The Funeral Dress (12 page)

“No, God, no,” Leona said, her cheek pressed against the concrete lamb set atop the small granite headstone. A blue carnation hung limp in her hand.

Curtis lifted his wife and led her to the truck. Tears stained his cheeks, too, and his shoulders fell forward. He pulled Leona close, but she pushed him away.

“Leona, please, let me help you.”

“No,” she said and collapsed against the side of the truck. “Don’t touch me, Curtis Lane. I heard the preacher talking to Easter and Wilma. I heard him carrying on about what a man of God you are. How devoted you are to the Lord.” Leona’s voice had strengthened and grown sharp. “He said you stopped by the church on your way home from work the day Curtis, Jr., was born.”

Leona tossed the back of her head against the door of the pickup. Curtis reached out for her, but again she pushed him away. “He said you come by the church to take a look at the plumbing in the bathroom. He said you worked on it for near an hour. You hear me, Curtis?” With the palms of her hands, she slapped Curtis’s chest. “You hear what I’m saying?”

Curtis stepped back but did not take his eyes off Leona.

“If you had come on home instead of stopping to do one more good deed,” Leona said, her voice rising with every syllable before coming to a full stop—she turned her back to Curtis and fumbled with the truck’s handle—“our son would be alive.”

Leona threw the door open wide and crawled inside,
quickly righting herself on the seat. “You did this, Curtis. You and that God of yours did this to us, to our child. Can you live with that?” she asked and slammed the door.

Curtis walked around the front of the truck, stopping to shake hands with men outfitted in dark suits. He nodded at their kind words but kept his face to the ground. Muttering a short, plaintive prayer, he climbed into the truck. He did not look at Leona. He did not speak to her either. Instead he steered the truck out of the parking lot and onto the road heading to Old Lick. Curtis stared ahead as he drove past Tennewa on the other side of town.

Leona spied the women gathered around the picnic tables outside the factory building. They talked and laughed in between bites of the lunches carried in brown paper bags. Not long before, Leona had sat there among them and chatted about names and dreams for her new baby. Some had brought her presents, knitted booties and caps. Now she hated these women, almost as much as she hated Curtis, for going about their day as if nothing had changed.

E
MMALEE

O
LD
L
ICK

A spray of white flowers hung from the factory door. Emmalee spotted the familiar bouquet as she passed in front of Tennewa on her way to Old Lick. This was not the first time she had seen these flowers. Mrs. Whitlow placed them there whenever someone from the factory died. It was a nice gesture, she guessed, even if it was a fake one.

Nolan hated plastic flowers, said there was no need to use artificial when so many wildflowers and greens graced these mountains. “There ain’t no plastic roses growing out there. You ever seen one?” he asked Emmalee once after returning from Fulton’s. “I hauled more than twenty plastic bouquets over to the cemetery. The shit people spend money on.”

Nolan could call out every flower, tree, and bird in these parts, something that impressed Emmalee, especially
knowing her father couldn’t write much more than his own name. He loved the mountains. He walked them almost every day. He even told Emmalee not to bother calling Mr. Fulton when he finally passed; just drag his body to the top of Pine Mountain so he could seep back into the earth like the autumn leaves.

Emmalee shifted the pickup into neutral and drifted near the factory parking lot. Kelly was calm by her side, the truck’s vibration already lulling her into a deep sleep. Women, gathered on the dark pavement, held one another in their arms. Their heads were bent forward, and their backs heaved up and down as their cries broke the late-morning quiet. Their grief appeared honest, as though they truly loved Leona. Surely they had gasped when they heard the news of her tragic death. Emmalee spied Wilma and Easter locked in an embrace. They stood apart from the others as they rocked to and fro.

Emmalee had heard too much gossip to believe the women’s tears were true. She had listened as many of them had called Leona
cutthroat, coldhearted
, even
unfaithful. She hoards the bundles
, they said.
She lies about her time
, they said.
She’d do about anything to make a dollar
, they said and rolled their eyes toward the front office.

Emmalee never believed this talk, and today she watched as these women lamented their loss. Surely this morning their words were kind. Maybe they were complimenting Leona’s work—her attention to detail, her quick hand, and her lifelong commitment to Tennewa.
But poor Curtis. Poor, sweet Curtis. What an awful death for such a good man
. Emmalee was sure that’s what they were saying.

