Read Online The Queen of Sleepy Eye by Patti Hill - Free Book Online

the line.
    Mrs. Clancy’s dentures clacked as she whispered in my ear. “Clancy and Sons Funeral Home, serving the North Fork Valley since 1920.”
    â€œGeorgia, is that you?” the man asked.
    â€œNo, this is Amy. Would you like to talk to Mrs. Clancy?”
    Mrs. Clancy shook her head sharply and pushed a notepad and pen across the desk.
    I repeated Mrs. Clancy’s prompt and added, “How may I help you?”
    â€œThere’s not much to be done now,” the man said, “but to bury her.”
    My breakfast burned the back of my throat. “Oh.”
    â€œWho’s calling?” Mrs. Clancy asked.
    â€œMay I ask who’s calling?”
    Once Henry T. Bigelow hit his conversational stride, no detail seemed too mundane or intimate to exclude about his sister’s death. “We found her just after we’d come back from moving the irrigation pipes up t’ the mesa, you know. She was feeling poorly most of last week, complained about feeling tired, spent a lot of time in the outhouse, she did. Other than that, whatever was bothering her didn’t seem to slow her down none. Bert says she was stronger than most men though she weren’t much taller than my belt buckle. But she was getting old, that’s for sure.”
    Mrs. Clancy put her cheek to mine to listen in. She smelled sour like she hadn’t taken a bath in a few days. Old people and twelve-year-old boys couldn’t smell themselves coming or going. I breathed through my mouth.
    The man continued his reverie. “We knowed something was wrong when we didn’t smell no bacon from the kitchen. It wasn’tlike her, though, to leave good meat on the counter where the flies could get to it. Bert swore up and down, but he wrapped the bacon up neatlike ’cause that’s how Mildred always done it. Then he goes stomping off ’cause he says we’ll be needing some more ice here pretty quick. Bringing the ice up from the ice house, that was Mildred’s job. She done got the cows milked and the cream skimmed before she lay down in her daffodil bed to die.”
    Mrs. Clancy took the phone. “Henry T. Bigelow, you old coot.” She shook her finger at the receiver. “Don’t be rattling off a bunch of nonsense. The sooner we get Mildred in here, the better she’ll look come viewing day.”
    Whatever Henry T. Bigelow said made Mrs. Clancy roll her eyes. “Suit yourself, Henry, but you wrap her up nice. I won’t be picking manure out of her hair. And make sure she doesn’t roll around that trailer. Do you hear me, you old fool?”
    * * *
    THE DOORBELL RANG. Mom and I huddled behind her bedroom door.
    Mrs. Clancy bellowed, “What are you doing? Not through the kitchen. For heaven’s sake, we have a ramp out back.”
    â€œThe trapdoor’s in the hall, ain’t it, Georgie?” asked a male voice I recognized as Mr. Bigelow.
    â€œHenry, people stopped calling me Georgie fifty years ago.”
    â€œI think it’s been more like sixty, don’t you, Bert?”
    â€œBring her in then, you old fool.”
    Men shuffled and grunted in the hall, and the floor groaned under their weight. One uttered an epitaph no one would dare chisel into a headstone. Mrs. Clancy called for me, but Mom held me tightly.
    â€œNot yet, fofa . Not yet. Stay here.”
    â€œAre you happy, Henry?” asked Mrs. Clancy.
    â€œI’d heard about the chute, but I never believed it. Thanks, Georgie, that settles my mind a bit.”
    â€œNow get out of here. I’ve got work to do.”
    Outside, sparrows chirped and bicycle tires clattered over gravel. “Mom, I’ll be okay. They have her in the basement. I don’t want to make Mrs. Clancy mad.”
    Mom crossed herself and glanced toward heaven. “I must be crazy. Blessed Mary, what was I thinking? A funeral home? Dead people in the basement? I never should have brought you here,