Getting Mother's Body Read Online Free Page B

send her nothing,” I says.
    Dill picks up my thought, “You mean cause of the treasure? You mean cause Willa Mae’s buried out there with her pearls and diamonds?”
    â€œNo. I was thinking more along the lines of, what with Candy being your mother and you having partly raised Billy some, that makes Candy practically family to us and we should keep on good terms with her,” I says, but I am thinking about the diamonds and whatnot. I can’t help it.
    â€œYr just thinking about the treasure,” Dill says, smirking at me.
    I stay quiet.
    June adds her two cents. “I’m thinking all that treasure Willa Mae got in her coffin ain’t doing no one no good,” she says. She clumps along the porch, reaching the steps and sitting down, laying her crutch by her side. There’s a blank space where her leg used to be. I ain’t never seen her with two legs. When I met her she had just the one. Folks say I was smart marrying a woman with one leg cause a woman with one leg ain’t never gonna run off. But I didn’t marry June on account of that. June’s a good woman. Today she’s salty but most days she’s sweet.
    â€œWhat you think of Billy’s Snipes fella?” Dill asks.
    â€œWe ain’t met him yet,” I says. “She says he stays at Texhoma. We should be going up there for the wedding.”
    â€œWe should be going to LaJunta and getting Willa Mae’s treasure,” June says.
    â€œLeave my sister in the ground,” I says.
    â€œI ain’t saying take her out the ground,” June says yelling. “I’m just saying take her treasury out the ground.” Then her voice goes soft. “Just enough to get me a leg,” she says.
    â€œYou got a point there,” I says. I look at Dill, waiting for her say. Getting at least some of my sister’s treasure has crossed my mind more than once. Dill would tell us how to get there or we could just look at a map. LaJunta’s in Arizona and Candy’s motel is called the Pink Flamingo. That wouldn’t be no trouble. June suggested the very thing about six years ago and Dill told June that if she went treasure-hunting, she would be going against the wishes of the dead. Dill’s the one who heard Willa’s dying wish and Dill’s the one who put Willa in the ground, so to my mind, if Dill don’t give the OK and we was just to go out there and dig, it would be like stealing.
    Dill speaks through her teeth. “Yr waiting for me to say go head but I ain’t gonna say it,” she says. “Willa Mae was proud of two things. Her pearl necklace and her diamond ring. Getting buried with them two things was her dying wish. I coulda took them, I coulda stole them from her while she was breathing her last breaths, but I weren’t about to go against her dying wish. So I put her in the ground and I put her jewelry in the ground with her,” Dill says, saying “jewel” and making it sound like “jurl.” “Willa Mae wanted to be buried with her jewels and that’s what she
still
wants,” Dill says.
    â€œHow you know what Willa
still
wants?” June says.
    â€œShe ain’t changing her mind once she’s dead,” Dill says.
    â€œShe might,” June says. June reads and knows things.
    â€œI know Willa Mae better than you and I heard her dying wish,” Dill says, making a fist and bringing it down slowly on the arm of her chair. That ends that.
    â€œDill Smiles, you the most honest person I ever met,” I says.
    June says “shit” to that and gets up, with more difficulty than usual, to go clumping back inside.
    â€œYou the most honest person I know,” I says again and Dill nods her head in thanks. Dill Smiles don’t open no mail that ain’t addressed to her and Dill Smiles don’t flout no dying wishes of the dead. Dill Smiles is the most honest person I know, even if she ain’t