by Joe Derkacht
Maybe the last trump had blown and the Lord had spoken with the voice of the archangel. Maybe she hadn’t heard because she hadn’t been meant to, because she had been deaf to the voice of the Shepherd. Maybe she had been left to suffer through the Great Tribulation all by herself!
She had reached the gate and looked both ways, anxiously hoping to see somebody, anybody, when she suddenly heard the sound of birds singing. Would birds sing after the Rapture? Seconds later, a car sped by from the direction of Flowers Baptist, its driver not glancing her way, seemingly unworried by the non-existent traffic, gospel music providentially blaring from the open windows. Then a harsh but welcome noise reached her ears. In the far corner of the yard, partially hidden behind a block of stone, Angel worked a rasp over his newest project.
Puffing her cheeks out in a breath of relief, she returned to the porch and lowered herself into the swing. As she sat there, pushing off with her legs, gently propelling herself back and forth, she began to sing, beginning with Amazing Grace and following up with The Old Rugged Cross. Though it was nowhere near Christmas, she sang Go Tell It On The Mountain, wishing Hermione was sitting beside her, singing along, even if most people didn’t care to hear a duet, not when Hermione was around to do the singing.
Finally she saw Duane approaching from the direction of her own house, carrying his sleeping mother in his arms like he might any small child. The boy was strong, his chest deep like Angel’s, his arms heavily corded with muscle, but the now frail Stella was no real burden anyhow; leukemia had seen to that.
Duane gave Ioletta a nod, one that communicated he had something to say but for the moment must wait, as he went past the swing and into the house to put his mother to bed.
“Where all did the two of you wander off to?” She asked, when he came back out.
“To see Anna Lee Odoms,” he said, taking a seat beside her and unconcernedly letting his gaze wander over the street. He might have been nervous for the chains holding the swing, if it had been the old Ioletta he sat beside. But then, he didn’t remember her from the years she was round as a pumpkin. “Didn’t you hear me ask you?”
“Well...” she said, thinking back. She had heard him say something. Could be the water was running while she scoured the sink, too busy to listen to what he wanted to say. All that worrying about the Rapture had been for nothing. All because of pride, too, having to prove she could polish the sink better than anyone else, especially him.
In an apologetic tone of voice, she said, “You was gone an awful long spell. Your mother is dyin’ and don’t need no trips around the block.”
“I wish you coulda been there, Ioletta. They made me set her in the gazebo. Have you ever seen it? You would have thought she had died and gone to heaven, the look she had on her face.”
He let out a low whistle, the same kind that men reserve mostly for sleek automobiles and pretty women.
“In their gazebo? What fo’?”
“Beats the heck out of me. Momma and Mrs. Odoms just looked at each other for a long time, and Captain Odoms and I took a hint, walked around their back yard for the most part.”
Ioletta’s brow furrowed in thought.
“Their back yard is—is like some kind of wonderland,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Hmmph,” Ioletta snorted, rising from the swing. “Never have seen it, don’t s’pose I ever will.”
She let the door slam behind her, as she went inside to check on Stella.
“You never know,” he said, shaking his head, remembering the gazebo. In that yard, surrounded by the twists and turns of intertwined, sculpted hedges and brightly colored bursts of flowers, the structure had seemed to hover as though in mid-space, weightless as a snowflake. Entering it had been like setting foot on another world, or more like stepping into a doorway leading to another world.
“You just never know,” he muttered, still marveling. If there was a prettier yard in the world than Anna Lee’s, he would sure like to see it. What’s more, if heaven was as pretty as her yard, he could hardly wait to go there.
****
Chapter 49
The day after Stella’s trip to Anna Lee’s, Ioletta sadly watched over her, comforting herself with birdlike nibbles from a peanut butter and banana sandwich, even as the bird of death seemed to be nibbling away at Stella’s life. Ioletta had tried, without success, to spoon chicken noodle soup into Stella’s mouth, and as someone who’d sat at more than one death bed in her life, she knew her friend was not long for this world. It seemed that Stella was constantly drifting off to sleep, and in between moments opened her eyes just long enough to look over in her direction.
