THIRTY-ONE

      There is no more moving religious spectacle than a black funeral. If you’ve been to one, you know. If you haven’t, you don’t. Grief and remembrance are not sacrificed to the false gods of propriety and decorum but released into the air like primal music, channeled through the congregation in a collective discharge of pain. Ruby’s funeral should be like that, but it isn’t. It’s a ritual struggling under the weight of a political circus.

      The church itself is under siege when I arrive, Annie in the backseat with my parents, Kelly in front of me, the other Argus men in a second car behind us. Sited on a hill in a stand of oak and cedar trees, the one-room white structure stands at the center of an army of vehicles, including a half dozen television trucks parked in a cluster beside the small cemetery. Lines of parked cars stretched down both sides of the church drive to Kingston Road, the winding old two-lane blacktop leading to the southern part of the county, where the Cold Hole bubbles up from the swamp.

      A black-suited deacon waves us away from the drive, but Kelly ignores him and accelerates up the chute created by the parked cars, stopping only when he reaches the church steps. Camera crews instantly surround the BMW.

      An old white-haired black man appears on the steps and jabs a finger at the human feeding frenzy around us. A wave of young men in their Sunday best rolls into the reporters, pushing them bodily away from the car, assisted by the three Argus men who drove up behind us. The old man comes down the steps and opens the back door of our car.

      “I’m so sorry about this, Dr. Cage. Afternoon, Mrs. Cage. I’m Reverend Nightingale. Y’all come inside. One of these young men will park your car for you.”

      Annie climbs between the seats into my arms, and I hurry up the steps with her as the camera crews close around us. A cacophony of shouted questions fills the air, but all I can distinguish are names: Marston, Portman, Mackey, Mayor Warren … As soon as we clear the church door, I turn and see my mother and father fighting their way through. A deacon slams the door behind them, leaving Kelly outside to help defend the entrance.

      Two hundred black faces are turned toward the rear of the church, staring at us. People are jammed into the pews and packed along the walls like cordwood. The building seems to have more flesh in it than air. Only the center aisle is clear. Reverend Nightingale takes my mother’s arm and leads her along it, through the silent staring faces. Dad and I follow, me carrying Annie in my arms. The rear pews hold a bright sea of color, oscillating waves of blue, orange, yellow, and green (but no red, never red) and like proud sails above the waves, the most stunning array of hats I have seen outside of a 1940s film. All the children are dressed in white, like angels in training. As I follow my mother, Ruby’s voice sounds in my mind: You never wear red to no funeral; red says the dead person was a fool. The nearer we get to the altar, the darker the dresses get, until finally all are black.

      At the end of the aisle Reverend Nightingale pulls my mother to the left, and I see our destination: a special box of pews standing against the wall, protected by a wooden rail. Despite the throng in the church, this box is empty. It’s the Mothers’ Bench, seats reserved for “sisters” who have reached a certain age (eighty, I think) and accepted “mother” status. Today it has been reserved for us. As we take our seats behind the rail, I see an identical box against the other wall. The Deacons’ Bench. Behind its rail sits Ruby’s immediate family: her husband, Mose; her three sons (all tall men with gray in their beards); her daughter, Elizabeth, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief; a handful of grandchildren (all in their twenties) and two infants.

      A single camera crew has been allowed inside the church to tape the ceremony. The logo on the camera reads WLBT, the call letters of the black-owned station in Jackson. As I pan across the crowd, I see several familiar faces. In the first row sits Shad Johnson, wearing a suit that cost enough to buy any ten suits behind him. A few feet down the same pew sits the Payton family: Althea, Georgia, Del Jr., and his children. Althea nods to me, her brown eyes full of sympathy. In the second row sits the Gates family, the most powerful force in black politics in Natchez for forty years, now upstaged by the urban prodigal from Chicago. Several pews beyond them sits Willie Pinder, the former police chief. Pinder winks as I catch his eye. And in the last pew, sitting restlessly in the aisle seat as though prepared to make a quick exit, sits a man who looks very much like Charles Evers. The former mayor of Fayette and brother of Medgar looks like a man who does not intend to be bothered by anyone.

      Suddenly the back door opens and two white faces float through it, Caitlin Masters and one of her photographers, escorted by Deputy Ike Ransom in his uniform. Ike remains just inside the back door, like a sentry, while Caitlin and her photographer slip through the crowd at the back wall and stop beside the WLBT camera.

      In the shuffling, sweating silence the organist begins to play, and the purple-robed choir rises to its feet, beginning a restrained rendition of “Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross.” The rich vibrato of two dozen voices fills the building, making the church reverberate like the soundboard of a grand piano. The whole congregation knows the words, and they join in softly.

      As the last chorus fades, Reverend Nightingale makes his way slowly down the aisle and ascends to the pulpit. He is a small man, with fine white hair and frail limbs, but his voice has the deep, resonant timbre of the best black preachers.

      “Brothers and sisters. Mothers. Deacons and officers. Visitors and friends. We are gathered here today to mourn the passing of Sister Ruby Flowers.”

      A collective Mm-hm ripples through the church, punctuated by a couple of soft Amens. Reverend Nightingale touches the rim of his spectacles and continues.

      “Everyone in this room knows how loyally Sister Flowers supported this church. She was born in 1917, and came to Jesus when she was nine years old. Reverend Early was pastor then. He was a godly man, but sparing with his praise. Yet as a boy I often heard him speak of how lucky he was to have womenfolk like Sister Flowers in his flock.”

      Yes, Lord, comes the reply. Yes, sir.

      “In the last few days a lot of reporters been asking me what Sister Flowers was like. Do you know what I tell them?”

       Tell it.

      “I say, ‘You know how when you got two people, and you got to carry something heavy for a ways? Like a big chest of drawers? There’s different ways you can pick up on it. You can pick up on it straight and level, with your legs and your back, and take your share of the weight’”—Reverend Nightingale pauses, letting the image sink in—“‘or you can kind of fudge it. Pick up with just your arms, or pick up a little high, puttin’ most of the weight on the other person.’”

      Soft laughter, guilty recognition. But Reverend Nightingale’s face is set in stone.

      “That was not Sister Flowers,” he thunders.

      No Jesus, comes the chorus. I know that’s right.

      “Sister Flowers picked up square and straight,” he declares. “She picked up whenever she was asked to. And more than that, she picked up when she wasn’t asked to.”

       Praise Jesus.