A wagon with the coffin in it come creaking up the road. When it reached the churchyard the driver turned the wagon and backed it almost to the church steps.
“Here goes, boys,” the pastor said. I took hold of the cold brass handle on the right side of the coffin and pulled. The box slid out over the rough boards and I passed the handle on to the Freeman boy and grabbed the second handle and pulled again. When I took hold of the third and last handle it felt like the whole weight of the casket fell on my fingers. But when I lifted up I found the box was already moving in the grip of the other pallbearers. I had to skip to catch up and take the extra weight as the casket tilted up the steps.
Rain started to fall just as we went into the church. A drop hit the arm of my suit and made a dark spot.
Mount Olivet Church was the smallest sanctuary I’d ever seen. It was really just a little clapboard chapel with a steeple no bigger than an outhouse. Inside was maybe ten benches on either side of the aisle. The preacher had cleared off the communion table in front of the pulpit where the offering baskets and the communion platter usually set. We rested the casket on the table and turned it around lengthwise to the congregation. I was sweating with the effort in the muggy air. I was going to set down with the other pallbearers on the left, but the preacher tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a screwdriver on the floor beside the pulpit.
After thinking for a second I seen what he wanted me to do. Without looking back at the congregation, I picked up the tool and started loosening the screws on the lid of the coffin. There was four on either side and one at each end. The screws come out of the pine easy, but I was careful not to loosen them too much. The screws must not fall out of the lid when it was took off, or they’d be hard to find in the dark church. Me and the preacher lifted off the cover and carried it to the corner, but the screwdriver slipped out of my grasp and went clattering to the floor. I scooped it up and laid it by the pulpit again.
As I straightened up beside the coffin, I seen Hicks’s face for the first time. He laid with his eyes closed and his skin looked dark as a bruise. And there was a smell coming from the box. Somebody had put cologne on the body, and talcum powder. And there was the scent of camphor from the cloth that had laid all night on his face. And there was a faint smell of whiskey, and another smell too, like Hicks had already started to rot, as any animal on a trail might smell after being dead two days.
After I set down, the family on the right come forward to view the corpse. Hicks’s widow, Jevvie, had to be helped by her son Lamar. Jevvie limped to the front of the church and stood with her hands on the side of the box. She looked inside and sobbed loud and deep. The sob filled the church like a gong had been hit. It felt like the whole church had been struck dumb. Everybody froze because Jevvie’s sob sounded so complete and final, like that was all there was to say about Hicks, about his life and his death. Everybody knowed that Jevvie and Hicks had quarreled about things all their married lives. Jevvie looked down at him in the coffin and shook her head. It was as if all the sadness of her life was summed up in that sob. Finally Lamar led her back to the front bench on the right, and the rest of the family filed forward, other sons and daughters, the grandsons with their hair combed for the first time in their lives and their shirts buttoned tight around their necks.
As the rest of the congregation come forward to view the remains of Hicks, I listened to the rain on the roof get louder and louder. It was a tin roof and it banged and chanted with every drop. The little church house rung inside like the sounding box of a piano. The church was just a cabinet of sound. It was raining hard as a summer storm. I thought how the people of Mount Olivet needed a bigger, more solid church. There was a rap of thunder like a big shirt had been tore. The roof clapped and clattered, and thunder fired another salute for Hicks.
The pounding on the roof was so loud it was hard to hear the preacher when he stood up and led the congregation in “We Are Going Down the Valley.” It was a mournful song and I joined in in a low voice. But the music was mostly drowned out by the throbbing on the roof. The preacher prayed, and next we sung “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks,” which was more mournful still. I shivered, just listening to the music and the cold rain. If the rain kept up, the new-dug grave would be full of water. How could we carry the casket up to the graveyard in such a storm?
“‘In my Father’s house are many mansions,’” the preacher read, “‘if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you … that where I am, there ye may be also.’”
