Wigford Rememberies

by Kyp Harness

  And the rock hard, immovable stillness of the body of Uncle Elmer lies there as before and for all time, his stillness flows from the casket, undeniable, incomprehensible, indomitable, merciless, down the aisle past the bewildered faces of his family greeting the incoming mourners with weak and hollow attempts at amiability, some even smiling and joking a bit, so easily do they fall into the habitual rap, through the crowd seating themselves in the pews and in the chairs patiently waiting, murmuring low, coughing muted coughs, from time to time exchanging glances here and there, and then after a while simply sitting, gazing straight ahead, the women lowering their faces periodically to dab at their eyes and noses discreetly with tissues, the men staring with grim abstraction, seeming almost angry, a tight, hard, clenched-up ball of sullen sorrow folded up deep inside of them.

  People amble back from the casket in pairs to their seats, some with faces collapsed in woe, with a deep, eternal sadness beyond time, others merely grim and grave, strengthening their determination, shaking their heads inwardly and silently proclaiming to themselves, “an awful thing.” An elderly woman walks looking down at the floor, her mouth compressed with disappointment as though she’d never seen a corpse before nor known what death was; she leans on the arm of a man who stares ahead as if seeing nothing, seemingly more puzzled than anything else, and surprised too, his mouth slightly open, all the folds of his face fallen down and his eyes shattered, little piercing pinpoints of hard, bright pain shining from the centres of them, beyond conciliation, beyond assimilation into the daily routine of his fleshy hands, his jutting brow with white, curly hair blooming with incongruous boyish vanity atop the expanse of his forehead.

  And suddenly, now from the casket where Aunt Maxine fusses and frets with her husband, comes Buzz in a quickening walk, his back bent slightly and his hand over his nose and mouth as if suppressing a sneeze. His eyes wide with sudden, astonished grief, he rushes past the pews and the neatly assembled rows of chairs to the doors of the restroom in the basement of the church. Some turn where they’re seated and gaze after him.

  After a while the organ music fades out. Aunt Maxine is led by her daughter and son-in-law to sit off by the side of the bier and down alongside the far wall. A thin man comes, slouching slightly as he walks, his head bent purposefully down, his movements swift yet somewhat constrained by a painful timidity. He comes hesitatingly up to the pulpit and looks peremptorily out over the assembled mourners—from a distance, his head seems ridiculously small for his body.

  He darts his eyes down as he extracts a pair of spectacles from the pocket of his jacket; placing them on his face, he looks out again upon the crowd. A carefully trimmed, triangular beard, chestnut brown and prickly, covers his pointed chin, and a thin web of painstakingly combed-over strands of brown hair lies stretches over the peak of his tall and balding forehead. The studied solemnity of his demeanour as he reaches forth and lays a slender hand on each side of the pulpit somehow intensifies the seeming smallness of his head and its insect-like appearance.

  A curtain is drawn behind him over the sight of Elmer’s casket. He draws from the inside pocket of his jacket a few pieces of paper that he unfolds on the pulpit before him. In the sudden silence of the church, he studies the pages for a moment and wets his lips. He looks up tentatively to his audience, breathes in deeply, and intones. “I did not know Elmer Huxley,” he pauses and stares down at the paper. “My colleague, Reverend Palmer, knew Elmer Huxley and knew Elmer Huxley well. Unfortunately, Reverend Palmer had a prior engagement this afternoon and could not be with us today. He sends his deepest regrets to Elmer’s family and friends.” The minister nods slightly in the direction of Maxine and her family at the side.

