The Hollow Men - Episode 36
The funeral of Gene Remington
Last week in Episode 35 of The Hollow Men Drew wakes up in the field world and gets no answers there. When he returns to the real world he finds no answers in a strange, rambling journey across Odessa in search of stardust.
The Hollow Men is the second collection of not quite true tales of Texas. If you have recently subscribed and like to read things from the very beginning feel free to start with The Cold Days of Summer, the first collection of not quite true tales of Texas. Each episode of The Cold Days of Summer and The Hollow Men contains a link to the previous and next episode so you can easily move through the story line.
Change or the world’s gonna change you, part 2
A little bit of Indian Summer showed up on Saturday. The sky was scattered with clouds, and the air was crisp. It was one of those days that made west Texas seem like a wonderful place. That evening, football games would be played across the state, life went on while in our little corner of the world we were trying to find a way to say goodbye.
I don’t think anyone is very good at this kind of thing. I’m sure not. All I wanted to be that day was alone. Sam sensed it and was more than willing to accommodate me. As soon as I woke up, she went out into the backyard and went on steady patrol. She knew the day was different, and she wanted no part of it. Brutus sensed it too and the two of them were more than content to stay in the backyard away from the strangely acting humans.
Everyone was polite. Everyone was quiet. Sherry, Mom and Elizabeth made breakfast, though in truth, Sherry did most of the work. Mom and Elizabeth kept their hands busy and avoided looking at anyone in the eye.
After breakfast we started getting ready for the funeral. Bud and Elizabeth took Mary and George to their house to get cleaned up and dressed. Uncle Bill and I cleaned up the kitchen, with Sam and Brutus taking care of the leftovers while Sherry helped my Mom get ready.
We were about halfway through the dishes and Sam and Brutus were long done with the leftovers when we heard my Mom cry out “God damn, not now!” That was the first time I had heard my mother swear. I looked at Uncle Bill, grabbed a towel, dried my hands off and walked back to where the scream came from.
I found my Mom and Aunt Sherry sitting on the bed in my parent’s bedroom. Aunt Sherry’s arms were around my Mom, who had her heads in her hand, her hair was damp and she was sobbing. Aunt Sherry looked up as I walked in the room.
“The hair dryer just quit working. She says it’s the only one in the house. She can’t go to the funeral like this.”
Uncle Bill said “I’ll run over to Walgreen’s and get a new dryer.”
I turned to Uncle Bill, placed my hand on his shoulder, keeping him from walking down the hallway.
“Let me look at the dryer for a minute. I might be able to fix it.”
My Mom looked up as I spoke, with what was a look of hope.
“We don’t have time for this, I’ll go to Walgreen’s.”
“No, let me look at it.”
Uncle Bill and I stared at each other. We weren’t angry, I guess the weight of all that had gone was finally too much and neither of us was going to back down now.
It was Mom who broke the silence. “Let him look at it, Bill. It won’t take but a few minutes, then if you need to, you can go to Walgreen’s.”
That seemed to settle things and I walked into the bathroom. The hair dryer was plugged in and turned on, but no air was blowing. I flicked the switch a couple of times, nothing happened. I unplugged the dryer and held it up to look at it, and through the opaque plastic in the handle I could see frayed wires. I looked around the counter, found a pair of tweezers, and used one arm of the tweezers as a flat edge screwdriver to remove the four screws that held the dryer in one piece. I pulled one half of the dryer case off and looked at where the wires from the power cord connected to a small terminal in the hand grip of the dryer. One of the two wires had broken and only one wire from the power chord was attached to the terminal. Using the tweezers, I unscrewed both wires from the terminal, tossing the broken wire into the trash.
I turned around, saw Uncle Bill leaning in the doorway of the bathroom looking at me with a slightly amazed, amused look on his face, shaking his head. I walked past him into the bedroom and told my Mom “I can fix this, just need some electrical tape to make it safe. Bet Dad has some in the garage.”
My Mom looked at me with a smile on her face and nodded her head. I walked down the hallway, through the kitchen and into the garage. I found my Dad’s tool chest, rummaged through it and found a roll of electrical tape. I couldn’t find a pair of wire strippers, but in the kitchen I grabbed the kitchen shears and a serrated steak knife.
I walked back to my parent’s bathroom and set to work. With the shears I trimmed a half inch off the end of the power chord, then used the serrated knife to split the end of the power chord into two wires. The serrated knife also served as a wire stripper. I used one of the scooped edges of the knife to strip away about a quarter inch of plastic, leaving bare wire. I wrapped the two ends of bare wire around the terminals and screwed the terminal posts back in. It was now time to make a quick test. I plugged the dryer back in and turned it on. Air blew hard, and all I had to do was clean things up. I turned the dryer off, unplugged it, then took a small strip of electrical tape and placed it on and around the terminal to keep the wires firmly in place and to make it all look safe. It was safe without the electrical tape, but there’s something about electrical tape that just makes it look safer. I placed one half of the dryer on the other half and put the screws back in place. All done, I added a couple of strips of electrical tape around the grip of the dryer, again to make it look safe, but also to hold the handle in place and provide a bit of a grip for the dryer. And I was done.
