Loose Ends

by Neal Bowers

  Putting things back made Davis feel better, but the process didn’t make his mother whole. Instead, it fractured her into Haupt and motel beds. Checking the bags to be sure he hadn’t missed anything, he withdrew something soft, silky, a pair of panties. When he realized what they were, he dropped them, then felt foolish when he couldn’t force himself to pick them up. Haupt might have taken them off her himself, before they climbed into bed, before her heart attack. Trying to stop the scene from playing in his mind, Davis kicked the panties underneath the bed.

  Why did everything keep coming back to sex? Sex and death, the odd twins. You reproduce and then you die. Pretty simple. And here was Davis Banks, the only thing Ralph and Ellen had to show for all their efforts, their puny bid for immortality. Well, maybe not the only thing. Haupt and Winningham had to be factored in. Humping with the oldies. Hell of a way to remember his parents.

  To slow his plummeting thoughts, Davis began unpacking his funeral clothes. His black suit came crumpled from the suitcase, and when he tried to hang it over the hall doorway, it dropped to the floor and picked up enough lint to make a universe. Brushing simply rearranged the constellations. To get the wrinkles out, Davis hung the coat and pants in the bathroom and turned on the shower. Hot water only, full blast, to make steam. He closed the door and went back to his suitcase for a shirt, socks, and clean underwear, paced the hallway for a few minutes, and then retrieved the suit. None of the wrinkles were gone but the cloth had definitely relaxed, gone limp, in fact. “Perfect,” Davis said, turning the coat one way and then another. “Absolutely perfect.”

  When he was dressed, he tried to wipe away the lint with a damp washcloth, but managed only to make the suit feel clammier. “Don’t want to compete with the corpse,” he thought, then chastised himself for the insensitive joke at his mother’s expense. “Careful, or you’ll offend yourself.” Leaning in toward the mirror as he wound his tie around, he repeated the word “careful,” forming it slowly, watching his lower lip flip out from beneath his front teeth.

  When he was ready to go, he checked the clock in his mother’s bedroom. Just twelve forty-five. Too early to put in an appearance at the funeral home. Much too early to put up with Aunt Goldie. But there was nowhere to sit without collecting more lint. Better to stay upright. Maybe a walk around the grounds.

  The backyard was spongy from the night’s rain, the grass tall enough to dampen the toes of Davis’s shoes. The sun flickered now and then through thinning clouds. Good day for a funeral. The only kicker was that the burial would have to wait until tomorrow. His father would be reinterred today. A double burial was a bigger return for the price of his plane fare than he had ever imagined.

  The stupid monologue wasn’t working. Davis kept thinking of his mother, her panties in Haupt’s hand, Haupt mounting her, the groaning, “Oh, God! Yes!” But who would be on top when his father was paired with Winningham? Was his father dominant or submissive? Giving or receiving? He couldn’t decide where to put his father.

  Desperate to stop such thoughts, Davis found himself pulling on the lawn-mower cord, the engine coughing and then catching. Just one full strip down the lawn and it choked on the wet grass, but the air was sweet with bruised green, the smell of mown hay, fresh fields. Davis’s socks and the cuffs of his pants were spattered with green pulp which stained his hand when he stooped to brush it away, and then his hand smelled of cut grass. Overhead, in a budding sweet gum tree, a cardinal made his slick whistle, a sound repeated and repeated, “Sex. Sex. Sex. Sex. Sex.”

  CHAPTER 16

  __________

  NOT WANTING TO reel in the moment of his funeral home appearance, Davis slackened the line, letting the minutes play out. He had always been a bad fisherman, impatient, certain whatever stream or lake he sat beside or drifted on was empty of everything but water. But now, he felt adept, the consummate angler, knowing exactly what was in Berkley’s well-stocked pond.

  Taking the long way, he drove through the old black section of town. Almost unchanged since his childhood, the rickety clapboard houses with their warped porches and sagging eaves somehow made a solid neighborhood. Saturday, and the kids were everywhere, playing tag and tossing balls. The smell of cooking flavored the air, turnip greens and corn bread. What would the rest of the menu include? Stewed potatoes and pork shoulder, pinto beans and peach cobbler.

