The Brass Bed

19

They took Sid home to Clearvale to bury him, and I went out there the day of the funeral with Fran and Jolly in Jolly’s Caddy. She asked me to drive, and I did. Fran sat alone in the back seat and didn’t say anything, and Jolly sat over against the door in the front seat and said very little, and we drove all the way out there, about a hundred miles, almost in silence.

Clearvale was in a long, narrow valley, and the highway went down the length of the valley with the fields rising gently on both sides, and it was quite pretty. The town itself was also pretty. It had wide, quiet streets with a lot of elms and oaks and maples growing around everywhere and spreading their branches over everything, and what you got in the streets and on the lawns was this dappled effect of light and shade, which is about as pleasant as anything can be on a summer’s day.

The first part of the funeral was in the home of Sid’s parents. His mother is someone I can’t even remember, and I suppose she had dimension and quality and everything that makes a woman what she is instead of something else, but even so I can’t remember her in the slightest, and not even her loss and her grief were enough to make me. I can remember his father, however, because he looked exactly as Sid would have looked if he had lived three or four more decades instead of dying drunk under an exhaust pipe. He was small and gray and drying on his bones, and he watched and listened to the things that were said and done as if he were trying to understand what had really happened to Sid and what was now really happening to him.

Two rooms of the house were used for the funeral, and we sat on folding chairs that were supplied by the undertaker. It was hot in the rooms, and the chairs were very uncomfortable, and after a while there was constantly this uneasy rustling and creaking that meant that everyone was tired of it and wanted it to stop. A woman with a big bosom sang Beautiful Island of Somewhere, and she sang it much too loud for the small rooms, and I got the impression from her professional approach that she too, like the chairs, was supplied by the undertaker.

After the minister had finished talking and had prayed a little for Sid’s good, everyone filed by the casket to look at Sid for the last time on earth, and I was caught in the movement and couldn’t get away and had to go. I looked at his face quickly, but it didn’t look like a face I had ever seen before, and I went on past him and out onto a porch and down into the yard. Outside, all the people were getting into cars to go out to the cemetery for the final part of the service.

It was a pleasant little cemetery with many small white stones, and I thought that it was probably as nice a place as you could find to be dead in. There was a mound of raw earth beside the hole they had dug for Sid, and on the other side of the hole there was a striped awning over some chairs for the mourners to sit in. The rest of us stood up behind the chairs and watched and listened while the minister went through the ashes and dust recitation, and after that the service was finished, and it was all over with Sid. Fran turned and walked away and got by herself into the back seat of the Caddy, and Jolly and I followed and stood outside looking in at her. She didn’t pay any attention to us, but sat looking instead across the green grass and intervening stones to the open hole they had put Sid into.

“Well, there the sneaky little devil is,” Fran said. “There he is, and he’s dead, and I never would have believed it. I always tried to look after him and take care of him and teach him what was right to do, but in spite of that he was always doing something that wasn’t, and now I’m damned if he hasn’t gone off and died and got completely away from me. I guess that was the most wrong thing he ever did among all the others, going off and dying that way, and it was all so useless and had no sense in it whatever. He was pretty hard to understand, I’ll admit that, and lots of times I thought I understood him when I didn’t, and I’ll admit that too, but anyone would have thought there was a limit to his duplicity, and I truly never dreamed that he would carry it this far. You know yourselves that I always thought of him and took him places and made all kinds of sacrifices for him and was heartbroken when I thought erroneously for a little while that he had become an alcoholic behind my back. Could any reasonable person have expected more? Is it fair that he should now have returned my kindness by dying in this foolish manner? Could I have anticipated that he would lie down behind Jolly’s car after drinking too many of Prince Sam’s highballs? Well, there he is in that hole over there, and there is no use in blaming myself or in thinking about it any longer in any way whatever, for he’s dead, that’s certain, and all I know is that I keep wishing and wishing that he wasn’t.”

All in an instant her ugly face crumpled and blurred, and she began to cry, and I couldn’t stand to see it. Turning, I walked across the grass and under a tree and stood by the trunk with my back to the Caddy. Jolly came up behind me and stopped.

“Why is she taking it so hard?” I said.

“Because she loved him,” Jolly said, and her voice sounded quite surprised. “Didn’t you know that?”

“Fran loved Sid?”

“Certainly. Surely it was perfectly apparent.”

