I Drove A Hearse To Mississippi

One year ago today, I drove a hearse to Mississippi. I really did. Well, in the company of my Dad, that is. You can believe me or not, because you can’t make this stuff up. I had just turned 16 and passed my driver’s ed test only two months before. I suppose I didn’t even know how to drive, really, but Dad, well, he must have trusted me enough to enlist me as his co-pilot. In retrospect, though, I wonder if it was not so much trust as something else that he had in mind. Well, since you’re questioning the veracity of my account, this is exactly how it all happened, when I was 16 and drove a hearse to Mississippi.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

I’m in Mrs. Corbin's first-year French class learning to conjugate simple verbs, when the principal, Jack Featheringill, appears at the door and motions for me to step out. He says,  “Your father just called and let me know to send you home right away. I guess he needs your help to drive down to, I think he said Mississippi, and pick up a body. So you’re excused from school until Monday.”

 I’m, like, huh. Pick up a - corpse?! “You’re kidding, right, Mr. Featheringill?” 

“No, I’m not. You better get a move on. He’s waiting at home for you.” 

I go back in the classroom and gather up my school stuff, at which point Mrs. Corbin comes over to find out what the disturbance is all about. I tell her in a hush-hush whisper, so the other students won’t hear, that I’ll be away from school until Monday, four whole days from now. I’m floating on air! It feels like an unexpected gift from heaven, this crazy news that I won’t have to sit through four whole days of boring school. And going on an adventure, to boot! Though ecstatic, my curiosity soon gets the better of me as I hurriedly walk the ten blocks home from school. What, exactly, is going on? It all seems too strange to believe.

After all, up until not too long ago when he quit drinking, Dad never involved me in much of anything. He’s basically ignored me - all of us kids. He never really paid an ounce of attention to me the way other kids’ dads dote over them, take them fishing, teach them how to properly catch a baseball or shoot a free throw or swing a golf club or build something. No, Dad’s always been in his own world, a sad bubble of alcoholism and depression. But when I was about 15, Dad miraculously snapped out of it, on Mom’s not-so-hollow threat, I guess, to commit his “sorry ass” to a mental institution. Boy, did that shape him up lickety-split! He quit boozing, just like that, cold turkey. So, I’m thinking, maybe this mysterious trip about to unfold is Dad’s way of trying to be involved with me, make amends of a sort with his only son whom he’s always ignored throughout my adolescence.

When I get home, Dad gives me the low-down. Apparently, some old-timer who’d moved to Mississippi decades ago died the other day and his family’s wish was that he be buried in the local cemetery. And, well, Dad, you know, he has this brother, Bernard (not Ber-NARD, but Ber-NERD, which is perfect, because he is kind of a nerd), and he just happens to be the owner and proprietor of the only funeral parlor in our small county in Indiana, so you can guess where this is going, maybe. Ber-NERD, who’s also called “Scoop”, don’t ask me why, is also an incorrigible booze hound. I guess the gene runs in the family, ‘cause my Aunt Vivian, she died of some alcohol-related illness two years ago, and Uncle Scoop seems pretty much well on his way to joining her. I mean the guy is always plastered and he smokes Pall Malls like a chimney. Well, anyway, at the supper table, Dad informs me that Scoop, “the bastard” had been on a big-time bender and is now laid up in bed recuperating.

“So you see, son,” says Dad, motioning for Mom to pass the salt, “He’s just not able to make the drive down to Mississippi. He feels terrible about it . . .” - at which point Mom interrupts and snarkily says, “Yeah, right!” - and Dad continues, “So he’s asked me to step in as a big favor and handle things from here. So this is on you and me, son. Are you ready for an adventure? Do you think you’re up to the task to help me drive Scoop’s hearse down to Hattiesburg to pick up ol’ Dick Waldrip’s body?”

It’s a madcap turn of events, as far as I’m concerned. My mind spins in confusion and hesitancy. Do I even want to go, just to tag along? On the other hand - how exciting! I’ll get to do some incredible driving on a road trip none of my cornfed nincompoop buddies could even dream of! But given everything I’ve mentioned about our estrangement it hardly makes sense that Dad has a sudden interest in me. He’s been sober for, what, a little more than a year. And this is his first overture, just a phony ploy to involve me in his little game of “what better time than now, son, to get to know one another.”

Plus, I can’t help thinking how ironic it is that this whole thing is falling in Dad’s lap. Dad, the “irresponsible, shiftless, no-good lousy boozer” as Mom defamed him more than once when he’d been stopped and arrested for “erratic” driving and thrown in the clink and needed bailed out, or during their screaming matches when the bills were due to pay or and he didn’t have a red cent to his name because he’d spent it all on Dark Eyes vodka. Could Dad now be trusted to step in and take over for his red-headed, pasty-faced younger brother, Ber-NERD, Uncle Scoop, the Undertaker Nerd, to save him from . . . what, exactly, I don’t know. Bankrupcy. Ignominy. Reputation. Creditors. Himself? So, I’m wondering, naturally, does Dad really have to do this? Moreso, can Dad do this? And can I do it with him? Do I want to do it with him? You can imagine my confused state of mind as I mull over all the possibilities, good and bad.

Well, at least I must consider that for Dad, maybe, just maybe, the proposed road trip is a way for us to have an adventure together. I want to accept that simple little reality, but still I wonder, why the heck can’t we just go fishing or take in a ballgame? Won’t it be kinda weird and awkward being in his company for four or five days? And, tell me, puh-leeeze, who on God’s green earth expects the director of the funeral home - and why would the director of the funeral home even consent? - to drive all the friggin’ way down to Mississippi to fetch some old-timer’s cadaver and haul it back a thousand miles to the county for burial. I mean, I’m just a dumb kid, 16 years old, and even I know it makes more sense for the family of the old geezer to just fly his ass back. Well, who am I to say. But it sure sets the stage for a great road trip and opportunity to bond with Dad.

So, these are the facts of the circumstances, and the circumstances of the facts, and it doesn’t appear that I have much of a choice in the matter now, does it. It’s not like I can say no, anyway. So, having sated my belly with Mom’s delicious meat loaf slathered in ketchup, I start to excuse myself from the supper table to throw some clothes and toiletries in my suitcase before turning in to get a good night’s sleep prior to an early departure, but Mom and Dad are looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to say something. “Well, heck yeah, Dad! I can’t wait! It’s gonna be real fun! Are you really gonna let me do some drivin’?”

Dad nods, “As long as you’re up for it, son.”

At first, Mom’s like, “No way are you going off like this! You don’t even have your license,” she says, before correcting herself and adding, “Well, you do not have the experience to even drive over to Templeton, let alone all the way to Mississippi.” But Dad sweet-talks her and her heart softens and she relents once Dad explains that “it will be good for the boy, honey. And good for me. Good for us both, right.” I mean, what can Mom say or do at this point, but give her blessings and secretly slip me a twenty dollar bill the next morning “in case of an emergency,” she says.

Now, there’s a little more you must know about Dad. After his prolonged spell of dissolution, years and years after the war ended, Dad was finally sober. How long his abstention from the “demon alcohol” would last, no one knew, only him, because he’d quit on and off in the past, but always fell off the wagon. This time, though, owing to Mom’s threat, backed up with legal and medical force, of committing him to life to “the nuthouse”, as I thought of it the first time I heard Mom mention it, Dad quit “for good, once and for all.”

