Driftless (55 page)

Winnie stood up, checked the fall of her dress, tossed her head in the manner to which she had become habituated during her many years with long hair, and stepped to the pulpit.

“Welcome,” she said, trying not to look at Rusty, who was looking just like she remembered her father looking. “I’m Pastor Winifred Smith, and if you would please stand we will sing song number four hundred and forty-seven in your hymnbooks.”

Leslie Weedle, the song leader, mounted the raised platform and
stood behind a pole-mounted microphone. The band played the last measure of “Blessed Be the Name” and the congregation sang with enthusiasm, glad to have something to do.

Winnie asked a blessing on the service and the memory of July Montgomery, and invited everyone to sit back down.

Jacob read the obituary, recounting most of the conventional signposts in July’s life—the place and date of his birth, the names of his parents, the school he attended, organizations he belonged to, places he’d lived and worked, and the name of his late wife. He ended with a brief description of July’s accident.

The band performed “Precious Memories” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” Then they abandoned their instruments among the flowers and returned to the pew behind the pallbearers.

Winnie resumed the pulpit and read the Twenty-third Psalm. Then she explained that it was traditional to allow time for anyone who wished to share a memory.

She returned to the bench and sat perfectly erect. Jacob, sitting with the other pallbearers, spoke first and the right side of the room began recounting memories. As soon as one speaker sat down another stood up, recalling incidents that highlighted unique aspects of July Montgomery. Voices faltered, but there was also laughter—yes, that was him all right.

The people on the religious side of the room remained quiet. They had not known July as well and were cautious about talking at funerals. Older and more familiar with the precarious social dynamics of speaking inside a filled church, they knew better than to say something hastily. It was too easy to confuse a memory that presented the deceased in a favorable light with one in which an even brighter light was cast on the speaker. Vanity, they knew, was the most likely candidate to volunteer an encomium. That’s what professional talkers were for. During life’s most important times, a pastor was necessary to keep people from saying things they later regretted. Pastors were verbal stuntmen, protecting others from hurting themselves with their own talking.

But as the recounting of memories continued, it soon became clear to the speaking side of the room that the other side was not
participating. An idea slowly began to congeal: perhaps the other half did not know July Montgomery at all, or even disapproved of him in some way.

Soon, memories in which July’s suspicion of organized religion was the central issue, along with his fondness for cigars and European beer, were being shared. The fact that he didn’t own a suit or tie but was tolerant, kind, and generous came up several times. It was mentioned that his only relative, a cousin in Omaha, was supposedly an extremely religious person but had not bothered to come to the funeral, which was typical of rank hypocrites, of which July Montgomery had not been one.

In the back of the church, Wade Armbuster rose to the tension in the room like a bass to surface bait. With his left hand on Olivia’s shoulder, he declared July the most patriotic man he had ever known, and dared anyone to say otherwise. He said he owed the completion of his custom car and staying out of prison to July, who, he said, “stood like a mighty oak for justice, freedom, and decency.” If the world were fair, he said, July would still be alive now and not stuffed inside a copper-colored coffin. “And if anybody doubts how unfair the present world is, they should just open the coffin and look inside.”

Jacob went forward and he and Winnie picked up the short bench she was sitting on, carried it down the two steps, placed it in front of the casket, and reseated themselves on it. The movement imposed a temporary silence. Then several more people spoke and another brief silence followed.

Then Gail Shotwell came forward, alone, and moved the double bass near the microphone. Her voice shook as she explained that she wanted to sing a song she had recently written, and dedicated it to July. It was called “Along the Side of the Road”. She played five or six deep, rising notes and began to sing.

It was a difficult song, with lyrical phrases that did not seem altogether connected to each other. The chorus was so different from the first verse that it seemed like an altogether separate melody. Finally, tears ran down her cheeks, her chin wrinkled, and her voice
collapsed. She stopped playing and attempted to start over, failed again, wiped tears from her eyes, but wouldn’t sit down.

Winnie looked anxiously at Jacob, and he stood up just as a woman with jet-black hair and green eyes rose in a pew near the middle, squirmed around the knees between her and the center aisle, and walked forward.

She smiled at Gail and, clearly accustomed to dealing with musical equipment, she moved the drummer’s microphone next to Gail’s, adjusted the strap on the acoustic guitar, and hung it around her shoulders.

“Start slower,” she whispered, counted to four, and hit a diminished chord.

The two women sang. At the slower speed, the lyrics turned into poetry, assumed a meaning beyond the words themselves. Rural images bloomed inside themes of redemption and the sadness of unfulfilled longing. Tears flowed in every pew, and during the second verse Gail’s voice broke free of her body and from a place somewhere above her held the room hostage to the sublime. Afterwards, everyone rose to their feet and applauded. A coal-black woman with a shaved head continued clapping after everyone else stopped, and then she stopped too. Then everyone sat back down.

After the singers sat down, Winnie stood up.

“First let me say how much I appreciate that you are all here. In preparing for today I wrote some things down, but I confess I don’t know what the right things to say are.”

She handed her notes to Jacob, glanced at her uncle, and continued, fear leading her to a higher castle.

“What I do know is that God loves us, completely, every one of us, all the time, and upon that single fact the hundred billion stars are hung. That love is both the source and the cause of all life.”

Jacob watched as Winnie stepped further down the aisle, as though entering the room’s center of gravity. She was beginning to gesture with her hands.

“We are here today to celebrate and mourn July Montgomery, and to do these things together.

“At moments like these it is hard not to wish for an end to suffering—a cancellation of it. But friends, a life without grief is hardly worth living, and someone who is not willing to give his or her life for something worth more than mere living is hardly alive.

“The things that wound us are the most important things we know, and the things that wound us deepest are things like July’s dying in an accident.

