to explain the sense of peace she felt there with the mountains gathered in close, cradling the open hillside, and the locusts and meadowlarks embroidering the stillness. And there was something deeper yet about the place that Dixie never could find words for, something about those worms and bugs and seeking roots of grass being the real gods of resurrection, turning death back into life. She found a sense of rightness in the cemetery, a feeling that maybe there wasn’t really anything wrong with death and dying, that it was just another part of living, not so very different. Even on this sad, sad day now, with Jamie Lee, the place brought comfort to her. If she had to leave him anywhere, Dixie was glad it would be here.
Only the immediate family came to the funeral. And Billy, of course, who was wearing that awful black polyester suit with the decorative red stitching that Dixie abhorred. He looked like a cheap Elvis Presley impersonator in it, but it was his only black suit – his only suit, period, if truth be known – and, as he was always pointing out, it still had a lot of wear left in it.
Dixie’s sister Leola came, but Earl Ray didn’t, so Dixie knew what Mama had been saying about Leola’s marriage was probably true. And Daddy came, Mama doggedly pushing his wheelchair up the grassy slope to the graveside. Dixie was surprised to see him. What with the way things were between them, she wouldn’t have thought much about it if he’d decided to stay home. Most likely Mama made him come. That was the big problem with being in a wheelchair. You were at the mercy of other folk. Even Daddy was.
The graveside service was very short. The small fibreglass coffin was lowered into the ground and the preacher bent to pick up a handful of soil. As he cast it into the open grave, an unexpected breeze played across the hillside, dispersing most of the dirt over the yellow prairie grass. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Dixie watched the blowing soil as it drifted away. A locust buzzed by and landed with an audible thunk on the lid of the coffin. The air was heavy with the scent of sagebrush. The mountains shimmered in the heat.
Since it was just family at the funeral, Mama made the meal for afterwards so that there wouldn’t be the expense of taking folks to the diner. There was cold fried chicken and potato salad, a relish tray with green onions, carrots, celery and some of those little sweet pickles Dixie liked so well. Even though she hadn’t been able to come, Aunt Ethel sent over a big batch of her special home-made rolls.
They ate outside in the shade of the house because the August heat had really set in by the time everyone got back from the cemetery. Dixie enjoyed meal. She’d expected to feel too sad, but it wasn’t like that at all. Everyone ended up relaxed and laughing. Even Daddy smiled, so that it felt almost like their family picnics in the old days, back before he’d had his accident.
Billy stepped back into his jeans, fastened them and did up his belt, clamping shut the big silver and copper buckle he’d won at the Abundance rodeo for staying on ‘the red-eyed roan’ till the buzzer sounded. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed to pull on his boots.
‘The funeral was good,’ Dixie said. ‘I think it went well.’
Billy nodded.
The heat in the small upstairs bedroom was absolutely suffocating, even with both gable-end windows pushed wide open to catch the slightest whiff of a late-afternoon breeze. Taking one of Billy’s folded handkerchiefs from the top of the dresser, Dixie wiped the sweat from her face. ‘I thought the service was nice, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I liked the bit where the preacher was saying how Jamie Lee was perfect in Jesus’ eyes, and all innocent, you know, and Jesus was going to welcome him with open arms.’
Billy was still sitting on his side of the bed. The suit was lying rumpled on the floor and he just stared at it, not making any move to put it away.
‘I reckon that’s true, don’t you?’ Dixie said. ‘I reckon Jesus don’t care one whit that Jamie Lee had Down’s. He just sees how perfect Jamie Lee really was.’
Billy didn’t answer.
‘Anyway, I liked for the preacher to say that.’
‘It cost almost a thousand dollars for him to say that,’ Billy replied morosely.
Dixie looked over. Billy had his forearms on his knees and his head hanging down so that all she could see was his rumpled hair. ‘You worrying about the money?’ she asked.
Billy didn’t answer.
This wasn’t the right time to be pointing out how much better it would have been if he’d taken the railroad job. Work at the sawmill would only last through August, and even if he saved every single penny he earned from it, Billy still wasn’t going to have enough money for more than a couple of horses by the end of it, even without Jamie Lee’s funeral to pay for. But at least it was a proper job and he wasn’t off cowboying.
Dixie reached a hand over to comfort him. ‘I already paid two hundred dollars towards it. And that man from the funeral home, he’s real nice. I told him you got steady work now, so he said we could give him the rest of the money in payments as long as we got it all paid off by the end of September. If I put the groceries on the credit card, we’ll be able to do that.’
Billy sighed.
Getting up, Dixie came around to his side of the bed. She sat down beside him and put her arms around him. ‘Don’t worry, Billy. We’ll manage.’
Chapter Five
Billy was late. The shift at the sawmill ended at six thirty and now it was almost a quarter of eight. Dixie took the casserole out of the oven and set it on top of the stove. Billy hadn’t said anything about being late home but you couldn’t always trust him to remember those kinds of things. More than likely he was making up the time he’d taken for Jamie Lee’s funeral. It never went down right to start a new job and then have time off right away.
Or maybe they were running a late shift. It being the middle of the summer, the daylight would last another hour. Like as not, Dixie reckoned, they’d be running the sawmill double time.
When eight thirty came, Dixie put the casserole in the refrigerator. She opened a second can of Coke and took a packet of potato chips with her to watch TV. She toyed with the idea of going over to Mama’s but decided against it. It was almost nine and too late to turn up without an explanation. Dixie didn’t want to admit she didn’t know where Billy was.
It was hard not to think about Jamie Lee at times like this. Nothing on TV could fill up her mind enough to push Jamie Lee out. It was the weight of him she missed most, as if her arms had a kind of memory of their own. She picked up a pillow and cuddled it against her but it wasn’t heavy enough. And it wasn’t alive. That’s what her arms yearned for: weight with life in it.
A quarter of ten and Dixie knew it couldn’t be a late shift keeping Billy out. Odds were, he was carousing. Usually he came home first and at least offered to take her with him, but maybe there had been something to celebrate at work and the boys had gone straight out.
She phoned Leola. Dixie didn’t say anything about Billy being missing. They got to talking about Earl Ray and what a piece of shit he was and that took Dixie’s mind off things at hand.
At half past midnight she flipped the TV off because she was sick of watching. She was sick of drinking Cokes too, and, most of all, sick of cuddling a lifeless pillow.
What if Billy had run off? That’s what Jamie Lee’s real daddy had done. One day he
