This Rock (42 page)

I had never seen Mama so dazed, not even after Jewel died. She had worked in a fury the night before, after they brought Moody's body home. I reckon she was trying to push back the grief that might drown her. In the morning she looked tired and shrunk, like the will had gone out of her. She even looked a little stooped, which she never had before.

“You go set down while I finish the casket,” I said to Mama.

“Somebody has got to trim the lining,” she said.

“I'll do that myself,” I said.

“Are you sure you want to preach the funeral?” Mama said.

“I'm going to do it,” I said. There was no use to try to explain my feelings.

“I pray the Lord will bless you,” Mama said.

Just then Aunt Florrie arrived with a dish of ham and a pone of hot bread. “Come on in the house, Ginny,” Florrie said. “I want to fix your hair.”

When I was left alone with the coffin I sanded the corners and edges until they was soft as silk. We show our love through little things, I thought. I tacked the lining to the sides of the casket. It didn't really matter if the lining was neat, since nobody would really see it except for me. The work reminded me how much I cared for Moody and how sorry I was we had quarreled and fought so long. The boards of the coffin would rot in fifteen or twenty years, but it was important to show myself how much I cared, and that I was doing what was needed, what a brother could do, at this important moment in my life.

I took a ruler and measured the sides of the box, and I marked the places for the two handles on either side and at each end. U. G. had brought brass-colored fittings, his best. They was heavy solid metal. The brass would go well with the oak wood. I hammered in the screws a little and then twisted them tight with a screwdriver.

When I stood back, the fittings sparkled in the sun. The box was plain but clean and beautiful. The boards was joined so tight you couldn't see the seams. It was the best carpentry I'd ever done. The wood was sanded so the grain looked magnified. It was not a fancy coffin, but it was the best I could do with the materials and the time I had. My sermon would have to be done the same way. I would make it the best I could with what I knowed, in the time I had.

When I carried the box into the house, Florrie and Mama and Fay helped me fit Moody in his casket. We put him in careful and Florrie lifted off the camphor cloth and combed his hair. Moody's face had turned gray as pipe clay. I didn't want to look at him. It didn't feel like he was there.

“I've got to help Hank dig the grave,” I said.

“You set down and eat something,” Aunt Florrie said.

“Ain't hungry,” I said. I was in a hurry to get to the graveyard.

“Have some ham and bread,” Mama said. “I'll get you a cup of coffee.”

I wanted to act calm and normal as I could. I set down and eat the sweet ham and hot corn bread. Florrie had made strong black coffee and I drunk a cup of that. But things already appeared bright and vivid. My grief and my determination made things sharp and the colors firm. The day had a long slow curve to it which I was going to follow. It was the shape of what I had to do. It was the shape of what there was to do.

“Put the grave in the row with Tom and Pa and Jewel,” Mama said. “But leave a space for me.”

I
TOTED THE
mattock and shovel on my shoulder to the family graveyard on the hill above Cabin Creek. Hank was waiting there with a pick and another shovel. The cemetery knoll was set just under the sharp ridge of Mount Olivet. Buzzard Rock loomed on the mountain far above. The first grave there was Great-Grandpa's, who died in 1871 at the age of eighty. His marker was a rough slab of granite. It was a peaceful place, with oak trees all around and a few junipers and boxwoods here and there.

“Just show me where to dig,” Hank said.

“Let's line the grave up with the family row,” I said. “And leave a space for Mama to be buried beside Daddy.”

Sighting down the row of gravestones, I marked a spot in the broomstraw. Hank took out a carpenter's ruler and measured a place six feet by two and a half.

“Ever wonder why they bury people six feet down?” Hank said.

“Cause that's how tall people are?” I said.

“More like because that's below topsoil, below roots, even below earthworms,” Hank said. “The hard clay seems clean and safe.”

We dug out the soft sod and piled it up. The ground had froze and thawed so much, and soaked up so much winter rain, it was soft as dough on top. The turf cut smooth and rubbery. We piled it all to the side neat as pieces of a machine we was taking apart. Underneath, the topsoil was black and mealy. But there was only three or four inches of it. The graveyard was put on a hill where the soil was not much use for cropping.

