“Strictly speaking, Moody was not a member of the church,” Preacher Liner said. I seen why he was acting so nervous.
“We have always gone to Green River Church,” I said.
The preacher said Moody was not a member, and that he hadn’t hardly attended church, and that he had been killed in a fight with the law.
“Are you judging the state of his soul?” I said. There was a tremble and edge to my voice.
“All we know is his actions, and they are not the actions of a Christian,” Preacher Liner said.
I patted my chest and looked at the fire. Fay stood in the doorway from the bedroom. “If Moody can’t have a funeral in church, does that mean he will go to hell?” she said.
“Has the board of deacons agreed to this?” I said.
“The board of deacons has voted,” Preacher Liner said.
I listened to the fire whine, the way it does in March when there’s bad weather on the way. I felt like I was breathing sand.
I reminded the preacher that Moody’s grandpa had built the church. The preacher cleared his throat and stepped closer to the fire. He took a deep breath and let it out. “Strictly speaking, you are not a member of the church,” he said.
“I was baptized forty years ago,” I said.
The preacher said he had checked the records and had found Pa and me had been dropped from the rolls and never been reinstated. I told him that was a long time ago, but he said there wasn’t any record of me ever getting my letter back.
It felt like my bones was turning to ashes. It felt like some old guilt was finally catching up with me, after laying buried all those years.
“You mean we can’t go to church no more?” Fay said. Tears was swelling in her eyes.
“It would be awkward to have Moody’s funeral in the church,” Preacher Liner said. “It would be against Baptist discipline.”
“Moody took a long time to grow up,” I said. “He was just beginning to change. He was just beginning to be hisself.”
“I can preach Moody’s funeral here at the house,” the preacher said.
“So that’s what you have come to tell us,” somebody said from the doorway. It was Muir, who still held a hammer in his hand and had shavings on his pants. “That Moody ain’t good enough for your church.”
“Moody was not a member,” Preacher Liner said.
“Who are you to say who is a Christian and who ain’t?” Muir said. He stepped closer and his face was white.
“The church must make a stand against lawlessness,” Preacher Liner said.
“This is not about Moody,” Muir said. “This is about me building the new church, ain’t it?”
“I am the pastor,” the preacher said. “I will not see my church split by factions.”
“You spend your time keeping people out, rather than bringing them in,” Muir hollered.
“You are upset with grief,” Preacher Liner said. “You are not at yourself.”
I seen Muir was right. What Preacher Liner wanted to do was keep people out if they didn’t agree with him. If they argued with him he always hid behind Baptist discipline. But he seemed sick and weak too.
“I’m at myself enough to see you clear,” Muir said.
“I didn’t come here to argue,” Preacher Liner said.
“You come here to get back at me for building the new church,” Muir said. But he didn’t holler. His voice was calm as the breeze in the pines.
“I didn’t come here to swap accusations,” the preacher said. “I will not leave my church to the Pentecostal Holiness. I will say good day to you.” The preacher hurried to the door and I followed and watched him as he cut across the yard to the springhouse.
“Does this mean Moody won’t have a funeral?” Fay said.
“We will pray about Moody,” I said.
“I will preach Moody’s funeral,” Muir said. I turned to him. His face had got red and sweaty, but his voice was calm.
“You don’t have to,” I said.
“I will preach his service in the new church,” Muir said.
“But the new church ain’t even built,” I said.
“It’s built enough to have a service,” Muir said.
“But you are not ordained,” I said.
“The Lord will ordain me,” Muir said.
FAY WALKED ACROSS the pasture to tell the Richardses we planned to have the funeral on top of the mountain in the unfinished church. After Muir had said it, I seen it might be the thing to do. Moody had been killed over Muir’s effort to build the new church. The new church was on family land, and nobody could tell us we couldn’t use it. And the new church was unfinished. It was really just getting started, the way Moody was just starting to grow up. It was a fitting place to have a memorial to Moody.
