The Undertaker's Daughter (10 page)

The rest of the journey was uneventful. While the doctor at the hospital x-rayed Mrs. Oakley’s leg, my father took me home.

“That can’t ever happen again,” he said. “I will never, ever do that again.”

I was proud that his first reaction that day was not to leave me in the care of Paulette, or to ask my mother to collect me from
Spring Farms, but instead he allowed me to go along with them. I felt I had earned some sort of stamp of approval, like I had passed the etiquette test in emergency procedures. A few years later when Mrs. Oakley suffered a fatal stroke and collapsed in her tomato garden, I remembered her broken leg and marveled that it had been instrumental in bringing me closer to my father. I’ve held a soft spot for her ever since.

 CHAPTER 3 

I
f there was one thing the men who controlled Jubilee didn’t like, it was outsiders. They especially couldn’t abide an outsider who made a splash. Not everyone in Jubilee thought the arrival of Frank Mayfield in town was a breath of fresh air. My father’s indoctrination into the world of Jubilee’s hierarchy began with a visit from two representatives of a group of men who were known as the Old Clan. In the 1960s they were still as territorial as children in a sandbox. Their families had ruled Jubilee since before the Civil War and they saw no good reason to surrender the reins. Most members of the Old Clan were educated men who knew a bit more about how the world worked than did the simple farmers and other less glorified laborers of Jubilee. Not to be confused with the Klan, the masks they wore were invisible and there could be no doubt as to their identity. Self-assured and at ease in public, they cut a wide swath. Henry Whitehall liked to fondle the gold pocket watch displayed in the vest of his white linen suit. His
daddy did the same when he was alive. Rusty Welch darted his head around the town square like a pigeon looking for food, afraid he would miss something important. Long ago they had claimed special seating privileges around the local coffee counters and could be heard noisily arguing with each other. They proudly labeled themselves grumpy, tenacious, and sly old devils, and no one would disagree. They dictated the way things worked around here.

When two of these old lions strolled up Main Street and stopped in front of the funeral home, my father slowly rose from his leather swivel chair. He stood behind his desk with his hands in his trouser pockets, with a clear view through the oblong window directly in front of him.

“Go on upstairs now,” he said to me. “It looks like I have unexpected visitors.”

I scrambled onto one of the folding wooden chairs and peeked out the window. The men were deep in conversation and looked in no hurry to climb the steps to our front door. “Who are those men?”

My father made his way over to the window and adjusted the venetian blind. “You see that one on the right?” He nodded toward the men. “The one who looks a little cocky? That’s Fletcher Hamilton,” he said in a chilly tone. “He’s a lawyer and a businessman. And that ole boy with him is Chuck Harley, Fletcher’s partner in the concrete business.”

Perspiration beaded Fletcher Hamilton’s forehead and his shock of burnt-red hair, usually swept back with pomade, now fell over his eyes. He pushed his browline-framed glasses up toward his nose.

“That sounds boring. What are they doing here?”

“That’s a good question. That’s a very good question.” My father’s eyes were fixed on them as they drew closer. “I guess I’m about to find out.”

“Here they come. Run along now.” My father gave me a little shove toward the stairs.

He held the door open for his visitors. He was awfully polite.

I ran upstairs to my mother with a full report on a man named Fletcher, who’d come to visit without an invitation.

“Be quiet. Sit down and eat your lunch.”

My father’s funeral home and the Jubilee Concrete Company wouldn’t have had a thing in common except for one product—concrete burial vaults. Burial vaults served an undeniably important function, as the cemetery’s caretaker once explained to me. He occupied the former sexton’s house on the edge of the graveyard. The poor guy had to live with a forty-year-old ghost story of a young girl who supposedly haunted the square tower of his house. He was dogged by out-of-towners who constantly drove by gawking. Young men on a mission to prove their bravery prowled the cemetery at night. My mother said the caretaker was a nice man, and my father told me not to ask him about the ghost in his house, so I didn’t.

One day I watched the lowering of a vault into the ground and didn’t understand its purpose.

“It’s a pretty graveyard, isn’t it?” The caretaker had come by to watch the ground being disturbed.

“It sure is, Mr. Shelton. Nice and peaceful.”

“You asked me about the vaults the other day. Your daddy didn’t tell you about them?”

“He told me to ask you.”

“See how nice and orderly everything is? See how smooth those rows of gravestones sit, and how level the ground is?”

“Sure. I see what you mean, I guess. They’re kind of scraggly in places, though.”

He ignored my observation. “Well, without vaults, if one single thunderstorm rolled into town, the ground would get so heavy from the wet soil that it would just cave in. That heavy old mud would crush the coffins. Vaults prevent something bad like that from happening and help keep that even appearance all the way across this cemetery.” He gave a sweeping gesture of his hand. “And you have to have something secure enough to protect those caskets from the critters that come out at night.”

“Aw. That’s creepy, Mr. Shelton.”

“Yesum, I know, I know. But it’s just part of it.”

The meeting between Fletcher Hamilton and my father was doomed before it began. Rumor had it that Frank Mayfield was causing havoc at the vault company because his funeral home wasn’t placing enough orders to please the Old Clan.

