by B. C. Nance
Gabe pushed himself up and sat on the edge of the bed. He listened for a moment to the reassuring rhythm of his wife’s breathing then cat-stepped to the door. Estelle would sleep for several more hours, and it was time to carry out the task Gabe had been planning since that late summer visit to the doctor’s office. He pulled on the flannel shirt, wool socks, and overalls he had set out yesterday. His boots waited by the door to the garage, and he would pull them on last. Though he wasn’t hungry he took a foil-wrapped package of leftover biscuits with ham from the refrigerator and placed it in the toaster oven to warm. He filled the percolator and took it to the garage as a precaution. The smell of coffee had always stirred Estelle from the deepest sleep, and though Gabe had aided Morpheus with one of the sleeping pills the doctor had given his wife, and for that he felt a twinge of guilt, he didn’t want to take any chances.
“Gabe,” she had said last night, “you were a little heavy handed with the honey in this tea.” It covered the taste of the ground up pill. She hated using those pills no matter how much trouble she had sleeping since that late summer visit to the doctor’s office.
Slipped her a mickey, Gabe thought. That reminded him of the hard-boiled detective novels he liked to read. Books by Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, Dashiell Hammet, Ross Macdonald, and many others. Gabe smiled despite his regret.
With the coffee perking until it almost resembled motor oil, and the ham biscuits warming, Gabe gathered the rest of the items he would need for the morning’s task. He opened an old canvas haversack, what he called his “possibles bag,” and checked the contents: flashlight, pocketknife, tin cup, and bottles among other necessities, then he placed it by the door next to the boots. To this cache he added his powder horn, a replica piece given to Gabe years ago by his little sister Annie, the baby of the family, and engraved: “Hezekiah Irving, Gunsmith. Born November 11, 1778, Died July 4, 1863.”
Lastly, he took from over the mantle great-grandpa Hezekiah’s long rifle, and he slid it into a handmade leather gun bag. With everything in place, he opened the bedroom door just a crack and listened to Estelle’s breathing. It would be so easy to just forget the plan and crawl back into bed, but he knew he had to do this on his terms and not burden Estelle for another—what had the doctor said—three months more.
Newlyweds Gabe and Estelle had talked until late then nervously slipped into bed beside each other. Gabe touched her as if she would break, but Estelle put her arms around her newly minted husband and held him so close to her that he could feel both hearts pounding together. Later, and in those days it was always much later, Gabe lay back on his pillow wearing a smile that he thought would never leave his face. Estelle had drifted off to sleep, her forehead touching Gabe’s shoulder, her fingers entwined with his, and her soft feet brushing his ankles. He listened to the gentle and soothing rhythm of her breathing until he also succumbed to sleep.
Gabe closed the door, left an envelope on the table, and pulled on his boots and an old, patched barn coat. He slid the ham biscuits into the coat pocket, filled a thermos with the strong, black coffee, and slipped out the garage door. He patted the old reliable Datsun pickup then loaded his equipment and absent-mindedly slammed the tailgate. He grimaced at the noise then eased down the door to the camper top. “Let’s start as quietly as possible, girl,” he said to the faded red truck.
Harley Simms bought the Datsun brand new in Nashville in 1965, drove it home, parked it in his new garage, and went inside for a nap from which he never awakened. The odometer stayed at 53 miles for nearly three years—Harley’s wife Louise didn’t drive—until Gabe made the widow a fair offer. She was reluctant to give up her late husband’s last purchase but needed the money, and Gabe had now driven the truck for almost 30 years.
At first reluctant in the cold November darkness, the Datsun eventually started with a low rumble. Gabe gave it a minute to warm up then eased down the drive to the gravel road—the blacktop had crept up the hollow over the last decade but was still half a mile short of the McAnnally house—then with a last look toward the house where Estelle still lay sleeping, Gabe drove off toward Chickasaw Ridge. It was 4:42 in the morning.
“Who will be there to greet you on the day of judgement?” Pastor Isaac Harris asked. Gabe never cared much for the man who came to lead the little church on the Duck River, forcing the well-loved Pastor Culbertson into retirement, but somehow that sermon, or more specifically, that part of that sermon, had always stuck with him. For Pastor Harris the choices were simple; it would either be Jesus or Satan there to greet you on your first day of the afterlife. The beginning of eternity. Gabe was 17, and the most interesting aspect of church was the pretty Lawrence girl sitting three rows up. He stared into her dark hair as Reverend Harris droned on. “Who will be there to greet you?” he asked again and again.