Soon, he had regained a measure of his fading dignity among the townsfolk in our community, and he was trying to get back on his feet after all the lost years, having secured a pretty good but low-man-on-the-totem-pole clerical job with the State Highway Department. Underneath his gruff exterior of Marine Corps, Republican, God Bless America, John Bircher ultra-right conservatism, when you get to know him, Dad is, after all, a gentle soul possessed of a droll wit and deep appreciation of nature and animals, and he never once harmed me or spoke harshly at me, laid a hand on Mom or my sisters, or had a bad word to say about anyone, for that matter, but let’s face it, and you know I’m trying to get beyond it all, but Dad was a non-entity, pretty much absent emotionally during my formative years, and I understand it and I do forgive him, because I know a little about his battles, literal and figurative, how he’s struggled with his alcoholism and who knows what else, but doubtless related to unspeakable stuff like horrific war experiences seared into his heart and imprinted on his tortured soul like the stuff of nightmares any hardened battle vet must know about and deal with every single day they can’t forget about it. But when you’re young, just a kid, and the other kids in school are making fun of you and teasing and taunting you about your old man getting stopped for drunk driving and getting thrown in jail, it’s hard to know the reasons why these things are the way they are, other than on the surface of things, as one mean classmate once shouted at me in the middle of study hall, with all the kids looking on, snickering or looking away in embarrassment, “Your old man’s a drunken bum, ha, ha ha!”

The night is long, and I toss and turn, restless and excited. Soon, daylight breaks, and I’m up and showering, eating breakfast while Mom is getting my sisters off to school - all of whom are jealous that I get to go off on this road trip adventure. But they just don’t get it, that it’s an opportunity, a conciliatory time, for Dad and me to bond and get to know each other. For my part, I’m determined to be open-minded about things. Sure, I’m still confused, even though committed to following through. But, questions linger: Is Dad still a big fat zero to me? Am I capable of forgiving him for the past, for not being there as my Dad? Is a different calculus in play now that he’s quit drinking and trying to make up for lost time, to be a father, a parent? I don’t know, honestly, but as excited as I am to be pulled out of school and launched into the big world outside of my little corner of Indiana, I can’t shake a cloud of malaise or quell a vague sense of uncertainty as we set off that foggy, chilly morning in Uncle Scoop’s big black Hearsemobile. Waving goodbye to Mom and my sisters, we’re “off ‘n runnin’” as Dad says, and soon we’re cruising down Highway 41 on our everlovin’ way to Mississippi! Yahoo!

It is weird at first, I admit. I feel like a shy hitchhiker picked up by a laconic stranger. It’s like, hmmmm: I don’t know this man - my Dad - very well at all, really, not because of a generation gap but because of a love gap. But Dad works hard to make conversation and keep things upbeat and cheerful. The best of his personality is coming out, and as time wears on and the miles click by, our comfort level with one another increases as we get to know one another better, just like he’d said. I’m surprised about all the things we find ourselves talking about, and how funny and poignant and caring and loving Dad can be, and his interesting stories of this and that, of meeting and dating and falling in love with and marrying Mom, and having the surprise of his life when, unexpectedly, my twin sisters were born on April Fool’s day, for example, and this one spellbinding story in particular about the time he was in the war and he’s telling me about how’s he trapped on some godforsaken Pacific island, but then he gets distracted and pulls off at an exit for gas, and I never do hear the end of the story, until later, that is.

Later that day, after we make some good time, I’m itching to get behind the wheel. We’re rolling down the road, and Dad finally relents, handing over the reins and lets me drive a short stretch on a side road to test my motoring skills, I guess. “Thatta boy, good job, you’re doing great, keep ‘er steady as she goes, son.”

I’m thrilled to be in charge now, navigating along this back country road, winding our lonely way along spooky swamps and moss-draped oak trees. Remember, I’m barely 16 years old, and never before have I found myself so far away from home, I don’t think; well, maybe one trip to Cincinnati on my own, can you believe, to see the Reds and Cards at the brand spanking new Riverfront Stadium, and come to think of it, countless trips up to Chicago on the Greyhound bus to spend partial summers with Mom’s brother, Gizzepp, we call him, short for, you can guess, being Italian and all, but now, here I am, leaving the cornfields of Tecumseh County behind, driving a friggin’ hearse all the way to Mississippi, can you believe it?

We take turns driving the rest of the day and because Dad wants to save money, instead of getting a motel, we pull into a rest stop area for about three hours to crash. I’m half-asleep when I hear the Hearsemobile roar up and take off in the still of night. A misty draping of eerie fog blankets everything, and Dad can hardly see out the windshield.

By the time daylight spreads its wings across the landscape, I’m wide awake and things have cleared up and the sun’s shining down on all of creation and it’s so beautiful I could cry. Dad looks like he’s flagging a bit from all the tough night time driving, and I can tell he’s looking for a place to pull over, and finally he spots a sign for gas and exits the highway. After filling up, checking the oil and cleaning the windshield at a gas station like out of the 40’s, Dad says, “Time to test your skills on the new Interstate Highway, son.” He offers up the oversized driver’s seat with its gigantic steering wheel and floor pedals so far down I can hardly reach them and have to stretch my legs out and scoot the seat up as close to the steering wheel as possible. Dad says, “Now, be careful, make sure you’re wide awake, son. I trust you.” Then he hands over the big ol’ clanky key and I put it in Drive and we’re off ‘n runnin’.

After seeing I’m capably handling things on the new Interstate Highway, with fancy cars whooshing by at a hundred miles an hour, it seems, and big menacing semi-trucks coming right up on my tail and then lurching around me to pass with loud blares of their horn announcing their supremacy, and big burly men with butts dangling out of their mouths sitting way high up in their cabs waving at me, Dad feels comfortable enough to doze off to catch some shut-eye after his tough four-hour graveyard shift getting us into the unfamiliar territory of what seems to my mind like the “Deep South”, even though I don’t think we’re any farther than Memphis a few miles farther up.

Dad had told me, “no fiddling with the radio while you’re behind the wheel, got that,” but since he’s in sort of a coma, it appears, I disobey, thinking it no big deal, and find a country station playing honky-tonk songs of Hank Williams and Dave Dudley that I just know Dad would approve of. Though keeping a sharp, watchful eye on the insanely busy road, and keeping ‘er steady at 55 MPH, I occasionally sneak a side-long glance over at Dad, observing a pathetic figure, I’m thinking, slouched in the seat, his bony knees crumpled up to stubbly chin almost, slightly twitching and issuing breathy snorts every so often followed by cryptic cris de coeur and melancholy non sequiturs. Questions, questions, questions flood my brain: What foreign tongue is possessing him? What dreams are haunting his sleep? What demons come to torment him? I look over at Dad and realize yes, I mean, no, I don’t really know him at all. Here he is, a guy, only 51 or something, probably, and he seems so old and worn out to me, like some forlorn lost stranger on a bus station bench.

Well, anyway, you can imagine, I’m feeling pretty proud actually, if I may say so, to be “manning” the wheel of such a singular vehicle, such an ungainly road hog as the Hearsemobile, being just a kid and all, and barely in possession of my license. But I must be doing a pretty damn decent job because otherwise Dad wouldn’t let me keep driving the beast, now would he, especially if he’s sleeping, right. And, well, you know I’m giving it my best to be his one and only good son, his trusty sidekick, his Number Two at the helm of the outta-this-world Hearsemobile.

I’m toolin’ down a long straightaway stretch, the traffic calmed down a bit, and lapse into a lull of near unconscious navigation, pure cruise control! I’m thinking about so much, my mind is overwhelmed with random thoughts of everything and nothing. I soon find myself reflecting on Dad, the man, the person: thinking what a pretty cool and decent guy Dad is, now that he’s sober and regaining his self-respect and dignity and really trying, I figure, to be a DAD to me after never having given a flying fuck for as long as I can remember. I figure, okay, shit, why not, maybe we are getting to know one another better, on this unexpected four day road trip. Is a little bonding too much to hope for? Am I ready for it? I better be, ‘cause it’s happening here and now! And maybe Mom was right when she’d said as we were leaving, shoving a picnic basket in my hands and kissing me on the cheek, “Now you be good, and be careful, those highways can be dangerous. There’s lots of nuts out there. And remember, your father loves you, so try to keep that in mind and don’t dwell on the past. Make it a trip worth remembering. I look forward to hearing all about it. And try to call me once you arrive.”

