Getting Mother’s Body

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.