Gabe’s mind wandered off to ponder the question. He wondered what happened to Saint Peter, who, according to Pastor Culbertson, sat at the pearly gates of Heaven and checked the big book to see who would enter and who would be turned away. Gabe imagined that those turned away would plunge into darkness, falling until they reached the fiery gates of hell. He wondered if Saint Peter had been forced into retirement like old Pastor Culbertson. “Who will be there to greet you?”
John Culbertson was more than a Pastor; he was also a family friend. The man braved a February snowstorm to visit the house on Gabriel’s 13th birthday and bring a letter from the town post office. It was the best gift Gabe could have received. Better than the carved wooden dog from Reverend Culbertson himself. Better than the birthday cake that mother had made from rationed sugar and flour and eggs. Better than the collection of smooth rocks, mussel shells, birds’ eggs, and dried summer wildflowers that his two younger sisters had given him. It was even better than the extra food, army rations given to Gabe by the soldiers who camped nearby during the army training maneuvers in Middle Tennessee. The letter was from his father, somewhere in England where he waited until the day the Allies would take back Europe from the Nazis.
Young Gabriel made a ceremony of opening the letter. He used the bone-scaled pocketknife that his father had given him before he left. The knife had first belonged to Gabe’s older brother Robert, but since the accident Rob had no use for it. He opened the blade and glanced at Rob, sitting in the corner of the room with his vacant stare and open, drooling mouth, and he sliced open the top of the envelope. He drew forth a single sheet of paper which he set aside, and then he slid out a smaller, more colorful piece of paper. It was money. English money. The small bill, blue and muted red, was decorated with a lion and a unicorn, and it stated that the note was worth one pound sterling. Sterling, Gabe new, meant silver, and he was aghast that papa would send him a note worth a whole pound of silver. That was more silver than the McAnnallys had in their entire house.
The letter was brief but conveyed his father’s love to all and a promise to return soon. Gabe secretly hoped that the war would last long enough for him to turn 18 and join his father on an adventure across Europe. Maybe they would ride in a tank together like the one the nearby soldiers used in their training exercise. He never said this aloud, knowing how much his mother worried and knowing what a burden it was for her to take care of the family, especially Rob.
Gabe turned the Datsun onto the Hampshire Road and started over the ridge known as the Devil’s Backbone. His father once told him that if he peed on the top of the ridge, half would run north to the Duck River while half would run south to the Buffalo and the two halves would once again unite at the Tennessee River. The thought had always intrigued him. By the time he had worked his way up the twisting switchback road to the top of the ridge, the old truck’s heater had begun to warm the cab. Gabe opened the foil package and took out one of the biscuits to nibble. He wasn’t hungry, hadn’t had much of an appetite for months and was already twenty pounds lighter than when the year had started. The twentieth century was coming to a close, but Gabe knew he wouldn’t see the next one. He had looked forward to it, a new century, a new millennium. He had been looking into taking a trip with Estelle, researching destinations that they both would enjoy.
It was not as if they had never traveled. As newlyweds they had taken a bus to Mexico where they had seen Aztec ruins. They had gone by car to the Grand Canyon with the children in 1969 and made a pilgrimage to Philadelphia in 1976 to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. Their son, William, named for Gabe’s father, had started college that fall, studying engineering, the first McAnnally to go to college. The big trip had come in 1990, an anniversary gift from the children William and Elizabeth and their spouses. They had visited England and Scotland for a whirlwind week that left Gabe and Estelle exhausted and elated. It had been a good life.
Gabe put the biscuit back in the foil and pulled the truck to the side of the road. A painful spasm ran from deep in his guts up through his body, and he gripped the steering wheel and grimaced until the worst of it passed. He considered taking one of the painkillers the doctor had given him, the bottle was in the possibles bag, but he had resisted these for so long. The few he had taken since that late summer day in the doctor’s office had left him lethargic and muddle-brained, a staring scarecrow with a head full of straw. He imagined that was how Rob felt after the accident, if he felt anything at all.
He sat for less than a quarter of an hour, hoping that a sheriff’s deputy would not see him and stop to investigate. He took a sip from the thermos, considered some aspirin, then, deciding to tough it out, he pulled back onto the road. He turned down the heat, never liking to be too hot. He remembered only twice in his life when the cold had really bothered him.
