The conversation faded again and they continued toward the funeral parlor in silence; Brother Walker was looking forward to the funeral. He knew that enough members of the Faith would be there to insist that he say a few words about Brother-in-the-Faith Joe Ben after the Reverend Toms finished, and the prospect of saying a few words to all those polished seats, those somber clothes, the organ, the drapes, to
all
the plush and pompery of conventional religion, always made him a little school-girlish. A tent, he knew, could certainly be the House of the Lord as well as any building, and as long as he held with the Faith—which did
not
hold with any gaudy show of mourning—he was compelled to frown on the orthodox Christian funeral; but frown as he might, he was always secretly pleased when one of the deceased’s kin insisted—as one of the deceased’s kin invariably did—that, with all due respect for the Faith’s teachings, still
perhaps
a funeral
should
, just for appearances, be held at a funeral parlor. And in spite of all its ostentatious, gaudy, and disgusting pageantry, you couldn’t deny that that pale gray drapery lining Lilienthal’s Funeral Parlor was acoustically superior to canvas as a backdrop for the Word of God. Yes, a tent could most certainly be a House of the Lord as well as any fancy building, but it was still just a tent.
(
Wouldn’t old Joby have a field day with these kind of sun-shiny signals?
I thought to myself, just standing there, looking at the sky . . . wouldn’t he bust a
gut?
Then I heard Viv call again and headed on to the boat . . .)
Simone works futilely with scissors and needle. Indian Jenny sighs and untangles her legs and arranges them full length on her cot heavily. Oh, she isn’t
giving up
on her projects—she reaches for the copy of
The Search for Bridey Murphy
lying on the shack floor—she is merely changing her approach once more . . .
In their hotel room Rod gives up on the want ads and reluctantly unsnaps his guitar case to join this madman roommate of his in rehearsing.
Behind his sunlit scrawl of neon tubes Teddy listens to the rising pitch of laughter and merrymaking and tries to plumb the dark well it rises from. What are they afraid of
now?
Evenwrite gives up on his tie: a white shirt, o-kay, but that was compromise enough . . .
no
by god
chokerope
, and that’s final! Simone hears the doorbell ring and hurries to answer it before it wakes her six-year-old from his nap; disgustedly she wraps a faded chenille housecoat about her body and checks the empty cigarette box one last time as she leaves the bedroom. Big Newton drinks his tasteless beer and orders another, feeling more bleakish than ever . . .
(Across the river, at the garage landing, I held the boat steady while Viv stepped out of the boat with the hem of her skirt held in one hand, watching that she didn’t get any mud on her high-heeled shoes. She crossed the gravel, then headed on up to the garage and waited there for me to tie the boat up and drag a tarp over the motor. The sky looked clear, and maybe that tarp wouldn’t be necessary, but one thing you learn young in this neck of the woods is not to be sucked in by a little fair weather. “Never trust the sun no further than you can throw it,” the old man always said. I took my time lashing on the tarp in spite of the sunshine, and even though we was running a little late. I took my time and got it right and let her stand there . . .)
The Real Estate Hotwire waves at someone down the street. “There’s Sis. Hey, Sissy, wait up.” And they step up their walk to reach her. The Real Estate Man took her arm. “You positive you feel up to this, Sissy? This close after Willard’s?”
She blew her nose through the veil. “Willard always had the finest opinion of Joe Ben. I feel I should go.”
“There’s a girl. You know Brother Walker, don’t you? Of the First Church and Christian Science?”
“Metaphysics, Mr. Loop. Yes, we saw each other at—the other day. May I say again how sorry I am, Mrs. Eggleston.” Brother Walker extended his hand along with his condolences. “These last few days . . . have been a cross for many of us.”
The Real Estate Man squeezed her arm. “But we’re through it, now, isn’t that so, Sissy-little? We’re around that corner.”
They resumed walking. Sissy-little wished she were alone with her brother so she could tell him about this awful thing the insurance company was trying to do with her Willard’s money. The Real Estate Hotwire wished he’d sold Willard a better package than that theater, as long as it looked like it was coming back to him anyway. And Brother Walker wished he’d worn less sedate garb. As they walked he watched the healthy bounce of the Real Estate Man’s once-muscular breasts through the casual blue polo shirt and wished he’d dared a bit of casualness himself. It would make a nice picture against all the rest of the stiff and formal trappings. He wondered . . . perhaps he could remove his dark serge coat and loosen his tie; on a day like this, who could blame a man for being a little informal? Even a man of God? It would be one way to show all those who were not Brothers or Sisters just how the Faith stood on appearances, show them he was a regular guy. He might even remove his tie completely. Wouldn’t Reverend Toms, with his french cuffs and his double-breasted black and his hanky-in-the-pocket, wouldn’t old Biddy Toms go into a flap when he was replaced by an open-collared white shirt that delivered a better eulogy in a more resonant voice? A regular
flap?