  “No, I did not know Elmer Huxley,” he proclaims, his voice sounding irresolute and watery, yet gaining timbre, as if daring itself to be more commanding and definitive with each successive statement. “But from what I’ve been given to understand from Reverend Palmer, and from Elmer’s beloved wife Maxine,”—he gazes over to Maxine now, staring dumbly before her, her daughter and son-in-law at each side staring solicitously at her and grasping her hands—“I know that Elmer Huxley was a decent, hard-working, God-loving man. We all know this. We all have our special memories of Elmer and the good work he did when he was with us. Perhaps what we remember most about Elmer, and what we will miss most about him, is just this aspect of his character: that when there was work to be done, when a helping hand was needed, when the call for assistance was sounded, Elmer Huxley did not step back into the shadows and wait silently for someone else to intervene, as so many of us might be tempted to do. No, Elmer was there. When Elmer Huxley saw that someone was in trouble and needed assistance, needed help, help that was within his power to give, he gave it, and when he saw that there was something that needed to be done, he did it, simply and unstintingly, with no thought of reward or the praise of others. We see this in the high profile Elmer Huxley maintained in his community, in his lifelong membership and involvement with the Lion’s Club, the Oddfellows, the Shankton County Fair Committee, the Shankton County Legion Club, the Wigford Memorial Society and of course here at the Wigford Baptist Church where his many years of deep commitment and unswerving devotion stood as a shining example to us all. It is written in the thirteenth verse of the first book of Corinthians, ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.’”

  The minister pauses and looks pointedly out through his spectacles, his eyebrows arching. “My friends,” he continues, “Elmer Huxley was no tinkling cymbal. Elmer Huxley knew that to live the good life is to do the good work, to give so that the left hand knows not what the right hand is doing, to give and to give until one can give no more, and after that to find a way, somehow, that one can give more. Elmer Huxley was truly a grateful and willing servant of the Lord.”

  People weep and blow their noses into Kleenexes. Buzz slips in and takes his seat beside his wife.

  “No, Elmer Huxley was not an important man in the eyes of the world, at any rate. The news of his passing will not figure in headlines nor on the covers of magazines. Elmer Huxley was not a famous man nor even a very powerful man, but Elmer Huxley did his work in life the best way he knew how. With his dearly beloved wife Maxine, he raised three children—Marlene, Jasper and Richard—to adulthood with a love and kindness that will long be remembered by them.”

  The sobbing gains in intensity; husbands reach their arms around the shoulders of their shuddering wives; and Aunt Maxine still looks numbly, dumbly before her. The minister steps back from the pulpit a bit, his eyes gazing meditatively past the mourners.

  “Now, when an event of this nature occurs, in the torturous aftermath of the loss of a loved one, many of us may be tempted in our grief and our puzzlement to raise our eyes up to the heavens and ask, Why, Lord? Yes, many of us feeling a pain, an extreme emptiness and desolation deep in our hearts that would seem to have no possible consolation, many of us may shake our fists in our sorrow, possibly with a great deal of anger too, and turn our eyes upwards and ask beseechingly, demandingly, Lord, WHY?” He raises an open palm and looks about, his small eyes behind his spectacles blinking painfully, the corners of his mouth drooping sadly.

  “Not because we anticipate a logical, sensible reply to our question, for what answer could there be that could make sense to us now in our grief, that could convince us in our hearts that this is a good and right and appropriate thing? And what answer could there be, my friends, that would satisfy us that we could possibly comprehend? No, we ask not that we desire our grief or our sorrow to be washed away or nullified, we ask simply because we hunger for a sign from God, an indication to assure us that He sees us in our sadness and will give us a sign, a word, some sustenance to strengthen us in this our time of extreme need, in this our time of loss.

  “And where is this sign? And where do we find this sustenance? My friends, it
is found in the word of God Himself, in the good news that he sent His only begotten son to deliver to us, the news that he who apprehends His word and lives by it, is born again into His spirit—need not fear death—and that his loved ones, we who remain, need not grieve nor pity the deceased for is it not written, my friends, that ‘He who believes in Me shall have life everlasting’? Is it not said that the righteous shall sit at the right hand of the Lord? My friends, it is not we who should grieve for Elmer Huxley, but it is Elmer Huxley who now undoubtedly grieves for us.” His voice picks up speed now, moving with certainty and grace, its wheels stumbling and clattering into their proper furrows, now racing along smoothly and cleanly.

