David*Macinnis*Gill.com

This story appeared in The Cres­cent Review in 1993, my offi­cial debut. It was one of sev­eral pieces I wrote while teach­ing sum­mer school that year. From first draft to accep­tance with about three weeks. Like many of the sto­ries writ­ten dur­ing this time, it fea­ture leg­ends form my mother’s fam­ily mythology.

I have long legs and big feet, and I wear cow­boy boots. So when my flight left LaGuardia, Delta ter­mi­nal, at 6:45 am, I was in first class because I had to have some place to put my legs. The nar­row coach seats aren’t a problem—I’m sort of bony, but my legs, just like the pio­neers, need room to spread out. I picked an aisle seat so I could get to the bath­room eas­ily, and I took along Clyde Edgerton’s Raney to pre­pare myself for the trip home. It had been a long time since I’d been in the South, and I needed a refresher course.

After I’d stored my back­pack, a blonde cliché sat beside me-a pretty, young woman, very neat, per­son­able, power suit, Dayrun­ner. Her hair was in aChina crop, and she wore tortoise-shell glasses.

“Excuse me,” she said as she tried to hur­dle my legs. She ended up spread-eagled over my lap.

“Don’t think that’ll work,” I said and unfolded myself. “Let’s try it now.”

“… tall,” she said.

I filled in the blanks. “Six-five. And I’ve never played basketball.”

She set­tled in. “They don’t make planes for peo­ple such as you, do they?” She slid her carry-on under­neath the seat in front of her.

“Lit­tle in this world fits my peculiarities.”

“Excuse me?” She paused, confused.

“Oh, don’t pay me atten­tion. Just think­ing aloud.” I felt awk­ward. I pulled my book from the mesh pouch in front of me. I’ve heard that bring­ing thick books on the plane keeps peo­ple from talk­ing to you I’ve found it makes them want to bother you more.

She tapped me on the arm. “I said, I love your ponytail,”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“I see a few of them that look nice. Maybe it’s the sil­ver streaks in your black hair. It must be the string tie. You have an accent. Are you from Texas?”

She was a chal­lenge: her lips moved quickly, her mouth opened lit­tle. “No,” I said delib­er­ately. “I spent some time in Okla­homa.” I held out the string tie to explain. “Few things fas­ci­nate me like mother-of-pearl, the way the light turns fluid and flows into dif­fer­ent colors,”

“You cer­tainly don’t sound like a cowboy.”

“I’m not.” I remem­bered how the judge gave me a choice-jail or Job Corps. The judge had slumped over the bench like a bushy black cater­pil­lar. When I asked him would the Corps let me do any paint­ing, he told me I was a strange boy and that he was sure the Job Corps would let me do all the house­paint­ing I wanted. I don’t think he under­stood. Life in the Corps wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t as hard as home. The sergeant in charge of civil­ian work­ers was noth­ing com­pared to my daddy. After four years, I had earned enough to go to NYU. I never went back home.

“You look more like some­body from the Village.”

“Soho, actu­ally.”

“You’re an artist, then? Do you have a gallery?”

She must in sales, I thought as she pumped me for my life history.

“No,” I said, look­ing at my hands spread out on the closed book. My knuck­les seemed too big, almost hol­low, and my fin­gers feath­ered out­ward, del­i­cate, frail. Woman’s hands, my daddy had always called them. Except for a horny cal­lous on my bird fin­ger, made by hold­ing pen­cils and brushes too long and too hard, they could’ve been per­fect “I just paint.”

“My name’s Cathy.”

“Ray­mond.”

“Is this trip busi­ness or pleasure?”

“Nei­ther,” I said. “I’m going to a funeral.”

She didn’t say much after that. She spent most of the flight read­ing a mag­a­zine, arid I fin­ished my book.

After my plane landed at Lovell field, I bought a copy of me Daily News to look up my mama’s obit­u­ary. It was short.

I rented a Chevy and headed north out of Chat­tanooga to Mon­tea­gle, where the funeral was being held. My mama was from the moun­tain orig­i­nally, and it was her fond­est wish to be buried there when she left this world.

