In the interim between graduation and the delivery of Emily Charlotte about a year later, hard reality set in upon Maggie and A.J. Maggie had her low-paying job down at the school, which would become no-paying upon her commencement of maternity leave. A.J. had many irons in the fire, but his efforts to secure a permanent situation were not bearing fruit. In retrospect, he realized he should have earned a degree with more career potential, such as archaeology or astronomy. But that was water under the bridge, simply another eddy in the currents of his life.
He briefly drove a dump truck for Johnny Mack Purdue but decided he wasn’t cut out for the trade on the very day his brakes failed in a curve halfway down the Alabama side of Lookout Mountain. He was hauling twenty-five tons of gravel at the time, and the remainder of the trip down the grade was completed with authority. He resigned as soon as the truck rolled to a stop. Johnny Mack tried to rehire him, stating that anyone who could have survived that trip was a natural driver, and good boys were getting hard to find.
A.J. thanked his benefactor and sought other avenues. He worked two weeks down at the Jesus Is the Light of the Barbecue Plates Drive-In, but Hoghead was forced to apologetically let him go because he couldn’t get the coffee right. He moved on to working with John Robert out at the farm, but this resembled charity because it was, and he did not stay long. He temporarily pursued carpentry until the morning he discovered gravity’s impact on careless elevated carpenters. By this point, he was harboring thoughts of running Mr. Gus off the road so he could get his hands on that cushy janitor’s job at the school. Finally-and with a strong sense of déjà vu-he went to work dragging slabs down at John McCord’s sawmill. Ironically, he was almost passed over for his old job because now he was overqualified.
So A.J. knew what it was to be economically idle, and it gave him no pause in its current incarnation. Something would come up, and they would not starve in the meantime.
A sad rain fell, turning the air chill. A trace of coal smoke drifted up the valley. He donned his jacket and stepped onto the back porch for a smoke. The breeze tugged his collar. This was normally the kind of day he loved, but today it struck him as bleak. There was a hole in him that he was unequipped to fill, and he wished his family would come home. He needed their comforting presence the way the dying need the gods. He sat quietly in the porch rocker that had been Granmama’s. His mind wandered back in time to her final day. His memories were like fine crystal etchings, the remembrances delicate and fragile.
The call from John Robert came early on a Sunday morning. Clara had suffered a stroke and was to be transported to the hospital in Chattanooga the moment the ambulance arrived. A.J. awoke Maggie and explained what was happening, then roared into the night. He was at Granmama’s bedside in twenty minutes.
“I heard a noise like she was falling down,” John Robert offered, his face grim. “When I came in here, she was on the floor. I called Doc right away. He says it doesn’t look good.” Doc was listening to her chest with his stethoscope, shaking his head and muttering. He looked up at A.J. and John Robert.
“This was a big stroke. If we get her to the hospital before she bottoms out, we might save her. After that, I don’t know.” The ambulance from the county service arrived, and Doc lashed the attendants like a mule team while they loaded their patient in record time. Slim arrived in the cruiser with blue lights flashing, and Miss Clara and entourage made for the bright lights of the big city.
By noon it was apparent the situation was deteriorating. She was still alive, but she was attached to most of the machinery in the intensive care ward and surrounded by many somber-faced members of the medical community. A.J., John Robert, and Doc paced the waiting room. Slim had tears in his eyes and kept referring to her in the past tense. She was a saint. She was a damn saint, he said repeatedly. A.J. could see that this tribute was wearing on John Robert’s nerves, so he prevailed upon Slim to take Doc home. Then he and John Robert sat down to wait.
“How old is Granmama, John Robert?” A.J. asked. He was bad with dates and ages. “Is it eighty?”
“Eighty-one,” John Robert said. “That Slim is a real idiot,” he continued. The observation caught A.J. off guard. It was uncommon for John Robert to cast a disparaging remark, but it was an unusual day.
“Yeah, you’re right about that,” A.J. agreed. “But he sure does think a lot of Granmama.”
Around four in the afternoon, A.J. called Maggie. “How is she?” Maggie asked. A.J. took a breath that sounded like a ragged tear in a piece of cloth.
