Linden Hills

by Gloria Naylor

  “Was? Is she dead, too?”

  “You might say that.” And Hollis took off quickly from the light.

  Willie wondered if the alcohol was the only reason she left. He didn’t think of ministers as being the type of men who would abuse a woman, but then he had never thought of them drinking before ten o’clock in the morning. Maybe he didn’t have to hit her. Women were funny. He’d seen that in his mother. They could stand up under things you’d expect to keel them over, and then bruise so easily from something that shouldn’t matter much. No, it had to be something besides the drinking. To leave a house like that and a man with a job like this, it had to be something else pretty awful—at least, to her.

  He was relieved when Hollis finally pulled up in back of the church, and even more relieved that he had decided to ride with him: although they had done an easy seventy most of the way, Lester was already waiting there with the truck. Willie thanked Hollis for the lift and started to open the door. Hollis touched his arm and reached into his pocket for a Life Saver.

  “You want one?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “They don’t help, do they?”

  “Naw, and gargling doesn’t either. Not if you use that syrupy stuff. Next time try rinsing with a little vinegar or straight lemon juice. My dad discovered that was the best way. Something about the acid neutralizes it.”

  “Let’s pray there won’t be a next time, Willie.”

  “Yeah.” Willie got out and closed the door.

  “Willie!” The car window slid down and Willie stopped without looking back. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas, Reverend Hollis,” he answered while looking up at the huge gray stones of Mount Sinai.

  Hollis sat there for a moment and then followed Willie’s gaze with a deep sigh. He pulled around to the front of the church and saw that Nedeed had parked his hearse in the spot assigned for the minister. Hollis double-parked so that the hearse couldn’t be moved without getting his keys. That young man had taught him one thing this morning: there are many subtle ways with which you can make one strong point.

  Consciousness returned long before she opened her eyes. She lay balled up under the covers in a gentle stupor, willing herself to sleep again. The heaviness in her head and the lightness in her limbs and middle were almost pleasant. If she concentrated on either, she could float back to where there were no thoughts, just dreams that she was too tired to remember. Lying there, she could believe that she had dreamed that evening out in the mortuary. Hadn’t it been pushed safely into a place that firmly locked in the unthinkable along with all the other insane nightmares that threatened to break through on reality? It had to be a dream or she couldn’t have kept living with the man she saw in the mortuary that evening. She would have packed her things and taken her child away long ago, wouldn’t she?

  The doubts kept her there. The poor lighting. The angle of the embalming table. She had been looking for something suspicious anyway, something to explain her lonely nights in that half-empty bed. Her checking through his wallet and address book came up with nothing. She had even watched him and his male assistant closely for some telltale sign so obvious in those moments when they didn’t look at each other, had no reason to touch. And so hadn’t she gone out back that evening, hoping to find something? What did her mother always say—you find what you’re looking for.

  But she had only found him working: the white lab coat, the tubes and needles that made her shudder even when packed away. She had never witnessed this part of his work before, but obviously it had to be so. He had to undress those bodies, move his hands slowly over the skin to check for the flow of the formaldehyde. Those weren’t breasts, thighs, hips; they were points of saturation. He was a technician—she knew that. He wasn’t seeing ears, mouths, nostrils, and vaginas; they were openings that had to be cleared of foreign matter. And the room was cold. He trembled so because the room must be kept almost to the point of freezing. The paint. The powder. His lingering and carefulness. The success of his work depended upon it. The body had to look natural. The lipstick. Eyeshadow. Mascara. The precision made him perspire, made him bend over and concentrate that closely. It could all be explained: the utensils, the cosmetics, the care. It made her feel foolish and dirty, crouching outside in the shadows and peering under a shade at him. And that’s why she turned back toward the house and ran, her heart pounding, her hand pressed against her mouth to keep from screaming or throwing up.

