Death In The Family, A - James Agee [131]
Miraculous. Magnificent. He was sure he had better not ask what they were. He saw a giant butterfly clearly, and how he moved his wings so quietly and grandly, and the colors of the wings, and how he sprang straight up into the sky and how the colors all took fire in the sunshine, and he felt that he probably had a fair idea what “magnificent” meant. But “miraculous.” He still saw the butterfly, which was resting there again, waving his great wings. Maybe “miraculous” was the way the colors were streaks and spots in patterns on the wings, or the bright flickering way they worked in the light when he flew fast, straight upwards. Miraculous. Magnificent.
He could see it very clearly, because his uncle saw it so clearly when he told about it, and what he saw made him feel that a special and good thing was happening. He felt that it was good for his father and that lying there in the darkness did not matter so much. He did not know what this good thing was, but because his uncle felt that it was good, and felt so strongly about it, it must be even more of a good thing than he himself could comprehend. His uncle even spoke of believing in God, or anyway, if anything could ever make him believe in God, and he had never before heard his uncle speak of God except as if he disliked Him, or anyway, disliked people who believed in Him. So it must be about as good a thing as a thing could be. And suddenly he began to realize that his uncle told it to him, out of everyone he might have told it to, and he breathed in a deep breath of pride and of love. He would not admit it to those who did believe in God, and he would not tell it to those who didn’t, because he cared so much about it and they might swear at it, but he had to tell somebody, so he told it to him. And it made it much better than it had been, about his father, and about his not being let to be there at just that time he most needed to be there; it was all right now, almost. It was not all right about his father because his father could never come back again, but it was better than it had been, anyway, and it was all right about his not being let be there, because now it was almost as if he had been there and seen it with his own eyes, and seen the butterfly, which showed that even for his father, it was all right. It was all right and he felt as his uncle did. There was nobody else, not even his mother, not even his father if he could, that he even wanted to tell, or talk about it to. Not even his uncle, now that it was told.
“And that son of a bitch!” Andrew said.
He was not quite sure what it meant but he knew it was the worst thing you could call anybody; call anybody that, they had to fight, they had a right to kill you. He felt as if he had been hit in the stomach.
“That Jackson,” Andrew said; and now he looked so really angry that Rufus realized that he had not been at all angry before. “ ‘Father’ Jackson,” Andrew said, “as he insists on being called.
“Do you know what he did?”
He glared at him so, that Rufus was frightened. “What?” he asked.
“He said he couldn’t read the complete, the complete burial service over your father because your father had never been baptized.” He kept glaring at Rufus; he seemed to he waiting for him to answer. Rufus looked up at him, feeling scared and stupid. He was glad his uncle did not like Father Jackson, but that did not seem exactly the point, and he could not think of anything to say.
“He said he was deeply sorry,” Andrew savagely caricatured the inflection, “but it was simply a rule of the Church.”
“Some church,” he snarled. “And they call themselves Christians. Bury a man who’s a hundred times the man he’ll ever be, in his stinking, swishing black petticoats, and a hundred times as good a man too, and ‘No, there are certain requests and recommendations I cannot make Almighty God for the repose of this soul, for he never stuck his head under a holy-water tap.’ Genuflecting, and ducking and bowing and scraping,