Another Eden by Patricia Gaffney

Author:Patricia Gaffney
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781453237496
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2013-04-18T20:27:03.594000+00:00

Thirteen

MATHEW HOLYFIELD’S NEW GRAVE still had no headstone. The Blessed Brethren must be waiting for the deceased’s kin to cough up enough money to buy one, Alex thought as he stood over the convex dirt rectangle with hands clasped and head bowed. He wasn’t praying. He was trying to decide on an appropriate epitaph for his grandfather. The Brethren expected something cheap but unctuous, no doubt— “He sleeps in peace” or “His life was a prayer.” But Alex had other tributes in mind. “He tolerated no human frailty” was one. Or “He was congenitally incapable of forgiving.” What about “His family feared him all his days”? or something really basic, like, “His grandson despised him”?

He swore at himself under his breath; even dead, Matthew could still bring out the worst in him. What he ought to do was forgive the son of a bitch. Then, if his grandfather was right and there really was a hell, Alex could watch him burn in it from a safe distance away in heaven for the rest of eternity.

He moved sideways, past the inconspicuous marker on his grandmother’s grave to the one over his mother’s. Susan Holyfield, it read. Nothing more, not even the dates. But that was probably just as well; if Matthew had wanted a message carved on his daughter’s tombstone, it would’ve been “Wretched Sinner.” That’s what he’d called her often enough while she lived.

Alex knelt to lay his bouquet of bright poppies at the foot of his mother’s grave. If she’d lived, she’d have been forty-eight years old today. He didn’t even know, not for certain, what had killed her. One day when he was seven, she’d “taken to her bed,” as the family put it. But not for long; within a few weeks she was gone. The funeral sermon, preached by his grandfather, had been so full of her shame and sinfulness that Alex had been embarrassed to show his grief. But he’d mourned her in secret, keeping her memory alive in his heart during the dreadful decade that followed. And then, at sixteen, he’d run away, just as she’d been driven to do twenty years earlier. Sometimes he thought she must have been looking out for him during those first years on his own because, unlike her, he’d never been forced by circumstances to return.

“Well, bless my soul. That’s Alexander Holyfield, ain’t it?”

Alex shot to his feet and pivoted. An old man stood on the path twenty feet away, shielding his eyes from the sun with a veiny, gnarled hand and peering at him. He wore rusty black trousers and a collarless white shirt; a sweat-stained straw hat was jammed down over his forehead.

“Don’t you remember me, boy?” He started forward at a loose-jointed amble, talking all the while. “Reese Melrose, over to Cider Creek. I was deacon in your grampa’s church for a time. You recollect me now, don’t you? Law, you’ve done changed a mite, ain’t you?” He wiped his palm on the side of his pants and stuck it out to shake.

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