“No, it was not. I would never have thought it in the world from the way she talked to him and kept fooling around with Harvey.”

“Oh, well, that didn’t mean anything, of course. She loved Sid, all right, and for that reason it was too bad that he didn’t love her instead of me.”

“I agree with that. It was too bad.”

“Because I love you, naturally, and therefore could not love Sid, and consequently nothing turned out right for either of them.”

“No more for you and me.”

“I don’t see that. Everything is now in a position to turn out right for us from this time on.”

“Now that Sid is out of the way, as well as Kirby? Is that what you mean?”

“Sid? Are you certain that you are feeling well, Felix? What on earth does Sid have to do with it?”

“Never mind. Tell me something, though, Jolly. Fran is your good friend, almost as special as I, and I would like to know what you feel when you see her grieving for Sid and wishing that he were not dead.”

“I feel quite bad. It is exceedingly touching to see her.”

“Touching? Yes, I suppose you could say at least that it is touching.”

“What’s the matter with you, Felix? I must say that you are acting and speaking very strangely, and I am becoming rather disturbed about it.”

“Are you? I am also becoming disturbed, if you want the truth, and perhaps that is why I’m behaving strangely.”

She didn’t respond at once, and I could hear her breathing as I had heard her in the garage where Sid had died, the slow and regular drawing and release of her breath.

“I cannot understand why you should be disturbed,” she said.

“Can’t you? It may be unreasonable of me. If I ask you a question, will you answer it?”

“I’ll try to answer.”

“If you do, you must tell the truth.”

“You will have to judge for yourself whether it is the truth or not.”

“I doubt that I’m a very good judge of the truth. However, I’ll ask the question because it’s necessary. Did you kill Kirby and afterward Sid?”

“Why do you ask such a question?”

“I told you. Because it’s a question that needs asking and answering.”

“Is it your belief that I did?”

“Yes, it is. It’s a belief I don’t want and tried to avoid, but it is one that is reasonable under the circumstances. I believe that you drowned Kirby, though I don’t know how you managed it exactly, and I believe that you killed Sid because he saw you do it from among the trees on the bank. Mostly it’s thinking about Sid that disturbs me. How about you, Jolly? Does it disturb you also? Does it bother you at all to remember how you drove the car yourself into the garage and left him alone on the floor under the exhaust pipe and then went into the house and upstairs to bed? Did you sleep, Jolly? I keep wondering if you slept.”

“Why does it please you to abuse me?”

“It doesn’t please me to abuse you. I am only telling you what I believe, as you asked me to, and I will tell you that Jason believes it also. In some details, however, he is mistaken. He thinks that I may be an accessory, which is not true, and he thinks that Sid was killed because he tried to blackmail you for money, which is also not true. He was killed, as I am certain, because he tried through his knowledge of the drowning of Kirby to make a place for himself in your fine brass bed.”

“I can see now from the way you are talking to me that you do not love me after all.”

“On the contrary, I do love you after all, and it is enlightening and not pleasant to learn what one can love and continue to love in spite of everything.”

“In that case, it’s all right. If you continue to love me, it’s all right.”

“It’s not all right. It’s all wrong, and I would rather be as dead as Kirby and Sid than ever to assume the place in the brass bed that you intended me to have.”

“Are you deserting me, then?”

“If that is the way you care to put it.”

“If you desert me now, it will be the end of me.”

“Go away, Jolly. This time for good. Go get into the car with Fran and go away.”

“I refuse to do it. How would you get back to town?”

“That’s a minor problem.”

“Don’t you care what happens to me?”

“I care, but I can no longer do anything about it.”

“I love you, Felix.”

“I doubt it.”

“It’s true. I will love you all the rest of my life, but that will only be a short while because I will soon die without you.”

“I doubt that too.”

“Would you believe me if I said I didn’t do the things you say I did?”

“I don’t know.”

“You see? It is clear to me now that you have made up your mind, and nothing I could say would change it in the least, and so there is absolutely no use in my answering your question. Perhaps after a while, when I have died because of you, you’ll begin to wonder if you were wrong, and it will be something you’ll always have to wonder about.”

I started to walk then, and I intended to walk right away without looking back, but I couldn’t do it. I stopped and turned and looked back at her over the small white stones, and she stood without moving beside the tree in a pattern of sun and shade, slender and suffering and somehow betrayed, about her still the air of fragile dignity.