Rite

Rite

By Fred Holt

 

        When Elbert Frazier hired Uncle Roy Harley to work weekends at the funeral home, some people in town wondered just how he would do, especially on Sunday, out in the country.  Uncle Roy didn’t go to church much.  When he was younger, he ran around to honky-tonks.  He had a reputation of being tough.

My mother thought he managed country funerals very well, in fact, because he was tough.  Elbert worked with the families while Uncle Roy whipped everybody into line.  He told them exactly what to do and where to sit or stand during the service.  He also drove the hearse.  On Sundays, he made sure that he got back to town by suppertime to catch Jack Benny on the radio.

        My mother played the music for Elbert’s country funerals.  Growing up in Pike County, she learned gospel songs for church and prayers meetings, and she went summers to protracted meetings and singing conventions.  Her brother Collins was a traveling man, and he brought her ragtime sheet music from Texas for her to play on the piano.  So, she played gospel songs with a ricky-tick beat that country folks in Southeast Arkansas liked.

        She knew all the songs sung at country funerals.  They opened with “In the Sweet By and By.”  After the eulogy, they sang “Amazing Grace.”  As they viewed the remains, Presbyterians sang “Abide with Me”, Methodists sang “When the Roll Is Called up Yonder”, and Baptists sang “Shall We Gather at the River”.

        Miss Jessie Harley taught piano, and she played the organ for the Methodists in town, but she didn’t play country funerals.  She learned her music at the Cincinnati Conservatory and at a state teachers’ college.  She believed that ricky-tick and ragtime were not fit to be played in church, if at all.

        She didn’t care for gospel songs either.  She selected music for preludes, offertories, and postludes at the Methodist Sunday services.  She took those pieces from a book of piano solos she taught through the years.  She especially liked “Liebestraum” by William Schumann as the offertory, and she played that piece most Sunday mornings.  Elbert didn’t know much about music, but he did know that country folk didn’t car for Miss Jessie’s style.   So, he called my mother to play the country funerals on Sunday afternoons.

        She played on a small pump organ that Elbert and Uncle Roy packed in the back of the hearse.  She tore out pages of gospel music from a copy of Spiritual Life Songs, and she pasted them on a big sheet of cardboard.  Uncle Roy came in the hearse after Sunday dinner to pick her up.  When he honked, she got the cardboard from the music cabinet and ran to get into the front seat.  She didn’t want to keep him waiting too long. 

        She liked going to country churches.  Elbert paid her a dollar each trip, and she always brought home fruit and vegetables.  But she didn’t care for the cigars Uncle Roy smoked in the hearse.

        She didn’t stay with it though.  She quit playing country funerals for good after a service in spring of 1942, at the Ebeneezer Church.  A cedar-chopper died on Monday, but his family wouldn’t do anything until the sister from California came to make all the arrangements.  She go there so late on Friday that they just laid the man in a wooden coffin and called Elbert to do the Sunday funeral and bury him.

        Midways into the service, Elbert open the coffin for everybody to view the remains.  Suddenly, everyone felt sick.  My mother didn’t stay inside to play the last hymn, and Uncle Roy didn’t smoke his cigar on the trip back to town.

        After that, my mother told Elbert that she didn’t care to play anymore in the country, but I told him I could use the money if he needed somebody to fill in.  I didn’t know anything about country funerals, but I took piano lessons from Miss Jessie, and my mother taught me ricky-tick.

        A few Sundays later that spring, Uncle Roy called me to play a funeral at the Sumpter Church.  Elbert came down with diarrhea and couldn’t go.  A cotton-farmer died.  He was a Hard Shell Baptist, and nobody at the funeral home thought they were too particular about the music.  So, Uncle Roy called me.

        It started to rain when he pulled the hearse into our driveway after Sunday dinner.  I put on galoshes and a rain coat, grabbed my mother’s cardboard of songs and hopped into the front seat.  We headed south with the windows rolled up.  Uncle Roy lit a bit Mississippi Crook.

