Miss Fairy said one of them used to work in a hospital. Catherine Jury went to Soane's to see if Deek was there. He wasn't, but Dovey was. It was Dovey who went to Seawright's, then Fleetwood's. Went to every house in walking distance. The Moss DuPreses lived way way out. So did Nathan (who would have hitched Hard Goods and galloped to Jesus for help). So did Steward, the Pooles, the Sands and the rest. Finally they got Senior Pulliam to agree. But by the time he got his shoes tied it was too late. Miss Fairy rushed from your bedside to Pulliam's house and hollered through his door-too exhausted to knock, too angry to step inside-and said, 'You can take your shoes back off, Senior! Might as well get your preacher clothes ready so you'll be in time for the funeral!' Then she was gone from there. "When Daddy got back everybody was worried sick about what to do and how long the bodies could last before, father or no father, husband or no husband, you both had to go in the ground. But Daddy came back the second day. No time for a decent wake. So you were his first job. And a wonderful job he did too. You were beautiful. With the baby in the crook of your arm. You would have been so proud of him. "He doesn't blame anybody except himself for being at mortuary graduation. We have quarreled about it and he doesn't agree with me that those 8-rock men didn't want to go and bring a white into town; or else didn't want to drive out to a white's house begging for help; or else they just despised your pale skin so much they thought of reasons why they could not go. Daddy says more than one woman has died in childbirth and I say, who? So the mother without one died and the baby whom you planned to name Faustine, if a girl, or Richard, after Daddy's oldest brother, if a boy, died too. It was a girl, Mama. Faustine. My baby sister. We would have grown up together. Patricia and Faustine.
Too light, maybe, but together it would not have mattered to us.
We'd be a team. I have no aunts or uncles, remember, because all of Daddy's sisters and brothers died of what they called walking pneumonia but what must have been the 1919 influenza epidemic. So I married Billy Cato partly because he was beautiful, partly because he made me laugh, and partly (mostly?) because he had the midnight skin of the Catos and the Blackhorses, along with that Blackhorse feature of stick-straight hair. Like Soane's and Dovey's hair, and like Easter and Scout had. But he died, Billy did, and I took my lightish but not whiteish baby and moved back in your pretty little house with the mortuary and your headstone in back and have been drylongso teaching the children who call me Miss Best using Daddy's last name as everybody else does, so short was the time I was Pat Cato." The words had long ago covered the back of the page, so she was using fresh sheets to continue: "I may as well tell you that except for you and K.D.'s mother, nobody in Ruby has ever died. Please note I said in Ruby and they are real proud about that believing they are blessed and all because after 1953 anybody who died did it in Europe or Korea or someplace outside this town. Even Sweetie's children are still alive and God knows there is no reason they should be. Well, crazy as it sounds, I believe the claim of immortality is this town's rebuke against Daddy's mortuary business, since he has to wait for our killed-in-actions or somebody out at the Convent or an accident someplace else, otherwise his ambulance is never a hearse. (When Billy died there was nothing left to bury except some "effects," including a gold ring too twisted to poke a finger through.) They think Daddy deserves rebuke because he broke the blood rule first, and I wouldn't put it past them to refuse to die just to keep Daddy from success. As it turned out, war dead and accidents in other towns (Miss Fairy died on a trip back to Haven; Ace Flood died in the Demby hospital but was buried in Haven) were all the work Daddy has had and it is hardly enough. Neither is the ambulance business, so I work hard to convince him that the money the town pays me for teaching is just household money and he doesn't have to borrow anymore on his shares in Deek's bank and should forget gasoline stations and what all."
Leaning back in the chair, Pat folded her hands behind her head, wondering what was going to happen when more people got as old as Nathan or Lone. Then would her father's craft be required or would they do what they did on the way out of Louisiana? Bury them where they fell. Or were they right? Was death blocked from entering Ruby? Patricia was tired now and ready for sleep, but she couldn't let Delia go just yet.
"That was some ride, Mama, from Haven to here. You and me, Mama, among those skinny blue-black giants, neither they nor their wives staring at your long brown hair, your honey-speckled eyes. Did Daddy tell you, Don't worry your head; it was going to be all right? Remember how they needed you, used you to go into a store to get supplies or a can of milk while they parked around the corner? That was the only thing your skin was good for. Otherwise it bothered them. Reminded them of why Haven existed, of why a new town had to take its place. The one-drop law the whites made up was hard to live by if nobody could tell it was there. When we drove through a town, or when a sheriff's car was near, Daddy told us to get down, to lie on the floor of the car, because it would have been no use telling a stranger that you were colored and worse to say you were his wife. Did Soane or Dovey, new brides too, talk woman-talk with you? You thought you were pregnant again and so did they. So did you talk together about how you all felt? Make tea for hemorrhoids, give one another salt to lick or copper dirt to eat in secret? I craved baking soda when I carried Billie Delia. Did you when you carried me? Did the older women with children too advise you, like Aaron's wife, Sally, with four children already? What about Alice Pulliam-her husband wasn't a reverend yet but he had already heard the Call and decided to become one so they must have had some charitable, some godly feelings then when they were young. Did they make you welcome right away, or did they all wait for the Oven to be reassembled or, the following year, when the stream came back, baptize you just so they could speak to you directly, look you in the eyes?
"What did Daddy say to you at that AME Zion picnic? The one held for colored soldiers stationed at the base in Tennessee. How could either of you tell what the other was saying? He talking Louisiana, you speaking Tennessee. The music so different, the sound coming from a different part of the body. It must have been like hearing lyrics set to scores by two different composers. But when you made love he must have said I love you and you understood that and it was true, too, because I have seen the desperation in his eyes ever since-no matter what business venture he thinks up."