“I’m glad!” Then slowly, as she reads the whole article, her brown face turns ashen.

“They’ll think Thomas did it! He never would. He’s a Christian. He might mouth off some, but he’s told me before he doesn’t believe in an eye for an eye.” She reads the story for a second time, and I read over her shoulder.

Dust to Dust

“Here, let me fix you.” I tie Star to a fence and straighten Bitsy’s collar. I’m wearing my best dark dress, a navy blue flowered print, with my hair done up high. She wears her black one with white lace on the sleeves and collar and looks like a young Mrs. Potts. We both step out of our long pants and put on our good shoes, then dust off our faces with a cool rag Bitsy brought in a basket. I link my arm through hers to give her support, and we head for the front of the little white chapel.

“Wow, look how many people!” I whisper. I’m surprised by the number of buggies and vehicles parked along the road and on the wide lawn next to the cemetery. There’s also a hearse with purple-fringed curtains and Sheriff Hardman’s black roadster with POLICE stenciled in white on the side.

We enter through the double oak doors and are escorted by an usher in a dark mourning coat to the first pew, directly in front of the wooden casket. I’m relieved to see Thomas already sitting there, wearing a simple white shirt open at the throat. He rises and hugs his younger sister tight, rivulets of tears running down his strong face. Bitsy sobs too. We are all crying while Mildred Miller, the organist, plays “Nearer, My God, to Thee” without even looking at the sheet music.

In between hymns I scan the chapel. Mrs. Potts is there, and a score of others I don’t recognize. Some of them must be from the A.M.E. Church in Liberty. There are only three other white people in the chapel, and I’m shocked to see Katherine MacIntosh, sitting with a man in his sixties, probably her father. She must have made it to Baltimore, stayed a few days, and come right back when she heard about William’s death. Daniel Hester is here too, sitting alone in the back pew.

Since I’ve never been to a Negro funeral service, I don’t know what to expect, but other than the singing it’s the same as any other funeral I’ve ever been to, and there have been several, all for women, I realize . . . my grandmother, my mother, and then Mrs. Kelly.

My father’s body was lost in Lake Michigan. Lawrence’s scorched body, after it was removed from the mangled train, was returned to his family in Iowa. Ruben, with the other unclaimed miners’ bodies, was buried near Blair Mountain. I’ve always thought I’d go see his grave someday, but it’s never happened. Probably because I’ve been afraid that if I went to southern West Virginia someone would recognize me, and also because I imagine I would see Ruben’s blood on the ground, a brown stain, all that’s left.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” Reverend Miller intones. Today I cry for them all, Mary Proudfoot and those others, long dead. I do not cry for William MacIntosh, although maybe I should. Surely he was once a decent fellow. Katherine told me how carefully he had tended the roses, the azaleas, and the butterfly bushes in front of their home.

When the service is over and their mother’s coffin is covered with earth, Thomas pulls Bitsy into the shade of a spreading black walnut tree and confers with her earnestly. Not wanting to intrude, I stroll over to speak to Katherine, Daniel Hester, and the other white man.

“This is my uncle, Reverend Martin . . . Patience Murphy, my midwife,” Katherine introduces me. Her eyes are dull and dry, so I can’t tell how she taking her husband’s death. Does she believe it was suicide . . . or murder? Does she believe Thomas would have done it? Does she even care? I study her face, a mask I can’t read.

No matter how difficult their relationship, William was her lover once, her friend. They made two babies together, and she knew his most intimate side. What she probably mourns is not the angry, violent, self-absorbed husband who felt himself a failure but the gentle man who loved flowers.

“Are you okay?” I whisper to Katherine as Hester and Martin gaze over the fields and comment on the crops and the drought. I pull on the sleeve of her soft gray linen dress and lead her to a bench at the side of the church. “Are you okay? It must be hard. Such a shock about William.”

Katherine looks down at her carefully manicured, ladylike white hands and twists a ring that I notice is not her wedding ring. She surprises me when she answers. “I’m not shocked. He was a good man once, years ago when we courted . . .” She shakes her head slowly. “But it wasn’t a happy marriage. You know that. He’d threatened suicide before, more than once . . . every time I tried to leave.

“I’d only been back in Baltimore for a few hours before he started calling. He was drunk, begging me to return. Nothing had changed. ‘Come back,’ he blubbered over the phone . . . over and over. ‘You belong to me. I can’t live without you.’ It probably sounds terrible, but I’m not even sad . . . It’s like a great weight is lifted off me.” She looks me in the eye, waiting for a reaction, a woman compressed into steel.

I return her gaze, my mouth pressed tight. “You had to leave. You had to leave him for the baby’s sake, and for your own. You can’t let a man manipulate you that way . . . There was an article in the newspaper calling William’s death suspicious. Did you see it?”

She waves it away as if batting flies. “Oh, that!”

“You don’t think there could have been foul play?”

“Never. William had guns all over the house. He would have blasted any intruder.”

When I glance up, Bitsy is sleepwalking across the churchyard. Far up the hill, behind the small chapel, moving through the green oak and maple, a white shirt disappears. Thomas, probably because of Sheriff Hardman’s presence, is taking the back way home.

Katherine stands up and embraces Bitsy. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. So sorry. Your mother was a saint. If it weren’t for her, I might have been killed the night I left. There will never be anyone like her.”

Bitsy blows her nose. You can tell she’s running out of tears. “Thank you, Katherine. You and the baby meant a lot to Ma. She always worried after you . . .”

Out of the corner of my eye I see Mrs. Potts moving carefully across the lawn with her cane. “There’s a reception at the Millers’,” she announces. Her eyes sweep the whole group but end with me. I take a deep breath, knowing I should be supportive of Bitsy, but I’m exhausted and just want to go home. Bitsy lets me off easy.