I shuddered, feeling the dampness on my skin and in my stomach. The banging on the roof sounded like it was in my head. The crease in my pants was straight and sharp as a knife blade. I run my fingers along the crease. The cloth was smooth and hard and without wrinkles.
“In the midst of life we are in death,” the preacher was saying.
The roof sounded like drums and cymbals and castanets. It was loud in the church as Fourth of July fireworks. I looked at U. G., who had his head bowed.
WHEN THE SERVICE was finally over, the rain had not stopped. If anything the storm sounded louder. The congregation stood up and sung the “Battle Hymn,” and it sounded like the shingles above was clapping. Then the preacher prayed again. And soon as he finished he motioned for the pallbearers to come forward and take the coffin. I got the casket lid from the corner and laid it over Hicks in his Sunday suit. In the dark I had to feel the screws to twist them down with the driver until they groaned.
We turned the coffin crossways on the table and each took hold of a handle. Walking slow as we could we headed toward the door and I heard the family rise and follow. There was a clap of thunder just as we got to the door. As we come outside, the horse and wagon at the door, the road and the cemetery on the hill, was all lit up in a flash of lightning. The ground was a river of splashing and racing water. Water leapt up and water at the bottom of the steps looked four or five inches deep.
I hesitated for a moment. But the pallbearers behind me pushed forward and I stepped right out into the downpour. The dignity of the occasion demanded it. There was nothing else to do. Rain dashed in my face like it was coming sideways. Water hit my eyebrows, and I was blinded by lightning. At the bottom of the steps I walked right into water like it was a creek. Water soaked down my neck and under my tie.
“Slide it right in the wagon, boys,” the preacher said. He had an umbrella and he held it over the end of the coffin as we loaded it into the wet wagon bed. Then he held the umbrella over Hicks’s wife.
Soon as my hand was free I took out my handkerchief and wiped my face. But it didn’t do no good, since even more water run down my forehead and into my eyes. We fell in step behind the wagon and followed it through mud and running water across the yard and up the haul road to the cemetery on the hill. Water run off my suit at first like it was a raincoat. But by the time we begun to climb the hill, I could feel the dampness soaking through the herringbone cloth around my shoulders. Water come right down my back and under my collar. My suit is going to be ruined, I thought. Just for paying my respects to Hicks I’m going to ruin my only suit.
Several people behind had umbrellas, and Lamar held one over Jevvie as we walked up the hill. None of the pallbearers had umbrellas. But it didn’t make much difference because the rain was coming so hard and blowing so fast even an umbrella didn’t do much good. By the time we got to the top of the hill where the fresh grave had been dug, my wet suit was molding to my chest and shoulders, sticking to my back. Both pants and coat was heavy.
As we slid the casket out of the wagon I tried to steady myself, but my foot slipped on the mud. Down I went in the dirt, and the coffin handle tore out of my grip. The wet coffin hit my leg and turned sideways, and the lid popped off. I must not have screwed it down tight enough. Hicks’s body rolled out onto the mud beside the grave. Everybody gasped, and then they looked at me as I hauled myself up, caked with mud. My leg felt like it was broke, but I hardly noticed it.
I was s
o ashamed I couldn’t look at nobody as I tried to wipe the mud off the suit and off my hands and wrists. The clay stuck to the herringbone like red shit, like grease. Jevvie was looking at me with pity, as if I was a little boy that had messed hisself. Lamar held her elbow and glared like I was the last straw that ruined his daddy’s funeral. I was so confused I kept slapping at the mud on my pants and on the sleeve of the suit. The rain spit gobs in my face.
I wanted to wallow in the mud to show how humiliated I was. I hated myself as I seen the disgust on the face of the preacher. U. G. looked embarrassed for people to know we was cousins. The pain in my leg was awful, but I wished it was worser.
There is a kind of shame so bad it’s almost a thrill of shame, a fit and a spasm of shame. When I seen the pity for me on the widow’s face I shuddered in my bones. I wanted to hurl myself off the hill into the lowest pit of hell, or into a sewer. You have showed your sorry ass again, I said to myself. You have showed what you really are.
