“Man. Woman. He’s only seven, who cares which one is which. We’re goin to a funeral, not a pageant.”

“It’ll look funny if he wears a woman’s shirt,” said the clerk.

“I don’t care how it looks so long as it’s black and it don’t fall off his shoulders.”

The girl walked over to a rack of button-downs. She looked through them casually before she spun around to face Betty.

“See here, lady. This is the problem. All our women work clothes is white. You know, for nurses and such. Does it have to be black?”

“Yes,” said Betty wearily. “Just give me the smallest man’s shirt you got.”

“It’ll be too big,” objected the girl.

“Don’t care. We’ll worry about that.”

The clerk threw up her hands in defeat and walked to the back of the store. She was gone a few minutes before she returned with a shirt wrapped in plastic. She took off the wrapper and unfurled the shirt with a flourish.

“This here’s the best we got.”

“That there’s brown.”

“It’s the darkest we got,” explained the clerk. “Most companies don’t want their employees wearing black. Too somber.”

“Somber, huh?”

“Yep. And, if you look here, you’ll see it’s got a logo on it. Can’t take it off. It’s embroidered right on there.”

Betty looked closer and saw UPS sewn in yellow thread on the left breast. She shook her head.

“We’ll take it.”

“Sure?”

“Yes I am.”

The girl scribbled out a receipt.

“That’ll be two dollars and thirty-five cents.”

Betty handed her three dollar bills. “Lincoln,” she said, “go put this on.”

The clerk looked up with wide eyes.

“He gonna wear that now? All that packing starch’ll drive him crazy.”

Betty said nothing. Lincoln took the shirt and stood behind the Carharts and buttoned it up. When he stepped out he was trying to manage the cuffs that drooped over the ends of his fingers. Betty stooped and rolled them up and tucked the tails into his pants.

“Let’s go,” she said, taking him by the arm. The clerk said nothing and they hurried out into the warm June air to catch the bus.

Lincoln was miserable the whole ride. The polyester fabric bunched and gathered in his armpits. His neck was red and raw. He looked with envy at Betty in her worn clothes and sleek black purse.

Finally they pulled into the depot on the reservation, nothing more than an extra room tacked on to the gas station, filled with plastic chairs with RESERVATION BINGO lettered on the backs, and old issues of Scientific American and National Geographic on the vinyl-topped side tables. An old Buick sat in the gravel parking lot, and when Betty and Lincoln stepped off the bus two men got out of the car and stood waiting for Betty to notice them.