U. G. drove up in his truck to deliver the handles and hinges for the coffin. When I told him what we planned, he said, “Wouldn’t it be better to have the service right here?”
“Muir wants to conduct the service in his new church,” I said. “He wants to preach the funeral hisself.”
“I understand that,” U. G. said. “But the fact is there’s no place to set in the unfinished church. There’s no way to get the coffin up there except tromping through the mud of the new road.”
I walked with U. G. out to where Muir was working on the coffin beside the shed. He was sanding the planks he’d planed and nailed together. The box was lined with an old blanket.
“Brother Muir, I have a suggestion,” U. G. said.
Muir stopped sanding and looked up.
U. G. said he thought we should have the funeral at the house. But Muir said he wanted to show Preacher Liner he couldn’t tell us where to conduct our service. Muir looked at the sandpaper in his hand. I knowed he was anguished by confusion and grief. So much had happened in the past few days. He was young, and disappointed in his plans.
“I will preach it the way I see fit,” Muir said and slapped the leg of his overalls.
Twenty-five
Muir
I KNOWED I had to preach Moody’s funeral in the new church. There was nothing up there but piles of rock and lumber, scraps and mud, and a frame on the rough foundation. None of the rock veneer was done, and there was no door or windows. Not all the sheathing had been nailed on. But in my mind the place had already been consecrated and dedicated, and it was the place for Moody’s funeral. It was the place to hold the service, among the people that loved him in spite of his faults and had seen him begin to change into a better person. A funeral didn’t have to be in a finished church. If you looked at it right, the whole world was a church, a place to worship and honor those that had died.
“We will find the Lord’s will if we wait,” Hank had said. I seen the wisdom in that, and I seen that my most common failing was hurry. I’d always had trouble waiting. But I seen I had to preach Moody’s funeral. That was not just pride. After the way Preacher Liner had acted it would not be fitting for him to funeral Moody. If there was to be words said, it was my duty as his brother, and as somebody that had aspired to preach, to say them. I owed it to Moody to honor his life. Whether I was ready to preach or not was not the point. It was a necessity.
When Hank come down to the house he said he would make benches in the new church by setting planks on rocks. And he would place the coffin on two sawhorses, after he carried it up in the wagon. “But I don’t know what you will use for a pulpit,” Hank said.
“I won’t need a pulpit,” I said.
All Hank’s talk about preaching while we was working had hit its mark. He had talked again and again about how he had wanted to be a preacher and never had.
“A preacher don’t have to be perfect,” Hank had said. “Nobody in this world is perfect. A preacher only gives what he has, all of what he has.”
Hank’s words had rung in my head for weeks. All through January and February we had worked together. I repeated in my mind the things he said without hardly knowing it. “What a preacher is, and what
a preacher does, is as important as what he says in the pulpit,” Hank had said. “And what he says to the grieved and to the afflicted and troubled in their minds, is as important as what he says at a revival meeting. For a preacher his whole life is his witness and his sermon.”
“WE WILL HAVE the funeral up there at four o’clock this evening,” I said to U. G. and Hank and Mama. “And we will bury Moody before sunset.”
“I’ll help you dig the grave,” Hank said.
“I’ll tell everybody to come that wants to,” U. G. said before he got into his truck.
I had never seen Mama so dazed, not even after Jewel died. She had worked in a fury the night before, after they brought Moody’s body home. I reckon she was trying to push back the grief that might drown her. In the morning she looked tired and shrunk, like the will had gone out of her. She even looked a little stooped, which she never had before.
“You go set down while I finish the casket,” I said to Mama.
“Somebody has got to trim the lining,” she said.
“I’ll do that myself,” I said.
“Are you sure you want to preach the funeral?” Mama said.
“I’m going to do it,” I said. There was no use to try to explain my feelings.
“I pray the Lord will bless you,” Mama said.
Just then Aunt Florrie arrived with a dish of ham and a pone of hot bread. “Come on in the house, Ginny,” Florrie said. “I want to fix your hair.”
