The Funeral Dress

by Susan Gregg Gilmore

  Emmalee glanced at the dials set in the panel above the steering wheel. “Damn,” she said. The tank’s gauge registered empty, and she carried only enough change in her pocket for maybe a half gallon. She didn’t have far to go; Fulton’s was only a mile ahead. But with the baby in tow she didn’t want to be walking home in the cold. She leaned on the steering wheel as if encouraging the truck along. The PURE station sat on the very next corner. As the truck rolled toward the pumps, a bell rang out.

  A young woman walked out of the garage wearing blue jeans pushed into a pair of heavy black work boots. She waved to Emmalee and flashed a toothy smile. Sissie Boyd had worked at her mother’s filling station since she was thirteen, less than six weeks after her father died of a heart attack while checking the oil filter under a customer’s hood. Sissie was a year older than Emmalee, but she graduated valedictorian of her high school class. She left three months later for college somewhere in Nashville but came home three months after that. She told her mama she wasn’t going back, and she’d been at the filling station ever since.

  Emmalee had always envied Sissie, and not because she pumped gas and discussed spark plugs and distributor caps with the men in town as if she was their equal. It was Sissie’s loss that Emmalee envied. Her father had died, not her mother, and Emmalee wished she had been that fortunate. She knew it wasn’t right to think so. Mr. Boyd had been a good man. But nothing about life and death was ever right or fair.

  Sissie motioned for Emmalee to roll down the window. She flung her arms inside the truck and peered across the seat. Sissie’s fingernails were cut short and the tips were stained black with grease. Her hair was long and smooth but she kept it tucked on top of her head underneath a baseball cap most days. Emmalee imagined Sissie could look real pretty if she wanted.

  “Hey there, Emmalee. Haven’t seen you around since you had the baby. You got her with you?” Sissie pushed her head farther inside the truck.

  “Yeah, she’s right here.” Emmalee lifted the end of the cardboard box.

  “Oh, she’s precious. Look at those little bitty hands. What’s her name?”

  “Kelly. Kelly Faye.”

  “Mighty tiny thing. You feeding her enough?”

  “Feed her all the damn time. My tits so sore I can’t stand it.”

  Sissie grimaced and shoved her hands inside her jeans’ pockets. “That doesn’t sound fun.”

  “Fun? It ain’t fun.”

  “Well, what can I do for you? Fill her up? The car, I mean,” Sissie said and laughed.

  “Ain’t got but a little change. Hate to bother you, but can I get a couple of gallons on credit?” Emmalee reached into her coat pocket for the coins. “Not sure when I can get the rest to you. But I will. You know I’m good for it.”

  Nolan had always taken most of Emmalee’s pay when she worked at Tennewa. He said she owed him every penny of it after sixteen years of mooching off him. Emmalee handed over all but a few dollars of it, knowing anything less would only end in a fight. But in all her life, Nolan had never bought her much of anything, and she remembered too many nights going to bed with her stomach screaming to be fed.

  “How about I fill the tank, Emmalee, sort of a baby gift from me and Mama. Only hitch, you’ll have to bring Kelly Faye back around for her to see. Mama’ll die to get her hands on her.” Sissie unscrewed the gasoline cap. “Already begging me for grandchildren. But I can guarantee that’s going to be one long wait. Told her I need a husband first, and I’m certainly not interested in getting me one of those anytime soon.” Sissie’s smile faded fast. “I’m sorry, Emmalee. I didn’t mean nothing by that. Just blabbering nonsense. I’m sure you and the daddy got it all worked out.”

  Emmalee looked at the baby. “Yeah, we got it all worked out.”

  Sissie shoved the nozzle in the tank and returned to the truck’s open window. “What are you doing out so early anyway? Baby not sleeping?”

  “She don’t sleep much. But I’m headed over to Fulton’s. Heard you ran the wrecker last night. On Old Lick?”

  “Sure did,” Sissie said, her voice turning somber. “Sheriff called a little before ten o’clock to let me know there’d been an accident. I didn’t get there till nearly two. Didn’t want to get in the way of the rescue.” Sissie pulled a faded blue rag from her back pocket. “We never could get the pickup down the mountain, what with the equipment we got. I think they’re going to call in some help from Chattanooga or Nashville.” Sissie rubbed her nose with the rag. It left a spot of black grease on her skin. “I can’t believe Mr. and Mrs. Lane are both gone. And what an awful way to go, flying off the mountain like that. Such nice people.”

