One Mississippi (28 page)

Passworth instructed Tim to hand out our costumes. He was busy talking to Sam, and tossed me the keys. I opened the Pinto’s hatchback. The boys crowded around, grabbing up hangers.

On the bottom I found our Combo outfits in clear plastic. Lifting them out, my hand snagged a corner of a brown blanket —

A glimpse of polished wood. I tugged back the blanket to find the last thing I ever expected in Tim’s car: a double-barreled shotgun, a hunting rifle, and eight or nine boxes of ammunition.

I pulled the blanket back over them before anybody noticed.

Lots of guys in Minor were hunters. I’d gone out with .22s with Bud at Granny’s place, shooting at (and mostly missing) squirrels and doves. But I’d never heard Tim mention guns.

I couldn’t ask him about it with the other guys crowding around, complaining about the costumes. Two by two, we went into the Kool ‘N’ Kreemy men’s room to change. Tim and I lucked out with the Combo outfits, which looked normal compared to some others.

Tim said, “Get a load of Evan Livingstone.” Evan looked terribly hot in his black wool Mafia suit with sunglasses and angel wings sprouting from his back. The other boys looked cooler but no less uncomfortable. Good thing Matt Smith wasn’t there — I didn’t think I could handle another vision of Jesus in his wedding dress.

We mobbed Passworth, begging her please don’t make us do this, please let us wear our own clothes. “This is Eddie’s mother’s request,” she said. “Do you want to disappoint her? On the day she’s burying her son?”

We really wouldn’t mind that, but no one had the nerve to say so.

“Of course not. You all look adorable.” She straightened her hat. “There’s no church part, we’re meeting at the graveside. You go to a town called Longstreet, go left, and it’s supposed to be six point two miles up that road. Just follow me.”

Tim asked Evan and Sam to ride with us. Before we could even get back in our cars, Passworth shot off in her Nova. Watching her at the overhead projector day after day, you would never imagine Mrs. Passworth drove like the road was on fire. Her dust was still floating in the air at the crossroads of Longstreet long minutes after she’d passed. By the time we rolled up to the church, she was already out of her car bossing the funeral director around.

This was a pretty little graveyard, in the exact geographical center of nowhere. A falling-down country church, formerly white. Tottery headstones, a rusty iron fence. A green funeral canopy with scalloped edges. A hole and a pile of bright red dirt, which a man was presently concealing with a roll of green felt. Another funeral guy came to greet us, a barrel-chested man in a black suit. “You must be my pallbearer corps.”

We said, Yes, we were.

“Thanks for coming, men. And thank you for the service you’re doing for your friend today.”

He introduced himself as Freeman Gillion. He gave us a quick course in the art of pallbearing. “Lift with your knees, not your back. If you feel yourself losing it, just say ‘I’m out’ and step out. No one will think any less of you. When you’ve recovered, you can step in again. It’s all a matter of balance. And don’t lock your knees. I’ve seen lots of strong men keel over doing that.”

“How heavy is it gonna be?” said Ted Herring.

“Heavier than you think. Mr. Smock only weighs one forty-five, but this casket is the Heavenly Vision — that’s three hundred fifty pounds of solid bronze. That’s why we needed eight of you — although y’all are big men, six could probably handle it. Never hurts to have a couple extra on a hot day.”

Mr. Gillion was that rare grownup who can tell you what to do without making you feel dumb for not knowing. I liked him for calling us “men.”

“You should feel proud to be associated with a funeral of this quality,” he said. “His family asked for nothing but the best, and brother, they got it — we’re talking forty-eight-ounce bronze with a natural brush finish and cream velvet interior. Top of the line. It costs a good deal more, but the thing about bronze is, the casket itself will never erode.”

We received this information with the awed silence it deserved. Mr. Gillion thanked us again, and went to check the placement of chairs at the graveside.

“I think I’m dying,” Tim said. “Or maybe I died and this is what hell is like.”

“Aw, he was okay,” I said.

The day had started hot and gotten hotter, and now, at the peak of the afternoon, the sky was bleached white, the sun beating its heavy hammer on us. The Steves were a couple of sweaty cowpokes, and poor Evan was melting in his Mafia suit. It was a relief when the long black hearse came gliding into the churchyard, followed by a fleet of shiny black limousines, one after the other.

