Buried Memories. Irene Pence
worry about it. It’s not your problem.”
Shirley already felt tangled in her mother’s web and worried how the petite woman would get Wayne’s big, heavy body out to the grave by herself.
“Mama, I’ll help,” she said, suggesting the last thing she wanted to do.
Betty sat up and turned around to look at her. “You don’t have to, you know. In fact, I’m not sure I want you to.”
“I couldn’t stand for anything to happen to you.”
Betty smiled affectionately at Shirley and reached out to take her hand. With little hesitation, she said, “Okay, but we have to do it like this. You can never tell a soul. Got that? Not Larry, not your sisters, not anybody.”
“I won’t,” Shirley said. “No one will ever find out. I’d be too afraid for anyone to know. What’s next?”
“Tell Larry that Wayne and I got into a big brouhaha and I’m scared shitless of him. Say I don’t want to be home alone tonight in case he comes back and wants to hurt me again. Then you come over after dinner and we’ll wait ’til dark before we stick him in the ground.”
Shirley leaned against the wall and nodded sadly. She wanted the whole matter to disappear. How could her own mother involve her in a murder? Worse yet, what would her mother do to her if she didn’t help? She already knew what had happened to Wayne.
For the rest of the day, Betty lingered at Shirley’s house and talked. She couldn’t stop rambling on about shooting Wayne. While Shirley wanted to forget, her mother continued talking as if needing the discussion as a catharsis.
“If someone saw what looked like a grave it might attract attention,” Betty said. “And I don’t want any of those damn dogs in the neighborhood comin’ over and digging him up. Tomorrow, we’ll go to Seven Points and get some cinder blocks. We can build a patio over him and no one will ever know he’s there.”
A nearly full moon rose in the darkening October sky when Betty unlocked the front door of her trailer and pushed it open. She motioned for Shirley to go inside.
“No, you first,” Shirley said, breathing deeply to calm her jitters. Her teeth involuntarily chattered, and she thought she might throw up. Cemeteries scared her silly, let alone walking into a house that hid a dead body.
Betty went directly to the kitchen and opened the pantry where her white poodle lived while she was away from home. As the dog hopped out into the room, Betty picked him up and said, “Hello, sweetkins, have you missed your mommy? You’re my good baby aren’t you?” She reached into the pantry and retrieved a small dog biscuit. “Here, you deserve a treat. You’re such a good little boy.”
Then the smile fell from Betty’s face, and she said dispassionately, “He’s back here.”
Hesitantly, Shirley followed her mother down the hall. Betty flipped on the bedroom light, then slid back the closet door. Shirley wanted to shut her eyes, but curiosity made her look. She could see a big blue mound crouched inside. It looked like Wayne was in a sitting position.
“We need to wait until it’s so dark that we can’t see our hands in front of our faces.”
Shirley nodded, knowing it was already dark, but they first needed to bolster their determination to get through this task. “We don’t have to stay here in the house, do we?” Shirley asked. “Can’t we build a bonfire outside like we did the other night?”
Her mother nodded, and Shirley went into the fastidiously clean compact kitchen and collected milk, vodka, Kahlua, a metal pitcher, and two plastic glasses to take outside.
Once in the yard, both women used flashlights to gather branches that strong winds from the lake had blown from Betty’s trees.
Shirley glanced up at the velvety black sky. With fewer city lights to compete with their intensity, the stars glittered brightly and looked close enough to touch.
Betty scooped up several armfuls of leaves and scattered them over the dry wood. Her match ignited the leaves, and they flamed instantly. Now they had a fire that warmed their bodies and distracted their minds from what waited inside the closet.
A car roared by with a loud muffler, and Betty turned to look.
Shirley watched her mother’s silhouette against the fire, then shifted her attention to the flickering sparks until they rose above the trees and the wind swept them away. She tried to focus on the fire’s glowing red ashes and curling gray smoke, but her mother wanted to talk about Wayne’s last five minutes. Shirley had already heard too much, but she let her mother get it off her chest while she slipped into an illusion of listening. She inhaled the smoke and thought of happier family times—going on family vacations, taking off for an afternoon of shopping at one of the Dallas malls, and having Christmas dinners with her big family sitting around a white clothed table.
Shirley mixed the ingredients she brought and made a pitcher of white Russians. The women sipped and talked and soon both of them could feel the intoxicating fumes of the sweet Kahlua. After a couple hours, Betty glanced at her watch. “Almost midnight,” she said. “It’s time.”
Staggering, Shirley slowly stood up, extended a hand to her mother, and looked into her eyes. Betty had that “business as usual” demeanor that Shirley found impossibly hard to accept under the circumstances. It seemed ludicrous to be disposing of a body with the woman who always reminded her to wash her hands before dinner.
They trudged back inside the trailer and swayed down the hall. Once in the bedroom, Betty opened the closet door and tugged on the sleeping bag. Wayne’s body felt as heavy as concrete, so they began dragging him. Shirley grabbed what felt like feet while Betty labored with the upper torso. Shirley saw an outline of a head through the heavy canvas as her mother took hold of it. Both women bent over at the waist and panted hard while they slowly slid the body across the carpeted floor. Then they dragged it down the hall and out through the trailer’s rear exit.
When they first went outside with the sleeping bag, the moonlight shined impossibly bright. Shirley glanced at the road, worried that someone would come driving down their street, or have Ray Price come by, the security officer who made routine drive-throughs of the area. All noises seemed magnified. Cicadas buzzed loudly and waves from Cedar Creek Lake slapped against brick and stone retaining walls as the women bounced Wayne Barker down the three back steps. Then they jostled him over ground that held thin, sparse grass because of the ever-present shade. While he lay by the side of the grave, the women cleared out the loosely crumbled soil with shovels Betty had hidden under the trailer. They rolled him into the four-foot-deep opening and tried to flatten him as best they could. Then unceremoniously, they picked up their shovels and blanketed him with dirt, one spadeful at a time. As Barker became more concealed, moonlight shined on the mound that grew disturbingly high, forcing them to scoop the rest of the soil into flower beds and pots—anywhere to camouflage the existence of a grave.
“Cinder blocks will hide all that,” Betty said, slurring her words.
After they finished their chore, they went back into the house and got very drunk.
Shirley lay awake all night in the spare bedroom at her mother’s. With Bobby at a friend’s house for the night, she had access to the trailer’s only other bedroom. Every time she thought of her mother sleeping in the next room, the room where she’d killed Wayne Barker the night before, chills bounced up and down her spine.
The next morning, Shirley sluggishly pulled herself out of bed and went over to the window. Sunshine walked across the lawn, mottled by trees, but enhanced the mound of dirt she had hoped was only a bad dream. She rubbed her pounding head, feeling much older than her twenty-four years. Then she jumped as music blared from her mother’s room.
In no time her mother stood at Shirley’s bedroom door. Shirley squinted in disbelief. Betty looked pretty. She wore a pair of freshly pressed jeans, a soft turquoise sweater, and perennially perfect makeup. “Time to rise and shine,” Betty said pertly. “I’ll go put on the