        On the way down, I told him I had never even been to a country funeral.  He said for me not to worry; he would tell me what to do and when to do it.  He also told me just to play the songs on the cardboard and not to pay attention to how country folks carried on. The first time he went out with Elbert, everybody stood around so long weeping and wailing that he didn’t get back to town before sundown.

He said, “I like to start on time and quit on time and I don’t pay any attention to the weeping and wailing they do.  If I bothered with all that, we’d be out all night.”

        He drove fast over chug holes washed by the rain.  The bouncing hearse and his cigar made me car sick.  After we passed the Shiloh Church, he stopped along the side of the road to take a leak and for me to throw up.

        We next stopped at the Sumpter Church just to check on things.  Early arrivals had come inside to keep dry.  A woman was setting washtubs around to catch drips leaking from the roof.  Outside, men in raincoats bailed water from the freshly-dug grave in the cemetery.  Uncle Roy said that everything would start late because of the rain and that he likely wouldn’t get home in time for Jack Benny.

        We then drove to the house to retrieve the cotton-farmer’s body.  Elbert had brought him from the funeral home on Friday.  As we pulled up to the front gate, we saw friends and neighbors standing on the porch and young folks standing around in the breezeway.  Uncle Roy said that young folks like to sit up with the body at night so they could fool around after the old folks went to bed.  “That’s the Lord’s truth,” he said.

        Everything was quiet except for the rain.  Uncle Roy passed out gloves to the pall-bearers, and he told them exactly where to stand and what to do.  Then he went inside to talk to the family.  I stayed on the porch and watched the preacher drive up in his Studebaker.  As he mounted the front steps, the women on the porch and in the front room began weeping and wailing.  Immediately, Uncle Roy emerged from the house.  He told me he wanted to get the body into the hearse before it rained harder, but I knew he was mostly getting away from the weeping and wailing.

        When the casket was set in the hearse, a fat woman appeared in the breezeway.  It was the cotton-farmer’s wife.  As she made her way onto the porch and down the steps, she fell limp a couple of times.  Two skinny-looking women steadied her and covered her head with newspapers when she got to the front yard.  The neighbors took out their handkerchiefs, wiped their eyes, blew their noses and went to their cars.  The procession was about to begin.

        The hearse pulled out first onto the road.  It moved along slowly.  Every time it hit a chug hole; the casket tossed from side to side.  Uncle Roy said that he should have pulled the straps tighter.

        The family car pulled out next.  It was a 1936 Plymouth.  It had weak springs and shock absorbers.  The wife and the skinny-looking women squeezed into the back seat.  The cotton-farmer’s brother drove.  Every time he hit the chug holes, the women in the back seat dropped down almost to the level of the road.  Uncle Roy chuckled at that, but he said a little curse because his cigar was wet.

        At the Sumpter church, Uncle Roy opened the back of the hearse.  He told me to set the pump organ on the side aisle.  He told the pall bearers to set the casket in front of the pulpit.  He then set a couple of flower arrangements near the front pew.

        By four o’clock, everybody was ready except the preacher.  He sat a long time on the front pew talking to the wife.  I couldn’t hear what he said, but she talked loud enough for all to hear how her husband never had much, how much he did for his family and friends, and how he never asked much in return.  Uncle Roy stood near the front door, looking at his watch and glaring at the preacher.

        Before he went to the pulpit, the preacher came over to check on the music.  I showed songs on the cardboard I thought would do for Hard Shell Baptists.  I suggested “Shall We Gather at the River” for such a rainy day, but he didn’t think that was funny.

        Uncle Roy told me to play something, anything, and to make loud enough to drown the wailing.  I pulled out all the stops and played “When the Roll is Called up Yonder” while later-comers looked for dry places to sit.  Uncle Roy moved the pulpit over so the preacher wouldn’t get wet.  The service began.

        After the scripture reading and the eulogy, the preacher talked about resurrection and how we would all see the cotton-farmer in heaven one day.  When he finished, Uncle Roy opened the casket and stationed the pall-bearers around it.  I played “Amazing Grace” as the people filed by to pay last respects.  One of the skinny-looking women pointed to a drip on the cotton-farmer’s chin, and Uncle Roy dried it off with his handkerchief.