I fiddle with the radio some more, losing the honky-tonk for tinny sounds of heartrending fiddles and nostalgic train whistles and unrequited broken heart love songs emanating from some staticy station out of Lubbock, Texas. I get sentimental and look over at Dad. He’s smiling, such is his love of country music, even though he’s still snoozing. Just in case, though, I turn the radio off and drive along without speaking or even thinking about anything now, lost in wordless thoughts and fuzzy images of my imagination running wild, every so often turning my attention out the window to gaze at and admire the bucolic landscape of green swathes of riotous vegetation and exotic moss-draped trees, one blurry scene after another of ramshackle towns, old graveyards, weather-beaten churches with crooked crosses and odd welcome messages, vacant billboards, past a home flying what looks like the Confederate Flag, and all those endless fluffy cotton fields dotted with colorful figures bent over plucking the harvest, and one dirt poor farmstead after another, and clusters of broken down buildings in boarded up strips in nowhere little towns. Welcome to Mississippi a sign announces.

And I can’t help but wonder: so where in the heck is the Mississippi River? We’d gotten a glimpse of it in Memphis, and that’s it. Having recently read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, I start thinking about how he and his best friend Huck Finn experienced their own life-altering journey navigating a “raftmobile” to Mississippi when they were probably just 16, too, down that big Old Man River, the adventure of their lifetimes, indelible intrigue and mystery and excitement, where “there warn’t no home like a raft,” but I’m thinking, they warn’t runnin’ toward something, they were runnin’ away from things, warn’t they. Which way was it, I wonder. And what, exactly, is it that I’m doing, I wonder.

Now, coming from where I grew up in a wealthy agricultural county, the 55th wealthiest in America, I’m told, Itawamba County, Mississippi seems exotic and shabby all at once. It’s my first peek into our own Third World, but of course, being just 16 and all, I don’t really have a clue about any of this, but at the same time, some little part of me senses a world of poverty and misery and racial inequality and miscarriages of justice that never make the news. I can’t quite put my finger on what’s gnawing at my conscience, though, or manage quite yet to get my budding intellect or unformulated political perspective around things of this nature.

In the spacious cab of the Hearsemobile, I feel safe and insular from the strange world out there. How different was it when Tom and Huck plied those great waters? I wonder, who would want to live and die in this backwater hellhole if they didn’t have to? Trouble is, they all have to. What choice do they have? This is where they were born, and where they’ll die. But why is Mississippi such a backwards place, I wonder. It may be impoverished sure, I try to reason and rationalize, but what makes stupid, conservative Indiana any better, just because it’s wealthier? Well, I imagine that helps.

And then, in the midst of these unformulated, random, inchoate, immature thoughts of mine, me, just a 16 year old kid driving a hearse to Mississippi, where I don’t even know what I’m trying to say, really, I experience a sudden, inexplicable urge to . . . just what if I do . . . what if I turn down this side road and follow it, see where it goes, see where it leads to . . . maybe straight into the wide open heart of the Delta . . . maybe somewhere where the untold secrets of the Deep South, the mysteries of exotic, charming Mississippi, will reveal themselves, like they did to Tom and Huck, and come alive with unexpected meaning and reassure me that not all is as it seems.

But what do I know? Nothing, nothing at all, about Mississippi, or the South, other than it was on the losing side of the Civil War and home of the blues and the birthplace of Elvis Presley, but I keep wondering anyway and never do end up turning down that side road despite all my yearning heart’s desire for an unexpected moment of spontaneous adventure and discovery, the pure stuff of fiction, left to Mark Twain’s, or my own, creative imagination.

Continuing down the road, the October sun in full bore, I’m thinking, AH! HA!, no wonder people live in the South! It’s warm, almost tropical! Not cold and dreary like back in Indiana. I’m cruising now at 60 MPH, feeling it, and so want to crank it up a notch or two, but I stay on the safe side, now enjoying a boundless sense of freedom and awakening in this exotic, far-away place that might as well be Mali as Mississippi.

With Dad still snoozing away shotgun side, I’m fiercely focused on the task at hand – driving a hearse through Mississippi! No easy thing, if you want to know the truth, because, well, me being just 16 and all, it’s a lot of responsibility and a ton of hurtlin’ metal for a kid barely in possession of his driver’s license to handle, don’t you agree! But, man, I’m telling you, I sure do feel super-competent, empowered, and in control! No greater feeling in the world for a 16 year old, or any year old, for that matter.

Feeling bolder, I bravely press the pedal down, and why not, we’re all alone on this killer straightaway, so feeling the freedom, my soul soaring, I let ‘er rip and gun it to 70! The powerful V-8 engine kicks in and revs loudly; Dad barely stirs and the Hearsemobile doesn’t miss a beat. I’m tearing down the road like nobody’s business now with just one hand on the wheel (ignoring Dad’s admonishments). The Hearsemobile is a tight-ass machine, keeping an arrow-straight trajectory. Then, just ahead, I spot a sign that says, “EXIT NOW, DON’T MISS ALLIGATOR FARM, 2 MILES!”

I slow it down real quick, ‘cause, man, no way am I gonna miss that! I don’t care what Dad thinks. I slow down, but not quite enough, and swerve off the exit a bit recklessly, which wakes Dad up with a start. “What the hell, son! What’s going on? You need gas or gotta take a leak or what? Slow ‘er down now!”

“No, Dad, it’s nothing, I just saw this sign that said, ‘don’t miss the alligators!’ and I thought . . . ”

“The alligators? What alligators?” Dad scoffs. “Son, we don’t have time for that nonsense. We’ve got to be in Hattiesburg tomorrow by noon.”

“Aw, geez, Dad, there’s time, it’s just a couple of miles down this road, and we can spend a few minutes checking them out. It must be pretty neat. I’ve never seen a real live alligator before, have you?”

Dad tells me to drive on a bit and pull the Hearsemobile over when and where I can. I come to a lot overgrown with weeds at a dirt-poor, god-forsaken place called Bean’s Junction that looks like it’s stuck in the Depression Era, with wrecked hulls of rusted out cars and trucks piled up in a junkyard and an old-timey Sinclair gas station with a single ancient pump and the green dinosaur sign hanging down in disrepair. A group of men are milling around a crusty old catfish sandwich shack to be avoided at all costs judging from its run-down appearance, and it looks like they’re eyeballing us with ominous suspicion - “Who be dem cats drivin’ that fancy death chariot?” - I can just hear them! - and to tell you the truth, I’m starting to feel like maybe Dad’s right, maybe we should get back on the road, right now.

We switch places and Dad takes over at the helm and whips out of that miserable junction and, maybe because he’s blurry-minded from all his snoozing, he ends up getting turned around and starts heading the opposite way from the way we’re supposed to go.

“Dad,” I say, “this isn’t the way back to the highway, it’s the way to see the alligators. Did you change your mind? Are we going to see the alligators?”

“OH, CRIMINITLY!” cries Dad, then tries to make light of his mistake. “See ya later alligator!” and makes a U-turn to get back on track, and, Criminitly!, he makes another wrong turn down a dead-end country road, and wouldn’t you believe it, when it pours it rains, next thing you know, we’re stuck there with a cotton-pickin’ flat tire!

“Oh, this is just great,” laments Dad. “Just fuckin’ great.” 