  She ran from guilt, not from the sight of him lifting a fish head out of a plastic bag and turning it gently in his hands before inserting it in the spread body before him. She had dreamed that. And like all bad dreams, she awoke from it with a severe headache the next morning and no appetite for days. But she could thank God as she fixed him his breakfast the following day and took his shirts to the laundry, that there was a safe place for such nightmares. Then, she could keep so frantically busy with her housework and her child that at night she was just too tired to dream. And in that space of time between exhaustion and unconsciousness if her hand ever strayed to the cold place on the sheet beside her, she could sanely accept that reality; this was simply the way life was when your husband’s work took him away so much at night.

  Luther was draping a mesh blanket of silver fern and white roses over Lycentia Parker in her open casket when Hoilis walked into the main chapel. He had been there almost at daybreak, chalking the exact location for the coffin, rearranging the positions of the floral wreaths while checking for any wilted blossoms or yellowing leaves. Then he had returned to Tupelo Drive to lead the procession to the church, and he would be the last to leave the burial site, waiting until the cemetery workers had completely filled in the grave. He turned and nodded to Hollis.

  “Michael.”

  “Luther.” Holllis went to walk past him toward his office.

  “I’m glad to see that you’re finally here,” Luther said as he rested his hand on the coffin. “I was afraid that we would have to start without you.”

  “That was a needless fear,” Hollis said, smiling, “since there’s no way to start without me.”

  “Not really.” Luther returned his smile. “The program calls for the choir to sing a Bach requiem after the guests file in. And then you make your entrance. Since it’s a rather lengthy piece, I assumed there would be a space of at least thirty minutes in which you wouldn’t be missed.”

  “Well, there’s been a change of program, so it’s a good thing you didn’t embarrass yourself by being premature.”

  “Oh, really? Is it anything about which I should inform the family of the deceased?”

  “The family of the deceased already knows what it has to. I’m responsible for this service. And you’re responsible for moving the body in and out of my church. And I must say, you’ve done a good job so far, Luther. But then you’ve always had a knack of doing whatever you do thoroughly. I’ve never had any complaints about your performance, that’s one thing I must admit.”

  “Or I of yours, Michael.” Luther’s eyes seemed to undress him. “No complaints at all.”

  Hollis turned abruptly, went into his office, and slammed the door. He picked up the phone and pressed the intercom for the superintendent’s office.

  “Ralph, good morning, Reverend Hollis. Listen, could you do me a favor and go to the choir’s dressing room and have Mary Beth Wilson come here. Tell her it’s important, there are some changes for the Parker funeral. Yes, yes, I know about the boys. After they’ve set up the tree, have them wait for me in the lobby. And just one more thing, my throat is pretty dry so could you see if there are any lemons in the pantry. Okay, thanks.”

  Hollis put down the receiver and tapped his forefinger nervously against it. A Bach requiem. You’d never be missed. He’d show him just how much he’d be missed. He yanked open the bottom drawer on his desk and took out a bulky, maroon altar cloth. He quickly unwrapped the fifth of Scotch and had filled his water glass three times before shoving it back in
to the drawer. Popping a mint into his mouth, he went to the closet and removed his gabardine-and-velvet robe. The Santa Claus suit was hanging next to it, freshly pressed and under plastic. He forced himself to look at the mirror on the inside of his closet door, starting with his face and moving all the way down. Is this what that young man saw? A six foot, aging disappointment who had to put on a clown’s outfit once a year to feel that he really counted at the pulpit. Any other time he could stand out there immobile with his mouth shut and play a tape recorder and no one would notice. If he missed a business meeting, if the credit union’s dividends fell, he would probably lose his job. But what was his job? Any dictionary defined him as an agent of God, but he had never seen and would be hard-pressed to prove the existence that justified this building and the last thirty years of his life. What had drawn him was the power that was possible between people; together they created “God”—so real and electrifying you could believe that once it was a voice that shook mountains. That was what he had set out to follow. But somehow, somewhere, it was a calling that went wrong. He went back to take another drink just before there was a knock on the door.