If you were to write a brief his­tory of my mama’s life, it would read like this. Milly May Stevens was in born in 1937 in Altamont, Tennessee. Her fam­ily was large even for those days-seven chil­dren. Her mama worked odd jobs-cook, house­keeper, school cafe­te­ria server. Her daddy worked at South­ern Rail­ways, but he was gone most of the time, blow­ing his pay­check on liquor instead of sup­port­ing his family.

When she was two, her mama gave birth to twins who were still­born. She met death face-to-face at an early age. At seven, she started doing most of the work around me house while her mama worked. At nine, she going to work with her mama some.

When she was four­teen, two remark­able things happened-she saw her mama beat her brother with a pick han­dle for steal­ing cig­a­rettes, and her daddy gave her, for the first time, a Christ­mas present: a china doll with silky black hair and pretty blue eyes that rolled into the back of her head. By then, she was too old for dolls. She gave it to her sis­ter Liddy.

A year later, she was mar­ried to Clyde Bar­row, an older boy who worked with her daddy part-time down at South­ern. She didn’t think much of him, nor his courtship. He was steel-cable thin, and he didn’t bring her flow­ers and candy. It seemed to be her time to move on. She might as well be a mama to her own chil­dren. At least they would be hers. They set­tled in Tracy City.

I—her boy—was born right there at home. Daddy couldn’t find work, and so for years, we hop-scotched our way toward Murfrees­boro. There we lived for the first time with run­ning water and power. My two sis­ters were born in the county hos­pi­tal while Daddy was at the pool hall. As Mama grew older, she worked less and less. By the time she was thirty, she was bone-weary and felt like she’d worked all her days away. By the time she turned forty, her face, never pretty, was bloated and moon-shaped. Her body had long since decayed. For her fifti­eth birth­day, she lost a foot to dia­betes. She didn’t know she was sick until her toes rot­ted off. Two years later, she died.

My sis­ter Char­lene called me with the news. I told her I didn’t know if I could make it She reminded me again that I’d missed our daddy’s funeral, so I told her I would try.

A week later, the day I arrived, they laid Mama out in Alta­mont Anti­ochBap­tist Church for all to see. Some of her fam­ily hadn’t laid eyes on her in twenty years. I was one of them.

When I left Ten­nessee, I had hon­estly thought it was for good. When I was grow­ing up, peo­ple always said that Ray­mond Bar­row was a strange bird. I guess I was. As a boy, I liked to draw and build things. Once my mama caught me draw­ing on my bed­room wall. What she didn’t real­ize, even after whip­ping me, was that I’d made a fair copy of a Monet I’d seen the pic­ture on one of her cat­a­logs, and the dots and splotches of color had fas­ci­nated me.

I frus­trated my teach­ers at school, too. When my sixth grade teacher brought in pop­si­cle sticks so that we could make cute lit­tle Civil War cab­ins, I copied the Golden Gate­way bridge, using up almost half of the sticks. In frus­tra­tion, the teacher gave me an F and threw the bridge into the dump­ster. I punched her, and they expelled me. I guess I shouldn’t have done it, but I had the Bar­row tem­per, and I’d learned from my daddy that the way to solve prob­lems was to hit somebody.

Before my acci­dent, I’d been a decent kid. School didn’t make much sense, and nei­ther did any­thing else; but when I was ten, my world changed. A series of run-ins with John Law fol­lowed. Right before I reached legal age, the judge gave me that option—jail or work for the Job Corps. I took the Job Corps, of course.

On the way up the moun­tain, I rolled all of this his­tory out, like unpack­ing boxes I had long ago stored away. Dust and cob­webs had set­tled on my mem­o­ries, and I wasn’t sure there was much worth keeping.

When I got to Tracy City, I was sur­prised that every­one knew me, or had heard of me. At G & W’s Esso Ser­vice and Tow, I bought a six-and-a-half-ounce Coke from a pull-out machine and won­dered how time had for­got­ten this place. The old pump-boy filled my tank. I asked direc­tions to the church.

“You must be a going to Milly May’s ser­vice,” the hunched man said, a gen­er­ous wad of snuff between his bot­tom three teeth and lower lip.

I nod­ded I was.

“Going myself, in a few min­utes.” His face seemed pinched, almost gath­ered al the ends and drawn tight. “Got to close down, first.” He replaced the pump. “That’ll be seventeen-fifty.”

I hanged him a twenty.

