Palindrome

CHAPTER 40

Liz found Angus Drummond at the family cemetery, where there seemed to be excitement among the group of students and their leader, Dr. Blaylock. She stayed on the other side of the low wall that enclosed the graveyard and watched them. They crowded around a large hole and watched as small amounts of earth were expelled by someone down so far that Liz could not see his head. "It's intact!" a voice said from the grave, and there was a little round of applause. "I can get my hand under the coffin; the supports have held, too."

"Is this the first coffin you've found?" Liz asked a girl at the edge of the group.

"Yes," the girl said excitedly.

"What does he mean by supports?"

"Well," the girl said authoritatively, "when you bury somebody, you put a couple of lengths of wood crosswise in the grave for the coffin to rest on. This keeps it out of any immediate water that might have collected in the grave, and when the coffin is lowered, the supports allow the ropes to be withdrawn again. This grave is from 1881, and rope was a valuable commodity then, especially on an island, where it would have had to be brought in from the mainland."

"Toss me the rope," the voice from the grave said, and two coils were passed down to him. The students began erecting a tripod over the grave; when they were done, they hung a block and tackle from it, passed a rope through the sheave, and lowered the end into the grave. A male student appeared from the grave, drawing up a wooden ladder after him. "Okay, you can hoist away," he said. The group massed on the end of the rope and began to hoist. Shortly, a wooden coffin, very dirty, emerged from the grave, and the students manhandled it onto the ground.

Angus Drummond, who had been watching from the graveside, stepped over and wiped the top of the coffin with his hand, then took a handkerchief and rubbed until a brass plate appeared through the grime. "Dorothy Callaway Drummond," he read aloud.

"Eighteen thirty-seven to eighteen eighty-one."

"That corresponds with the tombstone," Dr. Blaylock said. "All right, some of you get to work cleaning up that casket." Students fell to work with soap, water, and brushes. "The coffin is in remarkable condition to have been in the raw earth for nearly a hundred and ten years," Blaylock said.

"That's because it's made of live oak," Angus said. "Before Aldred Drummond died, he specified a coffin for himself of live oak from the island's trees, lined in lead. Every Drummond coffin since that time has been made the same way. I'd be willing to make a considerable wager that when you get old Aldred's box up, it, too, will be intact." The coffin stood clean, now, if stained, its rich wood gleaming dully.

"No varnish left," Blaylock said, running his hand along the wood.

"It wasn't varnished," Angus said. "The coffin was rubbed with teak oil."

"May we open the coffin, Mr. Drummond?" Blaylock asked.

"No, you may not," Angus said. "That was not part of our arrangement, and I won't have the remains of members of my family unduly disturbed. Dorothy Drummond was my grandmother."

"Of course; I understand," Blaylock said.

"I'd like you to get her into her new resting place without delay," Angus said. "The ground has already been consecrated. We'll have a proper service when all the remains have been moved."

"Right away," Blaylock replied. "All right, young people, let's load the casket on the truck. Carefully, now."

Angus turned and saw Liz. "Good morning, my dear," he said brightly. "How nice to see you."

"It's good to see you, Angus," she said. "You've arrived just in time to meet my grandmother," he said, waving at the coffin, which now rested in the truck bed.

"So I heard. That's fascinating about the coffins."

"You think so? Come along, then, and I'll fascinate you some more." He led her away from the graveyard, back toward the main house. Soon, they came to the cluster of maintenance buildings that sat behind the mansion. Angus opened a large door and motioned for Liz to go ahead of him. The room was well lighted by a skylight set in the roof, and, immediately, the clean, pungent scent of wood shavings reached her nostrils. They were in a carpentry shop, well equipped with power tools, and others, some of them obviously quite old, were stored neatly on pegs along the rear wall. The side walls were covered with large racks which held lengths of lumber.

