The Floatplane Notebooks (4 page)

Saturday, May fourth, gravecleaning day, broke hot. Thatcher stood tall. He was dressed in blue jeans and a white T-shirt. I had fixed lemonade and brownies as my portion. Miss Esther had told me not to worry, but I insisted. I wanted to be immersed in the whole tradition of the gravecleaning and all that went with it, which included, of course, the women preparing the food while the men handled problems such as, on this particular gravecleaning: a large dead tree which had fallen across the graveyard and had to be axed into sections and then hauled away in Mr. Copeland's truck.

By ten o'clock a large contingent of family had arrived at Thatcher's house—about twenty people, and four or five dogs. Mark and Meredith each brought a mixed-breed dog, Fox and Trader, who, in turn, brought several friends along. Everybody had people their age to match up with, plus there were several old people. Mildred took me around and introduced me to everybody. I finally got to meet Aunt Scrap, one of the older cousins I'd heard so much about. She has a wrinkled face, is somewhat stooped and wore a red bandanna around her head. Her eyes were little slits like a Japanese, almost.

All the rakes, hoes, and other implements, and picnic lunches were placed in the back of Mr. Copeland's jeep truck; he drove ahead to the graveyard while all others walked along the path through the woods. Thatcher and I held hands and I soaked up the beauty of the woods, especially the dogwood trees.

And as we walk along the final path I see a horrific splendor of purple wisteria blooms off to the left of the graveyard—a far larger gathering of such blooms than I have ever witnessed. Thatcher had shown me the graveyard and we'd walked down there several times. In fact, I'd walked down there and cried the time Thatcher took Veronica Harden out to lunch, but I had not really noticed the wisteria, since it hadn't been in bloom those times. The vines cover an area about the size of four or five houses, running out and around the limbs of tall stately pine trees and also uniformly winding very tightly up their trunks, eventually to kill them, I fear; thus a mixture of splendor and dread such as you would never expect to find in the very woods down behind Thatcher's house.

Mr. Copeland was already there, chopping with an ax on the large pine tree—fallen partly across the graveyard—so it could be taken to the pickup, a piece at a time.

Everyone started in to work, except Noralee and several of the smaller children, who walked down to the edge of the pond, which is beyond the wisteria. Mr. Copeland will not let them swim in the pond until after June first.

Miss Esther started in helping Mr. Copeland tote pieces of the log away. She works like a man. I got a hedge clipper and joined in, clipping a hedge planted near the center of the graveyard.

Aunt Scrap talked most of the time. We hadn't been working long when she came over to me. She was holding a rake—a yard rake, the kind with the short, straight, hard prongs. She leaned on the handle. Fresh tiny rivers of snuff juice were in the corners of her mouth. “Well, well,” she said. “You're Bliss.”

“Yes ma'am.”

“You know what kind of bush that is?”

“No ma'am.”

“It's a Sweet Betsy bush, come from T. C. Sutton's place about the time they tore it down. When they closed off that road used to run through here, things kind of died out. People moved out; houses got torn down. Anyway, Sweet Betsy—Mrs. Sutton had them all over her front yard. Don't trim quite so close there.”

“Okay.”

“That Thatcher's a fine boy.”

“Thank you.”

“He's my, let's see, I guess second cousin. His granddaddy
and my daddy were half brothers. You know”—she looked down, then up at me—“on this marriage stuff, they told me if I swallowed a raw quail heart I'd marry the first beau to come along and talk to me, and I knew the time of day Horace Jacobs walked along the road, that road that was right out there.” She pointed. “So I saved one and swallowed it—just before I knowed it was time for him to come along. I lived about half a mile down that way. And sure enough there he come and I made myself noticeable right out in the front yard. We got married too.” She laughed. She was leaning forward, looking at me, and her eyebrows were raised. Then she turned and spat a stream onto the ground where she'd already raked. She looked out over the graveyard. “Lord amercy. There's a bunch of good people in the ground here. And there ought not to be ‘ary another one added.”

“There's some more room back there, isn't there?” I asked.

She looked up at me. “Sure is, but it's been a good while—thirty years or more—and people just sort of started getting buried at church graveyards, and so that makes this like a little museum. You wouldn't put a new piece of furniture in a museum, would you?”

“I don't guess so.”

“You hear about how this graveyard got started?”

“No ma'am.”

“Well, it was when my great-granddaddy and grandmother, Walker and Caroline, lived here, and my granddaddy was a little boy, Ross. He was a pistol, that Ross. I remember him. He had a great big mustache when he died, 1918, buried right over there. He was something. He had real light blue eyes which got lighter and lighter and when he died they
were almost white. His nose was sort of up-tilted, which is why he grew that mustache, and when he got old his galluses held up pants so big at the waist he looked like he was standing in a barrel. He was the one lived his whole life in that house that was right there. He remembered when the graveyard got started, too. I heard him talk about it. What happened was a field hand died. This was a cotton field and the field hand dropped dead, and they buried him on the spot. Didn't have no family. Fellow by the name of Pittman. He's buried right there. Unmarked. Then somebody else died, somebody's baby I think. Most of the ones unmarked, them over there, are infant graves. And there's the little rock that says ‘Born Ded' on it. Ross carved that on there. Come here, and I'll show you.”

We walked over to a small stone, about the size of a football, but flatter, and sure enough, there it was, chipped into it: “Born Ded.”