Under the topsoil was yellow subsoil with isinglass in it. The fresh dirt glittered when we throwed it out into the sunlight. The damp clods dried quick in the breeze. As I dug, it felt like the shovel was growed to my hands. I thought, I am eating the soil with a big spoon. Moving the earth was what I was born to do.

Hank cut the sides of the hole neat as he would carve wood. He had his level and his ruler, and he shaved off dirt to make the corners plumb. As he worked, the dirt opened up to the shovel. When he hit a rock Hank took the pick and loosened it and dug around it.

“Lucky the row is turned so the graves face the east,” Hank said.

“Why do graves face the east?” I said.

“So the dead will be facing Jesus when he busts through the eastern sky at the Rapture,” Hank said. He heaved a big rock out of the hole.

A church faces west, and a grave faces east, I thought. The worshipers and the dead always face east.

Below the subsoil was red clay, packed hard as ice. It took the mattock or pick to loosen it. The clay carved like soft rock, and when it was throwed out in the sun it looked red-hot. We dug deeper and deeper. These are the walls between which Moody will lay for the next few centuries, I thought.

Hank took out his level and tested the floor. “Got to make the bottom level,” he said, “though nobody will ever know the difference.”

“We will know the difference,” I said.

“This will be Moody's house for a good long spell,” Hank said. “We might as well set it foursquare.”

W
HEN
I
GOT
back to the house I was sweaty and dirty. It was already three o'clock.

“You ain't got a minute extra,” Mama said. She was already dressed up in her Sunday dress. Moody's coffin laid on two chairs in the living room, opposite the fireplace. Aunt Florrie had found a sprig of arbutus and laid it on the box. It was early March and the only thing blooming was arbutus.

I took a cake of soap and a rag and hurried out to the spring-house. The thought of preaching made my skin feel like it was turning different colors. I took off my clothes and wet the soap in the
water below the cooling box and greased myself all over. And then with the rag I washed away the sweat and dirt. The cold water stung like lye and made my skin smart and tingle.

When I got back to the house I seen Hank and U. G. had already come for the casket. The living room appeared empty, with the two chairs facing each other in the center.

My clean shirt and suit was laid out on the bed. The shirt had been ironed and the pants pressed. My mouth was dry and my lips stuck together like they was swole and glued. Lord, I will say what words I can, I prayed. Give me the words you want me to say and that will be enough.

My hands was so stiff I had to try three times before I got my tie knotted. My fingers felt too big to guide the ends of the silk through the knot. People stopped by the house before they went on up the mountain. I could hear them talking in the living room and on the porch.

I looked in the mirror and combed my hair. My Bible was on the bureau. My tongue felt stuck to the roof of my mouth. My hand shook as it pulled the comb through my wet hair. It was a hand rough from hammering and sawing, and lightly blistered from shoveling the grave. I wished I was out in the woods along the river. I wished my tongue was as certain as my hands to do the needed task.

Lord, give me the words, I prayed. For the words belong to you, not to me. Give me the words that are right for Moody, and the thoughts that will comfort Mama and Fay and heal the awful bereavement. I looked in the mirror and wiped the sweat from my brow.

The next time I look in this mirror the funeral will be over and Moody will be in his grave, I thought. However my sermon goes, it will soon be over and my life will go on. The skin prickled on my lower back. I patted the tie snug.

