Getting Mother’s Body

A NOVEL

Suzan-Lori Parks

For Francis Amnion — the first Texan I ever met.

And, of course, for Paul.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Billy Beede

Snipes

Laz Jackson

June Flowers Beede

Roosevelt Beede

Billy Beede

Willa Mae Beede

Mrs. Faith Jackson

Dill Smiles

June Flowers Beede

Roosevelt Beede

Billy Beede

Willa Mae Beede

Alberta Snipes

Fat Junior Lenoir

Dr. Parker

June Flowers Beede

Mr. Israel Jackson

Dill Smiles

Willa Mae Beede

Mrs. Ruthie Montgomery

Billy Beede

Roosevelt Beede

Billy Beede

Dill Smiles

Laz Jackson

June Flowers Beede

Roosevelt Beede

Billy Beede

June Flowers Beede

Estelle “Star” Beede Rochfoucault

Dill Smiles

Willa Mae Beede

Homer Beede Rochfoucault

Roosevelt Beede

Laz Jackson

Willa Mae Beede

Billy Beede

Officer Masterson

Homer Beede Rochfoucault

June Flowers Beede

Billy Beede

Willa Mae Beede

Roosevelt Beede

Billy Beede

Willa Mae Beede

Billy Beede

Dill Smiles

Laz Jackson

Uncle Blood Beede

Precious Beede

Willa Mae Beede

Dill Smiles

Birdie

Candy Napoleon

Laz Jackson

Willa Mae Beede

Billy Beede

Roosevelt Beede

Willa Mae Beede

Dill Smiles

Homer Beede Rochfoucault

June Flowers Beede

Roosevelt Beede

Candy Napoleon

Dill Smiles

Willa Mae Beede

Billy Beede

Laz Jackson

Willa Mae Beede

Billy Beede

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Billy Beede

“Where my panties at?” I asks him.

Snipes don’t say nothing. He don’t like to talk when he’s in the middle of it.

“I think I lost my panties,” I says but Snipes ain’t hearing. He got his eyes closed, his mouth smiling, his face wet with sweat. In the middle of it, up there on top of me, going in and out. Not on top of me really, more like on top of the side of me cause he didn’t want my baby-belly getting in his way. He didn’t say so, he ain’t said nothing bout the baby yet, but I seen him looking at my belly and I know he’s thinking about it, somewhere in his mind. We’re in the backseat of his Galaxie. A Ford. Bright lemon colored outside, inside the color of new butter. My head taps against the door handle as he goes at it.

“Huh. Huh. Huh,” Snipes goes.

In a minute my head’s gonna hurt. But it don’t hurt yet.

“Where—” I go but he draws his finger down over my lips, hushing them so I don’t finish, then he rubs my titty, moving his hand in a quick circle like he’s polishing it. I try scootching down along the seat, away from the door, but when I scootch, Snipes’ going at it scootches me right back up against the door handle again. I wonder if my baby’s sitting in me upside down and if Snipes’ thing is hitting it on its head like the door handle is hitting me on mines.

“Ow,” I go. Cause now my head hurts.

“Owww,” Snipes go. Cause he’s through.

He lays there for a minute then pulls himself out of me and gets out the car. He closes up his pants while he looks down the road. Zipper then belt. In my head I can see all the little seeds he just sowed in me. All them little Snipeses running up inside me looking for somewheres to plant. But there’s a baby up in me already, a Baby Snipes. Baby Snipes knocks down the Little Snipes Seeds as fast as they come up.

“How you doing?” Snipes asks.

“Mmokay.”

I turn from my side onto my back, raising up on both elbows. My housedress is all open and the baby makes a hump. Snipes turns to look at me, his gold-colored eyes staying on mines, seeing the hump without really seeing it. He ducks into the front seat, getting his Chesterfields out his shirt pocket, and standing there with his back to me, smoking in just his undershirt.

“Penny for yr thoughts,” I go but he don’t turn around or say nothing. I sit up, buckling my bra and taking a look around for my panties, first in the front seat then running my hand between the backseat and the seat back, thinking my panties mighta got stuck in between but not finding nothing. Then I do feel a scrap of something and give it a yank. Big red shiny drawers. Not mines. Snipes turns around and sees me holding them.

“My sister’s,” he says smiling and putting on his shirt. “I let her use my car sometimes.”

I stuff the drawers back where I found them, first leaving a little red tail sticking out, then stuffing them back in all the way.

“I didn’t know you had no sister,” I says. “I don’t know nothing about you.”

“Whatchu need to know?” he says.

“What’s her name?”

“Who?”

“Yr sister.”

“Alberta,” he says. Then he turns away showing me the side of his face, shaved clean and right-angled as my elbow. He’s smiling hard, but not at me.

“Clifton, can I ask you something else?”

“I’ll get you some more panties, girl, don’t worry,” he says.

An hour ago, when Snipes came to get me, I was doing Aunt June’s hair. I heard his whistle. He weren’t stopped at the pumps. He was stopped across the road, standing against his car looking cool, waiting for me to come outside but waiting cool, just in case I didn’t show. I seen him and run across the road without even looking to see if cars was coming and he picked me up and swirled me around. Just like Harry Belafonte woulda.

“You ain’t been around in almost a month,” I said, breathless from the swirling.

“I been working, girl,” he said. He got a custom-coffin business. He makes and sells handmade coffins in any shape you want with plush lining inside and everything. While we drove he showed me his sample book with three new photographs, proud, like folks show pictures of they children. A oak Cadillac, a guitar of cherry wood, and a pharaoh-style one too, all big enough to get buried inside, the new ones not painted yet so folks can pick out they own colors.

“People been talking,” I said.

“What they saying?”

“Stuff,” I said. “They saying stuff.” We kissed as we drove down the road and then I started laughing cause he was tickling me and getting me undressed and showing me his sample book and driving all at the same time. His left hand on the wheel, his right hand between my legs. Then we pulled off the road. Then we did it. Now we done.

“I’ll get you a whole damn carload full of panties, girl,” he says. “Them panties you had on is probably along the side of the road somewhere between here and Lincoln.” He smiles and I smile with him. I remember taking them off. The wind was whipping and musta whipped them out the window while we drove. But that was an hour ago.

Now I look down the road, seeing if I can see them. I see somebody down there walking in the dirt and the shimmer from the heat.

“I don’t wanna go home without no panties,” I says.

“You worry too much,” Snipes says.

All the car doors are open and the wind goes through, drying the sweat off the seats.

“I gotta know something,” I says.

“Whut?”

“The man’s supposed to ask the girl,” I whisper. He don’t speak.

We been together since March. Now it’s July. I wanna give him a chance to ask me.

“You said I wouldn’t get bigged the first time we did it,” I says.

“Was our first time your first time?” he says.

“You gonna marry me or what?” I says. The words come out too loud.

He don’t speak. He cuts on the radio but it don’t work when the car ain’t running. He gets out, closing the back two doors, leaving mines open and getting back behind the wheel.

“Sure I’m gonna marry you,” he says at last. “You my treasure. You think I don’t wanna marry my treasure?”

“People are talking,” I says.

“They just jealous,” he says and we both laugh. “Billy Beede got herself a good-looking man and they all jealous.”

When we quit laughing we sit there quiet.

“You my treasure, girl,” he says. “You my treasure, capital T, make no mistake.”

“I’m five months gone,” I says. Too loud again.

He wraps his fingers tight around the wheel. I want him to look at me but he don’t.

Someone comes up, stopping a foot or two from the car to stare at us openmouthed. It’s Laz. He got his wool cap down around his ears and his plaid shirt buttoned to the chin.

“You want yr ass kicked?” Snipes asks him.

“Not today,” Laz says.

“You don’t stop looking at me and my woman, I’ma kick yr black ass,” Snipes says.

Laz looks at the ground.

“You don’t get the hell outa here, I’ma kill you,” Snipes says.

“Being dead don’t bother me none,” Laz says. He got a bold voice but he ain’t looking up from the ground.

Snipes jumps out the car and they stand there toe to toe. Everything Snipes got is better than everything Laz got.

“Go the hell home, Laz,” I says and he turns and goes. Snipes throws a rock and Laz runs.

“Goddamn boot-black-wool-hat-wearing-four-eyed nigger probably wanted to see us doing it,” Snipes goes, getting back in the car and laughing and holding my hand. “Peeping and creeping boot-black-winter-hat nigger.”

“Laz is just Laz,” I says.

“His daddy runs the funeral home but Laz ain’t never gonna be running shit,” Snipes says, laughing hard and squeezing my hand to get me to laugh too and I laugh till his squeezing hurts and I make him let go.

“Today’s Wednesday, ain’t it?” Snipes says. He looks down the road, seeing his upcoming appointments in his head. “I’m free towards the end of the week. Let’s get married on Friday.”

“Really?”

“Friday’s the day,” he says, taking out his billfold. He peeks the money part open with his pointer and thumb, then he feathers the bills, counting. His one eyebrow lifts up, surprised.

“That’s what you call significant,” he says.

“Significant?”

“What year is it?”

“ ‘Sixty-three.”

“And here I got sixty-three dollars in my billfold,” he says smiling.

He pinches the bills out, folding them single-handed. He reaches over to me, lifting my housedress away from my brassiere and tucking the sixty-three dollars down between my breasts.

“Get yrself a wedding dress and some shoes and a one-way bus ticket.”

“I’ma go to Jackson’s Formal.”

“Get something pretty. Come up to Texhoma tomorrow. We can do it Friday.”

“You gonna get down on yr knee and ask me?”

“You come up tomorrow and I’ll get down on my knee in front of my sister and her kids and ask you to marry me. Hell, I’ll get down on both knees. Then we can do it Friday.”

“How bout today you meet Aunt June and Uncle Teddy?” I says.

“Today I gotta go to Midland,” he says.

“It’ll only take a minute.”