I flinch at Dad’s sudden change of tone and harsh language. So mild-mannered at home, I’m shocked, for I’ve never once, I swear, heard him cuss. But now he’s flinging invective every which way and  I sense a violent streak like he’s about explode, and it’ll all be my fault for turning off that damn exit ramp just to see those stupid alligators we’ll never see anyway. I’m feeling shitty and scared not knowing how Dad will react as our adventure spins out of control. Dad orders me to get out of the car and check the back area, under the floorboard, for the spare tire. He remains in the car, half-slumped over, head in hands, probably wishing he had a big, stiff drink right about now, I’m thinking.

After rummaging around for longer than Dad thinks is necessary - “What are you doing back there? Hurry up!” - I approach his side window and, gulping, say in a shaky voice, “Dad, I think we’re in trouble.” 

“What do you mean, trouble? Did you get the spare out?”

“Yes, but, but . . . ” I trail off, not knowing how to break the news to him that the spare tire is only half-filled with air, and, worst of all, the tire jack sure as hell seems to be missing! At least, it’s nowhere to be seen or found. That’s what I keep trying to explain to Dad, the gist of our unlikely, stupid dilemma that’s all my fault.

“Are you shitting me, son? What are you trying to tell me, there’s no jack? What a crock of horse pucky. Now, quit playing games and get that tire changed.”

“But, Dad,” I plead, “Come look for yourself.”

Dad relents and heaves his lanky frame up and out the door, and follows me to the rear of the Hearsemobile, giving the spare tire I’d taken out and set on the ground a swift kick. Better that damn tire than my sorry ass, I’m thinking. Dad lifts the hatchback door up and starts rooting around under the floorboard tossing aside old paper coffee cups, crumpled candy wrappers, a pen with “Scoop’s Mortuary” on it, old rubberbands, a pocket calendar from like the 60’s, a broken pair of glasses, and odd and ends and bits of things that had fallen down in there over the years. But no tire jack.

“Well, shit fuck and piss my pants,” said Dad. “Butter my ass and call me a biscuit. It’s true, there’s no jack.” He’s standing there scratching his head, sweating in the heat, reaches back to swat a mosquito, and turning red with anger. I’ve never seen Dad get so dolgarned riled up, not even when he lost his temper the time I accidentally broke that expensive vase he’d brought home from his war days while stationed in China. That was nothing. But this - what to my mind is a minor problem, a mere contretemps, if you will, in the scheme of things- well, this is probably going to cost me my hide, ‘cause it’s all my fucking fault, isn’t it.

After a few minutes of pacing about and frantic thinking, at one point Dad actually slaps himself upside the head and then pounds the hood of the Hearsemobile with his fist so hard he leaves a dent in it and nearly breaks his hand. Then, his mood changes and I’m relieved to see him soften up, out of guilt I sense. Dad says, “Ah, to hell with it, son. Don’t worry, we’ll figure something out. I’ll tell you what pisses the holy crap outta me, though.”

“Yeah, what, Dad?” tiptoeing around my words hoping he wasn’t going to say ME and haul off and bust my skull or something for my irresponsible stupid nonsense of diverting off-course and getting us into this mess.

“Your goddamn uncle, that’s what! The drunk cocksucker!”

Yeah, Uncle Scoop had forgotten to replace the tire jack the last time he must have had a flat tire, that’s the only thing that makes sense; so here we are now, stuck in a dead-end back country road in the middle of Nowheresville, Mississippi, about a mile away from the alligator farm we’d never see anyway. Dad can sense my discomfort and low morale, and to his ever-lasting credit, in my mind, he cops the blame, and I feel a heavy weight release in my heart. “You know, it’s probably a good thing this happened here and now, off the highway, because a blow-out on that bad tire going 65 woulda been the end of it for us. Besides, it’s my fault, son, I admit it, I shoulda checked things better before we took off.” 

So, Dad and I are eating a sandwich and drinking the last of our water, wondering what on earth we’re going to do, when we spot a family, it looks like, sauntering down the road toward us. They look like simple Mississippi country folk, a middle-aged couple and, presumably, their four children. I don’t care who they are! People! Salvation! Hallelujah! Talk about feeling happy and grateful in the moment! 

“Well, what we got here,” says the man, with a bundle slung over his shoulder and dressed in overalls and wearing a straw hat to shade him from the hot sun. His wife, donned in a very clean white flowing dress and also a straw hat, peers inside the Hearsemobile and says “Would you look at this fine automobile! But it looks like it can’t go anywhere with that tire flat like it is now can it.”

The children, aged from 3 to 8, are adorably raggedy-assed and barefoot one and all, and giggle and begin running in circles around the vehicle, singing a child’s catch-me-if-you-can kind of song. The man sets down his bundle of goods and leans in to take a serious inspection of things. Dad says, “Hello, how do you do.” He offers up our names and his hand for a shake and an explanation of our dilemma. “Looks like a fine mess we’re in with a tire low on air and no jack, huh,” Dad says. The man and woman nod and look the Hearsemobile over and then give us the once-over, up and down, but not in any judgmental or envious way, just merely curious, is all, so far as I can tell. They are friendly folk, appearing sympathetic and willing to lend a helping hand, which is a good thing, ‘cause you never know when you’re lost and alone and out of your element in the strange boondocks of backwater Mississippi. 

The woman offers us some of her water in a plastic jug and pulls out some hard rock candy, which we accept with gratitude, and we’re now feeling quite at ease with their warm, gentle smiles and genuine concern over our sorry state of affairs. The man says, “Sure is hot, now, ain’t it. Phew,” wiping his brow. The woman corrals her kids and instructs them to settle down. The man says, “Now you just hold on while I go fetch us a jack to get this here tire fixed up and you’ll be on your way.” Luckily, the family lived in that old shack we’d passed a while back, not more than a ten minute walk, and, just as he said he would, the man soon returns holding up and waving the jack triumphantly, the most precious item in the world to us at this moment, worth more than gold bullion. We profusely thank the family and wish them goodbye, and they wish us good luck, and Dad, bless his heart, even pulls out a ten dollar bill from his wallet to give them, but the man holds up his arm, palm out, and flatly refuses to accept it. “We just happy to be able to help you out, that’s all, sir,” he says. “Now we be on our way, and you on yours.” And with that, we thank our lucky stars for their existence and generosity, because no one else was bound to come along this lonesome stretch of back country road. The feeling of joy and relief is immeasurable once we’re on our way, safely resuming our trip through the Mississippi heartland, but we still have to drive 30 MPH until we reach the gas station at Bean Junction to get air, and I’m thinking, please dear God, don’t let those guys still be hanging around there!

Back in control now. I’m steering the big old honkin’ wheel, like O Captain! My Captain!, peerlessly sailing down the narrow blacktop, so happy now that the flat’s behind us and the open road beckoning ahead and all’s good between me and Dad. I pat the steering wheel like it’s my pet, thinking this old beast is a pretty smooth ride, and I’m feeling it again, so, with Dad snoring away, I jack it up to 70 on another straightaway with no car in sight, just the signpost up ahead, your next stop, The Twilight Zone, I’m thinking, being such a nerdy fanatic of Rod Serling’s classic TV series.

Dad must really be needing to catch up on his sleep, because he’s dozing off again, ever so slightly shifting his knobby-boned frame and reposing his Marine-shaved head on the car window, using a rolled up jacket as a pillow. Murmuring almost inaudibly, I can barely make him out saying, “Goddamn” something, then “Goddamn fucking” something else, then he spurts and stammers again, “Goddamn” – and this time I can make out the jarring word “gooks”. “Goddamn fucking gooks”.

What am I supposed to do? You tell me, Good Lord, what am I supposed to do with that?

