Missing Buttons

T.J. kissed his Pappy’s cold forehead. The skin reminded him of those white turtle shells he’d stumble over in the woods. The kiss was perfunctory. Best not to linger too long over the dead.
The young man straightened his tie so that his two missing buttons wouldn’t show. He did not feel as sad as he thought he should. He wondered if anyone could tell about that. Or the missing buttons.
The family members all filed in the same way, with pots smelling of butter and gravy tucked under pale, flaccid arms; atrophied limbs outstretched to hug a neck, grasp a clammy hand.
Birdy had found the old daguerreotypes and she’d propped them up on a table near the coffin. The Pappy in the grey metal pictures was dark and puffy, with silver eyes and slick black hair; he held his King James Bible upside-down in his lap. This was a man with important work to get back to, not the broken remnant T.J. had known, the ghost who sieved milk through his long, white beard while babies dribbled spit onto his splayed chicken legs.
Birdy, she’d dyed her dress black. It had been a spring dress, blue and white, with bows, T.J. recalled.