| Melvin Sterne: Writer, Teacher, Editor, Photographer |
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The Funeral (Originally published in Mochilla Review)
The morning of the funeral Mama Kay dressed Tyler in a black shirt and charcoal-gray wool-tweed jacket she bought the
day before at the Saint Vincent de Paul’s thrift store in Tifton. The shirt was too big and missed a button on the right cuff.
Tyler complained, but Mama Kay didn’t have time to fix it so she fastened the cuff with a safety pin. The jacket was too short
in the sleeves, too, but there was nothing Mama Kay could do about that. She told Tyler to keep his arms by his side and
nobody would notice. Mama Kay fussed over him like he was getting his school picture taken, and even slicked his hair
down with some of his father’s Brylcream, but all Tyler could think about was that Daddy Frank would think it was a waste to
buy from Catholics. When Mama Kay was done with him he stood in front of the mirror scratching his neck where the wool
“itched” him, and moving his arms this way and that, watching the sleeves ride up and down, looking to see if the safety pin
showed.
“You look fine, darlin’,” Mama Kay called from the bathroom, where she was putting on her makeup.
The mirror hung on Tyler’s closet door. It was old and some of the silver coating behind the glass was gone. Tyler
messed with it and found that if he opened the door just right, he could see Mama Kay’s reflection in the bathroom mirror,
bent over the sink, dabbing on her makeup. She wore a low-cut black slip and a matching lacy bra. The pale light of the
bathroom’s single sixty-watt bulb made the vee of her cleavage yawn like a cave. Mama Kay never put on her dress until the
last thing, lest she show sweat lines under her arms.
His sister Jane, who was about to turn fourteen, got a black widow’s dress and a veil, which made her look grown-up
and somber, even if she was flat-chested and skinny as a bean pole. Folks said Jane was stupid because she didn’t talk
much—she had been held back twice in school already. When Tyler came out into the hall Jane was standing on one leg
with a far-off look in her eyes.
“Hey,” he said, and Jane smiled and nodded, swaying a little bit back and forth.
Mama Kay was not their real mother. His real mother took up with a Baptist preacher and moved to Alabama. Tyler’s
father brought Mama Kay home from the Crossroads Tavern shortly after Tyler’s real mama ran off. She was taller than
Daddy Frank, blond, with something called full hips, which meant not fat, but not skinny either. Sometimes she dyed her hair
platinum, and folks said she looked just like Marilyn Monroe. She was a war widow and had a black dress in the closet from
when her first husband died. Mama Kay forgot to air it out the night before so it smelled of moth balls, but before they left for
church Mama Kay sprayed on so much perfume nobody could stand to sit next to her anyway. She stood in the hallway and
did a little shimmy pulling her dress over her shoulders and down her hips. She knelt down and Tyler zipped up the back for
her.
They piled into Daddy Frank’s old Dodge pickup, which was the only thing worth anything he left them. Jane rode shotgun,
with the stick shift sticking up between her legs. Her dress hitched up above her knees and Mama Kay slipped it back down
and reminded Jane to “Be decent. Act like a lady.” Jane had taken to lifting her skirt up and looking at herself lately in the
most uncomely manner and in the most inconvenient places, like church, or the grocery store. Tyler played with the glove
compartment until the handle fell off, and then found that it would not stay shut, and Mama Kay scolded him all the way to
town for “pestering her.”
They drove to the Pentecostal Church, which was on the edge of town, rather than to the Baptist Church, which was
downtown between city hall and the Dairy Queen. Tyler preferred the Baptist church and the social life it afforded him after
services. Daddy Frank had been born and raised a Baptist, but in the last few years had switched to the Holy Rollers, not so
much because he held with talking in tongues, but because the Pentecostals were “plain folk” who didn’t believe in “puttin’
on airs.” It didn’t help any that it was a Baptist preacher who ran off with Tyler’s real mama, even if he was from Moultrie,
which was twenty miles away, and not Valdosta. The recentness of his involvement with the Pentecostals may have
contributed to the small turnout at the funeral—there being only a dozen or so mourners present. That and the fact that
Tyler’s daddy was what townsfolk called a mean drunk. There weren’t hardly any flowers. The coffin was closed.
Tyler knew what people said behind his daddy’s back. They whispered in the aisles of grocery stores and nodded in his
direction when he walked downtown. One Saturday morning, when Tyler rode his bike past the Crossroads Tavern, two men
in the parking lot whistled at him and said, “Hey Tyler! Hoo, boy! Your daddy sure is one tough-ass cuss.” Tyler wasn’t quite
sure how to take that.
Tyler spent plenty of Saturday mornings riding his bike looking for Daddy Frank’s truck (if Daddy Frank came home Friday
night) or Daddy Frank (if he had not). That particular time was one of the had-nots. Tyler never did find his father, though
eventually Daddy Frank called from Dougherty County jail asking for bail money. They found his truck in the ditch on highway
82 the other side of Albany. Daddy Frank had got drunk at The Crossroads and pistol-whipped two locals who made a joke
about a preacher running off with some fella’s wife. He had no recollection of it, but he told the state troopers who pulled
him over that he was on his way to Alabama to “shoot that self-righteous son-of-a-bitch.” He spent thirty days on a county
road crew. Mama Kay, Tyler, and Jane got to visit him sometimes, and they brought the whole gang cornbread and lemonade
when they did.