“Yeah, I been know­ing Milly since, oh, ’51, ’52, back when her and Clyde was just star­ling out, just after she had her boy. Lord, ain’t seen him in years.” He leaned in, as if shar­ing a con­fi­dence. “He always was a strange one, that Ray­mond. Hear tell he run off to some sissy-boy com­mune in New York.”

I raised my eye­brows in surprise.

“If you ask me, it was him and his shenani­gans that run her to her grave:’

“I thought it was a stroke. Dia­betes related”

“I heard dif­fer­ent, if you know what I mean.” He winked and his face seemed to pinch tighter. “By the way, I didn’t get your name?

I got into the rented car and gunned the engine. The Bar­row tem­per had come home with me, I guess. “Ray­mond.” Gravel pinged off the gas pumps and the man’s ungath­ered face.

About a half-mile down the highway, Altamont Anti­och Bap­tist Church had fluffed itself into a com­fort­able nest A broad canopy, like a leafy para­sol, blocked the relent­less August sun. Small and white, clap­board sid­ing, a gilded spire as tall as the church itself, the church seemed eter­nal, as if the pass­ing years couldn’t touch it. A small sign that announced the Sun­day School hours and the sec­ond to last preacher’s name wel­comed me. I didn’t feel wel­comed, though. This had been my mama’s church when she was a girl. With its tin sheet roof and white­washed clap­board sid­ing, it reminded me of a dime-store paint­ing, a piece of Amer­i­cana, a per­fect place for Mama to be mar­ried, if she hadn’t run off to the Grundy County justice.

I pulled into the gravel lot the vis­i­ta­tion must not have begun because only a few cars were there-a red and black long-bed Ford—a faded-blue Nova, a white Buick Cen­tury, its dash cracked from the sun, a black Towne Car, gleam­ing like a sleek ebony stone. Must be the under­tak­ers car. I said to myself. Good. Maybe I can see him alone.

A semi­cir­cu­lar wreath, a mix­ture of white and. red silk flow­ers, hung dis­creetly on the mas­sive oak doors. Antioch, my mama had told me years before, had been built around the turn of the cen­tury by local car­pen­ters, most of them orig­i­nal mem­bers of the congregation.

When I walked in, I felt those car­pen­ters the legacy of their work. Heart of pine and oak blended splen­didly to form the pews, the altars, and the pul­pit lines, gen­tle and sweep­ing, seemed to emerge from nowhere, con­verge to form a sweet melody of design, and then dis­ap­pear into infinity.

I stood, hands almost touch­ing in applause, as the melody began a crescendo. An insis­tent fin­ger jabbed my shoul­der and shat­tered my reverie. I whirled around, curs­ing myself for not sens­ing the man behind me.

“I said, ‘May I help you?’”

“You must be the under­taker,” I said to the broad, flat­tened, somber face.

“We pre­fer to call our­selves mor­ti­cians these days:’ He didn’t look like an under­taker, not ghoulish-more like a car sales­man, slick enough but not too slick.” Are you a friend of the family?”

“Fam­ily,” I said. I’m her son.

“Oh, I see. I didn’t real­ize. You don’t sound much like folks around here.” He turned away, walked toward the right wing.

”I’m from… I live in New York.”

As the man turned, the prac­ticed sobri­ety blot­ted out the sur­prise on his face. Most peo­ple wouldn’t have noticed, but I had spent a life­time study­ing faces. “…must be Ray­mond.” He pumped the offered hand. “I heard a lot about you. We weren’t sure you’d be com­ing in. The fam­ily will be delighted, just delighted.”

“I’m sure they will.” The old doubts returned: feel­ings I thought I’d locked away a long time ago pecked at me, chirp­ing a shrill song. My eyes traced the curves of the pews, rolling through the gen­tle, sooth­ing val­leys of wood and stone until the sound of the thoughts faded away.

“to see the deceased?”

My atten­tion focussed on the under­taker just as he fin­ished the sen­tence. I said, “Would I like to see the deceased?”

The under­taker smiled, but his eyes blinked twice betray­ing his frus­tra­tion. “Yes, that is what I said. Twice.”

“I believe I would,” I said.