“She’s dying.”
“I’m so sorry,” Maggie said. “How is John Robert holding up?”
“He’s smoking and staring a lot. You know how he is. He doesn’t talk much.”
“I know. Call me if there’s any change. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” A.J. said. “I’ll be home in the morning, or I’ll call if I need to stay longer.”
Around 6:00 that evening they were visited by the neurologist. Dr. Prine was a compact person whose eyes held weary compassion. She explained that Clara’s stroke had been massive, and she was left with no brain function. Barring a miracle, she would not regain consciousness. A decision would eventually need to be made on the subject of life support. Dr. Prine left after expressing her sympathies and telling them she would see them the following day. For a long time after she had gone, no words were uttered by the pair. They were an island of silence in the sea of life. Then A.J. spoke.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“I do,” came John Robert’s reply. “We talked about this a long time ago. She always said she didn’t want to be kept alive past her time. She even wrote it out on paper.” He fell into a stare. Then he arose and walked outside, where he lit a cigarette. A.J. joined him.
“So you’re going to tell them to let her go?” he asked. John Robert did not speak for an entire Pall Mall, and he was a slow smoker. Then he looked at his son and spoke.
“I can’t do it. It would be like killing her myself.” A.J. was overcome with pity for his father. He reached out and touched John Robert’s shoulder. The world as they knew it was coming to an end.
“I’ll take care of it, John Robert,” he said. It was the last thing he wanted and the only thing to do. John Robert slowly nodded. The night passed in silence, and next morning A.J. conferred with Dr. Prine. Granmama’s condition had worsened. He gave a sigh.
“It was my grandmother’s wish, and it is my father’s wish, that we remove life support when there is no sound medical reason for it to remain.” The words hung in the air, limp as wash on the line.
“Is this your wish, as well?” His wishes probably did not matter, but it was considerate of Dr. Prine to inquire.
“My wish is that she hops up, and we go get in the truck and go home,” A.J. sadly replied. “But that’s not going to happen.”
And so, late in the afternoon, the ventilator was removed and the life support was shut down. The candle that was Granmama began to burn toward its nub. Not long after, Clara Longstreet, mother of John Robert and grandmother of Arthur John, matriarch of the Longstreet clan, flickered out of this world and took her place beside the clumsy young husband who had waited patiently for her all those years. What Jehovah and a hay baler had put asunder, A.J. and Dr. Prine had now rejoined.
A.J. felt nothing. He supposed he was numb or maybe in shock. He and John Robert stepped out to the loading dock for a cigarette. A hearse was parked there, waiting to load some hapless soul for the long trip home. They both averted their eyes, as if they had seen something illicit. As they stood there, smoking and staring at the ground, A.J. attempted to make himself feel sad. But the effort was wasted, and no emotion would come to him. I’m sorry, Granmama, he thought. I loved you, and I will cry for you when I can.
Granmama had wanted her final arrangements to be done up in the old style and had left several pages of instructions written in her spidery hand. A.J. and John Robert read through these the day after he
r death while she was over at the Fun Home being prepared. The Fun Home was Raymond Poteet’s Funeral Home, and not a great deal of fun had ever been had there. It had become the Fun Home as a result of the second poorest business decision of Raymond’s career. He was a thrifty man, and in his early days as town mortician he discovered that the sign maker he had retained charged by the letter, so he instructed the rogue artisan to abbreviate the word funeral by using the letters f-u-n followed by an almost imperceptible period. The Fun Home was born.
Raymond’s worst decision-arguably the poorest business move ever made by anyone, anywhere-occurred when he attempted to open a barbecue restaurant in a small building that adjoined the Fun Home. Sensibilities being what they are, not much barbecue was sold, and theories about the origin of the meat outlasted the establishment-named Heavenly Ribs-by many years.
Clara’s instructions were clear. She wanted to lie in state and receive visitors in her own home. From the tone of her note, it was clear she expected large numbers, and she instructed A.J. to crawl up under the house and inspect the floor joists to be sure they were up to it. She had already arranged for an old-fashioned pine box, and when A.J. picked it up from Nub Williams, he had to admire its simplicity and quality. It was constructed of pine boards and configured in the archaic six-sided shape, like the coffins occupied by John Wesley Hardin and Count Dracula, to name but two.
