Chapel of Ease (15 page)

“You got a boyfriend back home?”

“Yes.”

“You ever been with a girl?”

“Thorn, I don't think we should pursue this. If you'll excuse me, I'll get ready for the service. Thanks for waking me up.”

She nodded, as if still mulling over my presumed gender preferences. Then she left without another word. I wasn't sure what to make of that, except the obvious: I was a fairly good-looking male from the big city, and she was a small-town girl with an itch the local boys could never scratch.

Of course, she hadn't volunteered anything about Cyrus, such as, “Oh, you mean gay like C.C.?” That would've been too easy, I suppose.

I put that out of my mind, changed into some nicer casual clothes, and went into the living room. Gerald stood looking out the front window and turned when he heard me enter.

“All ready?” he said.

“I am.” I looked around. “Is, uhm, C.C. around?”

“He'll meet us there.” After a moment, Gerald added, “You play anything?”

“I'm sorry?”

“Instrument.”

“Oh. A little piano.”

“Do you sing?”

“Yes, sir. That's part of my job.”

“Well, you might get asked to sing tonight, if that's okay. Seein' as you knew Rayford and all.”

“That's fine. I'm glad to do it.”

He nodded, almost identical to the way his daughter had, as if this didn't answer things so much as cause him to think even harder. He resumed looking out the window. “Rayford was always writing songs,” he said distantly. “Little story songs, not just tunes. They always talked about things that happened.”

“He got very good at it, too.”

“That's why he left. He said nobody here understood what he was doing.”

“Was he right?”

“I sure never did. He wanted to do what he wanted, and that was that. He was always gettin' DVDs of musicals from Netflix, then he'd watch 'em and do nothing but bitch about 'em. Said they just gave up on trying to show the real world, or how people really are.” He tapped the windowsill with his fingertips. “Then he started writing his own musicals.”

“Was that a bad thing?”

“No. But he sure didn't make things easy for himself. He still kept writing about things that really happened around here. Some people don't like that, especially when it happened to them.”

I didn't know what to say to that. Through the open door to the kitchen, I saw several dishes covered with aluminum foil waiting on the table, I assumed to be taken to the wake. I got a rush of nervousness, and pulled out my phone to check the signal. There was one tiny bar.

While I had it, I quickly texted Joaquim,
Getting ready for the wake. Ray's family has been very nice to me.
It took a couple of moments, but at last I got the
whoosh
sound that said it had been sent.

“All ready?” Ladonna said as she entered. She was dressed in jeans and a blouse with appliqué musical notes on it. Her hair, black with bits of gray, was pulled back and up into a bun.

“Yes, ma'am,” I said. “Can I help you with anything?”

“You're way too polite to be a Yankee,” she said. “You can take a couple of these dishes with you out to the car. Gerald, you about ready to go?”

“Pretty set,” he agreed. “Thorn!”

“I'm coming,” she called, and then entered in a sundress and cowboy boots that even made me do a double take. She saw it, too, and grinned knowingly.

Gerald said, “Well, let's get going. Thorn, help Matt carry some of that stuff out to the car.”

Thorn did not look at me as we picked up the dishes and went to the car. I sat in the back with her, the dishes stacked between us on the old bench seat, and we headed out into the dusk. I tried to keep track of the turns and directions, but quickly realized it was hopeless.

I checked my phone, but Joaquim had not texted back, or at least it hadn't gotten through; once again I got no service at all.

*   *   *

It was, as they said, a barn dance, and it took place in a literal barn. It was at the end of a gravel road, and through the trees I caught glimpses of enormous letters on its roof. When we got close enough, I saw that it urged people to
SEE ROCK CITY
.

“What's ‘Rock City'?” I asked.

“It's a place down in Chattanooga,” Gerald said. “Up on a mountain. They say you can see seven states from there.”

“Is that close to here?”

“Nope. But somebody a long time ago had the bright idea of buying up roof space on barns all over the place to advertise it.”

