The Undertaker's Daughter (21 page)

“Then why does it say ‘Mayfield and Son’?”

“It’s just an expression.”

“Well, I think I might be an undertaker. Are girls allowed to be undertakers?”

“You have a long time to think about that. I don’t know any women undertakers, though.”

“Maybe I can be the first woman undertaker then.”

“I have a feeling someone will beat you to it. Anyway, you still haven’t watched me embalm yet.”

“Nah, I don’t really want to.”

“Didn’t think so.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the thought of watching him embalm made me downright queasy. I wanted to stand beside him while he performed the job he was clearly meant to do. I wanted him to think I was courageous when I was not. I wanted to create a camaraderie in this special area of his life, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t ready and was unsure if I would ever be. Thomas had stood in that small, dark room once and told me he never wanted to watch again. Though he said it was clinical, like a surgery, he thought it was creepy.

I found things to do downstairs so that I wouldn’t be told to go away. I de-smudged the caskets—he was a stickler about fingerprints. I made sure the folding chairs in the chapel were perfectly in line, the way he liked them. In the summer I carefully placed a paper fan on each seat with the image of Jesus facing up. I wondered if anyone ever turned the fan over to read the advertisement on the back: “Mayfield & Son Funeral Home—our service is guided by the Golden Rule. Your confidence is our sacred obligation.”

As my father began to make a name for himself in Jubilee, the funeral home became a social club during downtime, a place to stop by for a cold soda on a summer scorcher, or a cup of coffee in the dark winter afternoons after the men about town had exhausted the coffee counters. He made friends easily and loved nothing better than to host afternoon games.

It was a bridge-party day, and having been scolded and sent to my room, I employed Operation Sneak Downstairs. I’d stolen a few biscuits filled with slices of country ham that Belle had left unmonitored and stuffed them into my pocket.

“What are you all doing, Daddy? Can I stay down here a while? I’m in trouble. Dropped a plate of ambrosia on the kitchen floor. Belle’s dizzy from it, she said—”

I stopped midsentence. Edgar held a gun.

“We’re being entertained by Edgar’s rifle skills,” my father said.

Edgar had recently spent time in a military situation about which he was pretty sparing of the details. He knew how to handle a rifle, though. Edgar marched for us and spun his rifle around and barked out orders until my father told him to knock it off so as not to disturb the ladies upstairs.

“What’s the temperature like up there?” my father asked me.

“They’re serious now. Mrs. Appleton has her glasses on, she’s going on about the Civil War again, and Miss Becky Lou took her shoes off—you know how she likes to stretch her feet.”

“Okay then, boys, let’s get a game going. Edgar, you’re on guard duty.”

To relieve the boredom during downtime, the fellows played checkers in the back section of the chapel. This growing group of men favored a more inclusive game, so my father bought a big folding table to play Crazy Eights. Just as I began to get the hang of Crazy Eights, they moved on to poker. Poker stuck. At first they bet with matchsticks, but then quickly emptied their pockets of nickels and dimes and played for money. Gambling made them feel guilty and they were afraid of gossip, so each time they played, one of the men was the designated guard. The guard’s duty was to sit in the front office, keep an eye on the window, and warn the men if anyone who wasn’t in the loop approached the funeral home.

Even my mother joined in the poker games at times. She had a cardplayer’s mind and the demeanor of a professional. Lily Tate was quiet when she played, quiet and deadly. She seemed to
recede into the wallpaper while she silently watched the men’s cards as they yapped on about the perfect kind of weather for growing crops, or a business deal. Then she would wipe the floor with all of them. When she leaned over the table and swept up the whole pot, my father would jump from his chair and throw his cards down in disgust.

Poker has a certain rhythm, and nothing jarred it like having to answer the phone, so the guard fielded the calls and left the men undisturbed unless it was an ambulance or death call. Everyone gave Edgar a pat on the back as we left him sitting forlornly at the desk.

Usually four or five men were around the table. They were the kind of men who made their own schedule—Eugene, an insurance salesman; J.W., a farmer; and Brother Sam, who was associated with one of the churches. I wasn’t surprised that one of God’s servants gambled. Due to my father’s profession I knew just about all the preachers and church officials in the county.

When I entered the room, Brother Sam smiled at me as if some part of him ached. He motioned me over to him. While the rest of the men were settling in with the first hand of the day, he leaned toward me like he wanted to whisper something. I lent him my ear.

“I’d appreciate it, young lady, if you wouldn’t tell anyone that I sit at this table once in a while.”

I looked at him like he was an idiot. I felt I could afford to be haughty; no one else was paying attention to me at that moment. “Don’t you think I know that? I’m not a snitch. You just need to concentrate on your cards and not worry about me, because you’ve got a pretty sorry hand,” I whispered back.

While the women ate gussied-up chicken salad upstairs, I passed out peanuts and cold drinks to the men at the poker table.
I ran back and forth into the hospitality room, where next to the snack machine a ginormous red Coca-Cola machine hummed away like a refrigerator. It was supposed to take money, but didn’t. My father had rigged it somehow so that his guests enjoyed a free-flowing supply of bottles of Coke, Sprite, Dr Pepper, and Nehi. And a pot of coffee was always going, aided by plenty of milk and sugar.

These men were easy with each other, even in the uncomfortable area of emotions. I could see they enjoyed the undertaker’s company. When they talked about other men, they referred to them as boys. “That ole boy Ralph, he’s never gonna give you a damn nickel off of anything.” But they would never refer to each other as boys; these were men.

