Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [100]
1. Hamm had discovered exactly what office he wanted to run for.
2. Hamm had met Cecil Figgs.
Emmett Crimpler
BEATRICE WOODS HAD been the first to call Dorothy and tell her what had happened to Minnie. Dorothy immediately got on the phone and called Betty Raye, who had taken the baby and gone over to be by her mother’s side.
Dorothy said, “Honey, I just heard. Is there anything you need or anything Doc and I can do to help?”
“Oh, thank you,” Betty Raye said, “but I just don’t know what anybody can do now. I’m so worried about her—she won’t see the doctor, and it’s been almost three weeks since she’s eaten a thing.”
“Oh, dear. Well, keep me posted and just know we are all sending you our love.”
After Ferris’s funeral Minnie had said to the boys and Uncle Floyd, “Take me home.” They’d put her on the bus and drove her, Minnie crying all the way. When she got to the little house in Sand Mountain, she announced, after the boys helped her get in bed, “I can’t go on without Ferris. I’ve come home to die.”
The entire family was so upset that they called in her personal preacher, the Reverend W. W. Nails, and prayed over her. But it did no good. “It’s no use, Reverend Nails,” she said weakly. “Yea . . . though I have oft walked through the valley of the shadow of death, due to high blood pressure, diabetes, inflammatory arthritis, and gout, I always prayed myself out the other side. But now I don’t want to come out the other side. I’m just gonna lay here reading Scriptures until I go.”
The Reverend W. W. Nails came out of the bedroom and reported, “That woman has gone sick to the soul with grief and nothing can help her now except a miracle.”
Everyone pleaded with her. Betty Raye cried and begged her to at least eat a cracker. But she would not. The house was flooded with flowers and letters from fans, although nothing helped. Chester the dummy came in and pleaded his little wooden heart out. “Oh, Momma Oatman,” he said, “get up, we need you. What will happen to the Oatman family without you?”
“Little Chester,” she said, “honey, I lost the will to sing when we lost your Uncle Ferris. . . . You take care of Floyd and be a good boy.”
Floyd could not take it and ran out of the room and locked himself in the bathroom again.
Bervin and Vernon came in, not knowing what to say. She took their hands and said, “Boys, music is left my heart. You and the rest is going to have to be brave and go on without me.”
There was great speculation in the entire gospel world. Articles appeared in the Singing News wondering if the death of Ferris meant the end of the Oatmans. Someone even called and asked if their bus was for sale.
But help was on the way in a six-foot-five-inch package called Crimpler. A few days later a green Studebaker drove up to the house and he got out.
Vernon saw him first and exclaimed, “It’s Emmett Crimpler!” The boys threw the door of her bedroom open and said, “Somebody’s here to see you, Momma.” Minnie was so weak at this point she could barely sit up. Emmett walked in and stood at the end of her bed and, not saying a word, he opened his mouth and sang to her “Sweeter as the Days Go By” in the most beautiful bass voice she had ever heard. After he finished he said, “Minnie, if you can hear me, I’ve come to tell you that I’m available to sing with you if you want me.”
Minnie sat up a little more in the bed. Emmett Crimpler was considered, along with J. D. Sumner and James (Big Chief) Wetherington, as one of the great basses in gospel music. He told Minnie he had had a dream where Ferris had come to him and told him to leave the group he was with and to go over and take his place.
After an hour she said to Bervin, “Run down to the drive-in and get me an order of fries and a ham-and-cheese sandwich.”
Emmett did not mention that he had wanted to leave the Harmony Boys for over a year but it did not matter. His arrival had been a miracle, said Reverend Nails.
Minnie had lost over thirty-five pounds—and the Oatmans were on the road once more!
A Man of the