W
ITH THE
B
IBLE
in hand I walked across the pasture and climbed up the side of the mountain. I didn't want to see nobody until I got to the top. The first person I met at the church was Frances, U. G.'s wife, setting on a chair by the door. I wondered why she was
setting by the door, but when I got to the door I seen the unfinished room was full of people. U. G. and Hank had arranged the chairs and the benches so they faced the coffin. There must have been thirty or forty people in that cold, dark room. Even the shucking chair from our corncrib had been carried up the mountain. Every chair was filled and there was people standing by the open windows and along the sides of the room. I didn't have time to notice them all, but I seen Blaine and Charlie, and Mrs. Richards and Annie. Wheeler Stepp was slouching in the back and Drayton Jones stood beside him. From the wetness of their eyes it appeared they had had a few drinks. I seen Florrie and U. G. and Hank and George Jarvis, and two of the Jenkins boys. Several nodded to me. Mama and Fay set in front of the casket. It was cool and drafty and they had their coats on. This is an upper room, I thought. Late afternoon light poured through the gaps in the sheathing.

I stood in the doorway for a few seconds, waiting for somebody to say something. And then I seen they was waiting for me. It was up to me to step to the front of the room on the subfloor and take charge. The bones in my knees felt like water. All eyes in the church was turned to me, scalding my face. I swallowed and I stepped to the front of the coffin.

But those three steps changed the way I felt. By the time I reached the front of the church I seen I was part of a ceremony. I was not there as myself only, but as a minister in the ceremony of the funeral. Whatever I said, it was the ritual of the funeral that was important. In a way it didn't hardly matter what I said, because it was Moody's life and death that was important. Anybody, almost anybody, could be the minister, the vessel. It was the power of the occasion, and the ancient words and everlasting truths, that was important.

When I turned to face the gathering the air got cooler. Their eyes was not on me but on the service itself. We was all there to remember Moody.

“Let us pray,” I said and held up my hand. Every head in the room bowed, even Wheeler's and Drayton's. I closed my eyes. “Lord, we are here to remember our brother Moody and to ask your blessings and your mercy and your love to ease his passing. We are here to
express our love for Moody and for one another. We are not here to judge or accuse. We ain't here to place blame. For it is goodness that will be remembered. The wrongs men do pass away like last year's frost. The good they do is repeated and remembered.

“As we are gathered here to remember Brother Moody, ease our grief and bereavement. Show your mercy on Mama's sorrow and Fay's sorrow. For we have lost a son and a brother. Everybody here has lost a cousin or nephew, a neighbor or friend. Give us strength to bear this grief. Give us the wisdom to know thy will and to trust the working out of your plan in the trials and confusions of our lives.”

After I prayed I asked Mrs. Richards and Annie to sing for us. I thought they would have to sing unaccompanied. But Hank took a French harp out of his pocket. I had forgot that he played a harmonica. I'd heard that when he was young he had been a banjo picker. But after he got married he played only the French harp.

Hank cupped the French harp in his hands like it was a flame he was shielding from the wind, and he blowed a low, sweet note, and then more notes, sucking in and out. And I seen it was “There's a Land That Is Fairer than Day” that he was playing. It was a sad and mystical song. I kept my head bowed as Mrs. Richards and Annie sung.

There's a land that is fairer than day
,

And by faith we can see it afar;

For the father waits over the way

To prepare us a dwelling place there
.

In the sweet, in the sweet, by and by, by and by
,

We shall meet on that beautiful shore, by and by
.

In the sweet, in the sweet, by and by, by and by
,

We shall meet on that beautiful shore
.

Mrs. Richards sung alto and Annie sung soprano. The voices was like two streams, one silver and one gold, weaving in and out of each other. Their voices was so pure and so simple, and the harmonica so sweet, that it was like the music inside the seconds was released. It was the music of the fresh air, the music already in the air, coming out of their throats.

I stood beside the coffin and seen it was not just talent and skill that made the music so perfect. It was the feeling and intention; it was the occasion of the gathering, the family and friends, in the unfinished church on the mountaintop. The music was also in the loyalty, in the tie of affection and fellowship.

When the song was over it was time for me to say something. It come to me that I should talk quiet and slow. There was no need to hurry and no need to try to be eloquent beyond my practice and ability. Whatever I said from the heart was the right thing. The best eloquence was the truth of feeling. The test of a sermon was its truth for the occasion. It was not a contest. That's what Hank had tried to tell me, but I hadn't understood it at the time. A breeze come through the open door and unfinished walls and soothed my face.