Walking Across Egypt

by Clyde Edgerton

  Mr. Crosley was waiting for them in the funeral home lobby. He spoke softly, with a slight rasp in his voice, “Mrs. Turnage, Mrs. Rigsbee? How are y’all today?”

  “Fine.”

  “Just fine. How are you, Mr. Crosley?”

  “Just dandy. Idn’t it a nice day out there? That little cool breeze.”

  “It sure is.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “You-all follow me right on up the stairs here and let’s get you a little cup of coffee before we do anything else. Maybe a little piece of chocolate cake.”

  Mr. Crosley started up the stairs.

  “Wait a minute,” said Pearl. “Let me look here at the roster, see who’s up here. I might know one.” She looked at the names. “No . . .”

  “Let me see,” said Mattie.

  Mr. Crosley waited at the foot of the stairs and then as Pearl and Mattie came along, he started up ahead of them.

  Pearl, under her breath, said, “I want a big piece of chocolate cake.”

  “Me too,” Mattie mouthed silently.

  Mr. Crosley stopped and turned on the stairs. “You all do drink coffee, don’t you?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “We got some soft drinks too.”

  Upstairs, they walked along a carpeted hall and into a small kitchen area with a round table, a sink, a Mr. Coffee, and refrigerator. On the table were two pieces of chocolate cake, two coffee cups, cream, sugar, and two navy blue cloth napkins. “Here we go,” said Mr. Crosley, pulling out a chair for Pearl.

  As she started to sit, Pearl said, “I’m thinking about getting something in a plaid.” She cut her eyes to Mattie.

  “Beg your pardon?” said Mr. Crosley, leaning his head forward.

  “Pearl!” said Mattie.

  “Just kidding.” Pearl laughed softly.

  “Oh, you want something in a plaid,” said Mr. Crosley. “Ah, ha. Well, I’m not so sure we’ve got anything in stock.” He slipped the chair under Pearl and bent over her shoulder, “but I imagine we could order something.”

  “Let’s drink a cup of coffee first,” said Mattie.

  Mr. Crosley took their cups, stepped over to the coffee maker and poured coffee. “Well, you ladies make yourself at home, and I’ll be right back.” He set the cups of coffee on the table. “I need to go get our brochure and a few other things which will help me explain exactly how we believe we can help you.”

  Mattie and Pearl ate cake and sipped coffee.

  “This is a right nice little kitchen,” said Mattie. “This is cake mix, though—bought.”

  “What you expect in a funeral home? They stay busy doing other things. You know, I remember coming up here when Carl died.”

  “Well, I guess this is all good. It keeps Robert and Elaine from having to do it all for me.”

  “I don’t know who would do it for me if I didn’t.”

  “Pearl. There are plenty of people. Me.”

  “I’m not sure you’d get the color right.”

  “I probably wouldn’t.” Mattie took a bite of cake. “Well, you know, I hadn’t thought about it but I would like to know what I’d be wearing so I could get a match,” said Mattie.

  “You ought to decide. I got mine hung in the closet and labeled.”

  “Labeled? What in the world does it say?”

  “‘Funeral.’”

  “I declare, Pearl. You hadn’t ever told me that. What is it?”

  “That sort of cream pink suit and a white blouse. I just did it a few weeks ago. I’m thinking about buying another suit just like it so I can wear it every once in a while.” She took a bite of cake. “I don’t have anybody to take care of all that. I got to thinking about it. Besides, I always say, ‘Dying is part of living.’ I believe it, too. And I’m going to have my funeral at the Free Will where they’ve just got plain wood inside.”

  Mr. Crosley came back in with folders and brochures. “Let me show you ladies what we can do for you. How was that cake?”

  “Good,” said Mattie. “Real good.”

