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Pine Cone, Alabama, was not a large town, but it was sizeable enough for two mortuaries, one catering to the white population and the other to the black. This was still only a few years after the great Civil Rights legislation and there were many institutions, many customs in the Deep South which remained segregated at this time. Congress had not even stated at the time that undertakers must accept the dead of any race, and so, as had been the custom in the past, corpses of different skin colours were kept separate.

The black and white morticians were not in direct competition since their respective customers were already slated to take the service of one or the other, and so it was not with any great envy that Washington Garver counted the number of white people who had died in Pine Cone in the last couple of weeks. The white undertaker had even had to come to him and purchase a casket in which to bury one victim but he had taken the merchandise away in the middle of the night - so that no one would know that the farmer was to be buried in a 'Negro' coffin.

The black community in Pine Cone did not number above a thousand persons, and that included babies who had not even yet been given a name. Washington Garver was therefore almost sure to know any corpse that he laid out and embalmed; that made even sadder a profession that was not known for its cheer.

The Silver Pine Funerary Home was not so grandiose as its name, but was merely a one-storey house of eight rooms that Washington Garver had set up business in. One room he had saved for himself, and another for his son Roosevelt, who assisted him in the business, but all the other areas of the house were given over to the preparation of the corpses, and the holding of services.

A large addition to the back of the house, adjacent to a screened driveway, was where the corpses were brought by the ambulance, by the police, by the family; and it was here that the bodies were drained of their blood, and injected with fluid that would preserve them through a funeral in July. This room was cluttered with tables and shelves holding chemicals, with surgical instruments that never wanted sterilisation, with racks of clothing, and boxes of makeup and perfumes, it was nearly always decorated with flowers - chrysanthemums and carnations mostly - smelling of florists' coolers.

Washington Garver was a large man with shining black skin and a wheezing voice; he stood at the foot of one of these embalming tables now. He was having some difficulty in pulling the shoes off the corpse of Audrey. The pool of blood and water in which she had lain had swollen her flesh and shrunk the leather.

A bright white lamp directly over the girl's body was the only illumination in the room; every crack in her skin, every speck of dried blood upon her damp dress was clearly visible, but all the edges and corners of the room and the things that were stored there were invisible in the surrounding darkness.

A young black man, not much more than eighteen, and looking much too young to be doing this sort of thing, was cutting through Audrey's wet dress with a pair of scissors. Her body was already stiff, and since the dress was ruined anyway, there didn't seem much point in trying to salvage it.

Washington Garver finally succeeded in getting the shoes off Audrey, and quickly he pulled off her socks as well; these he tossed into a large box that rested by the side of the door. They would be given to the black Baptist church ladies' group, who would discreetly mend and clean the items, and then distribute them through the community, never letting on that they had belonged to the homicidal baby-sitter.

Washington Garver spoke to his son, who was very carefully peeling the dress from the corpse. 'Real bad what this girl done, Roosevelt, and I feel bad for her daddy, real bad. He was in trouble, you 'member, 'bout killing somebody, and he got out of trouble. Audrey would've been in trouble too, if she'd have lived, but now Audrey's out of trouble forever. Ain't gone be no jury for her, Roosevelt.'

'Why you think she'd do it, do something like that?' Roosevelt Garver stared a moment into the face of the corpse, as if he thought he might read an answer to the question there.

'Just a accident, I reckon, Roosevelt, just a accident, but I still think it was real bad.'

'Well, Pa', said Roosevelt, 'it can't have been no accident, not putting a white baby in the washing machine, and then killing herself with a butcher knife
and
a electrical plug.'

'Had to be a accident', Washington reiterated. 'Black people don't kill white chil'ren. Black folks don't kill theirselves either. Black folks only kill their family and their friends. It's the white people that kill just anybody. Only the white people do that.' Washington Garver shook his head sadly over this melancholy reflection.

