“That’s not really the end, though, is it?” Delores asked.
“Well, there are two more things,” she said. “Little things.” But she did not look, Delores thought, as though
they were so little to her.
“I went back to Mama Delorme’s about four months after Pete was born. I didn’t want to but I did. I had
twenty dollars in an envelope. I couldn’t afford it but I knew, somehow, that it belonged to her. It was dark.
Stairs seemed even narrower than before, and the higher I climbed the more I could smell her and the smells
of her place. Burned candies and dried wallpaper and the cinnamony smell of her tea.
“That feeling came over me for the last time – that feeling of doing something in a dream. I got up to the door
and knocked. There was no answer, so I knocked again. There was still no answer, so I knelt down to slip the
envelope under the door. And her voice come from right on the other side, as if she was knelt down, too. I was
never so scared in my life as I was when that papery old voice came drifting out of the crack under that door
– it was like hearing a voice coming out of a closed grave.
‘He goan be a fine boy,’ she said. ‘Goan be just like he father. Like he natural father.’
‘I brought you something,’ I said. I could barely hear my own voice.
‘Slip it under here, dearie,’ she whispered. I slipped the envelope halfway under and she pulled it the rest of
the way. I heard her tear it open and I waited. I just waited.
‘It’s enough,’ she whispered. ‘You go on out of here, dearie, and don’t you ever come back to Mama
Delorme’s again, you hear?’
“I got up and ran out of there just as fast as I could.”
22
Martha got up, went over to the bookcase, and came back a moment or two later with a hardcover. Delores
was immediately struck by the similarity between the artwork on this jacket and the artwork on the jacket of
Peter Rosewall’s book. This one was Blaze of Heaven by Peter Jefferies, and the cover showed a pair of Gl’s
charging an enemy pillbox. One of them had a grenade in his hand; the other was firing an M-1.
Martha rummaged in her blue canvas tote-bag, brought out her son’s book, removed the tissue paper in which
it was wrapped, and laid it tenderly next to the Jefferies book. Blaze of Heaven; Blaze of Glory. Side by side,
the points of comparison were inescapable.
“This was the other thing,” Martha said.
“Yes,” Delores said doubtfully. “They do look similar. But I still think it’s possible-”
“No,” Martha said. “That’s not what I mean.”
She picked up the Jefferies novel. She looked at it reflectively for a moment and then looked at Delores. “I
bought this about a year after my son was born,” she said. “It was still in print, although the bookstore had to special order it from the publisher. When Mr Jefferies was in on one of his visits, I got up my courage and
asked if he would sign it for me. I thought he might be put out by me asking, but I think he was actually a little
flattered. Look here.”
She turned to the dedication page of Blaze of Heaven.
Delores read what was printed there and felt an eerie doubling in her mind. This book is dedicated to my
mother, ALTHEA DIXMONT JEFFERIES, the finest woman I have ever known. And below that Jefferies
had written in black fountain-pen ink that was now fading, “For Martha Rosewall, who cleans up my leavings
and never complains.” Below this he had signed his name and jotted August, ’60.
The wording of the penned dedication struck her first as contemptuous … then as eerie. But before she had a
chance to think about it, Martha had opened her son’s book, Blaze of Glory, to the dedication page and placed it beside the Jefferies book. Once again Delores read the printed matter: This book is dedicated to my mother,