When I was left alone with the coffin I sanded the corners and edges until they was soft as silk. We show our love through little things, I thought. I tacked the lining to the sides of the casket. It didn’t really matter if the lining was neat, since nobody would really see it except for me. The work reminded me how much I cared for Moody and how sorry I was we had quarreled and fought so long. The boards of the coffin would rot in fifteen or twenty years, but it was important to show myself how much I cared, and that I was doing what was needed, what a brother could do, at this important moment in my life.
I took a ruler and measured the sides of the box, and I marked the places for the two handles on either side and at each end. U. G. had brought brass-colored fittings, his best. They was heavy solid metal. The brass would go well with the oak wood. I hammered in the screws a little and then twisted them tight with a screwdriver.
When I stood back, the fittings sparkled in the sun. The box was plain but clean and beautiful. The boards was joined so tight you couldn’t see the seams. It was the best carpentry I’d ever done. The wood was sanded so the grain looked magnified. It was not a fancy coffin, but it was the best I could do with the materials and the time I had. My sermon would have to be done the same way. I would make it the best I could with what I knowed, in the time I had.
When I carried the box into the house, Florrie and Mama and Fay helped me fit Moody in his casket. We put him in careful and Florrie lifted off the camphor cloth and combed his hair. Moody’s face had turned gray as pipe clay. I didn’t want to look at him. It didn’t feel like he was there.
“I’ve got to help Hank dig the grave,” I said.
“You set down and eat something,” Aunt Florrie said.
“Ain’t hungry,” I said. I was in a hurry to get to the graveyard.
“Have some ham and bread,” Mama said. “I’ll get you a cup of coffee.”
I wanted to act calm and normal as I could. I set down and eat the sweet ham and hot corn bread. Florrie had made strong black coffee and I drunk a cup of that. But things already appeared bright and vivid. My grief and my determination made things sharp and the colors firm. The day had a long slow curve to it which I was going to follow. It was the shape of what I had to do. It was the shape of what there was to do.
“Put the grave in the row with Tom and Pa and Jewel,” Mama said. “But leave a space for me.”
I TOTED THE mattock and shovel on my shoulder to the family graveyard on the hill above Cabin Creek. Hank was waiting there with a pick and another shovel. The cemetery knoll was set just under the sharp ridge of Mount Olivet. Buzzard Rock loomed on the mountain far above. The first grave there was Great-Grandpa’s, who died in 1871 at the age of eighty. His marker was a rough slab of granite. It was a peaceful place, with oak trees all around and a few junipers and boxwoods here and there.
“Just show me where to dig,” Hank said.
“Let’s line the grave up with the family row,” I said. “And leave a space for Mama to be buried beside Daddy.”
Sighting down the row of gravestones, I marked a spot in the broomstraw. Hank took out a carpenter’s ruler and measured a place six feet by two and a half.
“Ever wonder why they bury people six feet down?” Hank said.
“Cause that’s how tall people are?” I said.
“More like because that’s below topsoil, below roots, even below earthworms,” Hank said. “The hard clay seems clean and safe.”
We dug out the soft sod and piled it up. The ground had froze and thawed so much, and soaked up so much winter rain, it was soft as dough on top. The turf cut smooth and rubbery. We piled it all to the side neat as pieces of a machine we was taking apart. Underneath, the topsoil was black and mealy. But there was only three or four inches of it. The graveyard was put on a hill where the soil was not much use for cropping.
Under the topsoil was yellow subsoil with isinglass in it. The fresh dirt glittered when we throwed it out into the sunlight. The damp clods dried quick in the breeze. As I dug, it felt like the shovel was growed to my hands. I thought, I am eating the soil with a big spoon. Moving the earth was what I was born to do.
Hank cut the sides of the hole neat as he would carve wood. He had his level and his ruler, and he shaved off dirt to make the corners plumb. As he worked, the dirt opened up to the shovel. When he hit a rock Hank took the pick and loosened it and dug around it.
