After the Flag Has Been Folded Read online

  Or, given the amount of money she was left with, maybe she ought to dig a hole in the backyard and stick him there. Mama was crying lots now. Seems like every time a telegram came, she got mad and cried some more, but she had quit yelling at God. Instead she just started cussing out the Army.

  “What the hell do they mean by ‘returning his remains’?” Mama asked. “How much is left of Dave?”

  Hugh Lee didn’t have an answer. No one did.

  The next telegram was sent on July 27, 1966, at 12:28 P.M.

  MRS. SHELBY SPEARS TRAILER COURT WEST BROADWAY ROGERSVILLE TENN REMAINS OF YOUR HUSBAND, DAVID, WILL BE CONSIGNED TO THE NASH-WILSON FUNERAL HOME, ROGERSVILLE, TENNESSEE IN ACCORDANCE WITH YOUR REQUEST. PLEASE DO NOT SET DATE OF FUNERAL UNTIL PORT AUTHORITIES NOTIFY YOU AND THE FUNERAL DIRECTOR DATE AND SCHEDULED TIME OF ARRIVAL DESTINATION.

  That was followed by one dated July 29.

  REMAINS OF S/SGT DAVID P SPEARS ESCORTED BY SFC WILLIE R HUFF DEPARTING SAN FRANCISCO DELTA FLIGHT NO 806 2:10 A.M. 30 JULY FOR NASH-WILSON FUNERAL HOME ROGERSVILLE TENNESSEE ARRIVING KNOXVILLE TENN VIA DELTA FLIGHT NO 534 7:12 P.M. 30 JULY. REQUEST FUNERAL DIRECTOR RECEIVE REMAINS AND ESCORT AT KNOXVILLE NEAREST TERMINAL TO ROGERSVILLE CG WA MILITARY TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT AND TERMINAL SERVICE OAKLAND ARMY BASE OAKLAND CALIF.

  Daddy’s escort, Willie Huff, wasn’t a close friend or anything like that. Mama didn’t know him or any of the escorts the Army sent to assist with the funeral. Not even the pallbearers. They were just soldiers, too, like Daddy, who did their best to carry out their orders. I’ve often wondered if Willie Huff thought of us over the years. Did he worry about what became of the Widow Spears and her grieving children? Or did he get shipped to Vietnam and come home in a casket, too?

  Mama saved the telegrams along with the last few letters that Daddy wrote and the last ones she’d penned that Daddy didn’t live long enough to receive. She kept them wrapped with a red ribbon and stuffed into a clear plastic pouch for decades, until December 2001 when she mailed them all to me. I hadn’t asked for them, but I suspect she knew how much I would cherish them. Words can breathe life into a dead man and make a daughter remember her father’s voice. Words can resurrect time forgotten and love lost. Perhaps it’s only for a moment, but for a daughter who has spent a lifetime without her daddy, sometimes that’s enough.

  Along with the daily telegrams were copies of the local news reports of Daddy’s death. The newspapers also told stories on a larger scale, such as the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in an antitrust case proposing a move of the Atlanta Braves to Milwaukee. The court threw out the case and ruled that the Braves would remain in Atlanta. Other headline news included that the Holston Army Ammunition plant in Kingsport would add an additional four hundred employees, bringing its total full-time staff to twenty-five hundred. The plant produced RDX, the basic ingredient in mortar rounds like the one that killed my father. And the Kingsport Times ran headlines welcoming home the town’s newest celebrity, Vicki Hurd, the newly elected Miss Tennessee.

  One of the first reports of Daddy’s death was stuck in a corner section of the Rogersville Review. The headline read: “Rogersville Man Is Killed in Viet Action.”

  ROGERSVILLE • A Rogersville man was among those listed Tuesday by the Defense Department as killed in action in Viet Nam. Staff Sgt. David Spears was killed during combat with the enemy last Sunday. Spears’ wife, of the Sluder [sic] Trailer Court in Rogersville, was notified of her husband’s death Tuesday. Spears served with the Artillery, 25th Infantry Division.

  Uncle James drove Uncle Woody and Mama in his car to Knoxville to meet Daddy’s casket. We stayed with Granny Leona. Mama had a car, an old Corvair we had shipped from Hawaii. Frankie and Mama had gone to Virginia to pick it up the week before Daddy died.

