A Death In The Family (39 page)

“And
that
son of a bitch!” Andrew said.

He was not quite sure what it meant but he knew it was the worst thing you could call anybody; call anybody that, they had to fight, they had a right to kill you. He felt as if he had been hit in the stomach.

“That Jackson,” Andrew said; and now he looked so really angry that Rufus realized that he had not been at all angry before. “ ‘
Father
’ Jackson,” Andrew said, “as he insists on being called.

“Do you know what he did?”

He glared at him so, that Rufus was frightened. “What?” he asked.

“He said he couldn’t read the complete, the complete burial service over your father because your father had never been baptized.” He kept glaring at Rufus; he seemed to he waiting for him to answer. Rufus looked up at him, feeling scared and stupid. He was glad his uncle did not like Father Jackson, but that did not seem exactly the point, and he could not think of anything to say.

“He said he was deeply sorry,” Andrew savagely caricatured the inflection, “but it was simply a rule of the Church.”

“Some church,” he snarled. “And they call themselves Christians. Bury a man who’s a hundred times the man
he’ll
ever be, in his stinking, swishing black petticoats, and a hundred times as good a man too, and ‘No, there are certain requests and recommendations I cannot make Almighty God for the repose of this soul, for he never stuck his head under a holy-water tap.’ Genuflecting, and ducking and bowing and scraping, and basting themselves with signs of the Cross, and all that disgusting hocus-pocus, and you come to one simple, single act of Christian charity and what happens? The rules of the Church forbid it. He’s not a member of our little club.

“I tell you, Rufus, it’s enough to make a man puke up his soul.

“That—that butterfly has got more of God in him than Jackson will ever see for the rest of eternity.

“Priggish, mealy-mouthed son of a bitch.”

They were standing at the edge of Fort Sanders and looking out across the waste of briers and of embanked clay, and Rufus was trying to hold his feelings intact. Everything had seemed so nearly all right, up to a minute ago, and now it was changed and confused. It was still all right, everything which had been, still was, he did not see how it could stop being, yet it was hard to remember it clearly and to remember how he had felt and why it had seemed all right. for since then his uncle had said so much. He was glad he did not like Father Jackson and he wished his mother did not like him either, but that was not all. His uncle had talked about God, and Christians, and faith. with as much hatred as he had seemed, a minute before, to talk with reverence or even with love. But it was worse than that. It was when he was talking about everybody bowing and scraping and hocus-pocus and things like that, that Rufus began to realize that he was talking not just about Father Jackson but about all of them and that he hated all of them. He hates Mother, he said to himself. He really honestly does hate her. Aunt Hannah, too. He hates them. They don’t hate him at all, they love him, but he hates them. But he doesn’t hate them, really, he thought. He could remember how many ways he had shown how fond he was of both of them, all kinds of ways, and most of all by how easy he was with them when nothing was wrong and everybody was having a good time, and by how he had been with them in this time too. He doesn’t hate them, he thought, he loves them, just as much as they love him. But he hates them, too. He talked about them as if he’d like to spit in their faces. When he’s with them he’s nice to them, he even likes them, loves them. When he’s away from them and thinks about them saying their prayers and things, he hates them. When he’s with them he just acts as if he likes them but this is how he really feels, all the time. He told me about the butterfly and he wouldn’t tell them because he hates them, but I don’t hate them, I love them, and when he told me he told me a secret he wouldn’t tell them as if I hated them too.

But they saw it too. They sure saw it too. So he didn’t, he wouldn’t tell them, there wouldn’t be anything to tell. That’s it. He told me because I wasn’t there and he wanted to tell somebody and thought I would want to know and I do. But not if he hates them. And he does. He hates them just like opening a furnace door but he doesn’t want them to know it. He doesn’t want them to know it because he doesn’t want to hurt their feelings. He doesn’t want them to know it because he knows they love him and think he loves them. He doesn’t want them to know it because he loves them. But how can he love them if he hates them so? How can he hate them if he loves them? Is he mad at them because they can say their prayers and he doesn’t? He could if he wanted to, why doesn’t he? Because he hates prayers. And them too for saying them.

He wished he could ask his uncle, “Why do you hate Mama?” but he was afraid to. While he thought he looked now across the devastated Fort, and again into his uncle’s face, and wished that he could ask. But he did not ask, and his uncle did not speak except to say, after a few minutes, “It’s time to go home,” and all the way home they walked in silence.

THE END.

About the Author

James Agee
was a writer with a precise and original talent, who was essentially a poet. This characteristic, in addition to his collection of poetry,
Permit Me Voyage
, appears clearly in his prose,
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
and
The Morning Watch
. It also gave a clear, artistic quality to his outstanding screen plays, among them “The Quiet One” and “The African Queen” and a yet to be produced screen biography of Gauguin which has been called a revolutionary approach to the film. Millions saw his superb film biography, “Mr. Lincoln,” which was repeated three times on
Omnibus
over ABC Television.

Agee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. He went to St. Andrew’s School, which was the background for
The Morning Watch
. After his family moved to Maine, he continued his studies at Exeter. While at Harvard he was editor of the
Advocate
. An assignment from
Fortune Magazine
led to the writing of
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
. During the last years of his life, he worked primarily in Hollywood, almost exclusively with John Huston and Charles Laughton.

His death of a heart attack in New York on May 16, 1955, at the age of forty-five, ended the career of a unique writer.