The Cotton Queen Read online

  Ned was two years older than me and being noticed by him felt like a very big deal. I’d never climbed a tree. The ones in our yard in California had been just sticks with leaves.

  “It’s too high,” I admitted.

  “I can lift you up,” he told me.

  I said okay and a minute later I was on the first big bough of the giant catalpa. I found a safe perch where I could see everything and didn’t feel like I was falling. I could see the roof of the house and the cotton fields beyond the barn and the dirt road that went out to the highway.

  “This is great!” I told Ned.

  He nodded. “It used to be a good place to hide,” he told me. “But now Grandma always looks here first.”

  I didn’t know why anyone would want to hide from Grandma, but I made no comment.

  “Look what I brought,” he said.

  He held out a shiny silver tool.

  “Take it.”

  I did. It was very heavy, a long piece of shiny metal with what looked like open mouths on each end. My daddy had a big box of tools that he carried with him to work. I was never allowed to play with them. But Ned was older than me, I thought maybe it was okay for him to have tools.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s a wrench.”

  “Wrench,” I repeated.

  “They use it to tighten up screws,” he said. “You just fit the head of the screw in here.” He showed me with his finger. “And then you turn it.”

  I nodded.

  “My daddy has some like this,” I told him.

  Ned nodded sagely. “I know,” he said. “It’s what killed him.”

  I glanced up at him sharply. I don’t remember one person saying to me, “Your father has died.” Nobody had told me, I’m sure of that. I’m not sure when my mother had been planning to. But Ned had beaten her to it.

  “My daddy’s not killed,” I told him.

  “Of course he is,” Ned said. “Why else would we all be here? Why else would your mama come to the farm without him? All the grown-ups are at his funeral right now. That’s what they do for dead people. They have a funeral. He’s dead all right. And this is what killed him. Uncle Carl told my dad. Just a common wrench.”

  I tried to hand it back to him.

  “It’s not true!”

  “Is so,” Ned insisted. “Somebody left it in the plane’s engine. When they revved it up, the thing went flying out and killed your dad just like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “You’re lying!” I screamed.

  He grabbed the wrench out of my hand and stuck it in his back pocket.

  “Am not.”

  I grabbed hold of the branch beside me and began wildly trying to kick Ned out of the tree.

  “Liar! Liar! Liar!” I screamed.

  My aunts heard the commotion and came running over.

  “What are you doing?” Aunt Grace scolded me. “Stop that right now, you’ll make him fall out of the tree.”

  I was crying by then. Crying because I was angry. Crying because I was scared.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Aunt Lurlene’s question was directed at Ned.

  “She’s...she’s just afraid to fall out of the tree,” he said. “I didn’t do nothing, she’s just a scaredy-cat.”

  “I’m not! I’m not!”

  I kicked him again and this time I caught him off guard and he did fall out of the tree. Fortunately we weren’t that high and Aunt Lurlene was right beneath us and caught him easily.

  When she did the wrench fell out of his back pocket and landed on the ground beside them. Both women gasped, as did the older children standing around.

  Aunt Lurlene grabbed the boy by the scruff of the neck.

  “Ned Hoffman, when your father gets home, he’s going to wear you out!”

  It was that instant that I knew it was true. It all made sense. Ned may have meant meanness, but he’d spoken in honesty. My father was dead.

  Suddenly I heard that terrible howl again. That awful sound that my mother had made. It had frightened me so much the day the men had come to the door. I could hear it again, only closer, louder, more intense than before.

  It was years later, looking back, before I realized that it must have been coming from my very own throat.

  BABS

  THOSE MONTHS after I moved back home to McKinney are vague and unclear in my mind. Tom. I still cannot think of him without the sense of anger and injustice I felt at his happy, optimistic life being cut so cruelly short. He had all the hopes and dreams and aspirations that buoy the rest of us. But he saw almost none of them come to pass. It was so unfair. When so many, to my mind, utterly useless people continue to live and thrive in the world, it was unconscionable for a higher power to strike Tom down. It made me furious.