“I don’t got a minute,” he says. He looks at me. He got lips like pillows. “Have em come to Texhoma Friday. They can watch us get married. I’ll meet em then.”

“When they come up you gotta ask me to marry you on yr knees in front of them too,” I says. “They’d feel left out if they didn’t see it since you’ll be asking me in front of yr sister and her kids and yr mother and dad—”

“My mother and dad won’t be making it,” Snipes says.

“How come?”

“They’s passed,” he says. He starts up the car, turning it around neatly and pulling it into the road, heading back towards Lincoln. On Friday my new name will be Mrs. Clifton Snipes.

“I was ten when Willa Mae passed,” I says.

“Willa Mae who?”

“Willa Mae Beede. My mother,” I says.

Snipes takes his hand off the wheel to scratch his crotch. His foot is light on the gas pedal. There’s a story about my mother. All these months I been seeing Snipes, I didn’t know whether or not he’d heard it. Now I can tell he has.

“They say yr mamma went into the ground with gold in her pockets,” Snipes says.

“You believe that?” I says.

“I’m just telling you what they say.”

“And I say Willa Mae Beede was a liar and a cheat. Getting locked up in jail every time she turned around. Always talking big and never amounting to nothing.”

He takes his foot all the way off the gas to look me full in the face. We coast along. “She was your mamma, girl,” Snipes says.

“Willa Mae passed and it didn’t bother me none. I was glad to see her go,” I says.

“How come you call her Willa Mae?”

“Willa Mae is her name,” I says.

He turns his eyes back to the road and we pick up speed. We go fast. The hot air swishes through the car with all the windows down. I put my hands on the sides of my head, keeping my hair in some kind of shape.

“Willa Mae’s pockets of gold ain’t nothing to sneeze at,” Snipes says. He sorta yells it over the loud whoosh of the air.

“Shoot, Snipes,” I says. “Willa Mae Beede was the biggest liar in Texas. She didn’t go into the ground with shit.” I feel mad then I laugh. After a minute Snipes laughs too.

“Any jewels she had was fake,” I tell him.

“It makes a good story,” he says.

“A good story’s all it makes.”

He checks his wristwatch. We come up on the road that leads to the Crater and he pulls over.

“I gotta let you out here.”

“Can’t you take me all the way home?”

“I gotta get to Midland.”

Sanderson’s is only a mile away. I can walk.

“Penny for your thoughts,” I says.

“Nothing on my mind but coffins,” he says smiling, looking down the road, hands easy now, two fingers of each balanced on the wheel. “Doctor Wells is dying. I’ma talk him into getting buried in a black doctor’s bag made outa oak.”

“That sounds nice,” I says.

His arm grazes my belly as he reaches over to open my door for me. I get out then lean through the window so he can give me some sugar. My dress gaps open. He looks quick at his sixty-three dollars.

“We getting married on Friday, Billy Beede!” Snipes hollers, taking off, driving north, waving at me as he goes.

I walk home the other way.

Snipes

I don’t know how the hell I get into these messes.

This mess I’m in now started with me needing three dollars’ worth of gas and a Coke. Just goes to show.

“That’s a nice car you got,” she said. “What’s it called?”

“It’s a Galaxie.”

“Like the stars and stuff?”

“It’s just a Ford, girl,” I said. I was on my way home. It was getting late. The man who’d sold me the gas had gone inside through the filling station and into what looked like a trailer out back. The girl was lingering.

“You like cars dontcha?” I said.

“Not really,” she said.

“You wanna go for a ride?” I ast her.

“It’s late,” she said.

“Maybe some other time then,” I said. And I went on.

But I came back the next day. Don’t ask me why cause I don’t know. Billy Beede got a good head of hair and a nice smile tho there’s plenty of gals with that. I heard folks say her mamma died rich, but I didn’t have no designs or nothing on her money. I was just headed back to see her.

“You wanna go for a ride?”

“I’m supposed to be watching the place. My aunt and uncle’s getting groceries in town.”.

“We’ll only go down the road,” I said. And we went.

I thought it would be hard to get her. But it was easy. Right on the side of the road the first time and on the side of the road, every other week or so after that, whether I had business in Lincoln or not. From March until today. The first time I went slow. I told her I loved her and that she didn’t need to worry about nothing cause couldn’t nothing happen the first time.

She only told me a few things about herself—that she had a talent for hair and used to do hair in town. I kept my cards close to my chest too. I only talked coffins. I coulda tolt her how I got a mother and father living in Dallas. I coulda tolt her that. I coulda tolt her other things. But I wasn’t wanting to let too much of my life loose cause letting yr life loose can turn a good time bad. Just goes to show, cause now the little bits of my life I done let loose at her has gone and made a mess.

Maybe Doctor Wells will go for my doctor-bag coffin. He wants to go out in style and I’ll give him a good price.

I’ma have to cross Lincoln off my list. It don’t bother me. Jackson’s Funeral ain’t never gonna buy nothing from me no way. Still.

Shit.

I don’t know how I get into these messes.

Laz Jackson

I wished I coulda caught them doing it. If I coulda caught them doing it, then my anger woulda come up and I woulda tolt Snipes that Billy Beede belongs to me and I woulda been so mad I mighta maybe kilt him. I seen them in the car. I got all the way up to the windows without them seeing me. But they was through doing it already and when I seen them sitting there I didn’t feel mad I just felt sick.

Now I can hear Billy walking in her shoes. Clop clop. Like a horse. Walking down the road. I’m laying flat on my back. Flat on the ground and right alongside the road. I got my hands acrosst my chest, I’m all laid out to rest. When she walks by she’s gonna pay her respects. She’ll have to.

“I’m getting married on Friday,” she yells out to everybody, to no one. “Billy Beede’s marrying Clifton Snipes!” It would be nice if she yelled out how she was gonna be marrying Laz Jackson.

Now I don’t hear nothing. No more clopping.

I could get up but don’t. Billy’s on her way towards me and I’m gonna lay here till she passes by. Her man left her on the side of the road and now she’s walking home. But I don’t hear no more clopping. She got off the road and is walking in the dirt or she took her shoes off and her feet on the hot ground must be burning up pretty good about now.

I can smell her coming: 12 Roses Perfume, sweat, hair grease and something else. A thick smell: the smell of almost-milk. Now her smell is right on top of me. Pressing down against my smell of sweat from running from the rock Snipes threw. He hit me on the back of the head. It hurt but it ain’t bleeding. I keep my eyes shut but I know Billy’s standing right above me looking.

“Whut the hell you laying there for?” Billy goes.

“I’m dead,” I go.

“No you ain’t,” she goes.

“Am too,” I go. “Laz Jackson is dead and you oughta be crying.”

“If you dead how come you running yr mouth?” she goes.

I open my eyes looking up at her. In one hand she’s holding her shoes, pink-colored pumps against her blue housedress. Her other hand’s holding her dress tight to her leg so the wind don’t lift it up.

“Your feet hurt?”

“No,” she says.

“They look like they hurt,” I says.

She bends down, putting her shoes back on, her eyes holding on to mines, making sure I don’t look up her skinny black legs and see nothing. She stands on one leg while she puts the first shoe on, then, balancing hard, she puts on the other shoe.

“I’m getting married Friday,” she says.

“To me?”

“Hells no,” she says. Then she looks to Midland. “Clifton and me been planning our wedding for months now.” She says it loud, like she’s saying it to me and to Snipes too.

I sit up, rising from the dead. If I had me a car and was sitting in it, the way I’m sitting would be towards Midland. My car’d be faster than his, as black as his is yellow. I’d go down there and run him off the road. Who bigged you? I wanna ask Billy but I know who: the one she calls Clifton Snipes.

“You think yr mamma’ll give me a good price on a dress?” Billy asks me.

“You gotta ask her yrself,” I says.

She looks down the road, towards Midland again, then she looks towards Sanderson’s filling station where her and her aunt and uncle stay at. They run the filling station and live in a mobile home out back. Sanderson’s ain’t theirs though, they just run it.

She starts walking, in her shoes again. Clop clop clop clop. I get up and walk after her. I seen up her smock. Where yr panties at? I ask her. Not out loud, just in my head.

“I was reading in the Encyclopaedia Britannica that there’s more dead in the world than there is living,” I says out loud.

“So whut,” Billy says.

We come up on the station. Four hundred yards. She throws her shoulders back and lifts up her chin. Someone on the porch, her Uncle Roosevelt, is standing there with Dill Smiles. They wave at us but Billy don’t wave back.

“There’s more Negro in the world than there is white,” I go but she ain’t listening.

“I want that wedding dress your mamma’s got in the window. The one with the train,” she says.

“That dress is high.”

“Snipes is paying for it. He gived me enough money to get any dress I want. Plus shoes.”

“Mamma closes up around five,” I says.

She glances up at the sky. It’s after four.

“Shit,” she goes and takes off running towards the filling station, as fast as her shoes and belly lets her, one hand still tight down at her hem, the other hand balled in a fist and working like a piston.

I keep walking, taking my time, looking at the sun, at the dirt, towards Midland, towards Sanderson’s. My fly is buttoned wrong. I button it right. My glasses are dirty. I clean them. Without my glasses on everything is a blur like I’m standing still and the world is moving. I got six different suits. Snipes, he got one or two but don’t never wear them together at the same time. He comes around every month to show my daddy his sample book and him and my daddy talk. It’s always the same.

“We don’t know nobody who wants to be buried in no coffin that looks like a banana,” my daddy tells Snipes.

“I got an appointment with Doctor Wells over in Midland. Doctor Wells says he’d like to be buried in a doctor’s bag,” Snipes says. “And look here, I got Cadillacs, guitars, Egyptian styles, and this here’s an airplane,” Snipes goes, turning his picture pages. “I made each one myself,” he says.