“What did your father ever do to you, Ioletta?” Stella asked.
Ioletta rolled her eyes in exasperation. “You should save your strenth, girl, don’t be axin’ me that question.”
Stella’s mind was still there. Ioletta could almost see the wheels turning. Slow and labored like, but still turning.
“You never told me you forgave him.”
Ioletta sighed deeply. For good reason, she had not told about forgiving her father. Telling her so would have been a lie.
“What--what did he ever do to you?”
“He was a man,” she said.
This time, Stella rolled her eyes.
“He was a wicked, evil man. That’s what he was.”
Stella stared unblinkingly. For a moment, Ioletta wondered if she was still with her, or if she had passed through the veil. Sometimes people went that quickly, and if you didn’t take a closer look--
Stella startled her by suddenly scratching at one ear. It seemed she had simply paused to gather her strength. “You just remember the words of Jesus,” she scolded. “If you want your Heavenly Father to forgive you--”
“You must forgive others,” Ioletta said, finishing the sentence for her to save her the energy. Sitting at her bedside, staring at her, she decided that if anyone deserved to preach on forgiveness, it was Stella. Probably no one else she knew qualified like she did. A lot of folks could preach it just fine but came by it cheaply, had not really paid the price. Which nevertheless did not mean she felt like talking about her father. Why spoil these last few moments among the bestest of friends?
“He sold me!” She blurted, biting her lip afterwards, drawing blood, shocked at the emotions she felt welling up. For over forty years they had been locked away, and now the words poured forth, punctuated by gasping and groaning. Eleven years old. That was the age she’d been, when her father began selling her to men, most of them whites. Some of those white men were the very ones who’d cheated him out of his land. Her mother had died of a broken heart over it, able to do nothing, forgiving neither her husband and his brutal ways nor the whites, who she saw as no worse than he was.
Ioletta did not weep a single tear, as she at long last told her story. The anger rose up like a raging furnace, burning away the tears before they could reach her eyes. Stella Jo looked on silently, evidently unsurprised, saying nothing to either comfort and console, or to criticize, or to reprove her. At length, Ioletta fell silent, too, except for the rasping, seething breaths that ventilated her smoldering memories.
“And that wasn’t all of it, neither,” she spoke in a whisper. “When I was thirteen...” Her voice drifted off, her eyes on some distant, interior scene. As though stiffening for the coming impact, Stella sat up in bed, waiting.
“I came down pregnant. By a white man or by one of Daddy’s customers in the medicine business, I don’t know. Did you ever have someone shove you down a hill, Stella Jo?”
“No,” she said, tears in her voice but not on her face.
“That’s what my daddy did, when he found out. Took me in his car way up in the woods. Then we stopped and he pushed me out the door. Took me by the arm and drug me to the edge of the road. Do you want to hear more?”
“God forgive him,” Stella said. “God hav
e mercy on his soul.”
“God have mercy,” Ioletta blurted reflexively, falling silent again, surprised the words had popped out of her mouth.
Stella’s gaze shifted in a long, slow revolution about the room. Ioletta, seeing light seemingly kindled in her friend’s eyes, felt prickles up and down the back of her neck.
“I feel--feel the presence of Jesus!” Stella said.
Feeling that presence as well, Ioletta stood suddenly, her hands shooting skyward in spontaneous worship. Words began rolling from her lips, words of praise and adoration, spoken and in song, some of it in English, some of it a language she didn’t understand, what some call tongues, others ecstatic utterance, others gibberish.
The Presence was too strong for her to keep her eyes open, which were streaming with tears. Her hair felt as though it was standing on end. She knew it wasn’t, but it felt that way. At the same time, chills ran up and down her spine, and she cried out, sinking to her knees, “Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, thank you, thank you Jesus! Jesus Jesus Jesus--Thank you, Lord Jesus!”
As the Presence grew stronger, her heart felt it was breaking and would soon burst into flame. Her breath came in gasps, and groans too deep for words rose up from the depths of her soul. Minutes passed, or maybe it was hours. It was not the kind of thing you can measure in human terms, that kneeling in the presence of the Eternal One, lost to the world but found in the spirit. But eventually there was a sense of ebbing to this tide that had washed in on her soul, and then it was gone, leaving in its wake a deep sense of peace. Then she saw that Stella Jo was gone, and she wept.