  “Yes, Elmer Huxley, having accepted the word of God and been born again, having done the will of the Lord in this life and on this earth, undoubtedly HAS at this moment been brought into that place where there is no toil nor weeping, far from us here with our tears and our wringing of hands, our doubts and our uncertainties and our anger. Elmer Huxley HAS met the Lord he loved so deeply in this lifetime and HAS gazed down upon us here and seen clearly what we now perceive so dimly—that there IS no death for one who lives in the Lord, that the will and the way of the Lord is good and just, that for the righteous there is only life and more life.” The minister pauses and draws back from the pulpit, gazing out at the hushed mass with a cunning searchfulness, wetting his lips briefly.

  “We are gathered here today not to commemorate a death, but to celebrate the life of Elmer Huxley, to express our thankfulness for the gift of his character which was given to us and the privilege of his presence in our lives. And so, to Elmer, we do not say farewell,” he says, turning to the curtain drawn over the coffin and gesturing with an open palm. “We merely say: until we meet again.” His hand drops and he turns back to the crowd.

  Seeming somewhat surprised himself at the sudden stoppage of his voice, he starts to remove his spectacles, but then evidently thinking better of it, he stops and gathers his papers from the pulpit. His eyes dart about embarrassedly as he places them in his pocket and steps jerkily away, bowing his head slightly as if navigating a low door frame. He walks back down alongside the far wall of the church as unimposingly as possible. The back of his head, particularly where his hair flattens down at the nape of his neck, seems to visibly tingle with shame and self-effacement as he walks away.

  For a moment, all is silent in the church—just the occasional liquid sniffing of noses, the shuffling of tissues, the creaking of pews here and there with restive expectation. And to the pulpit comes a stout, middle-aged man, uncomfortable in his suit—Bruce, Elmer’s son-in-law. He holds an open bible at his chest, right at the point where his belly strains out, ballooning his white shirt. He stands staring down at the pages of the open bible for a moment, seeming like a guilty, oversized schoolboy come to pay penance for a recess misdeed. His mouth works nervously with a slight chewing motion; his hands quiver with a faintly discernible tremor. He clears his throat painfully and exhales a long, sighing breath through his nostrils.

  “The Lord…” he says, barely in a whisper; he swallows and his eyes dart up nervously. “The Lord is my shepherd…” he intones with difficulty, his eyes blinking jerkily down at the bible. “I shall not want, He maketh…”

  He pauses a moment to squint at the words. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures… He leadeth me… beside the still waters…”

  Bruce’s voice struggles shakily from his throat. He shifts his considerable weight and braces his legs as if preparing to pull the words out of himself by sheer force. “He… restoreth my soul… He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness of His name’s sake…”

  His voice is a sad sigh, pale and cloudy, darkened and dampened like rain-soaked wood; his lips compress and his breath comes quickly through his nostrils in an aborted sob.

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me,” he murmurs, swallowing, his eyes staring down dimly, his great body seeming suddenly hunched and small. “Thou preparest a table for me in the presence of mine enemies…” and his voice catches and breaks like a tired, old, dry branch, creaking up into a tiny helpless cry. He shakes his head and purses his lips with determination.

  “Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over,” and now his chest heaves and shakes, his words tumble out in a jagged rush as the tears roll down his cheeks trailing long, thin, gleaming streaks. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life!” he cries, gasping, wincing as if in physical pain. “And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever!” He gulps, his voice trailing off into an anguished whisper.

  He backs away from the pulpit, closing the bible, weeping helplessly and shaking his head from side to side. One of his large hands awkwardly fumbles as he tries to wipe his eyes behind his glasses with his fingers as he walks away, back to where his wife and Aunt Maxine sit, both now sobbing with heads bowed. Bruce sits down beside them and surrenders completely, bent over with his elbows on his knees and his one hand clasped to his forehead, the other carelessly holding the bible upside down, his mouth gaping open in a large, black O of desolation, and at that moment the curtain is drawn back.