I turn off the radio which had been playing a rock and roll number, and cock my ear to hear what Dad keeps muttering about. He’s sleep-talking in some sort of nightmare trance he must be having about his war days as a grunt Marine, tough as they come, heroically defending freedom in the Pacific Ocean Theater in World War II. (Jesus, what brutal “theater” it was, and what a stupid thing to call it; it’s not like they were acting or anything of that nature!)

I think back and recall a time before, I must have been 11 or so, and poor Dad was in the darkest days of dipsomania black-outs and hallucinatory visions. He was an obliterated person, mentally and physically. One hot, muggy night, unable to sleep in his own bed, I could hear him get up and stumble downstairs, so I followed him surreptitiously as he went out to the back porch and dropped to the cement floor. I peered through the screen door and watched as he began crawling around on his belly, naked but for his baggy boxer shorts. I stood frozen like watching a live animation movie as he fake shot a tommy gun at spectral enemies - “goddamn gooks” - that he was forced to kill as a young man just 23 years old. Can you imagine? And not just shoot and kill Japanese men soldiers, but boy soldiers as young as 14 that he knew in his mind and heart he had shot and killed because “the goddamn gooks” ordered them in to battle, and worse, used women and little children as human shields when crossing enemy lines. Orders were “shoot to kill.” Just a few years older than me today, at 16. Jesus. Can you imagine?

“Dad! Dad!” My voice is rising and cracking, and Dad stirs, sputtering to consciousness.

“Holy shit! Dad exclaims. “How long have I been out?”

And I’m thinking, too long, Dad, too long . . . and it’s no wonder why.

You see, Dad had been a mama’s boy, I’d been told, but by the time he was in college, with the war raging and patriotism at an all-time high, he enlisted in the toughest outfit no money could buy - pure grit and gumption - the United States Marine Corps: Company One, Third Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Division. The Old Breed. Semper Fi. Dad’s unit, I know this much, was one of several waves that stormed ashore in World War II’s most horrific and bloody battles - Peleliu and Okinawa.

“Dad, are you all right,” I ask, taking one hand off the wheel to reach over and touch his shoulder. 

Dad yawns and straightens up and wastes no time admonishing me, “Get both your hands on that wheel, now, son! What did they teach you in driver’s ed, for Chrissakes! What did I tell you! Never drive with just one hand on the wheel!”

“But, Dad . . . Dad, you were having some kind of nightmare or something. I was worried for you.”

“Uh, nightmare, what are you talking about?”

Hesitantly, I try to inform him that he’d been quite agitated in his sleep and saying some strange things over and over about, “ . . . ” - but I’m unable to bring myself to say “goddamn” or “gook”. Finally I manage to squeak out in a meek voice, “Goddamn gooks, Dad. You were saying it over and over.”

Dad’s reaction surprises me. He shrugs it off with a smirky chuckle, like no big deal. “Lemme tell you a story, son. I started to yesterday, but got derailed. Now’s the time. You need to hear some things, and it’s about time I get them off my chest.”

And so for the next hour, after pulling over to get Dad a cup of coffee and me a Coke and a 3 Musketeers candy bar, we’re rolling down a single lane black top road in the heart of Mississippi, when Dad starts talking about the war, things so horrific I gasp every so often and say, “Dad, no way!”

“Yes way, son,” Dad slowly nods his head sideways, closes his eyes, and gathers up the emotional stamina to continue. “Son, I joined the Marines because I had something to prove. Not just to my Mother, who mollycoddled me to death my whole boyhood, but to myself, to prove I wasn’t a sickly little pussy the way she always treated me. No sir, not me.”

This news comes to me as something of a surprise. Dad, a sickly little pussy? Well, actually, I guess I can halfway see it. Dad continues, “Talk about toughening up. After the hardest month of my life in basic training, I was a new man, a big cocky stud. They shipped my unit off to the Pacific Islands to join the Army and Navy in an all-out assault to defeat the Imperial Empire. Mine was part of the first wave that landed in the decisive campaign of Okinawa on April 1, 1945. Maybe you didn’t know that. Enemy forces were entrenched on hilltop fortified bunkers and hidden caves, but those goddamn gooks, they were no dummies, lemme tell you, they tricked us by letting us storm the shore safely, so naturally our commanding officers thought the coast was clear.”

I interrupt and ask Dad, seemingly lost in deep reverie, what happened next. In his slow, deliberate manner, he goes on. “So, the commanding officers sent successive waves of Marines ashore and . . .” Here Dad pauses for a long five seconds, not so much trying to remember incident details, but reliving it in his mind and body, seeing it again through a filtered lens of time. “My fellow soldiers were systematically mowed down, it was like shooting fish in a barrel, son.”

I try to imagine, from visualizing scenes in the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! I’d recently seen, but have a hard time conjuring up the carnage heaped upon one of nature’s most beautiful beaches, as Dad described it. “So what happened next, Dad. What did you and the other guys on shore do?” 

“My unit of 100 men, we were forced to take cover in foxholes for three days until they could bring in reinforcements. It wasn’t pretty, son, and then it got uglier. We were low on water, running out of food. I ate grubs and insects and chewed on scraggly bark, and . . .” Again, Dad pauses in a lengthy moment of tension-filled silence, before resuming, “. . . and then those goddamn nips . . .”

I cut Dad off, “Nips?”

“Yes, nips, from Nippon, what they called their homeland we were on the verge of taking over once we could seize Okinawa. We called ‘em nips and gooks. I know it’s not right or proper to refer to them as such nowadays, but we’re not talking about nowadays, son. We’re talking about those days. So, those nips came down out of their bunkers looking to kill us. I had to bayonet more than one of those little fuckers. That’s not something you care to dwell on, son. It’s one thing, killing a man from a distance, with a gun, but up close and personal, intimately ending a man’s life with your bare hands, it takes the horror and vile act of survival to a whole nuther level, son.”

I’m awestruck by Dad’s language, his use of terms I consider offensive, without even knowing why, really, but they just sound offensive, but I guess after hearing Dad’s explanations and listening to his experiences, I can understand him using those derogatory terms. At the same time, I’m dazzled by the raw imagery of poor Dad being down in that foxhole, scared shitless of getting killed right at the outset of “Operation Iceberg” as he called it, and having to defend his life however possible in that hellish trench, having to kill other young men, no doubt as scared and desperate as Dad.

“Son, we were never safe, not from the get-go. By the time reinforcements arrived, the battle turned ugly, we were in a limbo of smoking hell, of flames and fury, rampant death and gore and destruction all about, yet by God's Good Grace, son, I survived.”

“Wow, tell me more, Dad! This is so amazing and so sad, too. I had NO IDEA you went through all this, saw and experienced so much suffering and destruction.”

Dad seems spurred on by my interest. “Well, you gotta know, because you won’t read about this in any history books. We all became savages. This is what war does to a man. War is hell, son, a barbaric thing, and don’t you ever forget it. I hope you don’t have to ever experience the things I went through.”  I wondered if Dad was thinking what I was: Thank God I was too young to fight in the current war raging today in a different Asian country.

Perhaps Dad’s got a bit of what’s known as “survivor’s guilt,” I speculate. But I want to know more. “Dad, please share more details of what it was actually like.”

“Oh, son, you want nightmares, too, I see,” Dad says darkly. “Things were ugly and gruesome. Days long battles and deadly skirmishes and dangerous scouting missions. The atrocities and horrors were never ending. It wasn’t possible to keep your head about you, remain sane. We were all mad by the constant stress and fatigue and fear and filth of being in a combat zone for weeks on end. It was impossible to keep dry or maintain a semblance of hygienic conditions in the mud or coral ground beneath us.”

“Geez, Dad,” I offer up, “It’s amazing you didn’t come down with diarrhea,” as though that was the worst possible thing he could have contracted. Dad laughs, “Let me tell you, fear and filth and hunger - it turns a man’s brain and soul to mush. War makes a man do things he wouldn’t ordinarily do.”

