Kate Mayfiled

A Longer Excerpt From THE UNDERTAKER’S WOMEN

Chapter 3

"I’m going to be gone for a little while this morning." My mother lectured.

"I want you to stay up here out of Belle’s way and don’t go downstairs. I don’t want you underfoot bothering your daddy."

"Okay."

"What?" She looked up from rummaging through her handbag.

"I mean, yes."

"Yes what?"

"Yes, mam."

"That’s better."

"What’s the matter with her?" I asked my father.

"She’s a little tense. She’s afraid she’ll have to cancel the bridge party if we get a body." My father stood at the kitchen counter drinking his second double Alka Seltzer of the day.

My mother was nervous that someone would die and therefore all of the food she prepared would go to waste. Bridge party food was like no other. Belle served trays of pale green congealed salads that wiggled on paper doilies. Chicken Surprise was a concoction of chicken, grapes, nuts and unidentifiable morsels that made my ears perk up and my eyes water when I stuck my finger in it for a taste. Belle moved with crackling sounds in a stiff, shiny black dress accented by a white collar and white-cuffed sleeves. She wore a fancy white apron with a ruffled border and I was uncomfortable to see her in it. The dress made her look like she worked for us and I didn’t like it.

"Why are you wearing a costume, Belle?"

"Not a costume. It’s jest a nicer dress cause your mother’s havin’ comp’ny."

I snuck around behind her and untied her apron. It delighted me to see it fall to the floor.

"I ain’t got time for this today. I’m gonna git a switch after you if you don’t behaves your self." She was perturbed.

"Who told you to wear that dress, Belle?"

"Nobody. I wears it myself. I owns it. Now run along and leave me be. Come back later and I’ll fix you some lunch. And takes them trousers off and puts on a dress. Ya hear?"

Just after noon, eleven hat-wearing, glove-toting ladies marched through the front entrance to the funeral home. My father held the door open for them.

"Afternoon Ellen Sue, Mrs. Appleton, Joyce." He nodded to each of them.

"Frank, how are you?" They each acknowledged him.

"You ladies are well turned out today, but I think there must be some misunderstanding. The luncheon is tomorrow, not today." He said amiably.

Their eyes froze in horror.

"But…I’m sure… isn’t today Tuesday?"

He burst into laughter.

"Oh, I’m just kidding you. You all go on upstairs, now."

"Well Frank, I swanee."

My father was a man who was comfortable around women. Flattered by the attention, they glowed as they climbed the stairs.

The ladies filled the dining room and remarked favourably of its transformation. They might even forget they were in a funeral home. The room was amply sized and felt spacious in spite of a previous tenant’s choice of toile wallpaper. A small, tiled fireplace and wooden mantelpiece, normally a room’s feature, was tucked away in a corner of the room. Starched white tablecloths and napkins offset the good china and silver laid out to perfection. Brand new packs of bridge cards, score pads and jewelled pencils sat at the ready on each of three card tables. The excitement of an afternoon filled with the promise of food, cards and gossip was almost unbearable.

I spied on the women from the kitchen; the doorway offered me a clear view of their manicured hands already fingering the glass bowls filled with Bridge Mix. The chatter began and would not cease for four hours. I listened to the sounds of the china clinking and the silver clanging in concert with the women’s voices while Belle swished around as efficiently as a worker bee. She got that food on the tables in a flash. The dining room began to smell like a restaurant, thick with food, perfume and wait – what was that scent that cut through? Mothballs.

"Belle, one of those ladies in there smells like moth balls. I think it’s Mrs. Appleton."

Belle gave me a rapid-fire piece of her mind.

"Hush up, that’s not polite. Maybe she does. I don’t cares if she smells like a pair of nasty ole boots. She mightn’t gets out much. This might be a real treat for her. You be nice, ya hear."

Duly chastised, the ladies were munching and nodding when I humbly entered their domain.

"Mmm. Delicious! Why Lily Tate, this is the best congealed salad I have ever had. Does it have a name?"

Everyone addressed my mother by both of her names. It’s something my father started. He addressed most people by their first and middle names as if to remind them of their whole selves.

"Oh, I don’t know what it’s called Joanna, but I’m happy to pass on the recipe. I got it out of Southern Living Classics."

"Well, I’m just gonna have to have that recipe."

"Colonel Leonidas L. Polk." Mrs. Appleton announced.

Mrs. Sally Appleton was a retired schoolteacher who regularly erupted with bits of information without explanation. She enjoyed being coaxed.

"What about Colonel Polk, Sally?" Miss Ellen Sue asked.