“You ever been there?”

“Naw. I got no need to see Alabama, and I've seen enough of the rest of 'em to do me for a while.”

We parked beside the barn, in a space I realized must have been left empty for us. There were a lot of vehicles already along the road, most of them older, and you never saw so many pickups in one place in New York. People clustered outside the barn, talking in little knots, and as we approached, they offered condolences to Ladonna, Gerald, and Thorn.

At the barn entrance sat an older man with a small wooden box on his lap. He wore a suit with an old-fashioned string tie, like a preacher in a Western movie, and looked sad and tired. But he managed a smile when he saw my hosts.

“Howdy there, Parrishes,” he said with forced joviality. “You got quite a crowd inside already. Mmm-
mm,
and smell that food. That your famous stuffing under there, Ladonna?”

“It is, Uncle Node,” she said.

I looked at the box he held, for all the world like a cashbox you might see at a place that charged admission. But I'd never heard of paying to get into a wake, although I'm sure someone like the Kardashians would try it someday.

Then the man they called Uncle Node saw me, and his eyes narrowed a little. I put on my best smile. He said, “And who's this gentleman?”

“This is Matt, a friend of Rayford's from New York City.”

He continued to scrutinize me. “You really from New York?”

“I am.”

“Ain't that something. Don't know that I've ever met anybody from New York City.”

“Well, you can't say that anymore, can you?”

He grinned. “Reckon not.”

He opened the wooden box he held, and inside I saw, not money, but rocks, of all shapes and sizes. Gerald carefully placed four more in the box, and Uncle Node closed it with a snap and a smile. “Well, you best get on inside before people stampede over me to get to that stuffing. And I'm very sorry for y'all's loss, Gerald.”

“Thank you, Uncle Node,” Gerald said, and led the way inside.

The barn itself was packed with people, and I was surprised to see that it was arranged as if for a concert: there was a small stage area at one end, an open space for dancing, and then bleacher-style seats made out of hay bales covered with thick blankets. It didn't smell like I'd always imagined a barn would smell, either; the odor of food, laid out on one long table, overwhelmed everything else.

We put down our dishes, then turned to look over the room. Gerald leaned close and said, “Some of these folks are likely to be a little wrought up.”

“I don't know what that means.”

Just then a large round woman dressed all in black came through the crowd wailing and threw her arms around Ladonna. “Oh Lordy, I'm so sorry! I'm so,
so
sorry for your loss! I'm
so sorry
!”

“It means that,” Gerald said.

“Ah,” I said. There was a similar moment in
Chapel of Ease,
in the wedding scene, and we'd all laughed about how overblown and exaggerated it was. I couldn't wait to tell everyone that it was, in fact, totally realistic.

I scanned the crowd, all black hair and bright, perfect teeth, wondering how true the stories of hillbilly inbreeding really were, and trying not to think about
Deliverance.
My own family had been so proper and withdrawn, we barely raised our voices even when we were furious; since they also never made me feel weird or wrong about coming out, I really had nothing to complain about. But I was totally unprepared for this great crowd of mourners, all of whom seemed to know Ray, or “Rayford,” better than I did.

“Y'all remember that time Rayford and that Jennings girl…?”

“I tell you, that Rayford sure could play the piano.…”

“He was on the cable news, even. They mentioned his name, sure enough.…”

I turned, and Thorn was right beside me. She said, “He ain't here yet.”

“Who?”

“C.C. I can tell you're looking for him.”

I hadn't been, but I felt myself blush anyway. I felt extremely vulnerable in a crowd of people who might not approve of my lifestyle, or existence. I said quietly, “Thorn, if you—”

“Oh, calm down, I'm not going to out you. But it would take a blind man with a sack over his head not to notice how you looked at Cyrus back at the house.”

I desperately wanted to ask about him, but I could think of no graceful way to do it. And she
knew
that, because she smiled and winked at me, then twirled off into the crowd.

