The Funeral Dress (23 page)

Leona said nothing. As they topped the mountain, Curtis tapped the truck’s vinyl seat. “You know I’ve been thinking maybe it’s time we take that trip to the Pacific Ocean you used to talk about.” Curtis’s tone was kind, more kind than Leona figured it ought to be. “I don’t need to be driving a big rig to get us there. The pickup will do us fine. I’ll have Jim Boyd take a look at her and get her all tuned up.”

But Leona waved her hand at Curtis. “Stop that,” she said and pulled her handbag onto her arm.

“Okay. We don’t have to go there. Why don’t you close your eyes and run your hand over all those spoons you got and point to one. Wherever your finger lands, that’s where we’ll go. Niagara Falls. Grand Canyon. Don’t matter to me. We’ll gas this baby up and hit the road.”

“Quit it, Curtis. Quit talking such nonsense.”

“I’m not talking nonsense, Ona. I’ll go if you want.” Curtis slowed the truck as he turned onto their property. He eased the truck down the long drive and parked in front of the trailer. Without bothering to cut the engine, he rolled down his window and whiffed the fresh air. “Not everything’s my fault.” His tone had turned serious.

“Curtis—”

“Hush, Ona. Let me say this. I should’ve done it a long time ago. Maybe I was afraid of what I knew or didn’t know.”

Leona slumped against the door.

“I didn’t kill our son, for one thing, Ona. He died. That’s all there is to it.”

“I know that.” Leona kept her head turned away from Curtis.

“Do you?” Curtis asked.

“Course I do.”

“Well, here’s the other thing. You will not be working late at the factory tomorrow or any other day from here on out.”

With her back still to Curtis, Leona nodded and slid off the truck’s seat. She walked toward the bluff, dropping her handbag on the trailer’s stoop as she passed it by.

Curtis called after her.

Leona walked on, not bothering to turn back and face him.

The green grasses on top of the clearing had already assumed a more golden hue. And as the sun dropped behind the loblolly pines dotting the far edge of the bluff, the mountaintop looked as though it had been trimmed with a delicate band of lace. A towhee, dressed handsome in his black and chestnut colors, flew low across the field. His loud, ringing call reminded Leona winter would come soon and her mountaintop would be full of these birds nesting in the brush.

She sat down on the bluff and pushed her legs out in front of her, letting them drop over her rocky perch. Curtis never liked her sitting this close to the edge, but Leona felt freer there than anywhere else. Her cheek throbbed worse, and she imagined there’d be a bruise tomorrow. It had not been her nature to fight like that, but she didn’t feel much like herself anymore. She hadn’t felt like herself in years, and it had nothing to do with her body slowly morphing from mother to crone. Maybe Cora understood those feelings.

Cora had raised four children on her own, her dead-beat husband only showing up long enough to get her pregnant and steal what little money she had. Rumor had it she finally ran him off with a loaded shotgun. Leona never knew how much of this was fact or how much fiction, but she had seen bruises on Cora’s face often enough for her to believe it, and she knew Cora was fierce when it came to protecting and providing for her young. Leona admired that about her.

Cora’s children were full grown and scattered throughout Sequatchie Valley. They came home for holidays and sometimes Sunday meals, never as often as Cora liked, but they came. Cora talked about her children all the time, the one who’d gone to drinking like his daddy and the one teaching school over in Jasper, the one married to a preacher and the one who loved to paint pictures but was recovering from a bout of tuberculosis. Leona wanted all of that—the frustrations and the joys. Instead, all she knew was an empty, quiet trailer. But she also knew it hadn’t been right to blame Curtis. And Cora knew that, too.

“Look a here,” Cora had told Leona earlier in the day. “I don’t care what you and Mr. Clayton are up to. Although Lord knows poor Curtis deserves better than that. But you ain’t going to steal bundles from the rest of us and get away with it because you done caught Clayton’s eye.”

“Shut up, Cora. I ain’t stealing nothing from you.”

“I ain’t shutting up when I’m speaking the truth,” Cora said. “Hell, Leona, you got a good husband, and you can’t see it. When that baby of yours died, it’s like he took your sight right along with him. Women lose babies, Leona, all the damn time. They cry, and they grieve, but they keep on living. But not you. Only way you done found some thrill in life is lifting your skirt up for Mr. Clayton. You’re acting like a no-good tramp, and you’re better than that.”

