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What Happened to Yvonne Duplin Bucheron?”. Dr. Martha Benn Macdonald
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by Dr. Martha Benn Macdonald
Acknowledgements: For friends who answered questions, listened, and encouraged: Edwin Harrison Stultz, Dr. Janie Sigmon, Kathy Sholl, Greg Boone, and the Reverend James Randolph McSpadden.
We were sure the Bishop had told Yvonne Duplin Bucheron, priest at St. Alban’s Episcopal in Paisley’s Crossing, South Carolina, a small Piedmont town in the Upper Diocese of South Carolina, to retire.
“A great beginning for Lent,” my neighbor, Van, sighed, his voice sarcastic. We all knew Yvonne, granddaughter of a long-time senator from Delaware, had trampled on the feet of too many parishioners.”
“Remember when she told members which gifts to give her for her Ordination Service?” I answered.
Henry Spangler chuckled, as we sipped coffee in the parish hall. “She wanted the choir to give her new stoles for each liturgical season.”
“And the Vestry to award her special shoes, a new prayer book, a water bottle, and more,” I added.
“And the dinner was ordered to her liking: standing beef rib, Lobster Newberg, Gelato for dessert, all assembled in the special cart and wheeled, with great fanfare, into the parish hall, fireworks in the background,” Van insisted, “by her husband, Flaubert Bucheron.”
“Was he an incendiary?” ever I wondered,
“Yvonne sneered at those over 75 unless they offered her Sunday brunch at Paisley’s Crossing Country Club or a swim in their pool. Yvonne and Flaubert never took their own towels.”
“You don’t mean that, Van,” I said.
“But I do, Carol. And she never allowed ‘Once in Royal David’s City,’ one of our most beloved hymns, to be sung,” Van continued, adding that she refused to baptize grandchildren of members, even if their parents had been baptized at St. Alban’s.
‘But you no longer attend St. Alban’s,’ I heard Yvonne had said to one young mother calling from Abbeville.
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‘But I grew up in this church. My great grandmother, Charlotte McClellan, gave the rose window years ago.’
“Sorry, and do not call me again. No point in contacting the Senior Warden either.’ Yvonne slammed down the phone, so I heard.”
“Gracious,” I answered. “You know she wouldn’t allow me---and I’ve made the Advent wreath for 35 years--long before Yvonne ever arrived---- to use fresh blue Mahonia holly berries, one of Mary’s colors, in the wreath”
“Nothing but fresh evergreens,” Yvonne emailed the Altar Guild chair who, in turn, texted me. So, I used spruce, rosemary, lavender, pine, live oak, and juniper.”
When Yvonne and her husband, Flaubert Bucheron, originally a supervisor at the DuPont Gardens, left St. Alban’s, they traveled to Canada and Vermont where they hiked for a number of months with her son from her first marriage and then spent ta little time with her daughter at Hilton Head Island, before returning two years later to 8016 St, David’s Way, just as Covid-19 was raging across the states and most were masking.
Her white hair shorter, grey-blue eyes colder, tiny studs now in her ears, and her back slightly humped, Yvonne began playing tennis, but not for long, and she never returned to St. Alban’s, as we imagined she might after two years.
“I do believe Yvonne has a dowager’s hump,” Van snickered, slightly stuttering, that warm afternoon in May when we were rocking on my porch a block or so from the Bucherons’ “And she’s carrying a black cat.”
We sipped sherry.
“Well, you know how she looked down on everyone. Now Yvonne has to look up. ‘What comes around goes around,’ to use that expression. I’ll never forget the time she shoved Mrs. Gordon at her husband’s funeral. ‘Hurry up, Joan. The organist is waiting. You’re holding everyone up.”
Tears had filled Joan’s eyes as she clutched her crutches.
“I can’t do this,” the widow protested.
“You will,” Yvonne insisted, her tone harsh. “if you’re a true believer, do what you say you believe. Nobody else is your husband’s widow.”
I remember holding Joan’s hand for a second to assure her.
