In Memory of Junior Read online

  And he come back in the night, with the shotgun, right when we were eating supper. You always worked till dark. Then you eat after dark. He put the gun back up over the door and sat down right there at the door, kind of listening out the door and he told us the whole story about how he got in there close and shot one in the chest with bird shot and then backed out of there, a tree at a time, shooting.

  And he had two trickles of dried blood down the side of his head.

  When we finished eating, Papa got up, walked over and more or less inspected his head, then had him sit down at the table, put his hands down by his side, and rest his head on a rolled-up coat.

  Papa made us all sit along by the wall. Oh, I can see it now. That light from the oil lamps on the wall and the one Papa had Mama to hold right up over Shaw’s head.

  And Papa pared that skin with his pocket knife and picked out two buckshot, one just above his ear and one right back here. Picked them out. Yeah, it wadn’t completely gone, you know what I mean. Just under the skin, see. They were shot from too far off to go on through that skull of his, and the rest of the shot hit that gun stock. There was just two shots hit him, and I believe there was one in his hand. Three hit him altogether. The one in his hand went in too deep to mess with. And I can see him at that table right now as clear as if it was yesterday.

  So, I said to Junior—to Morgan, I mean—that’s the gun you’re gone get because these boys will get it when I go my way and you’re the next one in line. It’s a good old gun—a lot of history around it.

  The boy was all agitated about what people called each other back then. That’s what they get in the public schools. I told him about after I got grown coming across this same Shaw when he was a old man, just as white-headed as a ball of cotton, and I was with Clarence Turner and Clarence said, “Mr. Shaw, you know who this is?” and he looked at me, and Clarence said, “It’s Grove McCord, Uncle Tad’s boy,” and I want you to know that old nigger hugged me, and cried like I was one of his own. He sure did. Aw, we were good to each other back in those days. Nothing but good to each other. Now, back when they had the slaves, I can’t say nothing about that. But I don’t care what they say, you got your niggers, and you got your poor white trash, and then too, you got people with good hearts, all colors, and people like me, who try anyway. And you know, whatever you leave behind is your history, and it better be good, because you’re history longer than you’re fact.

  Faison

  I drove up to the funeral home to see what the hell was going on about the autopsies. If they didn’t have them right away then it wouldn’t do no good.

  It all fell apart.

  I know Mr. Simmons, the main man up at the funeral home, so I figured he’d let me know about any investigation, if one had been started. Drew had laid the groundwork on the thing and I didn’t want to bug him anymore. For all I knew, they had already done the autopsies, and knew which one died first, which I had to find out so as to, you know, get the lay of the land—as you might say.

  When I got up there, Mr. Simmons said a couple of men were in with the bodies. I waited. When they come out I introduced myself and all that and told them I was concerned, what could they tell me. They said they were looking for some kind of probable cause of foul play, or something like that.

  We’re standing in the hall outside the door to the room where the bodies are, and all of a sudden with her coattails all flying out behind her, who comes sashaying up but—yeah, right—Faye.

  “What’s going on, Faison?” she says to me, like these guys weren’t even standing there. And she had fire in her eyes like . . . like a mad dog.

  “I don’t know,” I said, telling the honest truth.

  These two men start to walk off.

  “Just a minute,” she says, and they stop.

  She introduces herself to these guys, sticks out her hand, and her voice is shaking. “Please don’t go anywhere,” she says to them, then she turns on me. “I know what you’re doing, Faison Bales, and you can call the whole thing off. There will be no autopsy—over my dead body there will be an autopsy of my mother. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  So I say as calm as I can, “There may have been some foul play involved.” I mean, I figure I got to hold the line now.

  “No there wasn’t,” she spits out. “I checked that girl out thoroughly before I hired her. I did all that and I’ve talked to her since last night. Have you?”

  “Well, no,” I said. “I didn’t want to interrupt no investigation.”