Leona had shoved Cora against the bathroom stall. Cora stumbled. She righted herself and threw a punch at Leona, her watch catching the skin above Leona’s cheekbone. All these hours later, Leona held her hand to her cheek. She closed her eyes, and the wind washed over her face.

Someone suddenly called her name, but it was a voice more shrill and high-pitched than her husband’s. She turned toward the trailer to find a sharp-dressed woman walking toward her, holding a bolt of fabric in her arms.

“You-hoo. Leona, it’s me. Mrs. Campbell.” The woman, dressed in flowing trousers and a matching blouse, called again to Leona and waved. “Sorry I’m so late but I took a wrong turn coming down Signal Mountain. I’ve got the fabric for the slipcover we talked about. You’re going to love it. It’s simply beautiful.”

Leona stood up and brushed the dirt from her skirt.

E
MMALEE

R
ED
C
HERT

Emmalee sat in the truck long after Nolan walked into the house. With the windows rolled tight, she heard nothing but her own desperate cries as she numbered the ways she had failed her baby girl in the few weeks since she had been born. Mettie was right, she guessed. She had no reason calling herself a
mama
.

“Hey girl, come on, get out of that truck,” Nolan said from underneath the plywood cover. He scratched his chin and hollered again, but Emmalee ignored him. He slogged into the yard. “Come on. Get in the house.” With his fist balled tight, he pounded the truck’s hood. “Ain’t going to solve nothing sitting out here and looking off into space.” Nolan opened the truck’s door. “You’re acting funny like you did when your mama died. I didn’t like it back then, and I don’t care for it much now. And I sure
ain’t got the energy tonight to find a switch and whip your butt.”

Nolan grabbed Emmalee’s arm and pulled her from the truck. She stumbled along behind him. But as Nolan stepped to the door, she jerked away and dug the heels of her boots into the dirt. “No,” she said, “I can’t.” She held her hands to her ears. “It’s too damn quiet in there.”

“Shit, Emmalee. You’re wearing me out,” Nolan said and yanked again on his daughter’s arm.

“I ain’t doing it. I ain’t going in there without Kelly Faye.” Emmalee sagged against the broken-down refrigerator.

“Hell, girl, you’re acting like some kind of crazy fool done crept inside your body. Listen to me. This mess ain’t all on account a you.”

Emmalee looked at Nolan. “Runt and Mettie are right. I can’t take care of a baby.”

“They’re stealing. That’s what they’re doing,” Nolan said. “Putting doubts in your head ’cause you’ve got what they want.” His voice sounded more frustrated and tired than hateful. He pushed his hands inside his pockets and leaned against the door. “You was getting better at it. Being a mama don’t come overnight. Didn’t for your own mama. Took some time.”

“You said I was the one wore Mama out.” Emmalee pulled her bangs down in front of her eyes. “You said it was me.”

Nolan studied the narrow clearing there in front of the house. He said nothing for a while. A brief wind picked up some leaves and swirled them into the air. He
turned to Emmalee. “Girl, I want the daddy’s name. It’s damn time you come clean. We need more than us to make this right.”

“It don’t make no difference no more.”

Nolan grunted and spit a wad of brown juice from his mouth. “You must not want that baby like you say you do,” he said and walked inside the house, leaving Emmalee out in the growing cold.

“No,” Emmalee whispered, “that ain’t so.”

She walked away from the house and down the dirt drive. The oaks and pines danced above her head. Emmalee stepped faster. She thought about running straight to Runt’s house and stealing her baby back. She thought about running clear to Old Lick and hiding inside the trailer. Instead, she stopped at the edge of their land and screamed into the holler.

She kicked the base of the large oak, its bark crowded with her twiggy crosses. A cross fell to the ground, and she broke it apart under the weight of her boot. She scratched at the tree, digging her nails into the wood, tearing one cross and then another free from the stump. She snapped them apart and flung the pieces into the air until all but one was lying in splinters about her feet.

These crosses hadn’t been made for the dead. She had done them for herself, trying to soothe her own grief, trying to rid her own thoughts of gruesome memories. She was sick of Nolan’s work. She was sick of the dead and dying. She hated every one of them for reminding her of her own loss, for miring her in a sadness she had wallowed in for too long. And of them all, Emmalee figured
she hated her mama the most. Cynthia Faye was the one who had given up and left her daughter alone there in Red Chert.