“Like what, Dad?”

“Like . . . ” Dad thinks better about sharing this part, I can tell, but I nod, like “Go on, Dad, tell me, I can handle it.”

“Like once we were out on patrol the night after a brutal skirmish where we killed maybe 200 gooks and they got 50 of our men. I was leading a search party looking for a couple of MIAs, two of my very good friends and comrades, who we thought were still alive out there and we wanted to get them before the nips did. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it in time and found their naked mutilated bodies lying in feces and blood-spattered mud with their dicks cut off and shoved in their mouths. I broke down, I couldn’t take it, I was so angry and disgusted and full of vengeance, but what was I gonna do? What could I do?”

I’m speechless for a few seconds, but finally manage to squeak out a trembling sentence, “Oh, Dad, that is the most terrible thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It weren’t purty,” Dad says, almost pronouncing it like “warn’t”. Then says, “You want more, son?”

He pauses, collecting his words carefully. “So you know what I did? I went over and found some half-dead nip motherfucker and sliced off his balls and gouged out his eyeballs before he was even all the way dead. But I can assure you, that did him in pretty much permanently.”

I’m heart-wrenched hearing this, my stomach is in knots, and I can’t believe my own Dad is revealing this atrocity he committed on the dead Japanese soldier. It explains a lot now that I think about it.

Dad continues, “Son, it’s like I was saying, war changes a man, makes him do irrational things, evil things, just to get even, or have some sense of victory or superiority over the enemy, I don’t know, but I wasn’t done. I then busted out two of his gold teeth and crammed all four of his balls down his fucking throat, that’s what I did. I stripped him of his goddamn pistol, too. So, there you have it. A couple of nice war trophies, huh! I still have them to this day.”

“Dad, I’ve seen that pistol up in your desk drawer, but I didn’t know about the gold teeth. Where do you keep them?”

Dad says, “You know that little lockbox, they’re in there. I also got a shrunken head, I think it’s real, from a buddy who fought in Guadalcanal.”

Silence befalls our company for a few minutes, then Dad resumes, “Let me share a couple more things with you. You studied about Ernie Pyle in school, didn’t you, the famous war correspondent. Well, he and I shared a week together just before shipping out to Okinawa. We caroused and drank and had us a great time while it lasted. I think we were good friends and would have stayed in touch. Unfortunately, he was killed the next week on nearby Ie Island. Later the next month, my unit was ordered to take Shuri Castle. And by God, did we ever take it. It was a helluva blow to the nips and a turning point in the campaign! Your Uncle Scoop, why the son of a bitch, he was a Navy man on the U.S.S. Mississippi - funny, huh! - and had shelled nip troops defending the castle for three days, which made our advance easier, but not any less gruesome, because many Marines were picked off by retreating snipers and died from friendly fire.”

I gulp and wince and grit my teeth. “Geez, Dad, it all sounds awful, terrible. Just frighteningly unimaginable. I can’t fathom it. I had no idea. I guess you were pretty lucky, huh, to have emerged unscathed.”

Dad laughs. “Unscathed! Hardly, son. I witnessed death and destruction beyond what any man should have to endure. Countless dozens of my Marine buddies were slaughtered, and once the monsoon rains started up, things got so muddy we had to leave our fallen companions lying where they were killed in the muck and ooze. Shit and piss and gloom and destruction everywhere, I felt like I was sleeping in it and eating it. Plus, I got this foot rot thing that nearly caused me to lose ‘em both.”

Dad stops again with his gruesome reminiscences, so obviously still affected by the demons who accompanied him home to torment him years thereafter. “Son, listen to me carefully. That war - any war - but those battles I fought in, Okinawa and Peleliu, in particular exacted not only physical casualties, but mental health woes beyond measure. The psychiatric casualties were so awful that men returned home and committed suicide or went insane or became . . . like me alcoholics or drug dependents. It got so bad that I saw many of my brave men unable to shoot or kill the enemy, unable to eat or react emotionally. They called it ‘shell-shocked’ or ‘battle fatigue’  . . .”

I interrupt Dad again. “I’ve heard of that before, Dad. Were you shell-shocked?”

Dad affirms that it was natural to experience battle fatigue. “But let me clue you in on something, boy” - Dad always called me “boy” when he had something of profound importance to say to me - “it goes beyond shell-shocked. It sticks with you for life, the trauma and stress of hardened combat. That’s why I am the way I am, son. You live through hell, it’s hard to escape. I’m trying to get well, but the goddamn VA considers it like some untreatable disease, not the alcoholism but the shell-shocked condition that is a traumatic psychiatric disorder. Someday maybe they’ll figure it out, son.”

And so, now I’m thinking during a lull in the conversation, I know why all this time people in our town just figured Dad was the town drunk, which he was, I suppose, if you want to put a label on it, but really, and maybe some part of my little 16 year old brain and heart knows, he was suffering from something much more severe and undiagnosed. Hell, yeah, my Dad’s drinking problem was not because he was a lousy no-good bum of an alcoholic, it was because he was afflicted psychologically by the horrors of battle. Call it war neurosis or whatever, but Dad was not just a drunk. He was a war hero, by God! And that’s a fact. I tell him so. 

“Well, son, I wouldn’t go that far, but thanks for saying that. It means a lot to me.” 

Another pause and Dad continues. “Son, you are aware, aren’t you, that I also earned the Purple Heart for physical injuries I sustained on the islands in two separate battles. Got me a nasty concussion and laceration scars to show for it.”

I’m wide-eyed with astonishment. Dad had never shown me his Purple Heart, kept in his lockbox, nor had I ever seen the battle scars, ‘cause I guess they were up around his groin area and I’d never seen Dad naked before. “A Purple Heart!” I exclaimed. “Dad, that’s amazing. I’m so proud of you! How come you never showed me before?”

Dad said, “Because it’s nothing I want to remember. But now that you know, it’s yours. I’ll give it to you when we get home. And you can have those two gold gook teeth, too, if you want ‘em. But the nip pistol, that goes to your sister’s husband, you know how much he loves his guns.”

I tell Dad I really would value and cherish his Purple Heart and I don’t really care about the pistol, but I’m not so sure about the two gold teeth. Dad gives a little shrug of understanding and things go silent.

I fall into a spell of reflection. After hearing Dad’s war stories, his horrific recollections of brutality and desecration amid acts of heroism and bravery, about the incalculable toll of casualties, on both sides, numbering upwards of 250,000 soldiers and civilians, I think, by all rights, I should not be here on this, God’s green earth, driving this Hearsemobile to Mississippi at age 16, since half of Dad’s infantry unit perished in the horrific firefights and kamikaze attacks of Peleliu and Okinawa. Surviving that was enough to drive anyone to drink, I figure. I really do understand and get it and sympathize one-hundred percent with Dad’s post-war plight of alcoholism, depression and what-not. The what-not part, I’m realizing slowly, is his recovery and reclaiming of his dignity and mental well-being. After all these years, I sigh, thinking, thank God, it’s never too late.

After this lengthy stretch of silence between us, Dad clears his throat announcing he’s got one final startling admission for me. I’m all ears and can’t imagine what could top his stories up to now.

“Son, at the end of the war they station me in China for a few months before shipping me out back to ‘Frisco, and during the time I was there . . .” Dad breaks off in his usual dramatic punctuation filling the void leaving me hanging on his last words . . .

“Yes, yes, what, Dad?” I say.

“Well, while I was there, no one but you and I know this. This was before I met your mother. I had an affair with a young officer from Beiping, or Peking, as the occupying nips called it before their surrender. And . . .”

“And what, Dad? And what?”

“Well, dammit it all, I got her pregnant,” Dad confesses wistfully, but with a smile forming on his thin, near purple lips.