“Then of course that tombstone there is Tyree and Loretta and over there is Ross and Helen and his other wife and then there is Walker and Caroline, the ones that buried the field hand. My mama and papa are buried back there in that back row: Dink and Fair. And then all these others.” She shook pine straw off the rake. “Oh yes, and Vera. She collected a Confederate pension—her husband got killed in the Civil War. Can't remember his name. She lived alone, and chickens roosted on her bed. She was a laudanum addick. Would drink that stuff and dance up a storm. She wore a bunch of petticoats and had great big pockets in her aprons. She'd walk nine miles to get that laudanum when she was, Lord, over seventy years old, I guess. My, my. Course
you're not old enough to be interested in all this yet.”

“Oh, yes ma'am, I—”

“Then too, it ain't your blood kin.”

“Oh, yes ma'am, I am interested,” I said.

I thus found myself looking into the eyes of one of the very backbones and spirits of this marvelous family, which continues even unto today—witness Mr. and Mrs. Copeland, Meredith, Noralee, and now Thatcher and me—unabated into the future.

I think about my mother and father's parents and grandparents, buried in large conventional cemeteries—so unromantically—without an entire enclave, an entire force as it were, buried all around them. It seems to me that the tradition of being buried here should be renewed. It's the most peaceful place imaginable: the pond, the wisteria, the majestic pine trees.

“When the house stood over there,” said Aunt Scrap, “right over there, my great-grandma, Caroline, planted that wisteria plant by the back steps. She had seven or eight names—I used to could say them. Course I won't born when she planted it, but I do remember when it grew back there, trimmed—beside the back steps, up a trellis. Then it come up by the pond and they'd let it go, then trim it back, then let it go, and now look at that. You let one of them wisterias get loose and it's gone every which way. They'll never get that one back under control. They're the meanest plants you ever seen.” She called to Meredith, “Get that dog off that grave. He looks like he's about to take a notion to dig.”

“Ain't my dog.”

“I don't care whose dog it is. Get him off there.”

I was planted as a seedling by the back steps soon after first light on the day the field hand died planted by a woman named Cora Rosa Hunter Novella Caroline Hildred Martha Bird Taylor Copeland. Her husband Walker called her Puss. Others called her Caroline.

She dug a hole by the back steps with the piece of a grub hoe she used for her flowers. It was very early in the morning and cool. Beyond the pasture and the pond a wisp of low fog flung along just dipping into the tops of trees.

Walker called from inside. Puss where you?

Out here planting a wisteria.

Walker stepped onto the back porch stopped pulled his suspender straps over his shoulders.

Caroline pressed loose dirt with her foot. It'll have a chance to get a good start before it gets too hot. I want to get something started back here. And I want you or Isaac one to build a trellis.

Caroline walked over into the kitchen and started a fire to cook breakfast. The children Isaac Vera and Ross the smallest came out of the house and went briefly to their spots in the woods. When they came back Vera washed her hands with water from a pan on the porch and then pulled up a cloth-covered pail of milk from the well.

Ross looked around then picked up a rock and threw it at a chicken as a man came out of the smokehouse. Thomas Pittman the field hand.

Don't do that Thomas Pittman said.

Ross frowned and went into the kitchen.

Thomas Pittman took breakfast in the yard sitting with his back against a tree.

They finished eating and the children and Walker fed the animals then they all went to the field.

Before the sun was straight above Walker rolled Thomas Pittman back into the yard in a wheelbarrow one foot dragging.

Ross was with Walker. He stood watching as Walker with difficulty got Thomas Pittman up onto the back porch and laid him down went inside got a long coat covered the body down to just below the knees then said to Ross Now you stay here and watch him. Don't let the dogs get at him. And shell that there pan of peas while you're at it.

Yessir.

Walker stared at the covered corpse scratched himself then started back to the field.

Ross sat on the back steps and looked for a while at the shape of Thomas Pittman under the coat. Then he stood and walked with long bouncing strides over into the kitchen.

Two bird dog puppies ran from around the corner of the house. One stopped squatted peed then scrambled up the steps toward the corpse. The other one followed. The first approached the head of the corpse bit and held the coat at Thomas Pittman's head growled shook it back and forth and moved backward uncovering the head. The other puppy started for Thomas Pittman's pale face stopped wagged his tail and suddenly reared onto his hind legs then went for the ear licked it bounded back bounded forward again and licked the neck below the ear then started barking.

Ross came running. Git away from there. Git. Git. He ran up the steps grabbed the puppies dropped them down off the porch and placed the coat back over Thomas Pittman's head pausing looking at the face. Thomas Pittman's eyes and mouth were open.

The puppies' mother Trader came slowly from around the corner of the house followed by three more puppies. The porch puppies went for her. She lay on her side in the shade of the eaves over little holes made by rain dripping from the roof and gave milk tiny puppy-mouth hairs touching her nipples tongues and mouths making tight sucking noises.

That afternoon late Thomas Pittman was laid out somewhere in the house. Caroline and Walker decided that his heart burst. Caroline had come upon him she told people lying face down in a cotton row.

That night Walker and his brother Julius sitting on the back steps smoking and talking decided to bury Thomas Pittman out beyond the kitchen beside the woods.

Word was taken by Ross to Mr Saunders to please lend two of his slaves to dig the grave at first light. From the back porch
there was clear sight of them the next morning digging beyond the kitchen toward the woods. Their shirts were off and by the time the sun was on them they glistened.

Thomas Pittman was buried in a pine coffin made by Richard Stott. Richard let them use one he had made for his father who was lingering.

This is how the graveyard was started one summer.
Then in October, on the second full moon
—
that is, a blue moon
—
as the day died after sunset, but before dark, there gradually appeared the outline of Thomas Pittman rocking in a rocking chair beside his grave. And as he's been joined by others there in the graveyard beyond where the kitchen once stood, I, on blue moons, have seen and heard
—
still see and hear
—
them all.