At the funeral, they passed around a picture of Daddy Frank in a sailor’s uniform and another one of him with the semi he
drove for the Valley Grower’s Association. In both of these pictures he was smiling—a big-boned round-faced man with
close-cropped blond hair, a long red scar running from his left cheekbone to his chin, his arms painted pale blue with
tattoos. Mama Kay dabbed her eyes and sniffed through the sermon. The preacher said a few words about heaven and hell
and the importance of giving your life to Jesus. Tyler heard a woman behind them whisper, “He was not drunk. He was up
three days on pep pills and fell asleep at the wheel. He ran head-on into the abutment.” The man she whispered to
whispered back, “Took ‘em two hours to cut him out, him crying and moaning the whole time. Then he died on the way to the
hospital. I heard his last words were, ‘Can we pick up a six-pack on the way?’”
When it was over they sang “Amazing Grace” and a song called “Big Bad John” which had been Daddy Frank’s favorite.
Then they got in their cars and followed the hearse to the cemetery and buried him. The pallbearers lowered the coffin into
the ground and his mama pitched a rose and a handful of dirt after it. A man in a VFW uniform played ‘taps’ on the bugle. He
played very badly, and Tyler felt sorry for him. Tyler saw Jane lift her skirt and look at herself again, and Mama Kay shook
her arm to make her stop.
At the far end of the cemetery an old black man sat in the shade of an oak tree smoking a pipe, a shovel on the ground at
his feet. He wore overalls and a red and white checkered shirt, and Tyler watched as he slipped a flask out of his pocket and
tipped it back and drank. Tyler waved and the old man waved back. As they turned to go, a covey of quail took flight from a
bean field across the road, their wings beating the air like a drum roll.
At home Mama Kay had planned a picnic and invited everybody she knew to come. “It’s what he would have wanted,” she
explained. Mama Kay wore her black dress and veil, but Tyler changed into jeans and Jane into slacks. Tyler was hoping
some of his friends would come over and they could play baseball, but none did, so he rode his bike along the river until he
got hungry.
The ladies from the church brought fried chicken enough for a small army and someone baked a ham for sandwiches.
Mama Kay made lemonade and sweet tea with mint leaves in it, and a pound cake for desert. Tyler snuck a Coke from the
fridge and shared it with Jane behind the house. Mama Kay spread a tablecloth on the ground, and he and Jane ate quietly
while the adults sat at the picnic table. Jane nibbled on a chicken wing. Tyler listened to the adults talking.
“I suppose I will get some kind of a widow’s pension from the state or something,” Mama Kay said. “I believe I can collect
Frank’s GI bill, too.”
“Who’s GI Bill?” Jane asked.
Tyler looked away. “Must be a friend of daddy’s,” he said.
“Is Daddy Frank coming back?”
Tyler shook his head.
Jane smiled.
A shiny new white Cadillac pulled up in front of their house and a man and two women got out. Tyler craned his neck to
see, but he didn’t know them. A good-looking woman in a knee-length blue dress ran right up to Mama Kay and they hugged
in the front yard. “I’m so happy to see you,” the woman said.
“I’m so glad you came, Mindy,” Mama Kay replied. “I wasn’t sure you would make it.”
“Of course, I just wish it could be under pleasanter circumstances,” Mindy said.
Mama Kay shrugged, and then the two of them burst out giggling. The second woman and the man made their way slowly
across the front yard. The woman carried her shoes in her hand. “I broke my heel,” she said, holding her shoe out for Mama
Kay to see.
“Eloise!” Mama Kay said. “I can’t thank you enough for coming.” They hugged with a little less enthusiasm, then Eloise
took the man’s arm and introduced him to Mama Kay. “Kay, this is my beau, Thomas Boyle. He drove us all the way from
Atlanta.”
“Thank you,” Mama Kay said, shaking Thomas Boyle’s hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”
“The pleasure is mine, Ma'am.” Mr. Boyle took off his hat and bowed slightly. He wore a light gray suit with a white shirt
and a yellow tie, mirrored sunglasses, and a wide-brimmed felt hat. When he took off his hat Tyler could see that Mr. Boyle
was bald as an egg, even though he did not look as old as Daddy Frank.
Mama Kay took the shoe from Eloise. “Tyler!” she said, “Run and fetch me some glue from your daddy’s toolbox. Be
quick, now, ya hear?”
Daddy Frank kept his tools in the garage and it was the one part of the house that was sacred to him and always kept in
meticulous order. There was usually a car or two in the yard for Daddy Frank to work on when trucking got slow. Sometimes
he’d buy a clunker and fix it up. Other times folks would bring him theirs. The garage had but one window and it was gray
with dust and cobwebs. It was cool and dark inside, and smelled of burnt oil and pipe tobacco. Tyler spent hours helping
Daddy Frank, handing him tools and bottles of beer while Daddy Frank drank and cussed and worked. In the summer they
tuned an old radio to the Braves games. In the winter, Tyler huddled up in front of a little electric heater. When Daddy Frank
was on the road Tyler would sneak into the cabinets and read his collection of girlie magazines, Playboy, and Oui, and
magazines without names at all, just numbers. Those were Tyler’s favorites, and he would carry them down to the river
where he and his friends looked at the girls and speculated about which ones they preferred and why, and what they would
do with this one or that.
Daddy Frank kept his tools locked in a big Snap-On toolbox, but Tyler knew where the key was hid, and he found it and
unlocked the box. Tyler found the glue, but before carrying it to Mama Kay he squeezed a little into a red mechanic’s rag and
held it to his nose. He breathed the fumes in deep and held his breath until his lips tingled and his tongue went numb. He felt
dizzy and far away. He did this again and then, glancing towards the door, he climbed up on top of the toolbox and he
reached in the cabinet where Daddy Frank hid his magazines. Standing on his tiptoes, he pulled two out of the stack and
dropped them to the floor—one for now and one for later. He hid one in the bottom drawer of the toolbox and opened the
other one. It was dark in the garage, but in the half-light Tyler could make out the figures of a man and woman on a bed. He
thumbed through the pages until a Polaroid fell out of the magazine onto the floor. Tyler turned to the back of the magazine
and found several more photos stuck between the pages. He looked closely at one. The picture was of a young girl naked on
a blanket, evidently taken out in the woods someplace. Tyler looked around the room, then looked at the picture again. It
wasn’t anybody he knew. The man was middle-aged and white. The girl was young. He folded it back inside the magazine.
