by Randy Alcorn
Clarence mouthed the songs as a lapsed practitioner of a faith mouths its creeds, more out of habit than conviction. His lips moved, but no sound came out. It wasn’t so much that he disbelieved as that he resented what he believed.
I’m tired of injustice. I’m tired of evil winning. If you’re God, why don’t you just stop it?
A worship team came up front and sang a song he’d never heard. “Knowing you Jesus, knowing you; there is no greater thing; you’re my all, you’re the best; you’re my joy, my righteousness, and I love you Lord.”
Pastor Cairo Clancy stepped forward. A hush fell on the congregation. Dani had raved about Clancy over the years, but Clarence had only heard him preach once and wasn’t so impressed. He knew enough to realize that, like politicians, not every minister was what he appeared to be.
“Welcome to Ebenezer, family and friends of Sister Dani Rawls.” The pulpit looked like the bow of a ship, Cairo Clancy her captain. He gazed directly at the audience. Clarence could see no notes, nothing but a big black Bible.
“Sometimes I have to do funerals of people I don’t know. On a few occasions I’ve had to do funerals of people I wish I didn’t know.”
Some snickers and laughs and lots of knowing nods.
“But this time it’s someone I knew, someone I was proud to know.” His voice broke on the word proud.
“Amens” and “Yessirs” and “Hallelujahs” rippled through the crowd.
Clarence braced himself. He took pride in his objectivity. He resisted the emotional buttons they tried to push in churches like this. He viewed emotions as the back door, a way of sneaking past the mind to manipulate the audience.
Nobody’s going to manipulate me.
“Even as we meet right now, many of our minds and hearts are a few miles away at the hospital with little Felicia. Let’s go to prayin’ for her right now.”
Without looking down, as if no transition were needed, he talked to God: “Lord, we love that little girl and we pray for her healing. We want her back, Lord. She’s so young.” His voice cracked. “If you have a reason to take her to be with you and her mama, we’ll accept that—”
No we won’t.
“But you know we want her healed. You’re the great physician, Lord. You’re all powerful. And you’re all good. We commit Felicia to your care. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.”
If you’re all powerful and all good, you’ll have to prove it. I won’t let you off the hook.
“Most of you know Dani was an artist.” The pastor pulled out a painting from behind the big wooden pulpit. Clarence saw the blue waves of an ocean.
“Dani painted this for me. It hangs in my office and always will. I don’t think she ever spent much time at the ocean. But she knew how to dream, and her art was a gift from God.”
He held up the oil painting and pointed. “Look at this water. Just the right blue, with a hint of green. Bright and dark colors mixed just right. Now I don’t know a Picasso from a Grandma Moses—I’m no art critic. But one day Dani called me and Martha over, and we watched her finish up this beautiful painting. We saw her put her signature on the bottom. See, right here. Dani Rawls. And then she said to us, ‘I made it for you.’ Well, in the ol’ days people used to give things to us preachers, but I tell you, this painting sure beats fried chicken, collard greens, and a pan of cornbread! And you’re lookin’ at a man who likes his chicken and cornbread!”
Everyone laughed, replete with some hoots and snorts. Part of Clarence questioned whether this was appropriate at a funeral, but an older part remembered that in his family and in the black churches of his youth there had always been a close line between tears and laughter.
Clarence gazed at the painting. He knew Dani’s talent; she’d even sold a few paintings commercially over the years. In his home hung three she’d done for him and Geneva. One of his favorites was two old men playing chess. But the best was a painting of the Kansas City Monarchs, based on an old black-and-white photo of her father’s. There in the front of all these Negro League players stood Obadiah Abernathy, eyes sparkling and body strong. Obadiah loved that picture. Clarence thought he’d seen all her paintings, but never this one of the ocean. It took his breath away.
“Well,” Pastor Clancy said, “I’ve been looking at this painting, and I’ve been thinkin’ about Dani—about how leaving this world was like signin’ and framin’ her own self-painted portrait. What she said and did before she died, it was the finishing touch, the final signature.”