My hands was too filthy to help them lift the body back into the casket. My face burned as I tried to wipe my hands off on my dirty pants. Rain throwed itself in my eyes.
I stood with the other pallbearers soaking up the rain as the preacher read from the Bible beside the grave and we sung “Beautiful, Beautiful Zion.” Rain dripped from my dirty cuffs and elbows. There was another crash of thunder and everything got lit up again. The coffin resting beside the grave had water puddled on it. Nobody there would ever forget how I had slipped in the mud and dropped Hicks’s coffin. They would tell everybody.
“‘As for man, his days are as grass,’” the preacher read. “‘As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.’”
When it was over I couldn’t look at anybody. I started walking back down the hill and found U. G. beside me. My suit could not have been wetter or dirtier if I had fell in the river. The cloth pulled and weighed on my legs. Mud was caked like manure on my knees.
“Hicks never did like things dry,” U. G. said.
“I bet he’s having a good laugh at us right now,” I said. I was ashamed to look at U. G., and I was ashamed to look at myself. As I walked away from the cemetery I thought I could hear Hicks chuckle in the pouring rain.
Seventeen
Muir
IT WAS AFTER Hicks’s funeral that the circus come to town. I told Mama I was going to drive Annie to the circus, and Mama said I had to take Fay. She said Hank and Julie wouldn’t let Annie go unless I took Fay. So I had no choice but to take my little sister. I asked U. G. if I could have the afternoon off to drive Annie and Fay to the circus. To my surprise he said I could. U. G. had never mentioned me falling down in the mud at Hicks’s funeral.
They always had a parade through town to advertise the circus, and some people said the parade was a better show than the circus itself. Maybe that was because everybody in the county turned out, and it was like a holiday and a carnival rolled up into one. I always did like a parade, and to see all the animals and the prancing, dancing ladies going right down the middle of the street was a special thrill.
As we drove to town Annie set in the seat beside me, and Fay set by the window. I noticed that Annie’s hands was red from doing washing that morning. She kept them folded in her lap so the redness wouldn’t show.
Fay wanted to park in front of the feedstore on the south end of town so we could watch the parade from the car in case it rained. But I told her there wouldn’t be any room there, and besides, we couldn’t see from the car with people standing all along the sidewalk.
We found that Main Street was blocked off anyway. I had to drive up King Street and park in front of Brookshire’s Livery Stables and car lot, where me and Moody had bought the Model T.
“I wish Mama would have come,” Fay said. “She would have liked the circus.”
As we walked the two blocks up to Main Street, Annie kept her arms folded so her hands was hid. Everybody in town seemed to be going in the same direction. We got to Main just in time as the band music started in the distance. We could hear snatches coming down the river of the street. But those snatches of trumpets and trombones, and the beat of drums, was sparkling and thrilling. People lined the sidewalks and we had to push our way through to see anything. Finally we found a place just above the feedstore and across from the courthouse. The dome of the courthouse rose silver in the sun.
The excitement in the crowd was like music too. There was a beat and a hum as people stretched to see and shifted their feet and children darted out into the street.
“Where is the lion?” a little girl hollered.
“Hush up,” her mama said.
People packed both sides of the street, and kids run out on the pavement to see what was coming and got jerked back by their mamas. Annie stood on tiptoe to see better, her hands still folded on her chest. A policeman walked by and blowed his whistle and waved the crowd back.
“Yonder they come!” a boy hollered. But I couldn’t see much over the heads of all the people. Since Annie was a good bit shorter than me she probably couldn’t see at all. I wished there was something she could climb on. I wished I could hold her up in my arms.
The music got louder, and it was like the music I’d heard on the radio for a military funeral one time. As the band got closer it sounded like bright metal and silk cloth was tearing across the sky. Drums bruised the air again, again. I put my hands under Annie’s arms and helped her stand on tiptoe.
