In Memory of Junior Read online

  He walked on over toward his truck. “Yeah, well,” he said, “good luck with that coffin. It’s well made.” He slammed the door, cranked the truck, and drove off.

  Bill

  Me and Duck end up at the CFM not all that far from the graveyard me and Melvin been digging a grave in for that old man. So I said, “Duck, let’s go over there to the back side of the graveyard and I’ll show you a nice piece of work.”

  There was a bright moon and all, so we head on over. We get close by and I say, “Hush, hush. There’s somebody over there. Shhhhh. Come on.” So we creeped up on somebody kneeling down—over there by that very grave I was bringing Duck to see, kneeling down like he was praying. We creeped up into the corner of that little rock wall and we was right at him.

  “And Papa,” he say. “Papa, Papa. I’m coming to join you. It’s the only thing left to do. I’m shitting down my leg every few days now. People have to clean me up. There ain’t nowhere else to go. We got the whole place plowed out after you died. And well . . . I made friends wherever I went. Some good. Some not so good.”

  All this stuff. I recognized the voice, clear. The same old white man, name of Grove. His head was in his hands. He was kneeling beside a box, a coffin. He raised a foot, slow, started getting up, stumble a little bit, finally got up straight. “Ah, lord,” he say. Duck, he being quiet and still. The old man push the box over to a spot beside the grave. Pushed with his foot. We watch him, you know. It all feels a little bit like it’s on the TV. He pick up two long lengths of rope laying across a tombstone, drop one at each end of the coffin, open the coffin lid, stand there looking into the box. This was getting a little bit spooky. Then. Then he pulled out a pistol from his back pocket and drapped down to his knees, and then turned this way and that and finally got sitiated, sitting there in this open coffin. I said to myself, I’m dreaming, sure. Then he laid down in it, reached up, but he couldn’t reach the lid. So he finally got back up and pulled the lid down agin his shoulder, then laid down, close the lid. Just like that. He close the lid. I say to Duck, I say, “I’m coming to work here in a morning, getting fifty bucks to bury the old son of a bitch. And that’s a fact.”

  We could hear something what sound like a screen-door latch be handled inside there. Then it clicked solid. Then there was a knocking sound against the wood. I look at Duck. Duck look at me, raise his eyebrows, look kind of sleepy, and he whisper, “I just got the idea we ought to be getting out of here. Somebody gone lay this on us.”

  It was like he was knocking around in there with a monkey wrench, and all on a sudden we hear this muffle-up explosion, this bang, in the coffin, and these sparks flash off this great big tombstone, and Duck is up and running, and just as fast he’s laying on the ground moaning, holding his leg. He done hit this knee-high tombstone, and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  I helped him up and we get on back over to the 7-Eleven, but it look like over there they didn’t hear the shot, it being in the coffin and all that, so we hang around a minute, buy one more bottle of Mad Dog, and I decide to go back and take a look, see what be the case, now. Find out if anybody else heard and maybe come up on the old man. I was curious. Duck, he didn’t want to go, but I had the bottle so he finally say okay.

  We get back over there, and there that coffin still sitting just the same, six or eight feet from that open grave. It’s one of them old-timey pine boxes. Lord, I seen many a one. And sure ’nough, there’s a hole blasted in it about shoulder high.

  “This crazy, man,” says Duck.

  “What we gone do?” I say.

  “Get out of here.”

  “Let’s knock on the door.”

  “Naw, man.” And this all on the sudden strike Duck as funny and so he start kind of laughing. See, we don’t know whether he dead or not but we too high to care too much about anything, so Duck kind of walk on up there between the grave and the coffin and he look all around—he’s got right brave, see—and he squat down and knock on the door.

  “We could get shot,” I say.

  “This a good a place as any,” he say.

  We hear the latch getting played with, then the door fly open and there’s a pistol pointed right between Duck’s eyes and he’s trying to stand up and walk backwards at the same time when he disappear from the earth into that open grave.

  “Mr. Grove!” I say. “Don’t shoot. It’s just old Bill.”