  The short, plump woman came in carrying two lemons on a saucer.

  “Ralph asked me to bring these to you, Reverend. And I know what you gonna say about that music. You probably heard how lousy we sounded at choir practice, but you can’t turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse is all I’ve got to say. I can read them notes, but Lord knows, I can’t make heads or tails out of that Latin. So if it sounds flat, it sounds flat.”

  “Believe me, criticism was the last thing on my mind, Sister Wilson. Please sit down.”

  She gathered her robes around her and sat on the edge of the chair.

  “To be quite honest, I agree with you. And I know that you and the musical director have a history of differences about the interpretations of the hymns.”

  “Look, I don’t know nothing about no differences of interpretation. I may not have been to some fancy conservatory in Paris like Byron has, but I’ve been a member of the Baptist Church all my life. And I come up knowing only one way to do things—the way we did it down home. And when I was lead soprano for the Dixie Mockingbirds I never got no complaints about my inappropriate passion as he puts it. But I guess there’s singing and there’s singing.” She paused for a weighted moment. “Just like there’s preaching and there’s preaching.”

  “And there’s been precious little of both at Mount Sinai, hasn’t there, Sister Wilson?”

  “Now, I’m calling no names and naming no particulars, Reverend Hollis. We all don’t have to see eye to eye in order to see our way to the Kingdom. It’s the heart condition of each man that the Lord will judge.”

  “Well, I want you to know that I definitely see eye to eye with you about the musical selections this morning. And they’re out. I spent a lot of time in the church down home, too, Sister Wilson. And I remember that all a real funeral ever needed was a decent sermon and a decent song to put a soul away. If it was good enough for my grandmother, it should be good enough for Lycentia Parker. So what do you say? Go tell Byron and the choir that we won’t be needing them this morning, and you and I can give these people a little of what they’ve been missing.”

  “Sounds good to me, Reverend. But ain’t this one of Mr. Nedeed’s funerals? I don’t know how all this is gonna sit with those folks from Linden Hills.”

  “To my knowledge, Sister Wilson, neither Mr. Nedeed nor anyone else from Linden Hills is sitting up there with the Lord on his heavenly throne. And since we’re hoping that’s exactly where Sister Parker is heading, I think we should announce her arrival in a manner that will be heard.”

  The woman laughed as she got up and headed for the door. “I like your spirit, Reverend Hollis. You know, for a while I was worried about you.”

  Hollis just smiled and thought, For a while I was worried about myself, but that’s over. Then he said aloud, “Do you know what song you’ll start with?”

  “Of course.” She grinned. “No real funeral would be complete without ‘Amazing Grace.’”

  Hollis stumbled on the third step up to the pulpit and hoped no one noticed. He clasped a hand on each side of the lectern to steady himself. But perhaps it wasn’t his body that was moving so crazily but the chapel. No, it was perfectly still. The faces were a blur, but he could see that at least half of the pews downstairs were filled on both sides of the aisle. If he could have focused, he would have noticed the look of dry-eyed resignation before him. The mourners sat there with the stilted patience that accompanies the beginning of a business meeting. A few even glanced at their watches. This time the agenda was death and they had simply come to pay their respects. But like all debts, if the process was too lengthy and complicated, the feelings of obligation would turn into resentment.

  Hollis could feel the sweat rolling down his back under the heavy robe. The words on the sermon in front of him were totally incomprehensible, and he tried to buy his spinning head some time by making a pretense of looking with studied attention at the coffin to his left, the papers on the lectern, and then the congregation. When he had rotated full circle to his right side, where Sister Wilson sat poised at the organ, she gave him a slow wink.

  “All rise for the family to enter.” His voice was husky and cracked at the end, but it was covered by the first rich notes of the organ that began a winding dirge as the Parker family filed in to take their seats in the two front rows. Chester Parker led the procession, tottering on the arms of a niece. He met the intense curiosity that accompanied his entrance by pulling out his handkerchief midway down the aisle, letting it hang in his hand like a crumpled flag that said at least he was ready to mourn.

