had him an idea.
I toted tubs full of roses to the back porch. Drew buckets and buckets of well water to pour over them. And about time the first rays of sunlight hit the back steps, I sat down out there with my grandfather.
First he took a square of Brown Mule out of his pocket, bit off a plug, and settled it in his left cheek. Then he leaned his chair back against the porch wall and got to work. While I trimmed off the lower leaves and thorns, Grandpa took a big split-open croker sack and poked each rose stem into the loose burlap, weaving it in and out, then in again, like a pin being stuck into cloth. In no time at all he had him a solid blanket of roses. It was beautiful.
I noticed for the first time the pile of big croker sacks by his chair.
He spat tobacco juice in an arc that just missed a Rhode Island Red pecking dirt in the swept yard. The hen shrieked, flapped her wings, and ran off. Handing me what he had done, Grandpa said, "Now, son, git this here thang down under some water. Yore granny always soaks roses under water fore she puts'm in a pitcher." He didn't notice he was talking as if Granny was in her kitchen, fixing to cook us some grits, instead of laid out in a coffin in the parlor.
It will help to show what Granny meant to Grandpa if I point out that it wasn't a cheap homemade coffin she was in. It was a fine readymade one he'd ordered years ago when rich Mr. Sheffield was thought to be dying and didn't. It had been upstairs at the store ever since, alongside the stock of corn planters, fertilizer spreaders, mule collars, iron washpots, hat trees, and extra brass racks for readymade dresses. When I was little bitty, I used to close my eyes whenever I had to walk by that coffin.
There were some who said later that Grandpa, stingy as he was, wouldn't have used that expensive coffin for Miss Mattie Lou if he wasn't trying to make it up to her for something he'd done wrong—such as lusting in his heart after Miss Love or being too stingy to give Granny electricity and a bathroom.
If he wasn't ashamed about the lights and plumbing, maybe he
should of been. But personally I didn't think guilt had anything to do with the nice coffin. I thought he used it because he loved her. Despite all I found out later, I still think so.
Grandpa told Granny one time that dead folks ought to be put right in the ground as the Lord intended. I was there and heard it. "And I want me a party when I die, not a funeral. Remember thet."
She didn't act shocked like Mama would of. As a matter of fact, she laughed. "Don't go talkin' bout dyin', Mr. Blakeslee. I druther live in the past than dwell on that part of the future. Still, since you brung it up, I'll say this: my feeling bout buryin' ain't the same as your'n. You remember that." She said the dead body was sacred, it having been a house for the mind and soul, and as such it deserved proper respect. "A nice funeral is a sort of thank-you," she added. "A person's body oughtn't to be treated like no old dead dog."
What she said didn't change Grandpa's thinking about buryings in general, but that being the way she felt, then he was going to see to it she got her thank-you. For Grandpa, that was a sign of love, because usually he did what he wanted to and never noticed that Granny might welcome a little consideration.
By the time he finished covering another sack with roses, he was as excited as a little boy digging worms to go fishing.
They were really something, those rose blankets. It seemed a shame to plan on covering up a fine coffin with them, but they were sure pretty.
I stood up to stretch and scratch. I was hungry. After milking that morning, I had poured me a big glass of sweetmilk, warm right out of the cow, but that wasn't enough to call breakfast. I slumped down in a chair, tilting it against the side of the porch. "We picked way too many roses," I said, yawning.
"No, we ain't. Now make haste, son. I don't want no kinfolks or neighbor ladies seein' what we
I toted tubs full of roses to the back porch. Drew buckets and buckets of well water to pour over them. And about time the first rays of sunlight hit the back steps, I sat down out there with my grandfather.
First he took a square of Brown Mule out of his pocket, bit off a plug, and settled it in his left cheek. Then he leaned his chair back against the porch wall and got to work. While I trimmed off the lower leaves and thorns, Grandpa took a big split-open croker sack and poked each rose stem into the loose burlap, weaving it in and out, then in again, like a pin being stuck into cloth. In no time at all he had him a solid blanket of roses. It was beautiful.
I noticed for the first time the pile of big croker sacks by his chair.
He spat tobacco juice in an arc that just missed a Rhode Island Red pecking dirt in the swept yard. The hen shrieked, flapped her wings, and ran off. Handing me what he had done, Grandpa said, "Now, son, git this here thang down under some water. Yore granny always soaks roses under water fore she puts'm in a pitcher." He didn't notice he was talking as if Granny was in her kitchen, fixing to cook us some grits, instead of laid out in a coffin in the parlor.
It will help to show what Granny meant to Grandpa if I point out that it wasn't a cheap homemade coffin she was in. It was a fine readymade one he'd ordered years ago when rich Mr. Sheffield was thought to be dying and didn't. It had been upstairs at the store ever since, alongside the stock of corn planters, fertilizer spreaders, mule collars, iron washpots, hat trees, and extra brass racks for readymade dresses. When I was little bitty, I used to close my eyes whenever I had to walk by that coffin.
There were some who said later that Grandpa, stingy as he was, wouldn't have used that expensive coffin for Miss Mattie Lou if he wasn't trying to make it up to her for something he'd done wrong—such as lusting in his heart after Miss Love or being too stingy to give Granny electricity and a bathroom.
If he wasn't ashamed about the lights and plumbing, maybe he
should of been. But personally I didn't think guilt had anything to do with the nice coffin. I thought he used it because he loved her. Despite all I found out later, I still think so.
Grandpa told Granny one time that dead folks ought to be put right in the ground as the Lord intended. I was there and heard it. "And I want me a party when I die, not a funeral. Remember thet."
She didn't act shocked like Mama would of. As a matter of fact, she laughed. "Don't go talkin' bout dyin', Mr. Blakeslee. I druther live in the past than dwell on that part of the future. Still, since you brung it up, I'll say this: my feeling bout buryin' ain't the same as your'n. You remember that." She said the dead body was sacred, it having been a house for the mind and soul, and as such it deserved proper respect. "A nice funeral is a sort of thank-you," she added. "A person's body oughtn't to be treated like no old dead dog."
What she said didn't change Grandpa's thinking about buryings in general, but that being the way she felt, then he was going to see to it she got her thank-you. For Grandpa, that was a sign of love, because usually he did what he wanted to and never noticed that Granny might welcome a little consideration.
By the time he finished covering another sack with roses, he was as excited as a little boy digging worms to go fishing.
They were really something, those rose blankets. It seemed a shame to plan on covering up a fine coffin with them, but they were sure pretty.
I stood up to stretch and scratch. I was hungry. After milking that morning, I had poured me a big glass of sweetmilk, warm right out of the cow, but that wasn't enough to call breakfast. I slumped down in a chair, tilting it against the side of the porch. "We picked way too many roses," I said, yawning.
"No, we ain't. Now make haste, son. I don't want no kinfolks or neighbor ladies seein' what we
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