  “We got more if you want it.” Mr. Crosley smiled, sat down, tapped the ends of the folders on the table. “Okay, here’s the basic set-up, if I can just show you here in this brochure. Basically, what we do is provide all services, including any details you want to indicate, at today’s cost. That’s the plan I recommend. We will be able to guarantee you—if you pay now—the same services at any time in the future with no added costs. As you see here, you can indicate the number of cars you think might be needed for the family and such as that. By the way, I can’t remember ever having so much fun as I had with you-all in that car at Miss, ah, who was it?—Miss Hattie’s funeral. Your cousin. I just . . . you know, it won’t in bad taste in the least. It’s just that most folks—”

  “Well, since she was just a cousin,” said Pearl, “it didn’t seem quite so sad to us.”

  “She didn’t have nothing but cousins,” said Mattie.

  “No, I don’t think she did,” said Pearl.

  “That’s a fact. She didn’t,” said Mr. Crosley. “But, anyway. I know I’ve never had as much fun on the job. Who was that other woman?”

  “Alora. Alora Swanson, my neighbor,” said Mattie.

  “She was just along for the ride,” said Pearl.

  “Just along for the ride?” said Mr. Crosley. “Oh, me.” He laughed. “Just along for the ride. Well, let’s get back to our brochure here.”

  “Let me use your bathroom first,” said Pearl, standing.

  “Out and to the left, first door on the right; can’t miss it.”

  Mattie knew Pearl would take a fresh dip of snuff to help settle her nerves.

  Mr. Crosley poured Mattie more coffee.

  When Pearl came back in, she said, “I kinda want to see the caskets,” she said. “Could we do that now? Then talk all about the arrangements?”

  “Oh yes, oh yes,” said Mr. Crosley. “Right this way. Right this way.”

  Mattie was immediately struck by a light gray casket there against the far wall. “I see the one I want,” she said.

  Pearl punched her. “Wait ’til you find out about the costs,” she whispered. She pointed to one near them with a head-to-foot lid raised. “Look,” she said. “There’s a convertible.”

  “Bless my soul,” said Mr. Crosley. “I never heard it called that.” He laughed. “I need you two up here all the time.”

  Mr. Crosley’s back was to Pearl. She pulled up her dill-seed jar from her pocketbook, spit, and placed the jar back inside her pocketbook: three seconds. The dill-seed jar was wedged in a corner of her pocketbook, uncapped, held upright with five full Kleenex travel packs.

  “Let me show you this one first,” said Mr. Crosley. “Actually we have three here which are very similar. Of course, we’re working our way around to the more expensive models—here, right here behind us, the oak—pure oak.”

  “They are beautiful,” said Mattie. “Look at that finish. How much is that one?”

  “This model—the dark one—is a little more than four thousand.”

  “Gosh,” said Mattie. “I’d forgot they were that much.”

  “That’s about what I expected,” said Pearl, “for the nicer ones. How heavy is one?” she asked.

  “This is on rollers,” said Mr. Crosley, touching one of the cheaper models. “Push it if you want to. To get an idea.”

  Pearl set her pocketbook behind her on the oak casket—at the head, on the wood ledge above the white satin pillow. As she pushed to test the weight of the other casket, Mattie’s elbow toppled the pocketbook over onto the pillow. None of them saw it fall.

  “That’s pretty heavy,” said Pearl. “Are they all that heavy? My pallbearers ain’t going to be all that sprightly.”

  “Approximately the same weight. All very sturdily made. Now, as we go around in this direction, the models will get a bit more expensive.”

  Pearl couldn’t remember where she left her purse. She looked around, didn’t see it
anywhere. Mattie and Mr. Crosley were moving on ahead. She’d been right over . . . She stepped toward the oak casket. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. The dill seed jar had slid right out onto the pillow and . . . Mr. Crosley and Mattie were moving on, Mr. Crosley talking. Pearl quickly picked up her pocketbook and the dill seed jar. Not one bit had gotten on her pocketbook. But that white satin pillow. She looked up—Mattie’s and Mr. Crosley’s backs were to her. She turned the pillow over, patted it once and moved on. Whoever used it wouldn’t care.

  Pearl caught up. Mr. Crosley was talking. “This color is very nice. Oh, by the way, I forgot. I should tell you that we’re getting in several models of stainless steels one day next week probably.”

  “Stainless steel?” said Mattie. She turned around and looked at Pearl. “Did you hear that? Stainless steel. Maybe we should come back.”