  Savoring the meal as he eased to a stop at an intersection where a middle-aged couple waited to cross, he leaned out the window and said, “How’re y’all?” No invitation. Not even acknowledgment. And he remembered that he didn’t belong here. No one had a chair for him at any table in this part of town. “Move on through the New South, white boy.” They didn’t say it, but the words seemed articulated by their backs and shoulders as they walked away.

  From frame houses to brick, front-yard vegetable gardens to bluegrass lawns, the neighborhoods changed. No tire swings in the oaks, no one walking in the balmy middle of the day. Quiet affluence. Davis wound around until he found the rear of Berkley’s, its parking lot clogged, the street double-lined with cars. Nowhere for him to put the Trackless Tank, but he turned into the lot anyway, where several boys chased one another, their feet skittering in gravel. On the rear steps of the building, the predictable group of men loitered with their cigarettes, one of them laughing out a cloud of smoke. Dirty jokes or rumors. Always the same silt swirling at the top, everything slowing and settling in its own time.

  The only space for Davis was the space he occupied, in the middle of the driveway, directly opposite the rear door. When he got out and walked up the steps to the entrance, the men stopped their conversation, and one of them said, “S’pose he don’t care who he blocks in.” Davis turned and studied the man, trying to put a name to the flat face, the thrown-back shoulders. Some second or third cousin. The smokers drew nervously on their cigarettes, a thin haze spiraling above their heads. They were all older than Davis, familiar with death and the civilities of parking. Quick with a brickbat, too, or a two-by-four. Mean to the marrow. That’s what his father would say.

  “I promise not to park there when I come to your funeral.”

  No one laughed. The smoke grew thicker, and the flat-faced cousin rocked back and forth on his heels, his hands jammed into his jacket pockets, straining the fabric into bat wings. Davis wondered if he was processing the remark, trying to decide if it was an insult.

  “If you gentlemen will excuse me, I’ve got to go bury my mother.” As the door closed behind him, he heard throat-clearing and a jumble of low voices.

  The odor of chrysanthemums was overpowering, and organ music seeped from hidden speakers in the ceiling. In the parlor nearest the door, someone was keening. When Davis looked inside, he saw a family clinging to one another in a half circle around a coffin at the far end of the room.

  “Young boy, just seventeen. A real shame,” Mr. Berkley whispered from somewhere behind him. In the dim light, he was barely visible, propped against the wall between two large floral displays. “Most of your family’s here already, Mr. Banks.”

  Davis interpreted the remark as reproval. He was later than a son should be when his mother has been waiting so patiently. And he was neglecting the people who had come to see how he was taking it, the death of his last parent. So much depended on him. The bereft, unfortunate son.

  “How did the boy die?”

  “Car wreck. Out on the Dickson Highway. Awful tragedy.” Mr. Berkley dropped his head in a prayerful posture as he finished. Then, looking over Davis’s left shoulder, he continued, “Sometimes the visitation is worse than the funeral, everyone seeing the deceased for the first time. This will be a hard day.”

  For a moment, Davis felt he was glimpsing the inner workings of the death business—the two or three or five stages of moving the bodies along. Assembly line. First the crack-up or collapse. Then the makeup and the pose and all that grief to be parceled out in viewings, visitations, burials. Ellen Banks and her family were nearing the end of the li
ne, out the door and into the ground, with a boy to follow and an endless procession of the dead to follow him.

  How Mr. Berkley would hate Charles Winningham, who had contrived or provoked his own burial, eliminating the funeral business entirely. Still, he might get Winningham in the end—what was left of him—for proper interment, with all the rites and discreet tally sheets for supplies and services rendered. Sad to think that a man couldn’t just lie down in the kindred dust.

  As he entered the parlor where his mother was on display, Davis stumbled in awe of the flowers—wreaths and sprays and garlands and arrangements on wire tripods, little pots in colored foil, milky vases jammed with carnations and irises—so many blooms they almost obscured the coffin. His mother would consider this a good showing. She counted a person’s worth by the quantity of flowers. Depth of grief measured in gladiolas, tulips, mums, lilies. But there was nothing from him, no white roses tagged with a “Mother” ribbon, blue to match her dress. He should have remembered. But then she knew he never approved of this wastefulness, had withdrawn into silence when he referred to his father’s funeral as a horror-show hothouse. He wondered if she had ever forgiven him.