The funeral home was their haven. They created a jovial atmosphere in spite of all the mourning and death the place had witnessed. Tucked back in the rear of the chapel, they joked with me and didn’t seem to mind having me around. I knew how to disappear into the woodwork, practiced as I was at sitting silently, but I often circled the men and learned to play poker by standing at the shoulders of a few good players. The atmosphere always had a slight edge when a game was on. The men threw their cards on the table at the end of a hand, snapped them when they were proud, and sent their nickels spinning with a bet. Whenever I tried to spin a nickel, it fell on the floor.

They spoke in shorthand, like men who’ve lived closely with each other for a long time.

“Trip Harrison got a . . .”

“Yep, heard about that.”

“Not like last time.”

“Nope. But that wife of his . . .”

“Yeah, got that right.”

Then Edgar came running into the room. “J.W., your wife’s on the phone, she’s lookin’ for you.”

“Tell her I’m not here.”

Edgar left, but ran back in again immediately.

In unison, without looking up from their hands, the men chimed, “Goddamnit, he’s not here!”

They settled down again, picked up their cards as a new hand was dealt.

Just as Brother Sam’s eyes bulged, a sure sign he had finally received good cards, Edgar ran into the room yelling his head off.

“Old lady Peabody’s coming up the walk!”

Silence. My father stood immediately. He turned from the men, adjusted his face for the widow, and strode purposefully through the foyer to his office. It suddenly felt dangerous, as if we were hiding from a murderer rather than the elderly and frail Mrs. Peabody. The poker boys and I sat motionless. Suddenly these grown men looked like schoolboys again, sitting perfectly silent, knowing that if they made a sound my father would hit the roof.

As soon as my father stepped out of the room, the men shook in silent laughter. They could only remain quiet by not making eye contact, for each time Eugene looked over at J.W., Eugene’s face turned red and his shoulders trembled.

“Afternoon, Mrs. Peabody,” we heard the undertaker say in his most dignified and respectful voice.

Everyone in the neighborhood, and certainly the men in the back of the chapel hidden from view, knew Mrs. Peabody. Two years previously she had made her way slowly up the steps to the funeral home. A small, round hat sat atop her gray head, a simple handbag dangled from her wrinkled wrist, and she more or less
attempted a bright-colored lipstick. Mrs. Peabody had made an effort to look respectable even though her husband had died that day. She had no other family and not much money; she was worried about paying her husband’s funeral bill. My father noticed she twisted a thin, worn-out flowered handkerchief in her hands. He remembered such things. Please, could her husband have the least expensive casket and a no-frills service, she asked. She couldn’t afford flowers, not even the casket piece. It pained her to ask for long-term credit.

The next day my father waited for a flower delivery for Mr. Peabody’s funeral, flowers that never arrived. He thought maybe a friend or the widow’s church would provide at least a simple wreath. So he called the florist and ordered a spray of carnations and placed it on the man’s casket. Every week after her husband was buried, Mrs. Peabody returned to the funeral home. She sat down in the chair opposite my father, opened her small, black purse, and handed him one dollar. She was a regular visitor to our funeral home for years, until at long last she’d paid her husband’s heavily discounted funeral bill in full.

If she had visited on the same day each week, it might have been easier for the poker games to proceed without the niggling thought that Mrs. Peabody might just be on her way. The last thing my father needed was to shock a respectful widow with swirling cards and mounds of nickels and dimes, the evidence of gambling, before her very eyes. He sat behind his desk during the transaction. Mrs. Peabody took her time, unfolded the bill, and told him once again how grateful she was for his patience. As a matter of friendliness and ritual, they had a short discourse about the weather and Mrs. Peabody’s health.

After he helped her down the front steps and she was safely away, my father returned to the game, where a new hand had
already been dealt. The hilarity of the moment was calmer, but they all shook their heads and giggled like girls.

The poker boys became a bit obsessive. They showed up during nights of visitation, paid their respects, then one by one slipped out back. They set up a gurney and dealt a few hands. Even on frigid nights their stiff fingers placed the cards on the blanket that protected the white sheet, while they exhaled a combination of tobacco smoke and their natural breath.

I was glad my mother was playing bridge and not poker today, because if anything was worse for my father than losing, it was losing to my mother.

Sometimes in the afternoon games the playing became so intense that no one would move from his seat and the men lost all track of time. Today’s game was fervid and my father’s cards were stinkers—never a good thing. They’d been cutting cards all afternoon, except for the ten-minute break brought to them by Mrs. Peabody and a phone call for Eugene. I’d never seen so many nickels and dimes piled high in the middle of the table. One of the men reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of quarters. This was serious. My father wanted that pot badly. He was betting on two pair, queens high. I had pulled up a chair beside him, near enough to keep an eye on his cards, though now I stood and canvassed each of the men’s hands. Oh, Lord, I could see what was going to happen. I peeked over J.W.’s shoulder; he held trip aces. I could scarcely keep my expression blank. I moved back from the vortex and waited. Here it came. J.W. laid down his cards. A manly gasp of admiration followed. My father threw his cards down, stood up quickly and angrily, and the table swelled into the air as his chair went flying across the room behind him. To the sound of a chorus of “Look out!” and “Oh, no!” coins rose up and spilled over the men’s chests, dropping into their laps.

Edgar came running in again, obviously not cut out for guard duty, his face the color of a strawberry, and a thick mass of yellow hair stood straight up on his head as if he’d just tried to pull it out.

“Eugene, your wife is here! She’s just parked her car out front.”

I have never seen grown men move so quickly. Suddenly the cards disappeared, the coins were snatched up, and the poker boys ducked out the back door headfirst. My father looked at me as he grabbed his suit jacket. “Upstairs,” he directed me, and slipped into his jacket as he walked calmly to the front door. I ran along behind him and veered off up the steps. But not before I heard, “Afternoon, Fern.”

I never tired of the company of adults and thirsted to know what it was like to be one. They behaved in the most extraordinary ways!