The Funeral Dress (15 page)

“So what bothers you most is Emmalee got herself a baby before she got herself a husband,” Nolan said. “Seems to me the girl can do what she damn well pleases whether it’s making a baby or making a dress.” Nolan wiped his mouth with the back of his shirtsleeve. “Mr. Fulton said it was okay for Emmalee to make Miss Leona’s dress, and his word’s the only one that matters to me. He’s the one dressing the bodies.”

The preacher pulled his Bible to his chest. “Yes, but this is one time Mr. Fulton and I do not agree. He doesn’t go to the Church of Christ. He’s a Baptist man.”

“Yeah,” Nolan said.

The baby’s cries grew stronger. This time Nolan held a tin can to his lips and let some spit fall into it.

The preacher turned toward the door but glanced back at Emmalee. “You really think this is what your mama would want? You raising a baby without a daddy and without God. From what I’ve heard, I can’t imagine she’d be happy with the ways things are.”

Nolan jumped to his feet and landed in front of the preacher. With his finger, he poked the preacher in the chest, pressing harder and harder as he spoke. “I don’t want you talking about Emmalee’s mama. You hear me? The girl’s done answered your questions. Best you get on your way.”

The preacher’s lips quivered as he reminded Emmalee she was the one responsible for her child’s salvation. He raised his Bible over his head and reached his free hand out toward Emmalee. From the way the preacher stretched his body, Emmalee grew scared he might be placing a hex on her. Even Nolan tilted back from the preacher’s reach.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord!” The preacher looked up to the ceiling as he spoke. When he was done talking, he stepped backward out the door and returned to his church and a more compliant flock.

“What the hell did that man say?” Nolan asked and spit another load of tobacco juice in the can. Kelly was screaming fierce, and Emmalee could feel her milk starting to wet her shirt.

“I don’t know. Baby needs feeding.”

“Hold on there, girl.” Nolan’s voice was firm. “Look
a here, Emmalee. I don’t like no one talking about my blood, especially a preacher. I wouldn’t of let him in here, but he said he’d been talking to Mr. Fulton.”

Emmalee pulled her bangs down in front of her eyes.

“You know I don’t care to see you hauling that little one off to some church just ’cause he brings your mama’s name into this. But it’s time you tell me who this baby’s daddy is. You got knocked up. You ain’t the first girl, but I want the daddy’s name. He needs to do right by you. You hear me?”

Emmalee pushed her hair to the side and eased off the sofa. “I got to feed the baby.”

“Girl, believe it or not, I’m trying to help you here. Now tell me his damn name.”

“Are you? Are you trying to help me? ’Cause I ain’t looking for you to do nothing.”

“Girl, you are making it so damn hard.” Nolan bounded toward Emmalee, but she did not back away. Sometimes Emmalee wished he would go ahead and wrap his hands around her neck and choke the breath right out of her, instead of dragging her through this life slow and painful. “Preacher’s right about one thing,” Nolan said. “Your mama wouldn’t care for what’s going on here.”

He spit on the floor before walking straight out the door. He took to his truck and sped out of the holler, leaving Emmalee to tend to the baby alone.

L
EONA

C
HRISTMAS

1962

Leona spooned the remainder of the batter into a second loaf pan, careful to allow room for the gingerbread to rise as she had with the first. She set both pans inside the hot oven and checked her watch. She scraped what was left of the thick brown mixture from the sides of the yellow bowl and licked the spatula clean. She dropped the bowl and spatula into a sink of soapy water and rinsed her fingers, drying her hands on the apron tied around her waist.

Her calves ached from standing in the kitchen most of the day. She longed to sit for a minute but instead kneeled in front of a large cardboard box straddling the linoleum floor and thin green carpeting. Scattered around the box were piles of canned vegetables and meats and tins of baked cookies and biscuits, even a fresh pineapple upside-down cake wrapped in aluminum foil.

