To salve my conscience for taking the old man’s jobs, on which he had depended for self-importance as much as money, I hired him to stay on as my supervisor, and thereby learned some things that I needed to know and quite a few that I did not. Uncle Stanley loved to sit on the edge of a grave, dangling his feet in, and instruct me to do what I was already doing, his conversation varying between unspeakable and incredible. But he didn’t last long. In the first winter after the war, survived by Miss Pauline and thus forsaking forever his dream of a widower’s bachelorhood, he finally got into a grave he could not get out of. And I was the one who covered him up.
Barbering is a social business; it involves conversation just about by necessity. For me, after Uncle Stanley died, grave digging was a solitary business. Just once in a while I would get caught with a grave to dig on one of my busy days at the shop and would have to hire a hand or two, but mostly, up in the graveyard, I worked alone. It was hard work, and often it was sad work, for as a rule I would be digging and filling the grave of somebody I knew; often it would be the grave of somebody I liked or loved.
It was a strange thing to cut out the blocks of sod and then dig my way to the dark layer where the dead lie. I feel a little uneasy in calling them “the dead,” for I am as mystified as anybody by the transformation known as death, and the Resurrection is more real to me than most things I have not yet seen. I understand that people’s dead bodies are not exactly them, and yet as I dug down to where they were, I would be mindful of them, and respectful, and would feel a curious affection for them all. They all had belonged here once, and they were so much more numerous than the living. I thought and thought about them. It was endlessly moving to me to walk among the stones, reading the names of people I had known in my childhood, the names of people I was kin to but had never known, and (pretty soon) the names of people I knew and cared about and had buried myself. Some of the older stones you could no longer read because of weathering and the growth of moss. It was a place of finality and order. The people there had lived their little passage of time in this world, had become what they became, and now could be changed only by forgiveness and mercy. The misled, the disappointed, the sinners of all the sins, the hopeful, the faithful, the loving, the doubtful, the desperate, the grieved and the comforted, the young and the old, the bad and the good—all, sufferers unto death, had lain down there together. Some were there who had served the community better by dying than by living. Why I should have felt tender toward them all was not clear to me, but I did.
There were a lot of graves of little children—most of them from the last century or before—who had died of smallpox, cholera, typhoid fever, diphtheria, or one of the other plagues. You didn’t have to know the stories; just the dates and the size of the stones told the heartbreak. But all those who were there, if they had lived past childhood, had twice in this world, first and last, been as helpless as a little child. And you couldn’t forget that all the people in Port William, if they lived long, would come there burdened and leave empty-handed many times, and would finally come and stay empty-handed. Seeing them come and go, and come and stay, I began to be moved by a compassion that seemed to come to me from outside. I never said to myself that it was happening. It just came to me, or I came to it. As I buried the dead and walked among them, I wanted to make my heart as big as Heaven to include them all and love them and not be distracted. I couldn’t do it, of course, but I wanted to.
That place of the democracy of the dead was sometimes a very social place for the living. People would come to visit the graves, sometimes from far away, or they would come looking for the names and dates of ancestors, and they would meet and talk. Sometimes old friends would meet after a long separation and would have to make themselves known to one another again. I was always learning something.
One of the best days of the year, for me, was Decoration Day, when people would come from near and far with flowers to decorate the graves. Besides beingbeautiful and fragrant with all the roses and peonies and boughs of mock orange, it was a kind of grace and benediction, and a kind of homecoming. I liked to make a show of being busy in the graveyard so I could watch and listen.
I was doing that one Decoration Day when I saw Hibernia Hopple get out of her car with an armload of the white and pink peonies that she would divide between her mother’s family, who were buried at Port William, and her father’s at Goforth. This was about 1960. Before she could shut the car door and turn around, Burley Coulter had seen her and come over.
By way of greeting, he said, “Hibernia, I want you to tell me something.”
She turned, saw who it was, and said, “What?”
He said, grinning at her, “Ain’t you about lost all your ambition?”
She blushed as pink as a peony. There had been something between them. “Burley Coulter,” she said with complete affection, “you need to be shot.”
I don’t know if you would call grave digging “severe bodily exertion.” It surely was the hardest work I have ever done, but it didn’t kill me before I gave it up a few years ago. I expect I am by nature a lazy person, and so I never went at it with what you would call violence. But you can’t dig a grave without working hard. I mean you have to apply yourself. And after I would get about halfway down, well into the yellow clay that would be either hard or sticky, a voice would begin to speak in my mind; it would say, “Deep enough! Deep enough!” And then I would dig on down as deep as I was supposed to go.
I will say this: It made me strong. After I started digging graves, I got healthier and stronger than I had ever been in my life. And it taught me how to be a lazy person. I just didn’t let reluctance stand in my way.
Taking care of the church was steadier but easier. I didn’t have the time to spare on Saturdays, and so I did most of my work at the church on Friday afternoons, going up there usually right after dinner so as not to be caught in the shop.