  As soon as the family was seated, Hollis nodded to Sister Wilson and the last chords of the dirge were followed immediately by the unaccompanied chords of the human voice—“A-mazing Grace!” The first words cut through the chapel—loud, clear, and piercing. Then the rest were backed by the mellowness of the brass pipes.

  … How sweet the sound,

  That saved a wretch like me.

  The heat was building in Hollis’s body and throbbing in his temples. His blurred eyes moved past the first twenty rows and filled the empty pews with thirty-year-old ghosts. In the balcony he saw the damp bodies swaying, hands up, and heads lifted by Sister Wilson’s voice. They were waiting for him. If he would give, they would receive. Just call and they would answer.

  I once was lost but now I’m found,

  Was blind but now I see.

  Sister Wilson was leaning over the keyboard, turning one syllable into two, two into three. And not knowing what to do with four, she just balled them up and melted them over the walls and ceilings. Melted them over that frozen rectangle in the first twenty rows, and they began to stir uncomfortably.

  The power was charging up through the floor and out of the balconies. The ends of Hollis’s fingers tingled and his center was filling up. He couldn’t keep this contained inside of him and survive. It was now or never. He had to preach for his life.

  ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear

  And grace my fears relieved.

  How precious did that grace appear

  The hour—the very hour—I first believed.

  When she went into the second chorus, he began to speak. And Sister Wilson knew what to do, she stroked the keys softly and hummed behind his words.

  “I had a sermon prepared for today.” Hollis held up the papers that he couldn’t read. “But I said to myself, ‘What good is a prepared speech when we’re never prepared for death?’”

  “Amen!” Sister Wilson called from behind the organ.

  “Yes, I was going to take my text from John, Chapter Eleven. And you all know what John, Chapter Eleven, is about.”

  “I know, I know.” Sister Wilson swayed.

  Apparently, she was the only one. The others sat there stunned by the performance unfolding in front of them. But Hollis needed only that one vo
ice and he could hear it echoed from the back and the balconies.

  “It’s about when Mary came to Jesus and said, ‘Lord, my brother is dead. And if you had been there, he wouldn’t have died.’ And Jesus wept.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “He wept because he loved Lazarus. Loved him like a brother—better than a brother. Loved him like you loved our dear Sister Parker.”

  “Oh, yes. Oh, yes.” This time Sister Wilson was joined loudly by Chester Parker, who used his handkerchief to wipe his perspiring head.

  “So you can see even our Lord wasn’t prepared for that kind of sorrow. And I said to myself, ‘Are you better than Him? Can a servant be greater than his master?’”

  “Never. Never.”

  “So I sat in my office this morning and I wept. I wept like a baby because our sister was gone. And I’m coming out here now to tear up this sermon.” He held the pages over his head, ripped them apart, and threw the pieces at the audience.

  “I’m doing what Jesus did. I’m not prepared. Was Jesus prepared?”

  “No, sir!”

  “And you’re not prepared either. No one is prepared for death. But death comes. Yes, it comes. It comes sneaking up—all quiet and soft. And it knows no names.”

  “No names.”

  “It knows no occupations. No rich man or poor. It knows no Linden Hills or Putney Wayne. But it knew her.” His left finger shot out toward the coffin as he leaned over the podium and glared at the audience. “And it knows you.” He swung the finger in front of him. “And it knew Lazarus. Didn’t know he was the brother of Mary and Martha. Didn’t know he was a friend of Jesus. But death knew it was time.”

  “Time, Lord, time.”

  “Are you ready for death? Are you ready?”

  The veins in his neck stood out as he grasped the podium as if to shove it over into the pews.

  “Will the fancy homes, fancy clothes, and fancy cars make you ready? Will the big bucks and big jobs make you ready?”