When the Morning Comes

The air in the barn was heavy with humidity. The stalls were pitch black, but his lantern cast a perfect circle of light on his work space. Otis stopped sawing a board to wipe the dust from his forehead. It was a good thing Mrs. Dixon passed away late of an evening.  He could work during the cooler night and be finished with the casket before the sun came up, bringing the August heat with it. Even in the higher altitudes of western Virginia, summer days would swelter.

He smoothed a hand over the pine board, feeling the rough edge that needed a good sanding. It was the only pine he could get his hands on quickly, with so much casket wood gone for dead soldiers. The war was over, but Union or Confederate, it didn’t matter to him. Dead was dead, and the war meant that young lives were wasted, life was disrupted. He’d have to take down more trees to replace the wood he was using for this casket and fill the order for cabinets he’d promised to deliver. 

When the layer-out crossed the holler to fetch him, she told him to hurry. “She’s dressed and ready. This one’s not going to weather well, Undertaker. Better seal ‘er up in the box as soon as you can.”

Once he got directions to the farm, he didn’t ask any questions, didn’t want to know about the family. He threw supplies in his wagon, took the long, rutted road to the property and set to work without so much as stopping by their house. Under the dark of the moon, the katydids and black field crickets chirped in a steady drone of noise.

The sing-song sawing through the wood and the repetitive motion of the sanding soothed him, as always. Words ran through his head. Don’t care about the war. Don’t care about the dead. Don’t care about the blood. Don’t care about the loss. Don’t care, don’t care, don’t care.

He startled when he saw a movement at the edge of the circle of lantern light, and he stopped mid-stroke. She was young, maybe eight or nine years old, with long, dark hair in two pigtails down her back. She wrapped her arms around herself, hugging the folds of her long cotton nightdress to her.

He curled his lip and barked at her. “Git back to bed. What’re you doin’ out here in the middle of the night?”

She answered him with a question. “Are you here to bury my mama?”

He turned back to his work and started sawing again without saying a word.

She took a small step closer and touched the box of wax lying on the floor. “I know what this is for. The lady who dressed my mama told me. You’ll put my mama in a wooden box and then seal it up. And everyone will bring pretty flowers to put around the box.”

A bitter response rose up in him out of habit. He wanted to tell her that the wax and black, tarry bitumen would seal up the wood so her mama’s bodily juices wouldn’t leak out while they were waiting to bury her. And he wanted to tell her that the flowers were there mostly to cover up the odor of a rotting corpse. And he wanted to tell her he wouldn’t even consider embalming her mama because they were dirt poor. So poor that he was throwing together a pine box in the wee hours of the morning and trying to finish before sunrise so they could hurry up and bury her that day. But he didn’t say any of that. Instead, he kept sawing, wordlessly.

“I’m Lily. What is your name?”

He was sure it was the distraction of her touching the wax and her chattering on that made him catch his finger with the edge of the saw blade. The blade sliced through, causing him to curse and drop the saw as he grabbed his bleeding hand.

Quick as a whip, Lily turned and ran, leaving him to wonder where he could find cloth to stop the bleeding. He was considering ripping his shirt when Lily came back holding a medical kit. She dropped to the ground in front of him, opened the kit and pulled out a bandage roll and scissors. He stared as she deftly cut the bandage, took out a small bottle and poured what was undoubtedly whiskey over his hand. She then tied off the bandage as well as any war nurse he’d ever seen. When she was done, she sat back on her heels and said, “I think you’ll be ok. It wasn’t too deep.”

He sat down on a nearby woodpile and looked at his hand, stunned at how quickly it had happened. Lily picked up her conversation, right where she’d left off. “What’s your name?”

“Otis.”

“Well, hey, Mister Otis. Did you go off to the war? You must have. Where’d ya go? What battalion were you with? My daddy and all of my brothers went, though Mama said it weren’t none of our business. Daddy said we had to. He said if we didn’t go to war, the war would come to us.”

Otis looked at her small face, with its open, friendly stare, waiting for him to respond. “It weren’t none of our business, none of us,” he said. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wood pile. “I went to war, and so did my boys and so did my neighbors. I’ve seen more dead and dying than you could ever imagine.”

Though he was talking more to himself than to her, she tilted her head and paused. She rose slowly to her feet and reached out for his good hand. She tugged and he stood up. She led him out of the barn, just as the rosy edge of dawn was playing along the tree tops, and she kept talking as they walked up and over the hill behind the barn. “I know what it’s like to be around dyin’ people, Mister Otis. Mama said I’m good with ‘em. She said I have a good sense for what they need and how to treat ‘em. I can nurse just about anybody. And I can hold their hand while they’re dyin’, and listen to their memories and wishes and dreams.”

They crested the hill and stood looking down at a clearing, with the sun breaking over the trees and shining rays across the valley. There, in neat rows, were dozens of graves with wooden crosses marking each one.

“That’s my family, Mr. Otis. Daddy is there beside his mama and daddy, and there’s the spot where we’ll bury Mama. Eight of my brothers are in that second row. The youngest was 12 and the oldest was 26. All of ‘em went to war – some of ‘em at Bull Run and some of ‘em at Fredericksburg. One of ‘em was at Rich Mountain. And all five sisters are in the next row. Two of ‘em died havin’ babies, and the other three took the fever and never got better. There are baby graves and husbands who were killed in the war and a few aunts and uncles in there, too. I got one brother left. Just him and me are all that’s left.”

Otis felt the sadness and bitterness wash over him, distinctly at odds with the matter-of-fact voice beside him. “Why aren’t you crying, little girl? How can you talk about your dead family like it’s an every-day thing.”

“Well, it is sorta an every-day thing,” she said. “But that don’t mean I take kindly to it.” She paused for a moment, and then straightened up her back. “I just remember what Mama told me.” Lily turned her face to the sun and took a deep breath of the early morning air. “There’s no use dyin’ before you’re dead. As long as I can take a breath, I got things to do.”

Otis thought of his dead sons and the litters he’d carried off the battlefield. Then he turned his face toward the rising sun and felt the warmth light up his face. He breathed the fresh scent of dew-covered grass.

“Come on, girl. I got work to finish before folks start coming with those flowers for your mama.”

They turned their backs on the graves and walked back down the hill.

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