No Dark Valley by Jamie Langston Turner Read Free Book Online Page B

watch the clock and brace herself for it, but sometimes she would forget and be caught by surprise. Often she could feel the train coming before she actually heard it, but even then she was never fully prepared for the whistle.
    She had never thought to ask her grandmother during all those years whatever possessed her to buy a house less than thirty yards from a railroad track that was still in use. She remembered how the windows would rattle as the train rumbled by, how the floor would vibrate. No doubt her grandparents had gotten a low price for such a piece of real estate. They had probably thought they were getting a real bargain. Celia could imagine the former owners making sure they didn’t schedule appointments with potential buyers during one of the two times each day when the train came tearing by. She could picture them turning somersaults after her grandparents signed the papers, thanking their lucky stars for unloading the house, and then moving far away to a tranquil hillside out in the country.
    Two men in dark suits walked into the chapel from a side door and sat in chairs on the small platform. Celia sensed a stirring in the rows behind her and saw that the casket was being borne in by eight men walking slowly down the center aisle. She wondered if any of her relatives knew that the custom at most funerals now was to place the casket on a rolling stand and let the pallbearers walk beside it instead of actually carrying it. Of course, maybe Walsh’s Funeral Services didn’t have such a rolling conveyance available. It didn’t look like the kind of establishment that spent a lot of extra money on up-to-date amenities.
    As the pallbearers made their way down the aisle, everyone turned sideways to watch the procession. Celia wondered if anyone else was thinking about how much like a wedding this part was. The men were surefooted and kept the casket level. Mr. Shelby must have met with them and given them instructions beforehand. Maybe they had actually practiced it.
    Celia picked out Doreen’s husband at once. Ralph Hubert still had the build of a football player, carrying his part of the burden easily. He actually looked a lot better than Celia would have predicted. No potbelly or scruffy beard. If she didn’t know who he was, she’d almost be tempted to call him handsome. She knew if he opened his mouth, though, every syllable he uttered would give him away as a very blue-collar small-town former high school football player who had graduated only because of the mercy of several teachers.
    As they passed her row, Celia stared intently at the casket. And this is how it all ends, Grandmother , she thought. You’re put in a box, then carried in, then carried back out, then dumped in a hole. The end . Of course Grandmother wouldn’t agree. If she heard Celia sum it up that way, she’d turn at once in her Bible to the book of John and start reading aloud those verses about mansions, and then she’d flip back to Revelation and read about the twelve gates and the crystal river and the light that shines eternally and all the rest of it. If there was one thing Grandmother had had plenty of, it was faith.
    Celia felt a thick suffocating sadness. How pathetic, she told herself, to live eighty-seven years in the same area and never see the world, to rise day after day and do the same things, to have such a long list of rules to live by, to miss out on so much. But even before she finished the thought, her grandmother’s face, which she had seen less than a half hour ago in the open casket, rose before her—the set of her lips, the strong brow, the parchment skin—and she knew beyond a doubt that Grandmother would take issue with her on this point, also. “Don’t go feeling sorry for me,” she would say. “I did exactly what I was supposed to do. It suited me just fine.”
    At least I got away from here and didn’t end up like her , Celia thought.