Friday, November 25, 2005

Gather


Like zillions of other Americans good and true, I took to the road yesterday for Thanksgiving. We have been going to my cousin's house for the past 20 years or so. She and her husband built a nice place in Heber Springs, Arkansas out on some land that has been in the family since there pretty much has been a Cleburne County. She and David designed it themselves. It always amazes me when lay people design and build things. I have a brother in Missouri-also named David-who designed and built his house in Springfield. I could not design and build a cheese sandwich. I am awe of people that have this sort of talent.

To be quite honest-as I always am-I was not too keen on going this year. Typically, I like Thanksgiving although I have no particular use for Christmas. Never much have. Christmas is contrived and mercenary whereas Thanksgiving is pleasant and pretty low maintenance for a High Holy Day. But this year promised to be pretty different and not in a good way. None of my brothers would be there. Bob had to work at the nervous hospital. David had to tend to his father-in-law who has a terminal illness. John had to go to Jonesboro. Mother has not been able to travel in some time and Uncle Bill followed Aunt Jean into the Hereafter last August. So, all things considered, I was pretty much resolved to on sit this one out but I got talked into going by one of my sisters-in-laws who feared having nobody to talk to if I weren't there. Besides, I had purchased two dozen rolls at the high end bread store in the neighborhood. My cousin-who loves me very much-would have killed me had I not shown up with them. It is enough that the holidays are a pain in the ass. They are not worth dying over.

I got up there around 11:30 only to find out that lunch would not be ready until 1 or so. Rather, than hear Uncle Ralph tell the story about the time he saw a bush-hog sling a mower blade across a pasture for a second time, I opted to go visit the little cemetery in Pearson where many of my mother's people are buried and where I took the picture at the top of the page.

I first ran across Dr. Gorham's grave when I showing a friend where my grandparents were buried. To paraphrase Uncle Earl Long, when I die, if I die, I want Dr. Gorham's epitaph upon my own grave. "Friend of Sinners." I like that. I did not know Dr. Gorham. It is not inconceivable that we are distant relatives given the shallow gene pool that obtained in Cleburne County before the Army built the lake and all the Yankees started moving down from Chicago and Indianapolis. Which reminds me. I have a funny story-it was funny to me at the time at least-about Greers Ferry Lake and an ex-girlfriend who was overly proud of her physique. But this is a ostensibly a post about Thanksgiving so I will basically stick to the subject at hand.

Anyway, in my mind's eye, it amuses me to think of sitting down with Dr. Gorham and passing the time by committing various sins. Don't get me wrong. I'm not thinking of anything of a sexual nature with Dr. Gorham. I ain't that kind of a sinner. No. I'm thinking more along the lines of beer drinking, cussing, poker, that level of sinnin'. Alas, Dr. Gorham was probably a dour Baptist with an honorary doctorate from Southwestern Theological Seminary or some other depressing preacher mill. Whoever he is-or was- he has one hell of an epitaph inscribed upon his marker. You have to give him that.

While en route to Uncle Bill I passed the Hazlewoods. My Grandmother Bivens was a Hazlewood. There were Uncle Porter and his wife Cue. They lived down the street from us in Mabelvale. Nadine, their daughter who still lives down there, called Mother with the news that I had sold her house to black folks although that probably wasn't exactly the way she put it. Thanks a lot Nadine. Uncle Porter blew his head off with a shotgun while sitting in the garden back in 1987. Mother was upset that the coroner ruled his death a suicide. She told me that he had the shotgun with him because squirrels were getting his tomatoes. I guess they shot back.

Uncle Ira-pronounced "Arrie", naturally-is buried next to Aunt Mildred. And Aunt is properly pronounced "Ain't" by my mother's people. Lillian is buried not too far away. Anyway, Ira was kind of the town drunk as I am made to understand. He once got arrested for sneaking a bottle of whisky through the bars of the window of the county jail into the grateful hands of one of his drinking buddies. In what can only be described as something like unto a redneck bar mitzvah, Ira offered me a plug of his Day's Work chewing tobacco upon hearing from my grandfather that I had graduated from law school. Aunt Lillian was a mischievous woman. When I was little she delighted in trying to get me to confess that I thought that she was prettier than Grandmother. I must have squirmed something fierce during those interrogations as I didn't want to offend Mildred but I wasn't about to say anything bad about my grandmother.

