Daddy sent Patrick and me outside to work, and I was filling a tank with gas when an odd thought popped into my mind. The same way a car stops when it’s out of fuel or something goes haywire in the engine, Lucas had come to his end. But unlike cars and other machines, once our light goes out, there’s no way to ever start us up again.
“You see his eyes?” Patrick asked. “Hope I don’t have nightmares.”
“Don’t remind me.”
Cars rolled in and out as if it was a regular day and Lucas wasn’t lying dead inside the station.
A short while later, Doc Riley drove up with his daughter Rosie beside him.
He politely greeted everyone, and everyone returned his greeting.
“He’s in the garage,” my daddy told him.
Rosie glanced at Patrick and me, said, “Hi, y’all,” and took out a notebook and pencil and began writing.
“Hi, Rosie.”
“How’d he die?” she asked.
“Just dropped, same as a peach from a tree, and died,” Patrick answered.
Rosie jotted something in her notebook, and together we trailed her daddy and mine into the garage.
Doc Riley lifted the blanket from Lucas. “Jake, you said he was clutchin’ his chest?”
Daddy nodded.
“And cried out in pain?”
“Yes.”
“Howled is more like it,” Patrick added.
Rosie peeked at the body but didn’t even flinch.
Doc Riley scratched his head, covered Lucas back up, and said, “So, Lucas Shaw’s luck finally ran out.”
“Huh?” Daddy asked.
“His heart. It was why the army, navy, and marines wouldn’t take him when he tried to enlist. Wondered when it was finally gonna quit on him . . . Just a matter of time. Even the heart doctor I sent him to down in Charleston was in total agreement. Born with it, you know . . . a sick ticker. Nuthin’ could be done. His sister won’t likely ask for an autopsy, with his medical history. I’ll stop over there to deliver the news and call the undertaker.”
Rosie, who’d been busily taking notes, stopped and asked, “Did rigor mortis set in yet, Daddy?”
“No, Rosie—takes at least four hours, remember?”
She nodded and scribbled something else in her tablet.
“My Rosie’s got her mind set on becomin’ a doctor, you know.”
“Jake?” a voice called from outside the garage. “Jake?” Suddenly, Sheriff Monk and J. J. showed up in the doorway.
“Lucas croaked!” Patrick blurted.
The sheriff and J. J. glanced at each other, then stepped quickly over to the body.
Doc Riley lifted the blanket to show the sheriff and J. J. “Heart finally gave out. Surprised it lasted him this long.”
The sheriff and J. J. stared at the body as if they didn’t believe what they were seeing.
“Lucas Shaw done gone and died?” J. J. asked.
“Dropped dead right in front of us,” Daddy told him.
Sheriff Monk tugged at his earlobe, ran his hand across his brow, and glanced around at each one of us before he asked Doc Riley, “No sign of injury of any kind?”
“Not a thing.”
Sheriff Monk’s face twisted with questions and then he asked Daddy, “Where’s that colored boy who works here?”
“Home, I’d suppose.”
With the gentlest nudge possible, I let Patrick know to be quiet. And thankfully, he was.
“You notify his sister yet, Doc?”
“I was going to, and then call Billy McGinty to come pick up the body.”
“And you’re certain it was his heart?”
“I sent him to the specialist in Charleston myself. Remember after Pearl Harbor when he couldn’t enlist? Was because of that.”
Sheriff Hector Monk gazed up at the ceiling, sighed deeply, then proclaimed, “Doc, I know you to be an honest fella. I’ll stop by the Shaw place for you, save you the trip.”
“Thank you kindly. Got some house calls to make.”
A car honked out at the station pumps three times. “If y’all don’t mind,” Daddy told them, “I’ll excuse myself . . . Customer’s waitin’.”
J. J. Carroway shook his head in disbelief. “Cain’t hardly believe it. Lucas Shaw really done gone and dropped dead.”
The sheriff nervously tugged his ear again, and I watched as doubt returned to his eyes. But seconds later, a shrug of his shoulders made it appear as if the investigation was over.
The waiting car honked again, and Daddy hurried off.
Patrick and I watched from the doorway as the sheriff and J. J. climbed into their patrol car. And when Sheriff Hector Monk spoke into the car’s two-way radio, I knew that the news of Lucas Shaw’s death was about to be broadcast all over Birdsong, USA.
Doc Riley used the phone in Daddy’s office to call Billy McGinty, the mayor-undertaker, and then he and pretty Rosie Riley were gone too. She carried his black doctor’s bag as if it already belonged to her.
Before long, Mama showed up, wearing her most worried look. “Y’all all right?” she asked Patrick and me.
“You wanna see him?” Patrick asked her. “I gotta warn you, though, his eyes is wide open . . . so it’s even scarier than a Dracula movie.”
Mama closed her eyes and shook her head. “Horrible thing for y’all boys to witness.”
Because so many things that summer seemed to be pushing me to the finish line of childhood, I wanted to say, I’m not a boy anymore. But because it didn’t seem to be the right time for that, I didn’t. She placed her hand on my shoulder.
Patrick lifted the Saint Christopher necklace from underneath his shirt and nervously fingered the small round medal. Mama, taking note, said to him, “I can drive you home, Patrick, if you like. It’s been quite a day.”
“No, thank you, ma’am. I’ma go up front and help out Mr. Haberlin, like it was agreed,” he replied. Then, his hand tightly clutching his medal, he sauntered off.
“Daddy told me everything when he phoned me,” Mama said. “And that Meriwether’s leavin’ town today with his family.”
“Yeah, headin’ north, clear to Michigan. He claims Birdsong’s ’bout done with him.”
Mama gazed off toward the foothills. “Odd the way lives crisscross down here. I’m happy he’s heading north. But I’ll be forever grateful for him bein’ here that day when the car almost hit you . . . forever grateful.”
“Me too. He sure is a true friend.”
A half hour passed before Billy McGinty arrived in his black hearse. “Sad day it is, Agatha and Jake, when the Lord takes someone as young as Lucas Shaw . . . Sad day indeed.”
Daddy, Mama, Patrick, and I glanced at one another, and Patrick said what we were probably all thinking. “He wasn’t very nice.”
No one disagreed, not even Billy McGinty.
“I reckon his time had come,” Daddy added.
“Bad heart, Doc Riley said. Never knew . . . You?”
“He never said a word to me ’bout it.”
Minutes later, Daddy and Billy loaded the lifeless body of Lucas Shaw into the back of the Cadillac hearse.
“It never stops amazin’ me how heavy a dead body can be. Y’all take care, now,” the mayor-undertaker said as he turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened but a clicking noise, and he had to turn it again before it finally started. “I’ll bring it in for service next week, Jake.”
“Might havta wait on that . . . Got no mechanic now.”
“Still got that colored boy, don’t ya?”
“No. He’s leavin’ for a job up north.”
“Thatsa shame. I been hearin’ folks ’round town braggin’ on him.”
“Yes, it’s a shame.”
More goodbye words were uttered and we stood together, staring at the funeral car as it made its way down the street.
Lucas Shaw was really gone—for good.