  And then, boy, did she do one on me. She was literally shaking all over and she told those guys—I don’t know, I guess it was the coroner and an investigator or somebody—that if there was an autopsy on her mama she would sue the city of Summerlin into the next century and back, and then she hopped on me about being a land-grabbing no good son of a bitch, low-country worm something.

  WHOA, I said, you goddamned spruced-up, slick, goddamned I don’t know what-all and I told her she wasn’t going to get any of my family’s land because it won’t right for her to come in out of nowhere—especially Charlotte—and get it all.

  And she said that I didn’t have no choice and if I had known the first thing about the law, or if I’d had the decency to come to her, then I wouldn’t be sneaking around in the funeral home trying to find out who died first.

  Now that did kind of run all over me. I felt like choking her. And here is where she laid some very bad or very good news on me. I haven’t taken it in, yet. I’ll have to talk to our lawyer who ought to have known about this if it’s true, but he didn’t. This is it: in North Carolina, she said, if two people, like a husband and wife, die within twenty-four hours of each other, then by law, get this now, by law, they died at the same time. Some kind of simultaneous something something. She was spitting that stuff out right and left.

  I kept my hands in my pockets. If she had been a man, I’d had him in every corner of that place at one time.

  So, anyway, what it all comes down to is that me and Tate don’t get the whole place, but it means by god we don’t end up empty-handed either.

  You would not believe the way that woman looked at me. But I know good and well she would have done the same thing in my shoes. Anybody would.

  I mean, look. Now, listen. When I grew up on that place, I was fresh out of a mama, and I worked hard in them fields. My old man was gone all week, every week, and in the late summertimes when Aunt Bette and Aunt Ansie were babying around with Tate on the front porch or some such, I was cropping sand lugs—tobacco. You ever cropped any tobacco? Try it. One day. See how it is. There’s not any work that I know about that will touch it as far as worseness is concerned. Multiply that by all the days I did it all day long.

  See, I’m the one got the shit jobs. Tate was a precious little thing. They protected him. I got the shit jobs. The whole time I was growing up, from the time I was seven on, while my mama was gone and my daddy was away working, and then from twelve to sixteen, while Ma Laura was there giving me a hard time, that farm, friend, that farm got to be my mama and daddy, my brother and sister, and my boss, and I knew every damned inch of it like the back of my hand, and there won’t no job on that farm, hard job, that I didn’t do, because you see, my granddaddy was getting too old, and my daddy was gone, so I was what you call the man of the place. All the while, my buddies played on baseball teams in the summer and went to Boy Scout camp and all this while I’m doing grub work on that farm, and after I left it all started going downhill. And I by god deserve a piece of it now that it’s been more or less freed up. The truth is I deserve it all. That’s the truth of the matter. But now who do I share it with? A female Charlotte lawyer and my baby brother.

  And who do I leave my part to when I’m dead and gone?

  At least I’m glad that while he was alive, Junior didn’t have to go through all I went through. I’m glad I was around for him, and June Lee was too, and I’m glad he got to play ball up to his last year of Little League.
/>   Tate

  This morning Uncle Grove had a bad case of diarrhea, and I had to help him clean up. He kept apologizing, and was very embarrassed. I’m glad Morgan was still in bed.

  Daddy was on my mind, and something had happened at the funeral home that I haven’t heard the straight of. Aunt Ansie called me about it last night. Mr. Simmons had called her. Faison and Faye got into it up there.

  I wanted to ride out to the airfield to show Uncle Grove the airplane. He said he felt okay, so we went.

  It was cool and clear out there and the sun was in just the tops of the trees. The grass had almost filled out. Uncle Grove wanted to come out in the morning because he says he starts hurting in the afternoon. He’s not a complainer so I know it must be something fairly serious. He won’t go to the doctor or take any medicine at all, not even aspirin, so I’m going to slip aspirin in his coffee and tea this week, and see if that makes a difference.