Owl Creek Pond rarely froze completely, but on the first day of 1942 the ice stretched across the whole expanse. Children gathered from all over the rural farm community to slide on the ice and rush down the nearby steep hill with every manner of makeshift sled. Robert McAnnally, cheered by his friends and younger brother took a running start and slid nearly to the center of the pond where he stood and bowed to his audience. He then began to slide about the pond, wishing that there were at least one pair of skates in this community, and then he heard the loud crack. Everyone heard it. Other boys had scrambled clumsily onto the frozen surface of the pond following Rob’s lead. At the sound of the first pop, they looked toward Rob, farthest out on the pond. A rift appeared, and Rob plunged straight down.
Billy Deason, Rob’s best friend, started toward the hole where he had last seen Rob, but when his right leg broke through into the frigid water, he was forced to sit and work his way back. Out of nowhere Mr. Bauer, the merchant who ran the dry goods store in town, appeared on the ice with a coil of rope. Gabe learned later that the merchant had driven several children out to the pond in his truck, arriving just in time to see the boy disappear through the ice. He handed one end of the rope to two boys and told them to tie it to a nearby tree. He tied the other end of the rope around his waist and headed onto the ice where he leapt into the hole after Rob.
Ira Bauer was hailed as a hero for saving the boy. He fished out Rob’s body and got him breathing again then wrapped him in blankets in the warm cab of the delivery truck. Rob would live but he would never be the same, having spent too much time without air or too much time in the cold, Gabe never understood exactly what the problem was. He just remembered how Rob looked when Mr. Bauer finally surfaced with his lifeless body, pulling himself out by way of the rope that Jimmy Lewis and Hank Taft had quickly fastened to the small maple by the pond’s edge. Ira Bauer made sure that everyone knew the important part the two boys had played in the rescue.
Rob never fed or dressed himself again, never spoke or laughed or even cleaned himself again. He was an invalid. A year later he had not improved, and father was leaving for the army, a move that Gabe’s mother bitterly opposed. Gabe and his sisters did what they could to help take care of their brother, but Gabe heard his mother tell a friend that it would have been better had “that Jew” not saved the boy. Seven years later when Gabe announced that he would be heading off to another war, the strain was too much for his mother.
Gabe glanced at his watch. It was 5:15. He turned onto Highway 100 heading toward Chickasaw Ridge where great-grandpa Hezekiah Irving settled after returning from his own war. He had moved there from Nashville, settling on a land grant that he received for his service fighting the Creek Indians. Gabe had loved to hear grandmother McAnnally, the youngest of Hezekiah’s eighteen children by three different wives, tell the stories of her father and his heroic exploits. As she aged the stories became a shifting family mythology that had Hezekiah fighting alongside famous heroes from different eras, but Gabe loved to hear them anyway.
Gabe adjusted the heat once more and tried again to eat some of the biscuit, this time without the ham, but he couldn’t get it down. He remembered another biscuit that he couldn’t get down back in 1951 while huddling in a foxhole near the imaginary line that stretched across Korea. The 38th parallel where Corporal McAnnally and his brothers in arms held communism at bay, or so the officers had told them, was the invisible barrier over which the world was once again at war, this time meeting on a peninsula in Asia, the teams having been mixed up a bit since the last great conflict. The ration biscuit was not stale but frozen solid. Gabriel had never known such intense cold. He had shivered involuntarily when he looked down at his brother’s lifeless body as Mr. Bauer strained to breathe life into him again. Rob’s lips were blue, and it made Gabe feel cold to the bone, perhaps just out of fear. In Korea the winter again chilled him to his core.
It was so cold that Gabe did not feel pain when the army ambulance they were pushing out of a deep rut ran over his left hand after Gabe slipped as the truck broke free. He heard the crunch as the wheel crushed two fingers and some of the small bones in his hand, but he didn’t feel it until later. The huge platoon sergeant sent Gabe to the aid station, but they were too busy with real wounds to look at him now. He waited until the ambulance returned for more wounded, and the driver let him ride to the mobile army hospital where after a three hour wait, they finally treated his hand.
Gabe had thought about that big sergeant recently, starting that late summer day in the doctor’s office. Estelle whispered with the doctor when they thought they were out of earshot of Gabe. He didn’t want to hear of timelines and probabilities. “How long?” Estelle asked the doctor in a hushed and agonized voice. Gabe tried to tune them out, but some of the words drifted through his distracted daze.
