The New Moon's Arms Read Online Free

detail.
    “Well,” she said, easing her feet down to the floor again, “I just see somebody bring out the white rum. I going over there. It’s not a funeral if you don’t knock back a dram or two. To honour the dead, you know?” Off she went, before I could thank her for everything she had done for Dadda and me.
    Gene came by. He had a plastic cup in either hand. He held one out to me.
    “I don’t want any more,” I said.
    He nodded. “I finally tasted it; the punch, I mean. I didn’t taste it when I made it. It was nasty! I just poured the rest of it down the drain.”
    That got a little laugh from me. “Then what is this?” I took the cup, looked inside. Water? I sniffed it, and gasped as the fumes went up my nose.
    “High wine,” Gene replied. Overproof rum. He poured a little of his on the floor in libation. “Spirits for the spirits.”
    I copied him, then we each knocked back the remaining rum in our cups.
    I coughed. “Thank you,” I rasped.
    “Your father was my hero,” he said.
    “Mmm.”
    “I never believed the people who said it’s he who did it. Not Mr. Lambkin. He wasn’t like that.”
    Suddenly I felt ill. Feverish. The world started to recede. I grabbed for the arm of the chair. Damn. Not this again.
    There was a crash of breaking crockery. It startled me back into myself. I opened my eyes. At my feet lay the remains of a blue and white plate. Somebody must have dropped one of the dishes they’d brought to the potluck. Pastor Paul shooed people away from the shards. He shouted, “Whose plate is this?” No one answered. One of the singing cousins scurried to find a broom.
    “Hello, Mother.” My son-in-law Clifton leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. “Sorry to take so long. My plane was delayed.” He peered into my face. “You all right?”
    “I think I going to be sick.”
    Clifton leapt right into action. He helped me up out of the armchair, put an arm around my shoulders. I was tottery on my stilettos. “She had a hard day,” he said to Gene. “She need to rest.”
    “Of course, of course.” He backed away.
    In two-twos, Clifton had made apologies to Pastor Paul for me, collected Ife and Stanley, and had gotten us out the door.
    I stopped when we were outside the building. The afternoon sun beat down on my shoulders, but it didn’t stifle me like inside the funeral home. I took a deep breath of air that wasn’t buzzing with whispered condolences.
    “How you feeling?” asked Ifeoma. She looked worried. Stanley too.
    “Never better. I just needed to get out of there.”
    “Gene was trying to sweet-talk her,” Clifton told Ife. “At Mr. Lambkin’s funeral!”
    “It wasn’t like that.” I made a mental note to check in with the doctor about those bloody spells. That was the fifth or sixth one. “I’m okay to walk on my own now. Let’s just go.”
    Clifton took his supporting arm from around me, and we all headed for the parking lot. Stanley was concentrating on the controls of his glider, making it fly on ahead of us. He tripped, but Clifton caught him by the back of his suit jacket before he fell. “Bring that thing down and stop playing with it,” he ordered. “Ife, how you could let him bring a toy to a funeral?”
    “It’s not a toy!” said Stanley.
    “He didn’t have it during the funeral,” Ife responded mildly. “I sent him outside to play during the reception. He would have died of boredom in there.”
    I had it. “Willow Tree.”
    Ife looked confused. “What?”
    “That plate that dropped and broke. It was the Willow Tree china pattern. I used to have one like it.”
    “Let us take you home, nuh?” Clifton said. “Ife could drive your car. Me and Stanley will follow in ours.”
    “No, no. Don’t go to all that trouble. I’m fine. Fresh as a daisy in spring!” I threaded my way through the cars in the lot. The tarmac was softening in the heat. If I ruined my stilettos, I was going to blister Egbert Paul’s ears for