  “Well . . . I don’t know. You really think so?”

  “I don’t want to make a decision without seeing the stainless steels,” said Mattie. “Would it be all right if we came back?” she said to Mr. Crosley.

  “Why certainly. No problem at all. I’ll give one of you a call when they come in, Mrs. Turnage.”

  “What’s the advantage of the stainless steel?” asked Pearl.

  “It lasts,” said Mr. Crosley.

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Although I don’t think you’re going to find anything more beautiful than the oak,” said Mr. Crosley.

  “You ought to buy one then,” said Mattie. “Get on the plan yourself.”

  That night Mattie watched a show about alligators. She enjoyed the nature programs more than any others except Billy Graham. Sometimes she called Robert or Elaine when an especially good nature program was coming on. And she always called to remind them when Billy Graham was coming on, but later if she asked them if they watched it, they hadn’t.

  Before going to bed Mattie played “Love Lifted Me,” “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” and “To a Wild Rose.” She hummed “Walking Across Egypt,” that hymn her father used to sing to her. She couldn’t remember the words. She had the music to it somewhere. And he’d used that title as a saying all the time. He had sung a different song for each child before bedtime, and sometimes he sung to them in the daytime during a water break in the fields. He died from typhoid fever when she was eight, Pearl was ten, four older brothers, and one on the way.

  On Thursday afternoon, Bill Yeats brought back the covered chair bottoms. He arrived at about 3:30. Mattie had a pound cake, apple pie, and vanilla ice cream for him to choose from.

  Before Bill ate, he screwed in the four kitchen-chair bottoms. He leaned the rocker-chair bottom against the wall in the den. “Where’s your rocker?”

  “Dogcatcher’s got it. I had a little accident with it. Set through it without the bottom in it. And the dogcatcher had to cut me out. He’s putting it back together where he sawed it.”

  “Good gracious. You hurt yourself?”

  “Oh, no.”

  Bill chose apple pie and ice cream.

  As Mattie cut the pie and then dipped ice cream she studied the color of the kitchen-chair bottoms. She put the pie and ice cream in front of Bill. “Let me just look over here a minute.” She walked over and inspected the rocker bottom. Come to think of it, the color that was on them before was just right. “They’re too yellow, I think,” she said. “I know you think I’m crazy, but I’ll tell you what I was thinking; do you still have that material that was on them?”

  “It’s around the shop somewhere.”

  “Well, if you could get it cleaned and put it back on and cover them with clear plastic I’d be much obliged. Do you have any clear plastic?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “I just know I’d be happy with that. I’ll pay you, of course.”

  “No problem, no problem at all, Mrs. Rigsbee. I’ll just take them right back.”

  “Well, I sure do appreciate it.”

  When Bill finished his ice cream and pie, he unscrewed the bottoms, and as he left said, “If this keeps up, Mrs. Rigsbee, I’m going to gain ten, fifteen pounds.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt none. You could use a little filling out.”

  Later, Mattie walked out to the garage and found boards to cover her remaining three open chair bottoms. No need not to have your kitchen like you want it if that’s where you spend most of your life, she thought, and course that’s changing some, with me slowing down and all. But I can’t like it in here with chair bottoms that are too yellow. It needs to be comfortable. I might as well do a little something for myself once in a while. And the least I can do is leave things the right color. Course Robert’s liable to sell them. No telling what he might do. Maybe I should leave them to Elaine and . . . I do have to get all that straight in the will like Alora said.

  Robert called Friday and said he was coming for lunch on Saturday. Mattie was glad because she wanted to talk to him about about her will, about who was to get what. No need not to talk about it, think about it. Everybody had to die sooner or later. You might as well face it.

  That dogcatcher was supposed to come too, and bring back her rocker. She wondered what Robert would think of him.

  Robert showed up early, at about eleven, while Mattie was in the garden picking tomatoes. The food was on: string beans, corn and butterbeans, chicken, creamed potatoes, cornbread, and some good early bitter turnip salet. Robert went in, not noticing Mattie in the garden. He stood at the desk in the den and looked through the mail. He was on several mailing lists that still had his old address. He walked past the counter over to the stove and picked up the lids to each pot to see what was cooking.