“Maybe six months without treatment,” the doctor replied in a low tone, “but with chemotherapy . . .” Gabe’s mind shut out the rest. He remembered Mrs. Watkins when she was diagnosed with cancer, late stage like his. The doctor had told her that the chemo would give her as much as an extra year, but she was so frail and wasted from the treatment that the extra time, it had turned out to be nine months, was spent in regret and pain and sickness. Gabe would not prolong the inevitable; he would not put Estelle through the extra work of caring for an invalid as his mother had cared for Rob. He would leave on his own terms.
The big sergeant in Korea was called Kemo Worthington. Gabe never knew if this was a real name or nickname, and the sergeant scared him too much to ask. Sergeant Kemo was six and a half feet of raw muscle and hate. He hated Asians of any nationality. They were all the same to him. He told the men that the number “36” tattooed on his left shoulder was the number of Japanese he killed in the last war, and he hoped his next tattoo would be a much larger number.
Gabe’s army buddy Pudge Perkins from Arkansas once told Gabe that if Sergeant Kemo were supplied with enough ammunition and turned loose on North Korea, the war would be over in a matter of weeks, perhaps days. Gabe retorted that he didn’t think Kemo would stop at the border, and he would invade China next. The two laughed.
Pudge was a good friend. He spoke fondly of his hometown, Eureka Springs. He missed his parents, the green-eyed girl who worked in the bakery, a retriever named Dublin, and his Frankie Laine records. Gabe and Pudge promised to visit each other after the war. Two months later Pudge went home in a box. Kemo was still fighting and hating when Gabe was finally sent home. He imagined that the big sergeant stayed until the end of the war and probably went on to Vietnam where he could continue his personal campaign of genocide, numbered tattoos running the length of his arm.
As he sat on the examination table in the doctor’s office, Gabe heard Pastor Harris again. “Who will be there to greet you on the day of judgement?” His mind drifted back to that little church on the Duck River.
“Excuse me Mr. Lawrence. May I walk your daughter, Estelle, home from church?”
Estelle Lawrence, a black-haired, dark-eyed girl whose family recently moved to the area from Cleveland—“The one in East Tennessee,” she told Gabe, “not the other one”—gave Gabe a shy smile and agreed to be accompanied home by this handsome young man. They had been inseparable since. Estelle once told Gabe that her father’s grandfather had been Chickasaw, and her mother’s grandmother was Cherokee. This heritage showed in her features. She told him of the great reverence that these cultures had for their ancestors, and Gabe knew then the answer to the Pastor’s question.
Certainly, he wanted to meet Jesus eventually, but when he thought of who would greet him first on his day of judgement, the first day of eternity, he knew that it must be his ancestors. His father first, of course, because he had never come home from the war. His McAnnally grandparents, especially grandmother McAnnally who had been such an integral part of his childhood. And great-grandpa Hezekiah Irving, the old gunsmith and war hero, the family patriarch and creator of the family relic, a Tennessee long rifle.
Hezekiah had been past 70 when he married his third wife who was younger than the oldest daughter from his first marriage. Grandmother McAnnally often referred to her father as “the old rascal,” but she remembered how much Hezekiah’s older children had disliked her mother. Before Hezekiah passed, he gave each son one of his rifles, each a finely crafted work of deadly art. Each daughter got a dowry and was married off to the best suitor available. His youngest daughter, Rose Irving, was given in marriage to the young, red-haired Ambrose McAnnally, and she could not have been happier. When her older brother Gabriel died unmarried and with no children, his rifle had gone to Rose. It had since been revered as the family relic.
Gabriel’s Datsun truck labored up Buffalo Road on the steep side of Chickasaw Ridge. Another spasm of pain gripped him just after he left Highway 100 for Linden Pike, but he couldn’t afford another stop. It would be light soon and he had to get to the graveyard. As he crested the ridge, he killed the headlights and crept through the pre-dawn blackness. His cousin, who now owned the land originally granted to Hezekiah Irving, lived just over the ridge, and Gabriel didn’t want anyone who might be up at this early hour to see his headlights. They would know soon enough. Gabe’s note to Estelle told her where he would be, and she would call his cousin to go find him. But that would be later; for now, Estelle still slept. Slipped her a mickey. Gabe smiled then felt guilty.