Tyler climbed back up the toolbox and threw the magazine behind the stack and closed the cabinet door. He lost his
balance climbing down and fell, landing hard on his elbows and biting his tongue. He sat on the ground rocking back and
forth, tasting blood and rubbing his elbows. Then he took the rag and inhaled another hit of glue. He remembered the picture
that fell out of the magazine and he groped around the floor, but could not find it. He decided it must have slipped under the
toolbox. The toolbox was on wheels but the bearings had rusted solid so even Daddy Frank couldn’t budge it without help.
Tyler found a hacksaw blade in the toolbox and scraped around underneath. He struck something solid. He worked it to the
edge of the box and pulled it out: a pistol.
At first he thought he had found a hammer. Even when he got hold of it by the barrel he wasn’t sure what he had. It
wasn’t sleek and pretty like the chrome-plated hell-blasters Daddy Frank lusted after at the pawn shop. This gun was L-
shaped and clumsy-looking, rusted, and with what looked like a washer welded onto the butt end of the grip. The barrel was
octagonal. Tyler took it in his hand and tried to raise it to arm’s length, but it was so heavy he had a hard time holding it
steady. He spun the chamber and, though stiff, it turned with a satisfying click. Tyler tried to cock it with his thumb but the
hammer barely budged. He put his hand over it and leaned on it with all his weight and it slowly gave way. Tyler held it to the
light and spun the chamber again. It was loaded.
By the time Tyler got back to the picnic Mama Kay had forgot all about him. He stood leaning unsteadily against the screen
door from the kitchen, the glue loose in his left hand. His ears buzzed like a swarm of bees, his lips were numb and tingling,
his eyes dilated, the light hurt.
“Will you fetch me a roll of paper towels, hun?” Mama Kay called. Tyler got one and trudged zombie-like to the picnic table
and set it and the glue by her elbow.
“That’s your boy?” Mindy asked.
Mama Kay answered, “I guess he is now.”
Tyler walked away and sat down cross-legged next to Jane and she smiled at him, covered her mouth and
giggled.
“What’s the matter with you?” Tyler asked.
“Buggers,” Jane said, pointing.
Tyler wiped a bit of glue off his nose. Jane knew what he had been doing because sometimes they did it together. “You
better not tell,” he hissed.
Jane had her slacks hitched up above her knees and scratched her legs with a chunk of Spanish moss.
“What are you doing that for?” Tyler asked.
“It’s itchy,” Jane said.
“Well, don’t,” Tyler said, yanking the moss out of Jane’s hand and throwing it over his shoulder. “You’ll catch chiggers.”
“Chiggers?” Jane asked. She covered her mouth and giggled again.
“Come over here, boy, and let me take a look at you,” Mindy called.
Tyler looked at her but didn’t move.
“Don’t pay him no mind,” Mama Kay said. “The boy likes to play the fool around adults.”
Thomas Boyle frowned, then began to scold Mama Kay saying: “See here, Miss Kay, it’s not right for a boy to disrespect
his mother like that. I know his father wasn’t much, but a boy needs a strong hand to keep him out of trouble. I suggest, if
you aim to keep him, you let him know from day one that you are the law, and the law must be paid.” He snapped his fingers
and called, “Hey, boy! You hear your mama talking to you? Come over here like she says.”
“Chiggers,” Tyler said to Jane. “Remember when you got them itchy red bumps and Mama Kay had to paint you all over
with fingernail polish to make it stop?”
“You deaf or something?” Tomas Boyle said.
“Lookee what I found,” Tyler said, and lifting the front of his shirt he showed Jane the pistol.
Thomas Boyle stood up, and Tyler stood up, hesitated, then pulled out the pistol and swung it around in Thomas Boyle’s
direction. One of the churchwomen screamed and Mama Kay shouted, “Tyler, put that down!”
“That gun’s not loaded,” Thomas Boyle said, and he took a step towards Tyler.
There was a laundry line hung in the neighbor’s backyard, behind and to the left of Thomas Boyle. Tyler took aim at a
sheet and squeezed the trigger. The gun jumped in his hand and the sheet flew off the line, a big tear showing blue sky as
the sheet crumpled to the ground. Jane clapped her hands over her ears began a long, lung-deflating scream. The picnic
guests scattered across the yard at a dead run. Some jumped the fence while others dashed around the corner of the
house. Mama Kay and Thomas Boyle stayed put. Tyler cocked the pistol.
Thomas Boyle held out his hands in front of him and said, in a sweet and low voice, “I know this is a hard time for you, boy.
Maybe you should lay that gun down and we can talk about things man-to-man.”
Mama Kay sipped her lemonade and sighed.
Tyler licked his lips and tasted blood and gunpowder. He took aim at a shirt and fired again. The shirt jumped and a hole
appeared in the breast pocket. It dangled by one clothespin. Thomas Boyle ducked behind an oak tree shading the picnic
table. He peeked around the tree and looked at Tyler.
Jane stopped screaming and stood up. She walked past Tyler and picked up another piece of moss, began rubbing her
arms with it, then turned and went inside the house.
“Tyler,” Mama Kay said softly, “please lay the gun down.”
Tyler rubbed the barrel on his cheek. It was hot, but not enough to burn his face. He held the end of the barrel to his nose
and inhaled. It smelled pungent, like glue. He cocked it again, looked into the cylinder and could see three more rounds.