He took out a white handkerchief, slowly wiping it across his black face, the color contrast dramatic.
“Death’s the signature, now isn’t it? Till then our lives aren’t open to final appraisal, because it isn’t over till it’s over. As long as we’re alive, the painting’s still in process and we don’t know for sure how it’s going to turn out. Well, I can tell you that Dani’s life portrait was a masterpiece. It turned out well. She loved her family. She loved the church. Above all, she loved God.”
Sobs and “Amens” filled the sanctuary.
Clarence felt a sudden compulsion to leave. He couldn’t stand to stay in the auditorium another moment. He whispered to his father, “Got to go take an insulin shot.” He whispered the same to Geneva. He could tell she didn’t buy it.
He went out to the side aisle and walked to the back of the church, uncomfortable having everyone watch him. But it hurt less to leave than to stay. He didn’t want to hear any more. There were Jake and Janet, near the back of the full auditorium, a little out of place sitting there in their white skin. Jake turned and looked at him, his eyes asking if he was all right.
Clarence nodded as if to say yes. He went into the bathroom and took out of his suit pocket the three-by-five inch blood test monitor and his little vial of tracer strips. He grasped the beige pen-like pointer that housed the blood test needle and pushed it down on the little finger of his left hand. The spring popped, the needle pierced, and the dark red blood surfaced. Clarence gathered it into a bead, letting it drop neatly on the quarter inch of exposed litmus paper. He pushed the button on the monitor to begin its count to sixty. While it counted he wiped his finger with a cotton ball and stuck the vial back in his suit pocket.
When it reached 57 the monitor started beeping at him. He neatly wiped off the tracer strip on the third beep. He then slipped it down into the slot to be read in another minute. It said 178. Could have been worse, but higher than he suspected, too high. He reached to his other coat pocket and pulled out the small, clear-colored vial of insulin with the white label. He untucked his shirt, took off the orange syringe cover, drew four units of R insulin, and injected himself in the stomach.
His need to take insulin or to consume sugar to combat too much insulin sometimes embarrassed him, but in cases like this it came in handy as an excuse to leave somewhere he didn’t want to be. He knew he had to return now. Why had he consented to say something at the funeral? Reluctantly, he came back up the aisle and took his seat.
“God says it’s appointed to men once to die, and after that comes judgment,” Clancy said. “One day we’ll each stand before God. And it’ll take more than gold chains or lizard skin boots or fancy Easter hats to impress him.”
“Amens” sounded everywhere. A woman behind Clarence said, “Yessuh.” He heard the sounds of purses opening and closing and handkerchiefs unraveling and people crying. Though part of him resisted it, this black church brought up something in Clarence, something precious and long forgotten.
“Dani was a Christian,” Pastor Clancy said. “Her name was written in the Lamb’s book of life. God says because of what he did for her on the cross, she’ll spend eternity with him in heaven. Well, she’s there with him now. I’ll miss her. But if I had the power, would I call her back here?”
Yes. In a second.
“I don’t think so. It would be selfish. Once you meet Jesus on the other side, I have a feeling the last thing you’d want to do is come back here.”
“That’s true, pastor,” someone said.
Clancy went on for another few minutes, then looked at Clarence. “Now, I want to call up someone many of you know, or at least you know of him. Clarence Abernathy. Maybe you read his columns in the Trib. I asked him if he’d say some words about his sister, Dani. Welcome, Clarence. Come on up here.”
Clarence walked up front and faced the congregation. He saw the proud faces of the older women, glowing, beaming, ready to burst like they always were when a black man who’d made it stood up front before the community. He was never comfortable being shown off; it seemed to imply black men rarely succeeded. He felt particularly out of place standing behind a pulpit. If God wanted someone to speak for him today, Clarence knew he was a poor choice. He could think of nothing else to say, so he just looked at his notes for a prompting.
“Dani had that knack for fixin’ up the food, even when she was little. She always wanted to be near Mama, and Mama lived in the kitchen. I remember them fixin’ up possum, and Mama explaining to Dani you had to cook that possum till you could pull out the hair, nice’n easy.”
