Free Cemetery Silk by E. Joan Sims

little girls playing by the water’s edge. Abigail with her blond curls and Mother, the smaller brunette, looked like Snow White and Rose Red with sand buckets and tiny shovels. And there was a wonderfully pompous portrait of a man wearing a fedora and smoking a huge cigar. It was signed, “Love, Uncle Jackson.”
    Abigail’s father had died when she was fifteen, leaving no insurance and no other money to see his widow and child through hard times or even the next month. His brother Jackson had helped out until Abigail graduated from high school, at which time my grandfather had gotten her a job at the telephone company. She worked there for the next thirty-eight years. Uncle Jackson had married a new lady and forgotten his little niece.
    William and Abigail married late in life because their widowed mothers could not stand the sight of each other. But they apparently had a long and happy courtship as recorded on Kodak paper. There were lots of pictures of Abigail standing by the side of new cars. From the photographic evidence, William must have bought a new one every year. They were mostly all big cars, Buicks and Packards, with lots of chrome. William was a small man and I guessed that the big shiny machines must have given him a sense of dignity and importance.
    When William had been elected to the Board of Directors at the bank, his picture was on the first page of the Lanierville Gazette. The faded newsprint revealed him as a dapper little man with a perky bow tie and big smile. The next year there were pictures of two different graves covered with funeral flowers, then at long last, a wedding photo. Abigail had kept a little journal of their wedding trip. They had waited fifty minutes for the results of their blood test. Armed with that little piece of paper, they had gone straight to the Methodist church. The minister read them their vows while his wife and two daughters witnessed the ceremony. Abigail had noted in big red letters, “We are really happy!”
    Mother was wiping away a tear or two so I took over emptying the box. The last item was really a gem. It was a letter from Mother’s other deceased cousin, Dimple Howard. It described the Howard family tree as gilded and gleaming with the presence of several Dukes of Norfolk and countless Lords and Ladies beginning with the court of Henry VIII. Cassie and I had a good laugh over the magnificent fairy tale of a list. It had actually been duly accepted and sanctioned by the Daughters of the American Revolution. They had allowed Dimple and Abigail admittance to their esteemed throng by way of some poor little teenaged Howard. He had died carrying the flag in a battle against the very same British from whence he came.
    Cassie wanted to know if we could create a coat-of-arms to match our newfound position in life. We discussed the possibilities with great hilarity until Mother’s thoroughly royal “Ahem” put us in our place.
    Thus chastened, we trudged off to our little peasant beds to dream of blue haired old ladies with bony grasping hands.
    I arose early the next morning and sneaked out of the house, leaving a note so no one would come searching. I knew that neither Cassie nor Mother would approve of my mission, and I did not want to waste time arguing. Besides it was my BMW to do with as I wished and I chose to be a little bit less conspicuous a consumer now that I was unemployed. And on top of that, the little farm communities in this area had more Camaros and trucks than foreign cars. I thought it best to blend in. The fact that I had always harbored a secret desire for a tough, mean four-wheel drive had nothing to do with it.
    The nearest town of any size was Morgantown which sported a mall and two movie theaters. It also had several car dealerships, one of them owned by a college friend of mine named Bubba. Bubba had always wanted a Beemer. I hoped that I could persuade him to give me a decent trade.
    â€œBUBBA’S