My daddy can’t be moved. “Jackson’s Funeral Home ain’t the most respected in Butler County for nothing. White or black, we the most respected. You seen the sign out front. ‘Established in 1926.’ We’ll be fifty years come ’Seventy-six,” Daddy tells him.

Snipes got on a yellow shiny shirt to match his face. He’s wearing a suit jacket that don’t match his pants. That’s his style. His shirt is dark with sweat and when my daddy turns him away he will fold up his sample book and stand outside at his car, taking a clean shirt out and tossing the sweated shirt in the trunk. I seen him do it last time he came through.

“Jackson’s Funeral is gonna be fifty in twelve years,” Snipes says smiling, still trying to make a sale. “That’s a heritage to be proud of.”

“Thirteen years,” I says, correcting him. So far I ain’t said nothing but that.

“You all planning for the future,” Snipes continues, not embarrassed by his wrong adding. “Custom coffins is the future, I’m telling you.”

“You talk like you know it all but you can’t even count,” I says.

“We thank you for stopping by,” Daddy says, shaking his hand and Snipes goes. I know where he’s headed. He’s going over to see Billy Beede. She won’t give me the time of day but she’d fly to the moon for Snipes. I watch him go.

Ten years ago, when I was ten years old, my mother and dad told me all the facts of life. They divided life into its two basic parts, Life and Death, and each took a part, explaining it all while we ate dinner. Mother took death, Daddy took life. They’d took the opposite parts when they’d explained it several years before to my brother Siam-Israel, but Siam-Iz went bad, so they switched around their parts when they got around to telling me. Neither of them went on too long. The whole of it was through before Mamma got up to get what was left from the night before’s pecan pie.

Roosevelt’s on the porch with Dill. I can see them both good now. Dill is holding a letter, working it like a fan.

“Billy oughta want to hear this letter,” Dill says.

“June’ll read it when Billy gets back,” Roosevelt says.

“June oughta read it now,” Dill says.

“She says to wait,” Roosevelt says.

I stand there looking at them. I tip my hat to both. “Mr. Beede. Miz Smiles,” I says.

“How do, Mr. Jackson,” Roosevelt says.

“Ain’t you hot in that wool hat?” Dill asks.

“I’m all right,” I says.

“Billy’s out back washing up. She says she’s gonna pick out a wedding dress,” Teddy says. Roosevelt Beede goes by Roosevelt and he goes by Teddy too.

“She marrying you, Laz?” Dill asks but Dill knows Billy ain’t marrying me so instead of saying nothing I just give her the finger. She makes her hand into a gun and pretends to shoot me dead.

“Yr ma might close her shop before Billy gets there,” Teddy says.

“I’ll hurry home and ask Mamma to wait,” I says.

“We thank you,” Teddy says. And I walk on.

I got six suits. Snipes got that yellow car. I got Billy’s panties, though, in my coat pocket. I move them up to my breast pocket, letting them poke out just a little, like a handkerchief.

“Oh, Laz, why was you born, why was you born, Laz?” I ask myself.

“To find Billy Beede’s panties by the side of the road,” I says.

June Flowers Beede

I never seen Billy wash so fast. Come running up in here, standing out back, pumping water into the tin bucket.

“Get me my special soap,” Billy says. That’s easy for her to say, but I only got one leg. Billy’s got two. I crutch inside the office, getting down on my only knee to reach a little shelf underneath the counter where she keeps her soap, her perfume, and her small tin box. All her treasures lined up there. Right underneath the shelf is where she stores her pallet every morning. The tin box got a lock on it. Billy wears the key around her neck.

When I crutch back outside, Billy got all her clothes off and is hunched over the bucket, splashing her face and armpits.

“I’ma get me that dress in the window. The one with the train,” she says.

“How much it cost?” I go.

“I dunno but I’ma get it,” she says.

“Don’t go stealing it,” I says. She stops her washing to look at me, cutting me in two with her eyes.

“Snipes gived me more than enough money,” she says lathering on the soap, using too much even though she’s in a hurry. The white soap against her vanilla-bean skin makes her look like a horse that’s been running.

“Your mother woulda stole it,” I says.

“I ain’t no Willa Mae,” Billy says. She lathers soap on her face then rubs it off hard with a rag. She don’t favor her mother. Couldn’t be more different looking. Willa Mae was light and fine featured. Billy is dark. But on the good side, Billy got a way with hair and could make a living at it if she wanted whereas Willa Mae didn’t never amount to nothing.

“You went out with your Snipes and you forgot about my hair,” I says.

“I’ll finish it after I get my dress.”

One side of my hair is nicely pressed and the other side’s still wild. Billy’s hair is nice on both sides.

“Your mother woulda loved to see your wedding day,” I says.

“Why you gotta keep bringing her into it?” Billy says. She wipes herself down with her dirty housedress as I hand her a clean one, one of my castoffs, green and faded, but clean and with a good zipper up the front. I’m a size or two bigger than her but the dress fits her tight, especially around the middle. Willa Mae had plenty of “husbands” but weren’t never really married, and now here’s her one child, Billy, only sixteen with a baby inside her and no husband yet. When I was sixteen I lost my leg. I’d like a new leg, but even if we could get the money together for it, I ain’t yet seen one in my color. Me and Roosevelt don’t got no kids. Billy’s soap smells like roses.

“The apple don’t fall that far from the tree,” I says, just to bring her down a notch.

“I ain’t no goddamned apple,” Billy says.

Roosevelt Beede

“I used to be a preacher but I lost my church. God is funny,” I says.

“Sounds like you preaching now,” Dill says.

“You gonna give Billy her letter?”

“She’s in the back washing,” Dill says. Just then Billy comes running outside. Dill waves the envelope at her.

“A letter for you,” Dill says.

“Let’s read it when I come back,” Billy says, jumping over the two porch steps and going down the road.

Me and Dill watch her go. She left a smell of soapy roses. June is out back. I hear the bucket splash. She’s watering her flower garden with Billy’s wash water.

Dill holds the letter up to the sun, trying to get the news through the envelope.

“You know that letter ain’t to you,” I says.

“The letter’s from Candy and Candy’s my ma,” Dill says.

“It still ain’t to you,” I says.

Dill’s voice gets sharp. “It’s addressed to Billy c/o me but in all these years these letters been coming I ain’t never opened one yet,” Dill says. Dill’s long-legged and coffee-colored with Seminole features and soft hair cut close. Straw hat pulled down low and always wearing mud-speckled overalls and a blue work shirt and brown heavy boots. Dill’s a good head taller than me and a bulldagger. I wouldn’t want to fight her.

“Candy’s probably just asking for payment like she always do,” I says.

“Probably,” Dill says.

I dip some snuff, holding out the tin to Dill after I’ve had mines. Dill don’t dip but I offer it anyway. Dill don’t never ever dip and Dill don’t hardly ever drink. Willa Mae’s buried in Candy’s backyard so Candy writes asking for money to keep up the grave. She sends the letter to us by way of Dill. Candy’s Dill’s mother but she don’t never write Dill nothing.

“Ma could be saying something new this time,” Dill says.

“I doubt it,” I says.

“You never know,” Dill says.

“Sounds like you do know,” I says.

“Yr saying that I opened it,” Dill says. Her left arm goes stiff, with her hand making a fist. She knocked down someone with that fist once. They didn’t get up for two days. My sister. But for what I can’t remember.

“I’m just running my mouth, Dill, I don’t mean to mean nothing,” I says.

She shakes her fist free of whatever made her want to hit me.

“I coulda opened it and read it seeing as how it’s partly addressed to me and I can read. But I ain’t,” Dill says.

“Course you ain’t.”

“I’ll bet you on what it says in here,” Dill says.

“I don’t got shit to bet with,” I says. It’s funny but neither of us laugh.

“Let’s bet you’ll take up preaching again,” Dill says.

I don’t say nothing to that.

We sit there watching Billy turn into a speck as she hurries down the road to Jackson’s Formal. Mrs. Jackson sells dresses and together with her husband Israel they run the Funeral Home too. Laz helps out. When people start they lives they ain’t nothing more than specks. And when Billy came into our life, coming up the road in Dill’s old truck, coming back from LaJunta and the tragedy, she weren’t nothing more than a speck on the road, and then a truck, and then Dill in a truck and then Dill in a truck with little Billy. We thought Billy was gonna live with Dill like her and Willa Mae did when Willa Mae was living, but Dill didn’t want Billy around no more so Billy’s been living with us since she was ten.

“LaJunta, Arizona,” Dill says, reading the postmark. I hold my hand out for the envelope and she hands it to me. A circle with some lines running through it and some marks and a stamp. Below that some marks that say “Miss Billy Beede c/o Dill Smiles, Lincoln, Texas.” But the lines could say “Mr. John F. Kennedy, President of the United States, Warshington, D.C.” for all I know. I never did learn to read. June and Billy read good though. Dill reads pretty good too.

June comes outside. Her crutch tapping the floor like someone’s knocking. She looks at Dill’s truck, a shiny blue Chevrolet, parked off to the side of the pumps.

“That yr new truck, Dill?” June asks.

“Bought it with pig money,” Dill says.

“We could read this now,” I says, fanning the envelope, “it would spark up the day.”

“We’ll wait,” June says. “It’s addressed to Billy so it’s only right to wait for her.”

“Like Billy gives a crap,” Dill says. “She was glad when her mother passed, said so herself.”

“She didn’t mean it,” June says.

“You and Roosevelt don’t got no kids and Billy’s your niece, that’s how come you think that way, but I’m telling you Billy was glad when Willa passed. Billy said ‘good riddance’ and clapped her hands. I was there. I heard and seen it all,” Dill says, retelling us the tragedy.

We sit quiet. If I could give June children I would. If June could give me children she would.

“Candy’s got the grave to keep up plus she runs that motel,” June says.

“How much money you think Candy’s gonna want from us this time?” I ask.

