Contents
* * *
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Map
Song #72
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
About the Author
Copyright © 2005 by Deborah Wiles
All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.
www.hmhco.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Wiles, Debbie.
Each little bird that sings/Deborah Wiles,
p. cm.
“Gulliver Books.”
Summary: Comfort Snowberger is well acquainted with death since her family runs the funeral parlor in their small southern town, but even so the ten-year-old is unprepared for the series of heart-wrenching events that begins on the first day of Easter vacation with the sudden death of her beloved great-uncle Edisto.
[1. Funeral homes—Fiction. 2. Death—Fiction. 3. Grief—Fiction. 4. Family life—Southern States—Fiction. 5. Southern States—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W6474Eac 2005
[Fic]—dc22 2004013631
Map drawn by Comfort Snowberger
with assistance from Peach Shuggars
ISBN 978-0-15-205113-6 hardcover
ISBN 978-0-15-205657-5 paperback
eISBN 978-0-547-53904-1
v1.0216
For
Liz Van Doren,
who stood vigil
through the dark wordless night
and
for Jim Pearce,
who sang to me
in the morning
Acknowledgments
In the four years since the publication of Love, Ruby Lavender, one death followed another in my family and I came to understand the meaning of friendship and the power of love. I was suffocating in grief, unable to finish a story I had been trying to write for years—unable to finish anything. Friends and family slipped their arms around me, grabbed hands, and created a cradle from which I would eventually learn to navigate the world again and to write Comfort’s story.
Sue Fortin came first. Four Lions met her at the door: Nancy Werlin, Jo Stanbridge, Dian Regan, and Janie Kurtz. Norma Chapman, Jackie Erskine, Deborah Hopkinson, the High-Test Girls, Norma Mazer, Mike McConnell, Susan Miller, Judy Pontius, Linda Reed, Karen Robbins, and “The Voice” were witnesses to an ending that became a beginning. Together they created a lifeline for me. Cindy Powell pulled me to my feet. Kay Sheiss fed me and dispensed fashion advice. Kay and Cindy told the most raucous funeral stories I’d ever heard. Kay supplied the best first line ever for a novel. Plus, she has a snazzy maiden name. I borrowed it for Comfort’s last name.
Lavonne Radonovich championed me in schools, as did teachers and librarians around the country. What good work we did together! Thousands of children wrote their stories of wonder, courage, and resilience. They taught me how to pay attention. My cousin Carol Booth (the pretty cousin) and friends at the Brandon, Mississippi, library claimed me as their own. I owe each of them an RC Cola and a packet of Tom’s peanuts. Moon Pies and heartfelt thanks to everyone at Thurber House, Vermont College, and PEN, for the validation and support.
My family gave me hours, days, weeks, and finally months of time that belonged to them so I could finish this story. My daughter Hannah read the manuscript in its early drafts and gave her usual insightful comments. Friends and fellow writers Emily Ruppel and Iris Anne Debamie did the same.
My editor, “Dismay” Van Doren, was patient, steadfast, and definitely long-suffering. Every time I swooned, she flapped at my face with a Snowberger’s handkerchief. Then she led me back to my chair clutching all the right questions to answer. She is an Editor-Dog Extraordinaire, bright and beautiful.
Jim Pearce, wise and wonderful, climbed a mountain with me and with this story and shouted a rallying cry every time I faded. He understood the silence. He laughed with me, praised my biscuits, read the entire first draft, and asked the most pivotal question: Is there a dog?
Without all these folks and those readers of Love, Ruby Lavender who wrote such loving letters to me, this book would not exist. As I emerged from that cradle and unfolded myself into the sweetness of new beginnings and the fullness that follows a fallow time, I began to understand, truly, how family is a circle of friends who love you. So here is a hymn to family: to kin well-known and kin yet to come. Thank you for opening your hearts to me, to my family, and to the power of story.
Song #72
from the Snowberger’s Funeral Home Book of Suggested Songs for Significant Occasions
ALL THINGS BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL (AND TERRIBLE!)
Tune: Royal Oak (English Folk Melody)
Original Text: Cecil F. Alexander (1818–1895), a long time ago
Slightly Revised and Lovingly Updated by Edisto Snowberger
Chorus:
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
We’re family to them all!
Verse 1:
Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
How resplendent are their colors!
How magnificent their wings!
(Chorus)
Verse 2:
The purple-headed mountains,
The river rushing by,
The sunset, and the morning,
That brightens up the sky!
(Chorus)
Verse 3:
The biting wind in winter,
The scorching summer sun,
The ripe fruits in the garden:
They’re cousins! Every one!
(Chorus)
Verse 4:
The thorny bushes that snag us,
The knees we skin when we play,
The snakes that hiss, the kin we kiss,
All lovable in their way!
(Chorus)
Chapter 1
I come from a family with a lot of dead people.
