“Get out of here!” Rita hissed between tightly clenched teeth. “You the—”
“I just come to pay my respects. I ain’t come to cause no trouble.”
“You don’t respect nobody.”
By now the packed anteroom crackled with dread. The woman who had taken Gloria scurried back into the sanctuary; just a few months ago she had witnessed a fight break out at a funeral.
Tyronne rushed behind Rita, who was oblivious to her backup towering above her. With the arrogance of power, Snowflake stoically stood his ground and impassively peered at Rita and Tyronne. The tension increased.
“Get out!” Rita screamed, and pushed Snowflake hard in his chest. Snowflake glowered. She was fortunate that this was a wake, that Sammy was her son and might even be related to him, fortunate that a lot of people were standing there watching, but most of all, fortunate that none of Snowflake’s usual retinue was surrounding him, because then Snowflake would have been bound, at the very least, to slap her down. As it was, Snowflake’s hand instinctively went to his.38 derringer, snug but ready in the waist-pocket of his vest.
The confrontation escalated so fast the onlookers barely had time to breathe in and out; a few of the younger men were in fact holding their breath. Surely Snowflake wasn’t going to accept being pushed around without doing something in retaliation.
Tyronne quickly stepped between the antagonists. “She’s upset, you understand. Please, leave her be. We appreciate your concern but it would be better, man, if you would leave.” Tyronne stared unflinchingly into the depths of Snowflake’s emotionless eyes. Snowflake stared back and pulled an empty hand out of his vest pocket.
Everybody except Tyronne, Snowflake, and Rita prematurely relaxed and let out a relieved breath.
“I said get out!” Rita screamed a second time. The deacon who had closed the coffin lid ran to the phone to dial 911. Half the people who had been standing around now quickly moved out, some exiting the front door, others retreating back into the sanctuary. Rita reached around Tyronne in another attempt to shove Snowflake toward the door.
The rest happened so quickly only Tyronne and Snowflake saw it all. Tyronne took a swift half-step to his right to cut off Rita, who was charging around him. He leaned backward briefly, pushing against her with his shoulders.
Snowflake’s left hand leapt with lizard rapidity to knock away Rita’s outstretched right arm, and in the process was detained by Tyronne’s right hand that gripped with a viselike strength and was surprisingly unyielding.
An onlooker moaned, “Oh, Lordy, no!”
“Get out!” Rita’s vehement command overpowered the onlooker’s exclamation.
Snowflake’s right hand had already come up with his gun at the ready. Tyronne stepped in so close to Snowflake that if he pulled the trigger there was no telling what direction the slug would traveclass="underline" upward into the ceiling, upward into Tyronne’s chest, or upward into Snowflake’s jaw.
“He got a gun,” some young male voice blurted at the same time Rita was reaching to get around Tyronne so she could sink her nails into Snowflake’s smoothly groomed face. Snowflake pushed his right forearm against Tyronne’s chest, attempting to back him up and simultaneously free his left arm, which Tyronne held secure at the wrist. As is often the case in impromptu street fights, the peacemaker in the middle was the person in the most danger.
“Young man, please. Has there not been enough shooting and death?” the pastor asked in a calm but insistent voice, as he rushed through trying to get to where Rita, Tyronne, and Snowflake were locked in a tug-of-war.
Rita spit at Snowflake. She missed his face but a glob stuck to the top of his left shoulder. Some older lady fainted but no one paid her any mind because she was too far away from the focal point of the fight. The minister smothered Rita in his protective arms.
“Can’t you see this woman is grieving over her son?”
When Reverend White grabbed Rita, Tyronne bear-hugged Snowflake and spoke slowly and carefully into Snowflake’s ear: “I’m begging you, man. Please don’t shoot my wife. She’s so upset she ain’t got no idea what she’s doing. You can understand her only son is dead and she thinks you had something to do with it. You got the gun. If you got to shoot somebody, shoot me. But please don’t shoot my wife.”
Snowflake’s gun was pinned between the two men.
“Will everyone please either leave out the front door or join me in the sanctuary where we will pray for sister Rita?” Reverend White picked Rita up and dragged her out of immediate danger. Supporting her with firm grips under her arms, two ushers grabbed the woman who had briefly fainted and spirited her out into the welcome chill of the night air.
The whole scene had been acted out so quickly, it seemed like a blur of simultaneous motion. Within ninety- five seconds, Snowflake and Tyronne were alone in the forlorn vestibule.
“Thank you,” Tyronne said as he stepped back half a step, reached into his lapel pocket, pulled out a white handkerchief, and gently dabbed Rita’s spittle off Snowflake’s cashmere jacket. “Thank you.”
It sounded so, so insane, but that was all Tyronne could think to say to the man standing in the receiving area of the church holding a loaded gun gleaming beneath the chandelier lights. From inside the sanctuary, the Twenty-third Psalm seeped through the swinging doors. Reverend White led and the assembled congregation responded with a tremulous sincerity.
“... Yeh, though I walk through...”
“Yeah, what up?”
Rita almost dropped the phone. It was Snowflake. She quietly hung up. So it was just like she thought. Snowflake was behind it all.
Here it was, two weeks after the funeral, and only now had Rita finally been able to summon the strength to clean out Sammy’s closet.
When she pulled the closet door open, Sammy’s scent assaulted her. She buckled at the knees and had to grab the door frame with one hand and push hard against the knob with the other just to keep from falling. It was like Sammy was hiding in the closet and had come charging out when she opened it.
Rita started to close the closet door. She couldn’t stand any more. Her intruding into Sammy’s life had already gotten him killed. She blacked out momentarily.
When she recovered consciousness, she was stooped on one knee inside the closet door. This was as close to a breakdown as she had allowed herself to come.
Fueling her weakness was the indescribable mantle of guilt that refused to lift. She had taken the money out of Sammy’s backpack because she wanted to talk him into stopping. He did. His death stopped everything. And the money, well, four thousand dollars barely paid for the funeral.
Rita heard some sound behind her, turned to look over her shoulder, and saw Tyronne standing in the doorway, his brow deeply furrowed.
“I’m all right. I was just going to clean out his closet and...” How do you explain to a man that a mother knows how her child smells, that you could identify his clothes blindfolded, that opening this closet door was like finding the secret place your child’s death had not yet visited, the place where the child was still overpoweringly present? How does a mother tell a stepfather that the smell of dirty clothes piled on a closet floor knocked you to your knees?
“If you want me to help, I’ll be in the front room,” Tyronne said softly. Then, after waiting a few moments and hearing no response to his offer, he turned and left the room even more quietly than he had entered.
Tyronne was trying so hard to be helpful and patient and considerate. But Rita knew the details, and the ultimate impact of all of this was way beyond his understanding. So much of Rita’s reality was based on events she would never reveal to Tyronne, such as the fact that Sammy’s father was Silas Moore, Snowflake’s oldest brother, and that she and Snowflake knew each other in ways that were hard to explain.