“Ohyas,” he said, “a time of great trial for many of us.” (I got the boat secured good and walked up to the garage. Viv was waiting to see what I planned to drive into town; the jeep had that damn top on it I never liked, but the pick-up was still a mess from driving old Henry to the hospital—I hadn’t done anything about cleaning it up but for taking out that arm. So I said let’s take the jeep. And you drive, okay? I don’t care to. . . .
I never minded driving the jeep during the summer, it’s wide open and wild in good weather; but with that damned top on for winter, it makes the thing like a tin coffin on wheels, hardly any rear or front vision at all and just a couple slits in the side so you can see out that way. Not the sort of thing I like to ride in anyhow, especially to a funeral.
Viv got in behind the wheel and went to grinding the starter. I leaned back and tried to rub me a spot to see out through that plastic-covered slit in the door. . . .)
When Floyd Evenwrite leaves the house, wearing a tie, on his way to warm up his car, he meets Orland Stamper walking to his own car, as groomed and grumpy as Floyd himself—“. . . yeah, it took some doin’, Orland . . . but, shit, he
needed
brought down a peg or two.”
“If he’d been brought down sooner,” Orland said harshly, “Janice would have her a live man today instead of something swole up over at Edward Lilienthal’s. We’re just lucky his hard-headedness didn’t get more of us hurt. . . .”
“Yeah . . . too bad about Joe Ben. He was a good old boy.”
“If Hank’d been brought down that couple pegs just
one day sooner . . .
them five little tykes’d have a daddy instead of a piddling little four-thousand-dollar policy. The old man’d still have two
arms. . . .
”
“What’s the word about old Henry?” Evenwrite asked.
“Comin’ along, they say; comin’ along. Hard old coon to kill.”
“What has he said about his pride and joy knuckling under to the union? Looks to me like that alone would be enough to kill the old coon
. . . .”
“Why, to tell the truth, I don’t know how he took it. I didn’t think about it. Maybe they ain’t even told him.”
“Bull. Somebody’d sure have told.”
“Maybe not. Hank’s give orders nobody’s to get to see him. Maybe the doctor wants him to get his strength back before he hears the news.”
“Uhuh . . . an’
then
you know what. He’ll go to frailin’ whoever’s knob happens to be closest. Personally, I was Hank, I’d tell him before he got able to swing that cane of his again.”
“With one arm gone clean,” Orland said, “and the other just fresh out of a sling, I’d venture Henry Stamper’s knob-frailin’ days are a thing of the past.”
“Never saw the sun,”
Ray sings,
“shining so bright . . .”
“I ain’t givin’ up,” Jenny vows.
“Teddy . . . ?” Boney Stokes calls. “What’s the time?”
“Twenty till, Mr. Stokes,” Teddy answers.
“They should be comin’ past in about twenty minutes, then. My, my; that awful sun . . . you should think about putting up an
awning
, Teddy.”
“Yes, I guess I should.” Teddy returns to his spigots. It is still picking up. If it continues he will have to call in Mrs. Carleson from the Sea Breeze to help tonight. He should have already made the arrangements, but he still is unable to believe that such weather and well-being could stimulate so much business. It goes against all he has learned . . .
(Viv let go the jeep’s starter and took off her white gloves—the wheel and gear shift are wrapped with friction tape—and handed them to me so she could wrestle the jeep without getting them dirty. Neither of us said anything. She was fixed up real nice for the occasion; she’d worked half the morning getting her hair stacked onto her head like a coil of gold ropes—I swear to god the only thing a woman’ll spend more effort getting ready for is a wedding—but by the time she got that cold-blooded bastard choked, started, killed, started again, into low, killed again, and finally out on the road, the golden coil was on its way to coming unwound. I watched her but I didn’t put my two cents in. I didn’t even tell her to throttle it with the choke. I just sat there with them gloves in my lap figuring it’s by god
time
somebody besides me learned to tote and roll . . .)
“I ain’t quitting,” Indian Jenny assures herself when she shuts her book and puts it down, “just resting.” She closes her eyes, but the image of a green-eyed, proud-eyed young logger with a bristling mustache will not let her sleep.