Some made faces and chuckled, many smiled.
Without him realizing it, Clarence’s diction had changed as he made himself at home in the community. “Dani and I did chores together. Went on adventures together. Snuck around and spied out raccoons and skunks and badgers and foxes. Sometimes we just spent the day watchin’ the corn grow and talkin’ about our dreams. We had lots of dreams, me and Dani.”
His voice thickened. He paused for nearly ten seconds.
“One of the things about my little sis was her laugh, that delightful, hilarious, out-of-control laugh.” Clarence had planned to say more about her laugh. He didn’t.
“Summers were the best. Sometimes we hiked into the Bienville Forest, just the two of us, not far from our home in Puckett. Other days we moseyed down the Strong River and walked through the Mississippi mud. Dani loved to squish her toes in it. Then she’d skip up to Farmer Marshall’s jade meadow and pick buttercups. She used to put them up to her face and the sun would hit them just a certain way, and I remember the reflection, the amber color it made on her skin.”
Sobs of recognition and comfort and anguish filled the auditorium. Clarence no longer looked at his notes and found himself saying very different things than he’d written.
“I used to work the grease into Sissy’s hair when she wanted to try something new with it, which seemed like about every week. One time in the Chicago projects, in Cabrini Green, some boys called her a name, made fun of her nappy hair. Next thing I knew my fists were bleeding, two boys were on the pavement, and I was on top of them. When I got home I caught it from Mama. Nearly knocked my head off, Mama did. I ended up hurtin’ a lot worse than those boys.”
Laughter erupted from the congregation, especially the men, many of whom had nearly had their heads knocked off by Mama too. Obadiah sat there nodding, as if to say, “My boy’s tellin’ the truth, now, this ain’t no story, folks.”
“Mama was so mad she told me to stay in my room for five hundred years.” More laughter. “Daddy told me I shouldn’t have done it, but he said he understood why. He said we had to protect our womenfolk.”
Clarence looked at his daddy, both of their eyes watering.
“Later that night Dani snuck into my bedroom and told me, ‘Thanks, Antsy.’ Then she gave me a big plate of cookies she’d baked up just for me.” He fought for control.
“She’d gone and baked cookies for me. That was just like Dani. Then she said, ‘I know you’ll always be there for me, Antsy.”’ His face contorted as if in a wind tunnel. “Well…I wasn’t there for her when those hoodlums came after her Saturday night. Nobody was there for her. Nobody.”
Not even God.
He didn’t say that out loud, out of respect for his daddy. But something inside him burned so hot he didn’t trust himself to say any more. He had some concluding words written out, some thoughtful words people would walk away saying were profound, but he decided not to say them. He crumpled them in his fist and sat down.
Geneva hugged him tight from the left, leaving her wet makeup on the shoulder of his suit. His father put his frail, feather-light hand on Clarence’s. He couldn’t believe it was the same hand that used to throw a baseball to first without it dropping an inch, that used to swing a chopping maul for hours on end, that used to overpower him in arm wrestling even when young Clarence used both hands against him.
The pastor spoke on, but Clarence didn’t hear him. He was in a Mississippi pasture, with Dani, watching the color of buttercups on her face. “Do I look high yella now, like Aunt Licia?” Aunt Licia, Mama’s sister, was always so proud to be high yellow, the closer to white skin the better they thought in the old days, and if you could pass for white, that was the ultimate.
Dani. Oh, Dani.
The funeral procession snaked toward the graveyard. Clarence’s mind traveled to another graveyard, thirty years ago, outside Puckett. They’d gone to bury Papa Buck, his mother’s father, and he and seven-year-old Dani walked hand in hand. The funeral procession entered a beautiful cemetery. It was a peaceful, lovely, manicured plot with sculpted velvety grass and colorful arrays of flowers, growing wild and gathered in bouquets. He and Dani thought this was a fine place for Papa Buck.