  Mama wrote this account of that trip on July 24, the same day Daddy was struck by a mortar round that would leave him bleeding to death in a country half a world away:

  Dear Darling,

  …Frankie and I got the bus and went to Norfolk after the car. We rode all night Thursday and got there Friday, picked up the car and started right back. I think we were in Norfolk for one hour and were on our way out. I was scared to death to start driving out of there but we made it just fine and didn’t even miss the road one time. We were so tired and sleepy but we didn’t have enough money to get a room and it was so hot we couldn’t sleep in the car. We came to Rogersville and I wonder really how we did it. We drove 490 miles and stopped three times. We made it in 10 hours and coming through the mountains in Virginia that was really a good time. We bought $6.44 worth of gas and didn’t use any oil…. One time the car quit and wouldn’t start and some men pushed it to a service station for us. They cleaned the battery cable, which was all corroded, and it never give us any more trouble. That noise and the shaking got worse. I’ll have to see what is causing that. I was driving through Virginia and keeping up with all the big fine cars. They sure give me some looks when I would pass them. Just like “that damn car won’t run like that.” Frankie and I came on in and we were so tired we couldn’t rest and still feel beat and awful.

  I left the girls with your Mom and went after them last night. I have promised them I would take them to Dale’s house today to go swimming if they would be good and they sure didn’t forget it. I am going to take them over in awhile and they are planning to get that ugly bulldog. I’ll probably have to run the kids and that dog off. They are tickled to death about that ugly thing and how can I tell Dale they can’t have it? He thinks he is doing something great for them and I guess to the kids it is wonderful, but I can look at that dog and get scared myself…. Darling, write to me for I sure need those letters. I am going to get ready and go over to Dale’s for awhile. I’ll be thinking of you and wishing you were here.

  Yours forever,

  Shelby

  Mama’s tears still stain the pages of this letter that my father never received. I can’t help but wonder: If she was scared to drive a car through the mountains of Virginia all by herself, how did she ever muster up the courage to face a lifelong journey all alone?

  CHAPTER 4

  just as i am

  MAMA DECIDED TO BURY DADDY AT ANDREW JOHNSON NATIONAL CEMETERY OVER IN GREENEVILLE, Tennessee. Some of Daddy’s kin didn’t like that idea; they wanted him buried at McCloud, the town where he’d lived as a boy. To try and make them happy, Mama arranged for the funeral service to be held at McCloud Baptist Church, where Daddy had been baptized. But she made it clear that deciding where to bury Daddy was her decision to make, and the way Mama saw it, country graveyards often get overrun with blackberry brambles.

  “Greeneville was a national cemetery and would always be taken care of,” Mama told me, explaining her decision when I got curious enough to ask about it. “Country cemeteries are not always taken care of. They become overgrown, run-down, and sometimes graves can’t be found years later. I didn’t want that to happen.” Besides, tending to her husband’s grave wasn’t something she intended to do. As it turns out, Mama made the right decision. Today, visitors to East Tennessee wouldn’t ever be able to find McCloud on the map. The dirt-farm settlement has become part of the town of Persia.

  The whole burial thing mystified me. I’d never seen a dead person before, and Daddy was my first one. I hadn’t been allowed to go to Granny Ruth’s funeral. Instead, I hid behind the vanity in one of the bedrooms and cried. But truth be told, I wasn’t grieving as much as I was just plumb mad—Frankie was doing something I wasn’t allowed to do.

  Before she brought us to the funeral home to pay our last respects to Daddy, Mama took us shopping. She bought matching linen dresses for Linda and me, a white shirt and clip-on navy tie for Frankie, and cartons of Salem cigarettes for herself.

  I hated that dress. It was itchy and too tight, and what’s more, I felt ugly in it. I think it also had something to do with the way the lady at Parks-Belk Department Store studied me when Mama told her she was looking for something nice, for a mili
tary funeral.

  “Oh,” the clerk remarked. “Was your husband the one who was killed in Vietnam?”

  Looking down, Mama replied softly, “Yes, ma’am.”

  I had been sticking my hands between the piles of folded shirts and slacks and tapping my foot on the wide-plank floors. But I stopped and looked up at Mama. I couldn’t tell what she was feeling, but I felt something like embarrassment or shame. Like we’d all done something wrong for which Daddy had paid the price, and now the whole town of Rogersville was talking about us. Which, of course, they were.

