Raymond Atkins - The Front Porch Prophet

“I heard a noise like she was falling down,” John Robert offered, his face grim. “When I came in here, she was on the floor. I called Doc right away. He says it doesn’t look good.” Doc was listening to her chest with his stethoscope, shaking his head and muttering. He looked up at A.J. and John Robert.

“This was a big stroke. If we get her to the hospital before she bottoms out, we might save her. After that, I don’t know.” The ambulance from the county service arrived, and Doc lashed the attendants like a mule team while they loaded their patient in record time. Slim arrived in the cruiser with blue lights flashing, and Miss Clara and entourage made for the bright lights of the big city.

By noon it was apparent the situation was deteriorating. She was still alive, but she was attached to most of the machinery in the intensive care ward and surrounded by many somber-faced members of the medical community. A.J., John Robert, and Doc paced the waiting room. Slim had tears in his eyes and kept referring to her in the past tense. She was a saint. She was a damn saint, he said repeatedly. A.J. could see that this tribute was wearing on John Robert’s nerves, so he prevailed upon Slim to take Doc home. Then he and John Robert sat down to wait.

“How old is Granmama, John Robert?” A.J. asked. He was bad with dates and ages. “Is it eighty?”

“Eighty-one,” John Robert said. “That Slim is a real idiot,” he continued. The observation caught A.J. off guard. It was uncommon for John Robert to cast a disparaging remark, but it was an unusual day.

“Yeah, you’re right about that,” A.J. agreed. “But he sure does think a lot of Granmama.”

Around four in the afternoon, A.J. called Maggie. “How is she?” Maggie asked. A.J. took a breath that sounded like a ragged tear in a piece of cloth.

“She’s dying.”

“I’m so sorry,” Maggie said. “How is John Robert holding up?”

“He’s smoking and staring a lot. You know how he is. He doesn’t talk much.”

“I know. Call me if there’s any change. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” A.J. said. “I’ll be home in the morning, or I’ll call if I need to stay longer.”

Around 6:00 that evening they were visited by the neurologist. Dr. Prine was a compact person whose eyes held weary compassion. She explained that Clara’s stroke had been massive, and she was left with no brain function. Barring a miracle, she would not regain consciousness. A decision would eventually need to be made on the subject of life support. Dr. Prine left after expressing her sympathies and telling them she would see them the following day. For a long time after she had gone, no words were uttered by the pair. They were an island of silence in the sea of life. Then A.J. spoke.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“I do,” came John Robert’s reply. “We talked about this a long time ago. She always said she didn’t want to be kept alive past her time. She even wrote it out on paper.” He fell into a stare. Then he arose and walked outside, where he lit a cigarette. A.J. joined him.

“So you’re going to tell them to let her go?” he asked. John Robert did not speak for an entire Pall Mall, and he was a slow smoker. Then he looked at his son and spoke.

“I can’t do it. It would be like killing her myself.” A.J. was overcome with pity for his father. He reached out and touched John Robert’s shoulder. The world as they knew it was coming to an end.

“I’ll take care of it, John Robert,” he said. It was the last thing he wanted and the only thing to do. John Robert slowly nodded. The night passed in silence, and next morning A.J. conferred with Dr. Prine. Granmama’s condition had worsened. He gave a sigh.

“It was my grandmother’s wish, and it is my father’s wish, that we remove life support when there is no sound medical reason for it to remain.” The words hung in the air, limp as wash on the line.

“Is this your wish, as well?” His wishes probably did not matter, but it was considerate of Dr. Prine to inquire.

“My wish is that she hops up, and we go get in the truck and go home,” A.J. sadly replied. “But that’s not going to happen.”

And so, late in the afternoon, the ventilator was removed and the life support was shut down. The candle that was Granmama began to burn toward its nub. Not long after, Clara Longstreet, mother of John Robert and grandmother of Arthur John, matriarch of the Longstreet clan, flickered out of this world and took her place beside the clumsy young husband who had waited patiently for her all those years. What Jehovah and a hay baler had put asunder, A.J. and Dr. Prine had now rejoined.

A.J. felt nothing. He supposed he was numb or maybe in shock. He and John Robert stepped out to the loading dock for a cigarette. A hearse was parked there, waiting to load some hapless soul for the long trip home. They both averted their eyes, as if they had seen something illicit. As they stood there, smoking and staring at the ground, A.J. attempted to make himself feel sad. But the effort was wasted, and no emotion would come to him. I’m sorry, Granmama, he thought. I loved you, and I will cry for you when I can.

Granmama had wanted her final arrangements to be done up in the old style and had left several pages of instructions written in her spidery hand. A.J. and John Robert read through these the day after her death while she was over at the Fun Home being prepared. The Fun Home was Raymond Poteet’s Funeral Home, and not a great deal of fun had ever been had there. It had become the Fun Home as a result of the second poorest business decision of Raymond’s career. He was a thrifty man, and in his early days as town mortician he discovered that the sign maker he had retained charged by the letter, so he instructed the rogue artisan to abbreviate the word funeral by using the letters f-u-n followed by an almost imperceptible period. The Fun Home was born.

Raymond’s worst decision-arguably the poorest business move ever made by anyone, anywhere-occurred when he attempted to open a barbecue restaurant in a small building that adjoined the Fun Home. Sensibilities being what they are, not much barbecue was sold, and theories about the origin of the meat outlasted the establishment-named Heavenly Ribs-by many years.

Clara’s instructions were clear. She wanted to lie in state and receive visitors in her own home. From the tone of her note, it was clear she expected large numbers, and she instructed A.J. to crawl up under the house and inspect the floor joists to be sure they were up to it. She had already arranged for an old-fashioned pine box, and when A.J. picked it up from Nub Williams, he had to admire its simplicity and quality. It was constructed of pine boards and configured in the archaic six-sided shape, like the coffins occupied by John Wesley Hardin and Count Dracula, to name but two.

“Nub, they don’t make pine like this anymore,” A.J. said to the carpenter, rubbing his hand down the side of the coffin, respecting the obvious excellence of the construction. There were so many coats of varnish on the vessel that it appeared to have depth.

“I come up on those boards years ago,” came Nub’s nine-fingered reply. Pride could be heard in his voice. He had done a good job and knew it. “I was savin’ ’em for somethin’ special. When me an’ your granmama talked last year, I decided right then I knew what those planks were meant for.” A.J. asked about the charge for the work. Nub looked hurt.

“I wouldn’t let her pay me, and I don’t want your money, neither. She was a fine woman, and there ain’t no charge.” A.J. thanked him and hauled Clara’s coffin over to Raymond Poteet.

Clara had left no detail uncovered. She specified the nightgown she wished to wear into the void and the hairdo she wanted to sport when she went. She wanted to be put away next to her husband down in the grove by the lake. The songs she requested were “Amazing Grace” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” both to be sung by Angel Purdue, whose voice was beautiful even if she was Catholic. The instructions went on and on.