I’d never seen so many limousines. Eddie would have loved it. And he would have loved our costumes, and our misery at having to wear them.

Mr. Gillion formed us into lines at the back of the hearse. I peeked at the bronze casket, polished and sleek with rounded corners, like a fat gleaming cigarette lighter.

Dozens of Smocks spilled from the limousines. I recognized Eddie’s mother from some of the
Christ!
rehearsals. It is simply being truthful to say that Mrs. Smock was a piggy-looking woman, very plump with a pig nose, pink cheeks, and a flushed pink complexion. Today she was jammed into formidable foundation garments and a black dress. Her plump calves were cinched at both ends, like sausages.

Eddie’s father must have been the pale white-haired man clinging to her arm. He appeared to be not so much aging as collapsing.

From the corner of my eye I saw Tim looking at me, barely repressing hilarity. If I made any kind of face at this moment, he would crack up. I frowned and turned away. I’m not sure which part he found funny — the snuffling relatives, the sirenlike wail of Eddie’s mother at her first glimpse of the open hole, the eight of us in our preposterous getups, or all of it in combination.

I worked to make my face as sober as the funeral director’s. I forced myself to picture Eddie’s dead body, embalmed and powdered inside that gleaming box.

Imagine being borne to your grave by an assortment of cowboys, Mafia angels, hippie Combo players, and ancient shepherds from the Holy Land. Some of the mourners looked quizzical, but mostly the women took one look at us and broke down in tears.

They must have thought we were Eddie’s closest friends, we mourned his passing so deeply that we wore these costumes in tribute to him.

The whole thing gave me the willies. I prayed for it to be over fast.

We walked Eddie’s casket out of the hearse on its rollers, and Christ! the thing was heavier than I thought, heavier even than Mr. Gillion had promised. I saw veins pop out on Ted Herring’s neck. Behind me, Tim groaned.

Mr. Gillion’s voice was inaudible to everyone but us. “Fellas all right?”

We grunted, desperately scraping our shoes in search of a solid foothold.

Mr. Gillion counted us off and we began to move. See the people get out of our way! Pick up a casket and watch how they open up a path for you!

I stood on the right side, second from the back, with Mark and Ted ahead and Tim behind me on the corner. It felt like I was lifting the thing myself. We lurched across thirty yards of uneven ground, around headstones, toward the tent. Above the sounds of our struggle I heard the insistent
zizz
of insects in the woods.

Suddenly, right in front of me, Ted Herring said, “I’m out,” and stepped clear. The load on our side seemed to double. (Mr. Gillion was wrong — immediately I thought less of Ted.) The casket sagged — I braced it against my hip, gripped the slippery rail, and hung on for dear life. I had a clear vision of the box thudding to the ground, the lid popping open, and dead Eddie rolling out into the dirt.

“Steady . . .” Tim strained at the corner.

Freeman Gillion stepped in to help. The casket leveled out. We moved under the tent. It was tricky walking that close to the hole without slipping in. “Right here, hold it,” said Gillion. A mechanical whirr as the elevator rose to meet the bottom of the casket. “Excellent job, gentlemen. Thank you.”

We were sweating into our costumes now. We formed a line opposite the chairs for Eddie’s family. Funeral men moved in with a blanket of roses for the coffin. The other mourners crowded around the tent.

Oh please no, here came Mrs. Smock and her shaky husband, determined to greet each pallbearer personally. All dressed in black, coming down the row, grasping each boy’s hand for a word, Mrs. Smock worked the reception line like Queen Elizabeth. Mr. Smock even looked a bit like Prince Philip, pale and gray, receding into the background.

And now she was pressing my hand. “What’s your name, child?”

“Daniel Musgrove.”

“Daniel, thank you so much for coming, and for being such a good friend to Eddie. He loved you so much.”

“Thank you.” She didn’t mean it that way, but it creeped me out. I wondered if she had any idea of the real story on Eddie.

Mr. Smock put his weightless hand in mine and murmured, “Thank you, son, thank you kindly.”

Beside me, Mrs. Smock took Tim’s hand. “And your name?”

“Tim Cousins.”

“Well, Tim, thank you, it would have meant so much to Eddie,” said Mrs. Smock. “I hope you know how much he loved you.”

“Thank you,” Tim said. “Sorry he died.”

Mrs. Smock moved on. I released the breath I’d been holding.

