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WILD PLUM THICKET
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ing at the way the tight bodice molded her slenderness and the high, rounded curves of her breasts. The dress was pink as sunset and it was sprinkled all over with little white stars. It seemed to lend a soft glow to her face, wiping away the traces of death. We put black ribbed stockings on her but the dress was long and hid her feet completely. It was ruffled away above the knees.
"He'll never let her be laid out in that," Josie Caldwell said, and shook her head. "He'll have a conniption fit when he sees it.11
"She don't have a decent stitch we could put on her," Nell Parlen said. "Her clothes are in strings."
"Leave it to me," I told them. "I'll take care of it."
"You can have the job and welcome," Josie said. "I don't want any truck with him."
They brought the coffin in and we put her in it. I took her hair down and combed it over her shoulders, like she said, where it lay in ripples like a golden waterfall. She might have been asleep.
While the others were eating supper, Rildy Bannion and I went up on the hill and brought back sprays of wild plum bloom and laid them all around the coffin. We took time to bring back a little bunch of white wind-flowers to put in her hands, so that she would have a little bit of April to take with her ... to Harlie.
It was sundown when Ada Reese tiptoed in to say that Dan was coming to look at her. I was ready for him. I took a rag and started dusting the pansy flowered bowl and pitcher that -stood on the table, real unconcerned
like. I didn't look around when he came in.
"She looks right natural, don't you think?" I looked up to see him standing there staring, a look of horror on his tight face. For a minute there I thought he would choke on words, then he let loose.
"Where did that . . . that thing come from?" he thundered. "Who put that ... on her, diking her out like some strumpet and her lying there cold as stone. Who done it? I won't have my woman laid away in anything like that."
"Well," I said, "they got a pretty piece of black silk down at the store, only costs two dollars a yard. That would make a pretty burying gown."
"You think I'm made of money?" he stormed, and commenced stamping up and down the room. "I laid the other two out in calico and this 'uns no better."
I didn't raise my voice at all. "With print selling the way it is and all, it'll cost you at least a dollar and a half to make any kind of a dress and the pink's not bad. And it don't cost you nothing. Still and all, I guess you want to buy your wife's last dress, so you give me about three, four dollars and I'll go down to the store and see what I can get. If I have to pay more, I'll collect from you later."
That stopped him. He came bark to the coffin and stood there, and one forefinger curved up to scratch his chin.
"Course, burying clothes don't last long anyhow," I said. "It's just letting money rot, to buy new stuff, but I know how you feel. You want something nice for her and you're