Hidden Riches by Felicia Mason

drawl of a town tattletale.
    â€œWell, it took Ana Mae maybe all of three seconds to figure out where we were headed.
    â€œNo sooner had we paid the jitney and got in the line than we heard a horn blowing and some yelling behind us. It was Ana Mae. With a switch. Waving it out the car window and hollering.”
    The mourners gathered for Ana Mae’s homegoing roared with laughter. They knew what was coming next.
    â€œWe were this close,” Clayton said, holding his hands about a foot apart, “to claiming that free ice cream when a car screeched to a halt, tires kicking up dust and gravel, and Ana Mae jumped out.”
    Behind Clayton, Reverend Toussaint was wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. “That was me,” he said between guffaws. “Lord, I haven’t thought about that in years.”
    Clayton turned and grinned. “That was you?”
    Reverend Toussaint nodded and got a few jabs from the ministers sitting next to him.
    â€œAll we knew,” Clayton told the congregation, “was that Ana Mae had commandeered somebody’s car. She came out of that front seat yelling, ‘No ice cream for those three!’ and waving that switch like she was gonna give a whupping to every kid standing in that line. The poor carnival man probably thought she was our mother, the way she was carrying on. But we were wrong and all three of us knew it. I was crying by then and JoJo over there,” he said, with a nod toward her, “she was whining about the ice cream. And Delcine was saying, ‘They made me do it. They made me do it.’ ”
    The sisters were falling over their husbands and Archer, laughing in the pews.
    â€œWe piled into the backseat of that car and got a sermon and a half about lying, stealing, leaving the house, and disobeying Mama, who’d said no carnival until Saturday. Frankly, we knew we were dead. But you know what,” Clayton said, his voice lowering as he leaned into the microphone.
    Folks sat forward in their seats to hear what happened.
    Clayton closed his eyes for a moment even as the laughter died down. “Ana Mae never told on us. Not a peep.
    â€œOf course, we didn’t know that,” he said, standing straight again and chuckling to himself. “We were scared . . .”
    â€œTerrified,” Delcine called out to renewed laughter.
    â€œ. . . about what Mama was gonna do to us. Delcine told us Mama was just biding her time, waiting to punish us. It never came, though, and we learned a valuable lesson that day and week about the love of an older sister.”
    As he left the pulpit to thunderous applause, the congregants were still chuckling. When he took his seat, Archer beamed at him.
    More than an hour and a half later, after the mourners listened to and hollered back at Reverend Toussaint’s sermon about the virtuous woman, an altar call—“That we would be dishonoring God and Sister Ana Mae if we didn’t have”—and another protracted song about flying away to glory, Ana Mae Futrell’s funeral finally came to a close.
    Afterward, no one would recall just how the receiving line came to be, but the Futrell family stood in a line in the vestibule getting condolences and healthy doses of “I’m gonna keep y’all all in my prayers.”
    A brief lull in the line, which had to be at least four miles long, had Archer leaning over. “Does that mean because we’re sinners?”
    Clayton tried not to crack a smile. He failed.
    â€œThat’s all right, Brother Futrell. Let it out. Sister Ana Mae enjoyed a good laugh too.”
    Clayton looked up to see the Reverend le Baptiste. But the reverend’s eyes were on Archer. Really on Archer.
    Remembering what Archer had said about the preacher, Clayton studied the older man. Well, he guessed he was older. The Reverend Toussaint le Baptiste could have been anywhere from forty to sixty years old. His slicked-back hair—today