i drove a hearse to mississippi
CHAPTER ONE
One year ago today, I drove a hearse to Mississippi. I surely did. Well, in the company of my Dad, I admit. You see, I was just sixteen and had 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 had enough trust 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 . . . or in his secretive heart. Well, I can tell you’re questioning the veracity of my account, but keep reading, please. This is exactly how it all happened, when I was sixteen and helped my Dad drive a hearse to Mississippi.
I’m in Mrs. Corbin’s first-year French class learning to conjugate simple verbs, when the principal, William Featheringill, appears at the door and motions for me to step out. He starts right off. “Your father just called and let me know to send you home right away. He needs your help to drive down to, I think he said Mississippi, and pick up a body. So you’re excused from school through next week.”
I’m, like, uh, pick up a — corpse?!
“You’re kidding, right, Mr. Featheringill?”
“No, I’m not. You’d best 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’s going on. I tell her in a hush-hush whisper, so the other students won’t hear, that I’ll be away from school until the following Monday, six whole days from now. I’m floating on air! It feels like an unexpected sweepstakes win or something, this crazy news that I would be going on an adventure!
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. With my Dad?
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 a birdhouse. Father son stuff.
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 in a heartbeat! He quit boozing, 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.
When I get home, Dad gives me the low-down. Apparently, some old-timer who’d moved to Mississippi decades ago died and his family’s wish was that he be buried in the local cemetery. And, well, Dad, you know, he has this brother, Bernard, my screwy uncle. Not BernARD, but BerNERD, which is perfect, I have to say, and, well, he just happens to be, ghoulishly, an undertaker, and an incorrigible booze hound. I guess the gene runs in the family, because my Aunt Vivian, she died of some alcohol-related illness two years ago, and BerNERD, nicknamed Scoop, seems pretty much well on his way to joining her. I mean the guy is always plastered and he smokes Old Golds like a chimney. Well, I guess you can see where this is going.
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 with a snarky comment, “Yeah, right!” — and Dad continues, “So he’s asked me to step in as a big favor and handle things from here on.” Mom rolls her eyes heavenward and snickers inaudibly. Dad pats me on the shoulder. “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?”
At that point, Mom leaves the room and Dad pulls me aside confidentially. “Son, we’ve got a lot to talk about on this trip. Now, I want to know. Can you keep a secret or three?”
“Sure, Dad,” I say, “What secrets?” I imagine he must have a few.
Dad flashes a movie-star good lookin’ grin and says, “Well, son, if I told you, they wouldn’t be secrets now, would they? Just be patient.”
It’s a madcap turn of events. 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 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. Is it 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 drunk” as Mom defamed him more than once when he’d been stopped and arrested for “erratic” driving and thrown in the clink and needed to be bailed out, or during their screaming matches when the bills were due to pay and he didn’t have a red cent to his name because he’d spent it all on Dark Eyes vodka or missed a whole week of work, because. Could Dad now be trusted to step in and take over for his red-headed, pasty-faced younger brother, the Undertaker Nerd, to save him from . . . what, exactly? Bankruptcy? His reputation? So, naturally, I’m wondering: 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, can’t you, as I mull over all the possibilities, good and bad.
Stay tuned for CHAPTER TWO!