Delvin, standing next to the open window through which a lazy green fly buzzed slowly back and forth, looked out. Beyond the little ragged graveyard, now rife with fresh flowers amid the undersized gravestones and ceramic urns and worked wire markers, was a big hickory-handled plow with ponderous coulter leaned against a pine tree. He wondered why it was there and wondered what it would be like to plow a field. Beyond the plow the great expanse of cotton hung heavy with hard green bolls.
Now the minister, a deeply black portly man in a black suit with vest and a soft gray tie, ascended the three plank steps to the altar and took a seat in one of the big cypresswood chairs behind and to the side of the pulpit. He was followed by a thin young man in a brown suit who sat down in a similar chair on the other side. The choir had come quietly as ghosts through a door at the side of the church and was now sitting in two short rows farther back on a low platform behind the ministers. They began softly to sing. The accordion that had been playing steadily, the rangy musician pumping, never stopping once to wipe the sweat running down both sides of his face, stopped. The choir sang about how it was going to cross over into campground. Out the big open windows the leaves of the sweet gum soughed and sighed and squared themselves and shook in the breeze that barely reached the floor of the church. Crickets sawed their legs. The bob-white cry of quail. Without Delvin realizing it the service had begun.
The minister gripped the pulpit, thanking everybody for coming and giving the title of a hymn, “Uncumbered Grace.” In a light sweet voice he began himself to sing a line that was picked up by the choir. The congregation sang the line back to them and so the hymn followed: a line sung by the minister and choir and repeated by the congregation. Then another hymn, this time “The Ship of Zion,” sung by everybody together.
As the last phrase died out the minister stepped to the side of the pulpit and kneeled. In his hands was a large white handkerchief stained rusty brown in places. The preacher raised the handkerchief in both hands and began to pray.
“This bit of cloth, Lord, was found in the pocket of the young man before us today. It is a handkerchief given to him by his auntie for his birthday this last May. Casey carried it with him everywhere and used it to wipe the sweat of life from his face. But night before last he didn’t get the chance to use it. Life had already been stolen from him before he could.”
The preacher, who had been twisting the handkerchief in his two hands, raised it again. Many in the crowd had lifted their eyes and were looking at the handkerchief. A rusty tail fluttering in the warm breeze. A woman gasped. Another groaned.
“Blood from this boy’s body stains this hankie, Lord. Casey didn’t have time and the occasion was not propitious for him to draw this square of cloth. Those who kindly cut him down found it in his one unburned pocket. Now this memento belongs to his mother. She will not wash the blood from it.”
He held the handkerchief in front of his face, and Delvin thought for a second that he was going to wash his own face in it. But he didn’t.
“Heavenly Father,” he said, his hands trembling slightly, making the handkerchief flutter, “you have sanctified this blood by your own sacrifice. You too lost a son. A son who washes us all in his own blood. You too grieved. As we here are grieving. This blood, as the blood of any child does, mingles with the blood of the Savior. We here are all sinners, Lord. Fools and strayers, wayward, bumbling folk. This young man whose body lies here before us is cleansed now of all that. He lives with you in heaven. Have mercy on us here, us strugglers and sinners, those left behind in this cold world. Forgive us our sins that we can’t keep from committing. Wash us, Lord, in the blood. Wash us in the blood of the lamb. Heal us, Lord. Hear us. We cry out to you in our grief.”
He lifted his head as cries of