Thomas Boyle poked his head around the tree and Tyler took quick aim and fired.
He wasn’t shooting to hit Thomas Boyle—the shot struck the tree well above him and showered him with bark and
splinters—but Thomas took off running, anyway, screaming, “I’m shot! I’m shot!” Tyler was pretty sure he had missed, but
he was glad to see Thomas Boyle jump into the Cadillac and peel away.
Mama Kay finished her lemonade and went inside the house.
Tyler laid the pistol down and went around to the garage. The guests were all gone, even Mindy and Eloise. Eloise had
forgotten her shoes. Tyler opened the garage door and then closed it behind him, sat with his back to Daddy Frank’s toolbox
and began to cry. In a minute Mama Kay opened the door and asked him, “Hun, would you like some cake and ice cream?”
The state trooper was the first cop to arrive. He pulled into the yard with his lights on but the siren off. Tyler could see
him through the screen door when he turned the corner on their block.
Mama Kay sat in the kitchen fanning herself. She had stripped down to her slip and hung the black dress over the back of
her chair. Tyler sat on one side of her, Jane on the other. The trooper knocked at the kitchen door. “Jane,” Mama Kay said,
“go to your room for a little while.” Jane took her cake and ice cream, and with a long look over her shoulder, left.
The trooper came in without waiting for Mama Kay to answer. He was a big man, over six foot, and at least two hundred
pounds. He looked young to Tyler, maybe twenty-five or thirty. He tucked his hat under his right arm. He wore his hair in a
crew cut and it was shiny white, like Mama Kay’s. He had smile lines around his eyes. Tyler saw that the holster on his hip
was unsnapped. He carried Daddy Frank’s pistol in his left hand.
Mama Kay had poured herself a bourbon and coke, and motioned to the trooper that he could have one too.
He shook his head. “Thank you, ma’am, but not while I’m on duty.” He opened Daddy Frank’s pistol and emptied the
cylinder, held it up and read the markings. “We got us a Webley Mark IV, point four-five-five caliber. Don’t see many of them
anymore. Almost a antique. Used ‘em in the First World War; British issue, or Canadian. What was you doing with this,
anyhow?”
Tyler shrugged his shoulders. He could hear a siren, and in a moment another black and white came around the corner.
“He ain’t right,” Mama Kay said. “We buried his daddy today.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
The second cop pulled up into the yard and the siren cut out with a whine like a dying dog. In a minute the county sheriff
came puffing up to the door, but the trooper waived him off. “Go home Sam, I got this under control.”
The sheriff poked his head in the door and looked around. “Are you’re sure?”
The trooper pulled out a chair and sat down across from Mama Kay. “I’ll take care of it. You go on home.” He and Mama
Kay sat quietly, eyeing each other, until the sheriff was gone.
Tyler could see the neighbors beginning to congregate in their yards. Once in a while he could see somebody nod in the
direction of their house. Then Mama Kay said, “He ain’t gonna hurt nobody. He’s just upset.”
“That’s likely the case, ma’am,” the trooper said, “but dischargin’ a firearm in the city limit is a misdemeanor, and we
gonna have to do somethin’ about it.”
Tyler had visions of swinging a scythe on the county road gang. He had cut weeds in the yard with Daddy Frank before and
it blistered his hands. He wondered if Mama Kay would bring him cornbread and lemonade.
“But you ain’t gonna put him in jail, are you? That ain’t no place for a boy. He’s not even twelve yet.”
“The judge’ll likely want to talk to the boy hisself. He ain’t been in no trouble before, has he?”
Mama Kay shook her head. “Nothing any other boy in this county couldn’t get caught for.”
“Likely not then. But then again, he is his daddy’s son. They might figure a little stay in the reformatory would do him good.
They say a ounce of prevention is worth a pound o’ cure. But that’s not up to me to decide. I suspect they’ll want him to talk
to a doctor or a psychologist or somethin’. But I got to take him in, for his own protection, if nothin’ else.”
Mama Kay squirmed in her seat. She set her elbows on the table, rested her chin in her hands, leaned closer to the
trooper, and batted her eyes. “There must be something we can do?” she said, “some kind of arrangement we can make? I
would be very distressed if my boy went to jail the day we buried his daddy.”
Tyler stirred the melting ice cream with his fork. He crumbled the pound cake into it and mashed it into a creamy paste.
He looked at Mama Kay and saw the shadow of her cleavage practically shoved in the trooper’s face.
The trooper leaned back in his chair and looked around. At length he asked, “Is there some place we could talk about this
in private?”
Mama Kay stood up and took the trooper by the hand, led him down the hall to her room and closed the door.
When she was gone Tyler drank the rest of her bourbon and coke.
Jane came out of her room. “Is he gone?” she asked, and Tyler shook his head. Jane looked down and began scratching
her arms. Tyler saw bright red welts running all the way from her elbows to her wrists. “I think I got chiggers,”Jane said, and
she lifted her dress and showed Tyler where welts started on her thighs.
It was getting dark. Most of the neighbors had given up gawking and gone inside. A mosquito fogger came down the
street, its yellow light flashing. After it was gone, a sour smell lingered in the air. The telephone began to ring.
“You want to go for a ride?” Tyler asked.
“Where would we go?”
Tyler shrugged his shoulders. “Don't know,” he said. “Somewhere. Maybe Alabama.”
Jane glanced towards Mama Kay’s room. “Can you get the keys?”
“I don’t need no keys,” Tyler said. “Daddy Frank taught me how to start cars without ‘em.”
“Can you start a car without a key?” she asked.
Tyler nodded.
“Any car?” Jane asked.
