Chaneysville Incident Read Online Free PDF Page B

burial, and the specifications pointedly excluded the church—while the sunlight came slamming down out of a too-blue sky, listening to the preacher deliver a eulogy that tried very hard to give the impression that Moses Washington had been deacon rather than doubter, bishop rather than bootlegger, and it must have occurred to everyone that the minister’s designation of heaven as the destination of the soul of the deceased ran directly counter to the message from Mother Nature. Finally the minister finished, and the pallbearers present raised the coffin and carried it up the slope to the back door and through the house and out the front; that was easier than fighting around the corner of the house, where the slope was abrupt. When they had carried it out to the front porch, Old Jack Crawley and Uncle Josh White took up their part of the burden, and the boxed remains of Moses Washington moved across the brow of the Hill, the pallbearers sweating and grunting, the minister following, the too-long cuffs of his baggy black pants dragging in the dirt.
    I moved along behind the minister, my mother’s hand on my shoulder guiding and pushing me at the same time, my head shielded from the sun by the hat she had made by knotting the corners of a handkerchief. Behind us came the procession, moving slowly, a spiritual rising above it as if it were not a group of people but one giant organ. I wondered how they could sing in the dust and the heat; it could not have been easy. But they did sing, and the song that Moses Washington had called for rose like the dust itself. It was a tune I knew—Moses Washington had hummed it for as long as I could remember—but I had never before heard the words. Now they rose, languid and mournful: And before I’ll be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave, and go home to my Lord, and be free.
    We reached the graveyard and stood watching while the minister prayed over the coffin, and then as it was lowered, in the old way, as Moses Washington had stipulated: six strong men slowly, solemnly paying out the rope. The undertaker, a greasy-headed black man who, as Moses Washington had demanded, had been imported from forty miles away, viewed the process with thinly concealed disgust; he would have preferred, no doubt, a gentle mechanical cranking, with the coffin dropping slowly and smoothly as if it were being lowered by the Hand of God. The men stood silently, the women were crying softly—all except for my mother, who remained brisk, efficient, and dry-eyed throughout. We dropped the ritual spades of earth on the coffin, and then we turned away and went back across the Hill. The pallbearers stood awkwardly for a moment, and then Old Jack and Josh White disappeared into the woods and the other four were free to join the rest of the people, who came crowding into the house to present their final comfort to the bereaved family and to consume the contents of the covered dishes they had brought to the house in the days since the word of Moses Washington’s death had come rushing up the slope like a grass fire.
    In the depths of the house, the heat was even worse: like oil, stubbornly refusing to circulate despite the almost frantic motion of two dozen paper fans thoughtfully donated by the Mordecai D. Johnson Funeral Home of Altoona, Pa., and expertly wielded by the ladies of the Women’s Home and Foreign Missionary Society—middle-aged women of various shapes, sizes, and shades, who spoke often simultaneously but rarely unanimously. Many of the people left quickly, knowing that although the heat was everywhere they could at least escape the odor of dying flowers mingled with two dozen variations on the theme of cheap perfume that hung in Moses Washington’s house like a fog. Those who remained had “duty” to do, or nowhere else to go. The minister stayed for reasons known only to himself; it would have been expected for most people, but Moses Washington had not been most people, and the church was