  But I couldn’t think about that.

  Having lost my mother at an early age, I knew that I didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on what had happened or what might happen. I had to concentrate on the moment that was presenting itself and live through it in the best way that I could. Then there would be another moment and another. It was the only way to keep going.

  It wasn’t easy.

  Tom’s family was in conflict with me, I felt, about everything. The Hoffmans held strong opinions about proper behavior. They thought they knew what and how things should be done and felt no hesitation in doing them their way. The Air Force had taken Tom away from home. They had seen him only rarely in the last four years. But they still considered him to be their son, to be just like them. And somehow Laney and I were relegated to the position of latecomers. We were related to the family only by marriage. The concept that Tom belonged to me and my daughter, perhaps more than he belonged to them, never crossed anyone’s mind.

  When I arrived in McKinney, all the arrangements had been taken care of, the funeral had already been planned. The only thing my mother-in-law asked me was whether I had an appropriate dress for the service.

  “Tom wouldn’t want a funeral,” I explained to them. “He never liked them himself and he knew how hurtful they had been to me.”

  My protestation was whisked away as if I’d never made it.

  “There has to be a funeral,” Papa Hoffman said. “Everybody has a funeral.”

  “No, everybody doesn’t,” I told him. “I’m sure a graveside service would be plenty. A military guard and a few nice words from the pastor would be quite sufficient.”

  “Every Hoffman who has ever died in McKinney has had their funeral at the Lutheran church,” Mama Hoffman informed me. “We can’t do less for our Tom.”

  “I’m not asking you to do less,” I insisted. “I’m asking you to do different.”

  “It would look like we were ashamed of Tom,” his brother Carl said.

  “Anyone who would think something like that is beneath the notice of this family,” I told him.

  My words were useless. They wouldn’t hear of it.

  “Well, at least we don’t have to bury him in some anonymous nondescript cemetery in town,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You have your own cemetery, here on the farm,” I pointed out. “Tom took me out there, where your grandparents are buried.”

  “That place is full,” Papa Hoffman said. “We’re not burying anyone else out there.”

  “Why not?”

  “That little top of the hill with the tree was perfect for a graveyard,” Alfred, another brother, said. “But it’s full of graves. There’s no room for more.”

  “You could expand it,” I said. “There’s miles of cotton fields all around it.”

  “That’s good cotton ground,” Papa Hoffman said. “We don’t waste good ground for burials. He can be buried in town.”

  “No one ever goes to that old plot,” Mama Hoffman said.

  “I would,” I assured her.

  They held their ground, literally.

  But there was one point where I got my way. One detail that I wouldn’t give way o
n.

  “Laney will not be at this funeral.” I stated it unequivocally. There was no room for argument, but argue they did.

  “The child has to be at her father’s funeral,” Mama Hoffman said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  The entire Hoffman clan was staring at me as if I’d lost my mind.

  “Because Tom’s her father,” Skipper, the youngest of the Hoffmans answered. “I’d want to be there for my father.”

  “And you are an adult,” I pointed out. “Funerals can be traumatic for children. I don’t want Laney to have to go through that.”

  “Well, of course you don’t,” Mama Hoffman said. “None of us want that for her. None of us want it for ourselves. Do you think I get any pleasure out of burying my own son? I’d love to just pretend that this funeral is not happening, that my boy is not gone, that his future has not been wiped out. I could just go on about my life, like I didn’t know. That would be a whole lot easier. But I’ll go there and I’ll publicly mourn my son. It’s my duty out of respect for his life. Laney must do her duty, as well.”

  “Laney is four years old!” I told her.

  “But she’s a Hoffman,” Papa said. “Hoffmans aren’t sniveling whiners. We face what we’ve got to face.”

  “You don’t know what she’s facing,” I insisted. “None of you buried your parents when you were children.”

