TheBanyanTree: He Wept

[R J Fernalld]

"He stared through the open window and began to weep."

"He actually wept? Incredible!"

The women sat on his verandah, and spoke not again. The honeysuckle vines
carried a sweet scent on the lazy summer breeze as they waited. The hired
man from town had arrived with the hearse to bear him away, and silence
seemed appropriate. The sisters sat, with gloved hands folded demurely upon
their laps, bonnets bowed as the slaves carried out Arthur's coffin, but
neither felt remorse. They'd agreed to bury him in town rather than on the
property, to demonstrate the proper moral disapproval.

"We is done now ma'am. You want we should lock up the house?" the older
slave asked, hand extending for the key.

"No, George. We will stay and see to Mr. Grover's things. You may go."

"Yes'm."

Both women watched in silence as the horse drawn hearse rounded the bend at
the edge of the property. They waited for the remainder of the people to
carry Adelaide's body out to the slave quarters. Hearing the signal that all
was clear they entered the grand old mansion.

"It's ours at long last," said Lucille with a sigh.

"And rightly so," said Miranda in her clipped, spinster voice. 

Together they moved from room to room, with a satisfied sense of right. This
is where they belonged. Touching the furniture, admiring the drapes, each
secretly admitted the slut brother had married had taste in furnishings if
nothing else.

Finally, they came to Arthur's study, the one room they had avoided. Lucille
glanced at Miranda, took a deep breath and opened the door. 

The gun still lay where Arthur had dropped it. The carpet before the chair
by the window had soaked up the slut's blood. The sisters had not asked why
Arthur had killed her. Their web of lies about her, so carefully planned, so
neatly employed, had driven their brother mad with jealousy. No matter, they
thought. The bitch deserved killing. How dare she seduce Arthur into
sullying the family name?

"Arthur was a fool."

"Yes," replied Lucille.

"He really just sat there looking out the window? He wept?"

"I saw him. Addie's dead body lay there bleeding. He reloaded the gun,
opened the window, and sat weeping like a foolish child. Then he looked over
at me, and shot himself."

"Over that bitch?" Miranda shook her head in disgust.

They sat together on the sofa. With Arthur's blood and brains splattered
over the chair before them, the hated sister-in-law's blood at their feet,
they folded their gloved hands demurely. Through the open window the proper
southern ladies watched the slave cabin burn as they had directed. Cremation
for the slut was plenty good enough, they had agreed.

Satisfied with themselves, they sat enjoying the flames against a backdrop
of a North Carolina sunset, still wondering why he had wept.

copyright R J Fernalld 2003