“All of this is unlike you, Glen, but I am certainly glad that you feel that way about me, and it didn’t hurt a bit that you told me.”
Glen finally said to the both of them, “Now go, I don’t want y’all to be late.” He watched as they pulled out of the yard and stood on the porch until the car disappeared and the dust settled, leaving him alone. He turned and went back into the house. He took out a piece of paper and wrote a note to his parents and set it upon the night stand beside his bed. He then went to the cabinet over the sink in the bathroom and extracted a small brown bottle of prescription medication with the word Dilaudid inscribed on the label. The doctor had given it to Papa a long time ago after an injury to his back.
Glen went to the kitchen and retrieved a glass of water. He then carefully counted out the number of pills remaining in the bottle, and found there were forty-two of them. He took the bottle to his bed, removed his shoes and climbed between the sheets. He opened the cap and took a large drink of water from the glass. He then consumed every tablet from the bottle. He layed back on his pillow, and felt a rush of warmth that soon extended over his entire body. This was followed by a sensation of intense well-being, of floating upon a raft in the creek where he and his brothers went when they were children, where it was cool and damp and dark. Soon the darkness engulfed him and he went to sleep. He felt a deep and profound peace, and his sensorium drifted into unconsciousness and downward into oblivion.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
THE FINALE
When Mama and Papa returned from church they didn’t hear Glen stirring about the house. Papa called out to him again but got no response. Mystified, Papa went through the house and found Glen still in the bed. He softly called his son but got no response. As he approached the bed, he suddenly experienced an eerie sensation and felt that something was terribly wrong. He noticed that Glen made absolutely no sound, no movement, no respiratory effort, and no bodily motion whatsoever. He came closer and touched his arm, then felt for a pulse at his wrist, then the arteries of the neck, and found none. The body was growing cold. He knew that Glen was dead.
Papa saw the pill bottle on the night stand beside the bed. He picked it up, read the label and knew how Glen had died. He put the bottle away; covered Glen’s face with a sheet, and went back to the front of the house. He found his wife in the living room. She could tell that something was not right by the somber expression on his face. He told her, “Ellie, something terrible has happened, and I must tell you that our son is dead from an overdose of the prescription drug Dilaudid which was in our medicine cabinet. I received it from Dr. Watkins when I hurt my back last year.”
She cried out and ran to Glen’s bedroom. When she saw him with the sheet over his face she threw herself protectively over his body and began crying hysterically. “Why. Why did you do this?” She implored, and picked his body up in her arms, rocking him back and forth.
Papa appeared at the door and went to her. He gently released her grip on the body and tenderly laid him back on the bed. He then gathered her up into his arms and carefully, slowly pulled her up from the bed. He whispered endearing words to her and led her from the bedroom back to the living room. He then said, “I can only surmise why he has done this awful thing. I believe that the consequences of his stroke with his being crippled somehow made him feel less of a man. I don’t think that he was able to take it all and continue living.” He continued, “Nevertheless, we are faced with the fact that he is gone and we will never know the full story of why, and we must compensate for the results of this senseless act. We must notify everyone in the family, and his and our friends. We must have the hearse out to take him to the funeral home and make all the arrangements for the funeral and burial. I know that I am moving quite rapidly, but we cannot dwell on this any longer than necessary for my sanity and yours. I think that I should take you to his brother’s while I take care of all this.”
She spoke for the first time, “No, Silas, I need to remain here with you.”
Papa thought a moment and said, “You are a very brave soul, dear. I will get everything started right now if that is what you want to do.”
Mama nodded her assent, and Papa got up from the couch, went to the telephone and called the funeral home. They told him they would send out a vehicle right away. He next called all the children. He then notified Sal in New Orleans. He didn’t mince any words with him regarding the events that led to his death and completed by saying how much their relationship had meant to Glen. Sal then asked when and where the funeral would be held and said that he would certainly attend.
The next days were a blur in time. Papa didn’t sleep or eat much. Mama mercifully busied herself preparing food for the pending guests and mourners. She got everything together and on the day of the funeral was in the kitchen preparing it very early that morning. She had an army of volunteers to help as the family arrived and was not exhausted when it was time to go to the church and then move to the cemetery for the graveside service. They dressed and made ready to go to the funeral. At 10:00 in the morning the hearse came to the house with Glen’s body from the funeral home in Quitman. Everyone else got into their cars and trucks to form the cortege that would take Glen for his last journey.
The little congregation of neighbors and friends were already in the church when they arrived and the family emerged from their vehicles, entered the Church, then proceeded to the front pews that had been cordoned off and sat quietly as the ambulance attendant and six of the family, the pallbearers, entered with Glen from the hearse. The plaintive hymn, “The Rock of Ages,” played and the congregation joined to sing that wonderful old song of faith. Papa noticed that Sal was not in the congregation.
As soon as the final strains of the hymn abated he arrived. He had three people with him that had not been anticipated, two men and a woman. The first man was apparently about fifty years of age and was dressed very appropriately for the somber proceedings. Papa would learn later that he was Petrous Porter, and Freddy B. was next to him, Glen’s associates in Dothan. The woman was young, about twenty-five to thirty, very slim and wore a black outfit with a veil. Her features could perceptibly be seen, though barely, beneath the covering gauzelike fragility overlying her face. It could be easily discerned that she was beautiful.
Papa knew that it was Sybil Mervin. She was carrying a handkerchief and periodically daubed her eyes under the veil. He thought, “Why is she here? She had broken his son’s heart, married another, and was ultimately responsible for Glen’s disease and death.” His first impulse was to stand up right then and there and ask her to leave. He knew that he could not do that out of respect for his son, and for the rest of the family and the congregation. She had come here from far away and she must have loved Glen to leave her husband to come and pay her final respects. Papa pondered this in his heart, and then was indeed glad that she was there.
The service began. The congregation quieted and the preacher said a prayer and extolled the sadness of a life that was snatched away at such a young age and left a void in the lives of his father, mother, brothers and friends. The remainder of his comments was quite brief. Before the benediction was declared, however, Sal stood up and stepped out into the isle and down to the pulpit.
He spoke, “A man lies before us, who was most unusual. The first time I met him was on a lonely road in Louisiana. That night he proved his courage and more importantly his deep sense of loyalty to his family. I am Italian, from an island in the Mediterranean Sea known as Sicily. Family is the foundation of our society there, and I appreciated these attributes in this man from the beginning. Through the following months and years he demonstrated that he not only had those qualities, but more importantly, he never lost them even in the most trying of situations. He was the personification of faith and tenacity. He loved to have a good time, but he seriously believed in his work and always considered the men and women that were his business associates and employees before himself.
The longer I wa
s with him in a particular venture that we shared, the more I learned that I could trust him, both in his decisions and with my purse. He was a true Siciliano. His family has lost a good and faithful member, and I have lost a very dear and beloved brother and friend as well.”
The pianist played another hymn and the pastor pronounced the benediction. Across the road Glen’s grave was yawning like a pit to consume him. The congregation moved to the gravesite and the pastor said a few more words.
They then lowered his casket into the tiny plot and covered him with the weight of the earth that he would support until the last judgment day.
Just as he was disappearing to become a part of that same earth, a single flower drifted downward to join him, thrown from the tiny hand of a veiled figure, a lovely veiled figure.
THE END
Asylum Heights Page 31