Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [99]
Mozelle said, “That gospel crowd alone keeps him busy night and day.”
The reporter addressed the next question to both of them. “What would you say is the secret of his success?”
They both thought about it and Mozelle spoke first. “I would say that it’s his love of pageantry and knowing people. He told me one time, he said, ‘Aunt Mo’—Mo, that’s what he calls me—he said, ‘Aunt Mo, people need a little help to cry over their departed.’ He said most people try to hold it in when they should let go and get it over with. And believe me, with his theater background he knows exactly how to tug at your heartstrings . . . with music and lighting and all. He really knows how to pull it out of you.”
“That’s true. I’ll guarantee you will not go to one of Cecil’s funerals and not wind up crying along with the rest of them. I know. He did Old Lady Brock’s funeral and by the time we were halfway into the service he had me carrying on like she was my own mother. By the time he’s done you come out feeling like a dishrag—but you feel good too, don’t you?”
“You do,” said the other aunt. “And with him it’s not just a business. I’ve never been to one of his services that he didn’t get all emotional himself. Every time, no matter who the departed is, he sits in the back and has himself a good cry. I think he enjoys his work as much as the customers do. And he is not afraid to spend money. He hires only the best cosmeticians and hair people.”
“That’s right. I’ve yet to go to one of his funerals where the family didn’t say that the deceased looked better dead than when they were alive.”
The reporter thanked them and went home and wrote her story. She was tempted to headline the piece “Better Dead Than Alive” but thought better of it and used “Funeral King Kind to His Mother” instead.
Ferris’s Funeral
TRUE ENOUGH, when Ferris Oatman died suddenly in 1952 of a massive stroke, Cecil Figgs was the first one called. Although it was seventy-five miles from Ferris’s hometown, Cecil decided the service was to be held at the old Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham, where the Oatmans had sung at so many sacred-music festivals. On the day of the funeral every gospel group in America showed up to pay their respects. Everyone said it was one of the biggest the gospel world had seen, by far. Besides all the Oatmans and the Varners and the devoted fans, and the gospel groups by the hundreds, so many buses rolled in that they did not have room to park them all. Even the mayor and the governor himself showed up.
Ferris’s large white casket was covered in a spray of white carnations with black musical notes shaped out of little black pipe stems that Cecil had personally designed. As a tribute, Beatrice Woods, backed up by a stage full of twenty-six gospel groups, sang “There Will Be Peace in the Valley.” By the time it was over, Minnie was so torn apart she had to be put in a wheelchair and rolled out of the auditorium. It was a fine funeral, just the kind that Cecil Figgs loved. Big and showy. Everything had gone well except for Ferris’s brother Le Roy. He had been so riddled with guilt over leaving the group and joining up with the hillbilly band that he showed up drunk and kept yelling all through the service for Ferris to forgive him. Betty Raye was the only member of the family that would speak to him that day.
Hamm had driven Betty Raye over to Birmingham for her father’s funeral and he used this opportunity to shake hands and introduce himself to as many people as he could. Before the service started, while working the crowd, Hamm had watched the governor out of the corner of his eye. He had never been this close to a real governor, a man of such power and importance. He noticed with fascination how everyone clambered around him, how all the men on his staff jumped when he said jump, and how the entire auditorium hung on his every word as he delivered his short eulogy.
Before the day was over and they went