The Undertaker's Daughter (17 page)

Cranky with the dank air and the crack of thunder, I walked back to our veranda, where the swing awaited. From where I sat, I
looked down Main Street and without moving a muscle saw three churches. We had an awful lot of God in our town. Jubilee had more churches than it knew what to do with. They came in every variety imaginable, from a one-room house where the Holy Rollers spoke in tongues and fainted regularly, to the large, money-drenched building of the First Baptist Church, our church, a half a block from the funeral home.

At the turn of the eighteenth century Beacon County opened its arms and welcomed, or perhaps surrendered, to the Great Revival of America; fevered evangelists called it the Second Great Awakening. It was all go, go, go with the spirit, hallelujah, praise the Lord, just a few miles down the road. Then, in 1807 the Shakers brought their unique dancing and design talents a few miles in the other direction to South Union. I fell asleep every summer during the outdoor reenactment play in which the Shakers’ founder, Mother Ann, saw the light. Sensing a warm reception, in 1943 the Mennonites anointed the county with their eccentric ways, accessorizing our farmland with small dots of black buggies. My father had not merely dropped us into another spot in the lap of the Bible Belt; this town was ingrained in the original hide before it became dyed, punched, and buckled. And because death doesn’t wait for anyone or anything, not even the last prayer of Sunday-morning services, my father and therefore all of us had to sit in the last pew at the back of the church so that whoever was answering the phones at the funeral home could run down the block and tap him on the shoulder. It happened so frequently that I began to wonder if he’d made a pact with his employees to rescue him just when the preacher was warming up. I made a game of catching his attention and pointing to his watch, mouthing the words “Time to go.” He didn’t think it was funny. I never
heard him sing a note and especially not in church; singing hymns was not something he did.

He never did anything unless chances were good that he could learn to do it well. Under the glare of my mother’s hawk eyes I managed to sneak a look at him during the long, drawn-out prayers. I noticed that he never closed his eyes during them and wondered if praying was another thing he didn’t do well.

Our mother complained about Sundays, even though she wouldn’t be caught dead skipping church. “I have to wash your all’s hair the night before. Get your clothes ready. Make breakfast Sunday morning, get you all dressed, and then come home and cook Sunday dinner. Sunday’s supposed to be a day of rest. Well, it’s not a day of rest for me.”

“Let’s not go then,” I suggested.

“Watch your smart mouth!”

Here’s what I learned in Sunday school and church: we’re all going to hell. That’s what the preacher said every time the doors opened. Everyone in Jubilee believed in heaven and hell whether or not they attended church. There was no possible escape route from the doctrine. We all knew of the burning fires of eternal damnation. But I didn’t sit in the swing to think about hell. It was too hot. I wondered what it would be like to be at the seashore wrapped in a cool breeze with the Bobbsey Twins. I thought about how hard-pressed I was to find fairies in fairy tales. The heat became unbearable so I retreated to the coolest room in the house.

The showroom was full of caskets. There was no natural light, and when I switched on the fluorescent lighting, the strips of light came to life one at a time quickly, click, click, click, like the flashes of a high-powered camera. The effect was dazzling. The
showroom, kept at a frosty temperature, was a reliable place in which to cool off in the sticky summer months. The caskets shone, row upon row of them, quite like an assembly line, suspended on casket trucks that held them in place. My father always had a fine selection of colors available: lavender, pink, blue, wooden, bronze. The most popular were rose and white for those who favored simple or feminine. And they were cheaper.

Teddy, one of my father’s war buddies who lived in North Carolina, once came for a visit with Lenore, his wife. When my father led them into the casket room, Lenore ran over to a lavender-colored casket and threw her arms around it, practically draping her body over it.

“Frank! My favorite color in the whole world is purple. This is the one I want, this beautiful pale lavender casket. It’s mine. Don’t let anyone else have it.”

“Well, gracious, Lenore”—he laughed—“I’m sure you won’t be needing it for a long time.”

“I am as serious as a heart attack. You better save me a purple casket like this one.”

Later I asked, “Isn’t North Carolina far away? How is that going to work out? Will you have to deliver the casket to Raleigh?”

“Aw, Lenore was just being dramatic. She’ll go home and forget all about it.”