Tyler’s lips curled into a grin. “Any car at all.”
The morning of the funeral Mama Kay dressed Tyler in a black shirt and charcoal-gray wool-tweed jacket she bought the
day before at the Saint Vincent de Paul’s thrift store in Tifton. The shirt was too big and missed a button on the right cuff.
Tyler complained, but Mama Kay didn’t have time to fix it so she fastened the cuff with a safety pin. The jacket was too short
in the sleeves, too, but there was nothing Mama Kay could do about that. She told Tyler to keep his arms by his side and
nobody would notice. Mama Kay fussed over him like he was getting his school picture taken, and even slicked his hair
down with some of his father’s Brylcream, but all Tyler could think about was that Daddy Frank would think it was a waste to
buy from Catholics. When Mama Kay was done with him he stood in front of the mirror scratching his neck where the wool
“itched” him, and moving his arms this way and that, watching the sleeves ride up and down, looking to see if the safety pin
showed.
“You look fine, darlin’,” Mama Kay called from the bathroom, where she was putting on her makeup.
The mirror hung on Tyler’s closet door. It was old and some of the silver coating behind the glass was gone. Tyler
messed with it and found that if he opened the door just right, he could see Mama Kay’s reflection in the bathroom mirror,
bent over the sink, dabbing on her makeup. She wore a low-cut black slip and a matching lacy bra. The pale light of the
bathroom’s single sixty-watt bulb made the vee of her cleavage yawn like a cave. Mama Kay never put on her dress until the
last thing, lest she show sweat lines under her arms.
His sister Jane, who was about to turn fourteen, got a black widow’s dress and a veil, which made her look grown-up
and somber, even if she was flat-chested and skinny as a bean pole. Folks said Jane was stupid because she didn’t talk
much—she had been held back twice in school already. When Tyler came out into the hall Jane was standing on one leg
with a far-off look in her eyes.
“Hey,” he said, and Jane smiled and nodded, swaying a little bit back and forth.
Mama Kay was not their real mother. His real mother took up with a Baptist preacher and moved to Alabama. Tyler’s
father brought Mama Kay home from the Crossroads Tavern shortly after Tyler’s real mama ran off. She was taller than
Daddy Frank, blond, with something called full hips, which meant not fat, but not skinny either. Sometimes she dyed her hair
platinum, and folks said she looked just like Marilyn Monroe. She was a war widow and had a black dress in the closet from
when her first husband died. Mama Kay forgot to air it out the night before so it smelled of moth balls, but before they left for
church Mama Kay sprayed on so much perfume nobody could stand to sit next to her anyway. She stood in the hallway and
did a little shimmy pulling her dress over her shoulders and down her hips. She knelt down and Tyler zipped up the back for
her.
They piled into Daddy Frank’s old Dodge pickup, which was the only thing worth anything he left them. Jane rode shotgun,
with the stick shift sticking up between her legs. Her dress hitched up above her knees and Mama Kay slipped it back down
and reminded Jane to “Be decent. Act like a lady.” Jane had taken to lifting her skirt up and looking at herself lately in the
most uncomely manner and in the most inconvenient places, like church, or the grocery store. Tyler played with the glove
compartment until the handle fell off, and then found that it would not stay shut, and Mama Kay scolded him all the way to
town for “pestering her.”
They drove to the Pentecostal Church, which was on the edge of town, rather than to the Baptist Church, which was
downtown between city hall and the Dairy Queen. Tyler preferred the Baptist church and the social life it afforded him after
services. Daddy Frank had been born and raised a Baptist, but in the last few years had switched to the Holy Rollers, not so
much because he held with talking in tongues, but because the Pentecostals were “plain folk” who didn’t believe in “puttin’
on airs.” It didn’t help any that it was a Baptist preacher who ran off with Tyler’s real mama, even if he was from Moultrie,
which was twenty miles away, and not Valdosta. The recentness of his involvement with the Pentecostals may have
contributed to the small turnout at the funeral—there being only a dozen or so mourners present. That and the fact that
Tyler’s daddy was what townsfolk called a mean drunk. There weren’t hardly any flowers. The coffin was closed.
Tyler knew what people said behind his daddy’s back. They whispered in the aisles of grocery stores and nodded in his
direction when he walked downtown. One Saturday morning, when Tyler rode his bike past the Crossroads Tavern, two men
in the parking lot whistled at him and said, “Hey Tyler! Hoo, boy! Your daddy sure is one tough-ass cuss.” Tyler wasn’t quite
sure how to take that.
Tyler spent plenty of Saturday mornings riding his bike looking for Daddy Frank’s truck (if Daddy Frank came home Friday
night) or Daddy Frank (if he had not). That particular time was one of the had-nots. Tyler never did find his father, though
eventually Daddy Frank called from Dougherty County jail asking for bail money. They found his truck in the ditch on highway
82 the other side of Albany. Daddy Frank had got drunk at The Crossroads and pistol-whipped two locals who made a joke
about a preacher running off with some fella’s wife. He had no recollection of it, but he told the state troopers who pulled
him over that he was on his way to Alabama to “shoot that self-righteous son-of-a-bitch.” He spent thirty days on a county
road crew. Mama Kay, Tyler, and Jane got to visit him sometimes, and they brought the whole gang cornbread and lemonade
when they did.
