“He’s dead,” I manage to answer, repeating Grandma’s words.
I remember feeling sorry for those women, dressed in their visiting clothes, ones that were not quite church-worthy, but still too good for every day. They probably said things meant to make us feel better, about how he’s in a better place now, or at least he won’t have to suffer anymore, but I don’t remember any of it. What I remember is how fast they managed to get away from our house, away from the scene they’d blundered into, away from death. I couldn’t blame them. I didn’t want to be there either.
When I close my eyes that night, there’s my grandpa again, squirting milk from Bossy, our Jersey cow, straight into my mouth, me squealing for him to stop—no, do it again!
We’re in the woods together. Grandpa’s chopping down a Christmas tree and dragging it to the car.
Next, he’s saying grace at the kitchen table.
“Lord, we just thank you for this food that we are about to receive and ask that you use it to the nourishment of our bodies. We pray in the blessed name of Jesus. Amen.”
It could have been dinner or supper, maybe breakfast, I forgot to notice what was heaped on the platters, but it doesn’t matter, because he said grace every meal.
Grandpa, smelling of Bossy and Old Spice, is walking me to school in a snowstorm, and without him saying so, I know he’ll be waiting there to walk me home.
There he is preaching at a revival, his Bible held up to the heavens, his voice reaching to the far corners of the tent. “Amen!” he shouts, his voice soaring over the congregation. “The Lord is raining down His glory as we’re gathered here to worship Him tonight! Yes sir! He’s raining down His glory! Let’s praise Him as we turn to page 384 in our hymnal and sing ‘There Will Be Showers of Blessing.’ ”
I see him with hobos or gypsy boys or with a bag of squirrels he’s brought home from a hunting trip, dumping them on the ground for me and Vonnie to pick the best tails to hang from our bike handles. “They’s a pair of red ones in there oughta match up real nice,” he tells us.
The sitting room off the bedroom Grandpa died in served to hold the casket for the viewing. People brought food to the house to last for days, and still Grandma cooked more. A ham with rings of cinnamon apples tacked on with cloves. A pot of green beans and new potatoes seasoned with fatback. A platter of fried chicken. Mother made tomato dumplings and deviled eggs and a blackberry cake to serve with fresh whipped cream. A pan of her yeast rolls went into the oven.
Vonnie and I took our plates out to the swing to eat. Away from all those people who were either talking too much or not at all. Away from the bedroom where Grandpa died. Away from the casket where my Grandpa was laid out in a dark gray suit, his stilled hands folded on the satin coverlet.
The bells of St. Mary’s Methodist joined those of Wildwood Community Church and the Pentecostal Holiness Church my grandpa preached at in East Beckley. Pastor Parker from Wildwood Community preached the funeral. He and Grandpa were, according to his words on that day, “brothers in Christ.”
Grandpa had opened our door to him just after dark one night. The big man stood there, shrunken and trembling, sorrow ravaging his face. “She was so little,” Pastor Parker said, “so very little. Like a baby bird.” He wasn’t driving fast or anything. She ran right out from between two cars. It happened so fast, he remembered only a blur of yellow. Her corn-tassel hair, maybe, or her sundress. He couldn’t be sure. But as God was his witness, there was nothing he could do—he’d give his life if there was.
Of course he would, and no, there was not a thing he could do. “She’s an angel in Heaven now,” Grandpa told him, “safe in the arms of Jesus.”
They talked often after that, and they prayed, and finally they laughed.
Grandpa told Pastor Parker he believed he could make a fair-to-middlin’ Pentecostal out of him if he had enough time.
“I wouldn’t be holding my breath if I was you,” Pastor Parker replied. “You’re invited, though, to warm a pew at Wildwood Community anytime you’ve a notion to.”
“Well, don’t put my name on one just yet,” Grandpa said.
The little church filled up, then people crowded the steps and the grounds. People came from all around. W. W. Carter, Superintendent of the Pentecostal Holiness Church, came. He had stayed at our house many times, was almost like family. He taught me how to read before I started school.
The whole congregation, or so it seemed, came from Cales Chapel, the church Grandpa and Grandma founded in Coal City.
Cecil Miller came. He was the principal of Sylvia Elementary School, where Sissy Moles and Peggy Blevins and Patty Greer and I would be eighth-grade cheerleaders in the fall, and I would be co-valedictorian with Bill Grose in the spring. They all came. And so did David Stanley and Tony Cox, a couple of neighborhood boys I’d known since first grade. On rainy days they chased us home from school with the slimy fat earthworms that oozed up from the mud and stretched a foot long from their grimy fists, sometimes squeezing the insides out like pink toothpaste. Both sides went slower or faster to keep what we judged a safe distance between us. The rules were unspoken and unwritten. Yet somehow we all knew how to play the game.
I don’t remember much about the service, but at the end the choir sang a doleful rendition of one