“Now Yvonne will have to turn up to talk to people,” Van repeated, a smile on his face. “Guess she deserves it.”
Yvonne was driving a navy Tesla, but Flaubert continues to ramble around in his old blue truck with the rusty doors. He hauled potting soil, shovels, and a rake. Occasionally he mowed the grass, and he planted sunflowers, gladiolas, lobelia, snapdragons, and a hydrangea which died at the end of the first week. “Too much trouble to water,” he grumbled, when I passed him in the grocery store.
Van and I watched him poking around in his yard and in the neighbors’ yards. Said he’d gotten permission from the city to put pipes underground to serve as a sprinkler system for his flowers. His next-door neighbors confirmed that.
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“But I don’t think the city realized he was going to dig up his whole yard,” I commented.
“What?” Van asked.
“Yes. He dug up the old pipes and put in new pipes, then forgot where he’d placed them. When, I told him I smelled oil, he said it wasn’t his oil.”
“Are you saying it was, Carol?”
“Absolutely. It was his oil. He told another neighbor he’d accidentally struck his old oil drum hidden beside his house. But then he told me today that a neighbor had caused the seepage.”
“Not good. Sort of conflicting stories, don’t you think, Carol?”
“Yes, and then the oil seeped into another person’s pipeline which connected to other underground pipes, and, finally, to the pipes at Annandale Gardens.”
“Amazing, Van. So, the city traced the oil to Flaubert’s house, and he’s up the creek and is accusing his neighbors of spilling their oil into his yard. He’s suing them.”
“And what are they doing?”
“Suing him, and he’s hired an attorney in Bright’s Borough, South Carolina.”
“Curious! What is Yvonne doing?”
“She can’t tolerate the odor of oil which has backed up into his sump pump. When it rains, the odor is really bad. The sump pump doesn’t work too well.”
“We had that problem years ago, but, of course, there was no oil involved,” I commented.
“So, Flaubert has rented a mill house near the fire department. Don’t think Yvonne wants former parishioners to know that’s where they stay. And Flaubert’s not happy with renting either. Too much money. DHEC has told him that he has to have everything cleared up by late fall.”
“DHEC has different names in other states.”
“You’re right.”
“So, what’s he doing now?”
“Nothing but meddling in other neighbors’ business. He told Henry Lawson that the branches of his mulberry tree drooped on his sunflowers.”
“What happened?”
“He hired a lawyer and threatened to sue Henry if he didn’t cut the branches way back.”
“Did Henry?”
“Yes, and he was mad as a hornet. Then, Flaubert blew up because one of the mulberry branches fell on his peace rose bushes.”
“Kind of funny. You know when I talked to Flaubert the other day, I noticed how dirty his jeans were and that he and Yvonne have come to look a lot alike. Flaubert’s hair is white now, and his eyes are cold.”
I laughed aloud.
“All through the summer Yvonne has stayed in the mill house. Sometimes, she walks down to their home on St. David’s Way, but it’s a ‘gloomy house,’ no Faulkner intended.”
We shook our heads. “I can’t help but feel a little sorry for Yvonne. Wonder if he’s telling her the truth?”
After Labor Day, the oil smell intensified. DHEC returned and gave Flaubert an ultimatum: “We know you’re guilty. We’ve traced the oil to your pipes from Annandale Gardens. You clean up by early November, or you’ll owe us.”
He was livid, especially when he realized Yvonne had heard the warning by DHEC. After that, she followed Flaubert everywhere he went and questioned him. She even asked the retired professor from Lockwood College if he’d struck his oil tank and caused their problem. He lived on the corner above their ‘gloomy’ home.
“No, Mother Bucheron, as I’ve heard you prefer to be called. “I did not, and I resent being sued. Your husband is guilty, and maybe you’re an accomplice. I’d be after him, instead of trusting him, if I were in your shoes.”
Yvonne drove off in a huff, but then when we saw her at her home again, pinching back marigolds and picking seeds from sunflowers, we wondered if Flaubert would sow those seeds in 2021. How much did she know?”