At the funeral, they passed around a picture of Daddy Frank in a sailor’s uniform and another one of him with the semi he
drove for the Valley Grower’s Association. In both of these pictures he was smiling—a big-boned round-faced man with
close-cropped blond hair, a long red scar running from his left cheekbone to his chin, his arms painted pale blue with
tattoos. Mama Kay dabbed her eyes and sniffed through the sermon. The preacher said a few words about heaven and hell
and the importance of giving your life to Jesus. Tyler heard a woman behind them whisper, “He was not drunk. He was up
three days on pep pills and fell asleep at the wheel. He ran head-on into the abutment.” The man she whispered to
whispered back, “Took ‘em two hours to cut him out, him crying and moaning the whole time. Then he died on the way to the
hospital. I heard his last words were, ‘Can we pick up a six-pack on the way?’”
When it was over they sang “Amazing Grace” and a song called “Big Bad John” which had been Daddy Frank’s favorite.
Then they got in their cars and followed the hearse to the cemetery and buried him. The pallbearers lowered the coffin into
the ground and his mama pitched a rose and a handful of dirt after it. A man in a VFW uniform played ‘taps’ on the bugle. He
played very badly, and Tyler felt sorry for him. Tyler saw Jane lift her skirt and look at herself again, and Mama Kay shook
her arm to make her stop.
At the far end of the cemetery an old black man sat in the shade of an oak tree smoking a pipe, a shovel on the ground at
his feet. He wore overalls and a red and white checkered shirt, and Tyler watched as he slipped a flask out of his pocket and
tipped it back and drank. Tyler waved and the old man waved back. As they turned to go, a covey of quail took flight from a
bean field across the road, their wings beating the air like a drum roll.
At home Mama Kay had planned a picnic and invited everybody she knew to come. “It’s what he would have wanted,” she
explained. Mama Kay wore her black dress and veil, but Tyler changed into jeans and Jane into slacks. Tyler was hoping
some of his friends would come over and they could play baseball, but none did, so he rode his bike along the river until he
got hungry.
The ladies from the church brought fried chicken enough for a small army and someone baked a ham for sandwiches.
Mama Kay made lemonade and sweet tea with mint leaves in it, and a pound cake for desert. Tyler snuck a Coke from the
fridge and shared it with Jane behind the house. Mama Kay spread a tablecloth on the ground, and he and Jane ate quietly
while the adults sat at the picnic table. Jane nibbled on a chicken wing. Tyler listened to the adults talking.
“I suppose I will get some kind of a widow’s pension from the state or something,” Mama Kay said. “I believe I can collect
Frank’s GI bill, too.”
“Who’s GI Bill?” Jane asked.
Tyler looked away. “Must be a friend of daddy’s,” he said.
“Is Daddy Frank coming back?”
Tyler shook his head.
Jane smiled.
A shiny new white Cadillac pulled up in front of their house and a man and two women got out. Tyler craned his neck to
see, but he didn’t know them. A good-looking woman in a knee-length blue dress ran right up to Mama Kay and they hugged
in the front yard. “I’m so happy to see you,” the woman said.
“I’m so glad you came, Mindy,” Mama Kay replied. “I wasn’t sure you would make it.”
“Of course, I just wish it could be under pleasanter circumstances,” Mindy said.
Mama Kay shrugged, and then the two of them burst out giggling. The second woman and the man made their way slowly
across the front yard. The woman carried her shoes in her hand. “I broke my heel,” she said, holding her shoe out for Mama
Kay to see.
“Eloise!” Mama Kay said. “I can’t thank you enough for coming.” They hugged with a little less enthusiasm, then Eloise
took the man’s arm and introduced him to Mama Kay. “Kay, this is my beau, Thomas Boyle. He drove us all the way from
Atlanta.”
“Thank you,” Mama Kay said, shaking Thomas Boyle’s hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”
“The pleasure is mine, Ma'am.” Mr. Boyle took off his hat and bowed slightly. He wore a light gray suit with a white shirt
and a yellow tie, mirrored sunglasses, and a wide-brimmed felt hat. When he took off his hat Tyler could see that Mr. Boyle
was bald as an egg, even though he did not look as old as Daddy Frank.
Mama Kay took the shoe from Eloise. “Tyler!” she said, “Run and fetch me some glue from your daddy’s toolbox. Be
quick, now, ya hear?”
Daddy Frank kept his tools in the garage and it was the one part of the house that was sacred to him and always kept in
meticulous order. There was usually a car or two in the yard for Daddy Frank to work on when trucking got slow. Sometimes
he’d buy a clunker and fix it up. Other times folks would bring him theirs. The garage had but one window and it was gray
with dust and cobwebs. It was cool and dark inside, and smelled of burnt oil and pipe tobacco. Tyler spent hours helping
Daddy Frank, handing him tools and bottles of beer while Daddy Frank drank and cussed and worked. In the summer they
tuned an old radio to the Braves games. In the winter, Tyler huddled up in front of a little electric heater. When Daddy Frank
was on the road Tyler would sneak into the cabinets and read his collection of girlie magazines, Playboy, and Oui, and
magazines without names at all, just numbers. Those were Tyler’s favorites, and he would carry them down to the river
where he and his friends looked at the girls and speculated about which ones they preferred and why, and what they would
do with this one or that.
Daddy Frank kept his tools locked in a big Snap-On toolbox, but Tyler knew where the key was hid, and he found it and
unlocked the box. Tyler found the glue, but before carrying it to Mama Kay he squeezed a little into a red mechanic’s rag and
held it to his nose. He breathed the fumes in deep and held his breath until his lips tingled and his tongue went numb. He felt
dizzy and far away. He did this again and then, glancing towards the door, he climbed up on top of the toolbox and he
reached in the cabinet where Daddy Frank hid his magazines. Standing on his tiptoes, he pulled two out of the stack and
dropped them to the floor—one for now and one for later. He hid one in the bottom drawer of the toolbox and opened the
other one. It was dark in the garage, but in the half-light Tyler could make out the figures of a man and woman on a bed. He
thumbed through the pages until a Polaroid fell out of the magazine onto the floor. Tyler turned to the back of the magazine
and found several more photos stuck between the pages. He looked closely at one. The picture was of a young girl naked on
a blanket, evidently taken out in the woods someplace. Tyler looked around the room, then looked at the picture again. It
wasn’t anybody he knew. The man was middle-aged and white. The girl was young. He folded it back inside the magazine.
