Pastor Lundy waves hello as he opens the double-wide gate at the back of the chain-link fence. We quietly get to work. He moves out the machinery he used to dig the grave, and I unroll the grasslike carpet to define the space for our service. Together we arrange flowers and folding chairs until we see the procession of cars and trucks with their headlights on. Led by my father’s black pickup and the giant flag blowing in the wind, they travel under the speed limit, the number of vehicles a sign of the respect Mr. Purvis holds in our town. In that line of mourners, I see Slim’s school bus, nearly gray with dried mud and empty of children. Though I don’t guess he was a close friend, some come to funerals for their own reasons—a reminder of the brevity of life, a chance to socialize, the promise of coffee and baked goods after the service.
The vehicles wind along the outside fence, and I walk out to greet the mourners, signaling where they should stop, and making sure there’s room to get the casket out of the hearse. When Pop steps out, he reminds the drivers to turn off their headlights, or the end of the service becomes all about dead batteries and jumper cables.
“You look good, Pop,” I say.
“I used soap,” he says and winks.
The first few snowflakes begin to fall as Pop helps to round up the casket bearers—old men with curved backs and carnation boutonnieres, who can only lift the casket but for pride and their feelings, likely never shared, for the man inside of it. They carry the plain box with careful, labored steps.
I help the widow out of the car, trying not to rush her.
“A blizzard’s coming,” she says. “These low clouds, the ache in my knees.”
She is out of breath and struggles two-handed to hold a heavy bouquet of lilies, finally letting me take them from her. Her children and grandchildren follow, and the line of mourners grows, many wearing sheepskin coats, itchy wool pants, and Scotch caps with the earflaps down. I set the lilies at the altar.
“Such a nice touch,” Mrs. Purvis says about the carpet as I help her to a chair in front.
It always dawns on me, just about now, as the heavy casket is maneuvered from truck to carriers to gravesite, that I was the last to see the person who has passed. I was the last to see the secret items tucked into the casket—a lucky penny, a pack of Marlboros, a bundle of racy photos, a fishing rod, and for Mr. Purvis, his old, black lunch bucket. I saw the widow slide it beside her husband’s leg shortly before we closed the casket.
Guests are occupied with talk of snow. Got chains on your tires yet? Shovels at the front and back doors? Sacks of oats and salt tied up and stored? Have you filled up with extra gas and planned a pathway to the livestock?
Winter is serious business here. Last year, the snowdrifts were as high as the eaves of most houses. Once neighbors dug out, they had to trundle in waist-high snow to reach the livestock. Many had cattle stepping right over fences as if they weren’t there, and some smothered in the deep drifts, ranchers unsure of their losses until the melting snow uncovered the carcasses.
People talk more about the weather than the loss of Mr. Purvis, not because he didn’t matter to them but because those are feelings most around here keep to themselves. Pop and I take our places in back, behind the chairs, watching for anyone or anything that needs attention. I see Pete pull his white Ford beside the fence. Every guest turns to greet him. He acknowledges each with a look or a handshake, and me by raising his gloved fingers and one eyebrow. I take it as a reminder of the pressure I’m under to do things his way.
The guests stand inside what appears to be a fallen cloud. White sky, white winter skin, white exhaled breath as Pastor Lundy welcomes everyone, naming each of the relatives. He bends before their chairs, pressing his gloved hands into theirs, and saving his warmest greeting for the widow.
The pastor has tried hard to build a congregation, but many in this community don’t feel God’s presence in the confined space of a building, or in the hands of a pastor, just a man. Instead, they experience God in the magnificent earth and sky, in the first sunlight over the rimrocks, in the blue, blue snow at twilight, in the care they invest in this land and its creatures—never a guarantee of a return for their labor, forever at the mercy of a force greater than themselves.
Funerals, then, are Pastor Lundy’s biggest audience. He stands before the casket now and looks out at the snow-dusted guests. “The man we honor today was quite a handyman,” he says. “I think everyone here has had something fixed by him.”
The widow’s shoulders rise. I don’t think she or her husband thought of him as the man taking odd jobs. That was only to keep his family going. But he was not that. A handyman. Even though he did that work for two decades.
Pastor Lundy opens his Bible and reads from Ecclesiastes. “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven; a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.”
There are no tears. This death is not a surprise. It’s the kind of death people prefer—expected after a long life with many friends, a blessing to be free from illness and pain.
“Let us pray.”
Heads bow. Some close their eyes, but most use this time to see who’s here and who isn’t. Children kick at stray piles of snow. Pete tries again to catch my eye, but I pretend not to notice. Instead I watch my father’s wind-chapped face and clouds of breath as he says, “Amen.”
And now the pastor calls on Mrs. Purvis to say some words about her husband. She stands before the guests in a funny hat, clear she rarely wears one as she’s constantly touching and adjusting it. She unfolds something from her pocket, shoulders slumped, no words. Snow dusts the piece of notebook paper, and still she says nothing, but pulls her shoulders straight, her mouth tight. Whatever emotion she had when she wrote on this piece of paper, she will not show it now.
“Me and Al have only left Petroleum once in our lives. We went to a wedding in a big city that lit up at night. We saw all we were without—malls, neon lights, stylish clothes. People teased us about our lot, and when we came home we saw, in comparison, what a small house we live in, the mismatched furniture and dishes, the wind showing us where all the leaks and cracks are. I was glad to be home. The truth is we don’t need as much as people tell us we need.”
A small child tugs at his mother’s coat.
“Albert, like a number of you, spent many winters at the hotel. He used to call it boarding school, and he referred to his room as his dorm, where he made lifelong friends. The Petroleum Hotel is where he learned to blow bubbles with gum, how to whistle with two fingers, and how to do back handsprings down the hallway after bedtime, for which he was rightly whipped. This town made him who he . . . was.”
She fixes something under her coat and continues. “I know some of you worked with him at the grain elevator when the railroad made its last run through Petroleum. None of us knew then what would become of us or our town. And somehow we’ve carried on, and I know I’ll find a way to carry on after this loss, too.”
A snowflake melts on her nose but she refuses to wipe it dry.
“I missed Al this morning. I missed the smell of his coffee at breakfast. I don’t drink the stuff—it burns a hole in my stomach—but sometimes I make it just so the house smells like he’s with me.
“I miss the way he looks over the newspaper to read me the editorial and then tells me all the ways he disagrees with it because he wants me to know his opinions and he wants to know mine. I miss his little cough whenever he put his head on the pillow. Now falling asleep is too quiet. And in the spring I’ll miss him coming inside after he’s mown the lawn, tracking cut grass through the house. Most days are made up of simple moments, and he was a part of my sense of comfort and belonging here.”
She folds her paper again, finished now, and moves back to her chair without looking up. The pastor reaches out to touch her shoulder but she’s already slipped past and doesn’t seem to want any more attention drawn to herself or the hat.
The pastor spreads his arms as if reaching around all of us. “We therefore commit the body of Albert Purvis to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.”
The singing begins. It’s a hymn I don’t know—usually our customers go for “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” or “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” The others don’t seem to know this one either, not past the first verse anyway, as most are just humming. By the third verse, only the pastor is singing. Over his shoulder, I see a rattlesnake, head sliced off, hanging over the fence, and wonder who will keep the rattle.
Snow melts on the empty metal seats as it lands, and guests begin to set flowers on the casket. A small child sets a snowball there and gets smacked on the bottom—the first tears of this service.