The Front Porch Prophet (19 page)

“Don’t worry about it, Reverend. We all know that John Robert has his ways, and Granmama knew it, too.” A.J. paused. “You’re wrong about one thing, though. He’s not an unbeliever.” John Robert’s hatred was sustained by his belief. A.J. was surprised the Reverend Doctor had not understood. He seemed sharper than that.

“That went well,” he said to Maggie after the preacher had gone.

“I thought so,” she said, smiling ruefully.

“Next time you get married, maybe you ought to shoot for normal people.”

“Maybe,” she replied, coming over and holding him. They were still for a while, holding one another while Granmama slept the long sleep.

“This is too weird for me,” said A.J. “Do you know I don’t even feel sad? I don’t feel anything. I’m just as screwed up as John Robert.”

“You’re sad,” she said with concern in her voice. “I can tell.” She held him a little longer.

The ritual that followed resembled an Irish wake, although the only Irish present were third and fourth generation, and no consumption of alcohol was evident except for the occasional nip Eugene secured in the yard. Friends and neighbors began to drop by to express their regard, and by dark it was standing room only. Food was brought by all of the female mourners, and the kitchen and dining room were filled to capacity with hams, fried chicken, potato salad, and an uncountable array of side dishes, pies, and cakes. Everyone commented on how good Granmama looked, which A.J. considered nonsense, because she was dead. But the observations were well meant, and there isn’t all that much that could
be
said about a dead body. Granmama had covered the subject at length in her final instructions, and A.J. smiled when he remembered her words on the notebook paper:

I don’t want the whole town to see me when I’m dead, but I don’t suppose that it’s decent to have a closed coffin unless there has been an accident or afire. But you mark my words on this.
I do not want Estelle Chastain throwing herself all over me and having a fit.
She tends to do that. You remember what she did at Bonnie Cotton’s funeral. She got in there with Bonnie, and they had a time getting her out. What they should have done was just nail her up, since she always said she was so close to Bonnie, although Bonnie remembered it differently.

So A.J. nodded and shook hands as the town filed past, but he kept a close eye on Estelle to make sure she behaved herself. She did, mostly, and A.J. was quick to escort her out for a medicinal dose of potato salad on the one occasion she seemed to be working herself into a state.

The public portion of the ceremony began to wind down around nine o’clock, and by ten or so the group had dwindled to John Robert, A.J., Maggie with a sleeping Emily Charlotte on her lap, Charnell Jackson, Doc Miller, Eugene, and Slim Neal, who was grief-stricken. Eugene told A.J. that Slim had actually broken down earlier in the day while writing a speeding ticket and had let the scofflaw off with a tearful warning when he found himself too overcome to resume. This was not the Slim they had all come to know and love, and even John Robert was unable to bring himself to run the maudlin public official off.

“Well, she’s in heaven now,” offered Charnell Jackson, raising his glass in tribute. With the crowds gone, John Robert had allowed the bar to open. Granmama herself had enjoyed the occasional drop of wine.

“Surrounded by ten million birds who want to have a word with her,” A.J. noted quietly with a smile. Eugene choked on his drink.

“Thirsty
birds,” Maggie said with a chuckle.

“Ten million thirsty birds with the attitude that they wouldn’t eat a vegetable if you paid them,” Eugene said, laughing quietly. John Robert had a broad smile, the first on his features in some time.

Granmama had been a Christian saint among the women of the world, but she would not tolerate a bird in her vegetable patch. Her solution to this perennial problem did not involve scarecrows, which were ineffective, or shotgun blasts in the air, which tended to separate the telephone wires from the house. Ever since A.J. could remember, she had fed the birds to keep them out of her garden. Every morning, Clara pinched off a wad of biscuit dough for her feathered friends and loaded it down with as much salt it would assimilate. Then she made little balls out of the mixture and scattered them around her garden. The unsuspecting winged felons would hop up, cute as could be, and partake of these tidbits. An hour later they would be dead as a stone.

“Look, she’s feeding the birds,” Maggie had said during her first visit to the farm. “Your granmama is so nice.”

