Subhead
“Homecoming”
BY STEVEN RAY BOWEN
Body
Cheyenne had remained quiet through the retelling of much of the latter chapters of that summer, but he asked slowly, hesitant to interrupt.
“Popman, was that Corrina who came to stand by you with your Mama?”
I nodded, remembering again how sweet that moment was.
During Mama’s farewell, I had seen Corrina and her family standing at a distance, their backs to Mud Creek that I could hear murmuring in the distance.
I glanced toward her during the singing of “All Things are Different in Heaven” and saw she had moved up directly behind the singers in my direct line of sight. I could see her singing the song softly, too. I knew she remembered our singing it a few weeks ago.
Our eyes met just for a moment, and I saw a sadness in them that matched my own.
She grimaced, and I knew how much she hurt, too.
While Mama’s baby sister Aunt Gracie and the rest of my family walked by to see Mama once more, I waited, still seated, resting in my thoughts.
My mind had turned away from Corrina until her hand reached down to mine to share my final moments with Mama. The three of us together again, our hands joined as before. A peace seemed to fall from the sky, lighting upon us like a snow-white dove, bringing the answer to the old question that fell from the top of old Mount Carmel, “Is it well?”
The answer came yet again, “Yes, it is, it is well.”
And peace came.
We stood there until the director stepped closer toward where we were standing, a look of empathy on his face. Perhaps, I thought, he had lost his mama at far too young of an age, too. I gave a weak smile to him and stepped back so he could close the coffin for Mama to await the morning.
Corrina stood unmovable, holding my hand tightly, and we watched the rest of the scenes unfold as in slow motion. I don’t know how many friends came up to speak or how many weak thank you’s we offered. Corrina stepped back during that time, but only a step. She was not leaving, not until I did, that I knew.
I reached and took her by the hand again, knowing I would not let it go for a long time, and we stood quietly and watched the respectful crowd make their way to their cars to take their lonely pilgrimages up the dirt road past the creek where my own life once before stood in the balance, to the Whitesville Road, then to their quiet homes.
Mr. and Mrs. McClain walked over to me, and Mrs. Mac gave me a hug that said more than a thousand words could’ve said. It felt like Mama herself had grabbed ahold of me to tell me all would be well.
Not knowing what to do, young Alane came by and gave me a sweet 13-year-old hug. Her young eyes were sad, too. I felt for her more than for myself in that instant, and said, “It’ll be okay, sweetie, don’t worry,” and that made her cry. Her mom gave me a comforting smile as she took little Alane and held her close to her, the way mamas do.
I turned back to Cheyenne: “Little Alane grew up to be a great lady, a true Southern belle,” I said, with a satisfied smile,” but I never stopped seeing her as my little 13-year-old tomboy.”
Cheyenne grinned.
I deliberated a while on all of those thoughts until my grandson, in the words of Mr. Frost, gave “his harness bells a shake,” reminding me of the miles yet to go in our journey. I waited until he glanced over at me patiently before continuing.
“I’ll get Pup to take me home, Mama,” Corrina said.
I thought she would look at me for approval, but she didn’t. The McClains walked away, slowly, and Mr. McClain took Mrs. Mac by the hand. The cars were thinning out by then, clearing the view down the dirt road two hundred yards away, where I noticed two trucks parked across from each other, away from the crowd.
An old blue Ford truck sat conspicuously among the cars pulling out onto the road. The boy that I remembered well was standing beside it. He likely had been standing there the whole time. I could see that he wore western dress clothes and a black cowboy hat, and he looked much different than when I’d seen him before. He looked nice, and when he saw me looking at him, he tipped his black hat respectfully, then got in his blue truck for his own lonely drive home. When he pulled out, he flashed his lights once, left them on, and pulled out onto the road. I could not help but think of Santiago and his marlin, two brothers for life.
He drove slowly down the dirt road, tipping his hat again as he passed Mama’s grave. No sooner had he gone a hundred feet than I saw Doocy, Pee Wee, and the crew get out of Red’s red work truck parked across from him. They walked slowly up the narrow road to where Corrina and I stood near Mama.
They were all dressed in their Sunday best – Red looked like a riverboat gambler in his starched attire, Pee Wee – donning a navy-blue pinstriped suit and wearing boots and a bolo tie – looked like the mayor of LaGrange, or like he should’ve been the mayor. All the other workers, except for Doocy, wore work clothes they had washed but still had a hundred miles of hard red dirt work written all over them, miles and miles of road you can never wash out.
But that didn’t matter. The Lord doesn’t care what your Sunday best looks like.
