Blackman's Coffin (8 page)

Elijah climbed in beside my father. The Model T backfired once in protest and then lurched forward. I was on my way.

Without a clock I could only watch the thin gap between the doors for any sign of daylight.

If Elijah and my father spoke to each other, their words were too low for me to hear over the sound of the engine and pounding rain. At times the jolts from the bumpy road knocked the breath from my lungs, but the scariest moments happened when the rear end would fishtail, the tires sloshing as the dirt roads turned to mud. I wasn’t afraid that the hearse would slide into a ditch. I was afraid the hearse would slide off the mountain. We were on the same road we had taken from Spartanburg when Father purchased the hearse, a snaking, narrow way that in places had been carved out of the mountainside.

For several hours, I lay in terror with only the single thickness of pine boards between me and a dead man. The storm clouds must have been thick because the road had leveled before even a hint of gray marked the seam between the doors. I breathed easier knowing we were in the flatlands and the danger of tumbling into a ravine had passed.

The downpour continued and the Model T crawled along through what must have been a blinding torrent. At this speed, we would be lucky to make Georgia by nightfall let alone return home by Sunday. As the morning light brightened, the air in the hearse grew warm and heavy. My leg began to hurt. I slipped the support strap off my shoulder and pulled my phthisic stump clear of the socket. The pain eased. I lay back down and the rocking of the floorboards softened to a gentle sway. Somewhere outside of Greenville I fell asleep.

A door slammed and I awoke with a start. The hearse wasn’t moving. Sunlight streamed through the slit between the doors. I heard Father’s voice and then Elijah calling out to someone. In less than a minute, three other people spoke, but they were too far away for me to understand the words. Then I heard the chattering of children.

The inside of the hearse had become as hot as an oven and I was afraid Father would go off to discuss burial arrangements. My parents had warned me about playing in empty boxcars in the Asheville freight yard. Children had accidentally been locked in and died of the heat. I scrabbled around and crawled to the rear doors. Propping myself on my good knee, I pounded my fists against the mahogany planks. Outside a woman screamed.

This was not the way I’d wanted to reveal myself to Father.

The doors swung open and daylight burst in like an exploding Fourth of July rocket. I flung my forearm over my eyes and squinted against the brilliance. Black silhouettes backed away, some running, some stumbling. They must have thought I’d crawled out of the coffin.

One figure remained, and as my eyes adjusted, I saw Father scowling at me.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

My mouth went dry. I looked beyond him to Elijah who drew closer. He stared at me and then at the coffin as if I might have damaged it somehow. Behind him, a few Negro men and women froze, the panic in their faces replaced by curiosity. A girl of no more than four peeked around the faded floral skirt of a bone thin woman who must have been her mother.

Father slapped his hand hard against the floorboard. “I asked you a question, Henderson.”

I didn’t want to be disciplined by my father in front of these people. I didn’t have a convenient lie so I grabbed at a convenient truth. “You never said I couldn’t come. I didn’t want Mr. Elijah to have to ride in the back.”

The color rose in his face and I realized I had insulted him. My father wasn’t like so many others in town who called Elijah and his people niggers or made them give way on the sidewalk. He would have made me ride in the back just like I did when we brought the hearse up the mountain from Spartanburg.

“I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I didn’t want to be left behind.” Blinded by tears, I swept my hand around, clutched my artificial leg, and lifted it over my head. “Left behind with this.”

“You could have asked me,” Father said. I heard the hurt in his voice.

All my posturing vanished and I let the leg fall against the coffin with a loud clatter. My chest heaved and I buried my face in my hands. Father let me cry.

After a few minutes, he said, “And I could have asked you.”

I raised my head. Father reached out his hands to help me down.

No one spoke while I leaned against the hearse and attached my leg. The sun shone directly overhead, pulling steam out of the soaked ground. Sweat rolled into my eyes.

My father leaned in the hearse. “I’ll get your crutches.”

“Too wet. They’ll sink.”

We were parked about fifty feet from the main road, and if there had ever been gravel on this driveway, it had long ago been beaten beneath the surface.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“In for lunch,” Elijah replied. “This here’s my cousin Bessie’s on my mother’s side.”