“Nub, they don’t make pine like this anymore,” A.J. said to the carpenter, rubbing his hand down the side of the coffin, respecting the obvious excellence of the construction. There were so many coats of varnish on the vessel that it appeared to have depth.
“I come up on those boards years ago,” came Nub’s nine-fingered reply. Pride could be heard in his voice. He had done a good job and knew it. “I was savin’ ’em for somethin’ special. When me an’ your granmama talked last year, I decided right then I knew what those planks were meant for.” A.J. asked about the charge for the work. Nub looked hurt.
“I wouldn’t let her pay me, and I don’t want your money, neither. She was a fine woman, and there ain’t no charge.” A.J. thanked him and hauled Clara’s coffin over to Raymond Poteet.
Clara had left no detail uncovered. She specified the nightgown she wished to wear into the void and the hairdo she wanted to sport when she went. She wanted to be put away next to her husband down in the grove by the lake. The songs she requested were “Amazing Grace” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” both to be sung by Angel Purdue, whose voice was beautiful even if she was Catholic. The instructions went on and on.
“John Robert, have you seen this list of pallbearers?” A.J. asked.
“No.”
“I’m going to need a court order and a backhoe to get four of them. The fifth is down at Raymond Poteet’s right now, and not for the barbecue. The sixth is Doc Miller.” They both grimaced.
“We’ll make Doc an honorary pallbearer,” said John Robert. “Do you think you can line some folks up to do the carrying?”
“Yeah, John Robert, I’m sure I can.” So the horsepower for Granmama’s trip down that last mile was supplied by a collection of willing volunteers. A.J.’s only problem was in selecting only six out of the large number of applicants for the positions. Eugene was the first to raise his hand.
“I’d like to be in on the deal,” he said. “She was a good old girl.”
When it came time to lay the corpse, Raymond Poteet brought her out to the farm and arranged her in the parlor. She was up on two sawhorses, as requested, surrounded by flowers, favorite mementos, and pictures from her life.
“I haven’t done one like this in twenty years,” Raymond said, admiring his handiwork. He was decked out in his best funeral suit, somber, black, and respectful. He had arranged and rearranged until everything was just so. “This is a slice of history,” he said to A.J. and John Robert. “There won’t be any more like this, done in the old way.” John Robert raised his eyebrow, and A.J. knew it was time to send Raymond back to the Fun Home. He ushered the undertaker out to the yard, and they stood by the long black Cadillac hearse. A.J. brought up the subject of payment.
“You’ve done a fine job, Raymond,” A.J. said, shaking his hand. “Get the bill totaled and I’ll be down in a couple of days to settle up.” Not surprisingly, Raymond already had a figure in mind. He had indeed done a fine job, but business was business, and he wasn’t an undertaker solely because he liked to be around dead people. But when he related the sum for the preparations, A.J. was confused. “That sounds a little low, Raymond,” he said.
“I’m doing your granmama at cost,” Raymond said simply. “She was a fine woman.”
A.J. had to blink a tear. Raymond was a cheapskate from a long line of excessively frugal people. As such, money was naturally very important to him. The only other person ever to receive “at cost” service was his own mother, a fact verified by Charnell Jackson, who had handled the estate. The honor of the gesture was not wasted on A.J., and he suspected that even Granmama might have approved, although she had not always been charitable when it came to the subject of Raymond Poteet. She had once observed that the only part of dying she really dreaded was that Raymond Poteet would see her unclothed. That part, at least, was over, and since she hadn’t rolled over, maybe it hadn’t been as bad as she had thought it would be. A.J. thanked Raymond again and sent him on his way. Then he went back inside to sit with John Robert, Maggie, Eugene, and with Granmama. Emily Charlotte was staying with Carson McCullers, one of Maggie’s sisters, and was due to be dropped off when Carson came to pay her respects.