What mattered was that they were there. Real folks – such was my brick-job gentleman, as real as the tall pines that stood all around us every day – but they always look awkward when you take them out of their element, like taking Tarzan beneath the skyscrapers of New York City. Some things just don’t fit, nor should they.
But they fit neatly into the chamber of my mind that contains all of the sacred memories I have carried deep for all these years.
But Doocy stood out among all of them, as always.
He wore a dark blue suit that had trouble holding in the muscles in his chest and arms. I smiled when they walked up, a story about that suit coming to my mind immediately. Pee Wee told the story one day at lunch after Paul Harvey went off the air. He said one Sunday afternoon he and Dixie drove over in Doocy’s neighborhood on a Sunday and saw him and his mama walking down the street coming home from church.
He was wearing this blue suit, Pee Wee said, so he rolled down the window and talked to him and his mama for a minute. He asked him where he got that fancy suit.
“Bossman,” he said, “I got this ‘un from Mansours jus’ t’other week.”
“Mansours?” Pee Wee responded, “you got it from Mansours?”
Mansours was a high-end store that sits just across the street from the multi-colored fountain in the town square. We had all gone to school with one or more of the Mansours’ family at LaGrange High. Pee Wee knew, of course, that Doocy couldn’t afford to buy a suit from Mansours, but he didn’t say anything about it then in front of Doocy’s mama. But the next day at work, he questioned Doocy about it, and Doocy swore up and down that that was exactly where he bought it.
They argued on about it a while until Pee Wee finally said, “Okay, Doocy, when Pup and I take you home today, we’ll just jump out and go in the house and let you show us the tag on that suit from Mansours.”
I could tell Doocy knew he was beat at that point, so he reverted to his old tricks.
“T’Cool Breeze doesn’t gots to prove nuttin’ to you ‘n the Pups, Bossman,” he said with his vintage Doocy attitude, “No suh, if you doesn’t b‘ieves t’Breeze, yuh can goes up-a-thar and ask Mr. Mansour his own self. Me and him picked it out. He’ll tell yuh,” and with that turned his back to both Pee Wee and me and pretended he didn’t know us for the rest of the day.
As I’ve said, you couldn’t beat Doocy in an argument with a stick.
I couldn’t help but smile when I saw Doocy in that blue suit there in the graveyard that day. I knew that it was his Sunday best, regardless of where he bought it. He wore that for his “Pups,” and if he’d had it, he would’ve gone and bought the best one Mr. Mansour had in the men's section up on that second floor of the high-end store.
I complimented Doocy’s suit, which, I could tell, pleased him, then shook hands with each of the boys one by one. After shaking hands with me, they bashfully nodded to Corrina. We spoke in low tones for half a minute when I heard someone coming up from behind me, from the direction of the creek that ran behind the graveyard.
Before I could turn, I heard a soft “Billy Ray.” The voice trembled, clearly carrying a thousand words of emotion inside. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a word well-spoken is worth 10,000 pictures.
We never know which door our tears will hide behind, but when I turned and saw Miss Billie standing there, and she reached out and hugged me with tears streaming down her face, it was all I could do to hold onto a few I had left in what Corrina sometimes called my “sad ocean eyes.”
Two worlds met that day. Miss Billie was my old world, and a new one stood right beside me, 20 feet from the pain-free earthly body of my lovely mama.
And now, together they stood. One had prepared me for that rugged brick job. Kind Miss Billie emerged from that world with an unspeakable grief for the young man she had adopted to love. She seemed frail that day as she stood beside her daughter, vibrant Maggie, reminders of the lovely world I had left to go to another to try to grow like the summer Lilac we stood beneath.
Seeing the mild Miss Billie standing alongside the rugged Doocy was an incongruity that had almost become commonplace that summer, but it was a combination I had never connected in all my dreams and imaginations. But there they were.
Miss Billie stood quietly next to Corrina whom I introduced with pride, the two ladies forming a perfect picture – kindness exemplified and love poured out. The two stood next to the earthly body of the woman who was much like them. It was a lovely trio, a trinity in earthen vessels – Miss Billie, Miss Corrina Belle, and Mama all together.
It was a glad homecoming.
Coach Steven Ray Bowen served as a teacher and basketball coach at Red Oak High from 1998-2012 and recently spent two years teaching and coaching at Ferris. He and his wife Marilyn (the “amazin’ blonde”) served many years with the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl/Ovilla Roads, but now spend time evangelizing in several states in addition to Coach’s work as a writer and author, including the writing of the ongoing novel/memoir here in the Press. Call or text (972) 824-5197, or email coachbowen1984@gmail.com, or see frontporchgospel.com.
