The Death of Bullet  − 18 July, 1997

A proper country funeral is as much about eating as it is about the deceased, especially if he or she died of old age. This doesn’t mean that car wreck or gunshot victims get short changed. It’s simply that by the time a person has lived eighty three years, they’ve made enough connections to where each one feels honor bound to honor the memory with a covered dish.

So it was when my great uncle Marvin died, that we drove from Tennessee to Alabama with my mother cradling a large dome covered bowl of cole slaw on her lap. After hours of passing through flat pine forests dotted with towns named by Creek Indians (Opelika, Wetumpka, Nogasulga, Tuskeegee) we pulled into Tallassee the night before Marvin’s funeral; collapsing on our cheap hotel beds, the cole slaw safely ensconced in the mini-bar.

Now a funeral’s final legacy depends on a clutch of local women who go to each service whether or not they knew the deceased. Squat and territorial, dressed in Baptist not Catholic black, these ladies formed the final opinion on flowers, the casket, the clothes and the make-up with well honed eyes and speech, almost as if they were giving an opinion on wine or another of life’s aesthetic pleasures: (“you know Betty, this new embalmer is much better than the one at Pope Funeral Home. I mean, Marvin don’t look near as waxy as Emily Piersol did three weeks ago. I tell you it is just amazing what this new boy can do with corpses”).

My daddy referred to them as “The Professionals”.

And you can bet that when Marvin died, the professionals’ antennae were raised skyhigh because it was common knowledge that his three daughters (Little Jean, Deb, and Becky) were squaring off for the big fight over the farm given that Marvin didn’t leave a will. That fight wouldn’t happen on the day of the funeral. But The Professionals quickly positioned themselves at Marvin’s house so to handicap the next six months worth of gossip.

After the graveside service, cars lined the bend of the turn-off to Marvin’s farm all the way back to Route 28. Nearly 60 people disgorged in order to eat. They walked through the sticky air, fanning themselves, with the men draping their coats over their arms.

The three girls congregated in the country kitchen that looked out to Marvin’s tomato vines and on to the fields, which had lay fallow ever since Marvin’s wife died ten months earlier. Ostensibly, the girls were there to organize the covered dishes and decide whether they should fix plates or lay out everything in a buffet. But everybody knew the real reason was to see whose will prevailed first. The Professionals silently recorded everything.

I went outside to get some air which was stupid. Alabama in July is hotter than the hinges of hell. Unlike drier places like Texas where if you find shade, you can drop the temperature a few degrees, Alabama heat just sticks like a bad smell.
My parents stayed inside the country kitchen, with my mother looking to finally unload that goddamn bowl of cole slaw and my father trying not to be drawn into a conversation. He had been Marvin’s closest male relative. Hence, daddy’s opinions counted for more than he wished.

Outside the house, I toweled off my neck with a hankerchief, while watching a clump of kids poke something with sticks under one of the cars. They jabbered and laughed but I couldn’t pick out any words because the heat drops the voice to the ground as soon as it passes from the mouth. So I watched them in pantomime. They poked under the car, laughed, poked some more, laughed a bit more, stood back, then froze. They looked at each other, saw me watching them, and then exploded like a flushed covey of quail, with half running toward the pond, and the other half making a bee line toward the country kitchen.

I walked over and squatted to see what was under the car. There was a lump that looked like Bullet, Marvin’s old bulldog that had a tongue so long you’d swear the dog’s about to step on it. I couldn’t figure out what he was doing but I didn’t feel like getting any closer because Bullet stunk even in winter.

I walked back to the country kitchen, where the final decision had been made that the feed would split the difference, with Deborah serving up the hot food and people then going to another table to get salads. A long line snaked to the carport, as people fanned themselves with paper plates. Picking up my plate, I saw little Jamie and his brother Jason grab on to their mother Deborah, the only sister I thought who had a nickel’s worth of sense.

“He’s dead! He’s dead! Bullet’s dead momma!” Jamie sobbed

“He’s not dead” Deborah said, “The dog is resting under the car.”

“No momma, we been pokin’ him with sticks and he won’t move” Jason said.

His brother Jamie twisted his face in disgust, “yeah momma, and he peed on himself too…”

At that point, a friend of Marvin’s named Curtis came into the country kitchen looking like someone who’d just stepped barefoot on a slug. “Deborah, Bullet is under my truck and I think the dog’s dead. I think the kids have been feeding him chicken bones.”

Curtis then turned to my father, “Jim, can you help me move him? I got a sack where we can put him until I get back to my place where I’ll bury him…” Daddy moved out of the line, relieved that he could duck out before the first overtures were made to him. One of the professional narrowed her eyes to take in the information.

Deb panned the crowd of people waiting to get their lunch, trying to move some air with their paper plates. Little Jean and Becky were already working different sides of the room, expressing their deep appreciation as they built favors that would be needed in the future. Looking through the window of the country kitchen to farmland peppered with fire ant nests and sun-baked land, Deb smoothed back a fallen swatch of moist black hair, a drop of sweat on the nape of her neck, ready to stretch as thin and long as a spider’s strand. “Oh Lord, just give me strength…” she sighed. Then gritting her teeth she spooned a heap of baked beans on the first plate. “…and the nerve of that damn dog to die on a day like this….”