Passing through Perfect (Wyattsville #3)(31)
“Looks like we’re gonna get a rainstorm,” Bessie said. “We better get inside.”
“Unh-unh,” Delia said. “I got to get going. Daddy Church is there all by hisself, and he ain’t doing so good.”
Without staying long enough to finish her tea, Delia lit out. She headed for the road walking as fast as her feet would move. As she was about to turn onto Cross Corner Road, a crack of thunder rolled through the sky and rattled her bones.
“Oh, Lord,” she moaned, already regretting that she hadn’t left sooner.
Delia rounded the corner and broke into a run, but before she’d gone half a mile the rain started. It came in torrents with a sharp wind slicing through the trees, smacking against her face then circling back and coming at her from behind. It wasn’t just a rainstorm, it was a mean storm, the kind where lightning tears across the sky in search of something to destroy.
In Alabama rainstorms happen in a heartbeat. Wind comes from nowhere, and pellets of water materialize from what was moments earlier a clear blue sky. Delia heard the roll of thunder and saw the lightning bolt that slammed into a long leaf pine. It came crashing to the ground. The lightning was close, somewhere not far behind her. She lowered her head and pushed against the wind. Twice she lost her footing and came down hard on her knee. The second time she’d scrambled up with mud covering the front of her dress. As she turned onto the road that ran past their house Delia heard a second tree fall, this one closer than the first.
When she finally reached the house Delia was soaked through to her skin. Without stopping to remove her waterlogged shoes, she pushed open the door and looked for Otis. He was still right there on the sofa where she’d left him.
“Thank you, Jesus,” she mumbled, then stepped out of the wet shoes. When she bent to tell him that she’d arrived home safe, Delia saw he was no longer breathing. His skin was still warm, but he was lifeless as the trees that had fallen.
“Wake up, Daddy Church!” she screamed. “Wake up!”
She grabbed his shoulder and shook it as hard as she could. After a few minutes of hollering and pounding on his chest, she pulled Otis’ frail body into her arms.
“Don’t do this, Daddy Church, please don’t do this!” she wailed, then fell to her knees alongside the sofa. She held his hand in hers and cried as she had cried the night her baby girl died.
When Isaac got home two hours later she sat beside Otis, emptied out of tears.
“Your granddaddy died,” she said. Her words were raw and riddled with sadness.
“Granddaddy died?” Isaac repeated, and tears began to well in his eyes. He dropped down beside his mama and wrapped a skinny arm around her shoulder.
“I’s sorry, Mama,” he said. “I’s sorry for you ’n for poor Granddaddy too.”
“You can be sorry for me all you want,” Delia answered, “but don’t be sorry for your granddaddy. He’s gone to be with the Lord.”
Benjamin didn’t get home until nine o’clock that evening, and by then Delia had washed Otis head to toe and dressed him in his Sunday shirt and pants. He was lying in his own bed looking peaceful as a sleeping baby.
Two days later Otis was buried in the Negro cemetery on the far edge of Grinder’s Corner. He was laid in a pine box that Benjamin himself built. Even though it rained again that day, a crowd of people came. They gathered graveside and spoke of what a fine man Otis Church was.
“This is no time to be grieving,” Brother Albert proclaimed. “This is a time for rejoicing, because Brother Otis is resting peacefully in the arms of the Lord.”
Despite anything Brother Albert said Delia couldn’t muster up even the smallest bit of rejoicing. Otis was gone, and as far as she was concerned that was pure misery.
Cloak of Sorrow
In the weeks and months that followed, Delia wore her sorrow like a heavy grey cloak wrapped around her shoulders. She gave up visiting friends and moved through the days like a snail without purpose.
Although Benjamin’s pain was equal in size he carried it differently; he worked longer hours and heavier jobs. When his back throbbed from lifting stacks of lumber or lying in a cramped crawl space, he could focus on the physical pain and momentarily forget the anguish tearing at his heart.
Five days after Otis was buried, on an evening when Benjamin came home with his hands bloody from working on the barbed wire horse enclosure at the Paley place, he once again brought up the thought of leaving Grinder’s Corner.
After Isaac was in bed he told Delia, “If you’re still thinking we ought to leave here, I’m willing.”
Delia shook her head. “I ain’t wanting to leave no more,” she said sadly. “This place is all I got left of Daddy Church.”
“But,” Benjamin stammered, “what about Isaac?”
“Isaac’s fine here.”
“You said if we go north—”
“I know what I said, Benjamin,” she answered, “but I changed my mind.”
“You got thoughts about maybe changing it back again?”
“Not right now I ain’t,” Delia answered. “Not right now.”
The sad truth was living in Grinder’s Corner settled into a person’s soul like a disease handed down from generation to generation. Folks were born here, lived here, then died here, and there were few exceptions. Delia was once a newcomer and as such she’d had a chance for escape, but that time was long gone. When Otis left this earth, Delia willingly picked up his shackles and slipped them onto her own ankles.