To go up to clean the church was to go back somewhat into the world of women, in which I had been a welcome guest when I used to go there holding Aunt Cordie’s hand, a little boy petted and made over by the old ladies who were the pillars of the faith in their day. I didn’t want to suppose that the women would be purposely looking for signs of carelessness in the housekeeping of the former little boy, but I didn’t want them to find any, either. And so I didn’t “give it a lick and a promise,” the way Uncle Stanley often did. Uncle Stanley held that the congregation dusted the pews by sitting in them, but when I cleaned I got into the corners and the cracks and dusted everything.
About that time, I started more or less regularly attending the Sunday morning service, partly because, after I had taken care of the place, I didn’t want to appear indifferent to what went on there, and partly (I confess) to receive the women’s compliments on my work. They thought I was doing a good job, and I loved to hear them say so.
The sermons, mostly, were preached on the same theme I had heard over and over at The Good Shepherd and Pigeonville: We must lay up treasures in Heaven and not be lured and seduced by this world’s pretty and tasty things that do not last but are like the flower that is cut down. The preachers were always young students from the seminary who wore, you might say, the mantle of power but not the mantle of knowledge. They wouldn’t stay long enough to know where they were, for one thing. Some were wise and some were foolish, but none, so far as Port William knew, was ever old. They seemed to have come from some Never-Never Land where the professionally devout were forever young. They were not going to school to learn where they were, let alone the pleasures and the pains of being there, or what ought to be said there. You couldn’t learn those things in a school. They went to school, apparently, to learn to say over and over again, regardless of where they were, what had already been said too often. They learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works—although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself.
What they didn’t see was that it is beautiful, and that
some of the greatest beauties are the briefest. They had imagined the church, which is an organization, but not the world, which is an order and a mystery. To them, the church did not exist in the world where people earn their living and have their being, but rather in the world where they fear death and Hell, which is not much of a world. To them, the soul was something dark and musty, stuck away for later. In their brief passage through or over it, most of the young preachers knew Port William only as it theoretically was (“lost”) and as it theoretically might be (“saved”). And they wanted us all to do our part to spread this bad news to others who had not heard it—the Catholics, the Hindus, the Muslims, the Buddhists, and the others—or else they (and maybe we) would go to Hell. I did not believe it. They made me see how cut off I was. Even when I was sitting in the church, I was a man outside.
In Port William, more than anyplace else I had been, this religion that scorned the beauty and goodness of this world was a puzzle to me. To begin with, I didn’t think anybody believed it. I still don’t think so. Those world-condemning sermons were preached to people who, on Sunday mornings, would be wearing their prettiest clothes. Even the old widows in their dark dresses would be pleasing to look at. By dressing up on the one day when most of them had leisure to do it, they signified their wish to present themselves to one another and to Heaven looking their best. The people who heard those sermons loved good crops, good gardens, good livestock and work animals and dogs; they loved flowers and the shade of trees, and laughter and music; some of them could make you a fair speech on the pleasures of a good drink of water or a patch of wild raspberries. While the wickedness of the flesh was preached from the pulpit, the young husbands and wives and the courting couples sat thigh to thigh, full of yearning and joy, and the old people thought of the beauty of the children. And when church was over they would go home to Heavenly dinners of fried chicken, it might be, and creamed new potatoes and creamed new peas and hot biscuits and butter and cherry pie and sweet milk and buttermilk. And the preacher and his family would always be invited to eat with somebody and they would always go, and the preacher, having just foresworn on behalf of everybody the joys of the flesh, would eat with unconsecrated relish.
“I declare, Miss Pauline,” said Brother Preston, who was having Sunday dinner with the Gibbses, “those certainly are good biscuits. I can’t remember how many I’ve eaten.”
“Preacher,” said Uncle Stanley, “that’n makes eight.”
Having stated the rule, I must honor the exceptions. There were always some in the congregation who didn’t like or enjoy much of anything. And a few of those young preachers were bright and could speak—I mean they could sound as if they were awake, and make you listen—and they were troubled enough in their own hearts to have something to say. A few had wakefully read some books. Maybe one or two of these might even have stayed on in Port William, if they could have lived poor enough. But they would have a wife and little children, and the economic winds would blow them past and beyond. And what, maybe, would Port William have done with them if they had stayed? Port William tends to prefer to hear what it has heard before.
In general, I weathered even the worst sermons pretty well. They had the great virtue of causing my mind to wander. Some of the best things I have ever thought of I have thought of during bad sermons. Or I would look out the windows. In winter, when the windows were closed, the church seemed to admit the light strictly on its own terms, as if uneasy about the frank sunshine of this benighted world. In summer, when the sashes were raised, I watched with a great, eager pleasure the town and the fields beyond, the clouds, the trees, the movements of the air—but then the sermons would seem more improbable. I have always loved a window, especially an open one.
