1919 - A Kansas Tale

Chapter 2 - Burials

2  

Burials  

A threatening sky hung low as the funeral procession set out. Tom and Bess Heath's bodies were carried in a remodeled 1914 Bessemer truck, one of many which had been used in the work of the Automobile Trail Blazing Association to transport men in the service of marking a through trail by painting telegraph poles all the way from New York to the Pacific Coast. This truck had broken down in the process of painting markings in 1918, just north of Flat Rock, which, like every town in America, had a Ford garage. It had been hauled in for repair when Ralph Hahn, upon spotting it, convinced the mechanic to give the driver such a high estimate to fix the truck that the driver gladly sold the damaged goods to Hahn for a pittance. Ralph had a vision for the truck . . . a transformation into a hearse, with side enclosures, rear extension, plush interior and high-gloss black exterior finish. No Easterner would have recognized it as a former work truck. The girl's body was transported in a shiny white horse-drawn buckboard wagon. Ned drove himself and Nan in the town-owned ambulance, with blessings of the sheriff.  

From Flat Rock the burial ground was a fifteen-minute drive by automobile but double that by horse . . . the procession seemed interminable under a sky overcast with storm threats. Nan wondered whether the long transport, because of the child's wagon, was more painful, extending the terror and anguish of the final lowering of what she knew as warm bodies, senses, and reactions with powers and dignity of minds and expressions . . . or, a swift brief ride cheating one of pain and shocking disbelief at the final lowering, the ugly reality of human extinction. The longer ride seemed better to her. The graveyard was a half-hour into Kansas City by auto, depending on whether the dirt roads were dry or muddy. Nan knew that her father had traveled into the city regularly on business . . . his energies always seeming endless. Now at this midpoint between city and village were many of the schoolmates of Nan and Katie, and most of the townspeople. Ella stood very close to the local Episcopal minister, directing her gravelly voice to Hahn, saying, "Get rid of the shovels . . . is this the dignity you promised this orphan?"  

Otis and Sadie, the Negro couple who had served the Quinns as tenants and workers, on their place since the Quinns had made their home in Flat Rock, placed themselves behind Ella. These two had seen the births of Ella and Bess and wept bitterly.  

Soil removed to create the rectangular six-foot spaces for the dead was piled high round three sides of each opening. The coffins were placed on the cleared sides with under-roping for lowering. Ned quickly removed the shovels and returned to stand near Nan. Her father had put Tennyson's poems in her hands during the summer.  

With the rich earth smell bringing memories of fine corn growing, she struggled to silently recite her favorite line from "In Memoriam,"  

Behold, we know not anything;  

I can but trust that good shall fall At last--far off--at last, to all, And every winter change to spring.  

Should these words be carved on her father's tombstone, or at least more than a name and dates? No, she thought, it would not be Christian. Nan couldn't know that over the next sixty years she would learn little more about life or death than hope . . . and yet compile a continuous medley of immediate and distant tactics for survival . . . reaching for some joys in each present hour. Nan asked herself what could be the epitaph for a twelve-year-old, what summation could be appropriate as her sister entered the threshold to a new existence or nothingness? Suddenly a smile curled Nan's lips as she reviewed images of this little girl, by which she would be remembered. Katie had inherited her father's large green eyes, which were her great pride, since she adored him, and tried desperately to make drawings which would please him. She had, it seemed, pencil and crumpled paper in her pockets at all times, available for sketching anything she might view as beautiful. Once, Nan had been sent to find Katie as a long summer day was ending. It was not like Katie to be far from the house so Nan began to look in small nearby open lots or meadows when she heard a small voice singing and smoke rising from a dugout that some boys had made. Nan peered into the opening to see the younger girl in a deeper adjoining open ditch with a multitude of matches strewn on the red-clay floor, the result of attempts to get a Havana Cuban cigar, stolen from her father's bedside table, to catch fire and give rise to smoke for joining overhead cloud formations, under a cerulean blue sky ceiling. This was the vision she hoped some day to paint. As she manipulated smoke patterns she visualized her first canvas. Delighted, as her little bare feet cooled in the damp mud in the hot Kansas season, she was suddenly disturbed by her sister's discovering her secret. This had been her first private hour, free of adult watching and adult awareness as her heartbeat accelerated in identification with her father whom she knew also smoked secretly! Nan pulled her out of the ditch to straighten her clothes and wipe her clean of dirt, swearing to keep the event to herself. As the sisters entered the kitchen it was not unusual for Katie's summer feet to leave tracks of mud across the floor, but, surprisingly, the smell of the tobacco from her long blonde pigtails and the blue face she wore from inhaling smoke was mentioned by no one at the supper table. The family knew the young girl was eccentric--it was just the way she was. The skinny yet tough "tomboy" had put to shame both boys and girls, her age and older, through her skill with the yoyo toy, with her performance of the "round the world" trick, the "rock the baby in the cradle" maneuver, and by holding the longest "hesitation" spin as she threw the yoyo down and then, when no one believed she could possibly finally tweak it up into her palm, she did! At the big Flat Rock picnics on her grandfather's farm, more than once Katie had brought out her enviable collection of gorgeous agates to knock out all the marbles from the center of the ring, drawn in dirt, before anyone else even had a turn at it. Nan smiled wider now, remembering how her little sister's knees were, each summer, rough and scarred from kneeling on the ground. Nan saw, with her near-perfect visual recall, Tennyson's "Sleeping Beauty" lines;  

She sleeps; her breathings are not heard In palace chambers far apart,  

She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells A perfect form in perfect rest.  

Katie would not see her menses. She would never know a body experience gifted for new life. Nan knew her Bible, remembering that disciples had not addressed the condition of the dead before Judgment Day . . . only 2 Corinthians taught that when absent from the body one is present with the Lord.  

Nan had sensed her father's occasional questioning of his belief and had gained it herself as though through osmosis.  

The orphan's only reality seemed to be the sudden rainfall. Her thoughts floated above the weeping mentality of friends attending, and above the dull hum of the visiting minister's voice, so unlike her father's beguiling deliveries on all celebrations of life or death. Would these folks rush from a drenching in the chill October air? Would they run from the chill or from the horror of the grim's reaper's unspeakable mistake? Nan prayed she was dreaming . . . that she would be in her home tonight. Her mother would hold her, she would hold to her sister, and Tom Heath would comfort them all. Perhaps the electric flashes and storm would simply wash away God's gaffe!