One Shenandoah Winter (22 page)

The remainder of the week strung out hard and long. Nathan seemed to spend all of Friday and much of Saturday running from one emergency to another. So it was that he did not arrive at Connie's until just before sunset that Saturday evening. And was surprised to find it necessary to park half a block away.

The day held to a coolness more in keeping with spring than winter. Even with the sun creasing the western hills and sending farewell streamers out over the sky, still he was comfortable walking down the street in shirtsleeves. Connie's driveway and the spaces directly in front of her house were packed with five pickups and seven cars and a cluster of easy-standing hillfolk. The women had a hard-scrubbed look, their print dresses and fancy aprons washed until the colors had faded. The men were in starched coveralls or the bottom half of dark suits and their best white shirts buttoned up to their collars. Nathan counted two dozen visitors in all, plus about as many dogs. The animals sauntered around or sat in the back of the trucks or stood by their masters, showing the easy companionship of well-trained hunters.

Nathan walked over, greeted the assembly, and was welcomed in turn by a smile from Connie. The expression tugged at his heart. The gathering seemed to have drawn her out from beneath her covering of fatigue and worry. Whatever else these people were here for, Nathan decided, it was for the good of all concerned.

“Hey there, Doc.” Will Green stepped from the circle and offered a hard slab of a hand. “How you keeping?”

“Fine.” Nathan continued to be surprised how these country people managed to match hands like granite with grips as soft as feathers. Will's hand barely squeezed, just took his own, held it a moment, then let it go. “All these people are in your band?”

That brought a chorus of smiles from the gathering. “Shoot, Doc, we don't have nothing so fancy as a band.”

“We heard Will here was gonna come over and play for Poppa Joe,” a pinched-faced woman said quietly. “We asked if we could come too.”

“We's all friends of Poppa Joe's,” another voice said.

“And kin from way back,” Connie added.

“Shucks, Miss Connie, ain't hardly nobody in this valley who's not kin, you go back far enough.”

“You're all welcome,” Connie said. “But Poppa Joe's been coming and going all afternoon. He's here one minute, and asleep the next.”

“Don't matter none,” Will offered. “We'll just fill in the spaces best we can.”

“When he woke up earlier I reminded him you were coming to play,” Connie went on. “He said to tell you it'd be nice to have you bring the mountains down close to where he could touch them one more time.”

That brought a pause to the group. One of the women raised her starched apron and wiped at one corner of her eye. Will heaved a sigh and said, “Guess we might as well set up.”

They waited until the instruments were unlimbered and tuned before disturbing Poppa Joe. Hattie and Dawn had arrived by then, there to keep Connie company through the slow hours of another lingering dusk. Together with Nathan they lifted the old man, under-quilt and all, and settled him back on the stretcher. Poppa Joe was far too weak to use his wheelchair. With Connie and Dawn at the feet and Nathan taking the head, they walked him out to the porch.

Poppa Joe was wide-eyed and silent as he took in the people. There were four mandolins, three fiddles, two banjos, a bass fiddle, a washboard, four tambourines, and six guitars. Two men who clearly had no interest in either playing or singing rose from their seats on the front steps to greet Poppa Joe. Those there to sing and not play formed a little semicircle beyond the trellis.

They settled him at the corner of the porch where he could see both the players and the singers. Once he was down and those who had carried him had found comfortable spots around the stretcher, a silence gathered. No one seemed able to speak. The day's warmth continued to linger, even as the sun stroked the western peaks.

The assembly waited, their gazes fixed upon the old man. Their emotions were a palpable force. Then a bird sang a single note, clear as the sky. A sound of crystal promise, a swift chime of hope.

A voice as soft as a breeze through the last of autumn's leaves whispered from the stretcher, “Evening, all.”

The group smiled as best they could, and breathed easier. Will asked, “You got any favorites, Poppa Joe?”

“I like 'em all,” he murmured, and waved a feeble hand.

“Well, then,” Will said, “Let's start with them what everybody knows.” He hefted his fiddle, and swung into “She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain.” The beginning was a little scratchy, as people found their places and their voices and began concentrating upon the music and not what had brought them there.

The second song got them moving, and the third had the chorus doing soft little hand claps, alternating one hand on top of the other.

By the fourth, doors were opening up and down the street, and people were walking over. While a few joined the choir, the others seemed content to stand along the edge of the street and smile and nod and weave in time to the music.

The musicians ran through a host of old favorites—“Just As I Am,” “When The Saints,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “I Saw The Light,” “Amazing Grace,” “I've Got A Feeling,” “This Train.” The longer they played, the happier and larger grew the crowd, the stronger the voices, the more commanding the rhythm. Smiles blossomed like flowers on an early spring field.

Poppa Joe stayed with them most of the time. His eyes touched face after face. The smiles which greeted him were so sad Nathan could not watch for long. So much emotion within these quiet simple people. So much caring. Such a noble way to say farewell to one of their own.

When they started on a rousing chorus of “The Tennessee Waltz,” the old man was smiling and Connie was rocking from side to side. Nathan rose from his seat, at first planning to get the two ladies some cushions to soften their places on the porch planking. But he caught sight of young children spinning and giggling in the lawn. Then he saw Connie's eyes opened wide, half in fear and half in hope. And it was the most natural thing in the world to reach out his hand for hers.

There were a few good-natured chuckles. But not many. Neighbors and musicians watched and smiled as Nathan waltzed around the open space at the center of the porch. It was not like him to be the focus of attention. But just now, in the dimming light of a lovely Shenandoah winter's dusk, he did not care. Connie blushed her way through the dance, meeting his eyes only once. But that look was all the reward he needed.