The preacher arrived, a young theologian by the name of the Reverend Doctor Jensen McCarthy. A.J. liked the man who had ministered to his granmama’s spiritual needs for the last six or seven years, even if he did appear to be around fourteen years old. His deceased predecessor had been a crusty old so-and-so, and A.J. had always figured his ascension had depended heavily on whether God had been grading on the curve that day. But the Reverend Doctor seemed sincere and honest, qualities that washed a multitude of sins, even in a preacher. Still, A.J. was uneasy. He supposed it was the close proximity of John Robert to anything pertaining to the Almighty.
The Reverend McCarthy expressed his condolences and spoke in complimentary tones on the subject of his departed parishioner.
The trouble began at the call to pray when he noticed all heads had bowed but John Robert’s. A more seasoned veteran in local affairs would have let it pass, but the Reverend Doctor decided to gently lead John Robert to prayer. In his defense, he could not help himself. It was what they had taught him to do at preacher’s school, and he truly felt it was his mission to help John Robert. A.J. was sitting with head bowed and eyes closed, so it was a surprise to him when Jensen McCarthy spoke.
“John Robert, at times like these it is a comfort to know the Lord,” he said, his tone reasonable and compassionate. “Come. Pray with me.” He held out his hand to the elder Longstreet. The room held no sound. A.J. looked at the Reverend Doctor with respect, amazed at the obvious level of commitment and belief shown by his actions. A.J. knew it would do him no good, but Jensen certainly seemed to have the courage of his convictions, a rarity worthy of note. After a long silence, John Robert spoke.
“Reverend, Mama thought a lot of you, and you seem to be a well-meaning man. It is not my place to interfere with what you need to do. In her instructions, she said you knew all the arrangements. I leave all that to you. Please take care of your business.” John Robert rose and began to depart.
“You need to know God,” said Jenson McCarthy quietly and sincerely to John Robert’s retreating back.
“I know Him,” came the reply. “I just don’t care for His company.” The screen door squeaked as John Robert left. After an uncomfortable silence, the Reverend Doctor turned to A.J. He looked pained and sad.
The remainder of the visit was anti-climatic. Reverend McCarthy led them in prayer, and the invocation seemed to restore him somewhat, but he was still not quite
himself. A.J. wanted to tell him to not take it so hard, that it was impossible for a mere mortal to put John Robert on his knees. But the opportunity did not present itself, and A.J. did not press. They briefly discussed the arrangements for the following day over a cup of coffee.
“A.J., I apologize,” Jensen McCarthy said on his way out. “I picked a poor time to try to convert an unbeliever. I owe an apology to John Robert.” He spoke in a subdued tone. A.J. thought that Jensen looked like he could use a couple of belts, but it was impolite to offer. For that matter, he could have used a swallow himself.
“Don’t worry about it, Reverend. We all know that John Robert has his ways, and Granmama knew it, too.” A.J. paused. “You’re wrong about one thing, though. He’s not an unbeliever.” John Robert’s hatred was sustained by his belief. A.J. was surprised the Reverend Doctor had not understood. He seemed sharper than that.
“That went well,” he said to Maggie after the preacher had gone.
“I thought so,” she said, smiling ruefully.
“Next time you get married, maybe you ought to shoot for normal people.”
“Maybe,” she replied, coming over and holding him. They were still for a while, holding one another while Granmama slept the long sleep.
“This is too weird for me,” said A.J. “Do you know I don’t even feel sad? I don’t feel anything. I’m just as screwed up as John Robert.”
“You’re sad,” she said with concern in her voice. “I can tell.” She held him a little longer.
The ritual that followed resembled an Irish wake, although the only Irish present were third and fourth generation, and no consumption of alcohol was evident except for the occasional nip Eugene secured in the yard. Friends and neighbors began to drop by to express their regard, and by dark it was standing room only. Food was brought by all of the female mourners, and the kitchen and dining room were filled to capacity with hams, fried chicken, potato salad, and an uncountable array of side dishes, pies, and cakes. Everyone commented on how good Granmama looked, which A.J. considered nonsense, because she was dead. But the observations were well meant, and there isn’t all that much that could be said about a dead body. Granmama had covered the subject at length in her final instructions, and A.J. smiled when he remembered her words on the notebook paper:
The Front Porch Prophet Page 14