If Cynthia Faye had lived, everything would have been better. Emmalee knew it to be so. They would have walked through the holler together and talked about boys and birthdays and the stars in the sky. Her mama would have stroked her hair and reminded her how beautiful she was. Emmalee would have gone to school every day washed and fed, her clothes mended and ironed. She would have felt warm kisses on her cheeks in the morning and heard lullabies sung sweetly before bed. She would have been raised a churchgoing girl even if she was poor and wore others’ hand-me-downs. She would have been Cynthia Faye Bullard’s girl.

There was a time when Emmalee had once felt her mama swirling through the trees like the wind, forcing the branches to bow toward the ground. She believed her mama had come to her that way, blowing right through her, but Emmalee hadn’t felt her spirit in some time. She guessed all the hating she had done had run her off for good.

But at Leona’s trailer, Emmalee had sensed a comfort or a presence she had not known in a long while. Maybe it was her mama. Maybe it was Leona. Maybe it was just Easter and Wilma being there and tending to her care. She did not know for sure, but back in Red Chert, nothing felt right. She screamed loud and kicked the tree again. She kicked it over and over. And she punched and scratched at the bark till her knuckles were bloody and raw. Emmalee begged her mama to come and save her and tossed her plea
up to the heavens. Then she slid to the base of the old oak, not noticing Nolan standing there behind her.

“Girl,” he said, kneeling behind her, “come on. Your baby needs her mama, her real one, not some woman pretending at it.”

Emmalee rocked to and fro in the dirt, coughing and choking on her tears.

“Look,” Nolan said, “I ain’t been much of a father. I know that. Everybody in town knows it. Odds are that ain’t going to change much. But you can be a good mama, Emmalee.” He loosened a dirty rag tied around his neck and wrapped it around Emmalee’s hand. “But you got to let go of the past. I ain’t any good at that.” Nolan shook his head and smirked. “You’re better than me. But you ain’t going to find your mama, or that God you pray to, in that stump or in all those little crosses you been making.”

Emmalee stared at her father’s outstretched hand.

“Come on,” he said again.

Emmalee placed her hand in Nolan’s, and he lifted her to her feet. She pulled her hair from her eyes and followed her father back to the house, the dead oak left bare. Again. she stopped at the refrigerator and grabbed its door handle for support.

“Oh, shit, Emmalee,” Nolan said, letting go of his daughter. “What’s it this time? I swear—”

“Billy Fulton.” Emmalee tossed the boy’s name into the air like a ball, waiting to see if her father would catch it or let it drop to the ground.

Nolan stopped and turned toward Emmalee.

“Say that slow, girl. Real slow,” he said.

“Billy Fulton,” Emmalee said again, letting the name
simmer in the air. “That’s it. That’s the name you been looking for.”

Nolan pressed his hand against the refrigerator, leaning closer to Emmalee. “You ain’t told nobody else?” he asked.

“Ain’t even told Billy. Figure he knows it. He saw Kelly being born.”

A big smile spread across Nolan’s face. He patted Emmalee on the shoulder. “You done good, Em. You done real good.” Nolan scratched at his stubby whiskers. “Yep. The dead make for steady business.”

“I ain’t telling the Fultons,” Emmalee said, her voice turning scared. “And neither are you. His mama and daddy are real proud of Billy. It’d break their hearts, Nolan. No point in it. He don’t want me or Kelly Faye.”

“Shit, girl. You know damn well I’m telling them. You wouldn’t have spilled his name out like that unless you was ready for me to say something.” Nolan pulled his keys from his pocket and dangled them in front of Emmalee. “Come on. You’re going with me.”

Emmalee said nothing as her father drove the couple miles to the Fulton-Pittman Funeral Home. She held Leona’s dress in her lap, careful not to wrinkle it any more than it already was. Maybe Nolan was right. Maybe she did want the Fultons and everybody else in Cullen to know she had birthed Billy’s baby. Maybe she wanted them to believe that for a little while Billy had truly loved her.

She knew she had dreamed too big in the past, imagining
the Fultons welcoming her into the family as if she were a daughter of their own. Mrs. Fulton would help care for Kelly Faye and insist Emmalee and the baby live there on the second floor. Mr. Fulton would stand a little stronger, excited by the thought of his granddaughter growing up in their house. He would want Billy and Emmalee to take over the family business someday so he could slow down and go fishing with his brother down in Florida. He and Mrs. Fulton would be downright tickled that their son had found a girl with such a kind heart. But more important, they would be thrilled he had found one not afraid of the dead.