I’m stunned that Dad’s held onto this secret all these years, and never let it out of his heart. I’m shocked that he’s sharing such a taboo incident with me. It’s all I can do to just keep my eyes on the road, not knowing what to say or believe. “Listen, son, there are thousands and thousands of war babies, you know that, children born from liaisons between American servicemen and enemy women, who, you know, were pretty and sexy and always on the hunt for a guy they could have a kid with, and hopefully marry and return stateside with. Some were lucky, others not so lucky. So, now you know, I got a war baby myself, but I left China before she had the baby. She really wanted to come back to America with me, but she was caught between two worlds, two very different cultures and value systems, and though she claimed to love me, for whatever reason she chose to remain in China and keep the baby and raise it herself.”

Piecing things together, it’s starting to make sense. “So you’re saying, Dad, that I have a 26 year old half- . . .”

“Half-sister, yes, son. After I got back, we corresponded for a year, now this is still before I met your mother, and I learned that the girl’s name is Li-Na.”

“Li-Na,” I repeat. “Dad, I can’t, uh, this is too mind-blowing! So I, we, my sisters and I, we have an older half-sister named Li-Na?”

Dad grins, now rather mischievously. “Yep, her name means “Pretty Elegant”. How about that.”

“But, Dad, why haven’t you ever told us about this?”

“Because I couldn’t. How was I supposed to? What would your mother think? Well, anyway, when I sobered up, I started thinking about this, maybe it’s my one true only good memory from the war that I can recover and hang on to, retrieve, make right. I got to thinking, how it just wasn’t right to have abandoned Li Xiu, her mom, so I tracked her down with the help of your mother’s Private Eye brother, Gizzepp - swore the bastard to secrecy - and found out that Li-Na lives in Wuhan and is married with two kids. Li Xiu mailed me a picture of her. Wanna see it?”

Okay, now things are starting to get juicy. “You mean you have the picture with you, Dad?”

Dad gets out his wallet and roots around in one of the compartments and finally pulls out a little square crumpled faded color photograph and holds it up for me to see pinched  between his elongated thumb and crooked forefinger. “Isn’t she - pretty elegant!” Dad says proudly.

She truly is, with her exotic Asian aspect and Dad’s All-American movie star good looks. I ask excitedly, “Dad, do you think we will ever be able to meet Li-Na and her mom someday?”

“Hold off on that thought for now, son. And, mind you, keep this under wraps.”

At that Dad looks at his watch and says. “Losing track of the time son! We better pick up the pace.” He tells me to pull over at the next exit so we can switch places and he can make up time by driving 80. “We’re due at Grimsby’s funeral home to pick up old man Waldrip’s body in two hours.” That’s the first I hear of the funeral home director’s name and it cracks me up. “Dad, c’mon, is his name really Grimsby? You’re making that up, aren’t you?”

Dad, in his inimitably dry wit, winks and retorts, “You can’t make something like that up, can you, son?”

The funeral home’s located in Hattiesburg, nothing special of a city, really, or maybe it’s considered just a town, I don’t know, but we end up driving around in circles getting to know the place with Dad holding the wheel with one hand and reading the map with another, nearly running over a pedestrian and twice blowing through red lights. I’m certain we’re going to get pulled over. By now Dad’s pretty flummoxed and getting upset, so I grab the map from him and say, “Dad, just pull over and ask that man standing over there where the Ezra P. Grimsby Funeral Home is.”

Surprisingly, Dad actually listens to me, and I feel that’s another positive sign of him respecting me and trusting my judgment and intuition. At 16, you just never know. Especially with a Dad who always had his way with you, or imposed his will on you … or worse, ignored the hell out of you half the time. But things seem to be different now, changing for the better, as the past couple of days have proven, but especially since he decided to share his intimate war stories and the other story (under wraps!) with me after holding them in and letting them eat away at him like a cancer for all these agonizing years.

We’re amazingly right on time. Mr. Grimsby greets us with circumspect formality. He’s a hollow, old bony sack of a man, Dickensian in character, and smells like the smoky aftermath of a fish and cigar dinner. At first, I’m like, this guy is a doppelganger of Dad, just a bit older and more decrepit. I have a hard time keeping a straight face over his ironic name, and am grossed out by his bodily aroma, or rather the stench about him, that come to think of it, is more like the stench of death than fish and cigars. After a few pleasantries, Mr. Grimsby announces in a scratchy Mississippi drawl with a hint of throat mucus choking his words, “You’ll find your boy downstairs in the morgue. Shall we proceed.”

 I cringe when I hear the words boy and morgue. As kids, when he wasn’t around, we used to play in Uncle Scoop’s stone cold morgue and after getting creeped out we would then repair up to the fancy carpeted wood-paneled parlor, where we’d make believe we were forensic scientists, autopsy specialists and coroners. Pretty macabre stuff for kids, I’d say. This is bringing back all those memories now. And, wait! Now that I’ve gotten a closer look (and smell!), Mr. Grimsby doesn’t look so much like Dad as he does Uncle Scoop! I get such a kick out of this, and check Dad out, wondering if he sees it, too, but he’s too busy with Mr. Grimsby preparing paperwork and making final arrangements while I’m lost in my boyhood memories.

A winding staircase leads down to an uninviting basement smelling of acrid chemicals and - fish and cigars? Mr. Grimsby points to a lumpy figure heaped on a cold steel table. “There he is, he’s all yours. Come, I’ll help you get him in his casket and ready him for transport.” He pronounces the words “casket” and “transport” like “cuskut” and “trunsput” and I can hardly keep from laughing over his funny accent.

Mr. Grimsby slips around a corner, then reappears pushing a dolly with an upright standing fancy silver and black casket with gold trimming. It must have cost a fortune. Mr. Grimsby sets the casket down near old man Waldrip’s reposed cadaver, now uncovered and on full grim display on the table, and asks Dad for a hand to ease him down into the death box. Old man Waldrip is outfitted in a black suit and his arms are folded in the “death pose” across his chest, and, almost unbearable to look at, a creepy smirk is frozen on his lifeless pale blue face. I guess old man Waldrip had died of cancer, or something, so his body was all shriveled up like a prune, but Mr. Grimsby had done the best job he could of making old man Waldrip presentable for the open casket ceremony to be held back at Uncle Scoop’s funeral home. I’m watching the whole thing unfold, Mr. Grimsby and Dad engaged in this macabre bit of teamwork to pick old man Waldrip’s body up in “one-two-three” fashion and dump his lifeless corpse into the casket once and for all. It all seems rather unceremonious to my way of thinking, but what the hell, it’s a grim job and all, and who better cut out for the unglamorous task than a man named Mr. Grimsby and my Dad who’s certainly seen his share of death up close. So, I embrace the scene with a sort of stoic giddiness. At 16, well, I’ve never seen death up close, but after hearing Dad’s stories, this is nothing, especially since old man Waldrip actually looks so calm and perfectly at rest and natural in his state. He might even be sleeping if I didn’t know better. The eternal big sleep we’ll all fall into sooner or later.

Once old man Waldrip is safely ensconced in his coffin, lid firmly slammed shut, we wheel it out on the dolly, standing upright, and hoist it into the back of the Hearsemobile, at which point, all paperwork signed and no further need for pleasantries, I’m so glad to be leaving Mr. Grimsby’s horrible death stench in our wake. We bid adieu and take our leave. Off we go to make the return journey home, an estimated thirty hours of on and off driving.