Simone answers the door and . . . why, Howie Evans! “Yeah, Simone, I’m just wondering . . . if you might not join me at the Snag tonight?”
“No, Howie. I am sorry. Look at me . . . can I go into public like
this?
”
He shuffled uncomfortably for a moment, started to make a wisecrack, then grinned and said, “Well, who knows? Maybe a fairy godmother er somethin’ will come through, huh? Anyhow . . . we’ll be seeing you?”
“Perhaps. . . .”
He was gone before she could say good-by. . . .
The Real Estate Man and his bereaved sister leave Brother Walker when they reach Lilienthal’s, to go talk something over. Brother Walker searches the crowd for Janice—she will need him in this hour of need, certainly—and is astounded at the number of people who have turned out to pay their last respects to poor Joe. He’d no
idea
Brother Joe Ben had been so well loved by his neighbors . . .
(Viv or me didn’t say a word all the way into town, about Joe or anything. I imagine she figures I’d just rather not talk. She don’t have any way of knowing what I know. And it’s just as well. Because I didn’t feel like telling her how I come to know it.
The jeep was bumping and bouncing and banging so much we couldn’t of heard each other anyhow. There’s chuckholes galore. The road’s tore to hell after the storms, and the road crews are out working on it. Above the mountains there’s lots of small, tight clouds cluttering up the sky, and the sun keeps going off and on, dodging behind first one and then the other. “Man, I’m drained to a frazzle,” I say, but Viv doesn’t hear. I lay my head down against the plexiglass window and just take it easy. The sun comes out bright as hell, like it was lit with more than light. I see that snarl of berry vine beside the road and it’s like somehow it scrubs both my eyeballs clean of stuff that’d built up there without me knowing it, because I blink a couple times and look around and I’m seeing things clear as a bell. This kept happening, off and on. It’d be bright for a little bit, everything shining like chrome, waxy-looking, polished, then go dark as muddy water. Then bright again. It’s the first time I’ve really been out since Joe bought it, and I can’t help feeling that the world looks different. I tell myself that it looks so bright just because the light zooming on after that dark spell makes a diamond flash out of everything. But I ain’t convinced. It still feels like that first dazzling swipe of berry vine scrubbed my eyes clear.
I just sit there in a kind of doze, looking out through the flicker of ditch willows zipping past along the road and enjoying the scenery. Maybe I was seeing things so clear because it was the first time in I don’t know how many years I’d rode this stretch without having to do the driving. Maybe that’s it. All I know is everything was shining like a new dime. There’s rusty screen-topped cones of sawdust-burners vomiting sparks and blue smoke; widow’s-lace fern waving around the mailboxes; busy glisten of little breezes blowing across the standing water . . . swoop of powerlines . . . spearmint bush so bright and new I smell them as we pass . . . squirrels hustling around . . . then more rusty burners. Leaves, bright, waxy green, scrubbed, sort of. Prismed light where the sun comes through the drops hanging off the leaves, shattered and pure and bright. . . .
I put my face closer to the little window so I could see more. There was the sky, the little clouds, then the treetops running into the steep sloped-off canyon down to the railroad embankment, then there’s a wide drainage between the road and the track. This ditch is a mangle of scrubby little Himalaya vines; Himalaya blackberry got a pretty good flavor but loaded with seeds big enough to knock a tooth out. All the leaves had been whipped off the vines by that last big storm, and the vines look like a king-sized roll of steel wool. I bounce along, looking at them vines, thinking to myself if a fellow was big enough he’d just grab him a handful of that and scrub the world to a fare-thee-well, get shut of them clouds,
really
brighten things up. . . . This notion slid into a kind of open-eyed dream. I take a giant fistful of steel wool and go at it, working like a nigger. I can’t stop somehow. I finish with the sky and go at the beach. Then the town, then the hills. I’m panting and sweating and scrubbing like a nigger! I step back and take a look: but instead of things getting brighter and clearer this time, it’s just made them duller. Like it kind of faded the color out. I grab up the roll and tear into it again, and when I’m finished this time it’s even more faded than before. So this time I really work it over. I scrub everything, the world and sky and my eyes and the sun and everything, and finally fall back, wore clean out. I take a look and it’s bright all right, like a movie-show screen when the film breaks and you got nothing to look at up there but the bright white light. Everything else is gone. I throw away the steel wool; it’s fine to brighten things up with once in a while, but too much of it, man, can rub
everything
away.)