  “Thank the Lord, you’re finally here.” Aunt Goldie sidled up to him, her whisper loud enough for everyone in the back of the room to hear.

  She was clutching a program, which Davis tugged from her gloved grasp. “Rock of Ages,” “The Old Rugged Cross,” all the old Baptist standards. Sermon by Pastor Roy Watkins. “Who’s Watkins?” he asked Aunt Goldie.

  “That’s him, sittin’ right down front on the end.”

  From behind, the man she singled out might be dead himself. He wasn’t seated so much as tilted into a folding chair, his legs outthrust, head tipped forward.

  “Used to be the pastor down at Blooming Grove. He don’t do much preachin’ now but knows your uncle Oscar.”

  “The old-boy-done-been-called-to-preachin’ network,” Davis thought, wondering if Oscar was building credits with his buddy Roy. Might be a kind of geriatric exchange, with an invitation for Oscar looming in some rural church as payback.

  “Testimonials.” The word was printed in the middle of the program, immediately before “Sermon.” “Whose idea was this?” Davis was bending down to Aunt Goldie, his finger underneath the word.

  “Your mama always liked it when friends and family said a few words.”

  In other words, it was Goldie’s idea. She and Oscar had organized the funeral program.

  Realizing his aunt was shushing him and turning away, Davis followed and took his seat between her and Pastor Watkins, who did not pull back his legs for them to pass. From his seat, Davis could see the tip of his mother’s nose and part of her forehead, her profile held in marble relief. The organist was stammering through “Blessed Assurance” on the little keyboard set up in the corner. Someone behind Davis was humming.

  When the music stopped, Oscar stood and moved slowly to the front amid shuffling and coughing. “Praise the Lord,” he said, waiting as if he expected the Lord to reply. “It’s good to see so many friends here, even on this sad occasion. Ellen Banks was my sister by marriage, and I loved her so good—just like a sister. Her passing is hard for us all, but she’s safe in the bosom of Jesus. Praise the Lord.” A few people now echoed, “Praise the Lord.” “She’s gone to a better place.”

  Oscar sat down so abruptly that Davis thought he might be ill. Brevity was not his strength. Stammering in circles and going on to no point was his usual style. No one knew what to do next. The program indicated they were at the “Testimonials” section, but no one came forward. Goldie knuckled his thigh, but he didn’t want to speak. Didn’t the next of kin get a free pass where these things were concerned? The sound of anticipation was a white noise in the room, undertone of all those bodies breathing and shifting in their chairs. Davis stood up.

  When he turned to face the room, he realized for the first time how many people had come. Extra chairs had been set up at the back and along the walls. A small group of latecomers stood just inside the door. They were all looking at him, the professor, the skilled public speaker. But he had nothing to say. Casting a glance behind him, he saw his mother waiting. Her last thoughts, the ones decaying in her brain, were probably of Haupt. If he weren’t still in the hospital, Haupt might even be in the room.

  He was on the brink of saying something absurd, to suit the situation: “My mother’s last words were ‘cottage cheese.’ ” The words were forming in his mouth, but what came out instead when he proclaimed her dying expression was “I’m at ease.” “The doctor who tried to save her life told me. She was in terrible pain, in and out of consciousness as they worked on her. At the end, she motioned, and when the doctor leaned over she said, ‘I’m at ease.’ I take comfort in those words, as all of you who knew and loved her should. Ellen Banks is at ease.”

  Aunt Goldie gave him a perplexed, cocked-head look as he sat down beside her. Almost touching his lips to her ear, Davis whispered, “Cottage cheese.”

  “What’d you say?”

  Davis gave a somber look and turned to sit squarely in his chair. After more shuffling and awkward silence, he leaned to Pastor Watkins and said, “Time for the sermon.”

  Without answering, the old man went into action, pulling his legs toward him and hoisting himself up like someone balancing on a windblown ledge. His shirt was stained with coffee or tobacco juice, which his off-center necktie couldn’t cover. Speaking without notes, nothing but a Bible in his hands, he began.