I spoke to Lenore many years later. The first thing she said to me was how much she loved that lavender casket.

Knowing which of the caskets were the cheapest was easy. They were made of pressed wood and covered in a dull, gray felt fabric. For about $350 it was a bargain, especially because the person who bought the least expensive casket received most of the same services as the person who bought the $3,000 copper casket: embalming, extra labor, the registry book, memorial
folders, all sorts of odds and ends. The service could be held at the funeral home or at a church or graveside—all for the same price. There were no contracts or written financial agreements. My father took notes on a pad of paper, and sometimes he was paid, and sometimes he wasn’t.

“Then why,” I once asked, “would anyone ever pay more than the cheapest price?”

“Human nature. Some people regard it as a gesture of final respect. That’s a strong pull. And then some people like to show off. That’s not bad, but you’d be surprised at how it turns out.”

He explained that Beacon County was split into two factions on its end-of-life needs. In the northern half of the county, the people were unpretentious and not necessarily poor farmers. The case of the patriarch of the Blunt family, in which the children insisted that he be buried in his bib overalls, was telling. They arrived clutching a paper bag that contained a brand-new pair of the Pointer Brand, stiff as a washboard, and a new white shirt. They chose a midpriced eighteen-gauge, plain, gray metal casket that cost around $1,700.

Mrs. Blunt opened her purse and produced a big wad of cash. “How much do I owe you, Mr. Mayfield?”

“No, ma’am, now you just keep your money and pay after the funeral.” He wanted to make sure they were satisfied with everything before he accepted payment.

But she insisted and peeled off the $100 bills.

In south Beacon County the doctors and lawyers of the country-club set had their own ideas about how to go out in style. They might place a special casket order in advance in which they insisted upon brushed-steel handles on an expensive copper casket; they might choose a big, flashy mahogany casket trimmed with silver hardware. And the flowers—Lord the flowers! A south-county lawyer’s
wife ordered a casket piece so big that it took two men to carry. Cluttering the floor space were separate standing wreaths from every member of the family, each with his or her name scrawled across a wide satin ribbon:
FOR DADDY, FROM YOUR LOVING DAUGHTER ELIZABETH. GOD BLESS YOU. REST IN PEACE. WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOU
. They might hire their own organist and choose a vocalist from out of town to perform a few hymns. An entire choir was once called upon to sing a doctor to heaven. That was a first. But then, when the bill came due, my father often had to chase after payment from the wealthier families, who tried to put him off.

“Hellfire and damnation. Like water from a stone, I tell you.” My father complained that when he pushed the boat out for those who wanted a big-splash send-off, he relied on the smaller funerals to prevent it from sinking. The bills weighed heavily upon him until finally, sometimes years later, he would receive payment from a golf-course-tanned widow.

He felt that an undertaker need not sell a casket. The only thing that mattered to my father was that the family was pleased with their choice. Once the family had chosen him as their undertaker, it was a matter of budget and desire. It wasn’t as if they were going to order a casket from Sears, Roebuck. All he had to do was know his product. If quality mattered to the family, he showed them the better gauge; sixteen-gauge was the heaviest and strongest, twenty-gauge was the lightest and less expensive. If flash and beauty mattered, you couldn’t beat a solid, hand-polished mahogany, or the most expensive casket that my father carried, the strong and mighty bronze. Said to be the most durable, better able to resist corrosion, it wouldn’t decompose like wood or rust like many other metals.

I walked down the neat rows of caskets often enough that they
became a mundane piece of funeral furniture. I never climbed in one. I thought about it, but they were like a well-made hotel bed—I didn’t like to crumple the sheets until it was time to go to sleep. The caskets were so pristine and perfect that I couldn’t bear the thought of damaging them. And anyway, what if the top accidentally closed while I was in it and then it got jammed and no one could get me out and I died of suffocation?

Before the advent of Harley-Davidson and Kentucky Wildcats casket designs and bespoke, biodegradable cocoons, caskets were relatively plain. Rarely did my father make a mistake when he placed an order. He knew the taste of his clientele and he had good judgment. But occasionally he stumbled.

“What the hell is this?” Sonny asked.

The stiff, brown cardboard that encased the casket fell to the floor to reveal the most hideous thing we had ever seen.

