The Dry Grass of August(61)

J and J’s Garage had a rubber hose running across the parking lot, and bells rang as I drove over it. I didn’t see the Packard. Daddy told me to park in front. “I’ll find out what’s going on.” A plate-glass window was painted in bold black letters : J AND J’S GARAGE, ESTABLISHED 1946. Through the window I saw Daddy talking to Jake Stirewalt. When Daddy sat down, I knew it would be a while. I walked over to one of the empty bays and looked at the grease pit. Small steps led into it. In the bottom was a pink rag, a broken fan belt, a wrench. Wouldn’t anybody who worked in a grease pit want to be someplace else? And what sort of person built coffins? I turned away from the smell of gasoline and creosote, and walked into the sunlight to see Mr. Stirewalt driving our Packard around the building.

Daddy stood outside. “Hey, Jubie, look there.”

Mr. Stirewalt handed Daddy the keys.“She’s running good. The motor warn’t messed up much. You might need a new rade-yater sooner later.” He looked at the mashed fender. “Wisht we’d of had time for that.”

“We’ll take care of it in Charlotte. The motor sounds great, don’t you think so, Jubie?”

He was showing off, being a good father. “Yes, sir.” I wished he could really care instead of just pretending. I felt tears rising, blinked my eyes, looked away from him. If he saw how sad I was, he ignored it.

“Now all I’ve got to do is pay for it, right?” Daddy pulled out his checkbook.

“That’s right, Mr. Watts.” They walked back inside.

I sat on a bench, turning my face to the sun. One sentence jumped out sharply from the rumble of voices in the garage office. “Then again, the only good nigger is a dead nigger, right, Mr. Watts?”

Daddy said, “So I make this out to J and J’s Garage?” He should have told Mr. Stirewalt how wrong it was to say such a thing.

“No, to Jake Stirewalt.”

We got in the Chrysler. Daddy drove.

Mama was waiting on the same corner where we’d left her. She looked like she’d been crying, but when she got in the car, she just said, “Is the Packard ready? Please tell me it’s ready.”

“It’s ready,” Daddy said. He patted her shoulder but didn’t say anything about her swollen eyes.

“The train is at nine fifteen in the morning. I can have us packed to go right after that.”

“What train?” I asked.

They looked at each other, then Mama said, “We have to send Mary back to Charlotte. There are regulations about embalming and shipping bodies. I was seeing to it.”

I thought about Link and Young Mary, how sad they must be. “Have you talked with her kids?” I asked Mama.

“Last night, yes.” Mama stared out the window. “They’re distraught.”

“Do you know when the service is? We could go.”

Daddy said, “No.”

We rode in silence back to J and J’s. Daddy handed Mama the keys to the Packard. “We’ll see you at the motel.” I opened the car door and stepped out onto the hot pavement.

“You riding with your mother?” Daddy asked.

“I’m walking.”

“Get back in this car, young lady.” Daddy’s voice was dangerous.

“No.” I didn’t look back.





CHAPTER 24

Just after nine on Monday morning, Mama, Daddy, and I watched as three men wheeled a flat hand truck through the train station, loaded with a long box that looked more like a shipping crate than a coffin. M. LUTHER was stenciled in black on the raw pine boards. We followed the hand truck past benches where half a dozen people sat dozing or reading papers, and past a closed door with a sign: NEGRO WAITING ROOM.

The men tilted the coffin to get it into the boxcar and I imagined Mary sliding inside; I hoped her head was at the top so she’d slide feetfirst. Mama walked to the end of the platform and stared down the tracks.

They pushed the coffin across the floor to the back of the car, where light didn’t reach. Daddy put his hand on my shoulder and I caught a whiff of cigarettes and aftershave. The boxcar door slammed shut with a thunderclap. Mama’s heels clicked on the concrete as she came back to us. Her gray dress and hat made her look sad and plain.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“It’s horrible in that boxcar. Dark and horrible.”

“Mary’s not suffering anymore, Jubie.” Mama reached toward me with her gloved hand.

I turned away. “When is her funeral?”

Daddy said, “A day or so. No more than two, not in this heat.”

“Then we have time to get there.”

Mama and Daddy looked at each other.

I walked over to the train. I wanted to climb in and ride with Mary. The rusty door of the boxcar was rough to my touch. “I want to go to the funeral. I—”

Mama said, “Bill, we could go back to Charlotte for Mary’s service, then to Pawleys for a few more days of vacation.”

Daddy shook his head. “We’re not driving five hundred miles—from here to Charlotte to Pawleys—for an hour-long funeral. As soon as we’re packed, we’ll go on to the beach.”

The engine chugged to life. The train began to move, clanking slowly out of the station, gathering speed. I watched until the caboose was a red smudge far down the tracks.