Read Online The Funeral Dress by Susan Gregg Gilmore - Free Book Online Page B

pulled herself to her feet. She hugged her breasts with both arms as she straightened. She imagined her father was well into his work, and she feared the preacher had already offered up a prayer, willing the souls of the newly departed to a better place, perhaps a place where the streets really were lined with gold and speckled with pearls.
    “Oh Mama, not Leona. Don’t take Leona. Do this one thing for me. Just this one thing. This one time. Please, Mama, please.”
    The baby wailed again.
    Nolan cut the engine, and the headlights dimmed. He stumbled out of the pickup and into the familiar morning gray. A knit cap, pulled down over his forehead, highlighted his bloodshot eyes. His cheeks were streaked with dirt and a cigarette hung limp between his lips. His boots were covered in mud and the hem of his pants was stained dark. Even in the dull morning light, Emmalee knew these markings on his clothes had not come from the orange clay varnishing the mountains of East Tennessee. The truck’s rusted door screamed as Nolan slammed it shut, and a mourning dove’s first attempts to greet the day fell silent.
    Emmalee’s long legs had grown stiff and numb. She gripped the post at the edge of the house to steady herself as she stood, holding the baby tight in her other arm. She met her father’s stare head on. “Who was it?” she asked.
    Nolan took a drag on the cigarette as he pinched it between his fingers. He plucked an empty beer can from his coat pocket and tossed it on the ground behind him, turned his mouth up to the sky, and blew a long stream of white smoke in the air. He pulled the cigarette back to his lips and took another drag.
    “Nolan, tell me who.”
    He stumbled past his daughter, smoke spilling from his mouth and nostrils. “The Lanes.”
    The woods grew dark, and Emmalee’s body slid down onto the packed dirt, her long legs tucked underneath her. The baby rocked her head back and forth, rooting for her mother’s nipple. Kelly Faye squirmed and fussed while Nolan rambled on about shattered bodies, not noticing or caring his daughter was slumped on the ground.
    “It was bad, girl. The woman done flew right out of the truck. Found her maybe a hundred feet on down the mountain,” Nolan said. He flicked the stub of the cigarette to the ground. “Shit, must’ve been some more ride. I done thought we’d be looking for pieces here and there, but the body held together pretty damn good. She turned out better than her husband, that’s for damn sure. He was done near crushed flat as a pancake.”
    Emmalee lifted her head. She tried to speak, but her chin dropped to her chest. The baby screamed fiercer. Nolan paid them no mind. His footsteps were clumsy and his speech slurred as he stumbled inside the house.
    “Where’d you put my bottle? Where’s my damn bottle, girl?” he asked, not waiting for an answer before his tone grew rough and anxious. “I ain’t in the mood for a damn egg hunt. I told you quit hiding my stuff.”
    Any other day, Emmalee would have understood her father’s desperation to drown these gruesome pictures in a bottle of alcohol. Any other day, she might have offered it to him, even if she knew his talk and temper would swell with every sip.
    “Damn it, girl, I mean it. Quit messing with me.” He staggered out the door and knelt low behind his daughter, his sour breath washing over the back of her neck and his fist growing tight around her arm. “Get my stuff,” he said.
    “I don’t keep up with your bottle no more. Got enough to care for if you ain’t noticed,” Emmalee said, her cheek resting on her baby’s head.
    “Shit. I see what you care for. Whoring around. Dropping those pants for any boy come your way. Now I got a baby to feed as if your butt ain’t enough.”
    “Shut up, Nolan. I ain’t no whore. And you don’t feed me nothing.” Emmalee leaned away from her father, trying to scramble to her feet and escape his words and foul stench.
    “Don’t know the