Farewell, Soldier

William floats out of his flag-draped casket and hovers, puzzled by his own consciousness and wondering what to do next. Three generations of his descendants are assembled in the crowded viewing room, greeting the visitors lined up to scrutinize his corpse, judge how successful his progeny look, and say nice things to Ruth, who sits at the end of the receiving line looking stoic but tired.

Boxes of tissues stand ready on mahogany tables, though he doesn’t see anybody taking one, and a mix of nondenominational comfort hymns streams from speakers in the acoustic tile ceiling. Floral and embalming fluid scents remind him of the many funerals he and Ruth have attended since the early 1970s, when the dying rate of their peers stepped up. The decade is drawing to a close, leaving survivors to wonder who will be the last leaf on the tree.

Conversations drift from an overflow parlor. He leans that way and glides in over the crowd, where people swap greetings before funneling in for the viewing. Some share anecdotes, like the one about a typewriter sailing out a second-story window of Spring Pond High School while he was principal there.

Truett Sawyer, President Emeritus of Freeman Community Bank and former school board chairman, is saying something. William credits Truett as the driving force behind the board’s decision to send him packing at the end of his second term as Superintendent of Freeman County schools.

His granddaughters are walking toward the Ladies room and crying. Good to see someone using those tissues.

The evening wears on, and the last visitors finally pass through. As the family files out, William feels an urge to relax in his casket. He returns to the area, and Ruth gives a start. She looks right at him – not at his corpse dressed up in his best navy suit and tie but above, where he’s hovering. She frowns, shivers a little, and hurries to catch up with the others. When the lights are turned off for the night, he settles in and drifts off peacefully.

Aware that the casket is rising, he bolts out of it wide awake, in time to avoid the thud when staff members lower it onto a wheeled cart. He floats along near the ceiling as they push the whole business over a moss green carpet and park his remains front and center in the chapel. Daylight streams through cream and yellow stained glass windows, and organ music comes from behind a wooden lattice screen.

The chapel fills with family, friends, and acquaintances. Truitt, his face impassive, sits next to Mervin Pendergast, who consistently voted Truett’s way on school issues. Rumor had it he received off-the-books loans from Truett’s bank. William glances around at the ceiling to check for any board members who are already dead and is relieved to see no one. He wonders if they watched him attend their funerals.

The pastor enters, delivers the opening prayer, and launches into the Order of Worship. William’s mind drifts as he remembers coming home from the Great War, how well his career began, how badly it ended.

He was appointed Superintendent of Schools for Freeman County at the end of the Second World War and under his careful stewardship, the surplus fund grew. He’d spent most of 1950 inspecting every school in the county, forming a plan that he knew would make him unpopular.

At a quarter to four on a Monday afternoon, William entered the gym of Spring Pond High School, where the board had assembled today to allow for a larger than usual number of spectators who were eager to hear how the money would be spent. A reporter from the The Spring Pond Banner picked up a stenographer’s pad and pulled a pencil from his pocket. Opening business went by in a blur, and it was William’s turn…

A congregational hymn interrupts his thoughts – Nearer My God to Thee. Is God any nearer? There’s no sign of angels beckoning. The pastor delivers a message of comfort, but that’s for the living. He looks at Truett and remembers what happened next.

William’s final statement, “And in my professional opinion, Chairman Truett and distinguished members of the Board, the building that must be replaced with a new one is Mitchell School,” was met with silence.

Then someone in the audience shouted, “What?”

Mitchell School, Grades One through Twelve, was the lone Black school in their segregated county. William answered the question by offering a few facts. Conditions at Mitchell included a perpetually leaking roof, a crumbling foundation, and termite-eaten floors. Students wore their coats inside in the winter. The high school wing was even worse. Repairs would cost more than starting over, so they would start over.

Truett Sawyer was the first to recover. “A brand-new building? I can’t see it, W.T.”

William ignored Truett’s failure to address him by his title and replied, “The condition of the school building and resources hinders learning and keeps the drop-out rate high. Achievement test scores are combined to get an average for the county, Mr. Chairman, which matters when the state allocates funds for the system. If Mitchell students do better, everyone benefits.” Truett’s face was a deep shade of magenta.

A dentist in the audience was on his feet. “And what comes next? Pushing to make me take them as patients? I’d lose the rest of my practice.”

Judge Buddy Hawkins stretched out a palm to cut him off and turned to William. “Mr. Superintendent, we need some time to prepare a considered response to your proposal.”

“It’s not a proposal, Mr. Vice-Chairman. My position gives me the authority to decide the matter. Mitchell School will have a new building.”

Some exchanged looks, others appeared dazed. Truett moved to adjourn and there was a quick second. William didn’t linger.

On Tuesday, the reporter telephoned with more questions.

On Wednesday, a typewritten letter arrived. William was instructed to present himself on Friday at seven in the evening to meet with, “…selected members of the Board of Education and the wider community.” The location was Truitt’s private office at the bank. A handwritten note at the bottom said, “Come in through the back door.”

Friday evening, William pulled into the bank’s parking lot and eyed the other cars. Nearest the entrance was Truett’s. He pulled past the sheriff’s car and eased into a space beside a Cadillac belonging to the owner of a hosiery mill, the county’s largest employer.

The unlocked door opened easily, setting off a quiet chime, and a carpeted hallway led to a door labeled President. It was closed, but William could hear muffled voices. He knocked and entered. Truett looked up. “W.T.,” he said, pointing to the one empty seat in the room. If they were going to sit down and talk, maybe he still had a chance.