When they stopped, a quintet of smiles welcomed them back to their places by the stretcher. Hattie and Chad and Duke and Dawn all mirrored Poppa Joe's quiet satisfaction, their approval given equally to them both.

The old man's eyes began to droop, yet he did not ask for his injection. Nathan kept a careful watch, but felt there was no need to press. Poppa Joe would ask when he was ready. Every once in a while, the gaze would strengthen, and he would look first at his niece, and then at Nathan. He found himself waiting for those glances, drinking in all that was unsaid. All the mysteries.

Hattie drew Dawn inside. A few minutes later they came back with candles and set them around the porch. Someone joined the assembly with a pair of Coleman lanterns. Their glow added to the dusk's fading gold, backlighting all the people gathered around the house.

There came a sense of a natural pause. Poppa Joe's eyes finally closed, his breathing eased. Connie went inside and came back with another quilt which she settled around her uncle's form. Nathan sighed from the fullness and the sadness, and found he could see his breath, which was a surprise, because he had not noticed the growing chill at all.

Will Green signaled to the choir by lifting his fiddle, and he alone started into a song which seemed to drift from Nathan's most distant memories. The women joined in naturally, their voices as soft as the sunset's last rosy hues. “I will arise and go to Jesus,” they sang, and all the gathering seemed to catch and hold their breath.

Nathan found himself captured by the words and the moment, though his eyes remained held by Poppa Joe. A new force entered with the softness of the voices, a power so potent it squeezed his very soul. A tear escaped, pressed out by whatever it was that gathered there with the people and the night. He let it go, unhindered and unashamed. He watched the old man's breath grow softer and softer, and heard the ladies sing, “In the arms of my dear Savior, O there are ten thousand charms.”

The last sound lingered, the bow scratched its way across the strings, and then the force was too great. No one else could move, or sing, or do anything but stand there and wait. Wait as the old man stilled, and the force pressed them all into one unified whole, burning with the power of a love far beyond this world and this fragile thing called life. Wait and feel the Spirit leave, and take the old man away.

Connie knelt there beside him for a long moment, then finally managed to whisper through her tears, “Poppa Joe has gone Home.”

Twenty-Six

T
here were far fewer tears at the funeral than Connie would have expected. Even from herself.

The church service seemed to come and go in an instant, which surprised her as well. Normally funerals seemed to drag on forever. But long before she was ready, she was walking out of the church and into the bitter cold day. The sky was no sky at all, just a covering of finest gauze, a shroud so thin the sun could still be seen, a brilliant guest to this strange and unmournful day.

She walked with a dry-eyed Hattie and Dawn from the church. Nathan walked behind them, alongside Chad Campbell and Duke Langdon, because she had asked him to. She had worked up the nerve to ask Nathan because she had been afraid she was going to lose control, and she did not want to be left to cling to someone else's man. Now she was glad she had done it, simply because his closeness was nice. Strange that anything could be called that on such a day, but it was the truth.

Six of the musicians carried the coffin, led by a somber Will Green. It was her way of thanking the men who had 231 made that final night sing and had brought the mountains down for Poppa Joe to touch one last time.

Chad and Nathan sat up front as Duke drove his father's huge dark Lincoln behind the hearse. Connie was seated directly behind Nathan, and spent the time looking out the window at the town and the hills. Finally Hattie reached over and gripped her hand. “How are you feeling, dear?”

“Like I've been waiting all morning for the sadness and the keening to begin.” Connie turned from her window, and had to smile at the astonishment on the two women's faces. “You want to know how I feel? Fine. Does that sound crazy?”

Dawn answered before her mother. “I don't think it sounds crazy at all. I'm sitting here feeling sad on one side and good on the other.”

Hattie confessed, “I keep thinking about that send-off Will and the boys gave Poppa Joe.”

“Me too.” Dawn touched Duke's shoulder. “You think maybe you could arrange something like that for me when my time comes, honey?”

Duke shook his head. “I don't like this kind of wild talk at all.”

Chad smiled at him. “Better get used to it, son, if you're going to marry into this family.”

Connie looked from one face to the other, saw the humor there with the sadness. She turned to the one person still staring straight ahead. “What about you, Nathan?”

He stirred but did not turn around. “I was thinking about . . . before.”

All of the car's passengers knew enough of that story to sober up. But Nathan took no notice. He kept staring forward and said thoughtfully, “I never went to a funeral. Not once. I couldn't stand the thought of going. It was like bowing down in public to my own defeat.”

Connie felt her heart reach out with her hand as she leaned forward and grasped his shoulder. Nathan turned his head slightly at the touch, but not so far as to show her his eyes. Instead he reached up and took hold of her hand with his own. The touch was warm, and soft in the way of a strong man who knows how to be gentle. Out of the corner of her eye Connie saw Hattie give Dawn a look, but she kept her hand where it was.

Nathan went on, “But this doesn't seem at all like I had expected. I don't feel like there's a defeat here. Not in the slightest.”

The car was quiet for a time, until Connie asked for them all, “What does it feel like?”

Nathan was silent until they reached the cemetery's gates. As they drove between the ivy-covered pillars, he said quietly, “It feels like a healing.”

At the gravesite Connie sat down because it was expected of her. Reverend Brian Blackstone did a wonderful job of laying his old friend to rest. The town had turned out almost to a man, and they stood there in somber calm paying their final respects. Connie felt surprisingly good about it all, despite the hollow space that up to now had been filled by her uncle's presence. Dawn and Hattie and Chad sat there 233 beside her, with Nathan and Duke standing behind them. Surrounded by friends and people she had known her life long. And they in turn were surrounded by their beloved hills. And God was in it all. She knew that without an instant's hesitation.