The man led me down the left hall­way. The light of the August day fil­tered through the rooms to the right, and I lin­gered, not know­ing why, in the day-room door­way, fixed on a bird cage made of pop­si­cle sticks. For an instant, I lin­gered, but I sensed that the man had stopped and was wait­ing for me. He was talk­ing, but I couldn’t make out what he was say­ing. “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that.”

“I was just say­ing…” He turned into the room and I lost him again.

I fol­lowed the man into the small room. My mama’s cas­ket, closed, glowed canary yel­low in the sun­light. How tacky, I thought. How utterly tacky. Clydette must have picked it out. Mama’s life had been col­or­less. Full of smells and stinks and per­fumes, yes, bathed in the aroma of bacon in the morn­ings of sweat and Clorox in the after­noon, and of Emer­aude dabbed on her neck for Sun­day Ser­vice, mask­ing the week’s work. But no color. Her life, was drab.

Her death should have been drab, too. “So Clydette picked it out,” I said.

“Yes, yes. That’s what I said a while back.” His nos­trils flared, but the smile remained fixed. “Mr. Bar­row, have you heard a word I said?”

I flut­tered like a bird pegged with a stone. “No, I’m sorry, I haven’t. You see, I’m…”

“Pre­oc­cu­pied. Full of dis­trac­tion right now, I know. It’s hard to con­cen­trate in times like these, I know.”

“No, no. You see, I’m…”

A terse pat on the back. A beck­on­ing hand. I flit for­ward. The cas­ket seems to roar, attack me. My feet search the floor for a foothold, a perch. Two latches thrown. The lid lifted an inch. My hand slam­ming it down. The undertaker’s nos­trils flar­ing, the terse pat­ting, the vibra­tion of fad­ing foot­steps. I am left alone.

Some­where deep in my rec­ol­lec­tions, the chirp­ing begins. A soft cheep of a chick­adee, the lone­some coo of the dove. Lift­ing the lid, the first hot wave of Mama’s stench encir­cling me like a net. Swifts join the song—thousands and thou­sands of shriek­ing cries. I reel, the lid springs open. The song fades, leav­ing me shaking.

She is there. Shrouded in a dress she never owned, great streaks of rouge seem to gouge her cheeks, bright red lip­stick on wax candy lip.

A hand touched mine, a gen­tle squeeze.

“Hello, Ray­mond.” The woman was pretty. Dark brown hair fram­ing a pleas­ant, scrubbed face. She held out her arms.

“Hello, Sissy. How are you?” I whis­pered into her ear.

She held onto my hand. “Ray­mond, this is my fiancé, Roosevelt Stargin.

Roosie, this is my brother, Mond.”

The young man’s tie was too long, his pants too short, and he lugged too often on his col­lar, but his smile was gen­uine. “How do,” he said and extended his hand.

“Very well, thank you.”

“I… I seen some of your stuff, y’know, paint­ing and lit­tle build­ings and stuff. They’re real pretty, I don’t care what folks around here say. Ow,”

“Watch your mouth, Roosie.” She pulled her heel out of his foot

“Oh, don’t worry about it” I smiled. “I never lis­ten to my critics.”

Sissy and I laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Roosie said, offended.

“I’ll tell you later, Roosie.”

“He doesn’t know?”

“Know what?”

“I’ll tell you later,”

“Roo­sevelt,” I began, “it’s no big secret I’m …”

“Ray­mond Earl Bar­row, Lord have mercy, I do declare.” The voice careened through the room. A squat, square-faced woman wad­dled up to me and threw her arms around my stomach…It’s so good to have you home,” She shouted, form­ing the words carefully.

“It’s good to be here, Clydette,” I said, but I wasn’t quite sure that was true.

Clydette, cam­ou­flaged in a canary yel­low dress, waved a beefy hand at the body. “Ain’t she beau­ti­ful?” she yelled.

“Clydette, dar­ling,” Sissy said, “Mond is deaf, so it don’t do no good to holler.”

She shot her sis­ter that look. “I know that I just get car­ried away, that’s all.”

“You’re deaf?” Roosie shouted. “But you can talk.”

“He’s not a mute; Roosie. He just can’t hear.”

“Well, I noticed he talked funny, but I just thought that was his Yan­kee accent How. Do. You. Do. It?”