  Sissie wiped the windshield with a wet sponge and then dried the glass with the same blue rag. “Mr. Curtis was no doubt about the nicest man I’ve ever known. Pretty voice, too. He was a song leader at the church. And a deacon. He always had something kind to say about everybody. I don’t think he hated a single living soul.” Sissie pulled the nozzle from the tank and screwed the tank’s cap back on tight. “You friends with them or out running some kind of errand for your daddy? I saw him over there last night. That was some tough work those men did. They weren’t giving up till they got Mr. and Mrs. Lane down that mountain.”

  Emmalee drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. She liked thinking her father had done something good for Leona there at the end, although she had not expected that of him. In fact, she always found it difficult picturing him kind and respectful around the living or the dead, never knowing him to give either much attention.

  Emmalee looked straight at Sissie. “Tennewa. Leona and me worked together at Tennewa going on three years. Side by side. Curtis came by the factory with a cold orange soda whenever he was in town. He knew Leona wouldn’t buy one out of the machine. You’re right. He was a real nice man. Sometimes he brought me a sandwich and a bag of potato chips.”

  “I didn’t know that about you and Miss Leona. I’m so sorry, Emmalee. Really I am. Think sometimes friends hurt more than family, but nobody pays them much attention.”

  Emmalee nodded. She thanked Sissie and promised to bring the baby back later in the week for her mama to admire. The truck lurched forward, and Emmalee steered onto the main road with a full tank of gas and fifty-two cents in her pocket. The sun shone in her eyes, and she lifted her hand above her brow to better see the road that led into town and to the Fulton-Pittman Funeral Home.

  The downstairs curtains were pulled shut at Fulton’s. The large wood-framed house with a broad wraparound porch looked grander than the other homes on the street, and Emmalee considered it to be the prettiest one in town. Mr. Fulton’s granddaddy, George Pittman, had been a furniture man who saw the money to be had in making caskets, not tables and chests of drawers. He opened his home to Cullen’s grieving families nearly sixty years ago, all the time making caskets in a shed in the far back of the property.

  When Mr. Fulton married, he took over the family business and moved into the home’s second story. Mr. Fulton told Emmalee once it had been the perfect place to raise a family, although he admitted his wife had grown tired of the town’s grief-stricken taking over her home as if it were their own. Some kept their vigil going all night and wandered into her kitchen in the early morning to scramble up eggs and cook a pan of biscuits. She even found a relative of the deceased sleeping off a bottle of whiskey in an upstairs bedroom, on her finest cotton sheets. Mr. Fulton said his wife pitched a fit that could have waked the dead down in Georgia. But this morning, the house looked peaceful, as if it might be sleeping, too.

  A paved drive led around to the back where deliveries were made and caskets, which Nolan had told her were now ordered direct from a company in North Carolina, were hauled in and out of the house. Large clay pots brimming with purple and white pansies accented either side of a wide concrete stoop. Emmalee bent to finger one of the purple petals, believing something so perfect must be fake.

  She wondered if the Fultons were lonely in this b
ig house. Their daughter had moved to Birmingham with her new husband at the end of April, and Billy had started school up in Knoxville the first of September. Standing there on the porch steps, Emmalee missed Billy more than she had in months. She missed the way he twirled her hair between his fingers and kissed the tip of her nose. She missed the way he held her firmly in his thick, strong arms but never squeezed her too tight. She missed the way he spoke with a soft tone never seeming to fit his large, muscular frame. She wondered if he thought about her or if he had found someone new to love, someone he could bring home to his mother. It made her crazy to think so.

  Emmalee shook her head, trying to rattle the image of another girl out of her thoughts. She stared up at the windows on the second floor, wondering which room belonged to Billy. She had been inside the house only one other time. Her mama’s body had been kept at the house back in Red Chert. Nolan said he didn’t trust anyone, not even the Fultons, to stand vigil over his Cynthia Faye. Mr. Fulton came to the holler with a black bag in his hand and prepared the body right there in the front room. Emmalee had no memory of that day, only of her uncle Runt holding her in his arms.

