Dunaway's Crossing (26 page)

Her head and arms resting on the edge of the mattress, her mind cloudy with fatigue, Bea Dot sat on the hard wooden floor next to the soiled bed. For a second she thought she was dreaming the sound of footsteps. But she forced her eyes open and turned her face toward the door. Terrence Taylor, with a basket of collard greens in his hand, stared slack jawed at the bloody rags piled on the floor.

Bea Dot raised her head. “Go get your mother.”

#

Will’s upper arms throbbed from hours of hammering, his head pounding with fatigue. After a sixteen hour stretch of making coffins, he’d run out of lumber, so he trudged out of Pritchett’s shed in search of food and a place to wash up.

In the light of the streetlamps, his wristwatch read 6:45. Options were scarce during the evening. Pineview’s one restaurant, with only one waitress still working, closed after lunch. The mercantile closed at six, but Will knocked on the door, hoping to find the clerk still inside. No such luck. After peering through the glass into the dark store, Will turned and surveyed Pineview’s empty main street.

On a normal day, he’d knock on a friend’s door—likely Ralph Coolidge’s—and pay a visit. Almost certainly he’d be invited in for supper. But nothing was normal about today or the past month. Will could think of no Pineview household unaffected by influenza.

The only person definitely working at this hour was Pritchett, who had repeatedly offered him meals. However, determined not to pass influenza on to Bea Dot and Netta, Will had sworn not to cross Pritchett’s threshold.  His chest ached at the thought of Bea Dot’s dark curly hair and her coffee-brown eyes. Their one night together convinced him that she loved him as much as he loved her, in spite of her ambivalence. As soon as the epidemic ended, he planned to sit down with her and figure out a way for them to marry.

But Will’s stomached growled like a trapped bear. To be any good tomorrow, he had to eat. He turned around and retraced his steps to the funeral home. He’d go in this one time, vowing from now on to plan ahead for meals. Fatigue burned his eyes as he trudged up Pritchett’s front steps and knocked. In a few seconds, Harley, coated with oil and smelling of vinegar, opened the door and welcomed Will in.

“Pritchett’s already gone back downstairs,” Harley explained, leading Will to the back of the house. “He’s preparing one last body before calling it a night.” Catching a whiff of death and chemical, Will held a grubby hand over his nose as they passed the stairway to the cellar.

Harley led him to the kitchen, where Will washed his hands at the sink. Harley dished up a bowl of stew for Will and put a slice of bread on a plate. Will jumped into the food like a stray dog. Harley sat across from him with a cup of coffee.

“It’s a good thing you stopped by this evening,” he said, spooning sugar into his cup. “I’ve been talking to Pritchett, and I think I have him convinced to stop this marathon coffin production.”

Will looked up from his stew, his eyebrows elevated with hope. His heart picked up its pace. “Is the flu subsiding already?”

But Harley shook his head. “No, no,” he said. “Actually, it’s the other way around. The sick are dying so fast we can’t schedule the funerals. We’ve started doing two, sometimes three, at a time.”

That explained the recent pressure to pick up the pace of Will’s carpentry.

“I got the mayor’s support,” Harley continued, “and he also spoke to Pritchett this afternoon. Tomorrow the city council will pass an ordinance forbidding individual and small group funerals.”

“Small group funerals?” To Will, the phrase made death even more gruesome.

Harley nodded. “I know it sounds strange, but it’s a temporary ordinance to require all deceased to be buried in mass graves. It’s the only way we can handle the workload and prevent the spread of disease.”

Will’s appetite vanished. Harley’s explanation provoked nightmarish images of the trenches on the western front. Packed with the terrified, sick, and injured, they may as well have been mass graves. He shuddered before pushing the memory to the back of his mind, and he sat back in his chair, eyes to the ceiling.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Harley continued. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s the only way. Pritchett’s about to fall over with exhaustion.”

Will knew the feeling.

“So the good news, if you can call it that, is that you’ve hammered your last pine box.” Harley slurped his coffee. “Now we just need a few more fellows to help us dig.”

Surprised sparked in Will’s chest. “Us?”