This is about Ray,
I told myself again, and pushed thoughts of C.C. to the back of my mind. I looked around to find Ladonna and Gerald still surrounded by sympathetic mourners. Ladonna motioned me over, and I was quickly introduced to a dozen people whose names escaped me the moment I heard them. I was familiar with that from too many cast parties, and hoped that, like those other soirees, I'd never have reason to regret not remembering these names.

Then a voice came over a loudspeaker. I looked up, startled, and saw that the whole place was wired for sound, with speakers nestled in the rafters. The voice said, “If I could have y'all's attention for a moment?”

A serious-looking man stood onstage before a lone microphone. He held his wide-brimmed black hat against his chest. I wondered if he might be the local minister. He said, “Thank all of you for coming out today to honor Rayford's memory. It's a sad time when anyone dies, but especially a young man with so much promise.”

A general mutter of assent rose from the crowd.

“And now Miss Mandalay Harris would like to say a few words to you.”

He stepped aside, and a girl took his place.

I mean
literally
a girl. She was no more than thirteen or so, with big eyes and long black hair pulled back from her surprisingly severe face. She had to lower the microphone stand so she could speak into it. I wondered who she was: she was far too young to be an old girlfriend, and I'd met his only sister.

“Hello. As Mr. Hathcock said, thank you all for coming out this evening. We're here to celebrate a life, not mourn its passing; Rayford is with the night winds now, and he sure doesn't need our tears. Let's get the music started, what do you say?”

A half-dozen men and women came onstage. Most wore black, as befitting the occasion, or at least sported black armbands. All carried some sort of musical instrument that, six months ago, I might not have recognized. But thanks to my time in the play, I knew the hammered dulcimer and washboard, as well as the more traditional banjo, guitar, and upright bass.

The band whispered among themselves, then exploded—that's the only right word—into sound, a perfectly timed and tuned burst of music that almost knocked me back a step, not with volume but with intensity.

I didn't know the song, but its appropriateness was obvious right off:

Oh, they tell me of a home far beyond the skies,

Oh, they tell me of a home far away;

Oh, they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise,

Oh, they tell me of an unclouded day.

The words may have been tinged with sadness, but the music was anything but. People around me started clapping along, and I did, too. Then a group of people, mostly older, moved into the open area and began dancing in a flatfooting style that reminded me of our show's choreography. Ray had definitely made certain we re-created his home, all right.

Oh, the land of cloudless day,

Oh, the land of an unclouded day,

Oh, they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise,

Oh, they tell me of an unclouded day.

Everyone around me sang along. There was something truly joyous in this communal chorus, something very different from singing along with professionals in a show. These people sang for the fun and joy of it, to mark the passage of their lives. During rehearsals, Ray had said, “For some folks, music is the only way to speak about things that won't go into words,” and now I sensed he was right.

I didn't know the song, but I was ready for the chorus when it came back around; one skill I did have was picking up a tune quickly. And there was something so warm and open about singing this song with these people, a feeling completely different from what I got singing onstage. I sang because it was my job; whether rehearsing or performing, it was what I did for a living. These people sang for their lives.

When the band finished, the crowd whooped its approval. Suddenly I imagined Ray in this room, standing exactly where I was, clapping along and cheering whatever musician or band was performing. For a moment I truly thought I might see him if I turned around.

The band performed another pair of tunes, traditional-sounding but unrecognizable to me. They had the air of religion, and I wondered if they were, in fact, hymns that had been secularized.

Then Thorn appeared onstage, twirling in her sundress, and stepped up to the microphone. Someone wolf-whistled in approval. I'd never heard
that
at a funeral before.

“We got a surprise for y'all,” she said. “One of Ray's friends from New York City is here. He knows the last songs Ray wrote, and I bet if we ask nice, he'll come up here and sing a couple. What do you say, Matt?”