  “Friends, loved ones, children of God, we are here on this sad occasion to mark the passing of Mrs. Banks.” A loud moan from the back of the room unsteadied him. “She was a good woman—a daughter, sister, wife, and mother.” Coughs rippled through the room, a sign the preacher was slow in warming to his subject. “Helen Banks, a name that will now be engraved on a stone is also written in the Book of Life in Heaven.” Someone said, “Praise, Jee-sus!” and the preacher cleared his throat, saying Ellen’s name wrong again. “Helen Banks . . .” He wasn’t so much lost in thought as simply lost. Davis crossed and uncrossed his legs, wondering how to jump-start the old man so he could finish. The room was a bubble of air sunk in amber. Around them, the moments hardened.

  “How do we reckon the passing of a human life?” From nowhere, the preacher had returned. “Can we put a dollar value on it? Can we weigh it in pounds or measure it in inches? No, brothers and sisters, we cannot. And yet each life is precious to God, even the littlest. For His eye is on the sparrow. So we come here on this fine April Saturday to say good-bye to someone we cherished but God values even more. Among the flowers today, I saw one of those arrangements with the little telephone off the hook and the words ‘Jesus called’ on the ribbon. Yes, my friends, Jesus called Helen Banks and took her home.”

  The old man stood for a moment, apparently trying to determine if he was through, and then prayed, “Sweet Jesus, we know this good woman is in your care. We pray that if there be any here today who do not know you, who have not taken you as their personal savior, that they will realize how short life is. Lord, let us all be ready. Amen.”

  “Amen” sounded throughout the room as the preacher walked to his chair and sat heavily next to Davis. The organist began to play, something that at first sounded like “The Girl from Ipanema” but slowed into “Just As I Am.” Aunt Goldie was standing, motioning to Davis and Uncle Oscar. She meant for the three of them to form a receiving line at the head of the casket. This was the part Davis hadn’t remembered—everyone filing through to view the body, then shake the hands of the grieving family. Aunt Goldie nudged him closest to the body, a director positioning an actor onstage. Then she stood next to him and put Oscar at the end of their short line.

  Not everyone who passed by looked at the body, but some stopped and stared briefly. A few of the women even bent and kissed Ellen Banks’s forehead or her waxy cheek. The tendered consolations were a background noise, like the public address system in an airp
ort: Sorry for your loss. Your lost baggage. Lost. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Some of the older women hugged him or patted the back of his hand. The men gave a stoic look and mumbled. Some said nothing.

  Next to him, Aunt Goldie was offering a constant patter, and Davis eventually realized it was an announcement. “Burial’s been changed to tomorrow at two.” Whatever anyone said to her, that was her reply.

  On the periphery, Uncle Oscar occasionally cleared his throat to bellow a big hello at someone he hadn’t seen in a long time. When Oscar stopped the flow with his socializing, Davis pulled people along until they pushed the blockage through. “Thank you. Thank you so much for coming. Thanks. Thank you.” And then there would be four people moving past Aunt Goldie’s announcement of the burial postponement, bumping into Oscar’s gab.

  Linda was in the line. She stopped to place a single rose inside the coffin and then turned to Davis to ask if he minded. “Hell, yes. Get it out of there. Nobody needs any tokens from you,” but he killed the thought and said it was all right. Linda’s hand was damp when he shook it. She said nothing but gave him her best compassionate look.

  When the crowd had gone and only a few of Aunt Goldie’s friends from church waddled around her, making dovecote chatter, Davis went to the back of the room and sat down. Oscar was swapping pulpit tips with Pastor Watkins, who had not moved since giving his sermon. Maybe he was waiting to be paid. What should he get for such an inspirational message, especially one tailored so carefully to fit the deceased? Coin of the realm, Reverend—a fistful of dust.

  A few people sauntered in the hallway, but most were outside the funeral home. From the top of the steps, Davis could see that his car had been moved, maybe by the men who disapproved of his parking habits, possibly by Mr. Berkley. Unless it had been towed, it had to be nearby, pushed out of the way. As the lot thinned out, sunlight on glass in the rose of Sharon bushes flashed the location. Rolled completely off the graveled lot and onto a portion of the lawn, the car spoke its wounded word through small-leafed branches—LIER.