  When her mama’s mama died, Emmalee had walked to the funeral home alone. She was only ten and carried no memories of the woman Nolan called a red-eyed snake. But she figured they should meet at least once before her grandmama was dropped in the ground for good. Emmalee leaned over the casket and studied the woman with the thick layer of beige makeup on her skin and a blue scarf tied around her head. She couldn’t see the color of her eyes, and she struggled to find traces of her own mama in the woman’s deeply lined face.

  “Never seen a girl get so close to the dead before,” Billy said and blew in her ear. He had eased up behind Emmalee without warning, but she did not frighten. “Wouldn’t get too close, you know. She might reach out and grab you. I’ve seen it happen.”

  “No, you ain’t, Billy.”

  “Yes, I have. They’ll hang on to anybody passing by. Some just not ready to go on, I guess.” He moaned like a ghost might and blew another blast of warm air on Emmalee’s neck. Emmalee swatted him away.

  “They can hear you, you know. Keep an eye on her. She’ll blink fast if she’s listening. You’ll miss it if you don’t keep a close watch. Sometimes they even talk back.”

  “Shut up, Billy. She don’t scare me, and you don’t either.”

  “She don’t?”

  “Hell no. Only the living can do that.”

  Billy snickered. “Guess so.” He steadied his elbow on the edge of the casket and stared at Emmalee.

  “She’s my grandmama,” Emmalee answered, not daring to take her eyes off the woman boxed up neat in front of her in case there was some truth to what Billy had said. “Why she wearing that rag on her head?”

  “She didn’t have any hair except for what the family brought to my daddy in a paper bag. Heard them asking if Daddy could put it back on her.” Billy pointed to the wisps of white hair protruding beneath the edge of the scarf. “He did the best he could. Got some of it on. Mother helped him. Family seems pleased. Daddy says that’s all that matters.”

  “She looks good. Don’t know what she looked like before. She’s got some hair though sure enough. Your daddy done good, I guess.”

  Emmalee examined the woman a while longer. “Yep, he done real good,” she said and pushed her way past Billy and the other mourners. She walked back home, holding one lasting memory of her grandmama in her head.

  Standing outside the funeral home all these years later, Emmalee pulled the crocheted blanket over the baby’s face and stepped onto the wide wooden porch. She knocked on the door and waited. She glanced up and down the street and knocked again.

  Mr. Fulton opened the door a few inches, appearing in a bathrobe and black slippers. He scratched the top of his head. Then he held his weak hand to his mouth, cleared his throat, and offered up his familiar smile.

  “Young lady, what in the world are you doing here? Nolan forget something? Is something wrong? Something wrong with the baby?” he asked, his tone growing anxious as he rubbed his fingers across his short-cropped hair.

  “No sir.”

  Mr. Fulton stared at Emmalee.

  “I come to see Miss Leona.”

  He tied his bathrobe shut. “What time is it anyway? I was about to head upstairs.” He turned and hobbled down a long hallway toward the kitchen, motioning for Emmalee to follow. He looked around as if searching for a wall clock or a pot of coffee warming on the stove. “I don’t know what all your daddy told you about last night, but the bodies aren’t in good shape. I can’t let you see them this way.” Even his smile broke tired. “Come back tomorrow. Better yet, the day after. I’ll have time to do most of the repairs by then. Mrs. Fulton’ll hang the white wreath on the door like she always does when the bodies are ready for viewing.”

  Emmalee planted her feet firm. “No. No, sir. I come here to see Leona.”

  Mr. Fulton shook his head.

  “Look, I know she ain’t in good shape,” Emmalee said. “And I know you ain’t even been to bed. But if you don’t let me see her—” She paused and pulled out a kitchen chair. “Well, I’m going to sit right here at this table till you do.” Tears welled in her eyes. Emmalee shifted the baby from one arm to the other and sat down at the table.

  “Don’t start crying. Lord, I hate to see a woman cry. I know. It sounds crazy for a man in my line of work to say that. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. But I’m not.” Mr. Fulton handed Emmalee a dry dishtowel. “Hester says I’m too tender hearted for the funeral business.”