Great-uncle Edisto keeled over with a stroke on a Saturday morning after breakfast last March. Six months later, Great-great-aunt Florentine died—just like that—in the vegetable garden. And, of course, there are all the dead people who rest temporarily downstairs, until they go off to the Snapfinger Cemetery. I’m related to them, too. Uncle Edisto always told me, “Everybody’s kin, Comfort.”
Downstairs at Snowberger’s, my daddy deals with death by misadventure, illness, and natural causes galore. Sometimes I ask him how somebody died. He tells me, then he says, “It’s not how you die that makes the important impression, Comfort; it’s how you live. Now go live awhile, honey, and let me get back to work.” But I’m getting ahead of myse
lf. Let me back up. I’ll start with Great-uncle Edisto and last March, since that death involves me—I witnessed it.
It was March 27, the first day of Easter vacation. I had just finished deviling eggs in the upstairs kitchen. Uncle Edisto and I were planning the first picnic of spring. My best friend, Declaration Johnson, would be joining us. I was sitting at the kitchen table, scarfing down my Chocolate Buzz Krispies. Uncle Edisto licked the end of his pencil and scribbled onto the crossword puzzle in the Aurora County News. Daddy and Mama were working. Great-great-aunt Florentine had just sneaked her ritual piece of bacon from the paper-toweled rack by the stove.
“I’m off to the garden, darlin’s!” she said. “I feel a need to sing to the peas!” She kissed Great-uncle Edisto’s head. He looked up from his crossword puzzle and sang—to the tune of “Oh! Susanna”—“Oh, Peas Anna! Don’t you cry for me . . .” I laughed with my mouth full of cereal. Aunt Florentine blew me a kiss, then she drifted out of the room, singing to herself: “For I come from Mississippi with a Moon Pie on my knee!”
“‘Moon Pie’!” said Uncle Edisto, poising his pencil over the crossword puzzle. “That’s it! Twenty-four across!”
The sky had been clouding up all morning, but I was ignoring all signs of rain. A grumble of thunder brought my dog, Dismay, to the kitchen, where he shoved himself at my feet under the table, pressed his shaggy black body against my legs, and shuddered.
“Oh, now, doggie!” said Great-uncle Edisto, peering under the table at Dismay. “You don’t have to worry about no thunder! It’s a beautiful day for a pic-a-nic!” Uncle Edisto was always optimistic. “Yessir,” he said, smiling at me, “a pic-a-nic at Listening Rock should be just about perfect today!”
Then—Craaaack! went the thunder. Sizzle! went the lightning. And Boom! . . . The sky opened wide and rain sheared down like curtains.
Dismay scrambled for my lap, bobbling the kitchen table on his back.
“Whoa, doggie!” called Great-uncle Edisto. He steadied the table as Dismay yelped and tried to get out from under the table and onto me.
“Down, Dismay!” I shouted. Milk sloshed out of my bowl, and I made a mighty push-back in my chair. Dismay’s toenails clawed my legs and his thick coat crammed itself into my nose as my chair tipped sideways with me and Dismay in it. “Umpgh!” The air left my body. My Snowberger’s baseball cap popped right off my head. And there I was, lying on the kitchen floor with a sixty-five-pound dog in my face. He stuck his shaggy snout into my neck and shivered. An obituary headline flashed into my mind: Local Girl, 10, Done In by Storm and Petrified Pet!
Into the middle of all this commotion clomped my little sister, Merry, wearing Mama’s high heels and a red slip that pooled around her feet. I peeked at her from under my dog blanket. As soon as she saw me, her eyebrows popped high and her mouth rounded into a tiny O of surprise.
“Dead!” she said.
“No,” I said. I spit out dog hair. It was fine and silky and tasted like the cow pond.
“You all right, Comfort?” Great-uncle Edisto towered over me. He wore fat blue suspenders, and I could smell his old-person-after-shaving smell.
“I’m okay.”
My head hurt. My plans were ruined. My dog was overwrought. But other than that, I was fine.
“Fumfort!” chirped Merry.
“Move, Dismay!” I pushed at him, but Dismay was glued to me like Elmer’s. He gave my face three quick licks with his wet tongue, as if to say, Yep, it’s thunder! Yep, it’s thunder!! Yep, it’s thunder!!!
Merry turned herself around and stomped out of the kitchen, singing, to the tune of “Jingle Bells”: “Fumfort dead, Fumfort dead, Fumfort dead away!”
Downstairs the front doors slammed, and my older brother, Tidings, who had been painting the fence by the front parking lot, yelled, “Attention, all personnel! Where are the big umbrellas! I need rain cover!”
Dismay immediately detached himself from me and scuttled for the grand front staircase to find Tidings, who was bigger than I was and who offered more protection.
I gazed at the ceiling and took stock of the situation. One: It was raining hard. There went my picnic. Two: Best friend or not, Declaration would not come over in the rain—she didn’t like to get wet. There went my plans. Three: I didn’t have a three, but if I thought about it long enough, I would.
Great-uncle Edisto extended a knobby hand to me and winced as he pulled me to my feet. He gave me my baseball cap, and I used both hands to pull it back onto my head.