  “I’m trying to take a nap,” he say.

  “It’s just me, Bill,” I say. “And my man just fell in your grave,” and then I hear Duck moaning down in there. Then he got stood up, and his head was at the top of the grave, so I got him out, but it won’t easy.

  I asked the old man what in the hell he was doing and he said he had a change of heart and decided to just take a nap, and would we help him find a place to spend the night. Truth is, he has some stuck valves. His wheels has lost some spokes.

  There’s a Motel 6 over behind the CFM—he had some money I knew—so we walk along to over there and he talked about all kinds of wonderments: apple trees and girlfriends and cancer. Duck, he wadn’t in too good a shape. He’d got kind of beat up out in the graveyard.

  We got the old man checked in a room, him still a-talking. Duck told him they’d left the light on for him. He wouldn’t drink no wine with us, so we left and headed on home. I needed to get some sleep myself. The boy was going to pick me up at sunup to bury the box and fill in the grave.

  Sometimes I wonder about the peoples I get work with.

  June Lee

  I let Faison spend the night with me. He’s been through a lot. He was pretty wrung out and when we finally went to bed he reached over and touched me on the shoulder and I was as hungry for him as anything I can ever remember. He hadn’t said much since he’d got here. He hadn’t needed to, I guess. His daddy died and it don’t matter too much that they weren’t all that close.

  I told him, I said, Faison, Faison this is the time when you need somebody. There is some things you can’t just carry around on your own. You think you can. But you can’t. You need somebody to listen, and all the time we was together, Faison, one of us was strong when the other was broke down, and now when something goes bad, we ain’t neither one got nobody to be there. Don’t you see you need somebody, Faison?

  The bad time when Junior died in the wreck, we didn’t either one have nobody then. I wanted his real name, John Moody, Jr., on his tombstone, and Faison wanted his own name with the Junior on there. That tore us apart right when we needed each other more than at any other time in our lives.

  Faison was mostly quiet just about the whole time he was here—but I guess he had seen that he needed somebody, since he came over.

  I fixed him some eggs and bacon next morning and he went to work. They suddenly got more work than they can handle. Looks like everybody wants to move their house now. But he says he’s going fishing anyway. I’m glad. He needs a break. And if he gets rich out of the homeplace being sold, I might believe it, but I won’t believe it until I see the green in his hand.

  Faye

  I was tired. Couldn’t sleep. I was remembering Mother’s face, her gestures, her smile, from times before she’d married Glenn Bales. The old days. But of course the travesty of Faison’s attempts at an autopsy had intruded on everything, everything decent. What a poor excuse for a human being.

  I finally got up at about four-thirty, drank some coffee, and decided that when daylight came I’d drive out to the gravesite. I had an uneasy feeling about it. I’d never been out there and couldn’t remember how it was all supposed to be set up exactly. Mrs. Fuller talked about it all the time. Something had been said about a pink footstone. I was glad it had all been taken care of, but then too, I was curious.

  I had a set of written directions to Mother’s gravesite, and when I got to the graveyard, I saw two men filling in a grave. I rechecked my directions because it seemed these two men were very near Mother’s gravesite. As I approached I saw the BALES tombstone. Mothe
r’s grave was to be the one on the right. I realized that two men were filling in my mother’s gravel Morgan?—Tate’s son?—and, and a very old black man.

  I walked across the wet grass. “What are you doing?” I said. “Aren’t you Morgan?”

  “Why?” he says, stepping back, like he’s been caught at something.

  “We just had a little funeral,” said the old man, who looked in dire need of a change of clothes.

  “A funeral. Who? This was—did you bury my mother?”

  Morgan, I knew it was Morgan, just stood there, with that guilty look. I think he’s about fourteen.

  “No,” said the man. “We might have bury somebody’s daddy, but we ain’t bury nobody’s mama.”

  “Do you realize this is my mother’s grave?”

  “Not right now I don’t think it is,” he said.