“Why did it happen? What went wrong? What would be different if his life had not been interrupted? Instead of coming here today, we might have met him somewhere and he might have spoken to us. But that is no longer possible, and because it isn’t, do things that are still possible have a different color?

“By all reports he was an honorable man, yet he died horribly. What does that mean? What obligation does it place us under? The grief hurts, but how will hurting change us? Will the suspicion that we might perhaps have done something to interrupt the flow of events that eventually ended his life haunt us into becoming different people?

“In our lives we make only a few important decisions—some of us only one or two—and the rest of our time is spent living them out. But what should we decide here today? How can we bear the responsibility of running our own lives when something like this happens to us?

“The remains of July Montgomery are behind me, inside the casket. We have them with us. That’s the easy part, and we know quite well what to do with them. We’ll take them to the cemetery and bury them. We can keep good track of material things. But what of July? Where will we look to find the part of him that convinced us to come today? Where will we locate the influence he continues to have on us? How will the stories he set into motion end?”

Winnie walked back to the bench and stood next to Jacob.

“Who was July Montgomery and where is he now?

“Friends, we are all connected in ways we cannot even begin to fathom. Our lives unfold through each other and within each other. What one suffers, we all feel. What one does changes others forever.
July was part of us and that part of us will never be gone. We can find him in each other. Everyone here has a part of him, and the part he was able to share with us we can share with each other.

“So we’re united today not in belief but in grief—staring into the past, where July died alone. But though the world has cast him out, we never will. So long as we refuse to be separated from the love of God, which holds us all together, we will never lose July. We will never let him die. How we feel about him can never be taken from us. Nothing,” she said, turning and looking straight at her uncle and smiling, “nothing can ever, against our will, separate us from the love of God, and we will do the best we can.”

Pulling on the pew in front of him, Rusty stood up. He looked directly at Winnie and said “amen,” in a manner that suggested he had never spoken the word before and was unlikely ever to speak it again, and sat down.

Winnie continued, “After these last songs I ask you to come with me to the cemetery.”

Winnie sat beside Jacob and the Straight Flush took up their instruments and played “Bringing in the Sheaves.”

Leslie Weedle came forward to lead the closing song. Afterwards, Winnie gave the benediction.

Six pallbearers rolled the casket to the front door and with surprising ease carried it down the steps and set it in the back of the hearse. A line of cars, pickups, vans, and buggies followed Jacob and Winnie and the casket to the cemetery, in the corner of a cornfield. Under two sugar maples an open grave waited.

Winnie said a prayer, and a dozen people placed flowers on top of the casket. Once it was in the ground, Gail Shotwell, Wade Armbuster, and Jacob Helm shoveled in a token amount of dirt, which landed on the flowers and plastic lid with a flat, hollow sound. Then everyone stood back and sang as much of “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder” as they knew without songbooks and Leslie Weedle ended the song after the first verse.

Winnie said another prayer and the service was over. Some people stayed and talked, but most went back to the church for lunch, while
eight men wearing work pants, T-shirts, and boots quickly shoveled the remaining loose dirt onto the coffin, filling the hole above ground level.

“Are you staying for the lunch?” Winnie asked Rusty.

“No, I should leave,” said Rusty. “You did a good job with the service. I knew you would.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’ve got to go back to the church now. This is Jacob Helm. Jacob, this is my uncle, Russell Smith.”

“We’ve met,” said Jacob and they shook hands.

In the church basement, Jacob asked for more potato salad. As Violet placed a heaping spoonful on his sagging paper plate, he inquired after the aluminum receptacle. “I just happened to notice,” he said.

“Oh that,” she said. “I found it in the cabinet.”

“Nice vase,” said Jacob.

“I know. Land sakes, just sitting there when I needed it, with a screw top if you can imagine, filled up with oak ashes.”

“Oak ashes?”

“I’d recognize them anywhere. They’re distinctive, different. We always used to burn oak. My father said it was the best wood for heat. Pound for pound, he said, oak was the best. Oh my, how that old stove used to puff and smoke. You couldn’t come within ten feet of it when it was really cooking. I can remember as a little girl how the—”

“A vase filled with oak ashes?”

“That’s what I wondered myself. It must have been some young person, as near as I can tell—thinking to have something to stand flowers up in. Bad idea really. Ashes are too caustic for growing things, takes the life straight out of ’em. Sand would be okay but not ashes. Who knows where young people get their ideas? Take Wade, for instance, he often doesn’t seem to know anything about anything. Just the other day when he was helping me with the—”

“What did you do with the ashes in the vase?”

“I put them under the peony bushes in front of the church. Spread
out, ashes are good, and they don’t have to be oak. They neutralize the soil. That’s what I try to do every couple years—get a good load of manure on the garden, not green manure, that’s too ripe, and add some ash, you know, for lime. Helps work up better. Is that enough potato for you?”

“Yes. I wonder if I might buy that vase from you.”

“What vase?”

“The vase you put the flowers in.”

“Gracious no, it’s not mine. It was just here. I guess it belongs to the church.”

“How would I purchase it?”

“No one can buy it without a meeting of the trustees. In any case, you’d have to talk to the pastor.”

“May I have some cake, please?” said Leslie Weedle, holding out a plate in an expectant manner.

“Which one?” asked Violet.

“Who made that one?”

“Leona Pikes.”

“Give me the other.”

“Nice funeral.”

“I thought so. What did you think of the preaching?”

“Well, if you ask me it went on too long really. I don’t know why things have to be so complicated—someone dies, they go to heaven, and we’ll see them soon. That’s all that’s needed. I really liked the singing, though.”

“That Shotwell girl does such a nice job.”

“The black-haired woman has a band of her own, you know, and every person in it is a woman.”