  Then the lady said something I will never forget: “Seems like tragedy has come to roost in Rogersville. Did you hear about the accident? Out on Lee Highway? A woman and her two babies were run over by a semi. Her little ole car ran right up underneath that big truck. Killed them all instantly. Her car was all mashed up.”

  Some folks treat tragedies like jokes. They get on a roll and start telling all the one-liners they know as quickly as they can before they lose their audience.

  Mama shook her head. No, she hadn’t heard about the wreck. But she didn’t look too shocked. After all, there was a reason the menfolk called the two-lane Robert E. Lee Highway the Bloody 11-W. I remembered the photo of the accident that ran in the June 30 copy of the Rogersville Review. I’d seen the picture in the newspaper box outside the grocery store. Daddy’s cousin Mary Ellen had the newspaper spread out on her kitchen table, opened to that story. The car, crumpled up like notebook paper, was pushed up against the door of a semi with the words “Big Mama” sketched on it. Kimberly Hobbs, two, and her sister Kristi, one, were killed instantly along with their twenty-year-old mother, identified only as Mrs. Glen Hobbs, of Surgoinsville. The article said the car had swerved off the highway and then back into the path of the truck.

  I tried to shut out the image of what that mashed-up car looked like. I wondered if the little girls had felt any pain. And if you ran your car up underneath a big ole semi, would it cut your head off? I shuddered. Long trucks had always scared me.

  Before moving to Hawaii, we’d lived in Columbus, Georgia, where Daddy trained troops at Fort Benning. Mama had Linda to tend to, so Frankie had to get me to Mrs. Penny’s first-grade class at Edgewood Elementary School. He walked me on Morris Road, a main truck route connecting the business districts of Macon Road and Victory Drive. The roar of semi engines silenced the playgrounds at Edgewood School. Layers of asphalt trembled underneath the trucks’ unyielding weight. Instead of a sidewalk, Morris Road had a drainage ditch filled with grass. Whenever I heard those trucks coming, I scrambled for the ditch. The first time I did it, Frankie looked at me quizzically. He thought I was diving after something. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Hiding,” I replied.

  “From what, stupid?”

  Frankie didn’t like having to walk to school with a girl. Much less his sister.

  “That truck!” I exclaimed. “Those big wheels might suck us right off the road.”

  “You’re so dumb!” he said, walking faster. He didn’t even slow down to help me gather my letter-E pages from the ditch.

  I didn’t say anything else the rest of the way home. No reason to. Frankie was bigger than me. He didn’t have to worry about being sucked under the spinning wheels of a semi. But I knew from the way those trucks blew my hair straight up and my skirt sideways that they could mash me good.

  Now, while I tried on the funeral dress, I kept thinking about that crumbled car on Bloody Highway 11. Linda’s dress was a perfect fit, but mine was too snug across my chest. There wasn’t a matching dress in a larger size, and Mama didn’t want to fool with it anymore. She needed a smoke. So she paid the lady and turned on her heels. We kids followed close behind.

  I was still wondering about the terror those little girls must’ve felt when the wheels of that semi pressed down over them. I knew any screams for their mama would have gone unheard. I couldn’t figure out who I felt sorrier for, them or us. Which was worse? Being mashed or having your head cut off? Either way, I figured the saleslady to be right about one thing—it did look like tragedy had come to roost in Rogersville.

  NASH-WILSON FUNERAL HOME sat atop a hill. A low, long brick house surrounded on each side by massive colonial homes with towering white Corinthian columns, it looked like the poor relative. Mama was taking us kids to view Daddy’s body. Entering the driveway, we passed through a wrought-iron gate with matching lampposts on each side. I wondered what they looked like at night.

  The whole front yard was a parking lot. The first of two cars in the lot was long and as black as my patent leathers. I wondered if someone shined it with butter at night. The other car was white and much shorter. Mama pulled up next to the black car, near the front porch, and parked.

  Even though July mornings in Tennessee are hot enough to toast bread on the rooftops, Mama insisted all of us kids dress up. My linen dress itched in spite of my cotton slip. Everything stuck to me, and I had to yank at my anklets to keep them up. Getting out of the backseat, I pulled my slip off my chest, allowing air between my skin and my clothes for a brief moment. I felt sweat trace down to my panties. I let go and once again the slip wrapped me like a warm compress. I so wanted to leave, to go home, put on my shorts, and stand in front of the window air conditioner for a long time.