  “Oh my god.” I brought my hands to my face. I turned and started walking away. This was some kind of ultimate humiliation. To think that I would have to share one blade of grass from that farm with anybody in that godforsaken family. I stumbled. I had never felt such exhaustion. I dropped to the ground, and sat, to try to turn loose—for a minute—the whole mess that Mother had gotten into when she married that Glenn Bales, with those boys, and those aunts, and all these horrible country people.

  WRBR

  We interrupt for a local news bulletin. A visitor to Summerlin, Grove McCord, of Cutler, Arkansas, apparently buried himself alive last night in the Listre Baptist Church cemetery right here just outside Listre, North Carolina. A suicide note was found but has not been released by the sheriff’s department. Two men are being held as accomplices. One is a vagrant named William Turpentine and the other is a minor whose name was not released. The suicide motive was apparently related to the deaths from natural causes of Mr. McCord’s relatives, Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Bales, of Listre. Our own Tim Venable is headed to the scene and we’ll keep you updated . . . Stand by. I’ve been handed a note here that says . . . a bullet hole has been found in McCord’s coffin there at the site. Speculation now is that the victim may have been shot after he was dead and then taken to another location away from the cemetery. We’ll definitely keep you posted as events unfold. Now, back to the music. Here are Summerlin’s own Noble Defenders of the Word.

  Wilma Fuller

  Betty Donaldson had just called me with all the news when Harold walked in. I said, “Harold, where have you been?”

  “Out to the graveyard.”

  “Then you know,” I said.

  “I seen it with my own eyes.”

  “Grove McCord is back in town,” I said, “and he committed suicide and him and Miss Laura and Mr. Glenn almost ended up buried in the same grave together. It’s the worse thing I’ve ever heard in my life. All that hard feeling and misunderstanding from years and years of bad blood almost dumped into the same hole. Lord, it would be like burying I don’t know who-all together.”

  “I was there,” says Harold. “I been out there, Wilma. I know what happened. There’s a lot of people out there. There’s TV people out there.” Sometimes Harold gets off the subject.

  “They said Grove shut himself up in the coffin,” I said, “and got buried alive, and then Faye walked up on it, and somebody shot a gun.”

  “No. No, what happened was—”

  “They said some people think he might still be alive in there.”

  “Wilma. Will you be quiet a minute? He ain’t alive in there. He won’t even in there at all.”

  “Really?” That was news. “Who said so?”

  “Wilma, do you know where I just came from?”

  “The graveyard.” What kind of question was that?

  “Yes, the graveyard. I been out there, Wilma. I was out there when they dug up the coffin. It was a pine box with just some rocks and dirt in it.”

  “Oh, my . . . my lord. You mean he arose?”

  “Wilma. Wilma, he won’t ever in the box. They just dug it up. Drew said they was thinking about charging some wino with murder until they found out nobody was dead. Well, except Miss Laura and Mr. Glenn. They’re dead. No question about that. And now it looks like Grove had dibs on one of their graves. Somebody is going to have to dig another grave or two. At least one more.”

  And Harold heads for his chair. He’d missed his nap.

  I couldn’t believe my ears.

  Grove

  I was tired and sleepy, but happy. From the cockpit, I saw that old graveyard. Then it was a field of cotton, great big white cotton balls. I’d dust it, I figured. I’d dusted some crops in my time. Back on the power in the dive. Level her out, so you can pull the dust knob just before the plants come under the nose. Great big white cotton plants. Just like riding a bicycle. Like riding a bicycle. I hadn’t lost my touch. Line her up, down them rows. Now, power back in.

  Some people standing around out there. Cotton pickers maybe. Can’t poison them. Give them a little show. Where’s that damn fuel gauge? But it wadn’t a cotton field. By god, it was my graveyard and . . . I couldn’t find the fuel gauge. Where was it?

  I come to the decision I had to get on back and try to land the thing.

  I was too tired to fly much.

  Tate

  At Daddy’s funeral I felt very, very heavy. I didn’t know I’d be so tired.

