s, the nearest neighbors to Jude’s family.

  Because of the way it was situated between their own houses, the two girls passed by Cooper’s house daily, and they all caught the bus together, but Cooper didn’t make a habit of seeking them out. They were girls.

  The two waited at the edge of the woods that lined the river, but when Cooper caught up to them he leaned his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

  “Use your inhaler, dipshit. Everybody knows you have asthma,” Sam said as he joined them. His eye had turned an interesting shade of purple, but his nose seemed to be recovered. Hadley wondered what paints she could mix to make that exact shade, but she looked away when Sam caught her staring.