"Founder of The Progressive Farmer newspaper, 1886. Eventually became Southern Living Classics. Delicious recipe Lilly Tate."

My mother was genuinely grateful for this approval. Relief was the emotion, not pleasure. The ladder of acceptance in Jubilee was a tall one, and she had now managed to climb another rung. She could hold her head up with the best of the bridge-playing brigade.

Belle wouldn’t let me help serve, but allowed me to collect the empty plates. I sensed my mother holding her breath, waiting to see if I could manage the task without spilling anything on their dresses, or saying something wildly inappropriate. I just did what Belle told me to do. I smiled hugely at each of the ladies, as if I’d just received every item on a long Christmas list.

"May I take your plate, mam?" My cheeks were bursting with plumpness.

I avoided a near collision with Belle when she came out of the kitchen balancing a gigantic tray of cups and saucers and a steaming silver coffee pot.

Back in the kitchen I saw Belle wrapping up a plate in foil.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Mrs. Hargrove, she’s takin’ it home with her."

"She have a dog or something?"

"No, she keeps skin and bones on her by jest eatin’ half of everything. Saves money too."

"Is that polite Belle?"

"Not fer me to say. It’s jest the way she is. Your mamma says she does it ever where she goes."

After the ladies swooned over Belle’s pecan pie and stained the coffee cups with their lipstick the chattering dropped in volume upon settling into some serious bridge playing. I was no longer welcome in the dining room and Belle shooed me out of the kitchen, so I flew down the stairs to see what the men where up to.

Shortly after my father began to make a name for himself in Jubilee the funeral home became a social club during down time, a place to stop by for a Coca-Cola on a scorcher in the summer, or a cup of coffee in the winter after the men about town had exhausted the coffee shops.

"What are you all doing down here, Daddy?"

"We’re being entertained by Joe’s rifle skills."

Joe was a part-time worker who had recently spent some time in a military situation in which he was pretty shady about the details. He knew how to handle a rifle though. Joe marched for us, and spun his rifle around and barked out orders until my father told him to knock it off so as not to disturb the ladies upstairs.

"What’s the temperature upstairs?" My father asked me.

"They’re serious now. Mrs. Pike has her glasses on and Miss Ellen Sue took her shoes off." I told him.

"Okay then boys, let’s get a game going. Joe, you’re on guard duty."

To relieve the boredom during down time the fellows played checkers in the chapel in the back of the funeral home. The growing group of men favored a more inclusive game so my father bought a big round table to play Crazy 8’s. Just as I was getting the hang of Crazy 8’s, the men moved on to poker. Poker stuck. In the beginning they bet with matchsticks, but they quickly brought their nickels and dimes and played for money. Gambling made them feel guilty and they were afraid of gossip, so each time they played, one of the men was designated as the guard. The guard’s duty was to sit in the front office, keep an eye on the window and warn the men if anyone who wasn’t in the loop approached the funeral home. A widow might come by to pay on her bill, or a supplier might show up unannounced; it wouldn’t do for either of these types to hear the whooping and carrying on in the back.

There’s a certain rhythm to poker and nothing jarred it like having to answer the phone, so the guard fielded the calls and left the men undisturbed unless it was an ambulance or death call. Everyone gave Joe a pat on the back as we left him sitting forlornly at the desk.

There were usually about five men around the table. They were the kind of men who made their own schedule – an insurance salesman, a farmer, a man associated with one of the churches. I wasn’t surprised that one of God’s men gambled. Due to my father’s profession I knew just about all the preachers and church officials in the county. To me, they sounded like one type of man when they entered a church, and then gambled and cussed with the best of them behind private doors. I could only fathom that one side of these men must be an act.

Brother Sam looked at me when I entered the room with a mildly uncomfortable smile on his face. He called me over to him. While the rest of the men were settling in with the first hand of the day, he leaned toward me like he wanted to whisper something. I lent him my ear.

"I’d appreciate it young lady if you wouldn’t tell anyone that I sit at this table once and a while."

I looked at him like he was an idiot. I felt I could afford to be haughty; no one was paying attention to me.

"Don’t you think I know that? I’m not a snitch. You just need to concentrate on your cards and not worry about me, because you’ve got a pretty sorry hand." I whispered.

While the women ate gussied up chicken salad upstairs, I passed out peanuts and Cokes to the men at the poker table. I ran back and forth into a small room that housed a ginormous red Coca-Cola machine that was supposed to take money, but didn’t. My father rigged it somehow so that his guests enjoyed free flowing Cokes. And there was always a pot of coffee going.