The doorbell rang, and Roosevelt looked up. 'You better get it. I probably smell of her, and if it's her father there, he'll smell her on me, and that'll make him feel bad.'

Washington nodded, and walked out of the room. While his father went to get the door, Roosevelt cut Audrey's slip in half, from the bottom to the top, and pulled it open. When he did so, a necklace slid off her breast and on to the floor at his feet. He glanced down at the floor but could not see it. He stooped to retrieve it, feeling all around beneath the table, and in a few seconds brought it up to the light.

It looked expensive, not the sort of tiling that a fifteen-year-old black girl would have when she was just about to commit murder. The chain was still hooked - and that was strange. If Audrey had been wearing it around her neck, then it would have had to come unhooked to fall off the way it did. And if she hadn't been wearing it around her neck, why was she keeping it in her dress like that? It was just possible that she had stolen it, Roosevelt thought.

After all, he considered, a girl who was capable of throwing a baby into a washing machine was certainly not above taking a piece of jewellery off a white woman's dresser. He stared at the necklace a moment longer, lifted his head at the sound of his father's footsteps, and then thrust the amulet into his pants pocket.

Washington Garver entered the embalming room. 'It was

Audrey's daddy', he said. 'I told him to sit out on the front porch till we're done. There wasn't no sense in letting him see her like

this.''

Roosevelt nodded his head in agreement.

Johnny Washington sat on the front porch of the Silver Pine Funerary Home, rocking disconsolately in a caneback chair. It was the middle of the evening, not much past nine o'clock, and Johnny had just brought over the choir robe in which his daughter was to be buried. He had seen Audrey's body when the ambulance brought it to the funeral home, and Johnny was disturbed that his daughter had appeared so ill-content in death. The dead ought to lie peaceably and calm. But even motionless as she was, Audrey appeared sullen and nervous. Johnny had asked that the coffin be closed during the service. But the undertaker replied, 'Not no need, Johnny. No marks on her 'cept the butcher knife cut on her wrist. We gone cross her hands, palm down, and not nobody gone see it, 'less they lift up her hand - and who's gone do that?'

The evening was warm, and bullfrogs in a ditch nearby croaked loudly, trying to drown out the crickets. Johnny Washington sat and rocked, and Hied to think of nothing at all. An old black man came down the sidewalk presently, saw Audrey's father there, and called out to him in a friendly voice.

'Hey, Johnny, what you doing here?'

Dolefully, Johnny replied, They got Audrey inside.'

'Oh, I'm sorry', said the old man, I'm just
sorry
for you, Johnny Washington.'

Shortly thereafter, Johnny Washington got up from his chair and descended the steps of the mortuary. On the sidewalk he met a young girl, not much older than Audrey had been. He would have passed on by, but she stopped him.

'It's Ruby, Mr Washington', she said. 'I heard about Audrey, and I just want to tell you how bad I feel about it, how
bad.'

Thank you. Ruby', said Johnny.

'We wasn't close, you know, Audrey and me, but that's no reason why I shouldn't feel bad for you, and that's no reason why I shouldn't go in that house right now and do her hair up right for the service.' Ruby was abeautician, and a capable one. She had been Roosevelt Garver's girlfriend for two years and so it was she who got all the business of fixing the hair of female corpses. It was not a task that she was particularly fond of, but Roosevelt always stayed by her and she was never alone with the body, so that it wasn't too bad. And she was well paid for her services.

Ruby was subdued when she spoke to Johnny Washington, but normally she was energetic and voluble. She stood at the top of the steps to the Silver Pine Funerary Home and watched the bereaved father disappear around the corner. Then she knocked on the door, and presently Roosevelt appeared. Instead of letting her into the hou se, he came out on to the porch, and led her to the swing at one end of it. He wanted to spend a little time with Ruby in the dark before they started in again on Audrey, readying her for the service the next day. He was about to tell Ruby just how tired he was, but she didn't give him the chance.

