The Sixty Year Funeral
By
Chris Decker
In my
mind’s eye I still can see the foreman meandering toward the sawdust dump with the
mangled leg slung over his shoulder.
The
sawdust dampens the sound of my foot-steps as I chase after him. He is panting
under his eerie load.
I
take off my raglan and attempt to throw it over the leg. My aim is off and the
coat drapes over the man’s head obstructing his vision. He stumbles, curses and
regains his balance.
Eventually he throws his load on the
sawdust.
Two men
from the mill come running with shovels. Glancing nervously at the leg they start
digging. The main sawyer arrives, wiping his forehead with a polka-dot
handkerchief. He is followed by others from the mill in groups of two; six, a
dozen… The leg becomes the focal point of the group.
The
mill with a full head of steam for the afternoon shift whines in the
background, unmanned. Curious women with children clinging to their skirts come
running and join the growing crowd.
The Allied
ship, moored in the harbour, loading pit props for the war effort, stops her
winches. The ship’s crew and the stevedores row ashore and join the others at
the grave.
Sombrely
the foreman wraps the leg in my raglan and drops it into the hole. The crowd is
silent… waiting… The foreman hesitates.
A
woman pushes through the crowd, stands directly between the grave and me, and
stares into my face. I recognize her from church where she plays a leading
role. She is taller, broader and thicker than any other woman in the crowd.
Her
husband is the small man who operates the re-saw in the mill.
The
crowd closes in and I fear both of us will be pushed into the grave. I grab her
by her sleeves and pull her forward. She falls against me, squeezing her heavy
breasts into my face. Her sweat is overpowering.
“Are you going to say something or are you
going to let them bury the poor boy’s leg as if it were a slab of horse meat?”
She asks, contemptuously.
I
regain my composure. I ask her if she would be kind enough to sing a hymn.
She
has a powerful voice. Its crescendo drowns out the pervasive noise from the
sawmill.
There’s a land that is fairer than day
And by faith we shall see it afar…
Dutifully we all join in on the
chorus:
In the sweet bye and bye,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore…
As soon as we finish the refrain, she
continues with another verse and we all dutifully sing the chorus again. She
sings verses of the old hymn that I have never heard before.
When she finally runs out of verses
the crowd is silent.
She breaks the stillness with a
proclamation:
“Let us pray!
“Our loving Heavenly Father; in Whom
we live and move and have our being; in Whose presence angels veil their faces;
and at Whose feet men fall down and worship.
“Oh loving Father, there’s been a horrible
accident. That’s why there are over four hundred people gathered here on the
sawdust dump today. I’m sure You know who Andrew Hedderson is. We all call him Andy.
He lives with his mother. He’s a mere boy forced into a man’s world doing a
man’s job. They moved up here from down the shore last year after his father’s
boat sank and all hands on board were drowned.
An ancient text from Sunday school
flashes across my mind:
Rachael weeping for her
children.
“And, oh Father in heaven, I’m sure You
know about the main shaft that runs the whole length of the sawmill; the shaft
that drives all the pulleys that drive all the machinery in the mill.
“Well today, Blessed Master, after
the
“The manager, who is standing here
beside me, ordered the captain of the company’s tug to moor the boom and take Andy
to the hospital at St.Anthony.
“Even as we pray, oh God, poor Andy
is out on the
“Tempest! What tempest?” I whisper to
the man standing next to me.
“She knows what she’s talking about,
sir. The wind is north-east. We’re sheltered from nor-easters up here in the
bay. I can assure you though, it’s not too pleasant on the outside right now. And
it’s bound to get worse as the night wears on.”
As soon as she finishes praying a man
in the crowd raises a hymn:
Shall we gather at the river?
The beautiful the beautiful the river…
There are more prayers. And there are
testimonies in which people attest to the close calls they have had and how God
was always there for them and rescued them and saved them. And He will also take
care of Andy, if he puts his trust in Him.
There is a strange hissing sound.
Gradually it intensifies and becomes louder. Then it turns into an ear
shattering screech that drowns out Rachael who is leading the crowd to
A man shouts, “Mrs. Hedderson has fainted!”
The crowd moves back as I approach
the woman who is prostrate on the sawdust, leaning over the edge of the grave, her
blank eyes fixed on the leg that is partly covered with my raglan. Just as I
reach out my hand to help her up she slides into the grave and lands on top of
her son’s limb.
At that very moment the minister
arrives. He’s returning from another point on his circuit. The first thing he
does is shut down Rachael. Later he denies that he told her to shut her fucking mouth. I was standing next to
him when he told her to be quiet and the word he used sounded a lot like fucking to me. But I never repeated it
to anyone.
Several men hold onto the minister’s
feet and lower him head first into the grave. He wraps his arms around Mrs. Hedderson
and we drag woman and minister out of the hole. Slowly his face returns to its
normal colour as the blood drains back into his torso from his head. He
straightens his stock and tucks his white shirt inside his black pants.
Calmly he settles Andy’s mother down.
Then he turns to the mill-wright, who
is a member of his Church, and instructs him to carry her home. The mill-wright
takes the order literally and takes the woman up in his arms and lugs her off.
