The Funeral Dress Page 9

  Leona crawled down the hall toward her bedroom, believing if she could lie down for a moment, this pain would surely pass. She wanted to scream, to release the hurt mounting in her belly, but Leona did not want to admit what was happening. Instead she called out for Curtis, but he never came.

  She hugged a blue-ticked pillow, dug her fingers into its feathered mass. And when she could no longer bear the pain, she finally screamed for God to save her. As her body heaved with another contraction, Leona felt something wet seep between her legs. She looked down at her panties and the white sheets beneath her, both stained brown. The smell was foul, and her fear was ripe. She had no more strength for crying or calling out for help.

  Her body grew hot and beads of sweat dripped from her nose. Then she grew cold, and her body shivered as if she had been left too long in the snow. She tugged on a blanket and slipped into a shallow sleep, only to be startled awake by another sharp pain brewing deep inside her belly. “Curtis,” she moaned. She repeated her husband’s name over and over, hoping he would sense her need. But sometime later that morning, Leona birthed her baby alone.

  The boy came fast, too fast. His body was small and weak, and his cries sounded more like those of a new kitten than those of a newborn child. Leona pulled him on top of her belly and kept him warm against her body. She stroked his cheek and encouraged him to take her breast. “Please baby, please. Look at your mama.” She hummed her plea in his ear. But the baby grew still.

  She rubbed her finger, wet with her breast’s first milk, across her son’s lips, but he held his tiny mouth closed. She patted his bottom with a firm hand. She pulled on his chin and tickled his tongue, but he would not suckle. His breaths grew fainter and farther apart until she heard only quiet, sporadic gasps.

  “Wake up, baby. Please wake up,” Leona cried till her voice sounded raspy and weak, but her little boy never opened his eyes. And by the time the sun fell behind Old Lick Mountain, the baby boy born on the first day of summer was dead.

  Leona named her son Curtis Brown Lane, Jr., and held him in her arms, even as his skin grew cold and a deep shade of blue. She kissed his cheeks, washing his tiny face with her salty tears, and lightly stroking the tip of her finger along his back. Curtis came home that evening and found his wife unconscious in their bed, a bloody towel stuffed between her legs, and the baby lying limp across her chest.

  “Where’s my boy,” Leona mumbled as Curtis carried her to the truck. “Where’s my baby boy?”

  “Right here, Ona, right here,” Curtis said. He had wrapped their son in a flannel blanket and placed him on the seat of the truck. “He’s right here, Ona. He’s right here.”

  Leona came home from the hospital two days later to find the crib sitting empty. She blamed herself for the baby’s death at first. Next she blamed God. Then she blamed Curtis. If her husband had been on the mountain, he might have heard her cries. He might have felt her pain. He might have found her and the baby before it was too late.

  Leona and Curtis stood side by side at the cemetery next to the Cullen Church of Christ and watched as their baby’s casket was lowered deep into the ground. Leona had refused to let Mr. or Mrs. Fulton dress her baby. Instead she slipped the pale blue cotton gown she had stitched by hand, the one with little white feathers along the hem, over his tiny head. She eased his arms into the sleeves and held him against her chest as she buttoned the three pearl-like buttons down the back of the gown.

  Leona had insisted on embroidering Curtis’s name on the collar, afraid God might not recognize the little baby boy from Cullen, Tennessee. She tied a matching cap on his head and wrapped him in a knitted white blanket with a lacy edge. Easter had hurried to make the blanket so Leona would have something pretty for swaddling her baby for his eternal sleep.

  Leona had insisted a family portrait be made before her infant son was placed in the casket for good. Mr. Fulton offered to take a picture with his camera, but Leona refused. So Curtis called the Olan Mills studio in Chattanooga and asked them to send a photographer to Cullen by the end of the day. He paid ten dollars extra for the photographer’s trip to Sequatchie County.

  Leona knelt by her baby’s tombstone. She had insisted on this, too, that the marker be in place right away, with her son’s name already engraved on it. She couldn’t stomach the thought of her little boy lost among the other dead buried there. Mr. Fulton had said it usually took several weeks for the final tombstone to arrive, and they would use a temporary marker instead. Curtis only pulled his wallet from his back pocket, insisting Mr. Fulton do whatever he could to rush the order along. “He’s just so little,” Leona said as she sunk closer to the ground. “He’s just so little.”

  She stayed on her knees while the preacher promised the Lord never delivered more than one could bear. He spoke of Curtis, Jr., sitting happy on Jesus’s lap and loved by the family gone on. A short black veil covered Leona’s face, and the preacher could not see her sad, angry eyes.

  “There’ll be more babies, Ona,” Curtis promised his wife, kneeling by her side, holding her hand tight in his.

  Leona hated Curtis for saying that. She hated him for not crying. She hated him for not talking about this baby like he was their son, instead only speaking of the others to come.

  There’ll be more became a hollow refrain Leona heard too many times in the months after their baby’s death. There’ll be more. Somewhere in its singing, Leona no longer trusted the young man who had promised her a life better than the one she had known.

  The preacher lifted his Bible toward the heavens. He held it above Leona as she rested on bended knee in the short grass carpeting the hillside. A thick ribbon of clouds streamed across the sky.

  “Be with Leona and Curtis, dear Lord, as they carry on. Reassure them that their baby boy is safe, happy, spared the difficulties and pain of this world,” the preacher said. “He is with our Lord and Savior.”

  “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 fac
tory 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.

  EMMALEE

  OLD LICK

  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.