Tears running down his face, Duane walked in and closed his mother’s eyes. Standing at the open doorway, leaning heavily on his elbow crutches, Angel softly hummed Beulah Land, while a smile played at the corners of his mouth.
#
Reverend Champion was one of those preachers who didn’t know how to make a funeral out of a funeral, setting the necessary tone of solemn mourning and dignified depression, unless the funeral was for someone who was unsaved. Even then he would make a valiant attempt at pointing out the deceased’s best qualities and how people should emulate him or her. Not the person, mind you; he didn’t want any of the mourners emulating someone who hadn’t the good sense to be saved and get on the road to heaven instead of to the bad place, not when the gift of eternal life was free and offered to all. Normally, he didn’t take those kind of funerals, though, and except for the fact that those kind were good opportunities in which to point up the necessity of being born again (and he always told the mourning family that if they wanted him officiating, that was what they could expect to hear), he would not have taken one of them at all. If they didn’t like it, they could find someone else to do the job, maybe a Justice of the Peace or someone from the Unitarian Church. Besides, he figured he could do as he pleased, since he was old fashioned enough to refuse being paid for performing funerals, just as he also refused pay for doing weddings. If you were a member of the church, you could expect certain duties from your pastor: weddings and funerals, just like regular preaching, were among them. Even for neighbors in the community, who’d attended the “big church” all their lives, never darkening the doorway of Alliance Baptist, he only charged for the use of the church building and the cleanup afterwards. Approve of it or not, that was his philosophy.
The way he saw it, Stella’s funeral couldn’t be one of his regular sort of funerals, either, where one naturally expected a whole lot of rejoicing, of singing, shouting, and dancing because the deceased has taken that highway of gold she can now see with her own eyes instead of with the eyes of faith only. Yes, all of us are the same at the foot of the cross, regardless of gender, race, or financial status; he wouldn’t have argued that. All Christian believers are special to God (but so are unbelievers; otherwise, why would He have sent His Son to die on the cross?); but then again, every once in a while there is one who is also extra special to believers and unbelievers alike, to friends and neighbors, to those they’ve worked with, and to those who’ve simply happened to cross their path. That was the case with Sister Stella.
Still, as he sat in his office, he wondered how and what he should preach for her funeral. It wasn’t like he would write out a nice long sermon, of the three-point variety or otherwise; he seldom ever wrote out his sermons. If a man who constantly read and studied his Bible and prayed and stayed in communion with God couldn’t preach at the drop of a hat, something was wrong with him. The point being, if he couldn’t be a clear and clean conduit for the Spirit of God to speak to people, then something was wrong that needed correcting, and he wouldn’t have been able to write a sermon anyhow. Not that he faulted other preachers for writing everything they preached, some putting down every word on paper, others simply jotting down a few notes for reference. Certainly, though, his gift was to be an open conduit unhindered by either sin or the need to manipulate others…
Stella Jo McIlhenny, whom he usually called Sister Stella, should be easy to eulogize. She was like a Biblical Joseph and Ruth and Job and Dorcas, all rolled into one, the suffering servant who overcomes every adversity, character shining through like gold. Such a believer could stand before the Master and joyfully expect to hear the resounding, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant!”
He could almost hear those words himself and see the pride radiating from the Master’s face, as He welcomed her into the heavenly city, capital of the universe both seen and unseen. Crowds gathered around a gate of pearl, singing and shouting a thunderous victory greeting. He was lost in reverie, wondering if what passed through his mind was in reality a peek into the spirit world, when his office intercom buzzed rudely.
“Pastor? Miz Anna Lee Odoms is here to see you.”
Anna Lee Odoms? His hands flew reflexively to his necktie for a quick adjustment. What on earth could possibly bring Chance’s wife to Alliance Baptist?
“Please let her in, Ruby,” he told his secretary, then immediately stood, hastening to open his office door. He set the doorstop, making sure the door would not swing shut while he had a female visitor, and greeted Anna Lee with a pleasant smile.
