Crapalachia: A Biography of Place (12 page)

I sat with her and listened to a sermon that went like this.

 

One time a man left home. He had argued with his mother and father the day before he left. They spoke horrible words to one another and he left without saying goodbye. He had been gone many years and even spent time in jail. Years later, he finally got out of jail and he wondered if his mother and father were even alive, and if they were ashamed of what had been said and of where he had wound up. He wrote to them and told them he would be coming home on a specific day the following week. If they wanted to see him and were not ashamed they should put a blanket on the clothesline, and he would know to come inside. If the blanket was missing, then he would know that he was not welcomed. He would know to turn back. He told them he hoped they were in good health.

 

The man arrived by rail the next week. He was nervous when he stepped off the train. There was no one there to meet him. He walked up the worn path towards the home place and thought about the past. He thought about his time in jail. He thought about how ashamed his parents must have been. He thought about the horrible words they spoke. He was just about to turn around and go back to where he came when he saw a blanket in a tree. He kept walking and he saw another blanket. He kept walking and he saw another blanket. Then he turned towards home and the house was covered in blankets, the yard was covered in blankets, the clothesline was covered in blankets, the path to the door was covered in blankets. His parents were standing there and they were welcoming him inside.

I took Ruby home and she talked about Nathan. She talked about how she missed him. I didn’t know this would be the last time I spent with her like this. I didn’t know this last week would be the last week of her life.

A few days later, my Uncle Stanley called. He said they had to take Ruby to the hospital. He said that she was sick. So later that evening I went to see her. She acted like she didn’t recognize me, but then she told me that the angel of death had come to see her that morning. She said the angel of death sat at the foot of her bed. She told me she heard Nathan’s groans in her dreams. I heard Nathan’s groans too. She told me the angel of death didn’t say anything, but just sat looking at her. She told me that it wasn’t a man or a woman, but it was the angel of death all right. She said that the angel was smiling at her. The angel had black teeth and I believed her. She wasn’t faking her death. She was eighty years old and this was the end.

 

And so I stopped by my Aunt Mary’s and told her that Ruby was real confused and she wasn’t doing any good at all. I told her this was the end. I sat down on the bed and watched the cold rain beat against the windows. Then my Aunt Mary sat down beside me and said she didn’t know whether to believe her or not. She didn’t know whether she was sick or not because she was so good at manipulating you.

I looked at Aunt Mary and said, “I don’t think she’s playing this time. I don’t think she’s ever going over to the hospital again.”

Then I felt myself repeating: “I think this is the end. I don’t think there is ever going to be another trip to the hospital for her.”

 

That night I stayed with my aunt and uncle. My Uncle Stanley came home the next morning at dawn and said they were sending Ruby home. He said the doctor came in and he just stood in front of her bed.

Ruby said, “Well it doesn’t look good, does it, Doc?”

The doctoring man said, “No Ruby, it doesn’t look good. I don’t think there’s anything else we can do for you.”

Ruby said, “Well that’s fine. I want to go home then. I want to go back to my real home then.” The doctor signed the order and sent her home. He didn’t send her back to Stanley and Mary’s. He sent her back to the old house. The house where my father was born. There were cobwebs, but it was her home.

 

I went over there in the afternoon and she seemed so happy. She just sat up in the bed and smiled when I came in.

She said, “Well Nathan is gone, but he left me a good bed to die in. I keep thinking about the little feller.”

I stood at the foot of the bed and I told her about all of my memories. I told her about how I remembered when I was a little boy and had the croup and she put the Vicks salve on my chest. I told her about how I remembered staying the night and how I stayed up looking at the baby dolls in the baby doll catalog with her. Then she smiled and said that she remembered it all. She had something to give me but she wasn’t ready to give it to me yet. Then she smiled. She never got around to giving it to me. And now, years later, I just wonder what it was, what it was she wanted to give me…

I went back a couple of days later and she was dying. She was shaking and groaning and shaking.

For some reason I said, “Well you look good, Grandma,” even though she looked like shit.

She wasn’t eating. They had wheeled her around the house that morning so she could see her house and her things one last time. My uncle crushed her up a slice of orange and sat down beside her bed. Then he fed it to her. My grandma sat and looked like she was a little baby bird. That’s what I thought she looked like. I watched my uncle feed his dying mother just like she used to feed him when he was a little boy.

I thought my grandma’s face looked so much like Nathan’s right then.

 

 

There was something about my Uncle Stanley’s face too that looked just like my grandma’s face from long ago. I wondered if my face would look like my Uncle Stanley’s when I died. This was the story of faces. There was one face that looked like another face before it and then another face that looked like the face before it. This went all the way back until the beginning of time. Who knew what this face would look like a thousand years from now. Me?

 

There was a part of me that wanted it to be over. My Uncle Terry came in from California and sat beside her bed and said, “You gonna go see Nathan soon?”

Ruby whispered, “Yeah.”

I shook my head and wanted it all to be over because I knew deep down inside that the dying and the dead were selfish.

I knew it that evening when my aunt said—“I know it’s the wrong thing to say but I just wish it would all be over. I’ve got so much to do at work. I know that sounds terrible.”

But I knew what she meant. Bill and Lee were going to drink beer on Friday and I wanted to drink too. I didn’t want to disappoint them, and there was a part of me wishing she would just die. I knew that the dying were selfish, and the living were too.

