Before I even had the chance to knock, I heard the sound of dogs yipping, and the heavy front door swung open. Aunt Prue was standing in the doorway, her hair still in pink plastic curlers, one hand on her hip. There were three Yorkshire terriers weaving around her legs—the first three Harlon Jameses.
“Well, it’s ’bout time.” Aunt Prue grabbed me by the ear quicker than I had ever seen her move when she was alive, and yanked me into the house. “You were always stubborn, Ethan. But what you did this time ain’t right. I don’t know what in the Good Lord’s Myst’ry got inta you, but I’ve got a mind ta send you out front ta get me a switch.” It was a charming custom from Aunt Prue’s day, to let a kid pick the switch you planned to whip them with. But I knew as well as Aunt Prue did that she would never hit me. If she was going to, she would have already done it years ago.
She was still twisting my ear, and I had to bend down because she was only half my height. The whole posse of Harlon Jameses were still yipping, trailing after us as she dragged me toward the kitchen. “I didn’t have a choice, Aunt Prue. Everyone I loved was going to die.”
“You don’t have ta tell me. I watched the whole thing, and I was wearin’ my good spectacles!” She sniffed. “And ta think, folks used ta say I was the mell-o-dramatic one!”
I tried not to laugh. “You need your glasses here?”
“Just used ta them, I guess. Feel nekkid without ’em now. Hadn’t figured on that.” She stopped walking and pointed a bony finger at me. “Don’t you try changin’ the subject. This time you’ve made a bigger mess than a blind housepainter.”
“Prudence Jane, why don’t you stop hollerin’ at that boy?” An old man’s voice called from the other room. “What’s done is done.”
Aunt Prue pulled me back into the hall, without loosening her grip on my ear. “Don’t you tell me what ta do, Harlon Turner!”
“Turner? Wasn’t that—” As she yanked me into the living room, I found myself face to face with not one but all five of Aunt Prue’s husbands.
Sure enough, the three younger ones—most likely her first three husbands—were eating corn nuts and playing cards, the sleeves of their white button-down shirts rolled up to the elbows. The fourth one was sitting on the couch reading the newspaper. He looked up and acknowledged me with a nod, shoving the little white bowl toward me. “Car nut?”
I shook my head.
I actually remembered Aunt Prue’s fifth husband, Harlon—the one Aunt Prue had named all her dogs after. When I was a kid, he used to carry around sour lemon hard candy in his pocket, and he’d sneak me a couple during church. I ate them, too, lint and all. There was no telling what you’d eat in church, bored out of your skull. Link once drank a whole mini-bottle of Binaca breath spray during a talk on the atonement. Then he spent the whole afternoon and part of the evening atoning for that, too.
Harlon looked exactly the way I remembered. He threw his hands up, a sure sign of surrender. “Prudence, you’re near ’bout the most ornery woman I’ve ever met in my en-tire life!”
It was true, and we all knew it. The other four husbands looked up, a mixture of sympathy and amusement on their faces.
Aunt Prue let go of my ear and turned to face her latest late husband. “Well, I don’t recollect askin’ you ta marry me, Harlon James Turner. So I reckon that makes you the most foolish man I’ve ever met in my en-tire life!” The ears of the three tiny dogs perked up at the sound of their name.
The man reading the paper stood up and patted poor old Harlon on the shoulder. “I think you ought ta let our little firecracker have some time ta herself.” He dropped his voice. “Or you may end up passin’ on a second time.”
Aunt Prue seemed satisfied and marched back to the kitchen with the three Harlon Jameses and me following dutifully. When we reached the kitchen, she pointed to a chair at the table and busied herself pouring two tall glasses of sweet tea. “If I had known I’d have ta live with the five a those men, I’d have thought twice ’bout gettin’ married at all.”
And here they were. I wondered why—until I figured out it was better not to. Whatever unfinished business she had with her five husbands and about as many dogs, I sure didn’t want to know.
“Drink up, son,” Harlon said.
I glanced at the tea, which looked pretty appealing even though I wasn’t the least bit thirsty. It was one thing when my mom was cutting me up a fried tomato. I hadn’t thought twice about eating anything she handed me. Now that I had passed through the graveyard to visit my dead aunt, it occurred to me that I didn’t know the rules, or anything about the way things worked over here—wherever here was. Aunt Prue noticed me staring at the glass. “You can drink it, not that you need ta. But it’s different on the other side.”
“How?” I had so many questions that I didn’t know where to start.
“Can’t eat or drink over there, back in the Mortal realm, but you can move things. Just yesterday, I hid Grace’s dentures. Dropped ’em right down in the Postum jar.” It was just like Aunt Prue to find a way to drive her sisters crazy from the grave.
“Wait—you were over there? In Gatlin?” If she could go see the Sisters, then I could get back to Lena. Couldn’t I?
“Did I say that?” I knew she’d have the answer. I also knew she wouldn’t tell me a thing if she didn’t want me to know.
“Yeah, actually. You did.”
Tell me how I can find my way back to Lena.
“Well now, just for the teeniest minute. Nothin’ ta get all hopped up ’bout. Then I skee-daddled back ta the Garden here, lickety-split.”
“Aunt Prue, come on.” But she shook her head, and I gave up. My aunt was every bit as stubborn in this life as she’d been in the last. I tried a new subject. “The Garden? Are we really in His Garden of Perpetual Peace?”
“Darn tootin’. Every time they bury someone, a new house shows up on the block.” Aunt Prue sniffed again. “Can’t do a thing ta stop ’em from comin’ either, even if they ain’t your kind a folks.”
I thought about the headstones instead of doors, all the cemetery plot houses. I’d always thought the layout of His Garden of Perpetual Peace was kind of like our town, what with the good plots all lined up one way and the questionable graves pushed out near the edges. Turns out the Otherworld wasn’t any different.