Cullin Mitch - The Post-War Dream

Except what was just said might as well have fallen on deaf ears; for Hollis, too, had raised his head, glancing toward the passenger window — his attention immediately caught by two indistinct figures standing far off in a sloping back field, a pair of black shapes framed with blue, loitering where the flat horizon of the field cut a line underneath the sky. With a blink of his eyes, the taller shape standing to the right vanished from sight. But the other figure remained slumped to one side as if it were on the verge of toppling, both arms outstretched like Jesus nailed to the cross. You're only a scarecrow, Hollis told himself. Only a stupid scarecrow — that's what you really are.

On the following Sunday, Hollis and the McCreedys had a late lunch in picnic fashion among the deceased, a newly adopted weekly ritual which the family, especially Florence, felt was necessary. They ate outside during the afternoon, shortly after church, and the weather was nicer than usual, warm enough for coats to be unbuttoned once Sunday worship was behind them. Yet the Baptist church had been different than any church Hollis had previously attended; the service wasn't conducted inside a proper building but, rather, beside a dry riverbed at the bottom of the Caprock canyon, presented under a large revival tent — like structure lacking walls and covered by a corrugated-metal roof which was held up with slender wooden poles; instead of pews there were rows of long weathered benches, instead of a seasoned, soft-spoken minister there was an agitated boyish preacher with yellow bloodshot eyes — shaking his arms in front of the congregation, a Bible gripped in one hand, pacing like a caged lion and wagging his tongue, wearing a blue suit which was a size too big for him, spitting as a man possessed while he gesticulated, telling them they were no better than stray cattle! But Jesus had died a horrible death so they might be delivered from the slaughterhouse of damnation! Jesus, the preacher screamed, was greedy for their unworthy souls! The Lord couldn't care less about their spoiled flesh, but He would die again and again if only to redeem their wanton, sinful souls: “An eternity of Hell fire awaits you who are ripe with the taint of Satan's lure and choose not to heed His word lest you abandon the reckless pleasures of this here diseased world! Oh, heed His word! Redeem yourself, or perish!”

Redeem yourself, or perish.

Hollis's brain had begun to ache, throbbing somewhere deep within his forehead as the boy preacher shouted his wrathful message. By the time the service was finished, the pain had spread, becoming more unbearable, coursing with the pulse of his heartbeat and pounding along the cords of his sockets; it was an acute and near-blinding sensation which stayed with him while he rode in the backseat of the McCreedys’ Ford automobile, sitting beside Edgar and massaging his temples with the points of his thumbs. Florence sat up front, rigidly and silently, arms cradling a wicker picnic basket which pressed down against the folded baby-blue quilt on her lap; next to her, Bill Sr. drove northward, taking them straight through Claude without stopping. Beyond the windows was mostly a clear sky marred only by the presence of a small wayward cloud which, to Hollis, resembled a question mark. Presently a white gravel road appeared on the right side of the highway and Bill Sr. turned onto it, driving toward a fenced-in property, then he bumped the car across a cattle-guard entrance and beneath an arching iron gateway which read claude cemetery. For a while the car continued on the gravel avenue — winding amid tombstones and empty plots — traveling farther into a cemetery which was flat and barren save for patches of brittle grass. The surrounding fields were no less desolate — to the east was a wide-open pasture of nothing but dark brown soil and to the west, just past the highway, was identical terrain with the questioning cloud now floating over it.

Soon they were walking above the dead — Bill Sr., as always, leading the way, Edgar trailing his father closely with the blue quilt sandwiched underneath an arm, Hollis following the boy and squinting from the pain inside his skull, Florence at the rear carrying the picnic basket — crossing a trodden path which cut directly between family plots where the unseen heads of the buried lined the trail on one side, the entombed feet of the deceased bordered the other. All at once Hollis felt shaky, felt his hands tremble, could feel the color draining out of his face — and the inexplicable pain was expanding, reaching into his chest, his gut. “About there,” Bill Sr. said, staring forward but, Hollis understood, addressing him. “Had us a pretty nice gravemarker done, ‘cept that fool engraver got the name spelled wrong — so we had him come and fetch it last week to put it right.”

“Oh, there he is,” Florence said in a pleased manner which sounded no different than had she greeted Creed at the train station. “There's my boy.”

As if the path had been designed only to lead them there, they approached a mound of bulging dirt at the place where the trail ended, set apart from the rest of the graves and obviously a recent addition to the cemetery — for the dirt was not yet level with the earth, nor had any grass been planted upon it; although a few dark green weeds were sprouting on the unmarked rectangular grave, immediately getting yanked by the hands of Bill Sr. and flung aside. With the weeds discarded, all that adorned the dirt was a bouquet of fresh pink carnations, left there by someone who had dug a hole at the top of the mound so the flowers could splay upright as in a vase. Then while Edgar readied the quilt on the nearby ground, and Florence began unpacking the basket, Hollis and Bill Sr. stood at the foot of Creed's grave, looking down and, for Hollis, peering through the compressed layers of dirt to discern what lay below inside a simple black coffin — but seeing just a void of blackness instead.

Without a tombstone, Hollis found himself thinking the grave could be anyone's grave. It could, the now paralyzing pain in his body suggested, be his own grave. With that, he suddenly doubled over, clasping his stomach. “Son?” Bill Sr. said, except Hollis's ears were deafened by a ringing sound. Hunched in front of the mound, gaze still fixed on the dirt, he opened his mouth to speak, but the pain was too great. “You all right?” Bill Sr.'s hand was at his back, patting the spine of his jacket. “Son?” An unintelligible noise spluttered past Hollis's lips, escaping like a final heaving of breath. He tried to scream; he tried to bellow for the whole of humanity. However, the pain wouldn't release his voice; it shot around within him like a pinball, silencing his cry. The chasm of blackness he had glimpsed far beneath the dirt began bubbling up and poured like water through the soles of his shoes, consuming him as he collapsed headfirst against the mound, eyes rolling back into his skull.

When Hollis regained consciousness, he was being handled by Bill Sr. and Florence, both of whom were tugging at him from behind, their arms wrapped about his waist and chest. Dirt, mixed with spittle on his lips, had filled his gapped mouth. “Bless your soul,” Florence was telling him, whispering over his shoulder. “This is a lamentable place, it's true — a lamentable place for us all.” As Hollis was pulled to his feet, a thick clump of dirt fell out of his mouth like dung; he coughed a bit, clearing his throat, tasting grit on his tongue while catching his breath — then it felt like he had been exhumed from the grave, somehow resurrected. After Bill Sr. and Florence managed to turn him in their direction, they started brushing dirt off his face and clothing, both of them resting a hand on his right shoulder, neither looking straight at him but saying, “Let's get you something to eat, son,” and “Lordy, figured I'd lost you for good,” as if they had brought Creed back to life in time for lunch.