“Lucky the row is turned so the graves face the east,” Hank said.
“Why do graves face the east?” I said.
“So the dead will be facing Jesus when he busts through the eastern sky at the Rapture,” Hank said. He heaved a big rock out of the hole.
A church faces west, and a grave faces east, I thought. The worshipers and the dead always face east.
Below the subsoil was red clay, packed hard as ice. It took the mattock or pick to loosen it. The clay carved like soft rock, and when it was throwed out in the sun it looked red-hot. We dug deeper and deeper. These are the walls between which Moody will lay for the next few centuries, I thought.
Hank took out his level and tested the floor. “Got to make the bottom level,” he said, “though nobody will ever know the difference.”
“We will know the difference,” I said.
“This will be Moody’s house for a good long spell,” Hank said. “We might as well set it foursquare.”
WHEN I GOT back to the house I was sweaty and dirty. It was already three o’clock.
“You ain’t got a minute extra,” Mama said. She was already dressed up in her Sunday dress. Moody’s coffin laid on two chairs in the living room, opposite the fireplace. Aunt Florrie had found a sprig of arbutus and laid it on the box. It was early March and the only thing blooming was arbutus.
I took a cake of soap and a rag and hurried out to the spring-house. The thought of preaching made my skin feel like it was turning different colors. I took off my clothes and wet the soap in the water below the cooling box and greased myself all over. And then with the rag I washed away the sweat and dirt. The cold water stung like lye and made my skin smart and tingle.
When I got back to the house I seen Hank and U. G. had already come for the casket. The living room appeared empty, with the two chairs facing each other in the center.
My clean shirt and suit was laid out on the bed. The shirt had been ironed and the pants pressed. My mouth was dry and my lips stuck together like they was swole and glued. Lord, I will say what words I can, I prayed. Give me the words you want me to say and that will be e
nough.
My hands was so stiff I had to try three times before I got my tie knotted. My fingers felt too big to guide the ends of the silk through the knot. People stopped by the house before they went on up the mountain. I could hear them talking in the living room and on the porch.
I looked in the mirror and combed my hair. My Bible was on the bureau. My tongue felt stuck to the roof of my mouth. My hand shook as it pulled the comb through my wet hair. It was a hand rough from hammering and sawing, and lightly blistered from shoveling the grave. I wished I was out in the woods along the river. I wished my tongue was as certain as my hands to do the needed task.
Lord, give me the words, I prayed. For the words belong to you, not to me. Give me the words that are right for Moody, and the thoughts that will comfort Mama and Fay and heal the awful bereavement. I looked in the mirror and wiped the sweat from my brow.
The next time I look in this mirror the funeral will be over and Moody will be in his grave, I thought. However my sermon goes, it will soon be over and my life will go on. The skin prickled on my lower back. I patted the tie snug.
WITH THE BIBLE in hand I walked across the pasture and climbed up the side of the mountain. I didn’t want to see nobody until I got to the top. The first person I met at the church was Frances, U. G.’s wife, setting on a chair by the door. I wondered why she was setting by the door, but when I got to the door I seen the unfinished room was full of people. U. G. and Hank had arranged the chairs and the benches so they faced the coffin. There must have been thirty or forty people in that cold, dark room. Even the shucking chair from our corncrib had been carried up the mountain. Every chair was filled and there was people standing by the open windows and along the sides of the room. I didn’t have time to notice them all, but I seen Blaine and Charlie, and Mrs. Richards and Annie. Wheeler Stepp was slouching in the back and Drayton Jones stood beside him. From the wetness of their eyes it appeared they had had a few drinks. I seen Florrie and U. G. and Hank and George Jarvis, and two of the Jenkins boys. Several nodded to me. Mama and Fay set in front of the casket. It was cool and drafty and they had their coats on. This is an upper room, I thought. Late afternoon light poured through the gaps in the sheathing.
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