“I read lips. And don’t feel like you have to slow down. By the way, Sissy, you bet­ter make my apolo­gies to the under­taker. He thinks I was rude and not lis­ten­ing, but he kept turn­ing away in mid-sentence. I tried to explain, but he was too busy con­sol­ing me.”

Sissy showed me her sweet smile, the one with no teeth bared. “I’ll be glad to, even­tu­ally. I think I’ll let him stew a lit­tle.” She mouthed the words: He’s afriend of Clydette’s. She picked out the cas­ket. Could you guess?

“Absolutely.”

Clydette plowed into the con­ver­sa­tion. “Would you two stop con­ver­sa­t­ing like that? It’s awful dis­tract­ing. Didn’t Mama tell you it ain’t polite to whis­per in public?”

“I wasn’t whis­per­ing,” I said innocently.

“You know what I mean:” Clydette frogged me on the arm. “Ain’t the cas­ket just grand?”

“Amaz­ing,” I said.

“Hideous,” Sissy mouthed.

“It’s very… yel­low,” I said.

“I know it” Her eyes misted over, and she dabbed them with a mono­grammed hanky. “It was her favorite color, you know.”

No, I didn’t know that, I thought.

“Yeller is such a pretty, lively color. Why, you know, I bought me a new dress so’s I could match the cas­ket” She lurched to the cof­fin and struck a pose, spread­ing her chif­fon like a drape over a statue, cov­er­ing Mama’s face.

“Clydette,” Sissy rushed over, “you get your tent off Mama.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mama.” She pat­ted a cold cheek, arranged a stray hair.

“Just look at her, ain’t she just beautiful?”

“Hell­fire, Clydette,” Sissy said, “why don’t you just crawl in there with her?”

Fab­ri­cated sur­prise pierced the armor of her face. “I beg your par­don. I can’t believe you would say such a thing in front of Mama’s body.”

“I don’t know, Clydette,” said I, ”I think you’d make a fine-looking corpse. After all, you’ve already got the dress for it.”

Out came the hanky. “You ain’t changed a bit, have you? Not one bit. You think you’re so much better’n every­body else, mis­ter artsy-fartsy.” She plowed through us. “Sissy, I expected bet­ter of you.” She cov­ered her mouth. “Tomor­row, he’ll be back in New York with his fag­got friends, and here you’ll be. Don’t come cry­ing to me to make up then.” She marched down the hall.

Bitch, Sissy mouthed.

“Aren’t you afraid she’s excom­mu­ni­cated you?”

“I wish.” She closed the lid of the cof­fin. “Good night, Mama. Sweet dreams.” The clasps clicked, locked. “Tomor­row or the next day, she’ll come around, beg­ging me to let her for­give me.” She winked at Roosevelt.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I guess I’ll head on out. See y’all in a minute. Call me if you need anything.”

“Now, Mond, give me some sugar.” After the hug and a peck on the cheek, she said, “I’m glad you come this time. I was afraid you wouldn’t”

“It was time.”

“You seen Daddy yet?”

“No.”

“Going to?”

“Won’t have much choice, con­sid­er­ing where we’re going today.”

“You would’ve hardly rec­og­nized him. He was thin­ner. What hair was left was sil­ver. I see yours is get­ting that way, now. The skin can­cer was hard on him. I want to say that he was sorry for the things that… happened.”

My daddy and I had spo­ken lit­tle since I was a boy. I blamed him for most of the lousy life ‘we led. Why don’t you get a job and quit drink­ing, I once asked him. After he had back­handed me across the kitchen and knocked two teeth loose, he told me it was his house, he’d do what he wanted. I felt the bridge in my mouth, the one that had replaced the teeth.

I peeked into my heart and found lit­tle sym­pa­thy. “Did he lose any more fin­gers?” My daddy always seemed to be los­ing body parts. He’d get drunk and go to work in a mill or shop, and then he’d come home a lesser man.

“No, not after those last two. Mond, you’re a sick boy, you know that?”

When we were kids, Sissy and I had learned a trick to aggra­vate our sis­ter. Since my acci­dent hap­pened when she was two, Sissy had grown up used to my hear­ing loss. The rest of the fam­ily was always for­get­ting to face me, I thought on pur­pose. I learned quickly to read lips as my only means of real communication.