Leona was eager to finish her Christmas box. She had promised the women’s mission at church she would have it delivered by early evening. Most any other time of year, she was tight with her pennies, saving every one of them for something she could no longer name. She kept her money hidden in a shoebox in the back of her closet and added a few dollars to it every week. She once thought she was preparing to send a child or two to college. Later she thought about taking a trip around the world, but Curtis never wanted to travel farther than Nashville or Birmingham. Now Leona figured she saved the money out of habit more than anything else; just knowing it was there seemed reason enough. Curtis said his woman could stretch a dollar all the way to West Tennessee, and Leona knew this to be true. She spent some when the cause called to her, but she never did tell Curtis about the money stashed behind her slippers and his old work boots for fear he’d give it all to the church. She’d find a purpose for it someday.

Leona spent most of the week baking sugar cookies and sweet potato biscuits, loaves of pumpkin, banana, and gingerbread. She shopped for canned goods and a five-pound box of Russell Stover’s assorted chocolates from the drugstore. She even gathered enough pecans from underneath a tree on the outskirts of town to a fill a cloth bag and sent Curtis to the backside of Brown Chapel Mountain to fetch one of Mrs. Haygood’s fresh cured hams.

When Curtis wasn’t looking, Leona wrapped a lace-trimmed nightgown and matching robe in brown paper and hid it in the very bottom of the box between the cans of Spam and Blue Lake green beans. Curtis would
never think it appropriate giving such an intimate gift to a stranger, especially inside a church box. But Leona figured every woman needed to feel pretty every so often, even if it was in the dark of night.

Christmas had been a sad time in Leona’s house growing up. She was only eight years old when her daddy died in the mines along with nine other men from Cullen and Whitwell on December twenty-first. She and her mama were making Christmas cards out of red and green construction paper when a knock came at the door. She remembered her mama collapsing at the feet of the dark-suited official from the Tennessee Mining Company when he delivered the news. The company man apologized for her loss, said he spoke on behalf of everyone at Tennessee Mining. He gave her a meager check and a week to gather her things. Another miner and his family were set to move in the first of the year.

Leona was convinced her daddy left his family shackled to this valley, bound by poverty or weariness or fear. She wasn’t really sure which it was, but she watched her mother raise three children, taking in wash and sewing from women she didn’t know. They never had much for Christmas, other than a skirt or dress her mama had stitched together from scraps. But what saddened Leona most was that her mama never had a present of her own, other than what her three children had assembled from the school’s supply of craft sticks and glue. Leona grew up determined to find more out of living than filling her babies’ stomachs on hoe cakes and white beans, but nothing had worked out like she planned.

“You got the ham in there?” Curtis pulled a plastic comb from his rear pocket and stretched back in the reclining chair.

“It’s right here.”

“Who’s it going to?” Curtis asked as he combed his thinning hair, careful to work the part on the right side of his head.

“Nolan Bullard and his wife.”

“Nolan Bullard found someone to marry?” Curtis asked.

“Yep.” Leona shook her head. “About a year ago. A pretty young thing from over in Whitwell somewhere.”

“Bet he told her some more tall tale to get her to say ‘I do.’ ”

“Curtis Lane, you’re calling Nolan Bullard a liar,” Leona said and laughed.

“Well, even the Lord knows there ain’t any other way he could get a woman to marry him.”

Leona placed her hands on her hips and laughed some more. “Hey, go on and get out of here and quit wasting your time jawboning with me. You said you were going to cut down a tree for the trailer an hour ago. We’re never going to get this box delivered by dark if you don’t get on with it.”

“I thought you might want to go with me?” Curtis pushed himself up from the chair.

Leona shook her head. “You ask me that every year, and every year I tell you the same thing. No, I don’t want to go hunting for a tree. I got enough to do. Go on.”

Curtis slipped his hands in his pants pockets. “I doubt we’ll have time to decorate it tonight.”

“Those skinny things you bring in here ain’t hardly worth decorating. Can’t fit a decent-sized tree in this room.”

Curtis pulled on his wool jacket. “I don’t need to get one, Ona, if you don’t want me to.”

Leona had once loved to walk with Curtis into the woods. He scouted for the perfect tree while she hunted for pinecones. The big ones were her favorites. She’d dip the tips of their woody scales into glue and roll them in different colors of glitter. She hung them on the tree, giving thought to where she placed each one. The glitter sparkled against the strand of white lights Curtis wrapped around the tree’s branches.

But Leona didn’t care much about decorating the trailer anymore. She said it was a waste of her time. Surely Curtis could see she had enough to do without trimming a tree or making other silly decorations, especially with no one there to admire it all but the two of them.

