5. Papa’s Young Protégé

We are out in the cemetery now, at the graveside, where a great heap of black soil and yellow clay is held back by a pile of fence rails. Leather lines, borrowed from some farmer’s team, are looped under the coffin, and strong arms lower it into the flimsy pine rough-box, the lid to which quickly follows. Papa reads the conventional “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God… we commit this body to the ground: Earth to earth.”

A neighbor, with a shovel heaped high with dirt, would dump it onto the lid of the rough-box, and an anguished cry would burst forth from the family.

“Ashes to ashes.”

Another shovelful bounced and rattled on the rough-box, and another wail came from the bereaved.

“Dust to dust.”

More dirt and more crying. Then the shovels really went to it with a vim. At least a dozen men joined in the prompt filling of the grave. The fence rails were tossed aside; and, in less time than it takes to tell it, the grave would be shaped to the age-old pattern.

Then everybody grew quiet and Papa would be ready to pronounce the benediction. But before he did that, he would say, “Friends are invited to return to the family residence for refreshments.”

Now that it was all over, the community felt an immediate sensation of relief, and made no bones about it. The men, amazingly cheered, strolled out to the hitching racks, discussing their crops on the way. The women, who had barely spoken to one another, ambled out in groups, lightheartedly exchanging news of their families.

At the residence of the bereaved, a dozen or more of the women living in the neighborhood had set long tables in the dooryard, under the trees, loaded with heaping platters of fried chicken, cold baked ham, potato salad, pickled beets, deviled eggs, homemade bread, fruit preserves, every known variety of pie, and beautiful cakes with white icing and glamorized by little red cinnamon drops.

Naturally the women of the family received tender attention. They could smile now. It was a wan, weary little smile, but it was a smile; for they had cried until they could cry no more. And the men of the family, who had been out in the barn, were patted on the shoulder by the neighbors who had put the team away in their stalls and filled their feedboxes with the right amount of oats. Then the men would gather around the table. They were hungry. Within an hour, you wouldn’t have guessed that any of these people had attended a funeral. They had cried it all out. I used to cry, too, even when I had never seen a member of this family before. Some kindhearted woman, seeing the Reverend’s little boy with swollen eyes, would bring him another drumstick.