 

I would have been all right if I would have just left it like that—if I didn’t go back. But for some reason I did, and it was all a big mistake. I went back that Wednesday and the death rattle had started. She just looked gone, groaning full of death. And so I left that day thinking she wouldn’t make it through the day. But she did. She made it through the day and then she made it through the next day. She kept fighting and fighting some more. I stayed at my uncle’s the whole week. Then one morning I was sleeping when I heard the phone ring. It rang and it rang and I was awake all of the sudden. I heard my uncle’s voice in the other room half asleep.

“Okay.

“She did.

“Okay.”

And then he hung up.

My aunt went “Stanley” in this scared voice, but he didn’t say anything back to her. He just went into the other room where my Uncle Terry was sleeping and he opened the door and told him.

My Uncle Terry said real quick like he was awake, like he was embarrassed to be sleeping, “Oh I thought she would. I thought she would.”

Then he stood up and put his pants on.

 

They both got dressed and went into the kitchen. I got up and went into the kitchen and they were standing at the door. My uncle was the 7th son of a 7th son and my Uncle Terry was the baby of the family—a baby born blue who would have died if he hadn’t been the first of her babies born in a hospital. I stood in my underwear and they stood in their coats and it was the strangest thing. Both of them just reached out and shook my hand. They shook my hand like they didn’t know what to do. Their mother had just died and they were different now. They were free?

 

It wasn’t until later that evening, when they were planning the funeral, that I heard how she died. My Aunt Bernice said that it was at 4 o’clock in the morning and she was in the back room folding clothes (Leslie and Bernice were staying at the house that night and taking turns taking care of her). She was folding clothes and then all of the sudden she heard a noise in Grandma’s bedroom.

She listened and then Grandma said, “Good morning!”

So Bernice walked into my grandma’s bedroom not believing what she heard. Grandma hadn’t talked since Wednesday. After hearing Ruby say good morning, Bernice looked closer and Ruby was dead.

 

So after I heard about this, I just sat around and thought about what it meant. I didn’t get drunk with Bill or listen to him talk about the Greenbrier Ghost or hang out with the crazy fuckers or make prank phone calls. I thought about how strange it was that somebody would say “good morning” and then die. I thought to myself that maybe this explained something about death. I thought maybe she was saying good morning to the angel of death who was coming back to get her now. I thought maybe it was the spirit of Nathan she was saying good morning to and he was taking her away. But then I thought that maybe it didn’t mean anything. Maybe it was just the last little bit of oxygen escaping from the brain and it meant nothing. Maybe my Aunt Bernice didn’t even hear her right. Maybe my Aunt Bernice made it up. Maybe it was just a groan of death that sounded like “good morning.” And yet there was still something about all of this that said everything to me.

 

At the funeral the next day we all gathered around the grave beside Nathan’s grave and Elgie’s grave. My cousin’s wife sang a song about how Jesus loves us, complete with backing vocals on a cassette tape. She keyed the tape to start, let her head drop down dramatically, and then she started singing. Then her daughter stood beside her and did the sign language for the song. She moved her hands together like it was a bird flying into the sky. She moved her arms to portray the waves. It was sign language. And there was something kind of funny about it because there wasn’t one person who knew sign language there, but we all understood the signs. We were all deaf for a moment.

 

…So the preacher preached a eulogy about how Ruby waited to die. She took care of Nathan his whole life. And she never left him—even when people told her she should put him away in a home. She didn’t leave him because he was her baby. At the end of it all, she waited until he died. She waited all those years until he died so she could die too. Then he said that blessed are the peacemakers, but even more blessed are the caretakers.

So just like at Nathan’s funeral the Wallace and Wallace guy brought out a box of doves to fly away home and the preacher said, “We’ll now release a dove which is a symbolic representation of Ruby’s soul flying home to heaven.”

 

And so they opened up the bird box and nothing happened.

We waited.

And then this sleepy-looking dove just crawled out, except it didn’t even look like a dove really but just a fat pigeon that somebody had painted white.

It had a look on its face like,
What the fuck? Seriously, people. What the fuck? It’s way too cold to be doing this today
.

So the Wallace and Wallace guy tried to shoo it but it wouldn’t shoo.

So the preacher repeated: “We’ll now release the dove.”

The Wallace and Wallace guy shooed it again. Finally the dove shot high up into the air and out and over our heads, but instead of flying away it just landed on top of this chain-linked fence. And so the Wallace and Wallace guy tried shooing it again and everyone giggled and gathered around in a circle throwing up their arms and shouting “shoo-shoo” at the bird high above. I shouted, “Shoo.” We were all shooing.

But it wouldn’t shoo.

And so it was.

 

 

I went back to Bill’s mom’s apartment. I had already missed too much school that week and I needed to go the next day. Bill told me he was going to skip again. I told him he was never going to graduate.

That night I dreamed that she didn’t die. I dreamed she secretly escaped from the casket. I dreamed that she was back in Danese, WV, and she had kidnapped the devil. She was poking him in the ass with a pitchfork. She was stabbing him in the chest with the pitchfork, but there wasn’t any blood and there wasn’t any pain screams. There wasn’t any agony. He was just whispering…

 

 

GOOD MORNING!

I went to school. I told myself I needed to start going to school and get out of this place. When I got home Lee and Bill tried to do something for me to take my mind off Ruby. We decided to have a backyard wrestling battle royale. Naked Joe wrestled Reinaldo. I wrestled Russell and busted a chair over his head. I was next matched with Reinaldo and he pinned me before losing his next match to Bill. Then we ended the royale with a no holds barred, winner take all against Lee. Whoever could get him down would win the backyard wrestling championship belt.