Tyler climbed back up the toolbox and threw the magazine behind the stack and closed the cabinet door. He lost his
balance climbing down and fell, landing hard on his elbows and biting his tongue. He sat on the ground rocking back and
forth, tasting blood and rubbing his elbows. Then he took the rag and inhaled another hit of glue. He remembered the picture
that fell out of the magazine and he groped around the floor, but could not find it. He decided it must have slipped under the
toolbox. The toolbox was on wheels but the bearings had rusted solid so even Daddy Frank couldn’t budge it without help.
Tyler found a hacksaw blade in the toolbox and scraped around underneath. He struck something solid. He worked it to the
edge of the box and pulled it out: a pistol.
At first he thought he had found a hammer. Even when he got hold of it by the barrel he wasn’t sure what he had. It
wasn’t sleek and pretty like the chrome-plated hell-blasters Daddy Frank lusted after at the pawn shop. This gun was L-
shaped and clumsy-looking, rusted, and with what looked like a washer welded onto the butt end of the grip. The barrel was
octagonal. Tyler took it in his hand and tried to raise it to arm’s length, but it was so heavy he had a hard time holding it
steady. He spun the chamber and, though stiff, it turned with a satisfying click. Tyler tried to cock it with his thumb but the
hammer barely budged. He put his hand over it and leaned on it with all his weight and it slowly gave way. Tyler held it to the
light and spun the chamber again. It was loaded.
By the time Tyler got back to the picnic Mama Kay had forgot all about him. He stood leaning unsteadily against the screen
door from the kitchen, the glue loose in his left hand. His ears buzzed like a swarm of bees, his lips were numb and tingling,
his eyes dilated, the light hurt.
“Will you fetch me a roll of paper towels, hun?” Mama Kay called. Tyler got one and trudged zombie-like to the picnic table
and set it and the glue by her elbow.
“That’s your boy?” Mindy asked.
Mama Kay answered, “I guess he is now.”
Tyler walked away and sat down cross-legged next to Jane and she smiled at him, covered her mouth and
giggled.
“What’s the matter with you?” Tyler asked.
“Buggers,” Jane said, pointing.
Tyler wiped a bit of glue off his nose. Jane knew what he had been doing because sometimes they did it together. “You
better not tell,” he hissed.
Jane had her slacks hitched up above her knees and scratched her legs with a chunk of Spanish moss.
“What are you doing that for?” Tyler asked.
“It’s itchy,” Jane said.
“Well, don’t,” Tyler said, yanking the moss out of Jane’s hand and throwing it over his shoulder. “You’ll catch chiggers.”
“Chiggers?” Jane asked. She covered her mouth and giggled again.
“Come over here, boy, and let me take a look at you,” Mindy called.
Tyler looked at her but didn’t move.
“Don’t pay him no mind,” Mama Kay said. “The boy likes to play the fool around adults.”
Thomas Boyle frowned, then began to scold Mama Kay saying: “See here, Miss Kay, it’s not right for a boy to disrespect
his mother like that. I know his father wasn’t much, but a boy needs a strong hand to keep him out of trouble. I suggest, if
you aim to keep him, you let him know from day one that you are the law, and the law must be paid.” He snapped his fingers
and called, “Hey, boy! You hear your mama talking to you? Come over here like she says.”
“Chiggers,” Tyler said to Jane. “Remember when you got them itchy red bumps and Mama Kay had to paint you all over
with fingernail polish to make it stop?”
“You deaf or something?” Tomas Boyle said.
“Lookee what I found,” Tyler said, and lifting the front of his shirt he showed Jane the pistol.
Thomas Boyle stood up, and Tyler stood up, hesitated, then pulled out the pistol and swung it around in Thomas Boyle’s
direction. One of the churchwomen screamed and Mama Kay shouted, “Tyler, put that down!”
“That gun’s not loaded,” Thomas Boyle said, and he took a step towards Tyler.
There was a laundry line hung in the neighbor’s backyard, behind and to the left of Thomas Boyle. Tyler took aim at a
sheet and squeezed the trigger. The gun jumped in his hand and the sheet flew off the line, a big tear showing blue sky as
the sheet crumpled to the ground. Jane clapped her hands over her ears began a long, lung-deflating scream. The picnic
guests scattered across the yard at a dead run. Some jumped the fence while others dashed around the corner of the
house. Mama Kay and Thomas Boyle stayed put. Tyler cocked the pistol.
Thomas Boyle held out his hands in front of him and said, in a sweet and low voice, “I know this is a hard time for you, boy.
Maybe you should lay that gun down and we can talk about things man-to-man.”
Mama Kay sipped her lemonade and sighed.
Tyler licked his lips and tasted blood and gunpowder. He took aim at a shirt and fired again. The shirt jumped and a hole
appeared in the breast pocket. It dangled by one clothespin. Thomas Boyle ducked behind an oak tree shading the picnic
table. He peeked around the tree and looked at Tyler.
Jane stopped screaming and stood up. She walked past Tyler and picked up another piece of moss, began rubbing her
arms with it, then turned and went inside the house.
“Tyler,” Mama Kay said softly, “please lay the gun down.”
Tyler rubbed the barrel on his cheek. It was hot, but not enough to burn his face. He held the end of the barrel to his nose
and inhaled. It smelled pungent, like glue. He cocked it again, looked into the cylinder and could see three more rounds.