“You, me, and Randall.” Harley pointed his thumb toward the shed behind the house, where Will and Randall had been working for the past two weeks.

Will shook his head slowly. He’d never signed up for grave yard duty, and he resented Harley’s assumption that he’d be willing to handle scores of deceased flu victims.

“Now, before you start making excuses—” Pounding at the front door interrupted Harley’s argument, much to Will’s relief. When Harley left the room to answer, Will rose from the table and searched Pritchett’s cabinets. He could use a drink.

The sound of a familiar voice caught his attention. “Looking for Will Dunaway. You know where I can find him?”

“I’m here, Thaddeus,” Will called as he passed through the hallway into the parlor. “Don’t come in. Let’s talk on the porch.” Will’s mood elevated somewhat. Netta must have had her baby. About time for some happy news. As he stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind him, he smiled as he greeted his friend.

“Well, what is it? A boy or a girl?”

Thaddeus took an awkward step back, as if surprised by Will’s question. “Well, um, it’s a girl, I think. I…I don’t recall that I asked.”

Thaddeus’s face looked bewildered. Ashen, almost. Maybe from the dim light through the window.

“You didn’t ask? That’s the first thing Ralph will want to know.” Will chuckled nervously. As a father, Thaddeus should have known that. But he dared not ask what was wrong.

“I already talked to Ralph,” he said. “But I ain’t here just ‘cause of the baby.”

Will frowned and put his hands on his hips, staring at his boots and dreading anything Thaddeus might utter next.

“Netta’s dead.”

The ride to town was a horrid déjà vu. Bea Dot had not ridden through Pineview since the day she arrived, the day she met Will. Now she was returning, this time seated next to Thaddeus Taylor in his truck. And this time, instead of transporting a trunk of clothes, they carried more solemn cargo. For days she’d longed to see Will again, but not this way. She clung to the truck seat as she bumped along the dirt road, thinking that if she let go, she’d lose what was left of her sanity.

In the nightmare of the last day and a half, Bea Dot stood numbly by as the Taylor family dealt with the aftermath of Bea Dot’s botched delivery. Although Eliza and Terrence had tried to comfort her, she’d felt lost, numb, useless. Guilty. She’d let Ralph down. She’d let Netta down, and now Netta was dead. She couldn’t help Thaddeus and Eliza clean Netta’s body. All she could do was sit at the kitchen table and gaze at the newborn child who lay with baby Troy in a laundry basket.

Now she bumped along in a farmer’s truck, with her dear, dead cousin in the back, lying in a pine box Thaddeus nailed together three hours ago. She had lost count of how many times she cried herself to exhaustion. When she thought she’d run out of tears, her eyes watered again, as they did now with Thaddeus at the steering wheel beside her.

“I sure wish I had some words to make you feel better, Miss Bea Dot,” Thaddeus said gently, keeping his eyes on the road. “All I can say is I sure am sorry.”

“Thank you, Thaddeus,” she said before blowing her swollen nose, raw from constant swipes of the handkerchief. “There’s really nothing more to say. I just don’t know how I can face Ralph.” She stared out the window and watched the pine trees pass by her window.

“Now you ain’t blaming yourself, are you? ‘Cause there ain’t no call for that. You did everything you could to help Miss Netta. Sometimes these things happen.”

Thaddeus may have been right, but why did “these things” have to happen to her? She caught herself. They didn’t happen to her. They happened to Netta. Her eyes watered again.

After several miles, the truck drove into Pineview. Every building, every street looked the same as it did the first time she passed through town, the only difference being the ribbons on the doors in black, white, and gray. Here and there on a light pole, a public notice, its corners flapping in the cold breeze, warned citizens to go home if they were coughing or felt headaches. Every other store window bore a sign informing customers, “Closed due to flu.” Still, the sleepy Georgia town had not entirely shut down. A few masked people walked the streets, perhaps on their way to post a letter, buy medicine, or pick up a newspaper. Life did go on, in its limited way, in spite of the dreadful sickness that befell many Pineview citizens, and in spite of the tragedy in the Coolidge family.