  Emmalee dabbed her eyes with the terry cloth.

  “You look as worn out as I do.” Mr. Fulton poured a cup of hot coffee and placed it on the table in front of Emmalee. He poured another for himself. “Babies’ll wear you out, but you got to be real careful with a newborn, especially a tiny one like that. I’ve seen too many get sick this time of year and die. I don’t mean to be scaring you, but I don’t want to be burying yours next, you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir.” Emmalee blew on the coffee and took a sip.

  “And you got to take good care of yourself so you can take good care of her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You know I buried one no bigger than yours right before Christmas the year I married Mrs. Fulton. Tore my heart out. We kept the casket there by the Christmas tree in the living room.”

  “Under the tree?”

  “Right next to it.” Mr. Fulton smiled. “Funny thing though, Hester wanted no part of tending to the dead back then. I asked her to diaper that baby for me, said I didn’t know the first thing about working a diaper. After she did it, I looked at her and said, ‘There, now you’ve touched a dead person.’ She was fine after that. Been doing most of the makeup for me ever since.”

  Mr. Fulton leaned against the kitchen counter as if he had forgotten the purpose of Emmalee’s visit. “Sorry, I’m talking to no end. Ask your father, I do that when I haven’t had enough sleep.”

  Emmalee cradled the baby in her arms, careful to keep her child’s face from Mr. Fulton’s view.

  “You look pretty certain about this, Emmalee.”

  “I am.”

  Mr. Fulton squinted at the clock above the oven and set his mug on the counter. “You need to understand that once you’ve seen her, there’s no taking it back. No erasing it from your thoughts. It’s there for good. Are you sure you’re ready for that?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said and sat a little taller.

  Mr. Fulton set his mug on the counter. “Okay then, come on.” He motioned for Emmalee to follow him this time down a short, dimly lit hall running off the back of the kitchen. “You know the wife and me were supposed to be leaving in another hour to drive down to Destin for a week of deep-sea fishing.” Mr. Fulton tapped the blue-colored fin of a large fish mounted on the wall. Emmalee had never seen a fish that size in the creeks around Cullen. “Mrs. Fulton hates that tuna. Makes me keep it back here hidden
from plain view.”

  “You caught that?”

  “Sure did, back when my arm was good.” He pretended to cast a fishing line into the water. “This one was just too pretty to eat, don’t you think?” Mr. Fulton turned to a closed door. “Seems every time we plan another fishing vacation, someone in Cullen ups and dies. Usually Claiborne’s over in Jasper’ll cover for us, but they’re short-staffed this week. My brother and his wife are already down in Destin. Called me a few minutes ago to remind me to bring the ice chest.”

  “Destin?” Emmalee asked.

  “Florida, hon. Ever been to Florida?” he asked and pulled a set of keys from his robe’s pocket.

  “No, sir.”

  “Water’s so blue and clear. You can see the dolphins swimming right by your boat. Maybe one day you’ll get down there.” Mr. Fulton winked and scanned all the keys before easing a smallish silver one into the lock set above the knob.

  Emmalee noticed a photograph hanging on the wall next to the door. Mr. Fulton stood in the water on a sandy shore. His chest was broad and his skin, tan. A small boy was perched on his shoulders, dangling a tiny fish next to Mr. Fulton’s ear. Emmalee saw Kelly in the boy smiling back at the camera.

  “You recognize that man?” Mr. Fulton puffed his chest out big. “Believe it or not, that was me. Long time ago, but it was me.”

  “I believe it,” she said and winked like Mr. Fulton had.

  “You’re sugar talking me now,” he said and gripped the doorknob tight. His knuckles washed a pale white. “Look here. I don’t want to be scooping you up off the floor. So if you feel lightheaded, you let me know. Nothing to be embarrassed about. You won’t be the first to faint,” Mr. Fulton said. He stooped a bit and looked straight at Emmalee. “You know, I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for your daddy.” Emmalee’s eyes widened. Being Nolan’s daughter had never served any obvious advantage, and she tried to reconcile this thought with the fresh bruises already coloring her arms and legs.