by Daniel Smith
We arrive at the house, cars cluttering the driveway, friends and neighbors I don’t really recognize leaving and waving at us as we stop before entering through the back door. “So tell me, Corinne: are you going to win the case?”
“Now I have a decent chance anyway.”
“Don’t tell me it’s because of Danny’s help.”
“We’re still taking depositions, but, hey, it didn’t hurt.”
As we drive up in a couple of cars to Mt. Carmel, I can’t help noticing the historical sign at the turn into the cemetery: Juniper, it points out, was initially settled in 1844 by the George Williams family in a spot right next to what is now the cemetery. At the time, Texas was still a Republic but already the Williams family and others that followed were calling themselves “Texans.” By 1846 after the treaty with Mexico in the wake of the Mexican War, Texas became annexed as a state to the expanding American nation. So no doubt George Williams and his descendants took pride in making this little spot in north Texas part of that “Manifest Destiny,” the inevitable spread of democracy, so it was claimed, across the west, coast to coast.
Already there are several dozen people wandering through the cemetery, gawking, looking at the graves, and taking pictures of the head stones. God, I hope this doesn’t turn into the kind of human zoo scene that Dad always detested. Dad’s grave site, under a small grove of pecan and mesquite trees, gets a lot of shade, and with the nice wooden bench looks like it’s ready for duty.
We’re hardly out of our cars before Reverend Fletcher and Tim the funeral director come rushing up to us. Tim wants to know if we really want to make this a closed casket ceremony. We reassure him that, yes, that’s what we want—whatever downside there might be to people getting “proper closure” on Dr. Fenton’s passing. Reverend Fletcher is intent on knowing who, exactly, will be speaking, and why. Claire insists she won’t be offering any sort of eulogy (“People aren’t coming here to listen to speeches, least of all from me,” she points out), and I tell the Reverend I have made no plans to speak. Jeff says the same thing. But then, hearing the question as he walks up, Danny pipes up: “Hey, maybe I’ll say a little something.” Reverend Fletcher narrows his eyes as he gives Danny a look.
“This is my son, Danny, Reverend Fletcher,” I tell him.
“So you want to offer a eulogy?” he asks Danny.
“Maybe.”
“We’re going to be starting fairly soon, son, so it would be helpful if we could leave the world of ‘maybe’ behind and talk about what’s actually gonna happen. I would think your father would be the one to say a few words, you know?”
“That’s cool. Pops, you should get up and talk,” Danny observes.
“I wasn’t counting on it, Danny.”
“Okay, I get it.”
“We’ll just see how things play out, Reverend,” I say, hoping to end this mini-controversy.
“Okay,” Reverend Fletcher says warily. “Is there anything in particular you want to hear about your father, Brian?”
“The truth would be good. Did you really know him?”
“Well, yes. I mean, he’s been in my congregation ever since I came here ten years ago. Doc Fenton and Claire have given a lot to the church.”
“Right.” No doubt he’s thinking about their tithe and worrying about whether their prominent financial help is about to vanish or at least decline with Dad’s passing. “So you know what kind of man he is, what kind of life he’s led?”
“Is there something going on I need to know about, Brian?”
“Just asking, Reverend,” I say with a shrug. As I head over to collect Claire from a circle of mourners, someone taps me on the shoulder. I turn around and find myself looking into the face of a very special person I hadn’t seen in years: Shelly Ann! She’s decked out in a dark suit, with her hair down, and quite frankly, looking better than I could have imagined. I had not seen her in person since our divorce back in 1980.
“Shelly Ann! My goodness!” She leans in for a quick, awkward hug. Out of the corner of my eye I see that Corinne has taken notice of this little embrace among exes. “I can’t believe you’re here!”
“Well, I only found out about it yesterday from an old friend in Juniper. And I had some business in Dallas so it just seemed like the right thing to do. Of course, me and your Dad, we had our moments, you know.”
“Yes, you did.” I especially remember that Dad, soon after Shelly and I got married, learned that she was a big believer in labor unions, called her a Communist. He also got into more than a few arguments with Shelly Ann over her weight issues. “You want to lose weight, Shelly, you got to exercise. Get out and walk every day and you’ll look better and feel better.”
