After the Flag Has Been Folded (5 page)

As we left the parlor, I pulled on Mama's arm and asked a question that she would never be able to answer to my satisfaction: “Why is he so blue?”

Either she didn't hear me or she chose to ignore me. I persisted. Couldn't she see it wasn't him? I was furious at her. I asked again, “Why is he so blue?” Maybe someone should turn off the air conditioner, get that man a blanket.

“Mama, Mama, why is he so blue?” Over and over I begged for an answer.

We got into the car and, slamming the door behind her, Mama turned and yelled:
“Because he's dead!”
She left off the “stupid,” although I heard it in her tone anyway. Then, repeating the words quietly to herself, she said, “Because he's dead.”

Turning to look out the rear window, she backed out of the lot, leaving behind the long black shiny car and the man in the cold trunk.

Now I was the cold one. Shivers came quickly. I couldn't stop shaking. I needed a blanket. Rocking back and forth, I began humming:
“Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me.” I cried for Daddy, for Mama, for Linda, for Frankie, and for me. There are still times when I weep for my father the way I did that day at Nash-Wilson Funeral Home, the day I saw him lying all cold and purple-blue in that casket. Even today Mama is troubled by my tears.

O
NCE
D
ADDY'S BODY ARRIVED IN
T
ENNESSEE, PEOPLE CAME FROM ALL OVER TO PAY THEIR RESPECTS AT
Nash-Wilson Memorial Chapel in Rogersville. Those who couldn't come sent cards, flowers, or letters. Even the prime minister of Vietnam sent a letter from the embassy in Washington, D.C.:

Mama also received a letter from Captain Frederick Rice, from the 25th Infantry Division, dated August 1966:

Complete strangers sent their condolences, like this lady from Fall Branch, Tennessee:

New York City evangelist A. Gordon sent Mama a note from his West Side apartment, exhorting her to “meditate much on the love of Jesus.” And Mrs. Rosamond Christenbery, another lady we didn't know, sent a clipping about Daddy's death from the Knoxville paper with a note attached that read, “Thought you would like the clipping, most folks appreciate kindness.” She addressed her letter to “The family of the Late Stf. Sgt. David P. Spears, Church Hill, Tenn. (Please locate).”

Letters also poured in from Hawaii, West Virginia, New York City, Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, and from Daddy's buddies in Vietnam. There was even one from the White House:

Mama never talked about these notes, or the people who sent them, not even when the president's letter arrived. She just tied them all up in a red ribbon and stuffed them away in that plastic bag.

I don't know if she ever acknowledged these people and their kindnesses. I suspect she didn't. Mama is a woman of few words and even fewer letters. Besides, with a funeral looming, she had plenty of other business to tend to.

 

D
ADDY
A
ND
M
AMA
both came from large extended families, so visiting hours at the funeral chapel were busy all day long and into the early evening. Viewing had lasted the traditional three days; on the third day he was buried.

Daddy was the third-born of eight children, and I'd never seen all his siblings at once. James was the eldest, then came Lynn, Daddy, Betty, Ray, Hugh Lee, Mary Sue, and Doug. Lynn lived up north in Ohio. Ray lived down south in Selma, Alabama. Betty lived in Nashville with her husband, Dode. The rest all lived in East Tennessee.

Hugh Lee, Mary Sue, and Doug weren't finished with their growing-up years yet, so none of them had any kids. But the others had so many, I couldn't remember all my cousins' names. Dode and Betty had six kids. Ray and his wife, Helen, had three. James and his wife, Bon, had two boys. Lynn had kids, but the only one I remember was his daughter, Brenda. She was close to my age.

Mama was the youngest sibling to five brothers—Woody, Tub, Roy, Carl, and Charles. Granny Ruth had given birth to two more girls (one was a fraternal twin to Woody), but Mama was the only daughter who survived childbirth. I'd never seen all Mama's brothers in one place, either. Tub had died years earlier. And Charlie and Roy were living way out in Oregon, so they didn't come to town for Daddy's funeral.

All of Daddy's kin showed up, including his aunts and uncles and cousins from both the Lawson side of the family (Granny Leona's
bunch) and the Spears side (Pap's bunch). Granny Leona was always introducing me and Frankie and Linda around to somebody.

“These are Dave's children,” she said. “Frankie, Karen, and Linda.”

All the adults looked the same to me—tall. I cranked my neck all the way back to greet these strangers. And they were always tucking their chins on their chest bone so they could look me straight in the eyes. Nobody ever thought to squat down to a child's level. Granny was the only adult I could see eye-to-eye, and that's because she was an itty-bitty woman anyway and she always was sitting on the edge of her bed, which was in the living room.

My cousins had all been warned within an inch of their lives to be on their very best behavior. So they sat quietly on the arms of the couch or on the floor between their daddies' feet, fiddling with their papas' shoestrings. They would stare in curiosity at Frankie, Linda, and me, with big eyes, like they were afraid they might catch the disease that made us fatherless.

During the days leading up to Daddy's funeral, we kids didn't run outside to climb the coal heap. We didn't play tag-you're-it. We didn't do much of anything but sit around watching the grown-ups drink gallons of coffee and smoke cartons of cigarettes and swap tales of “Remember when” or “Do you suppose.”

