Here follows an experiment in posting something more creative-like. It may not always adhere strictly to the facts, but I assure you it is the truth.
Funeral Sermon
When the preacher came, no lie any adult could tell would put me at ease. Preacher Curley was bald, perpetually red-faced, and short. On Sunday mornings he was all fire and brimstone and Baptist, delivering baleful sermons to a flock eager for chastening. On Sunday afternoons, he had dinner with my grandparents, and sometimes I was there too, cowed into politeness by my memories of earlier in the day. But it was a Saturday this time that Preacher Curley drove up. There’s no church on Saturdays. Papaw died that afternoon, in the middle of Preacher Curley’s prayers.
By the time Papaw was dying, though, I had stopped going to church. Every Sunday since I was ten, I pretended to have a headache, too sick for church. It was one of my mother’s favorite ploys for getting out of family functions, so I must have picked it up from her. My preacher frightened me, shouting his way through sermons. I thought he was angry, and when I asked the Sunday School teacher, she brushed my questions aside. “Preacher Curley is a man of God, dear. He’s angry because God is angry. We are weak before Our Lord. We mustn’t displease Our Lord And Savior Jesus Christ by asking questions about the preacher.”
We took turns praying in Sunday School, hands joined in a circle of fellowship. I was too shy to speak out loud in front of my classmates and the teacher, so I refused each time. I could recite any number of prayers by heart, but the complex, archaic language of them confused me, and the simpler ones were just boring. Obviously, I wanted God to keep my family and friends safe, and since God was omniscient, why did I have to say so out loud? And if I had to hold hands with the entire Sunday School group while I prayed, did that mean I was wishing for all of their well-being, too? Some of those kids, I wasn’t so sure about.
My parents were easily fooled at first. I only got headaches on random Sundays, so they never found a pattern to my deception. After a few months, they began insisting that I go, which surprised me. They weren’t very religious themselves; Mom seldom went to church with us, and when she did, she worried aloud that Preacher Curley was working himself into a heart attack. Dad’s piety only got him as far as the parking lot of Mt. Pisgah Baptist—he drove my brothers and me to the church every Sunday, let us out of the truck, then turned around and drove himself back home. When my parents insisted on my going to church, my fleeting teenage rebellion kicked in and I refused to go. After a few weeks of genuine headaches and sitting stoically in a pew, staring at the hymnal, Mom and Dad relented. I only went to Mt. Pisgah after that on Christmas and Easter, when Mamaw Haffey guilted me into it.
In my family, nobody tells you what’s going on until you’re 21. So I didn’t know Papaw was dying, exactly. He had been sick all my life, that was nothing new. But I could read the anxiety in the women’s eyes and the piles of whittling shavings beside the men. Something was wrong, something worse than usual. And the worse things get, the less anybody wants to talk about it. The grownups nominated the youngest adult to step outside the house and take us, the too-young-to-understand, for a walk. What was discussed inside the house, behind closed doors? I imagine them all sitting vigilant, wondering in silence how to help their father. I imagine him, faintly breathing, ready for his pain to ease but not quite ready to overburden his children with death.
I imagine my dad was Papaw’s favorite son. Of seven boys, Dad was the first to learn his father’s trade, though he was the middle child. Papaw built houses to last, houses to withstand the harshest winter, the strongest hurricane wind, or the fiercest domestic strife. He taught my father how to use a chalkline, read a level, and take care of tools they likely could not afford. Dad also watched his father meet with new customers, saw how they so eagerly shared their dreams of owning a house and settling down, how careful a guardian of those dreams Papaw was.
When it came time to discuss terms or pay up, Dad knew why he was just as happy to trade a pregnant sow or a team of mules as he was to take cash. As measured in tangible terms, they never turned a profit on their work. But they were beloved. I think that’s why Dad was able to entice his brothers, both older and younger, to join the family business. Together, they nurtured our small town, helped most of a generation of kids grow up not too far from home, put down roots within walking distance of their own parents’ doors. When Papaw turned sixty, his sons became Mahaffey Brothers Builders, and everything they built was meant to last. They remembered every favor they’d been granted, and those they helped along the way made sure none of the Mahaffey boys ever did without. If I were still living near my parents, if I had not ventured out of the Carolina foothills and into the mountains, I would be working now at my father’s side.
I always felt this goodwill in our community. The most important thing I could tell a stranger was that I was “Dennis Mahaffey’s boy.” It granted me access to every kitchen in town, every basketball court, and later, a fair amount of free auto repair. While we lived in a trailer down the road from a man the Mahaffey brothers built a home for, a bright red Ford pickup drove by every weekend. The driver, our neighbor, gave me and my brothers a five dollar bill each, then drove away.
Read the rest of this entry »
