Prologue
1987
Two noteworthy things happened on the day we buried my grandmother, I turned thirty-seven and I found out about my father. I guess I knew my dad about as well as any son can know his father. But, like most if not all children, I didn’t know everything about my dad. On that day, though, I learned more than I ever imagined I would.
Looking back on it, though, I don’t suppose this newfound understanding would have come about if I hadn’t been at my grandmother’s funeral.
She had been sick for at least a dozen years and close to the end that many times or more. But, each time she’d recovered to live another year or two before death would pull on the gloves and spar with her once more. She, of course, lost this final fight.
And like most families her death caused us to have equal measures of both relief and sorrow. The sorrow was obvious and the relief came from knowing she hadn‘t really been with us for a number of years. Long ago, she’d started living in a world populated by the family she’d known decades ago.
A world which allowed her to hold and kiss the smiling face of a 10-year-old daughter who would never have to die of typhoid. A world where she wouldn’t have to bury a husband of sixty years. And a world where she woudn’t have to see a son murdered just as his life was really beginning.
I was thinking about that world, I guess, when the voice startled me.
“I’m real sorry ’bout your grandma, Mark.”
I turned and saw that it was Simpson Borden, the brother of my dad’s oldest friend, George. I hadn’t seen him in a number of years .He looked much the same except for the addition of those intervening years. I shook his offered hand.
“Thanks, Mr. Simpson.”
“She’as a fine lady, son.”
“Yessir, she w…..” My voice was suddenly larger than my throat, instantly choking off whatever else I was going to say. The emotions of the last few days seem to have finally gotten to me. My eyes welled up.
I felt, more than saw, the old man’s hand come to rest on my shoulder. A sob broke from me when he did this, my hidden emotions suddenly freed. Thankfully, it lasted only a few moments.
“How ya been doin?” I was finally able to ask.
“Pretty good,” A worn out smile said more than his words. “Seems like I spend all muh time at funerals now, though.”
He took his hand from my shoulder then looked around the tiny, oak and elm filled country cemetery.
“Where’s ya daddy? I thought I saw him just a few minutes ago.”
I looked around as well and when I didn’t see him or his truck, I grinned knowingly.
“His truck’s not where he parked it and Momma rode with Aunt Miriam. I guess he’s already gone home or maybe gone to tend to the cattle he’s got up on the Ridge. Anything to get away from here. You know how dad is, with crowds and all.”
“Oh, yea, I know.”
“Especially, doesn’t like funerals.”
“Well, ya can’t blame him, son. Started learnin’ ’bout ’em awful young. He’as only ’bout six or seven I guess, just a couple of years younger than ya Aunt Ellie when she died.”
He hesitated a moment as he thought back on a relative who had been gone for nearly twenty-five years before I was born. Then he grinned as the memory seemed to become clearer in his mind.
“Ya know we were tha same age, went ta school together. I can still see her right now. Prettiest little thing ya ever saw. No bigger’n a minute.”
He chuckled as the memory of my aunt seemed to warm him.
“I remember one time ole Billy Tacker. He’as a good year or so older and a whole lot bigger than Ellie or me either one. But I remember he pulled one’a her pigtails one day, ya know ya grandma always had her in pigtails, and I remember she let out a scream ‘at sounded like a wild In’jun or somethin‘. Next thing I knew, she had Billy on tha ground and ’fore anyone could get her off, she bloodied his nose and knocked out one of his front teeth.”
I laughed along with him, then even though his smile sort of remained, his eyes change and he said, “Then she just got sick one day and I never saw her no more.”
I looked back at the tombstones so he could be alone with his memories, memories which, as they do for all of us, can go from sweetness to heartache in an instant.
“Yea,” he sighed. “ Ya daddy learned about people dyin’ awful young.”
He wiped the heel of his hand through his right eye, then looked down at the marker for my dad’s brother, James, and nodded at it.
“And, I’ll tell ya, it was a bad time all around when James died,” His voice was almost a whisper, now. “I swear, it sure don’t seem like fifty years ago.”
We both were silent for a moment, staring at the granite stone as if our joint attention would somehow change the past.
“I don’t know much about him.” I finally said.
“He’as a good boy.” I guess the old man took my words as his cue. “Was set to be a good man. Was gonna make something of hisself for sure. Never got the chance, though. Ya know ya daddy and him were almost dead ringers for each other.”
“That’s what I heard. I’ve seen pictures of him. They looked a lot alike.”
“Course that’s good and bad,” the old man went on. “Might still be alive if he hadn’t. Looked like him, that is. But, then………, well, I guess it worked out like it was supposed to. God don’t make mistakes, ya know.”
“No, sir he doesn’t............... Was my uncle murdered?”
The question came out before I realized I was even going to ask it. I’d broached the subject to different ones in my family before, but I’d never gotten a straight answer about it. All I ever knew was that my Uncle James had been killed when he was eighteen. Beyond that everyone seemed to be real closed-mouth about it for some reason.
“Ya, mean nobody’s ever told ya what happened?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, I’ll be,” he said, head down. Then he smiled. “Ya know that sounds about like ya daddy. He never was one to volunteer information.”
He continued smiling then shook his head and looked up first at me then past me.
“Tell ya what,” He said. “If ya got some time let’s go over there.”
He pointed to two cast iron chairs not far away under what had to be an 80 year-old oak. I followed him and we sat down. He didn’t say anything for a few moments, gathering his thoughts, I guess. As I waited for what he might have to tell me, I looked out from the cemetery and across the cotton fields toward the Ridge.
Even at their half-mile distance, I could see the trees scattered over it’s slopes begin to sway in the early September wind, signaling the coming of fall. Then in what seemed an instant, the wind arrived at the cemetery, hitting us with the remnants of a searing summer.
It washed over me heating my skin briefly before rushing up into the trees leaving me just as quickly chilled. And as I imagined the whisper of the leaves rustling on the Ridge, the old man began telling me a story.
