Chapter Seven
1917
It had been three days since the mirrors had been covered
and the boxwood wreath hung on the front door.
The odor of flowers and candles was sickening and Mary desperately wanted
to fling open the windows and blow the stench out.
Ivy had been laid out in the corner of the parlor awaiting
the arrival of Mary’s parents from the east, and now that they had arrived and
were settled at the inn in town, it was time for the inevitable.
People had been coming and going from the
house constantly and she was exhausted.
Mary stood in the bedroom in her loosely fitting undergarments
and slowly picked up her black dress from where she had laid it out on the
bed.
Cy was sitting in a chair in the
corner, lacing his boots and as she stepped into her dress, she turned her back
towards him, hoping he might notice her exposed skin and want to come to kiss
her between the shoulder blades like he had before they were married.
He hadn’t touched her for months and she was
lonely. She had been foolish to hope that he would show her any tenderness,
even at a time like this.
“Cy, could you button me up?”
She tried to sound alluring, but she felt
like a girl who was repeating lines that she’d read in a novel.
He stepped to her absentmindedly, hooked the buttons without
really looking and turned to go to the kitchen.
Mary heard him open the side door and greet Reverend Hodge as he
approached the house.
“Mary, it’s time.”
The reverend stepped into the doorway of the bedroom and removed his
hat.
Reverend Hodge took her by the hand and moved her through
the house and towards the little white coffin.
Cy followed for a few steps but stopped in the parlor archway, grabbed
his hat from the coat tree and stood awkwardly, fondling it in front of him.
Mary stepped up to the coffin, put her hands on the edge and
remembered that night when she put her hands on the edge of Ivy’s crib.
Ivy’s lace gown hung over the end of the
coffin.
She grabbed the lace, noticed
the soft texture and tucked the hem inside so that it wouldn’t be caught in the
lid when it closed.
She thought of her
wedding day and how the fabric felt when she pulled up her skirts as they
walked down the stairs from the chapel.
She thought about how her dress that day had less lace than Ivy’s did
now.
Mary bent over Ivy’s face and
reached down to kiss the cold, waxy forehead.
This was the last moment that she would ever see her child.
Their house would forever be quiet now.
Maybe now Cy would stop shouting and
demanding quiet.
He gingerly walked
forward, brushed his palm across Ivy’s forehead and quickly turned away.
Reverend Hodge stepped in and gently closed
the lid.
It sounded like the “Our
Darling” placard on the inside of the lid might have fallen off, but no one
seemed prepared to open the box and check.
Mary grabbed her hat from the coat tree, put it on and
started tying the ribbon under her chin as she stepped onto the front porch.
People had begun to gather in front of the
house.
Cy’s mother, father and brother
were there, but she didn’t see her parents.
She was sure they would be along soon.
Martin Rogers stepped past her and into the house.
He and Cy soon emerged, carrying Ivy’s
casket.
The two men placed the casket on
the back of the cart that Cy had hitched the mule to earlier that morning, and
without a word, people began to follow the reverend as he led the mule and cart
towards town.
The crowd grew larger as
people joined them on the journey.
Mary’s parents joined in the procession as it passed the inn
and she felt a wave of calm when she saw them.
They joined her at her side just in time for the wind to pick up and the
sky to darken.
At the far edge of town,
they followed the road that led on towards Buck Hill Cemetery.
It began to rain.
It wasn’t a downpour, but coupled with the
wind, Mary’s face was stinging.
People
began to whisper amongst themselves, now that their words could be concealed by
the elements and the sound of the cart’s wheels as they struggled over the
rocks on the road.
Mary turned to look
over her shoulder and saw Mid Ferguson and Donna Whittle with their heads close
together.
Mid was pointing at Cy.
Mary glanced over her other shoulder and saw
Widow Jenkins and her daughter eyeing Cy intently as if they were just waiting
for him to turn around and make an announcement.”
Even the reverend seemed to be looking back
to check on them more often than was necessary and when he looked at Cy, his
eyes would soon drift down defeatedly and then look away after a short,
thoughtful pause.
Mary hadn’t yet thought of the repercussions that would
follow Ivy’s death.
She should have
realized that Cy would be the first that people looked at for the mysterious
death.
Even the doctor couldn’t explain why Ivy had died and it
didn’t help matters that Mary hadn’t been able to shed much light on the
subject.
It was all a blur to her and it
became fuzzier by the day.
Maybe folks
should focus on the living.
On her.
She needed attention now more than Ivy
did.
What did it matter how Ivy
died?
Nothing was going to bring her
back.
Ivy was in a better place now and
Mary was in a world of hurt.
“Gather round, folks,”
Reverend Hodge instructed as they entered the cemetery.
Cy and Martin placed Ivy’s coffin next to the
hole on the hill that had been dug the day before by Jerry Clifford.
He used to have a crush on Mary, but he had
one rotten tooth that always made her squeamish.
She wondered if he’d lost it yet or if it was
still terrifying young women.
“Gather in close,
people.”
The wind was swaying the iron
archway that read “Buck Hill Cemetery”
back
and forth.
Mary tried to guess whether
it would fall on Ivy’s grave if it blew completely down.
“Suffer the little children to come to me.
That’s what Jesus has taught us.
Let us not dwell on the passing of little
Ivy, but think of the joy that she brought to her family during her short time
here on Earth.”
“Didn’t have to be so short.”
Mary couldn’t make out which man in the group had said
it.
Reverend Hodge continued as if he
hadn’t heard.
Surely he was used to this
kind of thing.
He’d performed hundreds of
funerals and a child’s funeral, especially one whose nature of death couldn’t
be determined was sure to bring out grief, anger and fear in everyone, not just
family members.