“She’s killing the birds,” A.J. corrected her. “She’s like the Joe Stalin of the bird world. She’s killed more birds than Colonel Sanders.”

“That’s not funny,” Maggie replied, taking Granmama’s side. She looked so sweet out there with her straw hat and apron, slowly working her way to the left in an attempt to flank an especially cunning blackbird that was resistant to her wiles.
Coo, coo
could be heard wafting in the breeze, although A.J. had no idea why Granmama was trying to lure a blackbird by making pigeon noises.

“I swear it’s true,” he said to Maggie. “Every day I go down with a bucket and pick them up. This place is bird hell.” So Granmama had been a tad judgmental with the avian population, but that was small potatoes when compared to the sins of the wretched world.

They toasted her quietly once again, and she in her pine box accepted their tribute with quiet repose. More stories emerged, testimonials to the life she had led and the woman she had been. Maggie shared the advice that had been offered upon her marriage to
A.J.: Now, honey, you’ll have to put up with a certain amount of that
business
if you want to have children.
Much good-natured kidding was heaped upon A.J., and for a few moments the cat had his tongue. Doc Miller told of the time he suggested she take a tablespoon or two of wine at mealtimes to aid her digestion. This was sound medical advice, and often the old ways were the best. Clara took right to the idea, and before long she was consuming a bottle of wine per day, but always one tablespoon at a time.

“She enjoyed her tablespoon of wine,” John Robert agreed, smiling slightly as he remembered the exact manner in which she poured her dosage.

“Damn, Doc,” Eugene said. “It’s a good thing you didn’t put her on salty dough.” Eugene had consumed uncounted tablespoonfuls of good Canadian whiskey by this time, but his observation had nonetheless been presented with the greatest respect.

They moved out to the porch, and the narrations continued into the night, verbal monuments carved on the gentle Georgia breeze, a celebration in flesh and word of one of the good Lord’s finer pieces of work. There was a sweet sadness underlying the vignettes, and a gentle humor. She had not been perfect, and she did not change the world, although in her small part of it she had been a force to contend with. Her legacy was right there on that porch, friends and family who remembered her well and who wished she had not gone, plain people gathered together to try to fill the empty space now left in their lives. Her harvest was the dozens of visitors earlier in the evening who had felt the need to express a fare-thee-well. Her eulogy was the quiet murmur drifting from the porch in a generally starward direction, simple soliloquies in which no hard word could be discerned from people who would not let her face her last dawn aboveground alone.

The night passed, and the sky to the east shaded from black to blue. The quiet before the sunrise was broken by the chirping of birds as they got an early start on the daily business of survival. The early ones got the worms, and the rest would be left with the salty dough. The group on the porch began to move around and stretch. A.J. stepped out to the old pump by the well house and worked the cast-iron handle. The antique was there long past its necessity because Granmama had liked it. A.J. washed his face in the cool gush of water. Eugene joined him.

“Are you in the mood to dig a hole?” A.J. asked. Eugene had his head under the spout. He came up and shook his head like an old hound.

“Let’s do it,” he said. Granmama wanted her final resting place opened and closed by hand and had specified this requirement in terms that held no ambiguity. So while Eugene threw some digging tools into the truck, A.J. walked up to the house to see who wished to participate. Doc did, but he had checked with Minnie and had to go. There were still some out there he could save. Slim wanted the honor but was duty bound to go make a round. He promised to return shortly if no criminal activity detained him. Charnell also wanted to be of service, but Doc forbade it.

“You know what I’ve told you about your heart, Charnell,” Doc said. “If you try to help dig this grave, we’ll end up putting you in it.” So Charnell agreed to help Maggie make some breakfast. The plan was formed to bring the gravediggers hot coffee and fresh biscuits presently. John Robert appeared on the porch. He was clean shaven and wore a fresh white shirt.

“Are you ready, John Robert?” A.J. asked.

“Ready.”

“You’re going to ruin that shirt.”

“Expect so.”