  At the airfield, Daddy was still on my mind of course. Maybe if I’d been with him just before he died, he might have said he was sorry he hadn’t spent more time with us when we were little, said something about all that. Maybe I could have set him up in bed and bathed his back, or something—something that I could remember. I know I should have talked things over with him at some point, but it always seemed like a later time would be best.

  Guilt is normal. And there are grieving stages to accept and not fight. I’ll be okay if I don’t fight it. Faison will fight showing any emotion. I’m not going to.

  “Let me get up in there,” said Uncle Grove, at the airplane.

  “Sure. Just reach up there and—”

  “I know how to get in,” he says. “Hell, I got in one almost every day for twelve years. Son of a gun if it don’t smell the same. It smells the same. No better smell in the world,” he says. “Hardly.”

  He settled into the pilot’s seat up front. “Why hell,” he says, “let’s go for a spin.”

  I’d flown the airplane from the backseat, so I said okay. “Do you want me to talk you through?” I asked him.

  “No. Just keep an eye on me. Follow me through on the controls in case I forget something.”

  I got on the controls. He brought her to life and taxied out to the end of the strip.

  “Hell, this is like I was flying yesterday,” he said. “We got a, what’s this, hundred and fifty drop on the left mag, two hundred on the right. Let’s see, carb heat, little drop, run her up, looks good. Release the brakes. Hold on back there, boy—here we go!”

  I held to the controls, lightly. The stick came back between my legs—he was doing a short-field takeoff. We were airborne. He pushed the stick forward as soon as we were in the air, lowering the nose about right. He was steady, holding about eighty miles an hour on the climb out. A little hot, but fine. He was lax on rudder but he was doing it, doing it all.

  “She flies good,” he said, over his shoulder, back to me.

  Lamar Benfield

  I been working for Claremont Funeral Home and Marbleworks for about two months now. I was looking for outside work that would build up my muscles. Toting tombstones is perfect, and we do a little shovel work along with the backhoe. Good hours, don’t have to work in the rain.

  We were supposed to dig out seven-two-A—me and Isaac—one of a double plot, out at the big church graveyard just this side of Listre, and then do seven-two-B right after that funeral so they could do another funeral right then, or the next day—I don’t know which. It was a double death, car accident or some such I guess and somebody wanted a pink tombstone, but there had been a mix-up about that because, one thing, a footstone was already there. But listen to the other thing. Me and Isaac got over there to the spot and found ourselves looking at the grave already dug.

  We double-checked everything. We had the plot map and all.

  “Looks like they mussa got somebody else to do it,” says Isaac.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go to Big Al’s. We got time for a game of pool.”

  We’ve had the same thing happen twice before. They give the same job to two different teams.

  We had time for four games. I won all four.

  Morgan

  Uncle Grove and I were sitting in the living room at Dad’s. He’d called me away from a game of Tetris. Dad was taking a call from the funeral home.

  “Listen,” Uncle Grove says, and he motioned me over closer. “I told Tate I was staying with Faison, and Faison thinks I’ll be over here. All you got to do is come out there in the morning at sunup and fill in the grave and do a funeral. I want it at sunup, and then I want you to call my hometown paper in Arkansas and tell them. It’s the Cutler Morning Edition. Write that down.”

  I got out my billfold, pulled out a piece of paper, and wrote. It was some kind of joke, so I figured I’d go along with it. He was paying me good.

  “Don’t back out on me, you hear,” he said.

  “I won’t,” I said. “What are you going to do after you do the trick?”

  He said he was going to take a vacation then head on back home and surprise everybody. Then he started in with all these other details about how he was leaving some money at the grave for me and Bill, that we’d have to nail in the nails and drop the coffin down with two ropes, pile on the dirt, read the Twenty-third something—Psalms. Something in the Bible. He said a note to his wife would be in his coat pocket. All this stuff like you’d see on TV almost. I wrote it all down and had just stuck it in my billfold when Dad came back in.