“I hear him shouting at night.
At both of ‘em!”
This was a woman’s voice from somewhere behind her.
Mary quickly looked back and once again,
couldn’t place whose voice it was.
She
couldn’t let Cy be blamed for this.
If
folks were looking to him to place blame then he would become angrier and more
distant than he already was.
Her life
would be even more miserable than before.
The reverend began singing and the crowd quickly joined in.
“Softly and
tenderly Jesus is calling. Calling for
you and for me.
See on the portals he’s waiting and
watching. Calling, oh sinner, come home.
Come home.
Come home. Ye who are weary come
home.
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling. Calling, oh sinner, come home.”
The crowd continued singing.
Cy and Martin placed the casket on ropes and slowly began to lower Ivy
into the ground. Mary’s mind started to
race. Ivy would be cold. How could she sleep at night knowing that her
baby was in the ground, freezing? What
would happen as the lid of the coffin disintegrated? Her baby would be crushed and her dress would
be soiled! What if she was really still
alive? How would they save her?
“Cy Jensen, you’ll burn in hell for this!” Another random voice stopped the singing of
those that heard it. “We all know you
did it!” The rest of the singing
stopped. The crowd began moving. Arms were flying around as people began
shouting, some turned to each other and grasped hands. Some of the women started to cry. Cy let go of his side of the ropes and Ivy’s
casket crashed to the bottom of the hole.
A roll of thunder sounded in the distance, and Mary felt the rumble
through her feet. She stepped closer to
the hole to try and get a look as the crowd became more agitated. What if Ivy was on her side? Her body would be all crumpled as it rotted,
rather than laid out in a ladylike fashion.
The reverend was doing the best he could to calm the swarm, but the rage
seemed to grow the longer Cy stood looking at them blankly.
Mary stepped closer, looked into the hole and saw the coffin
tipped on a slight angle. The sides of
the hole were being washed in by the rain and the top of the coffin was spotted
with droplets of dirty water. Some of
the folks on the outer edges of the crowd were starting to leave, and some turned
to look back and shout as they shook their fists at Cy. It shouldn’t be this way. Mary lifted her head. Widow Jenkins was walking towards Mary, her daughter
in tow. Where were her parents? Her mind was starting to reel.
“Mama.”
It came from her left.
She turned her head in that direction.
Cy had begun angrily kicking dirt into the grave.
“Mama.”
This time it was on her right.
The reverend was shouting over the wind and the rain,
begging people to stay.
“Mama.”
This time she spun around, sure to find someone teasing her
cruelly. Who would be doing this to
me? Can’t they see what’s happening
here? I’m a grieving mother and they are
abandoning me and mocking me.
The earth began to slip from beneath her feet and her arms
flew out as she failed to find her balance and catch herself before falling
backwards into the hole. She landed and
felt the lid of the coffin give way underneath her weight. Oh, God!
Ivy would be crushed. Oh,
God! Oh, God!
“Mama. Mama. Mama.” The voice grew louder and she felt
raindrops falling into her mouth as she screamed. Cy, Reverend Hodge and Martin were looking
down on her with panic and several other unrecognizable faces were staring in
over her shoulder. Cy was pushing her
mother and father back away from the hole.
“Mama! Mama! Mama!”
The voiced was punctuated with giggles.
Ivy’s giggles. Mary’s mouth
opened wider and took in more rain as the horror of the moment grew. She could taste the dirt that the drops
carried down. Down. Down. Down into her
throat. She imagined the dirty water
travelling through her body to the very core where she had created life and
given birth. She struggled to stand and
knew that with every struggling movement she was crushing Ivy more and more. Crushing her so that no one would know her if they were to look upon her. Mary’s fingers clawed clumsily at the wet,
dirty walls and she was overcome by silence.
Sweet silence. She screamed
silence. Her voice had moved beyond the
range of human possibility and become a beautiful cry of anguish intertwined
with the harmonious silent shouting from above that only the angels could hear. She found herself walking through a field of
wheat with Ivy toddling amid the golden stalks.
Ivy giggled as it started to sprinkle.
Mary held her hands out to stroke the wheat, closed her eyes and looked
heavenward to let her face be washed by the tears of the angels. When she opened her eyes to see how Ivy entertaining
herself in the rain, the wheat field was gone.
Cy’s face, was inches from hers as he pulled her from the hole and
squatted on the ground, holding her. She
could see panicked faces around them.
They all moved their mouths at the same time and made noises, but as she
closed her eyes, the sound of their mouths became the chirping of the birds in
the trees surrounding the wheat field.
She could hear Ivy giggling close by and she ran towards the sound.
The land is contaminated, electronics are defunct, the ravenous
undead remain, and life has fallen into a nasty and brutish
state of nature. Welcome to Bridge City, in what was once Arkansas: part
medieval fortress, part Western outpost, and the precarious last stand for
civilization. A ten-year-old prodigy when the world ended, Gus is now a
battle-hardened young man. He designed Bridge City to protect the living few
from the shamblers eternally at the gates. Now he's being groomed by his
physician mother, Lucy, and the gentle giant Knock-Out to become the next leader
of men. But an army of slavers is on its way, and the war they'll wage for the
city's resources could mean the end of mankind as we know it. 
When the going gets tough, Ella Mae LaFaye bakes pies. So when she catches her
husband cheating in New York, she heads back home to Havenwood, Georgia, where
she can drown her sorrows in fresh fruit filling and flakey crust. But her pies
aren't just delicious. They're having magical effects on the people who eat
them--and the public is hungry for more.
.jpg)