There had been times when Emmalee had loved sitting on the picnic tables among these women, especially when the air was warm and she had enough change in her pocket to buy a cold drink. She remembered the day Easter had called out to her.

“Come over here, girl.” Easter was sitting on the end of a bench, her short, sturdy legs crossed at the ankle, her head cocked to the right toward her goiter as if she was resting on a pillow. She and Wilma were listening to Cora, who was chattering about her three grown children while the others around them puffed on their cigarettes. “Hang on there, Cora,” Easter interrupted. “I want to introduce you to Emmalee. She sits about ten rows in front of you.”

“I seen her,” Cora said. “You work collars by Leona.”

“She sure does but don’t go holding that against her.” Easter chuckled and took a sip of her Coca-Cola. “And Emmalee, this here is Cora. She’s one of the oldest and best at Tennewa. Loyal too, no one’s going to argue that. Walked to work once in a snowstorm. Two miles here. Two miles home. Nobody else but Mr. Clayton showed up that day. And he only drove a couple blocks in that big truck of his. Ain’t that right, Cora?”

“Had to feed my babies. Nobody else was going to do it.”

Emmalee extended her hand as she had watched Mrs. Whitlow do. “Nice to meet you,” she said. Cora nodded but kept her hand to her side.

“Emmalee was a student of mine at the high school,” Easter said and tugged on Emmalee’s shirtsleeve. “A real good student.”

Cora looked Emmalee up and down. “How you liking it here?” she asked. “Leona treating you right?”

“Now, Cora, don’t go putting none of your foolish thoughts in this girl’s head. Ain’t that right, Wilma?”

Wilma nodded.

“Leona don’t talk much, but she shows me what needs to be done,” Emmalee said.

Easter and Wilma laughed a little louder. Cora leaned her head back and soaked up the afternoon sun.

“She don’t talk much to nobody. Don’t take it personal,” Wilma said. “We’ve all known Leona Lane since she was a tiny thing. She’s a good woman.”

“She sure is,” Easter said, “but she don’t want you to know it.”

Cora harrumphed and folded her arms across her full, rounded waist.

Laura Cooley, dressed in blue jeans cuffed at the ankle, walked straight up to Emmalee and tapped her on the shoulder, not bothering to apologize to the other women for interrupting their conversation. She handed Emmalee a cigarette and turned her back to Easter and Wilma.

“Me and Georgia over there,” she said, pointing to another young girl also wearing jeans cuffed at the ankle, “we’re riding over to Pikeville later tonight to meet up with a couple of boys. They got a friend. You want to come?” She offered Emmalee a lighter and promised she would have a real good time.

Emmalee rolled the cigarette between her fingers.

“Emmalee!” Leona hollered from just inside the sewing room. She waved her arm, motioning Emmalee back to the factory door. “Emmalee Bullard!”

Laura laughed and the smoke spilled from her nose and mouth. “Ooh. You better go on. Looks like you’re in big trouble.”

Emmalee ran to the concrete steps. She looked up at Leona, the cigarette slack between her fingers.

“Listen to me, if you ever want to amount to anything, girl, you’ll stick to your work, not waste your time out there swapping silly stories and day-old gossip,” she said and snatched the cigarette from Emmalee’s hand. “And you sure enough won’t be hanging out with that Laura Cooley. She could make something good of herself, but she don’t care to. You hear me?” But Leona spun around, not waiting for an answer. Emmalee had followed Leona back to her machine, and Laura never again offered to take her to Pikeville.

Today Laura was talking fast to Georgia Mitchell, grins stretched broad across both their faces. From her pickup, Emmalee watched as Georgia giggled at something Laura said. They wrapped their coats around their bodies in unison as if they had choreographed their movements and walked on toward the others already gathered out front. With cigarettes drawn to their lips, they pulled their breath deep in their lungs and released perfect rings of smoke into the clear morning air. They chatted some more, not acting the least bit sad that only hours ago Leona had fallen off a mountain and tumbled out of this world. An older woman threw them a stern look, and their smiles vanished for a moment. Then they leaned their heads together and giggled some more.

“Shut up,” Emmalee whispered.

