This Rock (41 page)

U. G. and Muir took Moody's shoulders, and me and Florrie took his legs, and we carried him into the kitchen. Water was boiling on the stove and the windows was starting to steam up.

“Me and U. G. will do this,” Florrie said.

“No, Mama, I will do it,” U. G. said to Florrie.

I felt my will was a dam holding back a great tide of confusion and mourning. I had to shove hard as I could. If I let the dam bust loose I would drown.

“You all go back to the living room,” I said. “Muir and me will do this.”

“Why are you acting this way?” Florrie said.

“I will lay out my own son in my own house,” I said.

“You are on your high horse,” Florrie said.

They all stood back when I brought in another lamp and set it at the side of the table. I pulled off Moody's overalls an inch at a time, and I pulled off his shirt. He had been shot through the chest and blood had dried around the hole between two ribs like brown paint. There was wet blood in the wound, and the smell of old blood.

“You leave this to me,” U. G. said.

“Stand back,” I said, “and bring me some camphor.” I seen the only thing to do was cover the wound with a bandage soaked in camphor. When Muir lifted the body so I could strap the bandage around the chest, Moody's eyes come open. I closed them before anybody else could see. The eyes had a milky, cloudy look.

I poured hot water in a pan and got a piece of soap and started washing Moody on his hands and arms. His hands was stained with berry juice, or maybe it was blood. I scrubbed his neck and behind the ears. I hadn't washed his face since he was a boy. I was careful not to open the eyes again.

“Bring me your razor,” I said to Muir.

“I will shave him,” U. G. said. “You can let me at least shave him.”

U. G. was a barber and used to shaving people. I let him shave Moody while I scrubbed his chest and belly. Moody's bowels had opened after he died and I cleaned that up with hot water and a cloth. I had not seen Moody's private parts since he was a little boy. I tried not to look at the scar on his groin.

This is a test of dignity and strength, I thought. This is a test of faith. I will not give in to grief yet. Moody's anger was in his blood, and his temper was beyond his control. It was like all his life I had seen this moment coming. And just as he had begun to change, to soften and grow up, he had been killed. It was too sad to describe in words.

And it was my fault. I didn't know how exactly, but I was his mama and I was responsible for him. At the very least I had failed him by not expecting enough of him. I had expected a lot from Muir, and almost nothing from Moody.

I emptied the pan off the back porch and got clean water. I washed Moody's legs and feet. With my scissors I trimmed his toenails. His toenails was long and crooked and dirty.

“Now, what is he going to wear?” I said to U. G.

“Does Moody have a suit?” U. G. said.

“All he has got is overalls and flannel shirts,” I said.

“He can wear my old suit,” Muir said.

“Moody don't need a suit,” I said. “He never wore a suit in his whole life.”

“If his funeral is going to be in church he has to wear a suit like anybody else,” Muir said.

“Your suit is too big for him,” I said.

I got clean overalls and a shirt out of the bedroom and we slipped them on Moody a piece at a time. I remembered how hard it was to lift a dead body from the time Tom died. The weight and the rubbery stiffness make it almost impossible to fit clothes on the frame. It took all of us lifting and pulling, pushing and rolling, to do it.

After Moody was dressed we left him laying on the table. Muir would have to make a coffin the next day out of some of his oak boards. U. G. volunteered to bring him some handles to screw on the
sides and a nameplate and some hinges. I set a lamp on either side of the body and left it there.

“You come set by the fire,” Florrie said to me. “I'll fix you something to eat.”

“Don't want nothing to eat,” I said.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Preacher Liner come while Muir was hammering at the coffin in the backyard. I heard him talking with Muir where he worked at the sawhorses, and then the preacher knocked on the door.

“Ginny, I have come to be with you in your hour of tribulation,” the preacher said, stepping into the living room, hat in hand.

I was not surprised to see the preacher, but I was surprised he had come so early in the morning. And he was tense, like he thought he might not be welcome. He looked at Moody's body still laying on the kitchen table. I had put a handkerchief soaked in camphor over Moody's face to keep the skin from turning black.

“The Lord will not put on us a greater grief than we can bear,” Preacher Liner said. The preacher turned his hat in his hands and looked around the living room. He looked sick. There was bags under his eyes, and his shoulders was stooped. I had never seen him look so old and worried.

“Would you like to set down?” I said.

“I have come to ask about the funeral,” Preacher Liner said.

I told him we ought to have the funeral today, since Moody was killed the day before yesterday.

“Where was you planning to have it?” the preacher said. His question startled me. I told him we had planned on having the funeral in the church.

“Strictly speaking, Moody was not a member of the church,” Preacher Liner said. I seen why he was acting so nervous.

“We have always gone to Green River Church,” I said.

The preacher said Moody was not a member, and that he hadn't hardly attended church, and that he had been killed in a fight with the law.

“Are you judging the state of his soul?” I said. There was a tremble and edge to my voice.

“All we know is his actions, and they are not the actions of a Christian,” Preacher Liner said.

I patted my chest and looked at the fire. Fay stood in the doorway from the bedroom. “If Moody can't have a funeral in church, does that mean he will go to hell?” she said.

“Has the board of deacons agreed to this?” I said.

“The board of deacons has voted,” Preacher Liner said.

I listened to the fire whine, the way it does in March when there's bad weather on the way. I felt like I was breathing sand.

I reminded the preacher that Moody's grandpa had built the church. The preacher cleared his throat and stepped closer to the fire. He took a deep breath and let it out. “Strictly speaking, you are not a member of the church,” he said.

“I was baptized forty years ago,” I said.

The preacher said he had checked the records and had found Pa and me had been dropped from the rolls and never been reinstated. I told him that was a long time ago, but he said there wasn't any record of me ever getting my letter back.

