Fannie Flagg - Standing in the Rainbow

He's been a good son. How many boys that age would bring their mother to live with them and be so sweet? He takes her everywhere, buys her anything she wants. Hired a maid for her and treats her like a queen. She doesn't have to lift a finger."

Mozelle shook her head, puzzled. "A sweet boy like that but he never married and I don't know why. He was always real popular. Wasn't he, Ethel?"

"He was. Cecil was the band major in high school and in all the school plays."

The reporter asked, "Did he have a high school sweetheart?"

Mozelle said, "Well… there was that one girl, remember? That he went around with for a while. We thought maybe something would happen but when I asked Ursa about it she said that girl was a Christian Scientist and it never would have worked out. But he has lots of friends. He's very active in the Young Men's Christian Association and he directs the Miss Missouri contest every year and runs the Little Theater group up there in Kansas City."

"And directs sacred-music festivals," Ethel added. "And don't forget his church work. He's choir director over at the big Methodist church. So with all his theater and music friends, I'm sure he never has time to be lonesome. He's made a lot of friends in the gospel world. There's not a gospel-singing family in a six-state area that's not a customer. When one of them dies he's the first one they call to come and officiate."

Ethel nodded. "They're always falling out with massive strokes and heart attacks and things. Cecil said he has to special-order the caskets and keep a few in stock just for them."

Mozelle said, "That gospel crowd alone keeps him busy night and day."

The reporter addressed the next question to both of them. "What would you say is the secret of his success?"

They both thought about it and Mozelle spoke first. "I would say that it's his love of pageantry and knowing people. He told me one time, he said, Aunt Mo'Mo, that's what he calls me he said, Aunt Mo, people need a little help to cry over their departed." He said most people try to hold it in when they should let go and get it over with. And believe me, with his theater background he knows exactly how to tug at your heartstrings… with music and lighting and all. He really knows how to pull it out of you."

"That's true. I'll guarantee you will not go to one of Cecil's funerals and not wind up crying along with the rest of them. I know. He did Old Lady Brock's funeral and by the time we were halfway into the service he had me carrying on like she was my own mother. By the time he's done you come out feeling like a dishrag but you feel good too, don't you?"

"You do," said the other aunt. "And with him it's not just a business. I've never been to one of his services that he didn't get all emotional himself. Every time, no matter who the departed is, he sits in the back and has himself a good cry. I think he enjoys his work as much as the customers do. And he is not afraid to spend money. He hires only the best cosmeticians and hair people."

"That's right. I've yet to go to one of his funerals where the family didn't say that the deceased looked better dead than when they were alive."

The reporter thanked them and went home and wrote her story. She was tempted to headline the piece "Better Dead Than Alive" but thought better of it and used "Funeral King Kind to His Mother" instead.

True enough, when Ferris Oatman died suddenly in 1952 of a massive stroke, Cecil Figgs was the first one called. Although it was seventy-five miles from Ferris's hometown, Cecil decided the service was to be held at the old Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham, where the Oatmans had sung at so many sacred-music festivals. On the day of the funeral every gospel group in America showed up to pay their respects.

Everyone said it was one of the biggest the gospel world had seen, by far. Besides all the Oatmans and the Varners and the devoted fans, and the gospel groups by the hundreds, so many buses rolled in that they did not have room to park them all. Even the mayor and the governor himself showed up.

Ferris's large white casket was covered in a spray of white carnations with black musical notes shaped out of little black pipe stems that Cecil had personally designed. As a tribute, Beatrice Woods, backed up by a stage full of twenty-six gospel groups, sang "There Will Be Peace in the Valley." By the time it was over, Minnie was so torn apart she had to be put in a wheelchair and rolled out of the auditorium. It was a fine funeral, just the kind that Cecil Figgs loved. Big and showy.

Everything had gone well except for Ferris's brother Le Roy. He had been so riddled with guilt over leaving the group and joining up with the hillbilly band that he showed up drunk and kept yelling all through the service for Ferris to forgive him. Betty Raye was the only member of the family that would speak to him that day.

Hamm had driven Betty Raye over to Birmingham for her father's funeral and he used this opportunity to shake hands and introduce himself to as many people as he could. Before the service started, while working the crowd, Hamm had watched the governor out of the corner of his eye. He had never been this close to a real governor, a man of such power and importance. He noticed with fascination how everyone clambered around him, how all the men on his staff jumped when he said jump, and how the entire auditorium hung on his every word as he delivered his short eulogy.

Before the day was over and they went back home, two momentous things had happened.

1. Hamm had discovered exactly what office he wanted to run for.

2. Hamm had met Cecil Figgs.

Beatrice Woods had been the first to call Dorothy and tell her what had happened to Minnie. Dorothy immediately got on the phone and called Betty Raye, who had taken the baby and gone over to be by her mother's side.

Dorothy said, "Honey, I just heard. Is there anything you need or anything Doc and I can do to help?"

"Oh, thank you," Betty Raye said, "but I just don't know what anybody can do now. I'm so worried about her she won't see the doctor, and it's been almost three weeks since she's eaten a thing."

"Oh, dear. Well, keep me posted and just know we are all sending you our love."

After Ferris's funeral Minnie had said to the boys and Uncle Floyd, "Take me home." They'd put her on the bus and drove her, Minnie crying all the way. When she got to the little house in Sand Mountain, she announced, after the boys helped her get in bed, "I can't go on without Ferris. I've come home to die."

The entire family was so upset that they called in her personal preacher, the Reverend W. W. Nails, and prayed over her. But it did no good. "It's no use, Reverend Nails," she said weakly. "Yeah… though I have oft walked through the valley of the shadow of death, due to high blood pressure, diabetes, inflammatory arthritis, and gout, I always prayed myself out the other side. But now I don't want to come out the other side. I'm just gonna lay here reading Scriptures until I go."

The Reverend W. W. Nails came out of the bedroom and reported, "That woman has gone sick to the soul with grief and nothing can help her now except a miracle."

Everyone pleaded with her. Betty Raye cried and begged her to at least eat a cracker. But she would not. The house was flooded with flowers and letters from fans, although nothing helped. Chester the dummy came in and pleaded his little wooden heart out. "Oh, Momma Oatman," he said, "get up, we need you. What will happen to the Oatman family without you?"

"Little Chester," she said, "honey, I lost the will to sing when we lost your Uncle Ferris… You take care of Floyd and be a good boy."

Floyd could not take it and ran out of the room and locked himself in the bathroom again. Bervin and Vernon came in, not knowing what to say. She took their hands and said, "Boys, music is left my heart. You and the rest is going to have to be brave and go on without me."