Forty Stories (eBook Original) by Harper Perennial

Author:Harper Perennial [Perennial, Harper]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-07-17T00:00:00+00:00

21.

Graveyards

by Scott McClanahan

I didn’t even want to go to the graveyard, but Ruby told me I had to. She was giving my uncle Stanley hell about it for weeks, until he finally said: “Oh shit, Mother. That old road up there is rough as hell. What are we going to do if I get my truck stuck up?” My uncle Stanley just lived down the road, so he was always stuck with taking us places.

But she kept going on and on about it, saying: “Oh Lordy, I’d like to go to the cemetery. I don’t know when I’ll get back up there.”

She told us there was a grave up there she wanted to put flowers on.

There was a grave up there she needed to see before she died.

My uncle Stanley finally gave in. He picked up some plastic flowers from the dollar store and drove her up to the graveyard in his truck. He drove down into Prince and we listened to the radio—99.5 The Big Dawg in country. Lord have mercy, baby’s got her blue jeans on.

We drove through the places where Ruby had given birth to babies in shacks that no longer stood, and where my grandfather sold moonshine. We gunned it up Backus Mountain with my uncle Nathan, sitting in the back of the truck trying to hang on with his palsy legs. Then we finally pulled up the hill and into the Goddard graveyard.

Stanley stopped the truck, and on top of the cow-paddy hill we got out.

He said: “Damn, it’s bad enough being buried up here, let alone having to come up here when you’re still alive.”

But my grandma wouldn’t listen to him and started walking through the grass. I remembered to watch my step because my uncle Larry stepped in cow shit one time up here when he was wearing flip-flops.

I told Ruby I didn’t like graveyards. She told me it didn’t matter.

Even though I was only fourteen years old it was no telling when the angel of death might come to get my ass.

I stepped over a big fossilized cow paddy and then I stepped over another as Uncle Nathan laughed at us from the truck.

Earlier that day she fed me peanut butter fudge she made and told me: Nothing lasts.

Now we walked past the graves of all the people she knew.

There was Grandmommy Goddard and Daddy Goddard and Great Grandmommy Goddard and Virginia Goddard.

And there was her aunt Mag Goddard who starved herself to death. Ruby stood in front of the grave and said, “No one knows why. She just locked herself in her room and starved herself to death.”

Then there were other graves and she started walking through them.

She said: “I don’t think they’ve been mowing it very nice out here.”

Then she stopped in front of one.

I asked her if it was her mother.

And Grandma said, “Yeah, that’s Mommy. The day of the funeral they tried putting her in the ground facing the west. I just hollered and carried on ’cause she was facing the wrong way for the resurrection.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.