“You’re gettin’ to be a big girl,” he said. He picked up the newspaper, tucked his pencil behind his ear, and looked out at the downpour. His voice took on a thoughtful tone. “The rain serves us.”
Great-uncle Edisto always talked like that. Everything, even death, served us, according to him. Everything had a grand purpose, and there was nothing amiss in the universe; it was our job to adjust to whatever came our way. I didn’t get it.
“We can have us some deviled eggs and tuner-fish sandwiches right here in the kitchen, Comfort,” he went on. “Or, we can try another day for that pic-a-nic.”
When I didn’t answer, he turned his head to find me. “What’s the matter, honey?”
“I’m disappointed.” I studied my scratched-up legs.
“So am I!” Great-uncle Edisto took a Snowberger’s handkerchief out of his shirt pocket and mopped at his face. “I like to pic-a-nic more than a bee likes to bumble!”
He did.
While we straightened the table and chairs and cleaned up the spilled cereal, Great-uncle Edisto told me about how disappointments can be good things—like the time he thought he’d planted Abraham Lincoln tomato plants in the garden but found out later they were really Sunsweet cherry tomatoes. He’d had his heart set on sinking his teeth into those fat Abe Lincoln tomatoes, but then he discovered that he liked the Sunsweets even better—and besides, he could pop a whole Sunsweet into his mouth at once and save his front teeth some wear and tear. “A distinct advantage at my age,” he said.
“That doesn’t help my mood,” I said. The rain pounded so hard on the tin roof, it made a roaring sound inside the kitchen and we had to shout to be heard.
“Think of disappointment as a happy little surprise, Comfort. For instance . . .” Great-uncle Edisto pushed his glasses up on his nose and smiled like he had just invented a new thought. “I think I’ll get me a nap.” He was breathing hard. “There’s always something good to come out of disappointment, Comfort. You’ll see.”
I could tell by the rhythm and tone of his voice that he was working up to his grand finale: “Open your arms to life! Let it strut into your heart in all its messy glory!”
“I don’t like messes,” I told him. “I like my plans.”
Uncle Edisto patted me on the shoulder and lumbered off to his room. I called Declaration on the kitchen telephone, but her line was busy. I hung up and waited for her to call me, but she didn’t, so I tried dialing her six more times. Then I gave up.
Tidings slammed the downstairs doors on his way back outside, and Dismay came to find me. We went to my closet to wait for something good to happen. I do my best thinking in the closet. It’s quiet and comfortable and smells like opportunity. I sat with my back against the wall and my knees under my chin. Dismay sat facing me (it’s a big closet), with his paws touching my bare toes. He panted nervously and his dog saliva drip-drip-dripped onto my feet.
“Thunder’s gone,” I said. “You can rest easy, boy.”
Dismay wasn’t sure, but he smiled at me anyway, with those shiny dog eyes. It made me want to hug him, so I did. His tail thump-thump-thumped the floor.
The next thing I knew, Great-uncle Edisto surprised us all.
Great-great-aunt Florentine whooped for everyone to come. (Her bedroom was next to Great-uncle Edisto’s bedroom, and she was standing at her mirror, she said later, soaking wet, untying the ribbon on her sunbonnet, when Great-uncle Edisto took his tumble.)
“It’s an apoplexy!�
� she hollered. “Stroke!”
Everyone came running. We picked up Uncle Edisto from where he had landed, put him into bed, covered him with one of Aunt Florentine’s lavender-scented quilts, and called Doc MacRee. Mama sat on one side of Uncle Edisto’s bed. She held Merry on her lap and looked exquisitely sad. Daddy kneeled next to Uncle Edisto on the other side of the bed and stroked his pale forehead. Tidings stood at attention next to Daddy, with his hand over his heart and a devastated look on his face.
Great-uncle Edisto gazed at us peacefully. He took us all in, like he was seeing us new, for the first time. His face was soft (turning a little gray), and, with the covers tucked under his chin, he looked for all the world like a small boy.
“Time to go home,” he whispered. He blinked a slow blink, and when he opened his eyes, he seemed to be looking beyond us, to a land we couldn’t see . . . a new world to explore.
“You are home, Uncle Edisto,” I said. My heart pounded against my chest in a Don’t go! Don’t go! Don’t go! beat. I kept one hand on Dismay; my dog stood next to me, calm and silent, keeping watch.
“You go on, Edisto,” said Great-great-aunt Florentine, tears streaming down her wrinkled face. “It’s your time. Have a wonderful trip, darlin’.” She kissed him on the forehead and he closed his eyes. Then he smiled and . . . off he went.
I cried into Aunt Florentine’s wet bosom. Everybody cried, because death is hard. Death is sad. But death is part of life. When someone you know dies, it’s your job to keep on living.
So . . . we did. We adjusted. We did what we always do when death comes calling:
We gathered together.
We started cooking.
We called the relatives.
We called our friends.
We did not have to call the funeral home.
We are the funeral home.
Each Little Bird That Sings Page 1