  Mattie came in with a wicker basket full of tomatoes. “Howdy. I don’t know how I got so behind on tomatoes.”

  Mattie had always hoped Robert would grow up to be a doctor or preacher and that Elaine would marry one. But Robert was an unmarried businessman and Elaine, an unmarried teacher, and every week the chances for grandchildren grew slimmer.

  They both dated. Dated fairly nice people. For almost a year, Elaine had dated a “farm worker” who Mattie thought would be a farm worker, but he was from Boston, and worked for the state. Something about crops. He went on crop walks—looking at crops. And Robert had dated three different supermarket check-out girls. One had been very young. But neither Robert nor Elaine had ever dated the same person over a year or so, and then three years ago Elaine had said she wanted to not date at all for a while so she could get to know herself. Mattie argued with her that she ought to already know herself—after thirty-five years. Elaine angrily said that well, she didn’t, so Mattie backed off. Mattie had always dreamed of their talking together as Elaine grew older, about woman things. There would be so much to talk about. But it never happened that way. It always seemed like maybe it would happen in a year or two, but it didn’t. When Mattie tried to talk to Elaine, Elaine would launch into all these confusing questions: Why shouldn’t a woman have the same opportunities as a man? Why couldn’t career goals be as important as kitchen goals to a woman? The questions confused Mattie in her head but not in her heart, and Elaine would go off with this see-I-told-you-so attitude when she hadn’t really told anything. She’d just asked two or three kind of odd questions.

  Robert was reading the paper—sitting on the couch where his father used to sit.

  Mattie sliced two tomatoes, put ice in two glasses. Every once in a while she needed to remind them both of what they needed to be about in life: having a family. A Christian family. If they didn’t hurry it would be too late to have children. It was her duty to remind them. That was a main reason mothers existed. To remind.

  And now chances looked slim. She could not understand.

  And Robert. Now he was dating that nice woman who didn’t dress right: Shirley. He was forty-three for goodness sakes. Shirley was thirty-four, and for some reason Robert had gotten mad when Mattie asked him how old she was. He was like that sometimes.

  Mattie did not want to die without g
randchildren. She often thought of the links that extended back to Adam, a direct line, like a little dirt road that extended back through forests of time, through a little town that was her mother and father, on back through her grandparents, a little road that went back and back and back across lands and woods and back across to England and back to deserts and the flood and Noah and on back to Adam and Eve. A chain, thousands and thousands of years long, starting way back with Adam and Eve, heading this way, reaching the last link with Robert and Elaine Rigsbee, her own two children, two thousand years after Jesus. And there to be stopped dead forever.

  “Come on. It’s about ready,” said Mattie.

  Robert walked to the dinner table. “Where’d the chair bottoms go?” he said.

  “They just got up the other morning and walked out the door.”

  “Ah.” Robert smiled. His mother always did have a sense of humor. She had a lot of things, a lot of ways that would have served her well out in the real world if she’d ever gotten out there. But now the world out there was so complicated, she wouldn’t last a minute; here she was slowing down now and he didn’t want to think about it—except for the fact that Elaine was the one who ought to take care of her if she ever needed it—if Elaine weren’t too wrapped up in all her own stuff, Get Out the Vote, and all that crap.

  “I got some of the best turnip salet,” said Mattie, setting a butter dish on the table. “Patsy Mae come got me the other morning and she’s got five patches of it on her place and more vines of butterbeans than you can imagine.” Mattie sat down at the table, reached for the butter. “Listen, I need to talk to you about how to set up my will.”

  “Probably the best thing to do is talk to a lawyer.”

  “Well, I want to talk to you first. You’re the man in the family.”

  “Well, the main thing I got to say is see a lawyer. Divide the money down the middle and give Elaine all the furniture she wants and I’ll take the rest. Something like that. I do want those three lamps. You know that.”

  “Well, I need to get it all straight.” Mattie got up for the pickle dish, sat back down. “How’s Shirley?”