Pearl River Community College's award winning literary magazine

Special Edition—Spring-Summer 1998

Special Section

MCCCWC entry—short story division

Patrick O'Possum's Funeral

by Ronn Hague

Two fishermen pass in their aluminum skiff. The wash they leave laps at the shore and causes a small stick to bob up and down. The stillness sooths me. The river was here before my family settled on its banks; it will be here long after we depart this life. Somehow that's a comforting thought--that the river will be here to attest that we farmed its shores, hunted its banks, and fished its waters. As I turn, I walk toward an old field where I once played. It's grown over now, but even though the field is unrecognizable, I manage to walk right to the spot where I buried Patrick O'Possum. I remember that day as clearly as I remember yesterday.

Two things made that day special and contributed to my flawless recollection of it. First, it was my birthday--mine and Grandpa's. I was especially close to my Grandpa. Grandma said I was his shadow. She said we looked enough alike to be twins. Then she poked me and grinned, "If your grandpa was about a hundred years younger." We celebrated our birthday together every year. It was always something to remember with uncles, aunts, and carloads of cousins driving in for the festivities.

The other thing that made it so special was the new friend I made.

I grew up about a quarter mile from the Pearl River, a complacent stream that begins her journey in north central Mississippi's red clay hills and snakes her way down to the wetland coast. She takes her time getting there, wandering about to see as much of the countryside as she can. Fat and lazy, she finally arrives at the shallows of the Mississippi Sound, just south of Perlington, and drops her silt souvenirs. Before she gets to the Gulf, she splits into the East Pearl and the West Pearl. The result is Honey Island, a swampy stretch of land five miles wide and twenty miles long. It was this swampy island just across the river that fueled my imagination and haunted my thoughts during those care free years.

On that spring morning, the one I remember so well, I was finishing my breakfast when my daddy came in from the midnight shift at the mill in nearby Picayune and announced that there was a dead possum in front of the drive, and that I should take care of it before the dogs drug it up.

Five minutes later, I walked down the gravel lane to the main road with a shovel slung over my shoulder. When I got to the road, I found the possum lying there, so I scooped the small animal into my shovel and carried it back up the drive. I was trying to think of a good place to dispose of it when I decided to give the "poor thing" a decent Christian burial. I turned up a path that peeled off the lane and led into a stand of young pines. Just the other side of the trees lay two acres of open pasture, bordered on the north, south, and east by the pines and on the west by river bottom hardwoods.

"This looks like the perfect place, don't you think?" I asked the possum, laying the shovel down. I picked some wild flowers and lay them next to the animal. Then I started digging the grave, all the while singing "Rock of Ages" in my best imitation of Albert Pike's locally famous tenor voice. I tried to make it as sad as I could, because I remembered it was sung that way at Brother Walker's funeral

the previous fall.

The hole dug and the singing finished, I solemnly delivered the possum's eulogy. "Dearly b'loved, we

are gathered here this morning to say our last good-byes to our true, good friend, Patrick Q'Possum. He was a father, a son, a brother, and a neighbor."

I was so caught up citing good deeds and quoting and misquoting poetry and scriptures, that I didn't notice I was being watched. After the eulogy I launched into a sonorous prayer for the "dear departed possum's loved ones who are grieving his untimely passing and will greatly miss his shining smile and loving ways."

It was when I was shoveling the last of the dirt into the hole that my observer stepped from behind the bushes.

"The most moving service I ever heard," he said.

I jerked my head up, startled to find I was not alone and mortified that my eulogy had been overheard. I could feel the heat of embarrassment radiating from my ears.

"It was such a wonderful sad funeral; I just had to say something."

The boy was my age with curly blond hair that framed his face. He wore a pair of tattered shorts and was well-tanned even though it was the first of May. His mouth turned down at the ends giving him a perpetual expression of sadness, but his eyes gave him a look of mirth and innocence--two pinpoints of blue that danced and smiled.

"I've never seen you around here before," I said. "Did you just move here or are you visiting someone?"

"I live across the river," the boy replied. He stared at the newly filled grave while standing on one foot, resting the other foot on his calf, looking incredibly like a tall thin water bird.

"I never heard anybody lived over there. Do you live on one of those house boats?"

"Nope. Got a house on poles. It's on high ground. Ain't never flooded past the first step," he replied.

"My name's Dustin Ladner. What's yours?" His mysterious appearance from the woods and unusual bird posture made me uneasy.

"Shawn Matthews," the boy said. He moved closer to the grave and resumed his water bird stance. ^"He your pet?"

"The possum? Naw. My daddy wanted me to bury him so the dogs don't drag him up to the house. I got me a dog," I added.

"What kind?"

"Half Catahoula Cur and half something else," I told him, relaxing a little.

"I had a dog. 'Gator got him though."

"I saw a 'gator once," I bragged. "It was a bull, Daddy said."

"Seen a few myself," he said in such a matter-of-fact way I had no choice but believe him.

"Wanna go exploring?" he asked.

"Where?"

He nodded toward the river.

"You won't get us lost, will you?"

He just smiled.

We spent the entire morning exploring the river's edge until we got to a pile of beached logs that looked like a fort, and we spent the rest of the day defending it from river pirates.

That afternoon around two I invited Shawn back home for some lunch.

"I can't," Shawn said, "and you gotta promise never to tell anybody about me."

Tales of desperate runaways and escaped boys from Columbia Training School raced through my mind. "Why?" I asked, hoping he would tell me some exciting story of his adventures.

"Just can't; that's all." That was all he would say, but the seriousness of Shawn's request added to the drama of the day, making my skin prickle from the excitement and mystery.

"Wanna play again tomorrow?"

"Yep," he said.

"What time?"