We make it out of Hattiesburg without incident, even though a cop car follows us to the edge of town, what with us in a hearse and all, with far-away out of state plates, who knows, we might be up to no good, but the cop lets us proceed and Dad soon makes it clear he has some big ideas about hiking the Natchez Trail, fishing and camping in the national forest, and even visiting Elvis’ birthplace in Tupelo, but it’s all just pie in the sky, Dad schemin’ some kind of Walter Mitty dream, because if the alligator farm was so far out of reach, what the heck does that make all of this? Plus Mom, of course, after calling her from a phone booth at a bus station, is expecting us back by a certain time, and besides, even if we do go off on a wild goose chase of an adventure in the Mississippi backwoods, what the heck are we going to do with old man Waldrip, our constant, immutable companion? And what if we have another flat tire, or what if, my mind spins horrible thoughts, something . . . worse were to happen?

All hopes, dreams, ideas and visions properly shot down as sheer fantasy, we settle in for a long fairly uneventful straight-shot ride back home. It’s hard to explain, because it’s like the whole thing is a whirlwind of a blur of a dream wrapped in a passing vision from the car window. If you ask me, I barely remember stopping to get gas, stopping for a rest or bathroom break, where or what we did for sleeping arrangements, nothing, or anything.

Dad’s fallen silent, and a bit sullen, too, like his cathartic purge and admittances and confessions just took so much out of him. So, it’s like just me and the radio on, listening to those heart-rending country songs, just driving home with old man Waldrip’s formaldehyde preserved shell of a body in the back of the Hearsemobile, our sleek black sepulcher holding the old timer we picked up at Grimsby Funeral Home in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. But I can’t shake the macabre feeling of it all, of having a dead body as our creepy cargo.

Now, for reasons not wholly clear, the casket hadn’t been securely fastened back there, so every time I hit the brakes, or go barrelling down a slightly hilly stretch, that unruly sucker rolls forward and collides with a loud thump! into the back of the cab where I can feel it rattle my bones. Jesus, talk about annoying. And creepy.

It gets to be a running joke. “Hey, Dad, who that be bangin’ on us in the back?”

And Dad grins and says, “Aw, ain’t nobody but Old Man Death, I don’t suppose.”

Funny enough, I do suppose, but I can’t shake an uneasy feeling, a premonition of our death. Death and death images always make me cringe. When Dad was telling his war stories, I cringed. When I first saw old man Waldrip, I cringed. Indeed, it seems that Old Man Death is haunting us now, especially with the unruly casket in the back that keeps on a-knockin’ at our door. I suppose, though, at some point, we all must experience our demise, and it’s not so much that I’m frightened of death or dying, being just 16 and all, way too young for it yet, it’s just the way I don’t want to envision how it might happen that scares the living daylights out of me.

The gloomy spectre of the Grim Reaper nearly catches up with us at the next hill we come to, not that Mississippi has a whole heck of a lot of hills, but on the verge of cresting one of those suckers with just enough topography to block my vision at what’s coming head-on over the rise, I have exactly one split second to react to a speeding Pontiac LeMans appearing at that precise one split second driving maniacally right in my lane!

Unconsciously, with God as my auto-pilot or some other mystical being as my Guardian Angel, or maybe it’s the spirit of old man Waldrip orchestrating our salvation, but my youthful, quick instincts take over. I don’t over-react or try to over-control the Hearsemobile, and in that one split second of life-saving prowess, it’s almost like it happens in slow-motion, I swerve over to the other lane and - THANK GOD! - barely avoid a major collision with the asshole guy in the LeMans, and count myself - ourselves! - far luckier than you can imagine that no other vehicle was in the opposite lane because that would have meant a head-on deadly crash, surely the end of us. Can you imagine? I cannot, for the life of me. In the rear view mirror I see the LeMans whizz by like a demonic streak of flashing metal before disappearing out of sight.

As I say, thank God no car had been in the opposite lane, because I’m now white-knucklin’ the steering wheel and fishtailin’ like mad and doing my best to keep my wits about me and bring the Hearsemobile under control and to a complete stop. Oh, my, I’m trembling, even as I finally manhandle the beast and bring it to a safe stop off to the side of the road, thank God, or thank my Guardian Angel or old man Waldrip, ‘cause I can’t imagine dying like that, like classmates Jack Bender and Doug Patterson did in gruesome car accidents last year, except in both cases, they were drinking and speeding, but still, poor souls, they died way too young.

The swerving and weaving and commotion causes Dad, who’d been dozing and cradling a half-empty cup of cold coffee, to suddenly come to, and in a flurry of sputtering expletives he crushes the Styrofoam cup in his hand and coffee goes flying everywhere. “Holy shit, son! What the hell are you doing? What in God’s name just happened?”

“Dad, Dad, oh, man, Dad, you won’t believe it!” I proceed to tell him, breathlessly, the details of our near death experience, about how I’d successfully, and with panache, I might add, avoided a major head-on accident, how I’d managed, successfully, and with extreme skill (or maybe it was just luck) to keep the Hearsemobile under control and bring it to a safe stop by the side of the road right where we are. “Everything’s okay, Dad! I’m fine, we’re pretty lucky.”

Dad notices me panting heavily, thinks maybe in shock, but at 16, in the calm aftermath, a rush of pure adrenaline and unmitigated excitement flushes my body. “No, seriously, Dad, it’s all okay. This stupid car was speeding right at the top of that hill back there, and when I got to the top, he was about ten yards in front of me coming right at us in our lane!” 

Dad shakes his head disbelievingly. “In our lane! That is nuts, son! I don’t know how you did it, son, but you did. You faced death head-on and won.” Dad then showers me with praise in the realization of what, exactly, had just taken place and, what, exactly, had just been avoided. Our gory death. A fatal collision on a bloody Sunday bloody stretch of lonesome Mississippi highway. A reunion in the Great Beyond with old man Waldrip and Jack Bender and Doug Patterson and all Dad’s dead and gone Marine companions who perished long before their time.

“Son, son,” Dad repeats a hundred times. “Son, that was a helluva job you did, son. I don’t know if I could of done it any better. I don’t know how you did it, son, but that was something special, son. I’m proud of you, son. But I’ll take over from here, now. You need a good break from what you just went through, son.”

And that, well, that’s about as close to a high five as I think I ever got from Dad. Once back on the road, after a long spell of silence, I can tell we both feel something’s clicked, something’s changed in our relationship. There’s an ease of comportment, a felicitous energy between us, I can’t explain it, only feel it. It’s all for the better, too, now that we’ve shared in so much together. All the stories unleashed from their cages, all the secrets released from Dad’s heart, have bonded us, finally, as Father and Son, and thankfully, ain’t no Holy Ghost to come between us, at least not yet. A relationship restored, made whole, born from the confessions and sharing of the most buried of stories and secrets in a man’s soul.

    Finally, as we cross the border into Indiana, about two hours from pulling into our driveway, Dad says, “This was a mighty fine adventure, don’t you think, son. It will be something to remember. I know you like to write, and you’re pretty good at it. Maybe you can write up this story. I hope I’m around to read it someday.”

I thank Dad for the plaudits about any so-called writing talent I might possess, and blush and brush it aside. “I hope so, Dad, I hope so, because there’s a lot to tell, and who’s gonna believe it anyway unless I tell it.”

Dad nods. “Sure thing, son.” Another tension-filled pause. “And just wait until our next trip together I’ve got planned for us!”

    My eyebrows raise. “Next trip? What are you talking about, Dad? This one’s not even over yet!”

    Dad flashes that mischievous grin I’ve come to know and appreciate. “Well, son, take a guess.”

I draw a blank and shake my head and shrug. “I dunno, Dad. What do you have in mind? I can’t imagine. Maybe visiting Gizzepp in Chicago to see a Cubs game?”

Dad reaches for his wallet, and pulls out the little picture he’d shown me earlier and holds it up for me to see. “Son, when you turn 17 next year, for your high school graduation present I’m taking you to China to meet Li-Na."