My grandparents lie not too far from Ira. My grandmother was named Johnnie Esther. I am named after her husband. My grandmother was a kindly woman with a large body made strong from raising 5 kids and working in the fields. Her hands were as strong as any man's. She could play "Power in the Blood" on a little pump organ and she read her Bible on a daily basis. She had the distinction of being married to the meanest son of a bitch in Cleburne County.

Paul Bivens held himself out as a WPA tree farmer during the Depression. This was only his day job. His real avocation and highest use was that of making moonshine. The old whiskey still is probably back there in the woods somewhere yet today. Accordingly, he was the most important guy in the county during most elections as he was counted on by the powers that be to make sure that the guys who voted right got to wet their whistles. If the outcome of a particular election was in doubt even after the application of the white lightning, he would sometimes be asked to come into town with his shotgun and be a "poll watcher."

He quit making moonshine after several bad batches convinced him that he had lost his touch. The reality of the situation was that Grandmother, who by that point in time had evidently grown weary of his second career, kept sneaking back there to pour well water into the mash so that it wouldn't ferment. To his dying day he never knew why all of a sudden his whiskey wouldn't "make."

My final stop on this Thanksgiving was at the grave of Bill and Jean. They had been married for over 60 years. She was a Bittle. The graveyard is full of her people as well. They moved to California to find work after they were married. Like other Arkies and Okies, they went out west in search of work on farms where carrots grew as big as railroad ties and oranges were the size of chihuahuas. Like many of their fellow nomads they soon returned to Arkansas where Bill eventually found work in Benton with Alcoa and Jean worked at Gingles Department Store. Bill worked in the aluminum plant at night and built their house on Maple Street during the day.

My Aunt Jean was the proper sort of woman who kept "Leaves of Gold" on her coffee table in the living room. And she read it. And found it useful. Uncle Bill loved to hunt and fish. He enjoyed his garden. And he delighted in kidding me about a) being a lawyer and b) having an SUV with such amenities as leather seats and satellite radio. He refused to acknowledge that it was a real truck.

Bill had a massive stroke on New Year's Day of 2003. During a visit to the hospital one day Jean told me how much she despised my grandfather. Which was pretty much news to me. Jean up and died in her sleep in the summer of 2004. Bill was completely disconsolate until the day he died last August. I'm surprised he made it that long.

I have left people out. And I have done nobody any justice. I left out mother's Uncle Joe Boyd who talked like Carl in "Sling Blade." I didn't mention Aunt Opal who ran the diner in Quitman. I forgot to mention all of the tiny graves interspersed between them all marking the resting places of infants. Most of them are adorned with statues of tiny lambs and marked with the inscription "Safe with Jesus."

During our lifetime there are only so many people that will love us. I guess it is a sign of my station in life that the little cemetery in Pearson is full of people that once loved me and who are lost and gone forever.

I said goodbye to Bill and Jean. I dried my eyes and I left.

When I got back to the house, the food was laid out, the children were being called in from the yard and Ralph was still talking about his goddamn bush-hog. Grace was invoked. Food was eaten. Stories were told. News was caught up on. Afterwards, the men watched football. The ones that were still awake that is. The women cleaned up while I took pictures and stayed out of the way.

My cousin's boys along with their stepbrother went out back to shoot skeet. Nine year old nephew Henry wanted to learn how to sling the clay pigeon. So after a couple of practice tries with the slinger he pronounced himself ready to give it a try. Cousin Todd raised the shotgun. He shouted "pull." Henry swung the slinger for all he was worth.

And hit Cousin Todd square in the nuts.

Uncle Bill would have loved it. Once he made sure out that Todd was ok that is. Which he was after about an hour of being tended to by his two med student stepbrothers and his neurosurgeon father.

I left shortly after that. I figured that nothing else was likely to happen that would top Henry and the slinger. In fact, Slinger may become Henry's nickname after yesterday. And Todd will never shoot skeet without wearing a catcher's cup ever again. As I drove past the graveyard I honked the horn in my wussy SUV.

And I know somewhere, somehow my Uncle Bill heard me say goodbye.

And I know that he smiled.