Sissy, though, helped me. By the time she was four, Sissy formed her words for me, and I responded out loud. Our sis­ter said this one-way vocal­iza­tion drove her to dis­trac­tion. She swore that it was unnat­ural, the work of the devil.

“Excuse me, sir, ma’am,” inter­rupted the under­taker. His palms pressed together. “It’s time for the ser­vice to begin.”

With­out a sound, Sissy led me to the vestibule. I took my seat on the front pew.

Friends and rel­a­tives packed the tiny church, as much to catch a glimpse of the bad son made good as to pay respects to Mama. It seemed to me that the build­ing cracked and groaned under their weight. The tem­per­a­ture was notice­ably higher. What ear­lier had seemed to be a splen­did hall had changed into a clut­tered cage, and I flut­tered in its oppres­sive heat

The pall-bearers rolled in the yel­low cof­fin. The under­taker, with all the dig­nity he could bor­row, lifted the lid. Even over the heat and sweat, I could smell her, like a mix of old baloney and preservative.

Dur­ing the ser­vice, I enter­tained myself by trac­ing the thread lines of the preacher’s embroi­dered shawl. Veins of golden light danced through a per­fect pat­tern. I delighted in its sym­me­try and fluid motion. In its design, I found a new paint­ing. Peo­ple often ask me, where do you get you ideas from? Once I responded that ideas were like sperm—you were born with more than you’d ever need, but you had to wait around for them to be use­ful. That was picked up by the wire ser­vices and made the quota­bles in sev­eral mag­a­zines. But to be hon­est, I have no idea where my inspi­ra­tion comes from. I really don’t care, as long as it keeps com­ing back.

By the time I checked my watch, the preacher had gone on for forty minutes.

“… and I don’t know what the Lord has in mind for Milly May Bar­row. None ofus know what God had in store for Milly May Bar­row. We can­not know until we reach the pearly gates of Heaven. And He might not tell us then. But you can rest assured, my chil­dren, that God has a plan. He has writ His plan in His Book of Life. Yes, He has a plan. The great God Almighty in Heaven above has a plan for you, sin­ner.” His eyes bulged and the lig­a­ments strained in his neck like cables laced around a hot air bal­loon. I knew he was work­ing up a crescendo. Soon, he would be spent, his fury trans­ferred to the faith­ful. “Now let us pray,”

I had never heard a prayer. Before my acci­dent, my mama hadn’t gone in much for church. She found reli­gion a year of so after­wards, too late for me to hear. I’ve read the Bible, prob­a­bly more than the preacher him­self, but the ser­vices didn’t hold much mean­ing for me. I could tell from the strained faces and pur­ple fury of the preacher that the sound of the words had more impact than their mean­ing. I couldn’t lip-read a scream.

I bowed my head out of respect. The prayer was over long before I lifted my head. Sissy had to sig­nal me by squeez­ing my hand. To the faith­ful, my actions seemed the devo­tion of a good and lov­ing son, but in truth, I’d spent my time por­ing over the rich grain of the floor.

The doors to the church flew open to uncage the mourn­ers. Pall-bearers, mostly sons of Milly May’s sis­ters, car­ried the bright box. To me, it seemed a vibrant yel­low pill.

I stepped into the light awash with the cacoph­ony of col­ors and scents, the stymied air of the church behind me. Sissy looped her arm through mine and led me to the sec­ond lim­ou­sine. Clydette had piled into the first one.

“How far out is the grave­yard?” I said.

“A lit­tle ways, off the high­way some,” Clydette said. “I want you to be ready, now. It ain’t noth­ing spe­cial, now. Clydette had to make out with what Mama and Daddy had, which weren’t much.”

“ This where Daddy’s buried?”

“Yeah.” Sev­eral min­utes passed. “It hurt Mama some­thing awful when you didn’t come home.”

This isn’t my home, I thought. “I couldn’t see mourn­ing some­thing that I’d wished for years would hap­pen.” I looked away.

Her gen­tle hand turned my chin to her. “I know you don’t mean that, Mond.”

“Yes, I do. You among all peo­ple should know how much I hate him.”

“But he was your daddy.”

“And I was his son.”

