“I remember Rufus,” the girl said, “from when he was a big boy and I was just a little girl—” and she tried to smile at the front-row mourners. Cass watched her, seeing that the girl was doing her best not to cry. “—me and his sister used to sit around trying to console each other when Rufus went off with the big boys and wouldn’t let us play with him.” There was a murmur of amusement and sorrow and heads in the front row nodded. “We lived right next door to each other, he was like a brother to me.” Then she dropped her head and twisted a white handkerchief, the whitest handkerchief Cass had ever seen, between her two dark hands. She was silent for several seconds and, once again, a kind of wind seemed to whisper through the chapel as though everyone there shared the girl’s memories and her agony and were willing her through it. The boy at the piano struck a chord. “Sometimes Rufus used to like me to sing this song.” the girl said, abruptly. “I’ll sing if for him now.”
The boy played the opening chord. The girl sang in a rough, untrained, astonishingly powerful voice:
I’m a stranger, don’t drive me away.
I’m a stranger, don’t drive me away.
If you drive me away, you may need me some day,
I’m a stranger, don’t drive me away.
When she finished she walked over to the bier and stood there for a moment, touching it lightly with both hands. Then she walked back to her seat.
There was weeping in the front row. She watched as Ida rocked an older, heavier woman in her arms. One of the men blew his nose loudly. The air was heavy. She wished it were over.
Vivaldo sat very still and alone, looking straight ahead.
Now, a gray-haired man stepped forward from behind the altar. He stood watching them for a moment and the black-robed boy strummed a mournful hymn.
“Some of you know me,” he said, finally, “and some of you don’t. My name is Reverend Foster.” He paused. “And I know some of your faces and some of you are strangers to me.” He made a brief bow, first toward Cass, then toward Vivaldo. “But ain’t none of us really strangers. We all here for the same reason. Someone we loved is dead.” He paused again and looked down at the bier. “Someone we loved and laughed with and talked with — and got mad at — and prayed over — is gone. He ain’t with us no more. He’s gone someplace where the wicked cease from troubling.” He looked down at the bier again. “We ain’t going to look on his face again — no more. He had a hard time getting through this world and he had a rough time getting out of it. When he stand before his Maker he going to look like a lot of us looked when we first got here — like he had a rough time getting through the passage. It was narrow.” He cleared his throat and blew his nose. “I ain’t going to stand here and tell you all a whole lot of lies about Rufus. I don’t believe in that. I used to know Rufus, I knew him all his life. He was a bright kid and he was full of the devil and weren’t no way in the world of keeping up with him. He got into a lot of trouble, all of you know that. A lot of our boys get into a lot of trouble and some of you know why. We used to talk about it sometimes, him and me — we was always pretty good friends, Rufus and me, even after he jumped up and went off from here and even though he didn’t never attend church service like I — we — all wanted him to do.” He paused again. “He had to go his way. He had his trouble and he’s gone. He was young, he was bright, he was beautiful, we expected great things from him — but he’s gone away from us now and it’s us will have to make the great things happen. I believe I know how terrible some of you feel. I know how terrible I feel — ain’t nothing I can say going to take away that ache, not right away. But that boy was one of the best men I ever met, and I been around awhile. I ain’t going to try to judge him. That ain’t for us to do. You know, a lot of people say that a man who takes his own life oughtn’t to be buried in holy ground. I don’t know nothing about that. All I know, God made every bit of ground I ever walked on and everything God made is holy. And don’t none of us know what goes on in the heart of someone, don’t many of us know what’s going on in our own hearts for the matter of that, and so can’t none of us say why he did what he did. Ain’t none of us been there and so don’t none of us know. We got to pray that the Lord will receive him like we pray that the Lord’s going to receive us. That’s all. That’s all. And I tell you something else, don’t none of you forget it: I know a lot of people done took their own lives and they’re walking up and down the streets today and some of them is preaching the gospel and some is sitting in the seats of the mighty. Now, you remember that. If the world wasn’t so full of dead folks maybe those of us that’s trying to live wouldn’t have to suffer so bad.”
He walked up and down behind the altar, behind the bier.
“I know there ain’t nothing I can say to you that sit before me — his mother and father, his sister, his kinfolks, his friends — to bring him back or to keep you from grieving that he’s gone. I know that. Ain’t nothing I can say will make his life different, make it the life that maybe some other man might have lived. It’s all been done, it’s all written down on high. But don’t lose heart, dear ones — don’t lose heart. Don’t let it make you bitter. Try to understand. Try to understand. The world’s already bitter enough, we got to try to be better than the world.”
He looked down, then over to the front row.
You got to remember,” he said, gently, “he was trying. Ain’t many trying and all that tries must suffer. Be proud of him. You got a right to be proud. And that’s all he ever wanted in this world.”
Except for someone — a man — weeping in the front row, there was silence all over the chapel. Cass thought that the man must be Rufus’ father and she wondered if he believed what the preacher said. What had Rufus been to him? — a troublesome son, a stranger while living and now a stranger forever in death. And now nothing else would ever be known. Whatever else had been, or might have been, locked in Rufus’ heart or in the heart of his father, had gone into oblivion with Rufus. It would never be expressed now. It was over.
“There’re some friends of Rufus’s here,” said Reverend Foster, “and they going to play something for us and then we going to go.”
Two young men walked up the aisle, one carrying a guitar, one carrying a bass fiddle. The thin dark girl followed them. The black-robed boy at the piano flexed his fingers. The two boys stood directly in front of the covered corpse, the girl stood a little away from them, near the piano. They began playing something Cass did not recognize, something very slow, and more like the blues than a hymn. Then it began to be more tense and more bitter and more swift. The people in the chapel hummed low in their throats and tapped their feet. Then the girl stepped forward. She threw back her head and closed her eyes and that voice rang out again:
Oh, that great getting-up morning,
Fare thee well, fare thee well!
Reverend Foster, standing on a height behind her, raised both hands and mingled his voice with hers:
We’ll be coming from every nation,
Fare thee well, fare thee well!
The chapel joined them, but the girl ended the song alone:
Oh, on that great getting-up morning,