“I’ll feel better, Robert, when you stop commenting on my weight,” I remember Shelly Ann testily responding.
“I’m so sorry to hear about your father, Brian. But he did live a full life.”
“Thank you, Shelly. How are things down in Houston?”
“I’m ok. Just trying to—what was your Dad’s saying?—‘stay on the right side of the dirt.’”
I have to laugh. Dad loved to say that to people. Today, though, is probably the wrong time to remember that line, though you could argue that even today—given all the travails he’s been through with his dementia the past few years—he’s still on the right side of the dirt. Shelly and I stand in awkward silence for a moment, but thankfully some of her old Juniper friends come over and rescue us, taking Shelly Ann away. Before I can refocus on the solemn business before us, a cherub-faced man about my age walks right up to me with a knowing look in his eye. “You remember me?” he asks as I stare clueless at his weathered face of maybe 60. “Billy Ray. Billy Ray Kinzer. Class of ’72.”
“Oh, right. Billy Ray!” I respond, finally making the connection between my memories of Billy Ray the boy and this old man pumping my hand enthusiastically.
“I’ll never forget what Doc Fenton did when we first played in Little League,” he tells me, his eyes starting to tear up as he spoke. Among my dad’s many efforts to ensure that his boys became good athletes like he had been was to almost single-handedly inaugurate Juniper’s first Little League. And he personally hand-selected the first group of nine-year-olds trying to make the various teams. “My mom got the tryout date wrong,” Billy Ray remembered, “and I started crying ‘cause I had missed my big chance. So Mom drove me over to your house and we knocked on the door and your dad came out and as my mom was apologizing for everything, Doc Fenton interrupted her and said, ‘let’s go in the back yard.’ Your dad took me out in that big back yard y’all have, played catch with me, hit me ground balls and pop ups, and then pitched me a few balls to see if I could hit. I guess I did okay, ‘cause a few days later I found out I had made the team. I never forgot what he did for me, Brian, and neither did Mom.”
“Well, that is a good story, Billy Ray.” I had no idea someone like Billy Ray would bother to show up all these years later to say goodbye to my dad, but here he is and with such a fond remembrance. “I appreciate you coming,” I tell him, as he gives me one of those soft condolence pats on the back. Before I can think of anything else to say to him, I notice that Claire is taking her seat at the front facing the casket. There are chairs set up for about 50 people. There’s probably a hundred or so people who have gathered in the past few minutes, many of them standing or leaning against the trees. I go sit down next to Corinne and Claire with Danny, Dawn, and Francine seated behind us.
As Reverend Fletcher assumes his solemn-faced ceremonial comments, especially observing how “Dr. Fenton’s soul is now freed from his earthly body,” Claire reaches over and takes my hand. After several prayers, the reading of the 23rd Psalm, and standard issue Protestant commentary on how we’ve “come together in grief and to witness to our faith as we celebrate the life of Robert Fenton” while “looking for comfort in resurrection,” he finally moves into his own personal observations. “Doc Fenton had his own nagging doubts about
the actual value of ministers of God like me,” Fletcher notes, “but in all fairness, he held himself to the same exacting standards. I well remember Doc once telling me ‘you preach about the next life as if you’ve given up on this one. That doesn’t inspire confidence, Reverend, to the rest of us trying to figure out how to live a good life in this messed-up world.’ And, as you can imagine, he didn’t say ‘messed-up.’” Fletcher gets a ripple of chuckles and laughter with this line, one that, I suspect, even Dad would appreciate. In the end, Fletcher descends into platitudes, informing us we can all take joy and relief in knowing Dad’s suffering has ended and wishing him “swift passage into wholeness and peace,” whatever that is. And then, asking if anyone wishes to say a few words about the life of Robert Fenton, he turns to me with his beneficent stare. Claire nudges me with a nodding glance and Danny whispers from behind, “Go ahead, Pops.” I look at Jeff, who also gives his nodding approval.