  We’d found Uncle Grove at the airport and got him settled at Faison’s. He’d taken my airplane up. I don’t know what to do about it all. It was too much to handle at once. And now Morgan has developed some kind of odd loyalty to Uncle Grove, which I’m thankful for, but, hell, it could get dangerous. Uncle Grove has a pistol and won’t give it up. But at least Sheriff Swain has dropped all charges against the Turpentine man.

  Aunt Bette and Aunt Ansie were so mad at us for taking in Uncle Grove they wouldn’t sit on the same row with us at Daddy’s funeral, and wouldn’t speak to us beforehand or afterwards. They were upset about the farm coming to me, Faison, and Faye. I think they’d figured all along that somehow they were going to get some of it. I’m sure if Daddy had left a will they would have.

  That Daddy was gone, vanished from earth, leaving a black space where he once had been—this would settle in on me for a few seconds, lift, and in minutes settle in again.

  The newsreel ran in my head. The last time I walked out of that room, I turned at the door and Daddy raised his head a little, lifted his hand and said, “Bring me a newspaper sometime. I’m feeling like reading a little bit.”

  I remember when I was the height of his waist. I remember holding his hand as we walked into Durham Athletic Park to see the Bulls play baseball. I remember his face from below, as a child looks up—the same way I looked at his head on the pillow in those last years, as if from below.

  I remember one time when I was a boy and I rubbed my cheek against the hard bristles on his cheek. I remember thinking, I will never forget this minute.

  I remember looking at his belt buckle when he unbuckled it to whip Faison, and later, for a while, me. I remember the burning when he whipped me.

  I remember him driving up in the dust on Friday afternoons, over and over, and then on Sundays—after we’d all gone to church together—driving away in the dust, while I stood and watched until Aunt Bette or Aunt Ansie called me.

  And then later when Daddy worked closer to home, he’d come in tired and go to sleep in his chair. Ma Laura would make Faison and me leave him alone. His head would be back, his mouth open.

  Behind a dark, black wall stood all that could have been if he hadn’t had to work all the time. An afternoon’s sitting, just sitting out in the backyard in those cloth-and-wood lawn chairs, and talking about whatever. Times in the woods learning something, anything, instead of visiting everybody every weekend, the people he had to see—his mama, daddy, sisters, cousins. Any talking, his and mine together, happened between visits—on the way from one of them to another—and he acted like he didn’t know what to talk about, like most of what he and I might talk about would be wrong someho
w, too personal, not the right thing to talk about. About all that was right for Faison and me to hear was what we shouldn’t be doing or what we should be doing that we hadn’t.

  Marilyn and Morgan came with me to the funeral, and June Lee came with Faison.

  During the funeral service, Mr. Bass, who used to preach here—he’s pretty old now—told about Daddy donating money to the Salvation Army. He told a story about Daddy bringing him some used bricks when he was building a wellhouse. He read the Bible and talked about heaven and the reuniting of loved ones in the glorious hereafter for eternity. He told about Daddy saying he knew he was going to die and that his wife and sisters had taken good care of him in his final years. Glenn Bales, he said, had said he was right with God. Glenn Bales was happy in heaven. Amen. I don’t guess Daddy told Mr. Bass that he was right with his sons.

  After the service, the pallbearers, Mr. Barham, Mr. Fuller, Mr. Williamson, Mr. Raulings, Mr. Hollingsworth, Mr. Wright, men I have watched grow older and older over the years, rolled Daddy outside and into a black hearse. Faison and I and the others climbed into the family cars and rode in the procession out to the graveyard. Cars meeting us pulled off the road.

  At the cemetery I sat in a foldout chair by the grave. After the ceremony, as the family walked to the family cars, Aunt Bette grabbed my coat sleeve and held on.

  “When did he get here?” she said.

  “Sunday morning.”

  “Why did he come?”

  “To visit. He’s my uncle, Aunt Bette.”

  “You going to Miss Laura’s funeral tomorrow?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, I guess so. Why?”