 

T
HE RUMOR THAT
D
ADDY
had been decapitated caused some kinfolk to speculate that that was why Mama didn't want an open casket at the funeral. Aunt Mary Sue, Daddy's youngest sister, remembers hearing and even repeating the rumor, although she could not recall where she first heard it or why it got started. “I heard when they first opened the casket, your daddy's head wasn't attached to his body,” she told me. “I don't know who all was there when they first opened that casket. Was that the one he was buried in? But whoever it was, they said his head wasn't attached.”

Daddy's brother James was there when they first opened the casket, but he wouldn't talk to me about what he saw, and his sister
Mary Sue remembers seeing him lying in his death cradle, his head positioned awkwardly over his right shoulder. Mary Sue is a nurse. She chooses her words carefully and methodically like she's picking through a plate full of cut vegetables, and although she is blunt, she tries hard not to offend. Like Mama, she worries about giving me too much information. I know what they fear is that such information may shatter my soul and all that'll be left of the girl they love will be dangerously jagged edges. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I'm afraid of the same thing myself.

The decapitation rumor troubled Mary Sue as much as it did me. “It bothered me a lot when I first heard it. But if that's truly how it was, I'm not surprised,” she said.

I asked her why.

“Because if a person's blowed up you wouldn't expect him to be all together. I've treated patients who've been shot and are holding their guts in their hands,” she said. “If a cannon or big gun blowed Dave up, you wouldn't expect him to be together.”

The rumor infuriates Mama, to this day. She curses at the mention of it and is quick to note that Daddy had a military escort from the moment they put his casket on the plane in Vietnam. “Nobody was messing with his body,” she said.

From time to time I pull out a photo somebody, maybe Mama, took of Daddy in that casket. Taking pictures of loved ones in their caskets is an unsettling Southern tradition, one of many that give me the heebie-jeebies and make me hope in a merciful God. What I notice first is that Daddy looks too big for the casket. Like a holiday turkey that's been placed in a pan that's too narrow and too shallow. His chest is puffy. A flag is draped over the casket's lower half, its stars evoking an almost festive feel to the photo. But, yes, Daddy's head does look all hinky-kinky. Although dressed in his best military garb, there is nothing uniform about the way he looks. While the three brass buttons line up just beneath the thickly knotted tie, that knot wedges up to the far left corner of his chin, directly under his left
eye. Seeing it makes me want to reach in and scooch his head over just a bit.

But what I can't reconcile is that Daddy's face is only slightly marred. There's an abrasion on his right cheek and a few scrapes on his forehead. His eyes are closed, as if in sleep, and his lips are drawn, as if he is in solemn thought. But there is a look of worry about him. Perhaps it's only intense concentration.

I often wonder, what were his last thoughts? Were they of us, his family? Did he know he was mortally wounded? Could he understand how Mama would cry out over the years for the nearness of him? Was he aware of the muffled tears we kids would shed into feather pillows or into piles of folded laundry or over stacks of family photos? Perhaps he knew. Maybe that's why he looks worried.

I didn't care to see another dead person. Especially the blue man in that gray casket. My bones still chill at the sight of open caskets. The person seems almost transparent, like you can see clean through them. Or, if you were to touch them, their chest or forehead would crush under the weight of its own hollowness. There is nothing there.

It's like looking at a June bug's shell. Frankie and I used to find June bug shells clinging to pine trees. We'd mash them between our thumbs and forefingers, and I always wondered where the June bugs went when they left their shells behind. I figured—or maybe I just hoped—they grew into new shells somewhere.

But make no mistake about it, shells, even empty ones, are important to Southerners.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
conducted a poll in 2001 that measured the death worries of native Southerners. The article stated that lifelong Southerners think about death a lot. Mostly because they think so much about religion, said Charles Reagan Wilson, director of the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture. “Southerners have a very literal understanding of heaven and hell,” he said. “Death is not abstract. Ministers talk about it, preach about it, ‘Are you ready to meet the Lord?'
You drive down the road in the rural South, you see these signs, ‘Get right with God.'”

According to the poll, topping the Southerner's list of worries about death is not the soul's destination; 40 percent of the 852 adults polled in thirteen Southern states fretted about whether they'd get the opportunity to say final good-byes. Native Southerners have this uncanny need not only to make things right with God before they die, they've got to make things right with Aunt Ida as well.

Imagine, then, how upset our kinfolk were back in 1966 that they didn't get to say a proper good-bye to Daddy. None of his family had seen him since 1963 when we left for Hawaii. At that time nobody thought about dangers. They were thrilled for our family. Shoot, as far as they were concerned, Daddy had just nabbed an assignment in paradise.

“We were happy for him,” Uncle James said. “Everybody thought it was a nice tour of duty for him.”

He recalled the last time he saw his brother alive. “The last time I seen him was on Broadway in Rogersville. He was wearing civilian clothes. Shelby was with him. I believe you all were headed to Hawaii. He was happy, and I was happy for him.”

Mary Sue recalled that she was living in Nashville with her sister Betty the last time she saw him alive. “Betty's family was there and your family,” she said. “It was when you all were going to Hawaii. I don't remember anyone being sad about you all leaving. Nobody thought they wouldn't get to see Dave again.”