We heard her complaining to Flaubert. On Holy-Cross Day, the fourteenth of September, her closest neighbor heard her cursing him. “I won’t continue to live like this. It’s not the way the granddaughter of a senator should live. You’ve tampered with my heart and with these pipes, Flaubert.”
“Fine,” he answered, pulling his ball cap farther down. “I’ll give you a divorce, Yvonne, and you figure what you can live on. We spent most of your money on all the journeys you wanted to take. Were they to meditate or just to impress the members of St. Alban’s? Remember the pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James of Compostela? Remember how ugly you were to most parishioners? I covered for you, Yvonne. Have you forgotten?”
“But you vowed you had all of this money, Flaubert, when we married, saying you’d saved so much from your efforts at Winterthur. So where is that money now?”
“Running out. That’s all.”
We wondered why his closest neighbors confided that Flaubert had begun talking about the time Guy Fawkes had blown up Parliament in London in 1605 and about the time the State House at Jamestown had burned on Halloween Night in 1698. It seemed peculiar, so his neighbors asked him.
He shrugged.
Yet one afternoon we saw him throw a white cat in Yvonne’s arms. “Your choice, Mother Bucheron. The white cat or the black one.”
Yvonne preferred the black cat. She had alienated all of her friends. We saw her walk up the hill from St. David’s Way, assuming it was to the mill house. On October 31, most of the children on St. David’s Way were trick or treating, and they freaked when they saw Yvonne holding her black cat with green eyes, wearing a black mask, and sporting a witch’s hat with twinkling lights.
It’s cold, we heard her say, as we watched her walk down the hill again to return home.
Van and I watched Flaubert carry Yvonne outside wrapped in a blanket and put her in his green garbage bin which he hoisted onto his battered blue truck. He took off fast.
“‘Let’s follow him,’ Van suggested, and I agreed. When we saw him dump her dead body into the Patamawa River, I knew he’d killed her. I dialed 911. We asked for the Coroner.’”
We wondered what exactly was going on and lingered to watch the sheriff arrive and handcuff Flaubert, then search him. We heard the coroner pronounce Yvonne dead.
“The fire was beginning,” Flaubert defended. “And I didn’t want her to burn to death.”
“Fire?” the sheriff said, and asked one of his deputies to drive to their home on St. David’s Way. “Text me, please.”
“I had to calm her down,” Flaubert defended a second time. “When she heard the neighbors, I knew I needed to quiet her. So, I gave Yvonne a shot of my insulin, not much. As unkind as she had been to former parishioners. I knew she wouldn’t want to be accused of tampering with oil.”
“So,” the officer asked, “Are we to understand that you are diabetic and that you gave your wife a shot of your insulin, knowing it would lower her blood sugar and might kill her?”
“I didn’t know that for a fact,” her widower protested.
“So, you intended to burn down the house?”
“Well, yes. I imagined I’d collect insurance and wouldn’t have to pay DHEC.”
Van and I gasped, gazing at each other. We heard the sheriff’s cell phone ring. “So, you started a fire, but killed her before she burned?” He nodded.
“What a bastard!” Van said, as we watched the policeman reinforce the handcuffs.
“You’ll have a trial, Mr. Bucheron. Which attorney might you want us to contact? And you have the right, of course, to say nothing now. Do you want a court-appointed attorney?”
“No one. I’ll represent myself, and I’ll claim Yvonne’s pointed hat. After all, I made it for her. Is my house burning?” We heard Flaubert ask.
“Starting,” the officer answered, and turned in the direction of St. David’s Way. We followed, and the house was burning. Neighbors had gathered.
“What people enjoy watching always saddens me,” Carol said. “But then it is Halloween.”
“For sure, and I’ll be wondering how the trial will play out if Flaubert is representing himself. I suppose selecting a jury will be hard, too. In the end, Flaubert and Yvonne were two evil people, weren’t they?”
“Yes.” Carol wiped a tear from her eyes.
Martha Macdonald
College English instructor, published author, and performer.