Funeral men handed out hymn sheets still fragrant with mimeograph fluid. A minister with a glistening pompadour came to the head of the coffin and raised his arms. I admired his elaborate robe with all that piping and cording, around his shoulders a stole in immaculate Ole Miss red and white. There was something familiar about him — was he the preacher at that Methodist church Mom dragged me to once?

When he opened his mouth and began to intone, I realized this was Jacko’s favorite Sunday-morning TV preacher, the Reverend Alfred L. Poole, the curdle-voiced pastor of the Faith Holiness Tabernacle in Vicksburg, Mississippi!

I nudged Tim to see if he recognized the man. I froze when I realized I was gazing directly into Mrs. Passworth’s eyes. She was gazing at me and crying as bitterly as Eddie’s mother.

“The Lowered hath called our dear servant Edwin, Baskin, Smock to his heavenly home,” the reverend announced. “O Lowered, we cry out to thee. Why take one so young and full of life, when there are so many who are elderly and infirm? It does not seem fair, dear Gaud! We cry out to thee for a balm in Gilead to heal our souls, which are forever infested with sin.”

Mrs. Smock sobbed against her gray husband’s shoulder.

“Now let us join together,” the preacher advised, “in singing the praise of his name. Hymn 153, ‘I Saw One Hanging on a Tree.’”

This brought a fresh burst of weeping from the ladies. I wondered what Reverend Poole was thinking when he selected it, or if he even knew how Eddie died.

I saw One hanging on a tree, in agony and blood,

Who fixed His languid eyes on me as near His cross I stood.

I didn’t think it was very comforting, but then, I wasn’t the one being comforted. Thank God Reverend Poole was preaching with his back to us, which helped keep me from exploding.

Everything is funny all the time.
I swear, Tim must have thought those words at that moment, so clearly did I hear his voice speaking in my head. I turned. His eyes were fixed on some point in the distance — his lip trembling from the effort of holding it in.

“Merciful is our Father, and ever-mysterious his ways,” said the Reverend. “Let us join together in all-comforting prayer. Dear heavenly Father, why hast thou called home thy beloved child, Edwin, Baskin, Smock?”

He preached about the unfairness of it all, the youthful innocence and religious zeal that led Edwin, Baskin, Smock to his service in “the creation of theatrical productions for Christian youth, including these fine young people here with us today,” he said, sweeping his hand in our direction. He said Eddie had spent his life working tirelessly to improve the conditions of those less fortunate, although he didn’t give any examples. He said Eddie was bound for glory, and the good die young. He said God’s ways are revealed on the journey down a darkling path of tribulations our natures have yet to subsume, and a bunch more stuff along that line. He said Eddie was a “born Christian, as opposed to a born-again Christian. He didn’t need to be born again — Gaud got it right the first time!”

I thought that was laying it on a bit thick.

“Edwin may have had some difficulties with his thought life, as do many young people on the perilous road to maturity,” said the reverend, “but his soul was as pure and unmuddied as a crystalline spring.”

The reverend mopped his face with a handkerchief and introduced “a dear friend of Edwin’s who has requested time to address you about his most cherished personality traits. Mrs. Irene Passworth.”

She smiled and tossed her head walking to the front, as if we were applauding. Had to hand it to Passworth, she did look spectacular in black. She wore these huge Italian movie star sunglasses, wider than her face.

She touched her fingertips to her lips as if to blow a kiss, but she didn’t. “I just wonder if any of us really knew the truth about Eddie,” she said. “Personally I didn’t have a clue. Did you? I never guessed what he was. It seems like, my heavens, we were his family and friends. Shouldn’t one of us have seen this coming? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming anyone more than myself. I spent a lot of time with Eddie lately. Looking back I can see all the signs I missed. How badly I failed him. But not just me. We all failed him. All of us.”

I glanced over to see Mrs. Smock drilling holes in Passworth with those beady eyes. Reverend Poole’s glazed smile betrayed a trace of unease.

“I haven’t been able to sleep since I heard the news,” she went on. “I’ve been stripping off these layers of old wallpaper in my front room. It’s so thick, why, there must be twenty or thirty layers of old paper on there. Then of course when I got the call, I had to leave it like that, a big mess and not even half done. I mean, I just flew to the hospital. Thinking I could help Eddie somehow. But that was silly. It was way too late to help Eddie. I missed my chance. We all missed our chance.”