I turned around to see Uncle Bill looking at his watch. “Six and a half minutes, start to finish. Not bad, not bad at all.” I walked past him back into the bedroom and told my Mom “Dryer’s fixed, Mom. Should last a couple of more years easy.”
She stood up, reached out to me and gave me a big hug. “Thank you, Drew.” It seemed to be more than was necessary, but Aunt Sherry looked at me and I could tell from her eyes, this was not the time to ask questions, it was a time to simply say “You’re welcome. Y’all two finish getting ready, I think Uncle Bill and I have a few last dishes to finish up.”
Uncle Bill and I walked back to the kitchen to find Sam and Brutus lying on the floor, just collecting the cool from the linoleum.
We didn’t say anything while we finished up the dishes, but as he dried and put up the last dish he had something to say.
“That was good, what you did, Drew. You brought a little bit of Gene back into this house when we all thought he was gone forever. He could put anything back together with the strangest of things, just like you did. Fixing a hair dryer with tweezers, a pair of scissors, electrical tape and a knife, no one but you or Gene could have done that.”
I smiled at that. Uncle Bill wasn’t much on compliments so when he gave one out I was sure to take it.
“Guess now that we’re done with the kitchen we best get our selves prettied up.” He laughed at that and we went off and got ready.
Once I was clean and dressed, I made sure both Brutus and Sam had plenty of water and food in the backyard and checked that the gates were latched. Then it was time to go. I rode with my Mom in the back seat of Uncle Bill’s car, with Sherry riding shotgun. I don’t remember much about that ride. At first, Uncle Bill and my Mom tried to keep the mood light, but soon we became quiet and were silent for the rest of the ride.
The parking lot of the church was freshly tarred gravel and as the car came to a stop, small bits of gravel flew into the air. I helped my Mom out of the car and walked with her into the church. We walked to the front pew. In front of the altar was my Dad’s coffin. The reverend and the florist were already there, going about and tending to the final details. We watched them in silence. Just to the left of my Dad’s coffin was the cactus.
Time passed. Shadows, ghosts and people arrived. I wasn’t aware of much of this. I shook a lot of hands, heard a lot of people express their sorrow, saw a lot of faces, but I don’t remember any details. Once I looked around and I was surprised at how many people were in the church. I wondered if when I died as many people would come to say goodbye to me.
The funeral started, the preacher said his words, the choir sang, and the tape player played two songs of Willie Nelson’s Stardust. Elizabeth went to the front of the church to say a few words but all she found were tears. Bud helped her back to our pew. I sat quietly until the preacher said my name.
I walked to the front of the chapel. I didn’t have far to walk, as were sitting in the front pew, but, still, it seemed like the longest walk I ever been on. Each step took a year, and by the time I had reached the podium (or whatever they call it in a church) I was an old man.
I looked out among all the pews and I saw so many faces, so many that I knew, so many I did not. They were all here for a reason, some for my dad, some for my mom, some for Elizabeth, and some for me. They were here to cry, to say goodbye, and I imagine there were a few were there to say good riddance.
I remembered an old trick from Mrs. Inabnet, my speech teacher at Permian. She said if you’re nervous look over the audience, just over the top of their heads, don’t look them in the eyes, because when you’re nervous, that can cause you to lock up and lose your voice. It’s a trick, she said, everyone in the audience will be convinced you looked at them straight on as you scan the top of their heads, when, in truth, you never looked at anyone. I looked out over the audience; I saw a lot of comb overs and other crimes against nature. I didn’t look a single person in the eye, I couldn’t. Somehow I knew if I did I would fall apart right there and then, and that’s something I couldn’t do this day. I somehow needed to be strong, for Mom, for Elizabeth, and perhaps most of all, for me.
I stood there for I don’t know how long. It might have been seconds, it might have been hours, hell, it could have been days, I don’t know. I was beginning to hear a nervous hum, an underlying rumble that was building up in the hearts and souls of everyone there. It was time to speak.
“My dad was a man of few words. If you watched him you could almost see the gears turning in his mind as he thought, as he put words together, tossed them away, grabbed a few more, sounded them out in his head, then finally decided he liked what he heard and then he would speak. Rarely did he raise his voice, he didn’t have to, he spoke so rarely that when he did speak people listened. He realized that often times the quietest voice is the loudest voice.