So I get up and walk to the lectern Fletcher has been using and face the crowd. I’ve spent my career talking to a sea of half-interested faces, but this is way different. They’re all very interested and full of opinions, no doubt, about my father. And they’re probably intrigued to see what Doc Fenton’s over-educated son thinks about his old man. I determine that I’m going to make this quick and unemotional. I can’t stand people breaking down in public, even if it’s a fun sport for our culture of voyeurs. Growing up, I always hated that portion of our Methodist church service when the preacher made his altar call asking that all those sinners, if so moved by the Lord, to come up front and give their life to Christ in full view of the entire church. I would always silently pray, while the organist played the requisite “mood music,” that no one would take the bait. Watching crying, anguished people I knew well stand at the front of the church and bare their souls, was just too much to take.
“Robert Fenton loved this life, even if he was frequently at war with it,” I tell the gathered crowd. “I look out at all of you and see so many people he treated and healed, delivered as infants, and, yes, some patients he lost, which I know saddened him greatly. Now he has been lost to us, and we are sad. The inevitability of loss was something he spent his life fighting, trying to delay, if not defeat, and knowing that death could not, in the long run, be defeated, frustrated, even angered him. Our ministers tell us that in death there is a release from all the anger and frustration and sorrow. We are now in God’s hands. My father hoped this would be true, but faith was a hard sell to this man of science. And as I stand over his body today, it is hard for me. It is hard for Jeff. And most of all for his beloved wife, Claire. When I lost my mother, Louise, several years ago—a wonderful woman many of you knew from her days long ago here in Juniper—it was painful for such a vivid, powerful living presence in my life to be suddenly, and irretrievably, turned into simply a memory. Now we must do that with Robert. He always said, ‘don’t focus on the memory: just keep on living.’ But who is really ready for that? As many of you know, I’m an historian. I deal in memories, making judgments about the dead. But I, I am not ready to judge the history of Robert Fenton. I even wonder if I truly know him. If any of us do.”
And then I grow silent for a moment, trying to hold back tears and a total breakdown I feel surging from somewhere within me. I feel myself shaking, holding on to the lectern for dear life. I hear Reverend Fletcher asking if I’m all right and want to go on. I cannot answer. I am still shaking. Then out of the corner of my eye I see Danny getting up from his seat and coming to the front, standing alongside me, his arm around me, trying to calm me down.
“My father is right. None of us is ready for this. We’re all just here grasping at straws about God’s loving hands, celebrating a life, and entering the promise land—whatever the hell that is. The fact is, we don’t know a damn thing about where we’re headed and what we’ll find. Maybe some of you call that some sort of spiritual journey. I call it a tragedy. I didn’t know my grandpa as well as I should but the way he went out, barely knowing who he was, not able to take care of himself—that’s no way to treat a great man. I wish I could say we can do better. But we can’t. I know you disagree, Reverend, but what did God do for Grandpa the last few years? Turned his eyes, walked away—that’s what. Let’s go, Pops. This is a waste.”
And at that, Danny and I slowly walk towards our cars amid a rumble of audible gasps, people getting up from their chairs, and “what do they think they’re doing?” comments from the crowd. Meanwhile, Reverend Fletcher desperately tries to reassert control by saying a final prayer to a crowd that is now solely focused on the spectacle of Danny and me walking away in the middle of the ceremony. Jeff, I notice, is now escorting Claire and her sister Francine to the car. Tim and Reverend are exchanging “what just happened here?” glances. Danny opens the driver’s side of our car and, as I get in, he makes sure I’m all right and tells me that he and Dawn are going to spend a little time driving around town, to think a little, and then come back to the house.
Once everyone else joins me in the car—Claire, Corinne, Francine, Rhonda and Jeff—I look around for signs of anger or disapproval. “I’m sorry about how that ended,” I say.
“You need to have a serious talk with your son, Brian,” Jeff observes tersely.
“That is no way to speak about the Lord, especially at a time like this,” Rhonda pronounces.
“It probably wasn’t the right words but a funeral does bring out strong feelings, so I understand,” Corinne says, holding my hand in support.
“Really?” Jeff asks. “You understand that crap coming out of Danny’s mouth?”
“It wasn’t ‘crap,’ Jeff,” Claire calmly points out. “What Robert had to go through would make anyone question their faith.”