The burial party piled into A.J.’s truck and headed for the grove. John Robert marked off the grave while A.J. unloaded the tools—spades, a mattock, and an axe for the inevitable tree root. They set to, one on the mattock and the others on the shovels, and before long they were shin deep. A truck pulled up, and they looked over, expecting to see Charnell and the biscuits. They saw him, and he had more than breakfast with him. In the cab were Slim and Bird Egg, and a group of Sequoyah’s finest filled the cargo compartment: Hoghead, T.C. Clark, Brickhead, John McCord, and Jackie Purdue. The second shift took over the digging as A.J., John Robert, and Eugene took a coffee break. The work progressed swiftly, and the task was completed before the sun had climbed to the tops of the oaks. They adjourned back to the house, where Eugene and A.J. meticulously washed A.J.’s old truck, which would serve as Clara’s caisson to the grove. She had possessed a soft spot for the vehicle, calling it a
good old pile of junk,
and A.J. thought she would prefer it to a hearse. All was ready for her
bon voyage.

And so they sent her off. On a spring afternoon so blue and mild that it snatched the breath, Clara claimed her reward. Her mortal remains were placed carefully beside her husband, and the Reverend Doctor offered kind and comforting words. Angel sang so sweetly that surely even God above turned His vast attention toward high Georgia and looked with favor upon His gathered children. Then dozens of willing hands—men, women, and children—quickly replaced the dirt that had been earlier removed. It was done. Clara Longstreet weighed anchor and set sail, and neither she nor her equal would again grace the lives of her loved ones.

A.J. snapped out of his reverie with a start. He had not thought of Granmama’s death in a long time. The misty rain had grown to a drizzle. The chill in the air had turned to cold. He did not know the time and could not swear to the day. A deep melancholy descended upon him, a profound sadness, and he could not remember ever being as totally alone as he was in that instant. A tear slid down his cheek, then another. His throat closed, and his body shuddered as he tried to deny the emotion. His self-control crumbled and he began to cry.

“Well, shit,” he said between clenched teeth. He was grateful that Maggie and the children were not present to witness the spectacle.

A.J. sat and cried in the cold rain. He cried until his eyes were dry and his voice was hoarse. He cried for Eugene. He cried for the millions of souls who never saw it coming. And he cried for Granmama. She had been cold in the clay for ten long years. Finally, A.J. had found his tears.

A.J. WAS SITTING AT THE KITCHEN TABLE EATING
fried Spam when his family arrived home from Eudora’s wedding. Spam was a treat reserved for when Maggie was elsewhere, because she could not tolerate the smell of the sautéed delicacy. A.J. had never understood this point of view and finally came to the conclusion it was a gender phenomenon, something to do with the Y chromosome. So he ate faster when he heard the van door slam in the driveway. His one thought was to remove the evidence. The can was already in the garbage, and he had rinsed the pan right after sliding the greasy brown rectangles onto his plate. Long years of illicit Spam eating had taught him to eradicate the trail. He swallowed the last bite just as J.J. burst through the door, followed by his two older sisters. Maggie brought up the rear looking somewhat the worse for wear.

“Daddy, Daddy!” J.J. shouted as he jumped in A.J.’s lap. “I won the license plate game!” This was one of the cherished car games of the Longstreet children. On long drives they would compete to see who could spot license plates from different states. A.J. found it odd that his son had won. The boy was vague on the rules and had once claimed a
Get Your Heart in Dixie or Get Your Ass Out
plate on the front of a Dodge pickup.

“He did not win,” stated Harper Lee. “He counted Georgia licenses forty-two times. He cheats.” There was disgust in her voice, as if her sibling were something she had discovered on the bottom of her shoe.

“I don’t cheat!” J.J. hollered.

“How many states did you count?” Emily Charlotte asked, her voice reasonable and calm. A.J. wanted to warn J.J. that anything he said would be used against him.

“Seventy-seven,” he replied. A.J. cringed. He was on his own.

“There are only fifty!” Emily slammed her point home. She brushed past on the way to her room.

“Are not!” came J.J.’s rebuttal. He jumped from his father’s lap and followed his nemesis from the room.

“He is such a creep,” said Harper Lee. “We should give him away.” She took car games very seriously and was hard pressed to accept dishonesty in the ranks. They could hear the debate raging upstairs. She shook her head as she left the kitchen. A.J. arose and went to Maggie.