  Upon the bier the coffin sits now with its lid closed, its secret concealed. The coffin sits shining and unblemished and clean, gleaming brilliantly, shamelessly; and all eyes focus on the yellowish brown, smooth, polished wood of the coffin, knowing that within lies Uncle Elmer—his head, his nostrils and his lips—never to be seen again. Everyone pictures him in the darkness of the coffin as the drifting, narcotic fog of the faint organ music insinuates itself coyly, wandering and rolling in and slowly laying claim to the situation as it stretches itself complacently across the floor.

  The mourners arise as six young gentlemen stride solemnly up to the coffin and take the positions earlier displayed to them by the anxious, hand-wringing undertaker. They clasp the handles and lift the coffin, transporting it slowly and gracefully from the bier. They remove it with militaristic skill; it floats in the midst of them, down the aisle out the doors of the church. The mourners collect themselves and glumly walk with heads bowed following the coffin out. No one now amiably smiles in greeting or falls into friendly, joking small talk by way of commiseration. In fact, they do not look at each other at all; they are each turned in upon themselves in solitary meditation, their faces drained and sallow, their eyes wide and unblinking as if they’ve had more shoved into them than they’ve had time to digest or discern.

  Even the most pious of them seem shaken, chastened and almost ashamed, as if caught in the midst of some frivolous, hilarious revelry but now brought low to consider the most serious, weighty and unhumourous thing of all. They step out from the church just as a fine, misty rain begins spattering from the sky now darkening over, crowding up with grey and purplish clouds as a sudden summer storm sets in. The air is close and warm as breath as the people step down the sidewalk to their cars, hardly noticing the quick, cold drops speckling down on them.

  The undertaker, with a flourish, pops open a big, black umbrella over Aunt Maxine as she’s led to her car. Automobiles hum into motion all at once, motors run restively, and the cordon pulls out into the street in unison; the long line crawls up and around the corner as the rain intensifies, windshield wipers click on, squeaking and beating the silver beads of rain as it comes down in long, graceful needles upon the hoods of the cars. The windows fog—and wiping the grey, collected mist from the glass, you can see out across the fields as the line moves down the highway; see the ditches and the weeds as they pass by, the old, grey, stumpish fence posts and the rusty wires dividing the farms, the old homesteads with the peaked roofs and chimneys, the verandas and sun porches and weathervanes and piano-windows, and the pickup trucks parked on the front lawns.

  You can see the new, modest homes with aluminum siding, but mostly it’s the fields, vast and green,
drifting back to the dimly seen horizon where the forests sit, black and grey, hazy, peaceful battalions never advancing or retreating, with the angelic cows standing still as statues, one here and there lifting up a lazy head to peer with sudden piercing concentration at the passing procession, then letting it fall as quickly without curiosity.

  Trucks and cars, and even an unprotected guy on a tractor, all pull over to the side of the road in the rain out of respect as the cordon slowly crawls across the countryside, the landscape passing by as a foggy, grey dream, the rain blackening the trunks of the trees and beating a bright, bitter greenness back into the grass and the leaves of the trees, lancing down madly like a million arrows into the muddy creeks beneath the bridges, dancing and splattering with white sparks upon the highway before the line of cars as it inches reverently along, slowly rolling into the town of Wigford, past the old granary and the big water tank up on its stilts, over the hump of the railroad crossing, Bickerman’s Lumberyard, the bank, the drug store, the shoe store…

  The rain bubbles on the sidewalk, splashes in the gutters. An elderly gentleman comes out of the drug store with a parcel, stands staring at the cordon as it passes him by, clutching his parcel, rain pattering down and dripping off his hat.