But Uncle Elijah explained, “We’s just passin’ through the white section.” Soon they came to an unkempt pasture where instead of beautiful marble tombstones, plastic covered notepaper marked the graves. Looking around, Clarence saw that after exposure to the weather, no names would be left visible. Even in death it was marble monuments for whites and thin, rain-soaked paper for blacks. Little Dani had cried then. He drew her close to him and told her it didn’t matter, even though it surely did. He wanted to reach out and touch that little girl’s face again.
The rest of the day—Dani’s graveside service, family feast, all of it—passed for Clarence as if it were a television movie with bad reception going on in the background when your thoughts were somewhere else. When he got home, he withdrew to his office, withdrew from Geneva and the children and his daddy, the loved ones still with him, to brood about Dani, the loved one now gone. He kept thinking of that angel-like face, that face that looked just like…Felicia’s.
“You can’t have Felicia, God. You took my sister. But you can’t take away that little girl.”
He came out of his office and announced he was driving to the hospital. Geneva insisted she come with him. He relented.
“Let me inside, Clarence,” she said as he drove. “I know you’re grieving. So am I. Talk to me, please.”
He wouldn’t talk, not out of meanness but because he was afraid of what he would say, afraid he would frighten her. Besides, talking seemed so useless. What would it change?
Geneva tried repeatedly to fill the silence. But she couldn’t penetrate the dark winter of her husband’s soul.
“Felicia’s condition hasn’t changed,” the doctor told them. “Obviously, it’s a good sign nothing is worse. But she’s not out of the woods yet.” Clarence insisted on going into ICU to watch over Felicia, who still lay motionless on the bed.
Clarence stood at his bedroom doorframe, leaning back against the sharp edges, positioning the center of his back just so. Then he rubbed back and forth, up and down. Geneva always teased him about this, how he was her lumbering grizzly bear. She didn’t tease him now.
He flashed back to college football days as an offensive lineman. The defensive man could try all day to get to the quarterback. If he made it through once for the sack, he was a success even though he failed nine out of ten times. But if an offensive lineman succeeded nine out of ten times yet failed to protect the quarterback just once, his day was a failure. It didn’t matter how many times you succeeded. If you failed even once, everything could be lost.
His mind replayed sharp images of specific sacks he allowed twenty years ago, one at Alcorn State, a couple more at OSU. He could still see the enemy c
oming at him, feel himself getting knocked off balance, leaving his quarterback defenseless, vulnerable for the hit. He didn’t remember those hundreds of times he’d done his job, hardly any of them. But he did remember every time he hadn’t.
Spike, their English bulldog, marched into the bedroom, swaying side to side like an overstuffed sausage, walking like Charlie Chaplin. Spike looked up with his soulful eyes and tried to console his master. Dogs were so loyal, their lives so wrapped up in their masters, they could go days without eating until they were in his company again. Cats could take people or leave them, Clarence thought. It would be easier to be a cat than a dog.
After lying quietly in bed and having no idea what he’d spent fifteen minutes reading, he turned off the light. He rehearsed his last conversation with Dani.
“It’s bad in here, Antsy. Children are dying, and they’re killing each other. You’ve got to come help. We need men like you. You said you’d always be there for me, and you always have been, big brother. But we need you here.”
“My dream is the same as it’s always been. A house in the country. Peace and safety for my children. And for you too, if you’ll only come join us. That’s not such a bad dream, is it Sis?”
The dream was gone, replaced by this nightmare. Even the hope of moving soon to that country house five miles farther out wasn’t enough to lift his spirits for more than a fleeting moment. How far from the city would a person have to move to escape the realities of sin and death?
Night covered the open bedroom windows like a grainy cloth. Clarence Abernathy became part of the impenetrable darkness that surrounded him. He felt like a bird shot from the sky, dying in the reeds below, no longer able to see the horizon.
In a moment’s time, seemingly without warning, his grief began to transmutate, taking on a more powerful identity—rage.
Who killed my sister? And why? What makes him think he can get away with it?
For over an hour as he lay in the darkness, his mind filled with dozens of imaginary scenarios in which he tracked down and came face to face with the killer. Teeth clenched, he rehearsed in detail what he would do to him.