“We’ll keep it short. I read today’s newspaper. If you’re determined to follow through on this harebrained scheme of yours, we can’t stop you or remove you during a term, as the rules stand now.” His tone became steely. “But when your term expires…” He glanced around the room. “The board agrees unanimously that if you spend our money on those children, you’ll never work in Freeman County again in any position, and never again in education anywhere.”

William could imagine the arm-twisting Truett must have done to get a unanimous decision. “Then I guess we’ll go where our consciences lead us, gentlemen.” Expecting and receiving no reply, he left them there, walked to his car, and went home to Ruth.

The eulogy is still going on and the word, “admiration,” grabs William’s attention in time to refocus for, “…what he did and how he handled the fallout.” William has never talked about those dark times to anyone but Ruth. The pastor moves on to William’s service during the first World War, another very private subject that has been absolutely taboo in their household for six decades. His sons eye each other and he knows they’re thinking that if the old man could hear this, he’d have a hissy fit.

The pastor winds down and the congregation sings, It Is Well with My Soul, which William hopes is true. He hadn’t planned to have a stroke at eighty-seven and always thought he could work out spiritual details on his deathbed. But one minute he was in the garden trying out his new rototiller, and now he can’t seem to stay in his own coffin.

All he remembers about dying is feeling his brain explode and asking God to forgive him for not reaching out to his enemies – mainly Truett – to settle things. He hopes God will say the burden was on them.

He wonders where things are headed now. Hopes he doesn’t get lowered into the ground along with his mortal remains. He shudders and recalls 1950 again.

Monday morning. Time to stop licking his wounds and make plans. He’d been counting on another ten years of pulling in the top salary of his career and wanted Ruth to enjoy life a little. So they’d cleaned out their nest egg and bought a fashionable house on the town’s nicest street. Now he had only three years left to earn a salary.

They could sell the house, find something smaller. A place with land, where he could build a barn. He’d grown up on a farm and even after decades of desk jobs, he could manage a small one.

He and Ruth had discussed it Friday night. “You have to do it,” she said. “We’ll get by.”

So he did. They bought a modest acreage outside town that came with a small house. Their big house sold quickly and on the week of the poorly-attended groundbreaking for the new Mitchell Comprehensive School, the foundation was dug for their barn. Three years after William’s announcement of his plans to build the school, he cleaned out his office and started a new life.

It had been painful to watch friends pull away and for the first few months, he and Ruth had a church pew all to themselves. He brushed off thanks from Black parents and community leaders, to avoid making more trouble for everyone. His extended family was baffled, divided about how they felt.

In 1954, Brown vs. Board of Education’s ruling that the “separate but equal,” myth was unconstitutional made their county look better than most. Mitchell School was segregated, but it was the best-looking Black school in the state. Yet no one apologized or invited him back.

By the early nineteen seventies, a new generation saw him as being on the right side of history. Someone tried to organize a dinner in his honor. Ruth told him that times had changed. But the walls that had kept the world at arm’s length for two decades were fortified now, and they were comfortable, so he said no.

The organ begins a soothing postlude. They move his casket out and hoist it into the back of the hearse. Ruth and the rest of the family divide themselves between two limousines, a needless frill in his opinion. The three vehicles pull in front of the line of cars while mourners lower their windows for attendants to clamp on the little white flags. William wonders how much they’ll disrupt traffic on the highway.

He finds Ruth’s choice of this brand-new funeral home irritating. It’s five miles out of town – a long way for a long line of slow cars. What’s wrong with the chapel of First Methodist, where William has taught Sunday school for the past twenty-five years, partly out of godly devotion, partly out of spite? It always amused him that he could teach an adult class, where some of the very people who betrayed him would listen with respect, as if nothing had happened. People he once counted as friends.

The hearse eases out of the parking lot. William hovers just above the roof, wondering what’s happened to the traffic. All the way into town they encounter no one, except for a couple of Highway Patrol cars on each side, with officers out of their cars, standing at attention with hats over their hearts.

At the edge of town, the highway narrows and becomes the city’s main street. Finally, here are cars, parked along shoulders and perpendicular streets. People fill the sidewalks. Police officers stand at attention. Are they interrupting a parade?

They slow to a crawl, passing the high school where he was once principal. Ruth waves to the crowd, and it dawns on him that they’re here for him, paying him the kind of attention he’s rebuffed for years. It feels surprisingly nice, and he’s sorry he can’t tell them so.

He sees the grandkids staring out the windows. They were little when it all started, and no one told them about Mitchell School or why Grandpa became a farmer. Later, he didn’t want to discuss it, and his sons knew better than to bring it up. Maybe Ruth will tell them now.

Something inside him relaxes and he realizes he has a smile on his face. He turns around and floats backwards to watch as long as he can, until they reach the edge of town. Then the procession takes a left, toward the cemetery. He feels a pull, and it takes focus not to rise higher.

There’s the grave site with the canopy over the cordoned-off burial plot, chairs lined up neatly. The hearse pulls over, and men unload flowers along with the part of him that’s going into the ground at the end of a Bible reading and prayer. The mild spring day smells of fresh-cut grass and newly-turned earth. After his final send-off, he knows, the family will proceed to First Methodist to enjoy a meal cooked and served by the ladies of the church. But he senses he won’t be with them then. He feels himself growing lighter, drifting upward, no ceilings or unfinished business to stop him.

He takes one last good look down, then turns around and moves up, toward the light.