My father shuffled quickly and dealt like lightening. I’d say it was intimidating. Every man at the table smoked; swirls of it left the table as the cigarettes hung down from their mouths. I emptied ashtrays. My father smoked too, but he never smelled of it. I don’t know how he managed that.

Visiting the funeral home in the middle of the afternoon was a haven for these men and they loved my father for hosting the games. They were always in a good mood. They joked with me and didn’t seem to mind having me around. I circled the men and learned to play poker standing by the shoulders of some pretty good players. There was always a slight edge to the atmosphere. The men threw their cards on the table with a sharp snap and they sent their nickels spinning.

They spoke in shorthand, like men who’ve lived closely with each other.

"Trip Harrison got a …"

"Yep, heard about that."

"Not like last time."

"Nope. But that wife of his."

"Yeah, got that right."

Then Joe came running into the room.

"Howard, your wife’s lookin’ for you."

"Tell her I’m not here."

Joe left, but ran back in again immediately.

In unison without looking up from their hands the men chimed.

"Goddamnit, he’s not here!"

The poker boys became a bit obsessive. They began to show up during nights of visitation, paid their respects, and then they set up a gurney outside in the back of the funeral home. On freezing cold nights they slipped outside and dealt a few hands with their stiff fingers, blowing body smoke out their nostrils.

Sometimes the games became so intense that no one would move from their seat and the men lost track of time. Someone would eventually turn up at the funeral home looking for their missing person and suddenly the cards disappeared, the coins were snatched up and the poker boys learned how to move in a way that I’d never seen grown men move before. They ducked out the back door headfirst.

I was glad my mother wasn’t playing poker today, because if there was anything worse for my father than losing, it was losing to my mother. She was quiet when she played, quiet and deadly. The only female in the room except me, she seemed to recede into the wallpaper and silently watched the men’s cards while they yapped on about the perfect weather for growing crops, or a business deal. Then she would wipe the floor with all of them. And when she leaned over the table and swept up the whole pot, my father would jump up from his chair and throw his cards down. We were heading in that direction today and she wasn’t even playing.

Today’s game was fervid and my father’s cards were stinkers - never a good thing. They’d been cutting the cards all afternoon, except for a few interruptions from wives and employers. I’d never seen so many nickels and dimes piled high in the middle of the table. One of the men reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of quarters. This was serious. My father wanted that pot badly. He was betting on two pair, Queens high. I pulled up a chair beside him remaining outside of the circle, but near enough to keep an eye on his hand. I stood and tiptoed around the table. I could see what was going to happen. I peeked over Howard’s shoulder; he held trip Aces. I moved back from the vortex and waited. Here it came. Howard laid down his cards. A manly gasp of admiration followed. My father threw his cards down, stood up quickly and angrily, and the table swelled into the air as his chair went flying across the room behind him. To the sound of a chorus of, "Look out!" and "Oh no!" coins rose up and spilled over the men’s chests, dropping into their laps.

He was a bad loser at cards. The men dispersed, avoiding any eye contact. They knew he would only be mad for a few minutes and they wanted to chuckle, but they dared not. These were men who were easy with each other, even in the uncomfortable areas of emotions. And I could see that they liked the undertaker and he them. When they talked about other men they referred to them as boys. "That ole boy Ralph, he’s never gonna a give you a damn nickel off of anything." But they would never refer to each other as boys; they were men.

The only other time I had seen him this mad was when he butted heads with the Old Clan.

*****

Liverpool. Frank and his new buddies didn’t think much of England. Food was terrible. Everything was called by a different name, like chemist for drugstore and soddy for excuse me. If you wanted to cuss at a Brit no one knew what you were talking about: ass was bum, balls were bollocks, bloody this and bloody that. And the weather was god-awful. Frank and his buddies stuck together and formed bonds, miserable in their homesickness. They wouldn’t have much time to complain. Before he knew it, he and thousands of other man-boys were christened as green infantry soldiers under the command of General Patton when they joined the race across France. He would look back in a matter of weeks and give his left bollock to be on England’s soil again.

By November of 1944, Company C was on the move, taking close to five tours a day. There were no more poker games, leisurely smokes, or baths. Then it got worse. He’d never felt so cold, and he couldn’t get warm. He’d never felt such hunger, and there was nothing to eat. Never felt so tired, but was too frightened to sleep. Frank made friends fast, but they were dying right in front of him even faster. He’d never seen death like this.

In a small village, whose name he’d never remember, he opened the door to a deserted house. As he stepped in, an 88MM shell fell on the porch and killed five of his men who followed him into the house. In an instant he felt completely lost, lost in this damned war and lost without his friends.

*****

Copyright © by Kate Mayfield 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted.