by K. L. Cook
The coffin was made of black walnut, and it glistened beneath the lights in the church. It was three-quarters the size of a regular coffin, but it still seemed too big. It sat atop a long communion table draped with a red velvet blanket. The lid of the coffin was half open, from the head to the waist, and the inside lining was made of ruffled off-white silk, but from where Laura sat, she could not see the boy’s face.
The funeral was supposed to begin at two-thirty, but it was nearly three before the door by the baptismal opened, and out stepped the preacher, a tall, dignified man in his mid-fifties. Laura had often seen him around town, but she didn’t know until now that he was a preacher. He held the door open, and behind him came John, Anne, and Willie Letig.
Mrs. Letig wore a black dress and hat, her face partially hidden behind a sheer black veil. John carried Willie, who was crying. Both the man and the boy wore matching black suits, and Laura wondered for a brief moment if they had bought them today. John’s hair was slicked back, dramatically revealing the results of the accident. Three jagged gashes, scabbed over now, lined his right cheek. Abrasions waffled his chin and forehead. Both eyes were black and puffy.
The preacher nodded toward one of the ushers, who stood by the door, and he helped the Letigs to the first pew. The preacher approached the pulpit and waited until the family was seated. He paused solemnly for another moment in the silent church for them all to register why they were here.
“‘Suffer the little children to come unto Me,’” he began.
His voice was even and smooth, though ordinary; he didn’t have the usual singsong bombast of other preachers. He could have been a banker or an accountant.
“What exactly does Jesus mean when He says that? It is a translation that has always, quite frankly, troubled me. When He spoke those lines, He meant them literally, as His disciples were sending mothers and their children away because they didn’t want them to bother Jesus. For the translators in King James’s time, it meant simply, ‘Allow or permit or do not forbid the children to come to Me.’ And yet ‘Suffer the children’ is one of the phrases we most remember from the New Testament. We still cling to the archaic usage of that word, partly for the poetry but partly because the word still speaks to us in a profound way, especially at a time like this.
“I remember, before my own study of the Bible began, I thought that Jesus was saying that the children must suffer. My youngest sister died when I was fifteen, and I saw what happened to my parents after her death. Even now, to me, as a parent and as a minister who has had to comfort those who have lost their children, I can’t help but believe that those lines are also Jesus’s solace to parents, His promise that the suffering will pass, the redemptive consolation that the children are moving from our hands to His, our world to His.
“But still, despite that solace, it seems a terrible injustice to lose a child. It is so difficult because we believe that our children are meant to outlive us. Our parents may die, our grandparents and uncles and aunts, sometimes even our friends, but those losses do not carry the same jarring, unnatural blow that the death of a child brings to a parent. We cannot quite fathom it, no matter how many times we hear reports about children dying, or read about it in the papers, or even worry about it, as parents always do. It is still an awful and not-quite-believable tragedy when it happens in our community.”
He paused for a moment, looked down at his notes, and seemed to collect his thoughts. Laura stole glances at the people in the pews, some with their heads bowed, some with handkerchiefs pressed to their faces. Manny, Gene, and her own father wiped their eyes. She breathed deeply and listened.
“John Raymond Letig Jr.—Jack, as he was called—was only five. Five and a half, as he would have said. He would have been six on March twenty-first. I am sure that those of you here—family, friends, loved ones, members of the community who have come to pay your respects—join with me now to extend our prayers for John and Anne Letig, and to little William, too, as they try to bear this burden and prepare for the even harder days, weeks, and months that surely wait ahead for them.
“I have spent the past two days with this family, precious few hours, and I know they love each other. I want to urge them to persevere in their love. In the end, it must sustain them. But it is also in times such as these, when we are united in suffering so elemental, so primitive, that it seems beyond articulation…it is during these times that we can either renew our faith or discover our spiritual selves, that secret chamber of our hearts that may remain dormant until a tragedy such as this pries it open and reveals the hidden depths within.
“Without that renewal, without that discovery, we will most certainly flounder. We will lose our way. I know this for a fact. I have seen it happen again and again. We can easily give in to this despair. And while I offer this warning in hopes that it will not happen, I know all too well, both firsthand and in my work as a minister, how difficult it is to learn that lesson, and even to relearn it. Suffering renders us dumb and blind. We must remember this.
“Ultimately, however, our grief can purify us, as Jesus Himself promised and by His example revealed. But first there is a kind of death through which we must pass, and it is not an easy or safe passage. The journey is fraught with more hardships and with a dangerous pull, like an undertow, toward self-destruction and heartache.”
He paused again and looked down at the front row, where the Letigs sat huddled together with their heads bowed. Laura tried to see past the men in the pew in front of her, but she could only see the backs of the Letigs’ heads. She wanted to see their faces yet dreaded it as well.
“So John and Anne and Willie, we join now, in this assembly, to be with you in your tragedy, to let you know that you reside within a circle of prayer. And I ask that we all now bow our heads and pray together for this family.”
Laura bowed her head and could feel, as a kind of collective heaviness, the heads of others dropping, too. She closed her eyes.
“We need not pray for Jack. He has already come unto You, Lord. We pray for this family, who suffers his loss, and who may find in their grief the threat of despair, and the temptation to find fault with one another, and to search in their hearts for blame and their own guilt. We ask You to help them in their suffering and guide them to You, and to one another, and to those they love. And that You help them navigate the treacherous waters through which they inevitably must pass. Help them remember that they, too, are Your children, and that their sufferings can be, must be, rendered unto You, and they will find the peace that eventually awaits us all. While there can be no easy remedy for their sorrow at Jack’s passing, we ask that You please help that sorrow, in time, turn into strength, into compassion for one another and for others who also suffer. In Your name we pray. Amen.”
The gathered murmured solemnly, “Amen.”
The preacher looked down again from the pulpit at the Letigs and then motioned for the usher who had helped them to their pew to escort them to the coffin for the final viewing of their son. John and Anne Letig, with Willie between them, walked slowly to the coffin. John was first. He placed his hand over the face of his son, and then his back and arm seemed to shake visibly. The crowd sat, hushed, afraid of what could happen in this moment.
He then withdrew his hand and picked up Willie, but the boy did not want to look at his brother. He buried his face in his father’s shoulder and began sobbing.
Mrs. Letig lifted her veil and turned back for a brief moment to the audience. Laura could see her face for the first time. It was a face Laura realized she would never forget: a spiderweb of grief, not just wrinkled but shattered. The preacher went to her, held out a steadying hand, but she pushed him away, gently, and then placed one hand down on her son’s chest. She bent over and kissed his face.
John put his other arm across her shoulders. She hovered over her child in the coffin, and Laura wondered how long Mrs. Letig would stay there, if she would not allow him to be buried. But then she rose and placed her face in
her husband’s shoulder, wrapped her arm around Willie, and the three of them stood there, in front of the coffin, as if they were on display. But it also seemed appropriate that they stand there before their son, with everyone in the church as witnesses, many crying audibly now into handkerchiefs.
Then the preacher tapped gently on John’s elbow, to let them know it was time to go. They stood there, still, for a few more seconds, and then the three moved awkwardly, as if attached, for a few steps, before Mrs. Letig broke free, dabbed her eyes and nose with her black handkerchief, and then dropped her veil down again. Neither John nor his wife turned around, but Willie, from his father’s shoulder, lifted his head and looked back at the coffin, and his face seemed strangely shocked, the same expression Laura remembered from months ago, last spring, when she had walked all the boys to town, and Jack had stepped off the curb and into the road and was nearly hit by the screeching car, and she had grabbed him, pulled him back, and scolded him sharply, making him burst into tears. That was the face. The exact expression. As if that moment had been superimposed onto this one.
Throughout the funeral, Laura had not cried at all, but this moment triggered her own grief. She felt it swell in her face as she watched the Letigs leave the church with the preacher.
The rest of them were then led in a procession, row by row, toward the casket. She didn’t want to go, but she was in line, and she didn’t know how she could just walk away without embarrassment. None of the others had excused themselves. The procession moved by the casket, most paying their respects with simply a nod, others moving quickly on, not looking at all.
When his face came into view, she thought she might throw up. His eyes were closed, as if he were asleep, but she had seen him asleep many times, and the combed hair, the pale pink lipstick, the peach-colored blush on his cheeks made him seem like a cartoon version of a child, not the boy she had known, with his cowlick and his splotched skin and his father’s angular nose. He had a scarf around his neck to cover the jagged gash. That was the only wound, though it had been enough. She couldn’t look again. She turned away and then followed the man in front of her, out into the vivid, painful sunlight.
She saw the car where John and Willie and Mrs. Letig were. The windows were tinted lightly, but she could see them huddled in the backseat, heads down. She watched unabashedly. And then John turned to her, as if he knew she was looking, or as if her stare had compelled him. His face didn’t change, though. It seemed frozen. Finally he blinked twice. Then he turned, expressionless, back to his wife and child.
Laura’s father and Manny were pallbearers, and she watched them, along with the other men—John’s brothers, Mrs. Letig’s brother-in-law, three other men she didn’t know—as they carried the closed casket slowly to the hearse. They stepped aside while the driver shut the door. The engine of the hearse started, and then her father motioned for her and Gene and Rich, who held her hands, to follow him. They walked quickly to the truck.
Along the way, the automobile engines, in a fitful commotion, started, the bodies of the cars and trucks shaking slightly. The beams of light came on, one by one, but you could barely tell in the harsh sunlight, only a dull silver sheen over the globes and the bumpers in front. And then finally, slowly, the phalanx of humming vehicles followed the dead boy to his grave.
34
Letig in Grief
Every day since the funeral, she walked to the abandoned warehouse and waited. He didn’t show up. She really didn’t think he would. But each day she went with an electric sense of hope and dread, and she waited, telling herself, No, he won’t come. Her breath quickened when each new car or truck turned the corner, and she could feel the pressure in her chest, thinking, Yes, this will be him, and when it wasn’t, she thought, Of course it’s not him, and she chastised herself for going back and forth, like a yo-yo. Her need to see him was, in part, practical. She still hadn’t been able to tell him that it was a false alarm. She figured he’d want to know, would need to know, and so she kept coming day after day, as a kind of formless obligation. She’d rehearsed how she would tell him and had tried to predict what his reaction would be. She could even imagine him striking her, and at first she tried to dispel these thoughts, but soon she willed herself to think about that possibility because maybe she deserved it and so should prepare herself for its inevitability.
She was afraid to call again. She had worked out what she would say if Mrs. Letig answered the phone, and she had dialed the number and let it ring. Mrs. Letig answered, her voice dark and dull, as if drugged, and Laura knew that the lies from before would not be so easy now. She hung up.
She thought of sending him a note. Just something unsigned in code: “False alarm” or “Everything’s okay.” But then she remembered his reaction to that first letter she’d sent. She’d wait it out. She’d just keep coming to this spot, or she would one day go with her father to their house, to take a meal, and she would tell him then. Slip a note to him, or whisper something in the hallway or kitchen when no one else was around. And then it would be done. Everything would be over. She longed for it all to be over. Some part of her never wanted to see the Letigs again. They would always remind her of this year, this accident, and her part in it. But she also felt bound to them in a way, and drawn to them as well, as if they were a powerful planet and she simply a moon orbiting them.
Her father had gone over twice to visit the Letigs, but he’d not asked her to go with him, and when he returned he seemed stunned and vague. She wanted details, specifics: How did they look? What did they do? What did they say? But she didn’t feel it was appropriate to ask.
He just said, “It isn’t good,” and shook his head. “It’s sad,” he said. “They’re having a rough go of it.” And he went to wash up for supper.
How? What do you mean? Tell me!
So she kept coming here to this place, hoping he would show up, telling herself that he wouldn’t, but secretly believing that one day he would.
Waiting for him, in the increasing cold as the sun dropped lower in the horizon each afternoon, she relentlessly brooded over the events leading up to the accident, as if this time of waiting should be her penance. She had begun to wonder if Jack would still be alive if she and John had left. It seemed to her as if their staying had set in motion a chain reaction that had resulted in his death, and if they had gone, as they originally planned, if they had headed out of Charnelle, if they had started their lives over anonymously, even if their guilt over abandoning their families had torn them apart, creating only divisive shame and isolating regret, even if they had been permanently exiled from Charnelle, even if all of this had occurred, it would have saved Jack because he would not have been in that truck with John that terrible night. He would have grown into a man, perhaps a man who hated his father, who hated Laura, who hated what they had done to his mother and his brother and himself, but all that bitterness, all that anger and pain that each and every one of them would have felt, would have been worth it because he would be alive right here, right now, and on into the future.
And why, she wondered, did Willie have to get sick, his ear so bad that he had to go to the hospital on that particular day and stop them and make them think it was a sign, a sign that had saved them from their own foolishness? Why had her period not come for so many days, alarming her and causing her to alarm John so that he could not concentrate on the icy road, and then why had it started just hours later? Why had Mrs. Letig asked her to watch Jack on the day that an ice storm descended so suddenly and unexpectedly on the Texas Panhandle? And why, out of all the accidents that occurred that day—the rigs turned on their sides, the spilled oranges across the white highway, the truckers stalled in the black ice and snow outside of Amarillo, the seven accidents that happened in Charnelle alone and the ninety-eight that happened that night in the Panhandle—why out of all of these accidents had the only fatality been this guiltless little boy, who did not deserve to die, and whose only wound, whose only scratch, had been a th
in, jagged gash across his neck from the broken windshield?
And going back further, why had she and John met on that snowy New Year’s Eve, and why had it been snowing then, almost as white and cold as the night of the accident, a warning, it seemed to her now, and why had she let him kiss her, and why had she kissed him the next time she saw him, urging him on, and why had they kept meeting when it was so clear that this was no good for either of them or their families? And why had she continued to see him after everything that happened at Lake Meredith, and why had she not heeded Gloria’s warning to end it, to end it then and there, because, if prolonged, it could only result in disappointment and heartache? And why had he not heeded his own warnings of danger, danger to himself, to her, to their families? And why, for that matter, had they not been caught before this, when there were so many opportunities to be caught? There had been close calls, and it was miraculous, really, that they had not been caught, by Bob Cransburgh at the Armory that very first night, by her father during his poker game, or by Manny, who suspected something, she knew, or by Rich or Gene, or Willie, or Jack, who came the closest that night while she hid in the Letigs’ bedroom closet. Why didn’t she heed the signs then? Why hadn’t she just jumped off the trestle over the Waskalanti Creek, just jumped like Danny Lincoln when she felt the impulse to do so?
They had been lucky, she thought, so lucky, and yet what kind of luck is it that leads to this? She could imagine her father’s rage, Mrs. Letig’s anguish, John going to jail because of what they had done, could even imagine getting pregnant and desperately searching out Mrs. Aguilar or going shamefully to Dalhart or Amarillo and living with other teenage girls who didn’t want, or wouldn’t be allowed, to keep their babies, and it all would have been better than this.
And why, she finally wondered, had circumstances allowed them to go to Galveston together, giving her a maddening glimpse of what it would be like to have him to herself, making realistic a fantasy that propelled them into their crazy plan to escape Charnelle? And why did they continue to see each other after the huge failure of that fantasy, even though they both knew it was over? And why did they just keep passing the time, killing the time, refusing to end it cleanly, until all of these significant and insignificant events conspired to murder this little boy?