“Do it matter?” Dill says. “You can’t send her none nohow.”

“But we always write her back polite,” June says. “And Candy always finds a way to hold on.”

“She don’t ask me for money cause she knows I won’t send her none and I won’t write her back polite neither,” Dill says.

“The bank’s gonna take her motel one of these days,” I says. I should know. I had a church, a nice church over in Tryler before me and June corned here. It was the most beautiful church you ever seen. And the bank took it.

“Ma always finds a way to hold on,” Dill says.

“Plus she got Even helping out now,” June says. Even is Candy’s daughter. Dill’s sister but by a different daddy.

“Ma always finds a way to make do,” Dill says.

“How come she asking us for payment, then?” June asks.

“She’s what you call resourceful,” Dill says.

June says “huh” to that.

A car comes up, out-of-towners. White. I give them two dollars worth of gas.

“You got a restroom?” the lady asks.

“No, ma’am, we don’t.”

“We shoulda stopped at a Texaco,” the man says. And they go on.

“You all should build a restroom,” Dill says.

June says “huh” to that too. If we could get the money together to build a restroom June would be the one to clean it. It would be Billy’s chore but Billy ain’t as timely at her chores as June is, even though June only got the one leg.

“Ma asked you all for fifty dollars payment last time,” Dill laughs, “this time she’ll probably ask for sixty.”

“Candy can ask all she wants,” June says. “I got a whole dictionary full of words I can say no to her nice with.”

“I know the pain of losing a structure,” I says. When the bank told me they was gonna take my church I went to the bank and got down on my knees.

“I know the pain of losing a structure too,” June says.

We sit there for a while. Not saying nothing. The white out-of-towners leave a cloud of brownish dust in the road.

“It’s worth it, keeping on good terms with Candy, even if we can’t never send her nothing,” I says.

Dill picks up my thought, “You mean cause of the treasure? You mean cause Willa Mae’s buried out there with her pearls and diamonds?”

“No. I was thinking more along the lines of, what with Candy being your mother and you having partly raised Billy some, that makes Candy practically family to us and we should keep on good terms with her,” I says, but I am thinking about the diamonds and whatnot. I can’t help it.

“Yr just thinking about the treasure,” Dill says, smirking at me.

I stay quiet.

June adds her two cents. “I’m thinking all that treasure Willa Mae got in her coffin ain’t doing no one no good,” she says. She clumps along the porch, reaching the steps and sitting down, laying her crutch by her side. There’s a blank space where her leg used to be. I ain’t never seen her with two legs. When I met her she had just the one. Folks say I was smart marrying a woman with one leg cause a woman with one leg ain’t never gonna run off. But I didn’t marry June on account of that. June’s a good woman. Today she’s salty but most days she’s sweet.

“What you think of Billy’s Snipes fella?” Dill asks.

“We ain’t met him yet,” I says. “She says he stays at Texhoma. We should be going up there for the wedding.”

“We should be going to LaJunta and getting Willa Mae’s treasure,” June says.

“Leave my sister in the ground,” I says.

“I ain’t saying take her out the ground,” June says yelling. “I’m just saying take her treasury out the ground.” Then her voice goes soft. “Just enough to get me a leg,” she says.

“You got a point there,” I says. I look at Dill, waiting for her say. Getting at least some of my sister’s treasure has crossed my mind more than once. Dill would tell us how to get there or we could just look at a map. LaJunta’s in Arizona and Candy’s motel is called the Pink Flamingo. That wouldn’t be no trouble. June suggested the very thing about six years ago and Dill told June that if she went treasure-hunting, she would be going against the wishes of the dead. Dill’s the one who heard Willa’s dying wish and Dill’s the one who put Willa in the ground, so to my mind, if Dill don’t give the OK and we was just to go out there and dig, it would be like stealing.

Dill speaks through her teeth. “Yr waiting for me to say go head but I ain’t gonna say it,” she says. “Willa Mae was proud of two things. Her pearl necklace and her diamond ring. Getting buried with them two things was her dying wish. I coulda took them, I coulda stole them from her while she was breathing her last breaths, but I weren’t about to go against her dying wish. So I put her in the ground and I put her jewelry in the ground with her,” Dill says, saying “jewel” and making it sound like “jurl.” “Willa Mae wanted to be buried with her jewels and that’s what she still wants,” Dill says.

“How you know what Willa still wants?” June says.

“She ain’t changing her mind once she’s dead,” Dill says.

“She might,” June says. June reads and knows things.

“I know Willa Mae better than you and I heard her dying wish,” Dill says, making a fist and bringing it down slowly on the arm of her chair. That ends that.

“Dill Smiles, you the most honest person I ever met,” I says.

June says “shit” to that and gets up, with more difficulty than usual, to go clumping back inside.

“You the most honest person I know,” I says again and Dill nods her head in thanks. Dill Smiles don’t open no mail that ain’t addressed to her and Dill Smiles don’t flout no dying wishes of the dead. Dill Smiles is the most honest person I know, even if she ain’t nothing but a bulldagger.

Billy Beede

Mrs. Jackson stands beside me. She got a tape measure hanging around her neck and one of them red pincushions, stuck full of steel pins and shaped like a tomato, tied to her wrist. We both looking at the dress in the window, the one with the train. It cost a hundred and thirty dollars.

“How much it cost without the train?” I ask her.

“The train’s on there for good,” she says.

“What if it weren’t?” I says. “How much would it cost if the train weren’t on there for good?”

Mrs. Jackson looks at the dress then at me, sizing me with her eyes. Except for my baby-belly I’m on the narrow side. Her eyes hang on my belly and when I catch her staring, she looks through her front show window and up into the sky. It’s after five o’clock. When I came up she was standing at the door waiting for me. While I was washing up, Laz had told her I was on my way. I wiped the toes of my shoes fast across the backs of my legs, left then right, to get the dirt off. She let me in then turned the “Open” sign to “Closed.”

“I don’t think it’ll fit you,” she says softly.

“It’ll fit,” I says. “But all I got is sixty-three dollars.”

“Mr. Jackson don’t like me spending all my time making these dresses then losing money by selling them cheap,” she says.

“Sixty-three dollars ain’t cheap,” I says. I want to tell her how I’d have more money if her husband woulda bought one of Snipes’ coffins and how, since her husband keeps turning my future husband away, she owes me a deal. I want to say all this but something in me tells me to stay sweet.

“It’s all hand-sewn,” she says. “That’s not a machine-sewn dress and it’s not some dress from the Sears catalogue. That there’s a once-in-a-lifetime dress.”

I see something in her, something I’m not sure of at first. Something my mother might call The Hole. It’s like a soft spot and everybody’s got one. Mother said she could see The Hole in people and then she’d know how to take them. She could see Holes all the time but I ain’t never seen one. Until now. Words shape theirselves in my mouth and I start talking without thinking of what I need to say. It’s like The Hole shapes the words for me and I don’t got to think or nothing.

“When you got married, what’d yr dress look like?” I ask Mrs. Jackson.

The hard line of her mouth lets go a little.

“It musta been pretty,” I says.

“That dress is an exact copy of my wedding dress,” she says smiling. “I was fifteen. One year younger than you are now.” She looks at the dress then back at me then at the dress again.

“You make your dress yrself too?” I ask.

“My mother made mine for me,” Mrs. Jackson says. And then she goes quiet.

The Hole shapes more words in my mouth, all I gotta do is let them out. “Willa Mae, you know, my uh—”

“Your mother,” Mrs. Jackson says, saying “mother” out loud for me.

“Yes, ma’am, well, she’s passed, but she sure woulda loved to see my wedding day, seeing how she was always jilted and never lucky enough to get married herself.”

We stand there quiet, both looking at the dress.

“Let’s see what it looks like on you,” Mrs. Jackson says. She hurries to get a stool then stands on it, pulling down the window shade. I take off my clothes while she strips the dummy. By the time she gets the dress off I’m ready. With the shade down it’s dark inside her store. She can see my baby-belly but not too good. She holds the dress for me and I put my hand on her shoulder and step into it. A row of seed buttons up the back. High collar and long sleeves, blind-you white satin with lots of lace. Plus the long train with a hand loop to hold it off the floor. Be small, baby, I says, talking to my baby without opening my mouth. Be small, baby, be small.

The dress fits.

“Look at you,” Mrs. Jackson says. Her voice is thick like she is about to cry but I can’t tell for sure in the dim light.

I look down at my pink pumps. “I used to wear these when I worked over at Miz Montgomery’s,” I say. “I guess they’ll do.”

“Pink shoes with your wedding dress will not do,” Mrs. Jackson says.

“I can’t afford no nice ones,” I says.

“You wear size 6?” she asks.

“Size 5,” I says.

She goes to the back, walking backwards and turning her head this way and that to get a good look at me. When she’s out of sight I do a slow twirl. Snipes didn’t say nothing about the rings and he don’t know what size I wear but I guess we’ll get them when I get up there. I can’t expect him to think of everything. He had his new coffins on his mind today, plus that dying old Doctor Wells.

“The baby looks like it’s growing pretty good,” she hollers from the back.

“Yes, ma’am,” I says. No one has said nothing about the baby but I guess, since she knows I’m gonna have a husband to go with it, it’s OK to mention now.

“You lucky you got such small feet,” Mrs. Jackson says coming back into the main room with a shoe box. “I don’t carry many shoes but I did have these.”

“I don’t got enough for shoes,” I says.

“Try them on and hush up,” she says.

I pat myself on the back for having the intelligence to wash up before I came here. Sometimes smelling good can make all the difference. Mrs. Jackson brings me a chair and I sit, trying on the shoes like a lady would. When I get them on she helps me up.

“Look at you,” she murmurs.

“Do I look all right?”

“Your poor mother,” she says.

“I only got sixty-three dollars,” I says.

“And here it is 1963,” she says.

I pick up my pocketbook, fish through it and hold the bills in my hand.

“Can you promise me something?”

“Whut?”

“Don’t go telling all of Lincoln, Texas, how you got yrself a hundred-thirty-dollar dress and a pair of twenty-dollar shoes off of Mrs. Jackson for sixty-three dollars. People would accuse me of playing favorites.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She takes the money from me, counting it quickly, then sticking it underneath the pincushion on her wrist. “And when I say don’t tell no body I mean don’t tell no body, you hear? If word gets back to Mr. Jackson, Lord today, I won’t never hear the end of it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now turn around and style it for me,” she says.

I tell the baby to stay small again. It stays small. I turn all the way around one way then around the other way.

“I look all right?”

“You as pretty as you can be,” she says. “Just as pretty as you can be.”

Willa Mae Beede

This next song I’ma sing is a song I wrote about a man I used to know. It’s called “Big Hole Blues.”

My man is digging in my dirt

Digging a big hole just for me.

He’s digging in my dirt

Digging a big hole just for me.

It’s as long as I am tall, goes down as deep as the deep blue sea.

He says the hole he’s digging is hole enough for two.

He says the hole he’s digging is hole enough for two.

He says he’ll put me down there in it

And put my boyfriend in it too.

He says he’s just pulling my leg, but I got to play it safe

He says he’s just pulling my leg, but I got to play it safe

I done packed up all my clothes, I’m gonna leave this big old holey place.

Everybody’s got a Hole. Ain’t nobody ever lived who don’t got a Hole in them somewheres. When I say Hole you know what I’m talking about, dontcha? Soft spot, sweet spot, opening, blind spot, Itch, Gap, call it what you want but I call it a Hole. To get the best of a situation you gotta know a man’s Hole. Everybody’s got one, just don’t everybody got one in the same place. Some got a Hole in they head. Now, you may think “Hole in the head” is just another way of saying stupid, but “Hole in the head” means more than that. It means that they got a lack and a craving for knowledge. Not just the lack, now, but the craving too. A man could have a Hole just about anywheres: in the head, in the wallet (which means he burns his money), in the pocket (which means he don’t got no money to burn but would like some), in the pants, in the guts, in the stomach, in the heart. You offer a person with a Hole in the head some knowledge and they gonna be in yr pocket cause you done gived him the opportunity to taste what he craves, but if a person’s got a Hole in they heart and you offer them knowledge, you won’t be able to sway them none. A Hole-in-the-heart person craves company and kindness, not no book.

Mrs. Faith Jackson

I’ve never seen a girl so happy as Billy Beede walking out my store right now with her wedding dress and them matching shoes all wrapped up in my white store box. Mr. Jackson can say what he likes but it’s the formal-wear business that’s about making people happy. He says the funeral business is about making people happy but I’ve never seen no one smiling at a funeral. He doesn’t think Lincoln’s got the economy to support a formal-wear store and, tell the truth, I don’t turn a profit. If it weren’t for people dying, we would be out on the street. But, seeing as how folks do continue to die, I can, every once in awhile, afford to sell a hundred-thirty-dollar dress and a pair of twenty-dollar shoes for sixty-three dollars. Seeing as how the Funeral Home is doing so well, and folks is always continuing to die, and Jackson’s is the most respected Home, black or white, in the county, which means folks come out of their way to have us help them in their time of grief, and seeing as how Billy has her dead mother buried all the way out in Who-Knows-Where, Arizona, and seeing as how her Mr. Snipes, the man Jackson says is trash, has done right and asked her to marry him, I figure I can sell my showcase dress for the price she can afford.

Laz is gonna be broken up about it. He’s had his cap set on Billy Beede for the longest. Too long, I told him when he said he’d seen her running with Snipes. Much too long, Mr. Jackson said when we all seen Billy’s belly. Just cause you set your cap on someone, don’t mean she’ll set her cap on you.

You have to make the best of what God gives you, that’s what I say. That’s how I live my life. Married Jackson when I was not but fifteen. I was in the family way, but not like Billy Beede. My Israel had already spoken for me, and my mother and dad both were living. I was showing but I could walk around this town with my head up. Not like Billy Beede: shoulders pinched together, her head hanging down like a buzzard.

Me and Israel didn’t plan on getting married so early but we did. I had hoped to have a slew of girls. We had two boys. I had hoped Siam-Israel would run the Funeral Home with Israel, and Laz would be a doctor and deliver babies. That woulda dovetailed nicely, you know, cradle to grave with the funeral business we’ve already got. Nothing worked out like I hoped. Siam is doing time over at Huntsville and Laz, well let’s just say that Laz is doing his best. Doing the best with what we got. That’s the most that any of us can ask.

Dill Smiles

They call me bulldagger, dyke, lezzy, what-have-you. I like my overalls and my work boots. Let them say what they want. It don’t bother me none.

I take the letter back from Teddy. We’re still waiting here on his porch for Billy. She ain’t come back yet.

“Billy’ll be home directly,” Teddy says.

I lean my chair, tipping it back to balance on the two hind legs, like a stallion rearing up. Then I right the chair and get on my feet. “I don’t got no time to waste,” I says.

“I ain’t said nothing bout yr new truck,” Teddy says quickly.

“It’s a ‘Sixty-two. It ain’t brand-new.”

“Looks like you just drove it out the factory,” Teddy says.

“It’s just shiny,” I says. It’s last year’s model but the fella never drove it.

“You got all the luck, Dill.”

“I do all right.”

“Bet it runs good.”

“I don’t got no time for no jalopy.”

“Course you don’t,” Teddy says. “A Beede would have the time but a Smiles would not.”

I sit back down, taking the letter out of my front overalls pocket and resting it on my lap. We sit there quiet. Waiting.

“You gonna give me one of them new pigs you got?” Roosevelt asks.

“You can buy one, same as everybody else,” I says. My good sow Jezebel farrowed last night. Got up in my bed to do it too. She’s spoiled.

“Thirteen piglets and no runts. Dill Smiles oughta give Teddy Beede a free pig,” Teddy says.

“Thirteen’s unlucky. Why you want an unlucky pig for?”

“Thirteen ain’t unlucky for you,” Teddy says admiringly. “You got nothing but good luck, Dill, you got the luck of the Smiles.”

“I don’t got nothing like good luck.”

“Yes you do,” Teddy says using his greezy voice. He must really want that pig.

“I ain’t arguing witchu,” I says.

“Gimme a pig,” Teddy go.

I shake my head no.

“Hell, Dill, I’m practically yr brother,” he says.

“I ain’t no goddamn Beede,” I says and we both laugh.

We see a speck coming down the road. Too small and too slow for no car. It’s Billy.

“You think she got her dress?” Teddy asks.

“She’s Willa Mae’s child,” I says.

“Meaning whut?”

“Meaning by hook or crook Billy got herself a dress. Mighta got herself two or three dresses.”

“Billy don’t favor Willa,” Teddy says.

“Billy don’t favor me neither,” I says.

Teddy cuts his eyes to me, getting a good look at my profile without turning his head. I’m doing the same to look at him. His pecan-colored cheek is fleshy. Gray grizzle around the chin where he ain’t shaved this morning. Willa Mae told me once that I looked like an Indian nickel. Teddy’s mouth opens a little. I’ve brought him to his limit.

“Go head, Teddy, say it,” I says.

“I’m just taking a breath,” he says. He coughs and puts his eyes back front. Why the hell should Billy favor Dill Smiles? That’s what Teddy wants to say, but he wants me to give him a free pig more than he wants to give me a what for.

The Billy-speck coming down the road gets bigger.

“She’s whistling,” I says. We both hear it.

“Guess she got that dress,” Teddy says.

“Billy don’t favor Willa Mae but she’s got her mother’s heart and ways,” I says.

“Not completely,” Teddy says. “Willa Mae didn’t never like to work, but Billy had that good job over at Ruthie Montgomery’s.”

“Billy had a job,” I says.

“Well, Billy was doing pretty good in school,” Teddy says.

“Then she quit,” I remind him.

“Willa Mae was always singing her songs and flaunting herself. Billy can’t even carry a tune,” Teddy says.

“What you got against yr own sister?” I ask him. “What you got against Billy taking after her own mother?”

“Willa Mae ended up in the ground,” Teddy says.

“We all end up in the ground,” I says.

The tune Billy’s whistling don’t sound like a song. Just a bunch of notes and not in a steady rhythm. Then I recognize it. She’s whistling around something Willa used to sing. I can’t recall the words though.

“You got more luck than anybody in Texas,” Teddy says.

“I’ve had my share of bad luck too,” I says and Teddy nods cause he knows.

“Where did I come here from?” I ask him.

“Dade County, Florida,” Teddy says.

“Dade County, Florida, and don’t you forget it,” I says.

I came here from Florida with the promise of work from Mr. Sanderson, and when I found out the work was just field work alongside the wetbacks and the no-counts, I didn’t go back. I stuck it out. I worked harder than all the women and most of the men and saved up enough to start my pig business. Teddy remembers that. And when Willa Mae Beede came home to Lincoln looking to move in with Teddy, her married brother, she ended up living with me instead. Me and her was like husband and wife, almost. When Billy was born, it was me, Dill Smiles, who took care of Willa Mae and her bastard child both. And when Willa Mae left me for good that last time, it was my mother’s house in LaJunta where she decided to die at. I drove out there. Billy was standing in the corner of the room like a little dark ghost. Willa Mae was dying in a bed of blood. She’d tried to get rid of her second baby and botched it. She told me she was sorry for the wrong she’d done me and that she wanted to be put in the ground with her pearl necklace and her diamond ring. I gave her my word. Then she died. I was with her. Teddy knows.

Teddy and me can see Billy good now. She’s carrying a box balanced on her head and holding it with one hand, like they carry stuff over in Africa.