What I liked least about the service itself was the prayers; what I liked far better was the singing. Not all of the hymns could move me. I never liked “Onward, Christian Soldiers” or “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Jesus’ military career has never compelled my belief. I liked the sound of the people singing together, whatever they sang, but some of the hymns reached into me all the way to the bone: “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” “Rock of Ages,” “Amazing Grace,” “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” I loved the different voices all singing one song, the various tones and qualities, the passing lifts of feeling, rising up and going out forever. Old Man Profet, who was a different man on Sunday, used to draw out the notes at the ends of verses and refrains so he could listen to himself, and in fact it sounded pretty. And when the congregation would be singing “We shall see the King some-day (some-day),” Sam May, who often protracted Saturday night a little too far into Sunday morning, would sing, “I shall see the King some-day (Sam May).”
I thought that some of the hymns bespoke the true religion of the place. The people didn’t really want to be saints of self-deprivation and hatred of the world. They knew that the world would sooner or later deprive them of all it had given them, but still they liked it. What they came together for was to acknowledge, just by coming, their losses and failures and sorrows, their need for comfort, their faith always needing to be greater, their wish (in spite of all words and acts to the contrary) to love one another and to forgive and be forgiven, their need for one another’s help and company and divine gifts, their hope (and experience) of love surpassing death, their gratitude. I loved to hear them sing “The Unclouded Day” and “Sweet By and By”:We shall sing on that beautiful shore
The melodious songs of the blest ...
And in times of sorrow when they sang “Abide with Me,” I could not raise my head.
Other things about my janitorship I liked without qualification. I liked the church when it was empty. When I would go there to do my work and would come in out of the bustle and stir, and would shut the door and the quiet would come around me, and I would see the light falling unbroken on the scarred and carved and much-repainted old pews—well, it was lovely. I would work as quietly as I could so as to be in the quiet without breaking it. Coming there so soon after dinner, I would sometimes get sleepy, and then I would lie down on the floor and take a nap. I would just go dead away for maybe twenty minutes and would wake up in wonder, rested, at one with the quiet, and the light still the same.
My best duty was ringing the bell on Sunday morning. The bell rope came down into the vestibule through a hole bored in the ceiling. The rope was frayed where it had worked back and forth through the hole for a hundred years, and the hole was worn lopsided. Pulling the rope always felt awkward at the start, never the way I expected. You would feel the weight of the bell as it began unresponsively to swing on its creaky bearings up in the steeple. You might have to swing it two or three times before the clapper would strike. And then it struck: “Dong!” And then around the sound of the clapper striking, the sound of the bell bloomed out in all directions over the countryside, into all the woods and hollows. It was never easy for me to stop ringing the bell, I so delighted in that interval of pure sound between the clapper strokes. The bell, I thought, voiced the best sermon of the day; it included everything, and in a way blessed it.
What gave me the most pleasure of all was just going up there, whatever the occasion, and sitting down with the people. I always wished a little that the church was not a church, set off as it was behind its barriers of doctrine and creed, so that all the people of the town and neighborhood might two or three times a week freely have come there and sat down together—though I knew perfectly well that, in the actual world, any gathering would exclude some, and some would not consent to be gathered, and some (like me) would be outside even when inside.
I liked the naturally occurring silences—the one, for instance, just before the service began and the other, the briefest imaginable, just after the last amen. Occasionally a preacher would come who had a little bias toward silence, and then my attendance would become purposeful. At a certain point in the service the preacher would ask that we “observe a moment of silence.” You could hear a little rust
le as the people settled down into that deliberate cessation. And then the quiet that was almost the quiet of the empty church would come over us and unite us as we were not united even in singing, and the little sounds (maybe a bird’s song) from the world outside would come in to us, and we would completely hear it.
But always too soon the preacher would become abashed (after all, he was being paid to talk) and start a prayer, and the beautiful moment would end. I would think again how I would like for us all just to go there from time to time and sit in silence. Maybe I am a Quaker of sorts, but I am told that the Quakers sometimes speak at their meetings. I would have preferred no talk, no noise at all.
One day when I went up there to work, sleepiness overcame me and I lay down on the floor behind the back pew to take a nap. Waking or sleeping (I couldn’t tell which), I saw all the people gathered there who had ever been there. I saw them as I had seen them from the back pew, where I sat with Uncle Othy (who would not come in any farther) while Aunt Cordie sang in the choir, and I saw them as I had seen them (from the back pew) on the Sunday before. I saw them in all the times past and to come, all somehow there in their own time and in all time and in no time: the cheerfully working and singing women, the men quiet or reluctant or shy, the weary, the troubled in spirit, the sick, the lame, the desperate, the dying, the little children tucked into the pews beside their elders, the young married couples full of visions, the old men with their dreams, the parents proud of their children, the grandparents with tears in their eyes, the pairs of young lovers attentive only to each other on the edge of the world, the grieving widows and widowers, the mothers and fathers of children newly dead, the proud, the humble, the attentive, the distracted—I saw them all. I saw the creases crisscrossed on the backs of the men’s necks, their work-thickened hands, the Sunday dresses faded with washing. They were just there. They said nothing, and I said nothing. I seemed to love them all with a love that was mine merely because it included me.