Rabbit, Run - John Updike [129]
They go to the cemetery. He and his father and Janice’s father and the undertaker’s man carry the white box to the hearse. There is weight to it but the weight is all wood. The cemetery is beautiful at four o’clock. Its nurtured green nap slopes down somewhat parallel to the rays of the sun. Tombstones cast long slate shadows. Up a crunching blue gravel lane moves the careful procession; their destination a meek green canopy smelling of earth and ferns. Beyond them at a distance a crescent sweep of black woods; the cemetery is high on the hill, between the town and the forest. Below their feet chimneys smoke. Harry can see across the valley but from here it looks different, more blue. A man on a power lawnmower rides between the worn teeth of tombstones far off. Swallows in a wide ball dip and toss themselves above a stone cottage, a crypt. The white coffin is artfully rolled on casters from the hearse’s deep body onto crimson straps that hold it above the small nearly square-mouthed but deep-dug grave. The small creaks and breaths of effort scratch on a pane of silence. Silence. A cough. The flowers have followed them; here they are under the tent. Behind Harry’s feet a neat mound of dirt topped with squares of sod waits to be replaced and meanwhile breathes a deep word of earth. The undertaking men look pleased, fold their pink hands in front of their flies. Silence.
“The Lord is my shepherd; therefore can I lack nothing.”
Eccles’ voice made fragile by the outdoors; the distant buzz of the power mower halts respectfully. Rabbit’s chest vibrates with excitement and strength; he is sure his girl has ascended to Heaven. This feeling fills Eccles’ recited words like a living body a skin. “O God, whose most dear Son did take little children into his arms and bless them; Give us Grace, we beseech thee, to entrust the soul of this child to thy never-failing care and love, and bring us all to the heavenly kingdom; through the same thy Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”
“Amen,” Mrs. Springer whispers.
Yes. That is how it is. He feels them all, the heads as still around him as tombstones, he feels them all one, all one with the grass, with the hothouse flowers, all, the undertaker’s men, the unseen caretaker who has halted his mower, all gathered into one here to give his unbaptized baby force to leap to Heaven.
An electric switch is turned, the straps begin to lower the casket into the grave and stop. Eccles makes a cross of sand on the lid; stray grains roll one by one down the curved lid into the hole. A pink hand throws crumpled petals. “Deal graciously, we pray thee, with all those who mourn, that, casting every care on thee …” The straps whine again. Janice at his side staggers. He holds her arm and even through the cloth it feels hot. A small breath of wind makes the canopy fill and flap like a sail. The smell of flowers rises toward them. “… and the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, now and for evermore. Amen.”
Eccles closes his book. Harry’s father and Janice’s, standing side by side, look up and blink. The undertaker’s men begin to be busy with their equipment, retrieving the straps from the hole. Mourners move into the sunshine. “Casting every care on thee.” He has done that; he feels full of strength. The sky greets him. It is as if he has been crawling in a cave and now at last beyond the dark recession of crowding rocks he has seen a patch of light; he turns, and Janice’s face, dumb with grief, blocks the light. “Don’t look at me,” he says. “I didn’t kill her.”
This comes out of his mouth clearly, in tune with the simplicity he feels now in everything. Heads talking softly