Jake chuckled and said, “Oh, I think it’s beautiful. You wanna go to the funeral?”
“Only if you’ll go.”
“You’re on.”
They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the voices outside, to the ringing of the phones, and they both knew they had things to do. But there were so many questions, so much high drama just around the corner.
“I wonder what those boys saw,” Jake said. “Seth and his brother.”
Ozzie shook his head, no clue. He glanced at the will and said, “Ancil F. Hubbard. I can try and find him if you want; run his name through the network; see if he’s got a record anywhere.”
“Do that. Thanks.”
After another heavy pause, Ozzie said, “Jake, I have a lot on my plate this mornin’.”
Jake jumped to his feet and said, “Me too. Thanks. I’ll call later.”
4
The drive from central Memphis to Ford County was only an hour, but for Herschel Hubbard it was always a lonesome journey that seemed to kill a day. It was an unwelcome excursion into his past, and for many reasons he made it only when necessary, which wasn’t very often. He’d left home at eighteen, kicking the dirt off his shoes and vowing to avoid the place whenever possible. He had been an innocent casualty in a war between his parents, and when they finally split he sided with his mother and fled the county, and his father. Twenty-eight years later, he found it difficult to believe the old man was finally dead.
There had been efforts at reconciliation, usually at Herschel’s urging, and Seth, to his credit, had hung on for a while and tried to tolerate his son, and his grandkids. But a second wife and a second bad marriage had intervened and complicated matters. For the past decade, Seth had cared for nothing but his work. He called on most birthdays and sent a Christmas card once every five years, but that was the extent of his efforts at fatherhood. The more he worked the more he looked down on his son’s career, and this was a major cause of their tension.
Herschel owned a college bar near the campus of Memphis State. As bars go, it was popular and busy. He paid his bills and hid some cash. Like father like son, he was still grappling with the aftershocks of his own nasty divorce, one won decidedly by his ex, who got the two kids and virtually all the money. For four years now, Herschel had been forced to live with his mother in an old, declining house in central Memphis, along with a bunch of cats and the occasional freeloading bum his mother took in. She, too, had been scarred by an unpleasant life with Seth, and was, as they say, off her rocker.
He crossed the Ford County line and his mood grew even darker. He was driving a sports car, a little Datsun he’d bought secondhand primarily because his late father hated Japanese cars, hated all things Japanese, really. Seth had lost a cousin in World War II, at the hands of his Japanese captors, and relished wallowing in his well-earned bigotry.
Herschel found a country station out of Clanton and shook his head at the DJ’s twangy and sophomoric comments. He had entered another world, one he left long ago and hoped to forget forever. He pitied all those friends who still lived in Ford County and would never leave. Two-thirds of his senior class at Clanton High were still in the area, working in factories and driving trucks and cutting pulpwood. His ten-year reunion had so saddened him he skipped the twenty-year.
After the first divorce, Herschel’s mother fled the place and resettled in Memphis. After the second, Herschel’s stepmother fled the place and settled in Jackson. Seth hung on to the home, along with the land around it. For this reason, Herschel was forced to revisit the nightmare of his childhood when he went to see Seth, something he had done only once a year until the cancer arrived. The house was a one-story, ranch-style, redbrick structure set back from the county road and heavily shaded with thick oaks and elms. There was a long, open front lawn where Herschel had played as a child, but never with his father. They had never tossed a baseball or a football, never even set up a kids’ soccer goal, or played tackle football. As he turned in to the driveway, he looked at the wide lawn and was once again surprised at how small it now seemed. He parked behind another car, one he did not recognize, one with Ford County license plates, and for a moment stared at the house.
He had always assumed he would not be bothered by his father’s death, though he had male friends who had warned him otherwise. You grow into an adult; you’re trained to control your emotions; you don’t hug your father because he is not the hugging type; you don’t send gifts or letters; and when he’s dead you know you can easily survive without him. A little sadness at the funeral, maybe a tear or two, but within days the ordeal is over and you’re back to your life, undamaged. And those male friends had kind things to say about their fathers. They had watched the old guys age and face death with little concern for the aftermath, and every one of them had been blindsided by grief.
Herschel felt nothing; no sense of loss, no sadness at the closing of a chapter; no pity for a man so troubled he took his own life. He sat in his car and looked at the house and admitted to himself that he felt nothing for his father. Perhaps there was a trace of relief in that he was gone and his death meant one less complicating factor in Herschel’s life. Perhaps.
He walked to the front door, which was opening as he approached. Lettie Lang was standing in the doorway, touching her eyes with a tissue. “Hello, Mr. Hubbard,” she said in a voice straining with emotion.
“Hello Lettie,” he said, stopping on the rubber doormat lying on the concrete porch. Had he known her better he might have stepped forward for a quick hug or some gesture of shared sympathy, but he couldn’t force himself to do it. He had met her only three or four times, and never properly. She was a housekeeper, and a black one, and as such was expected to stay in the shadows when the family was around.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, backing away.
“So am I,” Herschel said. He followed her inside, through the den, to the kitchen where she pointed to a coffeepot and said, “I just made this.”
“Is that your car out there?” he asked.
“Yes sir.”
“Why did you park in the driveway? I thought you were supposed to park to the side over there, next to Dad’s pickup.”
“I’m sorry, I just wasn’t thinkin’. I’ll go move it.”