THE PITTER PATTER OF LITTLE PIG'S FEET

From the Chapter "A Piece of the Pie"

Mom and Dad went to Asheville to attend the funeral of one of my great-aunts.  My brother and I were allowed to stay with Mr. Cleve and Miz Lula Belle.  Had I known the bad experience I was to suffer at the hands of Mr. Cleve I would have opted to go to the funeral, dead person or not.  That is a story for a later time.

Back then the coffin containing the dearly departed was kept in the survivor’s house with the coffin lid open, so friends and relatives could drop off food and talk about the job the undertaker had done.  Have you ever wondered why most people, when gazing upon a dearly departed reposing in a coffin, usually say, “It looks just like him/her?  Of course it does, you idiot.  That is him/her lying there. Tradition also required someone to sit up with the coffin twenty-four hours a day.  (I can think of two or three million things I would rather do than sit up all night next to a coffin containing a body I can see out of the corner of my eye).

My great-aunt’s coffin was placed on two chairs in the dining room.  Mom, Dad, some other kin, and mom’s uncle were eating supper in the kitchen, and, unfortunately, Dad had a bird’s eye view of the body in the coffin through the dining room door.  It would be a gross understatement to say he didn’t have much of an appetite.  All he could think of was what he was going to do if the dead aunt raised-up suddenly.  The more he thought about it the more distressed he became, convincing himself that she was, at some point, going to spring out of the coffin after him. 

He managed to choke down a few bites of supper, but later had no recollection of what he ate.  As he sat there unable to swallow because of the gigantic lump in his throat, looking at the body, he began thinking he was at the wrong place at the wrong time.   Mom’s uncle said to him, “Grover, let me show you where we keep the candles, so you can have some light to read by while you sit up with the body tonight.” 

Dad was a polite man, so he didn’t scream and jump out the kitchen window like he wanted to.  He kept his own counsel until he and Mom were alone in the kitchen.  He told her in no uncertain terms that he was not going to sit up all night with a dead body, in fact he wasn’t going to stay in the same house with a dead body, and he may just drive back to Americus immediately, getting out of the dead body watching business altogether, funeral or not.

Mom could see by the maniacal look in his eyes that there was no way he was going to stay there that night.  They went to another of Mom’s uncles’ farmhouse to spend the night.  They got settled in their room and Dad decided he needed to answer the call of nature before he went to bed.   He asked Mom where the bathroom was and she replied, “Go down the hall, through the kitchen, out the back door, past the barn, and the outhouse is right behind the barn.”

 “What in the everknown hell are you talking about?” Dad asked.  “You mean I’ve got to go outside in the pitch black dark, by myself, in a strange barnyard, with no flashlight or outside lights, and find the outhouse?” 

She sarcastically replied, “You can either find the outhouse in the dark, by yourself, or you can stay in here and go in your britches for all I care. You can even hide under the covers all night if you want, but I’m going to bed!” 

Dad asked Mom another question.  She replied, “No, I am not going with you to the outhouse.”

His adrenaline pump had already been primed by trying to choke down dinner with a dead body in plain view, being threatened by dead-body sitting all night, and now being forced to walk three hundred yards in the pitch black dark without a flashlight, to use an outhouse he was not sure he could even find.  Dad girded his loins and set off on his journey to the twilight zone.  He couldn’t see very well in the dark, but whistling seemed to help settle his nerves.  He was at the end of the barn when the abyss opened and all the demonic creatures came pouring out.

The barn had a wooden floor, and Dad’s whistling had disturbed one of the light-sleeping hogs in the barn.  The hog got up and started walking toward the back of the barn toward where Dad was standing.  The hog’s hooves, because of the wooden floor, made sounds like a human, or a haunt, walking in the barn, heading for Dad.  All he could think of was the dead woman had indeed raised herself out of the coffin and had somehow found him in this barn in the country, and was about to punish him for not wanting to sit up with her. 

All thoughts of the call of nature, or any other bodily functions, were immediately forgotten, not to return for three days.  His brain immediately switched to the survival mode and flooded his body with run-fast juice. In confusion and sheer panic he took off in the wrong direction, heading away from the house and towards the dark shadowy woods where who knows what was lurking, waiting to kill him.  He cleared the pasture fence by a foot, in the best tradition of an Olympic hurdler vying for the gold.  He saw the woods coming up fast, realized his misdirection, thought he saw something in the woods and got another jolt of adrenaline, jumped clean over a twelve foot-wide creek, and made about a half-mile one-eighty turn, never breaking stride.  He cleared the pasture fence a second time and finally got back to the house, managing to find the bedroom without waking anyone in the farmhouse.  In one night he had broken at least three world records in the hundred meter dash, the eight-hundred meter run, and the high hurdles, but he would receive no medals or glory for his epic efforts.  Instead, he spent the rest of the night in bed with his head under the covers, trying to catch his breath, dreading the coming of the dearly departed Aunt Stella into the bedroom to drag him down into the grave with her.  He almost missed her funeral the next day because he was so sore he could barely get out of bed.  It was three days before he could use the bathroom again.  He never went on another trip without taking a flashlight and extra batteries.

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