  The argument went on and on. But, I was not giving in. I began wearing them down.

  “Lurlene and I were going to keep the youngers home with us anyway,” Carl’s wife, Grace, said finally. “She’s about the same age and one more won’t be any trouble.”

  Neither of the elder Hoffmans liked the solution very much, but they were exhausted and could fight me no longer. I didn’t feel particularly victorious.

  “I don’t know how you could put Mama and Papa through that,” Tom’s sister Jean Anne whispered to me angrily as she was leaving. “They are burying their son tomorrow. Did you forget that? You’re always just thinking about yourself.”

  I believe that up until that moment I’d thought myself welcomed into the Hoffman family. But right there, I felt the welcome mat being rudely snatched from under me. If a family doesn’t allow the widow to think about herself and her child, then I’m not sure I know why anyone would even want a family.

  Clearly it was, “me and Laney against the world.”

  The funeral was everything that I hate. The family seated in the front row to be observed by all. Extended passages about fleeting life and eternal glory. Long mournful hymns by trembling sopranos. And, at the end, the procession of mourners to view the open casket. Thankfully the family went last.

  The corpse lay stiff and silent, his dress blues, stark against the white satin. There was not so much as a scratch on his cheek to mar his tan complexion. His face was in uncharacteristic repose, the laugh lines wiped away. He looked like my Tom, but not so much. I felt a strong sense of relief that he only resembled the man that I loved.

  It’s just a shell, I thought to myself. It’s the place where Tom lived, but it’s not Tom.

  That seemed good. It seemed like something positive that I could take away from the moment. Something that I could live with over the long run.

  Then my gaze drifted down to his hands. Hands do not have expression. They’re not susceptible to decoration. They are simply what they are, completely honest and without deception. Laying on his chest, the left atop the right, these were Tom’s hands. Those long fingers, callused and scarred, were too familiar to be denied away. I couldn’t maintain my distance from what was happening. This was my husband, the man that I loved, the father of my child. And he was lying in this box. In five more minutes they were going to close it up and I was never going to see him again.

  A great abyss of loss and longing and regret opened up before me, threatening the very ground I stood on. It would have been so easy, comforting, to simply cast myself in that pit. I knew I could not. Deliberately I stepped away from the casket, determined to keep myself composed and in control.

  I was apparently the only person who felt that way.

  The Hoffman family, most particularly the women, did not hold back at all. Mama threw herself across her son’s body wailing with such plaintive grief, I was forced to look away. I focused my attention on a stained-glass window. It was beautiful, all reds and blues and greens. The Good Shepherd descended a rocky landscape with the lost lamb slung around his shoulders.

  Tom’s sisters began to cry loudly along with their mother. My eyes narrowed as I carefully memorized every detail of the shepherd in stained glass. Noting how each tiny leaded piece worked together to create the total picture. I decided that it would be the image to remember. The window would be the memory of that day that I would keep closely. My Tom, not lifeless in a box, but carried away on the shoulders of a great protector.

  Whether it was two minutes or twenty minutes that passed, I truly will never know. But eventually the anguish of family mourning began to quiet. I glanced back to see each of the Hoffman women being held and comforted by husbands or brothers or sisters. None of them faced the closing of the box alone.

  Only me.

  “We’re ready,” I told the funeral director.

  The howling commenced again. Once more I turned my attention to the Good Shepherd window, until it was time to head to the black limousines parked outside.

  Tom’s brothers and brothers-in-law were all pallbearers. They rode together in a car that followed the hearse. I rode with Tom’s parents and his two sisters. They carried on a running conversation all the way to the cemetery.

  The new Memorial Gardens had only a few graves near the entrance. The area Tom was taken to was completely empty.

  “I went ahead and bought a whole section out here,” Papa Hoffman told me as we walked from the car. “Mama and I can be buried near Tom. And there’ll be room here beside him for you, too, of course.”