The turnoff to the family graveyard was hard to see in the dark, but Gabe eventually found it and started up the rutted dirt road. Once off the blacktop and into the woods he felt safe turning the headlights back on. It had been years since he was here last, and he was surprised to see that his cousin had put a gate across the road just before the tractor shed. He supposed it was a reasonable precaution in these days when anything not bolted down could disappear, but it meant he would have to walk the rest of the way. He left the keys in the ignition so his cousin could move the old truck then he pushed his goods through the stout gate and climbed over, all his joints creaking.
When finally on the other side he wanted nothing more than to sit down and rest, but time was growing short. It would be light soon, and he needed to be in the graveyard by sunup. Tempus fugit. Who will be there to greet you? After fishing out a flashlight Gabe slung the haversack and powder horn over his shoulder then hefted the rifle and thermos and began to walk. Gabe had last been here ten or twelve years earlier when he and Estelle and the kids visited his cousin for a family reunion. With the kids came their spouses, and between the two Gabe had three grandchildren.
Gabe brought the family relic to show off. He only knew of one other of Hezekiah’s rifles that survived, and that had been sold out of the family many years before to a collector in Virginia. His cousin marveled at the piece. James wasn’t sure where the rifle given to his grandfather had ended up, but being the youngest son of a youngest son, it sure didn’t go to him. Later they had visited the family graveyard where Hezekiah and his three wives were laid to rest. The old rascal had buried the first two wives at opposite ends of the graveyard so they wouldn’t fight over him for eternity. He reserved a spot for himself in the center of the burial ground, and his third wife, having outlived him, had chosen for her own burial spot a place beside the old man. Her second husband had gone down with a river boat, and his body was never found.
The road seemed longer than Gabe remembered. He bent over panting at the exertion and found he was looking down at a tombstone. “Charlotte Anne Fielding Irving,” Gabe read. Thinking for a minute he remembered that Charlotte was the second wife. He swept the beam of the flashlight across the clearing and saw the obelisk in the center that marked the final resting place of the family patriarch.
It was just past six, and the sky was turning a pale grey. Shapes in the graveyard were beginning to define themselves against the lightening sky. Gabriel ran a hand down the obelisk and read his great-grandfather’s name and looked at the dates. Hezekiah would never know that his birthdate would one day become Armistice Day for the Great War, later Veterans Day. Appropriate since he had spawned generations of veterans. Irvings and McAnnallys had fought in every war since the Revolution. Gabe wondered if Hezekiah had known that the Battle of Gettysburg and the siege of Vicksburg were both ending on the day he died. Probably not since news traveled slowly in those days.
“First things first,” Gabe said. He unzipped the gun case and slid the family relic out. One of his first tasks after that late summer day in the doctor’s office was to take the rifle to a reputable gunsmith who knew a thing or two about antiques. The man had carefully inspected the weapon, marveling over the craftsmanship, and told Gabe that it was in remarkable condition. It would fire, in his opinion, but he didn’t recommend it, especially with a full charge and a projectile. Gabe thanked him, but he wasn’t going to need a full charge and certainly not a projectile.
“Who will be there to greet you on the day of judgement?” Gabe knew because he was going to call ahead.
Gabe measured from the powder horn about one-third of the amount that would have normally been used if firing a musket ball. He used a small patch of cloth as wading and pushed it and the powder down the barrel with the ramrod. He leaned the rifle against the obelisk and reached again into the haversack. He drew out an enameled tin cup and a bottle of Jack Daniels, a retirement gift from the fellows at the machine shop. He thought they would have known after so many years that he was not a whiskey drinker, but it was a thoughtful gift just the same. He poured a small sip into the cup, sniffed it, and held it up to the obelisk over his ancestor’s grave.
“Great-Grandpa Hezekiah, here’s to you.” Gabe drank the whiskey and felt the burn slide down his throat. He poured a second cupful, this one fuller than the first, and slowly tilted the cup until it drizzled onto Hezekiah’s grave. The whiskey soaked into the ground, and Gabe settled himself down against the stone with the rifle across his lap. He reached into the possibles bag and brought out the bottle of painkillers. He spread his handkerchief across his lap and poured the pills into it then opened the thermos with the still warm coffee, and, one by one, he began to swallow the pills with a coffee chaser. The walk to the graveyard had warmed him, but when he stopped, he felt the chill. The whiskey now warmed him as did the coffee, but the stone was cold against his back.