When Teddy Beede looks at me, he sees what I want him to see: Dill Smiles and Dill Smiles’ luck, which, to Teddy’s mind, springs from the bounty of Dill Smiles’ fairness, which in turn, springs out of a long swamp of unlucky years that hardworking Dill Smiles has bravely lived longer than. To Teddy, because I’ve lived longer than my bad luck did, I’m now allowed to enjoy thirteen healthy piglets and a shiny new-looking truck. But it ain’t that way at all.

I paid an undertaker to wash her body and put her in the coffin that I’d paid for out my own pocket. Before he nailed down the lid, I had a last look and took the necklace and the ring. Then me and the undertaker carried her outside and I saved a few dollars by digging the grave and burying her myself. I put her in the ground, put her jewelry in my pocket and brought Billy back here for Teddy and June to raise. When they asked after the jewels I told them the jewels was underground. In truth, I got Willa’s diamond ring in my own pocket. The necklace of pearls she asked me to bury her with, I’ve been selling pearl by pearl to a fella in Dallas who don’t ask no questions. The pearls are all sold but I still got the ring. My hole card. If the pigs fail again I’ll have to sell it.

The luck of Dill Smiles ain’t no luck at all, but compared to Teddy and June and Billy, it’s like I step in shit every day.

June Flowers Beede

July 16, 1963

The Pink Flamingo Motel

LaJunta, Arizona

Dear June and Roosevelt and Billy,

The past month has been what you could call very interesting. Even and me are on what Even calls “the up and up,” and so I am going to surprise you this time by not asking for payment to keep up Willa Mae’s grave.

If you have the time to read this letter you will soon discover what our new circumstances are all about. I hope you are not too busy. From your last letter it seemed like Texas was trying to beat Arizona as the hottest state. I hope your filling station has not run dry (ha ha) but I also hope that it has not run you ragged neither. I hope you have the time to read this because I have taken the time to write to you and it would be a shame to skip this good times letter after all the hard times letters I have sent your way.

Like so many things that come into your life, our present good luck came when we were just going about our daily business. We had not had any visitors in several days except an official from the bank in Tucson who came to inquire if we were interested in selling our land and motel. He left pretty fast when we told him no. But the banker from Tucson is hardly what I would call a visitor. The motel has been in a run-down condition for several years which is why I kept writing you all for payment. The payment would of helped. There were plenty of times that I thought I should write to my own flesh and blood, Dill Smiles, but you know as well as I do that Dill and her money are on a till death do us part basis.

On the day that turned out to be our lucky one, I was in the back working with Even who is becoming quite a horsewoman in her own right and if you ever manage to get out this way she and I will put on a show for you if Buster, that’s Even’s horse, is willing. We were out back working on her routines and up walks another white man in a dark suit. I thought he was another banker but, no, he was from The Rising Bird Development Corporation. They’ve got headquarters in Phoenix. They were hoping to build one of those big new shopping centers in the rear of our motel. It would give folks in that new housing development somewhere closer to shop. They wondered if I wanted to sell the land. There were several benefits to this. One was that our Pink Flamingo Motel would be in walking distance to a supermarket and that would be good for business. That is what came into my mind at first, the nearness of the supermarket, and then of course I thought of the money of the sale. I will not trouble you with the details of the sale but only say that we agreed to sell right away and the deal has gone through with very little trouble and I have received a fair amount of money for the sale of the five acres that was, before I sold it, the rear of our property. We still have enough yard for Buster and of course the Motel and swimming pool are untouched.

There is a matter that you might want to know about. The Rising Bird Corporation has plans to plow up and pave over what used to be my land. That is to say that they will be disturbing the place where Willa Mae is buried. It doesn’t sit right with me and Even that this should happen. The little I know of Willa Mae, she was a nice person. We dare not rescue the body ourselves because of the threats against my person made by Dill Smiles. I have never wanted to mention this, but Dill Smiles told me at the time of Willa Mae’s burial that if I so much as thought about disturbing Willa Mae and “stealing,” as Dill put it, the jewels, that Dill would drive all the way out here and be very pleased to gun me down, her own mother.

I suggest that if you want to save Willa’s remains from the fate I have mentioned above, please come out here and move her body. Even has made a lovely grave site here in the backyard, but it’s time for Willa Mae to move on. Perhaps she would want to be reburied in Lincoln. If not, we have a nice cemetery in LaJunta that has welcomed John Henry Napoleon and would welcome Willa Mae Beede too.

I hope, June, that you and Roosevelt and Billy (and I am saying it like this because I know from your letters back that you, June, are reading this to the others), and so I hope, June, that you and Roosevelt and Billy do not think I have gone back on my promise by selling my land and thereby putting you all in this inconvenient situation. I hope instead that you all will be happy that I am no longer writing you asking you for upkeep money. I would send some of our recently acquired money your way but Even is still living at home and Buster, as you can imagine, is a very large mouth to keep fed.

I think you should consider resurrecting Willa Mae but of course the final decision is up to you. Again, they will begin plowing the first of the month. I hope that, because of the plowing up of the gravesite and my improved finances, that this won’t be the end of our letter writing. I enjoy getting letters, especially from you all cause June uses such pretty words.

Very Truly Yours,

Candy and Even Napoleon

I get through reading the letter and, for a minute, nobody says nothing. Billy’s standing there with her new dress held up and wanting us all to look.

“You was gonna shoot your mother?” Billy asks Dill.

“I never said nothing about shooting no one,” Dill says.

Roosevelt and me are both looking at the letter. “Construction company’s gonna go to work starting the first of the month and pave over her land and make a supermarket,” Roosevelt says, repeating what I just read.

“We all heard the news,” Dill says. “Nobody here’s deaf.”

I look to Billy, to see what she thinks. She’s holding her dress up against herself with one hand and passing the other hand slow down over the fabric, like she’s ironing out the wrinkles even though there ain’t none.

“If we ever was thinking we should go get Willa Mae’s body, we better go and get her now,” I says. I make sure I say “body” and not “treasure.”

“She’s buried clear in LaJunta,” Dill says.

“I know where LaJunta is,” I says.

“It ain’t like she’s over in Fort Worth,” Dill says. “LaJunta, Arizona, ain’t no walking distance, now.” Dill enjoys reminding us we don’t got nothing but the eleven-bus, our own two feet, to get us around and she got that new-looking truck. The eleven-bus would, in my case, be the number one bus. Two feet make what looks like an eleven. One foot makes a one. When Dill came back from burying Willa Mae I went and got a map so I could see where LaJunta was.

“I know good and well where LaJunta is,” I says.

“It’s far,” Dill says.

“We can’t let Willa Mae get buried underneath some supermarket,” I says.

“Arizona’s near California,” Roosevelt says, helping. “It may not be close like Forth Worth but LaJunta ain’t the moon neither.”

Dill stretches out her long legs, pushes her hat back on her head, then folds her arms across her front. “You start walking today you might get there by next year,” Miss He-She-It says.

“I’ma put up my dress before it gets dirty,” Billy says. She goes inside holding it up so it won’t touch the floor, then places it gingerly back inside the box and slides the box underneath the counter with the rest of her things. When she comes back outside, she still got her new shoes on. They’re too white to look at.

“What color are those shoes, girl?” Roosevelt asks squinting.

“White,” Billy says.

“They so white they make my eyes hurt,” Roosevelt says. Billy styles the shoes some, walking to and fro on the porch, holding her hand on her hip like she finally done joined the ranks of the Happenings. She sits up on the porch rail and swings her legs.

“Roosevelt’s right,” I says. “LaJunta ain’t on the moon.”

Dill stands up like she is ready to head home. “Traveling’s high. It was high six years ago and it’s more high now.”

“We can pull some money together, can’t we, Teddy?” I ask. I wait for him to tell me yes but he don’t. He takes snuff and, standing, offers Dill some. Dill shakes her head and steps down a step. With Dill on the low step and Teddy on the porch they’re standing eye to eye.

I want to stand up too, to make my point, but instead just plant the tip of my crutch on the porch, holding it upright with one hand, letting it help me speak the same way standing up would. “It’s wrong to let Willa Mae’s grave get paved over. Being in the ground is bad enough, now she gotta have a Piggly Wiggly or who knows what with all them people walking around and they shopping carts rolling around on top of her. It ain’t fair is all I’m saying.” I stomp my crutch, giving myself some emphasis.

“June’s got a point,” Teddy says.

Dill turns away from us to look at Billy. “You getting married Friday?” she asks her.

“That’s right,” Billy says.

“Maybe you and Snipes would like to go to LaJunta for yr honeymoon,” Dill says.

“I ain’t asking Snipes to go way the hell out there,” Billy says.

“Watch your mouth,” Roosevelt says.

“Willa Mae’s getting paved over don’t bother me none,” Billy says.

“If you was my own child I’d slap your mouth for talking like that,” I says.

“I ain’t yr child,” Billy says.

“I thank God you ain’t,” I says.

“Why you got to be so ugly?” Teddy asks her.

“I ain’t being ugly,” Billy says, “I’m just saying, if they gonna put a supermarket on top of her, I ain’t wasting my honeymoon running out there trying to stop them.”

Dill opens her mouth, running her tongue over the teeth she got left. “I guess that settles it,” she says.

Me and Teddy thought, if we loved Billy the way our mothers and fathers had loved us, if we put food on the table for her and clothes on her back and took care of her when she was sick and told her to go to school and helped her as we could with her homework, that she would be ours. All ours. But she wasn’t never ours no matter what we said or did. I was the first one who noticed she was pregnant. I looked at her one day. It was May. I asked her if her monthly was regular and she told me her monthly weren’t none of my business. She had quit her job in March and had quit school the year before and then had the nerve to say her monthly weren’t my business. Just as well she ain’t my child, I guess.

Billy straightens both her legs out in front of her and points her feet, then she turns and looks me straight in the eye. “You sitting here talking about the body, but you only really interested in the treasure,” she says.