“Maybe next Christmas, Ona. Maybe we’ll be in our house by then, and you can pick the tallest cedar on Old Lick.” He pointed above his head and stared at his hand as if he was admiring his imaginary tree.

“Hush up, Curtis. I’m tired of that talk,” Leona snapped, her mood changing fast.

Curtis’s smile faded. He opened the door and stared out at the woods.

“First Baptist is using real live animals in the nativity this year. They hadn’t done that since I was six years old.” Curtis placed his hand at his hip, indicating the little boy he once was. “One of the sheep got spooked and ran off with baby Jesus in his mouth, ran all the way to Pine Mountain.”

“Curtis Lane, I wouldn’t be lying about the baby Jesus,” Leona said.

“I ain’t. But it was a good thing the live baby Jesus come down with a fever earlier in the day. They ended up putting a baby doll in the manger instead.”

“You’re pulling my leg,” Leona said and opened the oven to check on her gingerbread.

“I ain’t.” Curtis smiled big. “Some say that goat’s still living up there, tending to that little baby doll like it was his own. You listen real close on a quiet night and you can hear him baying on the other side of the valley.”

Leona waved her hand. “Go on. Get out of here.”

Curtis buttoned his coat and looked back at his wife. “You want to go by and take a look at the nativity? I mean after we deliver the box?”

Leona pounded her fist on the windowpane. “I hate them old crows. Shoo. Go on now,” she said to the birds pecking at the remnants of a dead possum or squirrel a few feet from the trailer’s end. “Where’s my pretty redbird?” she asked, her voice falling and rising as if she was calling an old friend to come pay her a visit.

Curtis stepped outside, and the door swung shut behind him.

Leona finished up the box, even tucking a new bottle of Jergens lotion she had bought for herself between the cans of green beans and the pineapple upside-down cake. She left the box ready on the kitchen floor for Curtis to carry and hurried into the bedroom to change her clothes smeared with butter and flour from her long day of cooking.

Later inside the truck, Curtis pointed to the band of
thickening clouds settling across the valley. “Looks like we might have a white Christmas, Ona,” he said. Leona said nothing as she spied the small cedar resting against the trailer as the truck lurched into reverse.

A long silence drifted between them as Curtis steered the truck down Old Lick Mountain. As the road straightened near the bottom, he licked his lips and pushed his nose into the air. “I can’t take it much longer. Hmm. Hmm. That bread smells mighty good. When do we get ours, Ona?”

“Not till we get home. Need to do our good deed first.”

Curtis pressed harder on the pedal and crouched behind the wheel like he was taking off for the moon. Leona screamed, and Curtis slowed the truck. He grinned big and patted his wife’s knee.

“That ain’t funny, Curtis,” Leona gasped, holding her hand to her chest.

“Sorry, sweetie. Just having a little fun.”

“I told you I ain’t in the right mind for that kind of fun.”

“I’m sorry. Where we headed anyway? Last I heard Nolan was living in a rented room on Cloverdale Loop. Surely he didn’t take his new bride over there.”

“No, he’s moved into some old shack in Red Chert,” Leona answered and pointed ahead with her finger as if Curtis did not know the way. “Easter said it was at the very back of the holler. And then to the right some.”

“Nolan’s a stubborn old mule. What makes you think he’s going to take this box?” Curtis asked.

“His young bride. At least I hope he’s thinking about his wife this time of year. This one time of year.”

Curtis grunted.

“Okay. I’m hoping he won’t be there.”

Curtis accelerated and steered the pickup on through town. He paused before turning left onto Red Chert Road. “You’re a good woman, Leona,” he said as he pulled onto the gravel and dirt road. He placed his hand on Leona’s knee and kept it there as they wound their way deeper into the holler.

“You think that’s it?” Curtis asked and nodded toward the house sitting back from the road. A long tail of smoke rose from a metal pipe pitched a few feet above a rusted tin roof. Any other time of year, the dwelling might not have been visible, but the winter’s cold had left the wooded lot naked and the house in plain sight. Pieces of tar paper tacked to its plywood sides flapped in the wind and left the house looking as though it was shaking from the cold.