World Made by Hand

Eleven

Britney Watling was picking black currants with her seven-yearold girl, Sarah, pale like her mother and barefoot, at the back of the garden as we approached. Both of them seemed to flinch at the sight of us. Loren didn’t even have to say anything. He went over to where she stood and guided her gently by the elbow to the shade beside the barn and sat her down on a marble slab bench that had probably been there for a hundred years. Jerry hoisted the child up and carried her down there hitched up on his waist, as he would a child of his own.

Once we were all there in the shade of the barn, where the family cow took refuge from the heat, and where the hostas that Shawn’s mother planted long ago bloomed purple, Loren explained to Britney that her husband was not just hurt but dead. The little girl, Sarah, seemed to search for a cue from her mother, whose mouth fell open without producing any sound. The child repeated, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” and began keening. It was left to me to try to briefly tell Britney what had happened, making it clear I hadn’t actually witnessed the incident. She did not ask me any questions about it. For the longest time, nothing was said. Finally Loren began to quietly explain what would happen next, how the funeral would be arranged and the sequence of events that would entail. Britney took it in stoically. She was a young person who herself had endured large losses, including parents incinerated in Los Angeles, a brother and many friends gone, and one child stillborn. She gave the impression of great solidity even though she was petite and pale. She asked if she could see her husband’s body. Jerry warned her that the wound was awful.

“I don’t care,” she said raising her voice so it broke. “I’m going to see him. You take me to him.”

The five of us walked the three blocks back to Jerry’s house. He carried the little girl hitched on his hip. She cried on his shoulder all the way there. He stayed outside with her while Loren and I went into the springhouse with Britney. I could hear Jerry’s wife, Jeanette, out there now. “Jasper told me,” she said to her husband. “Oh Jesus Lord almighty.”

“Is my daddy in there?” I heard Sarah say.

Inside, in the dimness, Britney stood mutely over Shawn’s body for a long time.

“All right, I believe he is dead,” she eventually said with stoical resignation and let out a long soblike sigh. “Oh Shawn. What are we going to do now? What are we going to do?” Then, she suddenly flew into a rage and cried, “What’d you have to go and get shot for!” and actually swatted his inert shoulder. Finally, she collapsed in a heap on the damp dirt floor, clutching the leg of the table as though she were a child herself holding onto a father’s leg. She stayed there weeping for the longest time.

“Robert will build the coffin,” Loren said finally.

“I want an open coffin at the funeral,” Britney growled back between her sobs.

“You don’t have to decide that now.”

“I want everybody to see what they did to my husband.”

“We’ll keep him here until tomorrow morning,” Loren said, apparently eager not to quarrel. “Ten o’clock we’ll start at the church.”

“I’ll fetch his good clothes before that,” she said.