He thought of the cold foxhole in Korea and the burning hatred of the big sergeant. He remembered the cold day at the pond and the stiff body of his brother Rob as Mr. Bauer breathed life back into his blue lips. Rob would be there to greet him, too. For all practical purposes Rob died in the pond on the first day of 1942. What had returned home was an empty shell, but that shell hung on until 1951. Father had taken special care of Rob until he went away to war. Pastor Culbertson visited the house just four months after he had delivered father’s birthday letter. This time he came with a man from the army in the second week of June 1944, but Gabe’s father never returned
In 1951 having just told Estelle the news that he would be going to Korea and hearing her promise to wait for him, Gabe went home to find his mother sitting in an old wooden chair kneading a small pillow in her lap. It was the pillow she had made for Rob on his tenth birthday, decorated with a cross-stitched Lone Ranger, Rob’s favorite radio show hero. Rob never slept without it, usually keeping the pillow propped up where he could look at the masked man until he fell asleep. Even after the accident someone always made sure the Lone Ranger was with Rob. Gabe found his mother now gripping the pillow, squeezing and releasing as she muttered to herself, apparently oblivious to his presence.
“Mother?” Gabe spoke softly. She gripped the pillow and pushed it firmly into her lap then released it. “Mother,” he spoke again.
“He died in his sleep,” she whispered, “he died in his sleep.”
The doctor said the same. First as a question. Then as a tentative statement to himself, spoken as if trying it on for size. Finally with conviction. “He died in his sleep.” The final verdict.
Mother still worried at the pillow and muttered to herself. Her hands gripped and released and constantly folded the Lone Ranger.
Kemosabe. Sergeant Kemo. Chemotherapy.
Gabe managed to get all the pills down with the remaining coffee, about twenty doses he figured. He thought again of Estelle, and a wave of uncertainty gripped his mind. Was this right after all? Was it fair? He began to struggle to his feet, but the pills were already taking hold, or perhaps it was the exhaustion. He thought about forcing a finger down his throat to throw them all up again. He could get back home to Estelle and get back into bed and listen to her breathe again. It had been a good life, but maybe it wasn’t too late to start the chemo and extend it a few more months. He slid back down the side of the stone and fought to control himself.
No, he wouldn’t put Estelle through months of watching him rot away. Maybe if they had caught it earlier. The doctor told her maybe six months, but Gabriel had known since that late summer day that he would only need three. It was dawn on November 11.
“Happy Birthday, you old rascal,” Gabe said to the obelisk. The edge of the red sun was just peaking over the horizon. Gabe felt no pain and his mind was getting a bit fuzzy. It was time to call ahead.
Who will be there to greet you on the day of judgement?
He couldn’t stand but he could do this as easily from a sitting position. He ran his hand over the rifle, over the iron fittings that were typical of Tennessee made weapons. The sideplate was engraved, “Hezekiah Irving, Gunsmith, 1831.”
“One hundred years before I was born,” Gabe said in a slurred speech. “Wonder if you made this on my birthday.”
The only change that had been made to the weapon was a conversion from a flintlock to a percussion lock. No one knew when that had been done, though Grandmother McAnnally said her husband did it before marching off to the big fight at Shiloh. Gabriel pulled the hammer back into a half-cock position and took out a percussion cap with shaky hands, immediately dropping it into the grass. The sun was rising higher, and he had to hurry. He pulled out another cap and with both hands pushed in down onto the percussion nipple. He raised the heavy rifle, aimed it directly into the morning sun, and pulled the hammer to full cock.
“Who will be there to greet you?”
He pulled the trigger, and the gun flashed out a streak of fire with a report that echoed around the graveyard. Gabriel smiled and placed the rifle on his lap then reached back and patted the tombstone.
“I guess you heard that.”
He thought he might want one of the biscuits now, but he realized he had left them in the truck. The coffee was gone, and he didn’t want more whiskey, so he just sat. Cousin James would make sure that the rifle went to William. That was the right of the oldest son. He had not forgotten Elizabeth. She would get grandmother McAnnally’s tortoise shell brush and the family Bible. He felt sleepy now and listened for Estelle’s rhythmic breathing but heard instead a mourning dove’s call. The sun was unusually bright for this early, and he shielded his eyes. Someone was in the graveyard with him, walking toward him. Gabriel smiled.
“You old rascal.”
Who will be there to greet you? Just look around us Parson Harris. There’s several here.
Two men helped Gabriel to his feet. “Come on, son,” one of them said.
Gabriel smiled. “You look much better without blue lips,” he said to the youngest of the men. The oldest of the men was running a hand along the rifle and nodding. They all dusted Gabriel off and took him by the arms.
“It’s been a good life,” he told them.
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