"It don't matter. I'll be here," Shawn said as he turned and headed back into the swamp. The next morning, Shawn was there, just as he said, and for the next three months, we continued to meet and play together.

The summer heat melted us together, and we became the best of friends. We performed the bonding rituals of adolescent boys: sharing our prized possessions, telling each other our most terrible fears, and swearing oaths of loyalty and secrecy. This is the time when friendship is at its best, when the mystique of life holds a boy in such awe that he must have a best friend with whom he can confide those dreadful inner thoughts that plague him. Ours was just such a friendship.

One day, toward the end of summer, a couple of weeks before school began, Shawn seemed troubled. Several times, he started to say something, but stopped. At a time of peculiar solemnity, I could stand the suspense no longer and asked Shawn what was bothering him. "We're friends," I reasoned, "If you can't tell me, who can you tell?"

"I won't be here tomorrow."

"That's okay. I'll just meet you here the next day."

Shawn shook his head side to side quietly.

"Then we'll meet day after that."

Shawn said nothing.

I began to feel a tightness that started in my chest and climbed up into my throat, closing it off. I swallowed hard, trying to push the tightness back down. "When?" I asked.

Shawn looked down and gazed at the ground. "I gotta go away."

The silence screamed in my ears. For that moment, no sound was being made anywhere in the world, and yet, the noise in my ears was overwhelming. My emotions rose up all tangled and twisted. I felt sadness. I felt rage. I felt everything all at once. I held onto my feelings as tightly as I could, fearing they would escape and drag me along with them. For some reason, I did not want Shawn to know how deeply hurt I was. He was the one inflicting the pain, and, for a moment, I hated him for it.

"You'll be back though, right?"

Again Shawn shook his head in that almost imperceptible way.

I felt my throat closing again, squeezing my eyes, causing them to water. I wanted to ask him why; I wanted to ask him where he was going, but I couldn't trust myself to speak. I turned away, trying to control the torrent inside me. When I got control of myself and looked up, Shawn was gone. For a brief moment, I fought a desperate urge to go into the tangle of vines and trees in search of my friend, but the place where we played so happily became dark and dismal. I did the only thing l could think to do. I sat down on the river bank, and as I sat there numbly, I felt the tentacles of loneliness and desolation reach out from the river and the swamp beyond, grope for me, find me, and overtake me.

Each morning for the next two weeks I returned to our meeting place, knowing Shawn would not be there, but refusing to give up hope. As the days grew shorter and the

air became cooler, I went to the river less, burying my grief deeper inside myself, until I thought of my summer friend only rarely, and when I did think about Shawn, the pain was not the stabbing pain of grief, but the haunting pain of loss.

One Saturday afternoon late in October, I was exploring in the little field bordered by pines and river bottom hardwoods. The hardwoods were almost barren and the feel of autumn clothed the air. My feet carried me toward Patrick O'Possum's grave. Suddenly, the happy summer memories came flooding back again, in their wake bringing a deep sense of loss that washed all the way through me, seeping into every cell, purging me of any hidden comfort.

The desolation pushed me to the banks of the river where Shawn and I had played so happily before. Now, the swamp's barren trees reflected my heart's emptiness, and I fled from them, hoping to leave my loneliness at the river's edge. I walked to my grandpa's house and sat with Grandpa on the front porch, silently rocking back and forth, the medicine of familiarity dulling my pain.

We sat there, the two of us, youth and wisdom, future and past, rocking in unison--our lives intertwined in the harmony of genetics, of culture, of tradition. We needed no words; we were linked together, our senses in conversation. I looked over at the old man, a question forming itself in my mind.

"Grandpa, you ever hear of anybody living in the swamp?"

"Honey Island Swamp?"

"Yes sir."

He was silent for a few minutes, rocking back and forth, a faraway look glazing his eyes.

"When I was your age," he said, "I had a friend who lived across the river in the swamp. Had curly blond hair. Never combed it though. And deep-water blue eyes that'd pierce right through you. We was best friends. Then one summer him and his parents got the fever and died. Buried them in the cemetery at the church."

We sat in silence for several minutes. Then I did something I had not done in a long time. I got up and went over to my grandpa and climbed in his lap, pulling his weather-worn arms around me. My grandpa hugged me close, "The air's beginning to get a little chill in it."

That afternoon became a special memory for me after Grandpa died that winter. He was buried in the old cemetery by the church. A lot of afternoons after school, I went to the graveyard and sat at Grandpa's grave. One particular afternoon in early spring, while I was sitting beside his grave thinking, a wind began to stir the treetops, gently moving them back and forth. I noticed some movement to my right At first, I didn't pay any attention to it, but the movement persisted. I looked up, and for a moment, I didn't see anything. Then I saw him! It was Shawn, his arm around the shoulder of a familiar looking boy. As I walked toward them, I began to realize the reason for the familiarity The boy with Shawn looked like me. Both boys were standing, their arms draped over the other's shoulders the way best friends do.

The closer toward them I walked, the further away they seemed to retreat, until I found myself standing in the spot where I first noticed them, but they weren't there. I looked down and read the headstone at my feet: "Shawn Matthews, Died of the fever at age twelve."

A cold chill swept over me as I realized the identity of my mysterious summer friend. When I looked toward the, church, I saw the two boys walk off together. I resisted an urge to shout, to tell them to wait for me, and instead said quietly, "Goodbye, Grandpa. Goodbye, Shawn," and as I lifted my hand in farewell, they both turned and waved.

Sometimes, when I am at home in nearby New Orleans, I wonder if those things I remember about that special time are only my imagination, but when I come home, the magic of the river and the land envelops me and all doubts are stilled. I can't explain it, but I understand the draw of friendship and love and home, and I suppose that's all the explanation that's necessary.