Father took my arm and we walked around the hearse. About twenty yards away stood a small one-story farmhouse. A buckboard wagon had been unhitched in front. In its bed, bushel baskets were filled with peaches and I guessed Bessie’s family was either taking them to market or selling them to passing cars. In the shade underneath the wagon, chickens and guinea hens pecked at worms and grubs driven up by the rain.

As we walked, the others fell in behind us like Father and I were leading a parade. Beyond the house, I spied a well and three outbuildings—a barn with doors open on either end to let air pass through, a shed with a tin roof that sheltered a smithy, and an outhouse set farthest from the well. Its door opened and an older woman came out still arranging her dress.

“There’s Bessie,” Elijah said. “These are her children and grandchildren. Bessie’s man fell under a hay mower a couple years back. Her kinfolk are trying to get her to move north where they can get good jobs. Can’t say as I disagree. Ain’t no future in sharecropping.”

As the woman came closer, she fixed her sharp eyes on me and then glanced at Elijah.

“One more for lunch,” Elijah said. “This is Mr. Youngblood’s son Henderson.”

“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” I said.

She smiled. “A well-spoken lad.” She turned to my father. “Thank you kindly for bringing Uncle Hannable so we can pay our respects.”

Then I noticed that everyone including the four-year-old were in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. “Are we in Georgia?”

“Liberty, South Carolina,” Father said. “The deceased is to be buried in a family plot in Georgia.”

I remembered Elijah saying that yesterday and how this was the only place we could eat together because of what they call the Jim Crow laws.

“I was left a little piece of land that was the old homestead,” Elijah said. “Mail the tax money in every year. It’s overgrown now because the ground’s hilly and doesn’t take easily to a plow. But when I quit working for Mrs. Vanderbilt, I aim to set that right.”

Father helped me up the two plank steps to the front porch. As we walked by the wagon, the pungent odor of ripe peaches hung in the air. Miss Bessie must have seen me eyeing them.

“We’ll give you a gunny sack of those peaches to take with you. Folks in Georgia make a big to-do over their peaches, but to me there’s nothing better than a South Carolina peach.”

She opened the screen door and nodded for Father and me to enter. “Everything’s just about ready. There’s a wellspring in the kitchen if you’d like a cool drink or to splash some fresh water on your face.”

I noticed no one else but Miss Bessie, Father, and I had come up on the porch. I entered the house first. The front room was small and a single table stood in the center with one chair facing away from the window and placed before a plain white china plate and dull utensils.

“We brought the kitchen table out here so it won’t be so hot. I’ll get another plate for the boy.”

Father caught the woman’s arm as she passed. “Isn’t anyone else eating with us? Elijah?”

Miss Bessie turned and looked as proper as any school mistress including Miss Nettles. “You are my guests. The others will eat outside after you’ve been served.” She pulled a second chair from a corner of the room and set it on the near side to Father’s.

I looked over my shoulder and saw the younger woman with the child now standing in front of the screen door. The youngster pressed her face against the mesh, bowing it in until it wrapped around her features like a metal veil. Here we were at the only place on our journey where coloreds and whites could eat together and we weren’t eating together.

Father and I sat and Miss Bessie brought another set of utensils. She picked up Father’s plate. “I’ll carry the food hot from the kitchen. I hope you don’t mind having your Sunday dinner on Saturday.”

“We’re honored by your thoughtfulness,” Father said.

As soon as Miss Bessie disappeared, I asked, “Why are we here by ourselves? Shouldn’t you insist we all eat together rather than make them wait outside?”

Father smiled and shook his head. “The point is that because we can all eat together, they are offering this privilege on their terms. I wouldn’t take Elijah’s money and he understands that. But to not take a man’s hospitality is something else. Remember that, Henderson, and show your appreciation by cleaning your plate.”

Having had no breakfast and smelling the tantalizing aromas of fried chicken and cornbread would make that an easy obligation.

“But I’ll insist there be no second helpings until everyone else has eaten,” Father said.

“Yes, sir. How much longer till we reach the burial site?”