The grave­yard was stuck out next to a farm house right on the high­way. Chain links sur­rounded the hodge­podge of marked and unmarked graves. We walked to the grave site. A small sign pro­claimed it to be THE LAST PIT STOP BEFORE HEAVEN. The pall-bearers hefted the beloved through the maze of graves and over the crum­bling oak stump. They set her on the pine boards above the grave.

A row of gray metal chairs trimmed the precipice of the grave. In a few min­utes, the chairs filled with the duti­ful, and the pine boards split with the great weight of Mama’s yel­low casket.

“Our father who art…” The preacher’s lips moved. When I focussed on the red clay mud and mixed the hues of the earth with the yel­low of the cof­fin, a radi­ant orange appeared in my mind. With my eyes for a brush, I painted the dead brown grass and the sullen sum­mer leaves. An autumn breeze swept in, it seemed, and the sum­mer was over­brushed with vibrant, cool­ing color. The heat seemed to fade, and I sat in my metal chair, almost serene.

Out of the comer of my eye, I spot­ted a dog, a blue-tick hound, snuf­fling to ground out­side the fence, its wet, soppy nose find­ing the way. The hound dog moved up and down the fence, pen­sively at first, then frantically.

The preacher had fin­ished. Two cousins from North Geor­gia, kin of Mama’s, had assem­bled by the grave to sing Will the Cir­cle Be Unbroken.

Sissy winced, and I knew the singers were prob­a­bly off-key. The fine cap­il­lar­ies in her cheeks and ears pulsed with blood. The hound dog stopped abruptly, pawed at his ears, then bayed to the heav­ens as if his heart would break.

I couldn’t hear him—there was no pos­si­ble way. But my ears rang with the bay­ing, a ring­ing that seemed to turn into a puls­ing gong. The dog reminded me of another dog, one I’d for­got­ten, or blocked out-I had blocked out so much. Then I remembered.

A fury of light, images of the bay­ing and shriek­ing of a pup. My daddy cussing the dog, me, my life. The stench of liquor in his pores. Grab­bing my head. Beat­ing it against the side of the well. Me screaming, “I didn’t mean to hurt it, Daddy. I didn’t mean”—Bang—“to hurt it”—Bang—“didn’t mean to”—Bang—“didn’t mean…” The over­pow­er­ing gong and the roar. Daddy’s nails dig­ging into my scalp, pulling the hair loose in furi­ous clumps, the falling wisps of yel­low down. My daddy saying, “I’ll learn you, boy. I’ll learn you.” The dark­ness pour­ing into me. The warm gen­tle flow of blood from one cut ear. My daddy walk­ing away, hands guilty with hair and blood. My mama scream­ing, run­ning to me. The great clang­ing of the gong shrink­ing into faint, elec­tric buzz.

“Acci­dent, my ass.” My tears washed my face, and I knew the truth. My lips trem­bled, and I tasted salt with the tip of my tongue.

No one would notice, I knew. They would think I was cry­ing for my mama. My body shook and seemed to fade from view. I felt the sen­sa­tion of falling, spin­ning into infin­ity, lost in the world of the first nightly dream.

“Please stop me before I hit bot­tom,” I said aloud.

I felt Sissy’s gen­tle fin­gers in my hand, her soft, downy cheek on mine. I seemed to awaken, and she held me, an unhear­ing lost child.

Clydette stood beyond us, duti­fully drop­ping a hand­ful of dirt into the grave.

She dabbed her eyes with the hanky. The preacher smiled approval at my grief.

I stiff­ened, unable to move, as my rage stu­pe­fied me. I would have liked to say a thou­sand things, recrim­i­na­tions, accu­sa­tions, but I couldn’t I felt mute.

“Son, would you like to …” The preacher’ gestured.

I nod­ded. I grabbed a hand­ful of dirt and lifted it as if to throw it down in some last, tri­umphant ges­ture of con­tempt; but my hand remem­bered, even if I didn’t. My mama hold­ing me in her arms, “Hush sugar, you be all right.” The glow­ing yel­low sun that seemed to warm her as she held my hands as the blood dried.

My hands low­ered and gen­tly opened. The soil, lifted in spite, rolled from my palms into the grave, show­er­ing my mama with a sweet, slow melody, the like of which she’d never heard.

Copy­right 2009 by David Macin­nis Gill. All rights print and elec­tronic reserved.