"We don't often cut down a live oak," Angus said. "Takes them too long to grow to have them fall to some obnoxious human's ax, but now and then a hurricane will blow one down or wound it so badly that it makes sense to harvest it. The lumber is sawn at our own sawmill, down in the woods, and left here to dry."

In the center of the room, on sawhorses, rested three coffins, one of them already lined in sheet lead, the other two still only bare wood inside. In a corner of the room, a smaller coffin sat on the floor. "We keep a supply in stock," Angus said. "We hadn't made one for a while, but it seemed a good idea to do so now. Jimmy Weathers won't be needing one, but I will, soon, and so will Buck Moses. He'll be buried in the family plot with us."

"What about the child's coffin, in the corner, there?"

"That was never needed, thank goodness. It was built when the twins' mother was pregnant with them. We were ready for anything."

"And the third large one?" she asked.

"Always good to have a spare," Angus said. "You never know."

Liz ran her hand along the side of one of the coffins. "It's so smooth," she said.

"It's very dense wood, almost like iron. When you sand it down, it stays smooth for a long time." He paused. "That one is mine."

"It does seem a little longer than the other two," she said.

"I've spent my whole life looking for clothes, beds, and other things that were big enough for my frame," Angus said. "I don't intend to be cramped in my grave."

"Angus," she said tentatively, "there's something I want to tell you."

"Go right ahead," he said.

"When you had me to dinner and asked me to witness your will, you told me about James Moses."

"Yes."

"Although you didn't say so, I had the feeling you were telling me about both the will and James in some confidence." Angus said nothing. "If that was so, then I'm sorry to say that I've broken your confidence."

"How so?"

"Germaine and Keir, and probably Hamish, as well, have been upset, I think, about your not having made a will."

"They've brought it up often enough," Angus said irritably. "I think it was a reasonable concern, and things reached a point where I felt I had to tell them about it."

"That's all right; I would have gotten around to it myself."

"I'm glad, but I'm afraid I also told Germaine and Keir about James being your son."

Angus chuckled. "I'm not sure I'd have got around to that, but I'm glad you did. Otherwise, they'd have learned about it at the reading of the will, and it would have been something of a shock, I suppose."

"It's a shock now," Liz said, "but less of one, I think, than if they'd learned about it after you were gone."

"What was their reaction?"

"Nothing that you or James would have to worry about, I think. They both took it pretty well, although Germaine was truly shocked at first."

"Well, they'll have time to get used to the idea."

"I think it helps a lot that they all love James anyway, relative or not."

"I know they do. It's only lately that I've let myself feel strongly about the boy. For a long time, I didn't want to think about it."

"From what they've told me, Jimmy's death somewhat simplified things."

"That's God's truth. I'm sure the little brat would have stirred up all sorts of trouble when he read the will. There would have been lawsuits for decades. Now old Goliath has done us all a service."

"All but Jimmy."

"God forgive me for speaking ill of the dead, but I have to say I never liked the boy, from the time he was a gnat. He was nothing but an irritant to the whole family his whole life long. His mother, my daughter, was a rebellious thing, married badly, had only the one child, thank Christ. She died, drunk at the wheel of a car, in Jacksonville. Her husband drank himself to death some years previous."

"Jimmy had a wife."

"I must have been prescient; I left her a bit in the will, providing he had no control over it. She isn't a bad little thing; I always felt sorry for her." A truck rumbled past.

"Well," he said, looking at his pocket watch, "I think I'll go and see Grandmother Dorothy put to rest. She died before I was born, so I missed her first burial. Will you come with me?"

"Of course. I'm glad I made a clean breast of things and that you're not angry with me."

"Nonsense. You did what any reasonable, concerned person would have done under the circumstances. And," he said sheepishly, "you did something for me that I didn't have enough courage to do for myself.

Now, come on, let's get our respective cars, so you won't have to bring me back." The two walked from the carpentry shop arm in arm, and Liz felt comfortable with herself for the first time in days.