“I’m talking about your own mother,” I says.

Billy keeps on, not even listening to me. “I always said there weren’t never no real treasure buried there nohow. It was all just a story she made up. I told you the truth of it but you stuck on believing the story,” she says.

“Dill buried your mother with her jewels. The pearl necklace and the diamond ring,” Roosevelt says.

“That stuff weren’t no real jewels. They was fakes, wasn’t they, Dill?” Billy asks.

“I ain’t no expert on the subject,” Dill says. “I just put it in the ground like she asked me to, I ain’t no expert on its value.”

“Hell, they was fakes, I’m telling you,” Billy says.

“I said watch your mouth,” Teddy says.

Billy closes her mouth and shuts her eyes. If she weren’t pregnant she’d let loose of that porch rail she’s balancing on and cover her ears with her hands. I seen her do it plenty of times. Like all Billy’s got to say is cusses and she got to close up every place so the cusses won’t come out. Me and Roosevelt and Dill look away. We hear Billy take a breath, but none of us look at her.

“This is Willa Mae Beede we talking about,” Billy says. Then she gets down from the railing and goes inside. After a minute I can hear her rattling that tin money box she got.

“You two don’t like the body getting paved over but Billy’s made her peace with it,” Dill says.

Billy comes to stand in the doorway. She’s got a single pearl earring in her hand. It was Willa Mae’s. “This is a jewel she had and it’s a fake. She tolt me so when she gived it to me.” She goes back inside. When she comes back out, the earring’s put away and she has some money in her hand. Not much. “I could use help with my bus fare to Texhoma,” she says.

Dill opens her billfold. It’s made of pig leather. She made it herself. There ain’t much money in it, but there’s some. “I can only spare a single,” Dill says. Billy takes it, but I can see by her face that she had hopes for more.

“A dollar’s better than nothing,” she says.

“Show yr manners,” Roosevelt prompts.

Billy says thanks and Miss He-She-It tips her hat.

There was a time when Dill woulda gived Willa Mae and Billy the world. I guess that time’s done passed.

Roosevelt Beede

If I had more money I’d take the time to hide it, but I don’t.

“I got three quarters in my spot. They’re yours if you want em,” I tell Billy and she goes inside to get them. Through the filling station office, out the back door, over the two wood planks and underneath the yellow plastic tarping that makes a sort of covered bridge between the office and the house, a trailer, truth be told, going in there and squeezing past the fold-down sink to my bed. Shaking the pillow slip for a pouch. My spot.

We all see someone coming down the road.

“What’s Laz doing walking down here?” Dill says.

“Maybe he wants some gas,” June says.

“He better go back home and get his hearse,” I says. And we all fall out laughing.

“It’s good Billy’s getting married,” Dill says. “People were starting to talk.”

“I ain’t heard no one talking,” June says.

Dill puts her hand in her pocket, fiddling with something. She’s been fiddling in her pocket like that for years. Like a fella would touch hisself from time to time. Dill sees me watching her fiddle and stops, taking out her hand. I want to tell her that she can go head and fiddle all she wants to, it’s her pocket and her privates.

“They was talking, believe me,” Dill says.

Billy comes out on the porch jangling my money in her hand. It don’t sound like three quarters, though.

“I found a silver dollar too,” she says.

I look over at June who is looking at me. The dollar is the first and the last of June’s leg money. “Let yr Uncle keep his old silver dollar for a little while longer,” I tell Billy.

A smile passes over June’s face before a new thought comes to her and she looks down at the floor. “We’ll need that dollar for our own bus fare when we head up after you tomorrow,” she says. And she’s right.

Billy gives me the dollar. “I’ma pack,” she says going inside. June clumps after her to help out.

Dill walks down the steps slow-like, taking one step at a time, placing one foot on the step then the other, standing still, then moving down the next step until she is standing flat on the ground.

“Guess you all won’t be going to LaJunta then,” Dill says.

“Don’t look like it,” I says.

“I shoulda brought Willa back here and buried her in the first place,” Dill says, “then we wouldn’t be worrying about her getting paved over.”

“Water under the bridge,” I says.

“Them diamonds and pearls woulda been nice.”

“Whoever said you can’t take it witchu didn’t know my sister,” I says.

“Willa Mae sure was something,” Dill says, her voice going funny, sad or mad, I can’t tell which.

I had plans that depended on someday getting the treasure my sister had left us. A new church maybe. But maybe not. Maybe just something easier, like a regular house instead of a trailer and land that we owned outright. I feel those plans move away from me, out of my reach. But there’s something I wanted more than a house, something I didn’t know I wanted more until now. My parents are buried in the colored section of the Butler County cemetery and my mind had planned, secretly, without me actually thinking about it, to lay Willa Mae alongside them. It woulda been nice, visiting them all at once.

If I was still preaching I would have something to say about the lightness of the Way and the roughness of the Road, but I just let out a heavy breath.

“How tall you, Dill?” I ask.

“Same as I was last time you wanted to know.”

Dill is over six feet.

“You look like you growd.”

“I’m too old to grow any taller,” she says, hand in her pocket again, fiddling. “Only way I’m growing is out.” But Dill is as tall as she is lean. Nothing ladylike on her at all.

“I’ll tell you when the piglets get weaned,” Dill says. “Then you can come by and pick one out.”

“Sounds good to me,” I says.

“Billy getting married’ll shut a lot of folks’ mouths,” Dill says. She gets in her truck and goes, honking her horn at Laz as she passes him still coming down the road.

Laz shoulda been here by now. He musta stopped.

People been talking all right. June ain’t heard nothing but I know better. They been talking in the beauty shop and in the barbershop, when they get they dry goods, and when they go over to Atchity’s to order from Sears Roebuck. When they come by here to get gasoline, they catch a look if they’re lucky, and tuck away what they seed to gnaw over together in public places, or in they own homes, after the dinner dishes have been cleared away. Old biddies talk. Men talk. Fathers and mothers talk. Billy Beede and her baby-belly and no husband. Billy Beede and Billy Beede’s bad luck: father-she-ain’t-never-knowd run off and dead probably; mother run wild and dead certainly; young bastard girl child tooked in by dirt-poor filling-station-running childless churchless minister Uncle and one-legged crutch-hopping Aunt. Girl growd almost to womanhood, also growd as big as a house with no ring on her finger and no man in sight. Old biddies talk and feel a ripple of delight coming from the satisfaction that they think they seed it coming. Men feel a ripple too. Snipes, Snopes, Snaps? They can’t be sure but one of them seen Billy run across the road without looking for cars to jump into the fella’s arms. None of them cept Laz never gived Billy the time of day but now they all rippling when they think of her and wish they gals and they wives would run across the road towards them like that. They’ve all seen Snipes’ yellow car.

While the father and mother talk over dinner, their children, all born within the confines of marriage, hang around the doorjambs, standing just out of sight, listening. The good girls savor the details of Billy’s business (her swole belly, the housedresses she wears these days that fit tight around the middle). The good boys strain to overhear and savor what, if I was in the pulpit, I would call the intimacies of unmarried intercourse. Those good boys overhear the details with pleasure but hope not to hear their own names mentioned among the lists of possible fathers. Being forced to marry a Beede, for the most part, is pretty bad.

I get an idea that June should ride with Billy tomorrow and I’ll come up alone on Friday. I holler my plan into the house.

“Thanks, but Snipes wants just me to come tomorrow,” Billy hollers back.

Laz has come up in the yard. He’s laying between the two gas pumps with his hands acrosst his chest.

“Someone’s gonna drive up and run over your head, Laz,” I says.

He don’t move for a minute then he gets up and comes to sit on the porch. Laz has a steady way about him. He don’t walk too fast but he walks steady. Most days I wish he was the baby’s daddy. Some days I’m glad he ain’t.

“She gone yet?” he asks.

“She’ll leave on the six A.M. bus.”

He asks if he can tell her goodbye and walks inside, staying just a minute then coming back out.

“She’s got a pearl earring around her neck on a string,” he says.

“One of Willa Mae’s fakes,” I says.

“She says it’ll match her wedding dress,” Laz says.

“I guess it will,” I says.

“I could give her a ride,” Laz says. Texhoma is about four hundred miles to the north. Eight or nine hours drive.

“Billy,” I says, turning my head to holler through the office and into the trailer where June’s got her own hope chest open and is giving Billy things for her trip, “Laz says he’ll give you a ride.”

Me and Laz both sit there waiting for her to holler back.

“Good idea, Laz,” I says. “I didn’t want her showing up to Snipes’ people, getting off a bus.”

Billy hollers back, “I’d rather show up in a bus than in a hearse.”

Laz leans against the porch rail. “I’ll ask my father if I can drive the sedan,” he says, getting up to walk back home and ask even though we both know Israel Jackson ain’t gonna let Laz take the sedan nowheres.

A girl with a baby-belly and no husband makes folks sweat. Wives look sharp at they men, then, finding no fault related to the crime at hand, look even sharper at they sons. Men look at themselves and worry. They find relief in the facts of life: a lustful thought carries no spunk. Everybody looks in their doorways and nobody sees me standing there with my shotgun demanding justice. I wanted to know who I was after before I went shooting.

“Who the daddy?” I asked Billy. This was two months ago. If it had been Laz, he woulda taken responsibility already.

“No one you know,” she said.

“I’ll make him do right by you,” I said.

“Let it alone,” she said. “He loves me. It’ll be all right if you just let it alone.”

So I let it alone and I waited. Then I seen him come up in his yellow car and I seen her run across the road without looking.

I’ve always wondered what happens when you don’t got a mother. Without a mother you don’t get born. But after birth, what then? Over the past six years, watching Billy come up, I’ve had several different thoughts on the subject. Several things happen, and different people take them in different ways. Or maybe just one thing happens and it happens differently to each person it happens to. A mother helps a child learn the basics. Billy don’t know the basics. Basic: don’t go opening yr legs for a man who ain’t yr husband lest you wanna be called hot trash.

