Crapalachia: A Biography of Place Read Online Free Page B

back of the photo which had his death date on it—7/8/52.
     
    Then she turned to another picture and it was yet another picture of a dead person. It was an old woman (her Aunt Mag) with one of those made-up funeral home faces. And what was funny about this one was that there was a man posing for the picture by the dead body. He was smiling.
    “Who’s that?” I asked.
    “Oh I don’t know,” she said. “Just some guy I asked to pose by the pretty flowers.”
    So I sat in the kitchen not really knowing what to think.
     
    Grandma looked through all of her pictures of the dead and then she said: “Of course some people don’t think it’s right. They don’t think it’s right taking pictures of the dead.”
    Then she flipped back through all of the other pictures and looked at the one of Elgie’s dead brother.
    She closed her picture book and smiled her smile.
     
    That evening we went to the Wallace and Wallace funeral home to pay our respects for a woman she knew. It was another woman who was coming home one day and the mountain collapsed on her. I especially didn’t want to be at the funeral when Ruby took out her camera later. I’d been going to wakes with her for years now, and I’d even been to wakes at people’s houses, something called sitting up with the dead. I thought about how I watched people picking the body up and holding it and petting the dead hair and crying. I thought about how they carried it around and cried. I knew something was up that night, sitting around in front of the casket, and I knew what it was when my grandma leaned over and said: “Why don’t you take a picture for Grandma?”
    “WHAT?”
    She pointed to the body and tried handing me a camera.
    “Why don’t you take a picture for Grandma?”
    Oh GOD no.
    I sat nervous and shook my head. But she wouldn’t stop it.
    She kept trying to hand me the camera and saying: “You go on.”
    I took ahold of it and stood there even though I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to take a picture of this dead body in front of everyone.
    There were a couple of pretty girls in the corner and they had a look on their face like, “What’s he doing? Is he getting ready to take a picture of a dead body?”
    There were a couple of people standing around the body. They were hugging and holding and hugging and holding each other and crying. So I stood looking at it all and couldn’t take the damn thing.
     
    Grandma cussed “shit” beneath her breath and tried getting my cousin Tina to do it for her instead.
    “You take that camera and take a picture for Grandma,” she said…
    Then she pointed to the camera
    …and then at the body
    …and then at Tina.
    Tina didn’t want to take the picture either, but finally she took the camera out of my hand and turned to the body.
    “That’s right,” Ruby said. “Grandma’s just a poor, old woman who can’t get up. Go ahead and take it for your poor Grandma and make sure you don’t cut off the pretty flowers behind the head. Someone spent so much on that arrangement.”
    So Tina held the camera and Ruby said: “That’s right.” Then Tina snapped the picture—SNAP—and everyone looked around at where the camera flash was coming from.
     
    I figured this would be the end of it, but it wasn’t. The next morning I walked the film down to Rite Aid when Ruby was working on one of her quilts. She was still stitching one of her squares on when I came back from Rite Aid and put the film back down on the table. I told her they wouldn’t develop them. I told her what they said.
    “What?” Ruby said after I told her what they said.
    I repeated it: “They said they couldn’t develop pictures of dead bodies anymore. They said it’s the policy.”
    Ruby just looked so confused: “You mean they won’t develop pictures of people you know anymore. Well how are you going to remember them? How’s an old woman gonna remember all of ’em?”
    I said: “It’s probably because of privacy laws and