Lucky Strikes

 

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In memory of Marjorie Braman

 

Chapter

ONE

Mama died hard, you should know that.

Nearly died alone, too. Now, most nights, she'd so much as groan, I'd come running, but this was late March, ten days shy of Easter and spring barely a thought, and a dream come and snatched me. I was the princess of a mountain people, and they come right into my bedchamber and asked if I could tame the dragon that was cleaning its teeth with people's bones, and I said sure. The dragon was living at the bottom of a cavern, half in water, and when it looked up with its yellow-purple eyes, I said,
You got some nerve
. That was all it took! The thing slunk away, its spiky tail dragging after. And the mountain people, they started cheering for me, calling for me by name, and that was the rub 'cause it took me a long time to hear the voice on the other side of theirs. Calling my name, too, only drawing it out as far as it could be drawn.

“Melia … Meeeelia…”

I scrambled out of bed, threw open the curtain. Mama was rolled over on her side, staring at me.

“What's wrong?” I said.

“I'm so sorry.”

I set down next to her, ran my hand on her brow. It was cold like a pumpkin.

“Sorry for what?” I said.

“Your daddy,” she said.

Her eyes were white and sweaty.

“What about him?” I said.

“He's…” Her fingers were bent like talons. “Your daddy, he's…”

She never finished, but I set there just in case she did. Then I felt something. I felt the bed settle.

You know how a mattress sinks under you when someone climbs in? Only there was no one else there climbing in. Just us two.

I don't know why, but my hand went straight to her hair. And I could feel, beneath the hair, her whole scalp crackling. I think now maybe that was her soul flying off. I'm nearly sure of it because when I looked at the rest of her—her face, her hands—her bare white legs—her eyes—she was empty.

Gone.
That's what they always say about dead folks when they don't want to say
dead
. But that's how it was with Mama. Whatever'd been there a second ago, making her eyelids twitch and her breath hitch … well, somehow or other it'd slipped away when I wasn't looking.
Gone.

I rolled her onto her back. Settled her head on her pillow. Combed her hair one last time. Then I left the room.

Janey and Earle was still asleep when I slipped back into bed. I laid there all night, not an ounce of sleep in me now, trying to figure out how to tell them. At dawn, I shook them awake, same as usual. I said, “Guess what? No school today.”

Which, looking back, was about the worst way I could've gone about it. 'Cause they got crazy excited.
Is it a holiday?
Is tomorrow a holiday?
Are we going to miss school all the way clear to Easter?

I didn't say anything, but there must have been something in my face because Janey spoke up.

“It's Mama, isn't it?”

She's funny that way. Such an odd, dreamy thing you think she's not even part of the world, only she's more in it than anyone.

Well, Earle's face started to crumple, and then the rest of him crumpled, too. Janey set by the stove, wailing and clawing at her head. I tried to think of all the things a grown-up'd say.
She's with God now.
…
She's gone to a better place.
…
We'll meet her on the other side
. They just sounded sour on my tongue. I couldn't even say “She's at peace,”'cause when I thought back on how she'd looked—in that very, very last moment—there weren't a lick of peace in her.

“You got five more minutes to cry,” I said. “Ten minutes to eat your oatmeal. Then we got work to do.”

I wrapped Mama in her two bedsheets, and me and Earle carried her to the truck. Considering how thin she was, she weighed quite a bit. We laid her in the flatbed, and Earle and Janey climbed in the front with me, and we drove out to the hill overlooking Jenkins Orchard. This was Mama's favorite spot. Back when she was healthy, we'd come here every Sunday afternoon, rain or shine, with a basket of chicken and corn bread and dried-apple stack cake, and we'd sit and watch the sun set over Mr. Jenkins's silo.

This time, I drove the truck right up to the edge, so close I could hear Earle suck in his breath. We got out, and we were staring down at a hole. Six feet long, three wide, another three or four deep.

“It's magic,” said Earle.

“Ain't nothing magic about it,” I said. “I dug it myself.”

Next to the hole was a pile of dirt, neat as I could make it. Janey tapped it with her shoe. “Must've taken you a month of Sundays, Melia.”

“Took me five.”

I never told them, but when Mama took sick, I kept coming out here every week. On account of it was just easier to think. After a time, I started bringing a shovel. If you'd asked me what I was going to do with it, I couldn't have told you. Even when I was digging, I never stopped and thought,
This is where we'll put Mama
.

On that fifth Sunday, I looked down, and sure enough, there was a big old hole and but one thing to do with it.

“Here, Earle. Give me a hand.”

The boy give a little shudder, but he tucked his head down and set to work. Together we lifted Mama out of the flatbed and laid her in the ground. I pulled the top sheet off her face, and the three of us, we stood there on the lip of the grave, just looking. I don't know for how long. Ten minutes, an hour. All the time, I was thinking it was a mistake. She was taking a breather. Any second, she'd jump up and swear about ten thousand oaths (Mama was gifted that way) and ask us what the hell we were doing.

But she didn't do none of that. She didn't move a grain.

I knelt down by the hole and reached in until I could touch her forehead. Damn, but it was cold.

“She needs a coffin,” said Earle.

“We can't afford one.”

“Then we ought to say something.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know, something holy.”

“Well, don't look at me,” I said. “When was the last time you saw me in church?”

“I been to Sunday school,” said Janey.

“Then give it your best crack,” I said.

She tugged on her collar and cast her eyes off.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down. I will fear no evil. Blessed are the poor. Do unto others as you would have them do. He who is without sin. For thine is the kingdom. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. The Lord is my shepherd.…”

She kept going for a good spell, circling, circling. I didn't care. I was looking down into the valley, past the Jenkinses' silo, past the Hammonds' horse farm, all the way to the mountains at the other side. The dogwoods weren't out yet, but the tulip magnolias were just starting. I could hear bees and mockingbirds. A handsaw pushing through green wood. I could see Mrs. Jenkins carrying eggs in her apron and someone way out in the distance cutting hay. And a Studebaker crawling down the mountain road, with a little puff of smoke following. Stupid me, thinking the world would stop just 'cause of us.

I took one last look, then bent down and pulled the sheet over Mama's face.

“Reckon we better fill it up,” I said.

Well, they didn't have the heart for it, so I took up the shovel myself. It was a queer business. I couldn't stop thinking she was
feeling
every little clod and pebble. It got so I'd have to stop every couple of minutes and wait. Listen for some faint little cry.
Wait, stop.
But there was nothing.

Sweat was coming off every part of me. I threw down the shovel and set there at the edge of the grave. From out of the woods came Janey, carrying a mess of wildflowers. Bedstraw and golden ragwort and wild phlox.

“They look nice,” I allowed.

Earle come right after. He'd gone and whittled a couple of sticks and tied them into a cross with a strip of bark.

“Most fitting,” I said.

We took some time arranging everything. We never did get it perfect. The dirt was loose, so the cross couldn't help but tilt a little, and the wind took a good share of the phlox blossoms.

“Well, now,” I said. “Time to say good-bye.”

Janey spoke first. Her voice was clenched like a fist. “Bye, Mama.”

Earle, he spoke straight to the ground. “Bye.”

I didn't say a thing.

Driving back home, I kept glancing at the other two. Janey was quiet and still. Earle's big jaw was working away, like he was chewing on turkey gristle, and his hands made fists and then unmade them.

“What?” I said.

“We done it all wrong, that's what.”

“How do you figure?”

“She should've been buried at church.”

“She wouldn't have wanted that. You know that.”

“There should've been a preacher,” he said. “And hymn singing. That's how God likes it.”

“God don't care.”

“He does, too. He's going to be pissed off. He ain't gonna let Mama in.”

“Then the hell with him,” I said. “After all he put her through.”

Earle didn't answer.

“Listen now,” I said. “Whatever we done wrong with the burying, that ain't on Mama's account.”

He looked out the window. “What the hell do
you
know?”

By then we were pulling into the station. I saw a Cadillac V-16 two-door coupe parked by the pump. The driver was standing alongside it, his foot on the running board, a cigarette hanging off his lip.

“Closed!” I called out.

He straightened up, tossed his butt on the ground. Give me a dumbass smile.

“Can't you read?” I said. “We're closed.”

“So you are,” he said, squinting at the sign in the window. “But now you're not.”

“We're closed all day.”