It was the fireman’s band from Asheville, a banner proclaimed. There was a big fat fellow with a red face carrying the drum and punishing it. There was a row of trumpets and trombones, blasting the sky with echoes and sweet barks.
After the fireman’s band I seen this man prancing in a tall hat and uniform. The tall hat had a tassel on it and as the man strutted the tassel danced around. The man carried a silver baton, which he throwed high in the air and caught. I don’t know how he could catch the spinning stick so neat.
There was another band behind the major. It was the city high school band, dressed in maroon and gold. The crowd cheered because they knowed all the boys and girls in the band, I reckon. There was sons and daughters and cousins and neighbors puffing on the horns and slamming the cymbals together like pot lids.
But everybody was looking up the street now. For just behind the high school band was the swaying elephant, and all of us turned toward the elephant. It was so big it didn’t look like anything alive, except that it was moving. There was a kind of painted rug draped across the elephant’s forehead, with a star on it. And several people rode on a big rug on the elephant’s back. The animal was so high it was like looking up at a tall building to watch the riders. A man in a silk top hat, and a pretty lady in a dancer’s short skirt, set just behind the elephant’s head. And a midget or dwarf set behind them and waved to the crowd. He looked tiny as a child, except his head was big.
“How did they get up on the elephant?” Annie said over her shoulder.
“Must have climbed a ladder,” I hollered in her ear. Her ear was pink with excitement.
And then I noticed the elephant’s eye. It was the size of a big light-bulb and looked dark as prune juice. The elephant appeared to be crying, for liquid run down the side of the leathery face. What could make an elephant weep? I wondered. It should be happy, wearing its colorful bedspread and marching in front of the cheering crowd. Its tears was the color of tobacco juice.
A man strutted in front of the elephant carrying a stick, a kind of wand. He appeared to be the man that was in charge of the elephant. He appeared to be the master of ceremonies, maybe the boss of the circus, striding out in front and waving his hat to the crowd. I guess he was the ringmaster in charge of the show.
As we watched, the elephant behind him stopped marching and turned toward where me and Annie and Fay stood.
The man with the stick yelled up at the elephant, but the animal ignored him and started toward us on the
sidewalk. I seen it was crying out of both eyes, tears sliding down to the elephant’s mouth.
“Hey!” the man in the top hat yelled, but the elephant didn’t pay him any heed. The animal stared right at me and over me. I turned around and seen the elephant was studying its reflection in the window of the storefront. It took a step closer to us.
There was laughter on the other side of the street, but I couldn’t tell what the people was laughing about until I seen the great clods dropping behind the elephant and knowed it was doing its business right in the street. And what a big business it was! Chunks and pieces the size of grapefruits plopped down on the pavement. A pile of dark wads and chunks stacked up like cannon balls. The crowd tittered and clapped.
“The Lord gosh,” Annie said.
“Whew!” Fay said.
A big wagon with cages of lions and tigers had to stop on the street behind the elephant. But the band kept on playing and somebody blowed a whistle. The elephant flung its trunk out like a whip and the crowd pushed us back. It was looking at itself in the store window and must have thought it was facing another elephant as big and sad as itself. The elephant let out an awful screech that sounded like the squall of a sawmill when the blade hits a knot or a nail.
“Get back!” the man in the top hat hollered, and hit the elephant on the trunk with his stick. The animal flung out its trunk again like it was trying to shake off a fly. Boys whistled through their fingers and throwed papers and apple cores and things at the elephant.
Suddenly the elephant started toward us, and everybody pushed back from the curb. Annie screamed and I stepped back, still holding her under the arms. A blue roadster was parked on the street and we all rushed to get behind it. The man on the elephant’s back rapped his stick on its forehead and grabbed a floppy ear.
When the elephant got to the roadster it reared up, just like in the pictures I’d seen where a circus elephant climbed on a stool or a barrel. The animal put one foot on top of the roadster, and then its other front foot. The car creaked and lurched and something broke inside. The top wrinkled and caved in.
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