The paint job on this two-tone, steel casket was a shocker. A white background offset the garish gold sides and top. Small, white snowflake-looking designs dotted the sides of the casket. It was as if a bizarre fairy-tale casket had been transported to the showroom by mistake. Sleeping Beauty might look appropriate in it, but Mr. Woodall or Mrs. Lipton would not. It took its zany place in the showroom for two years. No one bought it or even considered it, and my father eventually admitted defeat and had it repainted.

I quite liked it. It reminded me of winter and holidays, so on this swampy day, before the fairy-tale casket was whisked away, I crawled underneath it with my book. The next thing I knew my mother shook me awake.

“What are you doing? I couldn’t find you. Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking all over for you. Didn’t you hear me call you?”

“I fell asleep. I went to the—”

“I don’t want to hear it. I’m going to wear you out if you don’t start doing as you’re told. Now go find your daddy and tell him supper’s ready.”

He wasn’t too far away. Outside, in the back of the funeral home, he and a couple of men who occasionally worked for him stood around an old barrel they used to burn trash. As the flames leaped out and lit their faces, they froze as if in a cabal when I opened the door and stepped outside. My father slowly passed a bottle to Lee, the man standing beside him. Lee nonchalantly shoved the bottle in his jacket pocket. Did they think I was blind?

Our county held an occasional vote. Were enough people ready to claim Beacon County a wet county? Did anyone out there want to
legally
drink alcohol in Jubilee? During the run-up to the vote, Jubilee’s preachers went wild. One of the brethren placed a ladder near the courthouse, climbed it with his Bible in hand, sat on top, and sang hymns during the vote. The county remained dry that year.

Jubilee had no bars, no restaurants that served drinks. Those who liked their liquor were shoved back indoors to the privacy of their own homes, or to the country club, where law enforcement officials were paid to turn the other way. A few drove to the closest wet county in Tennessee. And one man stood in the back of his funeral home and passed around a bottle of mother’s ruin. I hadn’t a clue of its provenance.

“Dinner’s ready,” I said, pretending that I hadn’t witnessed this cocktail hour.

“Be right in.” My father made eye contact, smiled, and winked.

Oh, I got it. Our secret.

I carefully watched my father at dinner. I wanted to know if sipping from that gin bottle made him different in some way. I saw no sign of it. Remembering the spanking he’d given me before, any attempt at conversation stuck in my throat and I tried to make
myself small and invisible. He was a little quiet, but I would never have known he’d been swigging away had I not seen it. It was the first time I’d seen him take a drink, I believed my mother knew, as dinner was thick with silence. Perhaps she’d sent me to find him to embarrass him. Or maybe she really didn’t know where he was. Even though he had to be available at every moment, at times no one seemed to know his whereabouts. Muffled arguments erupted in their bedroom upon his return.

“Where’ve you been?”

“The hospital.”

“Sure you were. And what were you doing there at this time of night?”

But I didn’t hear his answer.

That night when I went to bed, I thought that it had been a pretty interesting day. My bedroom was right above the casket room, and when I closed my eyes, I knew that I was lying directly above the coffins. This is where I practiced playing dead, not in the caskets, but lying in my bed at night looking up at the ceiling with my hands resting perfectly, one on top of the other, on my stomach. I finally closed my eyes and wondered if I would wake up in the morning.

Come the autumn when school began again, we entered our elementary classroom and were assigned seats. At times we were given a choice, but were more often told to sit alphabetically. I always sat behind Linda Mayberry. One wouldn’t notice her. In a
classroom filled with twenty or so children born of farmers, factory workers, doctors, and teachers, and me, the undertaker’s daughter, it was unusual not to know what Linda Mayberry’s father did for a living. But no one bothered to ask.

I sat behind her year after year and therefore became intimate with her back. Her hair was coarse and the color of burned wheat. It fell in tight, fuzzy curls just above her shoulders. Her hand-me-down cotton dress washed to a faded tiredness hung loosely below her knees. In the winter when all the other girls switched to wool, Linda Mayberry dealt with the cold by adding a cardigan to the same thin dresses. She sat with a slight stoop and walked like a boy—a tomboy in a dress—but she was small, petite even, and still and quiet.