  I looked over at Linda winding her way around the back end of our blue car. Mama held her tiny hand. Linda was sweating. Her dark pixie hair was matted around her face. Her cheeks were flushed pink as rose petals. She stared at her feet.

  Frankie slammed the door of the car. His hair would have stuck to him, too, but he didn’t have any. The top and sides of his head were shaved so close I could see the freckles on his scalp. He looked funny in a white dress shirt and navy pants, like a tent preacher. Give him a Bible, and he could baptize us all in our own sweat.

  Mama nodded quietly at Frankie and me to follow her. We followed Mama and Linda up the three brick steps, walking between tall white pillars. Mama reached for the brass knob of the glossy white double doors. The door on the right opened from the inside. Everything was quiet.

  A man wearing a gray suit greeted Mama and welcomed us in a hushed murmur. The first thing I noticed was the air-conditioning. The cool temperature made my dress slip from my body. The itching stopped, but now I had goose bumps and I needed to pee.

  Nash-Wilson was fancy, like those big city churches. There was gleaming furniture with puffy seats made of red crushed velvet. The carved wooden legs on the chairs looked like claws. A crystal lamp sat atop an end table with the same claw feet. The lamp gave off the only fake light in the entry. The light reflected off a gold-trimmed mirror mounted behind the man who was whispering to Mama. I could watch him in the mirror without actually staring at him. Mama didn’t approve of staring. The walls were papered silver-white. The hallway led only to the left. I noticed a multipaned window with beads of water on each square. I decided not to ask about the bathroom; I’d wait.

  Still grasping Linda’s hand, Mama headed off after the man. Frankie and I followed them. Mama’s spiked black heels sunk into the red carpet that looked like dried blood. I was so busy watching her shoes that I forgot to walk and Frankie had to push me from behind. We passed a closed door on the right and rounded a corner. I heard music, a familiar tune. I was no longer hot, but my hands were sweaty and sticky.

  We turned left and went through two doors. I looked up. Little round moons hung from the ceiling. Underneath the moons were rows of pews, like the ones at church, only a lot shorter. Perhaps, I thought, this is a church for little people. Frankie really could preach here. There was a book on a varnished pine podium to my right. An aisle led to a front altar. There was no podium for preaching, but there was a large, lead-colored trunk where it should have been. There was even a cross made from red and white flowers. I wasn’t sure what was in the trunk. Mama had never sat us down and explained what we were about to see. I don’t think it even occurred to her.

  I saw
a piano to the right and a small organ to the left. A cross was centered on the wall behind the altar. That’s where I’d heard that music before—at church. It was a traditional hymn, sung at the close of nearly every service: “Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me.” I had always liked that song. I could sing it all the way through without the book. “Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me, and that Thou bidd’st me come to Thee, O Lamb of God I come, I come.”

  The man stepped aside to allow Mama access to the aisle. Linda pulled her hand away and stopped four pews from the back. Mama turned and looked at us. Frankie started walking. I followed. Linda stood still, as if she was holding something important, something that would shatter if she moved one inch. Pausing beside her, I challenged her to walk with me. She refused.

  Mama was at the center of the altar, by the open trunk. She turned and looked at me. Her thick lips were tautly turned down. Her brown eyes were scolding. They said, “Get down here and leave your sister be!” I walked on by Linda but not quickly. Time seemed to have no hold over the place.

  Frankie joined Mama; behind them the trunk sat up high on crossed frames. It was gray and as smooth as Mama’s pink nightgown. The cross cast a shadow over it. Turning, I looked at Linda, pleading with her not to abandon me. She saw my plea and looked away, down at her shoes. Angry, I faced forward. I walked faster, my feet moving, my mind shutting down.

  Mama walked over to the bench on the right and sat down, looking away from me toward the wall. She refused to see. I wasn’t scared, but my heart was beating fast and my petticoat was sticking to me again. Frankie had no expression. He was peering into the top half of the trunk. I touched the trunk’s side. It felt cold and wet, like the Popsicle we sometimes got when the ice cream truck circled our neighborhood.