It felt like my bones was turning to ashes. It felt like some old guilt was finally catching up with me, after laying buried all those years.

“You mean we can't go to church no more?” Fay said. Tears was swelling in her eyes.

“It would be awkward to have Moody's funeral in the church,” Preacher Liner said. “It would be against Baptist discipline.”

“Moody took a long time to grow up,” I said. “He was just beginning to change. He was just beginning to be hisself.”

“I can preach Moody's funeral here at the house,” the preacher said.

“So that's what you have come to tell us,” somebody said from the doorway. It was Muir, who still held a hammer in his hand and had shavings on his pants. “That Moody ain't good enough for your church.”

“Moody was not a member,” Preacher Liner said.

“Who are you to say who is a Christian and who ain't?” Muir said. He stepped closer and his face was white.

“The church must make a stand against lawlessness,” Preacher Liner said.

“This is not about Moody,” Muir said. “This is about me building the new church, ain't it?”

“I am the pastor,” the preacher said. “I will not see my church split by factions.”

“You spend your time keeping people out, rather than bringing them in,” Muir hollered.

“You are upset with grief,” Preacher Liner said. “You are not at yourself.”

I seen Muir was right. What Preacher Liner wanted to do was keep people out if they didn't agree with him. If they argued with him he always hid behind Baptist discipline. But he seemed sick and weak too.

“I'm at myself enough to see you clear,” Muir said.

“I didn't come here to argue,” Preacher Liner said.

“You come here to get back at me for building the new church,” Muir said. But he didn't holler. His voice was calm as the breeze in the pines.

“I didn't come here to swap accusations,” the preacher said. “I will not leave my church to the Pentecostal Holiness. I will say good day to you.” The preacher hurried to the door and I followed and watched him as he cut across the yard to the springhouse.

“Does this mean Moody won't have a funeral?” Fay said.

“We will pray about Moody,” I said.

“I will preach Moody's funeral,” Muir said. I turned to him. His face had got red and sweaty, but his voice was calm.

“You don't have to,” I said.

“I will preach his service in the new church,” Muir said.

“But the new church ain't even built,” I said.

“It's built enough to have a service,” Muir said.

“But you are not ordained,” I said.

“The Lord will ordain me,” Muir said.

F
AY WALKED ACROSS
the pasture to tell the Richardses we planned to have the funeral on top of the mountain in the unfinished church. After Muir had said it, I seen it might be the thing to do. Moody had been killed over Muir's effort to build the new church.
The new church was on family land, and nobody could tell us we couldn't use it. And the new church was unfinished. It was really just getting started, the way Moody was just starting to grow up. It was a fitting place to have a memorial to Moody.

U. G. drove up in his truck to deliver the handles and hinges for the coffin. When I told him what we planned, he said, “Wouldn't it be better to have the service right here?”

“Muir wants to conduct the service in his new church,” I said. “He wants to preach the funeral hisself.”

“I understand that,” U. G. said. “But the fact is there's no place to set in the unfinished church. There's no way to get the coffin up there except tromping through the mud of the new road.”

I walked with U. G. out to where Muir was working on the coffin beside the shed. He was sanding the planks he'd planed and nailed together. The box was lined with an old blanket.

“Brother Muir, I have a suggestion,” U. G. said.

Muir stopped sanding and looked up.

U. G. said he thought we should have the funeral at the house. But Muir said he wanted to show Preacher Liner he couldn't tell us where to conduct our service. Muir looked at the sandpaper in his hand. I knowed he was anguished by confusion and grief. So much had happened in the past few days. He was young, and disappointed in his plans.

“I will preach it the way I see fit,” Muir said and slapped the leg of his overalls.

Muir

I
KNOWED
I had to preach Moody's funeral in the new church. There was nothing up there but piles of rock and lumber, scraps and mud, and a frame on the rough foundation. None of the rock veneer was done, and there was no door or windows. Not all the sheathing had been nailed on. But in my mind the place had already been consecrated and dedicated, and it was the place for Moody's funeral. It was the place to hold the service, among the people that loved him in spite of his faults and had seen him begin to change into a better person. A funeral didn't have to be in a finished church. If you looked at it right, the whole world was a church, a place to worship and honor those that had died.

“We will find the Lord's will if we wait,” Hank had said. I seen the wisdom in that, and I seen that my most common failing was hurry. I'd always had trouble waiting. But I seen I had to preach Moody's funeral. That was not just pride. After the way Preacher Liner had acted it would not be fitting for him to funeral Moody. If there was to be words said, it was my duty as his brother, and as somebody that had aspired to preach, to say them. I owed it to Moody to honor his life. Whether I was ready to preach or not was not the point. It was a necessity.

When Hank come down to the house he said he would make benches in the new church by setting planks on rocks. And he would place the coffin on two sawhorses, after he carried it up in the wagon. “But I don't know what you will use for a pulpit,” Hank said.

“I won't need a pulpit,” I said.

All Hank's talk about preaching while we was working had hit its mark. He had talked again and again about how he had wanted to be a preacher and never had.

“A preacher don't have to be perfect,” Hank had said. “Nobody in this world is perfect. A preacher only gives what he has, all of what he has.”

Hank's words had rung in my head for weeks. All through January and February we had worked together. I repeated in my mind the things he said without hardly knowing it. “What a preacher is, and what a preacher does, is as important as what he says in the pulpit,” Hank had said. “And what he says to the grieved and to the afflicted and troubled in their minds, is as important as what he says at a revival meeting. For a preacher his whole life is his witness and his sermon.”

“W
E WILL HAVE
the funeral up there at four o'clock this evening,” I said to U. G. and Hank and Mama. “And we will bury Moody before sunset.”

“I'll help you dig the grave,” Hank said.

“I'll tell everybody to come that wants to,” U. G. said before he got into his truck.