“Reverend Champion.”
“Miz Odoms,” he replied, taking note of her tear-stained face as he showed her to one of the chairs that faced his desk. Rather than retreat behind his desk, he dropped to one knee beside her and cradled her hand in his own oversized mitts.
“Is it something you would like prayer about, sister?” He asked, his eyes large with concern.
She dissolved into tears, withdrawing her hand and covering her face, while he waited, head bowed, praying for her to regain her composure and for whatever heartache she suffered.
The moments seemed to stretch into minutes. He was feeling the discomfort of remaining on one knee, and uncomfortable in the presence of this weeping woman. It didn’t help that she was the most elegant white woman he knew, wife of a man who was not only a police official but somebody with whom he’d had his share of disagreements.
“Does this have to do with Sister McIlhenny?” He asked, silently discounting a raft of other possibilities that came to mind.
“Yes,” she sobbed, reaching into her fashionable purse for a tissue.
“Sister McIlhenny is in the presence of Jesus, now,” he said, coming up from his knee, recognizing the perfect moment for returning to his own chair.
She snapped her purse shut, and dabbed at her eyes. “I know,” she said. “It’s about the funeral.”
His eyebrows arched in surprise. Was she here to tell him that he could not perform the services? If so, she would be sorely disappointed; even John Willimon would insist that Stella’s final request be met. He wasn’t about to back out on a promise he’d made to a dying woman, even if all the crackers in the great state of Alabama objected to his burying a white woman.
“Yes?” He said, steeling himself for the attack. Tears or bullets were all the same to him. No one would chang
e his mind.
“You have the use of my back yard for the service.” Her voice was husky, deeply affected with grief. “I’ve thought this all out. The gate is sufficient for a hearse to drive through, if you wish, and there is ample room for folding chairs.”
“What?” He asked, disbelieving his ears. She couldn’t have said what he thought she’d said.
“You’re to use my back yard for Stella’s service.”
“Your back yard?”
“She loved my gazebo!” She blurted, dissolving again in tears.
“Your back yard?” He repeated, his voice rising incredulously. He had never seen it himself--had heard rumors but never seen it. Images of a multitude, black-brown-yellow-white, flashed through his mind, of grief-stricken mourners trampling the grounds of a delicate flower garden.
“I don’t think so, ma’am,” he objected. “You wouldn’t believe the damage a few careless people could do.”
She rose to her feet, sniffing back tears and clutching her purse to her waist. “Da-da-darn it all, Brother Champion! Don’t you worry about damages to that little ol’ back yard of mine. It’s what Stella Jo asked of me before she died, and it’s what she’ll have, not what you want.”
As unbelievable as it may seem, that’s how it came about that Stella’s funeral was held in Anna Lee’s back yard that Saturday, with the gazebo steps as Rev. Champion’s preaching platform and the floor of the gazebo itself as the funeral bier.
Marveling at the size and diversity of the crowd, Cedric felt a sudden impulse to change his sermon. His intention had been, after dispensing the usual chronological details of the deceased’s life, to preach on how Christ’s sacrifice was the bridge between God and man, and likewise how Stella’s life had been a bridge between the communities on either side of Flowers Ave. Instead, he now began to tell a series of stories. The first was about Jesus walking to Emmaus with two of His disciples. The second was about the Good Samaritan. The third was about Judgment Day, when God would reward those who had ministered to the least of these, My brethren. What had all of them thought when they saw Stella Jo Pierce McIlhenny? Had any of them thought she was special? Beautiful? Wise? Stylish? Intellectually scintillating? How many of them had fed her when she was hungry? Paid her bills when she was ill? Helped with her housekeeping or her yard work? Indeed, hadn’t she been like Christ walking among them, unrecognized by his own disciples on that road to Emmaus? Or perhaps she’d been like an angel in their midst, and them unaware of it? Indeed, hadn’t she been a Good Samaritan to all, without thought of personal reward? Indeed, hadn’t she been considered by most to be one of the least among them, someone who would never be rich, or famous, or politically influential?
