A Place on Earth (Port William) (47 page)

They sing the chorus, Big Ellis pounding the car door, the dogs barking, Whacker's feet keeping their perfect repose in the wagon.

Jayber is shaken and a little sobered by the turn his song has taken. A
true grave digger's tune," he tells himself. And he tells himself, "Once a
preacher, always a preacher." But now that he has sung his way into it, he
reckons there is nothing to do but dig in and sing his way out of it.

Burley and Big Ellis bawl the chorus.

There is something incorrigible about his mind. He has always known
it. No matter how near home he sets his mind to work, it always beelines
for the final questions. His thoughts return to the verge of this life, the
place of their defeat, with fascination and with strange delight. Is it noble
faith or cowardice that, though he cannot see that all loves do not end in
the dark, he cannot believe they do?

They sing the chorus. The end in sight, Jayber begins to be conscious
of the darkened country lying quiet beyond their singing and the commotion of the dogs.

That movement of his mind completed, he feels himself returning,
fully and gladly present again with the others. As he listens to his companions singing the chorus, the sense of the rarity and extravagance of
the occasion comes back to him, the sense of the rarity of their comradeship, and he laughs aloud and sings with them. They are approaching the graveyard now, and the dogs, as if having pursued to the limit of
their jurisdiction, have quit following.

Their turning off the road at the graveyard gate seems to Jayber to
mark a culmination of large significance, and he calls to Big Ellis to stop.

'A few appropriate words will be appropriate at this time," he says.

"Gentlemen," he says, "that was a procession, I dare say, without
equal, and will not be forgotten, I dare say, in the lifetimes of those now
living-it being in any case an accomplishment-a glorious achievement
in the pride of which we may all rejoice-a triumph-a gilded pinnacle
in the history of this noble city, this alabaster village, this fairest flower,
this yaller rose of the valley of the green Kentuck. Can you say amen?"

`AMEN!"

"Forward!"

In solemn triumph they advance between the stone pillars of the gate
and up the hill, Big Ellis's headlights picking out the white of the headstones under the cedars. They have hushed their singing.

At the top of the rise they follow the road as it turns to the left and
goes among the graves along the ridge.

"Right here," Jayber says. "Whoa!"

Big Ellis gets out, and in the red glow of the taillights, as quietly as
they can, they begin the job of getting Whacker out of the trunk. Getting him out is for some reason harder than getting him in. At each straining heave they move him only inches. As they tug and haul on his great
arms and legs, they are intimidated by the size of him.

"What a tub of guts!" Jayber says. "He must weigh five hundred
pounds."

"He don't miss it far," Burley says.

They laugh.

"Shhhhh!"

"We look just like devils in this red light," Big Ellis whispers.

They are all stopped a moment by the thought of that.

Burley whispers: "We'd look like the devil if it was daylight." And
straightening from their labor, they laugh. They are wavering helplessly
now between hilarity and a strict silence that they feel to be demanded of
them by the silence around them-not so much the heard silence pierced
by the voices of insects as the imagined perfect silence of the dead. And
though in their silences they are beginning to be troubled by what seems
to them their disturbance of the dead, that seems to make what is funny
even funnier.

They finally get Whacker out and lay him on his back on the wagon,
his head dangling over one end and his legs over the other.

"Now ..." Jayber whispers.

But he does not finish, for they become aware that Big Ellis's old car,
relieved of its burden, has begun to roll. It has eased off slowly, rocking a
little over the bumps, following the road down the gentle slant of the
ridge.

"Oh, Lordy!" Big Ellis says. "It's got a hant in it!"

They stand transfixed, chilled to the bone by what, in that place under
those circumstances, seems a certainty.

Finally Jayber says, making a blind leap in the direction of rationality:
"You didn't put on the brake, Big Ellis."

And Burley says: "Oh mercy! All that crockery!"

And all three of them begin to run after the car, which has a good
head start and is rolling faster.

As they run they whisper violently to each other: "Run!" "Hurry!"
"Watch out!" "Oh, Lordy!" And running in the dark, their feet pounding
the uneven gravel, they stagger and lurch, bumping into each other, ricocheting both ways out of the road. And somehow they gain on the car,
which keeps its even pace straight ahead in the wheel-ruts. Then where
the road makes a right angle turn to the left, the car keeps going straight,
climbs over the low embankment, which checks its speed, and comes to
a stop against a large granite tombstone whose markings show with sudden clarity in the beam of the headlights. And then the three pursuers
fetch up against the tombstone too. Leaning down between the stone
and the car, Burley inspects for damage.

"Not a dent, not a scratch."

And then they all sit down to get their breath. They sit facing the car
whose headlights peer steadily at the tombstone, almost touching it, for
all the world like a nearsighted person trying to make out the inscription.

As soon as they have rested, they get up and walk back to where they
left Whacker. Following Jayber's whispered orders, Burley and Big Ellis
each pick up one of Whacker's legs, and Jayber taking the tongue of the
wagon, they start slowly down among the stones toward the newly dug
grave of Ernest Finley. All the way there they labor in conscientious
quiet, keeping the wagon uneasily balanced as with great effort they lug
it over the mounds.

They halt it at the end of the grave and begin the difficult and perilous
business of lowering Whacker down. Gravity is too much in their favor
now, and they accompany their work with much grunting and whispered cautioning as they roll Whacker over on his belly and start him in
feet first and backwards.

"Oh, me!" Big Ellis whispers. "I believe the grave will be the end of us
all."

And leaving Whacker bent like a hinge over the lip of the grave, they
let go and laugh, rolling on the ground until, intimidated by their noise,
they fall silent again.

Now, Jayber getting down into the grave to pull and the other two lift ing at Whacker's shoulders, they work him carefully backward and
downward. But it is not until Whacker's balancing-point slides over the
edge that they realize that instead of leading they are being led. For
Whacker is going on his own now, and they lack the strength to pull him
out-or to hold him, either, for very long. Down in the grave Jayber
fights off the impulse to turn loose and run, knowing there is no place to
go; he takes his stand where he is, shoving at Whacker's great buttocks
for dear life, his voice rising up quick and small from under his burden.