She was not yet eighteen on the day she died, not ten months after we had wed, on the thirteenth day of a windy cold September. Her family came. Her brother Lee had hatred in his face. Her father stood stoic on the door sill. Her mother sobbed, “The poor child was too young.” By this she meant, She was destroyed by this man’s greedy lust. Thrust at me squalling was the murderous red thing expelled by her dear body, our dear body.
Her lips were parted, her gaze fixed. Where had she gone? The black strands of sweat-bedraggled hair spread on the pillow, the mortal scents and stains of my darling’s blood and urine on the coarse moss mattress we had sewn together-our bed of life where this red thing had been created, her bed of death. I would not look at it for fear that cold Jack Watson might seize it up and hurl it to the blood-sniffing dogs outside.
Still on my knees, I took Charlie’s cool hand, rested my brow on her cool wrist.
Edgar? Please? For Ann Mary’s sake? Give this little boy a name. (Mr. Curry Collins, father of the bride.)
Take it away.
The voices hushed me.
All of you go away. Please. Take it with you.
I lay down in my own corpse beside my murdered wife. They watched from the cabin door. Son? Get away from there. Now don’t go acting crazy!
Shouting, I drove them all out of our cabin.
Holding cold hands, we stared upward at the cedar roof where I once patched that faraway blue sky. Together we prayed that I might go wherever she might be going. We did not stir. Night fell. I turned cold beside her. For two days I lay amongst my dead: the Widow Cloud, Cloud’s Creek, South Carolina.
At daybreak, I carved her cross; that same day, I made her coffin. Our own ceremony would be her memorial, and she would lie in our own ground beside our cabin. No. In the end, the families came and shamed me. They whispered at the graying face and melancholy scent. Nobody had closed her eyes nor crossed her arms nor even bathed her. Her stepbrother and minister and my friend J. C. Robarts bent a wayward arm, forcing it to join the rest of her within the coffin. “It’s not a chicken wing,” I growled. His face went mushy with resentment. Edgar, don’t. We loved her, too. Nobody’s trying to hurt Cousin Ann Mary.
Charlie, I said. Ann Mary Collins was the dead girl who went away nailed up in my pine box, under black crepe, to be bounced and thrown about in a black cart. Every jolt hurt me. I ran after them half naked in the cold, yelling at them to go slow and be more careful. I walked a little ways but being barefoot fell behind and finally did not follow.
In a dream her coffin is lowered into a deep pit in the white clay earth of Bethel churchyard. It is left uncovered. I can see inside. The fair skin which shivered at my touch purples and softens. Shadowed eyes sunk back, grayed small teeth on blue-gray lip, dead hair lank over the skull. She no longer knows me.
Cousin Selden drifts among the mourners, feathers rotting. He is rotting, too. I cry, “Why have you come? What do you want of me?”
Night after night, Charlie returns.
Wandering the woods roads under sleepless stars, I walk and walk, heart dead as the white clay.
Charlie my Darling, gone and lost forever. I swear a terrible revenge but upon whom?