Уолтер Мосли - John Woman

“Bringing a man to his final resting place is a delicate dance,” Herman had once said. “The men carry him down but it is the women dancing who make sure his passage is a gentle one.”

There were no dancers at Herman’s end, no minister because even though Herman believed in a deified universe he had no truck with organized religion. There were obituaries posted in the Daily News and the New York Times. The coffin was pine for the sake of Herman’s Mississippi roots. Collingwood’s Idea of History was nestled under his right arm. The mourners numbered three: France Bickman, Violet Breen and Cornelius, but four chairs were set out at the younger Jones’s request.

The service was set to start at ten. They had fifty minutes to say their last good-byes. The three mourners, all of whom had arrived early, stood by the open coffin and communed with Herman’s clay.

Cornelius had decided to dress him in a torn white T-shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans that he’d found in the bottom drawer of Herman’s bureau. Both items were very, very old. They were folded into a brown paper bag that had Greenwood, 1957 scrawled on the side. The mortician’s makeup captured the faded character in his face.

The two passions of mankind are the ecstasy of childbirth and the inescapable tragedy of death, Herman had often said. Without these elements human beings would be no more than automatons wandering blindly through a world of wonders.

“We should get started, CC,” France said.

The two men went to their chairs. Cornelius looked at the empty seat on the far left, then at the door in back of the small chapel. When he turned to look at the coffin Violet was standing there attempting to master her grief.

Short with sturdy legs, wearing a dark blue dress and a black shawl over her shoulders, she wore no makeup. Her hair was wrapped in a dark green fishnet of some sort. Violet’s eyes filled with tears as she opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again to swallow. She repeated the attempt seven or eight times. Cornelius thought that this alone was proper tribute to his father.

The cleaning woman stared at Cornelius gathering her strength.

“Herman Jones was a learn-ed man,” she said. “Weak of body but strong in his mind. He had no formal education, which would hinder most people, but Herman loved knowledge, collected it. Even though he was smart and well-read that is not why I will miss him. He was a most generous man. Not like some moneybags who gives his tithe to charity, but like a river that flows through a country village. All you had to do was come on down and he would take you on a journey, clean off the dirt or feed you if you were hungry. There was more life in that little man than in most children.”

Cornelius sat forward. He was surprised by the poetry in Violet, who he had known only as a cleaning woman and his father’s willing audience.

“... But his generosity is not why I will miss him either. What he gave he gave freely and so it had nothing to do with debt or sorrow. The reason I’m here is to say that Herman Jones was the only man I truly loved. A black man confined to a bed who never once spoke angry or coarse words in my presence, who recited poetry because we both loved it and who asked each morning about my family and my health.” Violet broke down crying and France hurried to help her to her chair.

After helping Violet, Bickman went to stand before the pine box.

He began talking, CC noticed, without ceremony or dramatic tones.

“Herman taught me forgiveness and humility. He showed me through conversation and by example that my college degree was worth less than a Sunday ticket to the Arbuckle. And if I could give up some of my eighty-two years to have him back here today I would do it without a moment’s hesitation.”

“Oh,” Violet said.

His hands clenched into fists, France Bickman returned to his seat.

Cornelius glanced at the empty chair. When France put a hand on his shoulder he stood up and stumbled. The only reason he didn’t fall was that France steadied him. He experienced a powerful connection with the old man in the soft gray suit. Then Cornelius took the five steps to his father’s coffin.

“When I was in the jailhouse,” he began, “I didn’t have any books at first, so I followed my father’s example and considered the road that brought me to my present location. Dad was always telling me things like that. When I was little I’d get impatient with him but he never seemed to mind. And when I got older I didn’t believe that I could ever be as smart as he was, or as kind. He made me the man he could never be and then set me free to be that man.

“I was there in the jailhouse, in Brooklyn, thinking about sitting next to my dad’s body. Somewhere in my mind I knew that I should have called somebody, done something. But I couldn’t leave his side. My father was dead. The world was going on outside and if I left I would be abandoning him, the only person in the world that mattered to me — except my mother... who hasn’t made it here today.

“Then the police came and they took me into custody.”

Violet started crying again. France lowered his head.

“I owe my father everything. Even when he was on his back, weak as a baby, delirious from the heart disease that the doctors never saw — he was the man I turned to for strength. Good-bye, dad. I will never willingly leave you.”

They took a limo to the graveyard and threw clods of dirt onto the lowered coffin. Cornelius wondered if his mother had seen the notices or if someone from her family had seen them and passed the information on. The day was bright and the air cold. He had on a brown sports jacket and black trousers, clothes that had belonged to his father. He was shivering but did not register the cold.

He missed his mother as much as he did his father.

But even then The Plan was hatching in his mind.

When the burial was over the small group walked back to the limousine. An unfamiliar white man was waiting there. He wore olive work pants and a plaid shirt. He was middle-aged and obviously feeling awkward. When the mourners got to the car he approached them.

Up close Cornelius could see that the man was brawny and broad. He had a bulging stomach and thick brown-and-gray hair.

“Cornelius,” Violet said, “this is my husband, John.”

A smile came immediately to Cornelius’s lips. His shoulders and spirits both rose.

What a wonderful good-bye gift, he wrote to Posterity years later. My father not only had a woman who loved him but he stole her away from a big strong Irishman.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Breen.”

“O’Connel,” Violet said. “That’s my married name.”

Cornelius’s smile turned into a grin. “You have an exceptional wife, sir,” he said. “She made my father’s last days tolerable.”

Cornelius’s friendliness put the dour man further off balance. He nodded, mumbling his thanks, then shaking the teenager’s hand.

“Sorry for your loss,” he said.

“Thank you. Thank you very much.”

The limo dropped Cornelius and France off at the Arbuckle. There was a handwritten note on the front door saying that it would be closed in deference to the death of the projectionist.

France took Cornelius to the office behind the tiny concession stand. There he kept supplies for popcorn sales and the accounting ledgers.

“Sit,” France Bickman said, “sit, sit, sit.”

Cornelius experienced an unexpected feeling of calm. Years later he understood this peacefulness as an easement into freedom.

France sat down on the other side of the walnut dining table used as the desk for the tiny office. There were debit and credit ledgers, silent film catalogs and piles of letters from theater fans stacked up on both ends. France sat back taking Cornelius in with faded gray eyes. Bickman had never looked his age. There were few wrinkles on his spare face and he moved easily without stiffness, hesitations, or trouble bending over to pluck pennies from the floor. He’d always looked younger than Herman.