Like my father, Fletcher Hamilton always wore a suit, though Fletcher’s were just a tad more understated than my father’s. Their quality and the cost snuck up on you. He may have been wearing a plain white shirt, but upon careful scrutiny it was a damn fine one. A quiet sophistication dwelled within him, the kind that was cultivated just as carefully as my father’s meticulous presentation. In a desire to be noticed for what he said rather than what he wore, Fletcher’s deep Southern voice was as polished as his shoes. Someone would say he was a class act—with the emphasis on
act
.

It was well-known that if Fletcher Hamilton was on your side, it was a grand state of affairs. If not, you’d better make sure the ground beneath your feet was solid. At different times in life, a man or a woman might well experience both the good and the bad side of Fletcher Hamilton and his excellent legal mind.

It was a little crowded with both my father and Fletcher in the same room. They were never going to see eye to eye on anything. A man of long-winded eloquence when it was called for, Fletcher chose on this occasion to get right to the point, which was just as well because the men weren’t offered any refreshment.

“Now, Frank, we sure would appreciate it if you would tell the families you attend about our Jubilee vaults,” Fletcher began.

“Those concrete vaults leak and you know it. I don’t care for the Jubilee vaults. I don’t like any vault made solely from concrete. I’ve seen them crack, Fletcher. The water from the soil gets in there and then you’ve got a waste of money. Vaults with some metal in them are more expensive, but they last.”

“Well, you think about it, Frank. Alfred sure sells a hell of a lot of our vaults. They’re good enough for him,” put in Chuck Harley.

“I’m sure they are, Chuck, I’m sure they are,” my father said levelly.

It was true. My father’s sole competitor, Alfred Deboe, owner of the Deboe Funeral Home, was only too pleased to recommend the concrete vaults. He and Fletcher Hamilton were good friends, and Alfred would sell rats’ tails if Fletcher told him to. Alfred Deboe had enjoyed easy business until my father’s arrival. Embedded within the good-ole-boy society, he sailed along year after year without any serious competition. When my father bought the funeral home on Main Street, it had been deteriorating for years and its business was almost nonexistent. The only other funeral home in town was for the black community, which was no competition at all. But Deboe resented my father’s incursion.

“Well now, Frank, maybe you’re . . . well . . . unfamiliar with the residents of our town. Maybe you’re too new to Jubilee to understand that not everyone can afford metal vaults. We’re a
community of hardworking farmers.” Fletcher, who’d never farmed a day in his life, shifted from one expensively clad foot to the other.

“My policy has always been to let the families decide for themselves. When it’s time to talk burial vaults, I present the choices. And only when and if my opinion is required do I give it,” my father said, making a gallant effort to remain calm. “I’ll tell you what, Fletcher. I’m not going to push those concrete vaults, but I won’t bad-mouth them either. That’s fair enough.”

As soon as Fletcher and his partner had disappeared down Main Street, my father climbed the stairs two at a time, putting on the brakes only when he reached the kitchen. Jemma was sitting in her yellow high chair. I sat at the kitchen table, waiting to hear why my father’s eyes looked like storm clouds. He reached for the Alka-Seltzer.

“I can hardly believe it,” he erupted in front of us. “Damn that Fletcher Hamilton! Can you believe he would come in here and try to tell me how to run my business? I know what he thought. He thought I’d just go along to get along. Wasn’t it enough that I offered to stay quiet about the damn vaults?”

Oh, boy. My father acted as if he’d been dealt a nasty old poker hand. My mother’s silence taught me something she already knew: these were rhetorical questions that invited no answers.

He made a point with his finger in the air. “No, that wasn’t enough. It’s never enough for those men. Well, he can take his cracking, leaking vaults and—”

“Frank. The girls.”

“I shook his hand. And I’m sorry I did.” His Alka-Seltzer fizzed away furiously.

What a temper! I’d never seen him so angry. His jaw was so tightly clenched I thought his teeth would crack and my heart
raced as I maneuvered to stay clear of his path. His anger was sharp and fixed and I hoped that it would never be pointed at me. I saw then that he was a man who would never be coerced. I would certainly never attempt it. All this uproar because of burial vaults and a man named Fletcher Hamilton. I would hear this man’s name in the years to come, always accompanied by some dissatisfaction or annoyance.

“Frank, calm down.”

“I am not going to have a man like that, or any other—”

The phone rang. My father rallied his funeral home voice when he answered it. “Mayfield and Son Funeral Home.”

I watched, awed by his transformation; he had to be calm because there was no choice. Even the Alka-Seltzer stopped fizzing. And that was it—we had to be quiet again. We were getting a body.

S
hortly after this formal request from the Old Clansmen, an odd thing began to happen at the Jubilee hospital. Normally, when a person called upon a funeral home to drive them to the hospital, if that person died, the family requested the same funeral home to handle the funeral. It was the natural and expected outcome. But for a noticeable number of people whom my father had taken to the hospital, their families did not call him at the time of death. They called Alfred Deboe instead. My father couldn’t figure it out, and it was driving him crazy. He was working hard to develop relationships, people were beginning to call him for favors instead of Deboe, and it just didn’t make sense that they wouldn’t follow through when it was time to make that all-important call. He set out to get to the bottom of it.