  “Ah...thank you,” I answered, a little uncertainly.

  “Of course, you might not want to be,” he admitted. “As young and pretty as you are, you’ll probably marry someone else.”

  I couldn’t think of any kind of response to that, so I simply ignored it.

  We gathered under a green awning, the flag-draped casket in front of us. Flowers in every color and description were crowded around. I couldn’t look at it. I fixed my gaze beyond the scene to the long row of cars parking along the driveway.

  I felt a hand slip into mine. I glanced over. It was Aunt Maxine. I almost shouted with joy as I hugged her. Uncle Warren was beside her. They were strong and solid and dear. I’m not sure I would have made it all the way to the end without them.

  When they handed me the folded flag and the minister had spoken the “amen” I feared that they might leave me alone with the Hoffmans again. Uncle Warren did manage to get away, but I grasped Aunt Maxine’s arm.

  “Can Laney and I stay with you,” I said.

  “What?”

  The question clearly surprised her and caught her off guard.

  “We’ll need a place to stay for a few days,” I explained. “I was hoping that we could stay with you.”

  “Well...ah...I...” She fumbled around for a long minute.

  “Just for a few days,” I pleaded. “Just until I figure out where to go and what to do.”

  “Well I... The Hoffmans have so much more room than we have, Babs,” she said. “We’ve got the boys doubled up in one bedroom and the twins in the other.”

  “Laney and I can sleep on a pallet in the living room,” I assured her.

  “I don’t know if that would be good,” Maxine said.

  “It’s just for a few days,” I assured her again. I leaned closer, whispering so that I wouldn’t be overheard. “I can’t go back to that house. Please Aunt Maxine. Don’t make me go back to that house.”

  Of course she didn’t.

  Neither she nor Uncle Warren could understand why I couldn’t just stay out at the
farm, but they wouldn’t force me. I drove from the cemetery with them. We picked up Laney and our suitcases and drove to their house. They put a camping cot in the twins’ room for Laney and suggested that I sleep on the living room couch.

  “This is just a temporary arrangement,” Uncle Warren said sternly.

  I nodded.

  “I know I need to get out on my own and I will,” I promised him.

  There is nothing like desperation to push people into unexpected choices.

  LANEY

  LIVING WITH Uncle Warren and Aunt Maxine was great. He seemed as constant and dependable as a rock. She was a font of sweetness and simply doted on me. My cousins were great, too. Renny and Pete were in high school. Both were tall and athletic. They didn’t pay that much attention to me, but Pete would sometimes give me rides on the handlebars of his bike. And Renny would give me nickels to buy candy. The twins, Joley and Janey, were twelve and they loved the idea of having a younger sister. It seemed like every day we played school and I was the student.

  On Sunday afternoons Uncle Warren would drive me out to the Hoffman farm. Most times, I’d get to play with Cheryl and Nicie. Even if neither of them were available, there were always grandkids around. The Hoffmans made a fuss over me, too. I knew I was special. Both because my daddy had died and because everybody was mad at my mother. I didn’t know what had happened, but I overheard plenty of snide comments made between my aunts and uncles.

  Ned told me directly.

  “Your mother is selfish, disrespectful and she never really loved your father.”

  I didn’t really know what the first two things meant, but I knew she did love my dad, so Ned was either lying or the Hoffmans were wrong. I never gave Ned much credit for honesty.

  But beyond the few worrisome undertones, my life was great. I had lots of cousins to play with, pretty clothes and plenty of attention.

  It didn’t make up for the fact that Daddy was gone forever, but it helped.

  So, it was unbelievable to me when, just as things were going so well, Babs comes home with the news that we’re moving to Dallas. Overnight the homey house filled with comfy furniture and happy people was replaced by a sad little duplex apartment. The entire neighborhood of green grass was exchanged for one small patch between the duplex’s two back porches, beyond that it was all concrete driveway.