The Brotherhood of the Grape (16 page)

T
EN CARS
of mourners followed the hearse across town to the cemetery a mile away, behind the high school gym. We had a police escort, a cop on a motorcycle leading us through the deserted little town, everybody having gone to the circus. No traffic at all, only the slow-moving funeral procession over the bridge to Pacific Street. My car followed the hearse, Mama sitting between Virgil and me.

“Didn’t Papa look great?” Virgil said. “God, the things they can do nowadays.”

“He looked happy,” Mama said. “It’s the way he used to be, always laughing, always making jokes.”

The joke was on Papa, but I held my tongue.

At every intersection the cop brought his Harley to a halt, raised his arm, glanced to the left and the right, blew his whistle, and waved the hearse to proceed. It was twelve blocks to the graveyard and he stopped the procession at all twelve intersections. My mother watched, deeply impressed, her veil lifted, for the escort gave her husband an air of importance, as though he’d been a big man in the town.

We moved slowly through the cemetery gates and past the “new” graveyard to the “old” one, the difference being that the new section was without ornate tombstones or large trees, whereas the old place was a brooding fairyland of grotesque marble figures beneath enormous oaks and sycamores, luxuriantly shaded, the grass moist and very green and uncut, as if to devour the ancient sunken graves. Through the trees we could see Father Martin standing before an opening in the ground, waiting, prayer book in hand.

I helped my mother from the car and she choked back a cry as she moved toward the priest. As I started to follow, Virgil snatched my arm.

“Let’s watch it now,” he cautioned. “Keep her between us. She might try something.”

“Try what?”

“Jumping on the coffin.”

The thing was possible, but it didn’t happen. Each of us held her by an elbow during the last rites, and though she swayed as she watched the casket descend, the pulleys squealing, she remained composed and without grief. Afterward Father Martin came to her side and took her hands in his and she looked up at him and began to cry. He bent and kissed her on the forehead and that made everybody cry, adults and children alike, and people turned away and tried to hide their misery as they drifted back to their cars.

Harriet joined me and we escorted Mama away through the sycamores. Then, from a distance, we heard it: a voice, mechanical, electronic, pulsing across the land and through the trees as if to make every leaf tremble, a cry of battle, growing louder. We stopped to listen. It was a radio voice, a sportscaster, tense, explosive, profaning the holy cemetery with alien vibrations.

“Bottom of the ninth!” the voice proclaimed. “Two out. Bonds at second, Rader at third, Kingman the batter. The count: two balls and two strikes. Capra in a full windup. Here’s the pitch: a ball!”

Through the trees lurched Mario’s battered truck, nuts and bolts jangling, the voice strident as it swept down upon us. Joy brightened my mother’s face.

“It’s Mario!” she exulted. “Oh, Mario! He came after all. I knew he would, I knew it! Oh, thanks be to God!”

The truck skidded around a curve and braked to a stop before us, throwing gravel. The radio’s irreverent hysteria seemed to jeer at the peaceful dead, rude, flouting their eternal sleep.

Kingman had struck out. The Giants had lost. Momentarily Mario caved in upon the steering wheel. He snapped off the radio and returned to reality, looking at us.

“Am I too late?”

“No, Mario,” Mama said. “There’s still time. Hurry, before they cover him up!”

He jumped from the truck and walked quickly toward the grave where two men with shovels were preparing to fill the plot. We watched him look down upon the casket, covering his face with both hands as he began to cry. Then we walked to the car.

My mother got between Harriet and me. She took off her veil, leaned back and sighed. Her face was beautiful, her eyes were warm with a sense of peace. She took my hand.

“I’m so happy,” she said.

“He died quickly,” I said. “He didn’t suffer at all.”

She sighed.

“He worried me so, all the time, from the day we were married. I never knew where he was, what he was doing, or who he was with. He wouldn’t tell me anything. Every night I wondered if he’d come home again. Now it’s over. I don’t have to worry anymore. I know where he is. That he’s all right.” She uttered a little moan. “Oh, God. The things I used to find in his pockets!”

I started the car.

“Let’s go home.”

“I bought a leg of lamb,” she said. “We’ll have a nice dinner. The whole family. With new potatoes.”