The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,111
no one else will be there.”
I hung my skirt back on the hanger and put on a pair of pants and an old sweater.
We drove to the church in silence. A train whistled in the distance. Mist slid over the fields near the church. The ground sparkled white under the streetlights with the first frost of the season.
All churches were left unlocked back then, refuges for sudden repenters. We walked in quietly, as if trying not to disturb anyone. Faint moonlight diffused through the yellow glass windows. Being in the church at such an odd hour felt both sinful and holy.
Momma’s coffin sat in front of the pulpit, the lid shut. I went to turn on the lights while Adam opened the coffin. The electric light brought the room back to its ordinary self.
I’d seen her the day before at the funeral home, but this was Adam’s first time seeing her. She didn’t look like herself. She had lost so much weight in the last weeks. Her face had a strained, unnatural look. Only her hands were unchanged. All my life, I had seen those hands moving, giving me the world. Now they lay stilled.
“Momma,” Adam said, touching her hands. “Good-bye, Momma.” He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. I was acutely aware of him beside me, his ragged breath, his sweat. I braced myself for his howl.
But he remained silent. After a while, he turned and faced the pews. He leaned over and gripped the back of the first pew. His shoulders tightened. He looked so alone, the dark rows of empty seats in front of him. I thought of the faces that would fill the church later in the day, the people we were avoiding. I pressed my hand between his shoulder blades and readied myself. He took a sharp, deep breath.
There was no horrid cry. Instead, he fell to his knees and wept like an ordinary man, his head on the hard wood of the pew. We held each other for a long time. Then we went home.
He did not go to bed, though it was still hours until dawn; instead he began to pack. “I’m going up into the mountains,” he announced.
I wanted to stop him, to insist he not go, but I saw the faraway look on his face. He was already gone.
While I packed some food for him, he went to say good-bye to the girls. Rosie’s voice rose in protest then fell again as he soothed her.
“Adam.” I took his arm as he passed.
“It’ll just be a couple of days. Call Wallace for me. Let him know he may need Cleatus’s help for the next few days.”
Then he left.
My anger at death splintered into a brittle rage toward those people in the congregation who had turned against Adam. I could not allow myself such brittleness. I could not afford to break: my daughters slept down the hall. I lay in bed, comforting myself with images of Adam in the forest, howling his strange songs to an audience of receptive wildlife. I remembered the radiance of his face when he’d told me about his mountain trips and how the mountain returned his calls. I hoped it did this time. I wished that solace for him.
I must have slept, for I woke to the gentle percolation of the coffeepot. Adam sat at the kitchen table, a cup in front of him.
“You haven’t left yet?”
“No, I’ll go after the funeral. The truck is packed. I got a few miles down the road then turned around . . . the girls . . . She was their grandmother. I should be there with them.”
“You want to come to the funeral?” I held the coffeepot over my empty cup.
“Yes, I should sit with them. I am their father.” He did not look at me.
“But . . .”
He shook his head. “You told me they’ll be singing at the funeral and I told them I’d always be there when they sang.”
I remembered his face in the barn after Jennie’s funeral, when I had silenced him with the girls. I did not press him further.
Cars packed the church parking lot. Momma had lived all of her life in Clarion. The bereaved family is always the focus of a funeral, but I felt the extra stir of attention as we entered the church, Adam first with Sarah holding his hand. I braced myself against the stares and kept my eyes steady on Adam’s shoulders above Gracie and Rosie’s. Lil