Delvin got up, thanked the old man for his time. The white man waved a rickety arm loosely as if it was waving by designs of its own but he said nothing. Delvin started back up the path. On his way he noticed a wide white sand wagon track behind the house running up through the darkening woods. This was probably where Mr. Beall came to when he went off in his truck, or maybe it was. These were some unusual living arrangements, Delvin thought, but, by way of the funeral home, he had become privy to unusual arrangements. So often who was whose, or had been, lived on as secrets in the hearts of the living. Women revealed as grandmothers, not mothers, aunts who were mothers, sisters who were mothers, mothers who were nobody at all. Same for fathers on their side. Husbands who had been forgotten or simply never mentioned. Children who had been run off and left and who now claimed the first seat on the mourners’ row and wouldn’t be displaced without a fight. He had seen both men and women — and children — leap into the grave hole, trying to continue the struggle with the dead, right on into eternal life. He had seen furious left-behinds hammer with their fists on the coffin and at least once break through the lid and beat the unresisting face. Some had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the grave, some came wailing, some came limp as the freshly dead. Fistfights broke out at times among the bereaved. Once a pistol had been pulled and with a single shot one of the mourners, a smirking brother, had been sent to join the dead child on his journey. He’d seen a husband arrested at the funeral of his wife. You never knew what might happen as the dirt shoveling moment approached.
Death brings out the real person, Mr. O always said. You can’t hold these commotions against anybody. Some of these folks, he said, some of them have waited a lifetime to let the cat out of the bag. We are helping them to do for themselves what nothing else in their lives could. You see estranged children at last drop their hatred and become loving. Others go right exactly the opposite way. Sometimes you can see how happy a spouse is to be finally free. And you can see the ones who know they will never be free. If I wanted to go into business — or get married, he’d say with a look of false horror on his face — I could make up my mind who not to do it with or who would be the best choice just from how people show themselves during the time of bereavement. But it’s our job to provide a backdrop — a stage for these dramas. Without preference. Their lapses or breakouts are safe with us. Think of it, he would say, puffing on one of the tightly rolled Cuban cigars he had begun to smoke after supper, some of these folks have never in their lives been able to trust anybody with the secret of who they are, not the loved one or the preacher — not even themselves. But they can trust us. We don’t bring it out — death does that — but we make it so they can feel at home with their fit. Some of the displays, Delvin thought, were so public that those folks would have to trust the hundred or so other folks who watched them squeal and roll on the ground begging Mama or Daddy or sweet Sue not to go, and not just Mr. O and his boys. At least once Delvin had seen a man who had just shouted out in glee at the sight of his dead wife fresh from the embalming room threaten Mr. O with a future pistol shot if he did not keep his mouth shut about his delight. Mr. O, trembling a little and thinly smiling, had promised that no word would escape.