“We didn’t always get along, and that ought not to surprise anyone. After all I’m his son, and it is just about guaranteed that as a child grows up he or she is going to go against what their parents stand for. We have to; we have to show our parents, we have to show the world we are our own selves, not miniaturized versions of them, but our own unique parts of the world. Sometimes we don’t realize, I know I sure didn’t, that in our urge to stand on our own we often end up knocking down the ones nearest to us, those who have spent their whole lives helping us along.
“We were true father and son the last three years, meaning we didn’t talk much. I didn’t know his dreams, and I didn’t tell him mine. We said hello, we said goodbye, we nodded our heads, but that was about it. The funny thing was our lives had become very similar. Every morning I got up early, took my dog for a run, and then headed off to school. My dad did much the same; he woke up, let Brutus out in the backyard, he even made mom’s coffee every morning, and then drove off to work. At the end of the day we were tired, sometimes a little frustrated. Sometimes we drank too much beer in order to soften, to forget the day, but we always woke up early the next morning determined that this would be the day things would be different, this would be the day things would get set right.
“When I left for Austin he said to me ‘change or the world’s gonna change you.’ I didn’t take that well. I thought he was trying to tell me in his east Texas ways that I was wrong with my life and that I had better turn it around. That’s how I was then, always assuming that others were against me, always standing up or backing down, but rarely listening. Hmmph… that’s how I was then, that’s almost funny to hear me say that. That was only three years ago, but I’m so much older now…
“I now think I understood what he meant, or at least I am able to see things a little differently, maybe a little clearer.
“Everyday the world changes. Sometimes in the smallest ways, sometimes in the biggest ways. Some days, like today, we are reminded that we are a part of a bigger world, and that world’s gonna change. Sometimes the changes don’t make any sense at all, and no matter what you believe in or don’t believe in, it doesn’t matter, the world’s gonna change and all we can do is be a part of it. I can’t make sense of this week, and I don’t know if I ever will, but three years ago my dad warned me about this day when he said ‘change or the world’s gonna change you.’ No, I don’t think he was predicting his death, no, nothing as crazy as that, but he was telling me that I have a choice. I have a choice on how I let the changes in the world change me.
“I could let this day break me, and I’m real tempted to do that. That would be the easiest thing to do, just fall apart and hope someone can put me back together, but that wasn’t and never will be my dad’s way, and since I am my father’s son, it won’t be my way either.
“Today will bend me, it will hurt me, but it will not break me.
“The world’s gonna change, that’s given. Our choice is to accept that, to work with that, and to change ourselves in order to be part of the new world, the world after the changes. Or, we can choose to hold onto to the past, but if we do that, the world’s gonna change us, even if has to break us first. Nobody is so strong that they can deny the changes going on around us. The smartest and the most adaptable of us see that and we will bend, sway against the challenge, but we will not break.
“This past summer I spent a couple of weeks along the coast. You can see where the big storms and hurricanes have come in across the land. There are long stretches of land where there are few big trees, the storms blew them away. But as you move inland you notice something else, the trees grow bigger, bigger in height and girth, but they’re crooked, they generally lean in one direction. One day I was in a small town, where there are hundreds of large, old oak trees. It is a foreign land to this one, where trees grow deeper underground than they do above. There, the oaks tower into the sky 30, 40, 50 feet and more, but many of them lean in one general direction. The town had a small historical museum and I walked around it, looking at the pictures and artifacts. One of the museum volunteers asked me if I had any questions and I asked about the trees, why did they lean? She told me that Hurricane Carla came through that area in the mid-60’s and the trees that didn’t get blown down, bent with the wind. They survived the storm.
“I will survive this storm; I will bend with the wind. I will not break, because that is not what my dad wanted me to do. Yes, he raised me to be strong, but also to be smart so I could see when the storm was too strong and to bend with the wind so I could live to see another day.
“We’re all going to change because of this day. This kind of storm is too big not to cause some kind of change. But, since we have to change, let’s change for the good, for my dad, so his life, his words, his memory, his legacy means something right and true to each and every one of us.”
I was done. There was nothing left to say. I went back to our pew and sat down. Sometime later the funeral came to an end. People walked up to us and talked, but I don’t remember their names, faces or words.
Uncle Bill drove us home. Once back in the house I let Sam and Brutus in from the yard. Sam followed me as I went to my room to change out of my suit. She hopped on the bed and nuzzled next to me as I took off my shoes. I stopped for moment and looked at her as she burrowed her nose against my leg. I rubbed her ears, and scratched her shoulder blades. It was a hard day, but she reminded me there was still some good to it.
Next week in Episode 37 of The Hollow Men Uncle Bill explains why he moved to west Texas after World War II, a few beers are drunk to end the strange day, Drew’s Mom makes some changes and Drew and Sam drive back to Austin.
more good tears