'I heard
ever'thing'
, she gasped, 'right thirty minutes after she done it, and 1 knew they'd be bringing her right here. Didn't wait for you to call me over. Lying in that blood and them soapsuds, gone be a real mess, and I know it's gone take me a hour and three-quarter to get her hair done. Audrey', she whispered, 'wouldn't come to me to get her hair done, she'd go 'cross the tracks to Marjorie, 'cause she's cheap. Her daddy's a cheap man, wouldn't give her no money, wouldn't hardly let her keep what she earned for herself over at the Taylors' - and I bet the Taylors are sorry now they ever gave that girl a dime, after what she did to that baby. Her daddy's a cheap man, and I bet she's only gone get a pine coffin out of him.'

'Cedar', Roosevelt sighed.

'Well', said Ruby, unabashed, 'I tell you, right no w I am
glad
she didn't come to my place, 'cause I don't want to do the hair of people what's gone go out and put white babies in washing machines.'

'If white people gone spend their money on washing machines', said Roosevelt sententiousiy, then that's what they

got to expect

Ruby laughed shrilly, then stopped short, and whispered:

'But I am
glad
that I'm gone get to do Audrey's hair, 'cause it will serve her right! Serve her right for going 'cross the tracks when I was right there 'cross the street from where she lived and if she would have walked ten steps out of her way she could have looked at me through my own picture window. She thought I wasn't good enough to do her hair, but now she don't have no choice. She gone look reai good in the church tomorrow.'

'Service gone be held here', said Roosevelt.

'Why? 'Cause she murdered that baby? Her daddy's not never gone be able to look a washing machine in the face again!'

Ruby's nonstop conversation wearied Roosevelt as much as working on a corpse, soheasked, 'You ready to go in, Ruby?'

'Your daddy through with her yet?'

'I think so', said Roosevelt.

'Don't you help him no more?' asked Ruby, with a little friendly sarcasm. 'Lazybones!'

'I'd rather sit out here with you.'

'Um-hmh', said Ruby with a doubting smile, but she was evidently pleased with the compliment.

'I got something for you, Ruby', said Roosevelt slyly.

'Ohhh?' she cried, 'what you got for me, Roosevelt?'

Roosevelt pulled the amulet from his pocket and dangled it before Ruby's eyes. It glinted softly in the distant light of a streetlamp.

'Where'd that come from?' said Ruby.

Roosevelt did not answer her.

'Lot of coloured people got to be dead in this town, 'fore you can afford something like that for me, Roosevelt Garver.'

'Didn't cost me nothing', said Roosevelt.

After apause, Ruby leaned over and whispered harshly in her boyfriend's ear, 'You got that thing off Audrey!'

Roosevelt nodded slowly.

Ruby drew back, and whistled loudly. 'And you are giving it to me?' she squealed.

Roosevelt knew Ruby. He smiled and nodded.

'I don't want it', said Ruby hastily.

Audrey got no use for it', said Roosevelt.

'Something like that', said Ruby, 'somebody's gone miss.'

'But they not gone know I got it', replied Roosevelt. 'Audrey's mama's dead. Buried her two years ago. It was after her funeral that Johnny Washington got in trouble, killing that man. Dying and killing runs in that family, looks like.'

'What 'bout Johnny Washington? He's gone know something is missing off his little girl's body, and he's gone know what it is, and he's gone know who took it!'

'He's not gone notice. He's tore up 'bout Audrey. I don't even think that the thing belonged to Audrey' - He swung it around by the chain - 'I think she
took it!'

Ruby whistled again.

'He may not even know about it. I don't think he does', continued Roosevelt. 'And even if he does, how's he gone know I got it? Or had it? 'Cause I'm gone give it to you.'

'I can't wear it', whispered Ruby,' 'cause people '11 see it, and then they'll ask me where I got it, and what am I gone say then, Roosevelt Garver?'