“Yeah, but Danny getting up in front of the whole town and announcing basically that he’s a fucking atheist—”
“No need for the language, honey,” Rhonda says.
‘Whatever,” Jeff replies, throwing me a “fuck-you” glance.
I drive everyone the rest of the way home in silence. When we get to the house, Jeff asks me to follow him a few steps behind the garage. “I have never been so humiliated in my life,” he tells me. “I’m not so much criticizing your comments, Brian, though I can’t say I followed everything you were getting at. But Danny, like I said, the boy needs to learn how to behave.”
“He’s not a boy. And at least he showed up for the ceremony.”
“Now wait a minute: you know perfectly well Sarah was in the middle of moving up to Salt Lake for graduate school.”
“Taking a side trip to see your grandfather put to rest is not against any graduate school rules I’m aware of, bro.”
“Okay, maybe she didn’t much care for Dad—and she wasn’t alone in that regard, as you well know—but if she had come I guarantee you she’d have treated the fucking funeral ceremony with respect.”
“If she had come,” I say as I head off into the house.
“Asshole,” I hear Jeff mutter.
An hour or so later we are all sitting around the dining table drinking coffee and feeding our faces with one of the many cakes and pies brought to us by our friends and neighbors. Then Danny and Dawn roll up and come into the house. He seems pretty chipper for a guy who single-handedly wrecked a funeral service.
“Hey, is there some of that German chocolate cake left over?” Danny asks.
“I believe so,” Corinne responds, pointing to a plate in the kitchen.
“You know, Danny, I think you owe Claire, and really all of us, an apology,” Jeff says.
“Excuse me?” Danny asks, his mouth full of cake.
“He was just saying what was in his heart,” Dawn offers.
“Yeah, well, what’s in his heart is messed up,” Jeff replies.
“Look, I love Grandpa,” Danny says, “and I’m just having a hard time with this ‘happy clappy, we’re all headed for Paradise’ stuff that was going down out there.”
“It’s ‘going down,�
�� Danny,” Rhonda insists, “because that’s what we all believe.”
“So if I believe different, I have to keep my mouth shut?” Danny responds.
“It’s not a college debate, son,” Jeff says, getting right in Danny’s face now. “Well, you didn’t go to college, so you wouldn’t know—”
“All right, Jeff, that’s quite enough!” I say, pushing myself in between him and Danny. “If Dad were here he’d be taking out his belt over all this arguing.” For a second, Jeff looks like he might want to take a punch at me, but Claire is eyeing us both and that stops him.
“You boys just stop it,” Claire says. “This is no time for fighting about the hereafter and religion and so on. We’re all hurting because we lost Robert. And everybody hurts in his own way. Okay?”
After a moment’s silence, Danny sets down his plate of cake, wipes his mouth, and gives everybody a good look. “You know what? I think it’s time me and Dawn hit the road.”
“What, you two are leaving?” Claire asks innocently.
“I figure it’s about time,” Danny replies.
“You all have been nothing but wonderful to us,” Dawn says not entirely convincingly.
“Look, there’s no need to be rushing off. Right?” I ask imploringly to everyone around the table. I get a couple of mild nods from Claire and Francine. Finally Corinne pipes up.
“Where are you going, anyway?” she asks.
“Yeah, I’d like to talk to you guys about that,” I point out.
“Better get to it, Pops; we’re packing up,” Danny replies as he and Dawn say a fond goodbye to Claire, including a surprisingly emotional embrace. They shake hands with Francine, Jeff and Rhonda, and then walk down the hallway towards their bedroom. I gesture for Corinne to join me and we follow them.
I can’t help but think that all this family mess is my fault. It was, after all, my near-breakdown at the lectern that unleashed the cascading emotional fallout at the funeral, climaxing in Danny’s vaguely atheistic rant in front of the good people of Juniper and culminating in Jeff and Rhonda’s attack on Danny’s religious scruples and, by implication, my own lousy parenting. Thankfully, Claire doesn’t seem to harbor any ill will towards me or Danny—or if she does, she’s, as always, simply too kind to let it show. But I don’t want Danny—or Dawn, for that matter—to take off for God knows where without a semblance of closure. We didn’t get any closure with my Dad; maybe I can find some with my own son.