Father pulled his silver pocket watch from his trousers. “Now that the weather’s cleared we’ll make better time. I reckon between four and five o’clock. We’ll have a couple of hours of daylight. We’ve probably got to dig the grave.”

“There’s nobody at the cemetery to do that?”

“There’s no cemetery. It’s a family plot and Elijah’s the only member who’s going to be there. He said he’ll take a shovel and pickax from here. I’ll help as much as he’ll let me.”

Miss Bessie returned with two plates heaped high with a thigh and drumstick each, snap beans, mashed potatoes, and cornbread soaked with butter. “You want sweet milk or sweet peach tea?” she asked.

Father looked at me to answer first.

“What’s peach tea?”

“Sun-brewed tea with peach juice squeezed in. Mighty delicious.”

“That’s what I’ll have, please.”

“Make that two, please,” Father said.

“Eat slowly,” Miss Bessie said. “I want you to save room for dessert.” She rested her hand lightly on my shoulder. “Guess what that’s gonna be.”

“Peach pie?”

She laughed and patted my head. “You’ve got a smart boy, Mr. Youngblood. A smart boy.”

I ate my fill, careful not to wolf down large bites, which would have raised my mother’s eyebrows had she been there.

Before dessert, Father slid back his chair and loosened his belt a notch. “If I had extra money, I’d open up a diner for Bessie in Asheville. That woman knows how to cook.”

Miss Bessie came into the room with two slices of steaming peach pie. From the smile on her face, I knew she’d heard Father’s compliment.

As we prepared to leave, Elijah laid a shovel and pickax in the narrower space between the coffin and side of the hearse. “I’ll ride back here,” he said. “Henderson’s done taken the rough road.”

“No,” I said. “I’m more comfortable where I can stretch out my leg.” Truth be told, sitting in the passenger seat would have been much better than bouncing on the floor.

“Let’s keep the doors open so Henderson has more air,” Father said. “We can tie them against the sides.” He crawled in the hearse searching for extra rope and then looked at the coffin. “Elijah, did you use them all?”

“Yes, sir. With the rain, I didn’t want the load shifting on some slippery curve.”

For the first time I took a good look at the coffin. Four lengths of rope stretched across its width and were tied to the recessed eyehooks in the heavy plank flooring.

“We won’t need the middle two,” Father said. “Henderson, squeeze up on the other side and untie the ends.”

I wormed my way over the shovel and pickax where I could attack the knots. While I was undoing the second one, I noticed one of the nails in the coffin lid was bent over and smashed into the wood. Hammer claw marks scratched the grain around several others. The Cincinnati undertaker needed better craftsmanship. Father would never have done such a poor job.

We stopped at a general store in the next town of Westminster for gasoline. The owner filled the tank and the two spare cans Father stored under the front seat. Then we followed him inside to pay at the register. Elijah bought me a handful of penny candy.

“We’ll be coming back through tonight,” Father told the man. “What time do you close?”

The old fellow stroked his scrawny beard and then hooked his thumbs in the suspenders of his bib overhauls. “I lock the pumps at five o’clock. Won’t open up till seven Monday morning, tomorrow being the Lord’s Day and all.”

“Anybody else open later?” Father asked.

“Nope. Not in Westminster. Might be somebody back in Easely, but I don’t know for sure.” He risked a quick glance at the hearse and whispered, “You got a body out there?”

“Yes. Bound for Gainesville.”

The man shook his head. “Even if you and your boy just unload it, you won’t make it back to Easley in time.”

I knew the boy he meant was Elijah, not me.

The man shifted his wad of tobacco from one cheek to the other. “Course, I reckon I could let you pay in advance.”

“Pay in advance?” Father asked.

“Yep. I got a storage shed out back and could leave a couple cans filled. Nobody would bother them.”

“But I won’t know how much I need.”

“There’s that.” The old man leaned across the counter. “I figure two five-gallon cans ought to do it. At two bits a gallon that would come to two-fifty.”

Father thought about it.

“You can trust me,” the man said. “Give me the money and the gas will be there.”

“I don’t think she’ll take ten gallons.”

The man shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Elijah looked at my father and then the man behind the counter. “Sir, how about we buy five gallons in advance. You leave the extra can and we’ll pay for any more we use.”