Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense by Linda Landrigan

Author:Linda Landrigan [Landrigan, Linda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Anthologies
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2011-12-14T21:00:00+00:00

CONNIE HOLT

HAWKS

June 1989

THIS STORY, PUBLISHED in 1989, won for its author the Robert L. Fish Award for the Best First Short Story. In a genre where the subject matter is violence and the realism is often “gritty,” this story is a small jewel of understatement and implication, but no less disturbing for that. We like the way the little details accumulate to create a subtle but powerful ending.

The mourners gathered in small groups on the hillside, some under the red-leafed oak and others before the monuments to their own dead in the overgrown Irish cemetery. Aunt Hattie was back home in the kitchen seeing to supper for the “hungry folks after a funeral.” Aunt Sue, Uncle Joe’s wife, stayed down to help her. So did Miss Tatum Harris, the telephone operator for Arkansas Bell in Republican. Miss Tatum had brought two of her lemon layer cakes to do for dessert. Her neighbor, Mrs. Loder Smith, the wife of the general store proprietor, went over to Miss Tatum’s house to take the switchboard whenever trouble called the good lady away. Aunt Sue seemed low as she rolled and cut biscuits, but Aunt Hattie and the telephone operator kept up an effort to jolly her out of it.

The children—nieces and nephews of the dead man, Preacher’s five young ones, and a few second cousins from Gilbert—were charged to be on their best behavior and to stay among the older graves at the top of the hill. Soon they were running through tall grass that tapped the spines of Irishmen one hundred years dead. Shrieks of happy laughter bounced off crumbling stone, and a game of marbles got under way on the bare, packed earth above Baby McDonough, 1865.

Sarah and Donald sat side by side in quiet dignity upon the granite slab of Lough MacDougal, the one stubborn old Scot to lie up in that Celtic hillock. They spoke in somber tones to honor their uncle’s funeral day, and to impress their maturity on the younger children.

“Preacher says Elmo ain’t goin’ to heaven ’cause he’s a pagan,” said Donald. At thirteen a deep furrow already showed between his brows.

“What’s a pagan?” asked Sarah.

“Save they don’t go to church and they’re sinners, I’m not real sure,” he replied.

“Daddy said Aunt Hattie says he ain’t goin’ too, ’cept ’cause they cain’t find him,” Sarah said.

“Uncle Abe ain’t goin’ to heaven neither?” asked Donald.

“No, silly, not Daddy,” she laughed, “Uncle Elmo. ’Cause they cain’t find his body is how come he cain’t get into heaven.”

“What difference does that make?” Donald asked.

Sarah mused the point and decided. “I guess you got to have your body with you when your soul goes.”

“’At don’t sound right,” said Donald with a knowing nod. “People don’t use their bodies in heaven. Only your soul goes to Jesus. Nobody’d drag along to heaven somethin’ that’s been in a hole.”

“All the same,” she replied, “Aunt Hattie says there cain’t be no Christian burial, so he cain’t go.”

“Maybe so,” Donald said, “but it don’t matter none.

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