The truck chugged down Pineview’s main street, then turned a corner, where it approached another, larger wagon, this one loaded not only with pine boxes, but also with a number of odd, long bundles wrapped in sheets. The wagon resembled Will Dunaway’s, but the driver wearing a gauze mask was stockier, heavier than Will. Thaddeus steered the truck slowly behind the wagon, so Bea Dot stared into her lap, refusing to acknowledge the sober cargo ahead of her.

Around a curve, the cemetery appeared. Thaddeus and Bea Dot followed the wagon through the gate and passed the long-established family plots with obelisks and angel statues, the occasional marble tree stump bearing the insignia of the Woodmen of the World. One plot bore the name of Coolidge, but the truck continued to the back of the cemetery, where the larger wagon pulled up to a long pit. Two dirty men wearing bandanas over their faces leaned on the handles of shovels. Bea Dot’s jaw dropped in horror, and she grabbed Thaddeus’s arm to alert him they had driven to the wrong place.

“I know how this looks, Miss Bea Dot,” he tried to placate her. “But it’s the only way. They ain’t got enough time or manpower to dig individual graves.”

Bea Dot gaped at Thaddeus in disbelief. “But Netta didn’t die of flu.” Somehow the thought of her cousin buried in the mass grave convicted her of a crime she didn’t commit.

“I know.” Thaddeus frowned and nodded. “But it don’t matter how somebody died. It’s the number of dead that’s the problem.”

The truck rolled to a stop, and Thaddeus engaged the brake as a haggard Ralph approached the truck. A white gauze mask dangled by its strings under his chin. He stopped two or three yards away.

“Hello, Bea Dot,” he said with sand paper in his voice. Except for the dark circles under his eyes, his skin was ghostly, his eyes bloodshot. He’d lost weight since she’d last seen him, and his dingy shirt hung off his hunched shoulders. The burden of influenza and his wife’s death physically pressed down on him.

Bea Dot struggled for comforting words. “I’m sorry for your loss” seemed trite and inappropriate, especially considering she was the cause of that loss. She climbed out of the truck, still searching for words as she stood on shaky legs. All she could muster was a feeble “Ralph, I’m so sorry.”

She burst into tears, resting her elbow on the truck window and laying her head on her arm. Her shoulders shook so hard that Thaddeus stepped up behind her and put his hands on them to settle her.

Ralph remained where he was. “I’m surprised to see you here. You shouldn’t be in town,” he said.

“I told her not to come,” Thaddeus said, “but she wouldn’t have it no other way.”

Bea Dot wiped her face with her hands, then dried them on her pants—Will’s mother’s pants, the only garment not stained with Netta’s blood.  She faced Ralph, her cheeks burning with shame, and said, “I hate myself for letting this happen.”

He shook his head sadly. “Don’t blame yourself. It’s my fault. I should have listened to her when she said she needed me. There’s nothing you could have done.”

Now tears fell from both their eyes. Bea Dot stepped toward Ralph to offer a comforting embrace, but he backed away and held up his hand.

Thinking he was too upset for a hug, Bea Dot nodded and mustered a smile. “You have a beautiful baby girl.”

He nodded, unable to speak through his tears.

“She’s with Eliza now,” Bea Dot told him, “and she’s doing just fine. I can’t wait for you to see her.”

Ralph pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. Poor Ralph. How heartbreaking it must be to lose his wife in childbirth and not even get to meet the child.

Finally, Ralph found his voice.

“Thank you, Bea Dot, for all you’ve done for Netta and the baby. I hate to ask you for more, but I’m still contagious. Can you and Eliza mind the baby until the flu breaks?”

“Of course,” she replied warmly. “I’d be honored.”

Ralph smiled weakly, again too choked up to speak.

“I know it’s not my decision,” Bea Dot said, “but would it be all right to name the baby after Netta?”

“Yes, that’s perfect. Thank you.” Ralph inhaled deeply, then let out a long, slow breath as he slid his handkerchief back into his pocket.

A minister approached, stopping a couple of yards away from Ralph, and said, “We should begin.”