        With everyone standing around the casket, I decided to play a few bars of “Liebestraum,” which I learned by heart for Miss Jessie’s Spring recital.  No one seemed to care that I wasn’t a gospel song, but I got a dirty look from Uncle Roy.  He know it wasn’t on my mother’s cardboard.

        After the doxology, it rained the hardest.  The pall-bearers were soaked as they carried the casket to the grave in the cemetery.  Uncle Roy walked behind them with the wife.  He held an umbrella for her.  She went limp a few times, but he grabbed onto her arm and kept her sloshing on.  He handed the umbrella to the brother and walked ahead to check to straps that would let the cotton-farmer down into his grave.

        I packed the pump-organ case into the hearse and rejoined the mourners in time to see the casket lowering into a hole that was half full of rainwater.  When the wife saw it, she wailed again about the old man’s hard lot in life and how, at least, he ought not to be laid to rest in a watery grave.  Uncle Roy told the diggers to bail it out with buckets, but it didn’t do much good.  The preacher read Scripture as the pall-bearers let down the casket with the straps.

        Suddenly, the wife gave a loud cry and turned to Uncle Roy shouting, “I’m going with him!

        As she edged toward the grave to jump, the preacher and the brother tired to hold her back.  Uncle Roy didn’t move, and he called her bluff.  He told her to go ahead and do what she had to do; because it was getting late and he had to finish the job to get everybody out of the rain and himself back to town.  She stopped and stared hatefully at Uncle Roy.  Then, as she stepped away from the edge of the open grave, Uncle Roy motioned for the grave-diggers to shovel in the dirt and gravel.  The preacher said, “Amen.”

        The wife walked in silence, alone, with her head down, to the family car.  She squeezed again into the back seat with the skinny-looking women and waited for the brother to come and drive her to the house.  Uncle Roy gave her no attention as she walked away.  He paid off the grave-diggers and ran to get into the hearse.

        The other cars pulled out behind the family car.  When they left, the rain stopped.  It was dusk, and the cemetery was quiet.

        Uncle Roy and I stayed behind for about a half an hour in order to pack the gravesite equipment into the hearse for the trip home.  On the way back, we stopped by the cotton-farmer’s place to pick up the flower stands.  As we drove near the house, I heard music.

        It wasn’t gospel songs or ricky-tick pieces.  It sounded like tunes I heard played by string bands at the county fairs.  I got out of the hearse and walked closer to the house.  All the folks from the church were gathered around in the front yard.  The chief pall-bearer was on the porch, playing a fiddle.

        Out in the yard, women spread food in covered dishes on a long table.  The skinny-looking women fixed iced tea in a tub brought from the church.  The preacher sat on the front steps eating a chicken wing and telling funny stories to a bunch of men.  The brother laughed at them the loudest.  They all asked us to stay a while, but Uncle Roy said we had to get back to town.

        A grave-digger motioned for Uncle Roy and me to come behind the house.  Some of the pall-bearers were there huddled around near the barn.  They broke out a jug of home-brew and offered us swigs.  Uncle Roy thanked them and said that we had to get on home and that I was too young.

        Then we walked back to the front yard.  Just as one of the women handed us iced tea for us to drink on the way to town, the wife came out of the front room onto the porch. She had dried off and put on a fresh flower dress.  She stared hard at Uncle Roy for a long time without saying a word.  Then she sat in the porch swing and began to fan herself.  Everybody got quiet, and nobody moved.

        Then, I saw Uncle Roy mounting the front steps and walking toward the swing carrying his glass of iced tea.  The wife looked at him hard for a few moments.  He stood before her with his had outstretched.  She hesitated some then reached out to take the tea.  She drank it down, all of it.  After that, she smiled, thanked him sweetly, and asked him to sit in the swing for a few minutes to visit.  And he did.

        The folks started talking again.  The chief pall-bearer fiddled a new tune, and young people danced in the breezeway.

        On the way back to town, I told Uncle Roy that I still didn’t understand all about country funerals.  He grinned and said I would do all right.  After we passed the Shiloh Church he slowed the hearse, rolled down his window and let a fresh cigar.  It was already too late to catch Jack Benny.