A redbird nipped at one of the plastic roses hanging
on the door and danced along into the day amid the women’s tears. Emmalee blew a kiss into the air. Leona had told her blowing a kiss to a redbird would bring good luck. Nolan had told her this, too, but Emmalee had never believed him. She had blown thousands of kisses waiting for her luck to change, but not until she met Leona did she believe this could be true. As Emmalee imagined her kiss floating toward the clouds, she wondered if Leona was happy this morning, or if she was darting about, frantically searching for Curtis.

Emmalee pushed the clutch and quickly shifted the engine into first gear. She patted the baby’s tummy and sped straight into second, guiding the truck past the factory and the women, left huddled in her rearview mirror. She spotted Wilma and Easter, pointing in her direction. The engine sputtered and coughed as the truck barreled faster through town and toward a sky turning gray and bitter.

A couple of men milling in front of the hardware store looked up from their coffee and tipped their hats as the track passed in front of them. The taller of the two men pushed a long-handled broom across the sidewalk, and a ball of dust rolled into the street. Emmalee headed on west toward Old Lick.

As the road narrowed, she gripped both hands on the wheel, careful to manage the tight turns while keeping the cardboard cradle secure on the seat by her side. The truck climbed a little higher. Emmalee glanced back at the smoke pouring from the stone chimneys speckling the valley’s floor like spring daisies growing wild along the riverbank. The wood-framed houses built long ago
to shelter the families of the Tennessee Mining Company grew smaller and smaller till they looked no bigger than the dollhouses Emmalee had once admired in the dime store window. These homes with their thick stone foundations weren’t wrapped in tar paper like hers. It seemed like a fairyland to Emmalee as she looked back at the houses growing smaller and smaller.

She pumped the accelerator, and the truck lurched forward. The mountain road, once traveled mostly by loggers like her uncle Runt, who hauled loads of timber in and out of the valley and across the Cumberland Plateau, was rough in places, where the asphalt was cracked and drawn. Runt had come by the house a few days after Kelly Faye was born, offering to pay Nolan two hundred dollars to cut trees on the far side of Old Lick. He had two acres to haul and needed help. Instead Nolan cursed and yelled like a gambling man who thought he’d been cheated at his own game, claiming he didn’t need a handout from his own kin.

The truck’s engine fought the steep climb, spitting fumes and coughing hard. Emmalee looked quick at the baby who was kicking her feet and lifting her arms in the air. She shifted the truck into a lower gear and pushed the accelerator to the floorboard. She thumped the gearshift. The truck climbed higher, obeying Emmalee as she guided it through one hairpin turn and then another. The road grew rougher as she neared its top, and she tightened her grip on the wheel, trying to avoid the deep ruts and the slim shoulder.

Two wooden crosses stood in the ground to the left of the road, already placed there earlier in the morning
to mark the very spot where Leona and Curtis flew off the mountain and fell headlong into a dark November night. These were painted white and much larger than the ones Emmalee made of twigs. Red and yellow carnations were scattered among the crosses and the rock and mud. Emmalee wondered who had done this, who had cared enough to memorialize Curtis and Leona this way. Her eyes grew wet again as she pictured Leona’s face, stricken with fear as the pickup left the road.

Emmalee idled the truck and bowed her head toward her chest as if praying for a winged angel to come and guide her the rest of the way there. Her straight brown hair masked her eyes. She had seen Leona’s bloodied face at Fulton’s, and she had stared at her without growing sick or lightheaded. But at the sight of these crosses, Emmalee felt hopeless, abandoned, maybe even orphaned.

If Leona were alive, she would be tending to the baby. She would have told Emmalee to rest while she fed Kelly Faye her bottle and rocked her to sleep. And when Emmalee woke from her own nap, she would have found Leona cooking dinner with Curtis sitting nearby, maybe reading the evening paper or holding the baby on his lap. Now this was all gone, and Emmalee wiped her eyes on her shirtsleeve. The truck rattled as it climbed a little higher.

The fog lay heavier in patches on the top of Old Lick. Emmalee had watched these white clouds blanket the mountains around her many times in the winter months, keeping the sun from shining on the people who lived there. She eased to a full stop before heading deeper into the marshmallow-white sky. She sucked another tearful
sob back down her throat and shifted the truck into a higher gear. She counted each mile and searched for the fork in the road Mr. Fulton had drawn on the back of the envelope. The fog thinned in places, and Emmalee found her way. She turned sharply into the drive marked by a black mailbox painted with large white letters that read LANE.