People will talk. Let them talk. I can bear it. I am a Beede. I am a Beede so I can bear the people talking. I can bear pumping gas for Sanderson, I can bear losing my church. June Flowers is a Beede by marriage, not birth, so what June Flowers can bear is another story. I guess what Billy do or don’t do, and what she get or don’t get, is no more than just part of the Plan.

Billy Beede

Lots of buses pass by Lincoln but most don’t stop. Buses stop in Midland, two different ones at five A.M., one going east to Dallas and the other west all the way to Hollywood, California. An hour and a half after they go through, two more stop. One heading southeast towards Galveston and the other one, the one heading north, passes through Texhoma. The north one’s the one I need to get. There’s a old rattling bus that stops in front of Mr. Bub Atchity’s at six every morning, except for Sunday. It’ll get you to Midland in time for your connection. Miss that rattling bus and you gotta walk.

“Texhoma ain’t much bigger than Lincoln,” June says. She got one of her maps folded neatly to the spot.

Bub Atchity’s standing in the doorway of his store wearing his nightshirt under the white doctor’s coat that he puts on when he sells stuff like Scott’s Emulsion. Laz says it ain’t a doctor’s coat but a dentist’s, cause it has the buttons along the shoulder and it hangs just to his hip. Doctor or dentist’s coat Mr. Atchity’s wearing it over his nightshirt with his bare feet and legs poking out underneath. “I’m telling you it stops there,” Atchity says.

“June’s just making sure,” Uncle Teddy says. I stand between them, not saying nothing.

“Come on in and buy a ticket, goddamnit,” Atchity says, retreating inside to write it up.

I give Uncle Teddy my money so it’ll look like he’s treating.

“You be sweet up there with Snipes and his family,” Uncle Teddy says, “so when yr aunt and me come up there tomorrow, we won’t have to impress, we can, you know, just be ourselves.” He looks at me like me being sweet will be hard, but I’m gonna be married so being sweet will come naturally.

“Tomorrow when you get there, head straight to the courthouse,” I tell them. “Me and Mr. Snipes and every-body’ll be waiting for you.”

“That pearl earring looks nice how you’re wearing it,” Uncle Teddy tells me.

“We’re proud of you, Billy,” June says. She pets me on the shoulder and I smile. She’s got a straw hat on, hiding her hair.

“I forgot to do yr hair,” I says.

“I got a pretty scarf I can wear till you get to it,” she says.

“You gonna buy a ticket or you gonna let me go back to bed?” Atchity hollers from inside.

“We’ll take one to Texhoma. One-way, please,” I say into the darkness of his store.

“I’m writing it up,” Atchity yells.

“You want some candy or something?” Uncle Teddy asks me.

“I’m all right with the chicken,” I say, holding up the sack, already a little greasy from the two chicken wings Aunt June fixed.

“Some candy’d go good with it,” Uncle Teddy says and goes inside.

June and me stand there. June’s leaning on her crutch. She lent me her own grip to put my things in. A small brown suitcase with the leather sides all cracked and sun-burned, but the clasps and handle still good. The one she had her everyday things in when her family was traveling to California. I got my own pocketbook. It’s brown too.

“I’d like to get my grip back someday,” Aunt June says.

“Clifton’s gonna get me all new luggage for the honey-moon,” I says.

“Where’s he taking you?”

“It’s a surprise,” I says. I don’t tell her he ain’t mentioned the rings or the honeymoon. “He’s been talking about going someplace exciting. Up to Chicago maybe,” I says.

We stand there quiet, listening and watching for the bus.

“If this bus is late y’ll miss yr connection,” Aunt June says.

“It won’t be late,” I says.

The day is coming up, sunlight crawling up over Miz Montgomery’s House of Style, where I had me a job once. The sun gets to the top of her place and splashes down main street, what on maps is called Sanderson Boulevard but I only ever heard one person call it that out loud. Main Bully, most people say. When Mr. Sanderson comes by every month to check up on how Uncle Teddy’s pumping his gas, he says Sanderson Boulevard a lot. We drove down Sanderson Boulevard to get here. We won’t be taking Sanderson Boulevard home, though. Sanderson Boulevard used to be quite a street but now it needs repaving. Like he’s making up reasons why to say it. And Uncle Teddy nods at Mr. Sanderson and Aunt June looks blank and I want to tell Mr. Sanderson that him and his Sanderson Boulevard can go to hell but Uncle Teddy would just tell me to watch my mouth. Mother told me once that the street’s named for Mr. Sanderson’s father’s father, Gustav Sanderson, who founded Lincoln. Mother said that Mr. Gustav coulda named the town after himself but he wanted to show how fair he was so he named his town after Abraham Lincoln instead. When me and Mother was living with Dill, we seen the younger Mr. Sanderson walking down the sidewalk. He expected us to get off the sidewalk for him and his wife but Mother told him to kiss her behind.

Aunt June shields her eyes from the sun so she can see Main Bully better, looking for the bus. From inside the store I can hear Uncle Teddy paying for my ticket and getting some candy. “Spot me a Baby Ruth,” he says.

“Oh, hell,” Bub Atchity goes.

“Me and June gonna buy two tickets from you tomorrow,” Uncle Teddy says.

“Round-trip tickets too,” June adds, turning her head to yell the news inside.

“Why don’t you buy em right now?” Atchity goes.

“We ain’t leaving until tomorrow morning,” Teddy says.

June leans forward a little on one crutch, getting a better look down the street. The bus will come from the west, from where the night is headed, all bunched up like a dark-blue quilt.

“That bus is late,” June says.

“We could go in and sit and wait,” I says.

“If we inside when it comes it might not stop,” June says.

I used to think that crutch under her arm hurt, but when she don’t wear sleeves you can see she got a patch of skin ringing her armpit, darker than the rest. She says the dark patch is why the crutch don’t hurt, even though she had the dark patch from since she was born and only lost her leg when she was my age. She says it was like something inside her knew she was gonna need that funny-looking skin.

“You leaving tomorrow you should buy yr ticket now,” Atchity says. “Save yrself the inconvenience waking me up at five in the morning.”

“You up anyhow,” Uncle Teddy says and the two of them laugh. Mr. Atchity, he got eight children and Mrs. Atchity is still nice-looking.

When the bus pulls up, the Driver, a gangly white man with red-rimmed eyes, gets out. He stands at attention like he’s in the army or something.

“Link-on!” the Driver barks. Where his shirt is open at the collar there’s a sunburn. I give Aunt June a hug, surprising us both.

“Don’t forget to eat,” she says.

The Driver opens up the underside of the bus, like the belly of a big cow. Uncle Teddy takes my grip and slides it neatly underneath. I hold on to my dress box and food, letting Teddy give the Driver my ticket and help me get on. When I get up the bus steps and turn to wave goodbye Uncle Teddy’s right behind me.

“Here go yr candy,” he says, handing me the Baby Ruth he got.

He’s standing on the steps and I’m standing at the Driver’s seat. The Driver slams the belly-door and comes to get on but can’t. Uncle Teddy’s in his way.

I hold on tight to the dress box and the candy and the chicken.

Uncle Teddy turns toward the Driver, looking down on him from his steps-perch. He holds his pointer finger in the air like he’s testing the wind direction or the Driver’s worth.

“I don’t want no Freedom Riders, now,” the Driver says, looking past Uncle Teddy to get a better look at me.

“My niece is going to meet her husband up in Texhoma,” Teddy says, establishing me.

The Driver’s face relaxes. “All aboard!” he yells from his place in the dirt.

“Tomorrow me and my wife June’ll be riding with you,” Teddy says.

“Tomorrow ain’t today,” the Driver says, “I got a schedule to keep.”

“You best sit towards the back,” Uncle Teddy whispers to me.

“Yes, sir,” I says.

He gives me a kiss on the forehead. Something he ain’t never done. The kiss is wet. Not practiced. He gets out the bus, walking down the steps backwards. The Driver moves in quick, taking his seat. Outside, Uncle and Aunt stand together. She leans against him a little.

“Take your seat,” the Driver says.

I walk back, past the empty seats up front, toward the back. Three other folks back there. All men. All sleeping.

There’s an empty seat on the side of the bus that looks out over to the other side of the Main Bully, over at Miz Montgomery’s side. I sit there, close to the window, looking across the double rows of seats, across the body of a sleeping man, his long legs unfolding out into the aisle, his head back and mouth open, but not snoring. Through his window I watch June and Teddy searching the windows for my face. The Driver cuts the engine on.

“This is a Mid-land-bound bus, now!” the Driver yells. No one wakes up. “Midland!” he yells again.

Uncle Teddy runs around the back of the bus, just reaching my side before we take off. He squints up his eyes, finding me through the window, and waves hard, hard enough for both him and June. I wave back at him, and as I look out across the aisle I see June, still looking for me on the other side, squinching up her eyes and leaning harder on her crutch, not seeing me but waving anyway.

We go.

East to Monahans then Odessa then Midland. In Midland the north-bound bus is waiting for us. It’s silver like a icebox, with the running dog painted on the side. I could try sitting in the front, where the view’s better, but Uncle Teddy’s right, that could cause trouble. Sitting in the back’s easier and I don’t mind. The driver says we gonna be in Texhoma by three. I got my dress in my lap, right where I can see it. The box is pretty and white with a red long-stemmed rose sculptured on the cover, such a nice-looking box someone might try to steal it. We head north. Stanton, Tarzan, Sparenberg, Patricia. Grandview, New Home, Lubbock, Slide. The bus fills with people. We cross the Brazos River. New Deal, Becton, Happy Union, Plainview. Mostly folks are quiet. There’s a man two seats ahead, listening to country music from a yellow plastic transistor radio. Yr cheating heart,

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