  Uncle Grove kept on talking. “Now you get yourself married sometime after you’re twenty-seven and have a little boy and give him that gun when you find yourself slowing down. I tell you something. I met Huey Smith when he was twenty-seven and I was seven, and then I remember being forty-seven and I realized I myself was twenty years older than he’d been when I thought he was a old man at twenty-seven and I knew then that when I was twenty years older than he was right then, then I’d be a very old man. And I’m already older than that and if Huey Smith was alive he’d be, oh let’s see, a hundred and two, no, twelve. Now ain’t that something? And they think I’m crazy,” he said to Dad.

  I think he might be. Something’s wrong with him.

  Grove

  I was at the gravesite. It was after dark. Tate and Faison were doing legal shenanigans somewhere. Each one thought I was at the othern’s house.

  It had been seeming like I was almost through with living for a long time. It seemed like if I didn’t handle all the carrying-ons about dying then I’d go to my grave unfinished. In other words, I myself, Grove McCord, wouldn’t have finished it all, and it would haunt me the whole time I was history, which would be a long, long time—forever as a matter of fact. I had to finish it. I had to be the one. I couldn’t leave it up to anybody else. I’d been worrying about digging my own grave in this graveyard for a long time, and now all I had to do more or less was go through all the motions, and this was my chance, away from Tina and Bobbie and Four-Eyes.

  It was a unusually warm night, but so early in the spring that the mosquitoes won’t all that bad yet. The man delivered the box like he was supposed to, after dark.

  “You the one wants this?” he says.

  “I’m the one.”

  “Where you want it?”

  “Just put it on the ground there. What I owe you?”

  “Hundred and twenty-five.”

  “You said a hundred on the phone.”

  “Twenty-five for the delivery.”

  “You said one hundred dollars delivered.”

  “Look, I got to make a living, you know? The box costs me eighty dollars to make—in materials. It’s like a cabinet. That ain’t but a twenty-percent markup, not including labor. And I’m delivering. I could be making another box while I’m delivering this one.”

  I managed to sit down on the box. He caught my arm as I started down. Young fellow.

  “Did you put a hook and latch inside?” I asked.

  “I did. What’s that f
or? Some kind of joke?”

  “Yeah. It is.”

  “Well, I got to get my money and go. This whole thing is pretty strange.”

  I pulled out my roll of bills, pulled off six twenties. The moon was bright enough to see by. I looked for a five. “That honeysuckle smells good, don’t it. Or whatever it is.” I found a five. “There’s your damn hundred and twenty-five, but you either lied to me or your mouth and your mind ain’t working together.” Hell, maybe I was the one got it wrong. “Sit down on this box a minute. I want to tell you something, son.”

  He stood there, then sat.

  “How old are you?” I asked him.

  “Thirty-two.”

  “Let me tell you something. I never had a son.”

  “Oh.”

  “Something else, I knew a man when he was twenty-seven years old and I thought he was a old man. You know how old he is now?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “He’s dead. Something else.” Then I told him about my papa. When Papa died, people come in from Bethel, Summerlin, from all around, and I want you to know they plowed out the whole farm in one day. And another time we had a barn burn down. Lost all our harnesses, six bales of cotton. People came, brought lumber on a Friday morning, laid out the lumber, and by Saturday noon, that barn was built back. Nobody charged nothing. Why—and here I had to laugh, I guess, sort of a laugh—Why son, I said, people don’t want to even look at you no more. And if they do, they look at you like they hate you. People do.

  He said he had to go, and stood up.

  I went on anyway about how across the yard down to the barn we had all these apple trees. June apples, horse apples, good horse apples. Made cider. Mule apples. Three pear trees. And let’s see, between the house and the barn was one, two, three, four, five, six, seven—seven big white oaks. The sun didn’t hit the yard except from oh, ten-thirty to one-thirty in the summertime. There were lilies there that I guarantee you still come up today.