Thomas Boyle poked his head around the tree and Tyler took quick aim and fired.
He wasn’t shooting to hit Thomas Boyle—the shot struck the tree well above him and showered him with bark and
splinters—but Thomas took off running, anyway, screaming, “I’m shot! I’m shot!” Tyler was pretty sure he had missed, but
he was glad to see Thomas Boyle jump into the Cadillac and peel away.
Mama Kay finished her lemonade and went inside the house.
Tyler laid the pistol down and went around to the garage. The guests were all gone, even Mindy and Eloise. Eloise had
forgotten her shoes. Tyler opened the garage door and then closed it behind him, sat with his back to Daddy Frank’s toolbox
and began to cry. In a minute Mama Kay opened the door and asked him, “Hun, would you like some cake and ice cream?”
The state trooper was the first cop to arrive. He pulled into the yard with his lights on but the siren off. Tyler could see
him through the screen door when he turned the corner on their block.
Mama Kay sat in the kitchen fanning herself. She had stripped down to her slip and hung the black dress over the back of
her chair. Tyler sat on one side of her, Jane on the other. The trooper knocked at the kitchen door. “Jane,” Mama Kay said,
“go to your room for a little while.” Jane took her cake and ice cream, and with a long look over her shoulder, left.
The trooper came in without waiting for Mama Kay to answer. He was a big man, over six foot, and at least two hundred
pounds. He looked young to Tyler, maybe twenty-five or thirty. He tucked his hat under his right arm. He wore his hair in a
crew cut and it was shiny white, like Mama Kay’s. He had smile lines around his eyes. Tyler saw that the holster on his hip
was unsnapped. He carried Daddy Frank’s pistol in his left hand.
Mama Kay had poured herself a bourbon and coke, and motioned to the trooper that he could have one too.
He shook his head. “Thank you, ma’am, but not while I’m on duty.” He opened Daddy Frank’s pistol and emptied the
cylinder, held it up and read the markings. “We got us a Webley Mark IV, point four-five-five caliber. Don’t see many of them
anymore. Almost a antique. Used ‘em in the First World War; British issue, or Canadian. What was you doing with this,
anyhow?”
Tyler shrugged his shoulders. He could hear a siren, and in a moment another black and white came around the corner.
“He ain’t right,” Mama Kay said. “We buried his daddy today.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
The second cop pulled up into the yard and the siren cut out with a whine like a dying dog. In a minute the county sheriff
came puffing up to the door, but the trooper waived him off. “Go home Sam, I got this under control.”
The sheriff poked his head in the door and looked around. “Are you’re sure?”
The trooper pulled out a chair and sat down across from Mama Kay. “I’ll take care of it. You go on home.” He and Mama
Kay sat quietly, eyeing each other, until the sheriff was gone.
Tyler could see the neighbors beginning to congregate in their yards. Once in a while he could see somebody nod in the
direction of their house. Then Mama Kay said, “He ain’t gonna hurt nobody. He’s just upset.”
“That’s likely the case, ma’am,” the trooper said, “but dischargin’ a firearm in the city limit is a misdemeanor, and we
gonna have to do somethin’ about it.”
Tyler had visions of swinging a scythe on the county road gang. He had cut weeds in the yard with Daddy Frank before and
it blistered his hands. He wondered if Mama Kay would bring him cornbread and lemonade.
“But you ain’t gonna put him in jail, are you? That ain’t no place for a boy. He’s not even twelve yet.”
“The judge’ll likely want to talk to the boy hisself. He ain’t been in no trouble before, has he?”
Mama Kay shook her head. “Nothing any other boy in this county couldn’t get caught for.”
“Likely not then. But then again, he is his daddy’s son. They might figure a little stay in the reformatory would do him good.
They say a ounce of prevention is worth a pound o’ cure. But that’s not up to me to decide. I suspect they’ll want him to talk
to a doctor or a psychologist or somethin’. But I got to take him in, for his own protection, if nothin’ else.”
Mama Kay squirmed in her seat. She set her elbows on the table, rested her chin in her hands, leaned closer to the
trooper, and batted her eyes. “There must be something we can do?” she said, “some kind of arrangement we can make? I
would be very distressed if my boy went to jail the day we buried his daddy.”
Tyler stirred the melting ice cream with his fork. He crumbled the pound cake into it and mashed it into a creamy paste.
He looked at Mama Kay and saw the shadow of her cleavage practically shoved in the trooper’s face.
The trooper leaned back in his chair and looked around. At length he asked, “Is there some place we could talk about this
in private?”
Mama Kay stood up and took the trooper by the hand, led him down the hall to her room and closed the door.
When she was gone Tyler drank the rest of her bourbon and coke.
Jane came out of her room. “Is he gone?” she asked, and Tyler shook his head. Jane looked down and began scratching
her arms. Tyler saw bright red welts running all the way from her elbows to her wrists. “I think I got chiggers,”Jane said, and
she lifted her dress and showed Tyler where welts started on her thighs.
It was getting dark. Most of the neighbors had given up gawking and gone inside. A mosquito fogger came down the
street, its yellow light flashing. After it was gone, a sour smell lingered in the air. The telephone began to ring.
“You want to go for a ride?” Tyler asked.
“Where would we go?”
Tyler shrugged his shoulders. “Don't know,” he said. “Somewhere. Maybe Alabama.”
Jane glanced towards Mama Kay’s room. “Can you get the keys?”
“I don’t need no keys,” Tyler said. “Daddy Frank taught me how to start cars without ‘em.”
“Can you start a car without a key?” she asked.
Tyler nodded.
“Any car?” Jane asked.
Tyler’s lips curled into a grin. “Any car at all.”