A half dozen women follow.
The minister announces that we shall
sing the first and last verses of
Abide with me…
After the singing of the abbreviated
hymn, he reads the order for the burial of the dead adapting the ceremony
to apply to a leg instead of to the body
of our brother here departed.
Earth to earth, ashes to ashes…
Darkness falls. Gradually the crowd
disperses.
The captain of the tug reports to me
after he returns from St.Anthony.
“Andy is still in hospital, sir. The
doctor told me he’ll be there a year or more. They’re worried about infection.
They intend to fit him with an artificial leg. He will have to learn to walk all
over again.
“What was the weather like, captain?”
“I assume you mean on our way to
St.Anthony? It was not good. Before you hired me I had spent nearly thirty
years at sea. I’ve seen some bad storms in my day. I can honestly say, though,
I’ve never been out in anything worse.
“It struck as soon as we went around
Englee Head. It came from the north-east at forty or fifty knots. It became
worst as the night wore on. The waves were over twenty feet and the darn tide
was running against the wind. If it had not been an emergency I would have
turned around.
“A wave broke over her off Fox Head
and smashed out all the glass in the front of the wheelhouse. I had to slew
around and run off while a couple men boarded up the windows. It was practically
all compass after that.
“The boom broke when we were steaming
through Fishot Tickle. You’ve seen the ring bolt on the roof of the wheel house
where we fastened the main sheet. When the wave broke over us it yanked the bolt
out of the wood just the same as if it had been screwed into hard grease. The
boom swung out over the gunwale and broke in three pieces. I thought we were
going to capsize.
“I ran her into a cove on the north
side of
“While the men were pumping out the
water I went down fo’ard to check on Andy and the nurse. He had fallen off the
bunk and was lying on the floor. She had managed to get a quilt under him. She
told me he had slipped into unconsciousness about an hour earlier and his
bleeding had stopped about the same time.
“She couldn’t hide her disappointment
when I told her we were not in
“I stayed with him a few minutes
while she went to the head.
“I had considered remaining in the sheltered
cove until daybreak but when I saw the despair on her face I changed my mind.
“Back aft the engineer informed me
that the stuffing box had vibrated loose and was leaking. It only took him a
few minutes to repair it.”
I almost missed the announcement among
the dozen notices on the community channel.
Passed away at Golden Years Manor, Andrew Hedderson, 76.
Predeceased by his father, his loving mother and three sisters. Funeral services
will be held at Peaceful Rest Funeral Home,
At the funeral parlour we tried to
sing Amazing Grace but the music was
piped in and we couldn’t keep up with the tempo.
The minister didn’t know God as well
as Rachael had known Him. He didn’t even know God’s gender and addressed Him in
neutral language. He knew Andy even less. He had no way of knowing he was
finishing a process that had started sixty years earlier.
The minister acknowledged my presence
in the cemetery. He spoke as if he were speaking to a congregation of several
hundred. He placed extra emphasis on the last word of each sentence.
“We have with us this day Mr. George Thistle.
It is my understanding that Mr. Thistle was the manager of a lumber
company in the early days of Roddickton;
when this town was just a hamlet and didn’t have a name; when the deceased was involved in a serious accident. I wonder would Mr. Thistle like
to say a few words.”
I could have said more than a few words about Andrew
Hedderson
I could have told about the infection that kept him in
hospital for fourteen months.
I could have described his return from St.Anthony on the
coastal boat and his struggle down the gang plank from the ship; a cardboard
suitcase in one hand, a walking stick in the other. His prosthetic knee bent
too far and he fell on his face. Two men rushed up the plank and dragged him down
to the wharf.
I could have described his welfare leg which swung like a
scythe as he struggled along the sawdust paths of the village. As the years
passed by the sawdust paths became gravel roads and the gravel roads became
paved streets but his leg remained the same.
I could have told about the attractive young social worker
who interviewed him after his mother’s death to make sure he wasn’t getting
more assistance than he was entitled to. She sat across from him, crossing and
uncrossing her shapely legs, showing more thigh with each crossover until he
was overcome with lust. She saw the stain on his crotch and burst out laughing.
She confided in her boyfriend who told someone else. And the whole town heard
about it and labelled him a pervert.
She decided to send him back to school. But he had never gone
to school before. They arbitrarily placed him in grade eight. My three sons
consecutively caught up with him and passed him by. My oldest son described his
frustration. I asked my two younger boys not to tell me about it.
I could have told about his infatuation with a woman who
bluntly told him she wasn’t interested in a cripple.
I could have told about the Christmases and New Years and
Thanksgivings when we carried him our leftovers and congratulated ourselves on
our generosity.
I could have said there are more ways to bury a man than to
shovel mud or sawdust on his coffin.
Yes, there were many things I could
have said about Andrew Hedderson. But I left them all unsaid. What was the
point? There were only three of us at the funeral; the undertaker, the minister
and I.
“He was a good man,” I said. “May he
rest in peace.”
After a brief pause the minister
realized that I wasn’t going to say anything else and continued with the
committal.
“Earth to earth; ashes to ashes; dust
to dust; in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead and the
life everlasting.
END