Wanda Maureen Miller - Last Trip Home: A Story of an Arkansas Farm Girl

Last Trip Home

Copyright 2018 by Wanda Maureen Miller

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published May 15, 2018

Printed in the United States of America

Print ISBN: 978-1-63152-339-7

E-ISBN: 978-1-63152-340-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017958359

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She Writes Press

1563 Solano Ave #546

Berkeley, CA 94707

Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

For Ken, a.k.a. Dr. Frugal and Old Dude,
who has endured much for 25 years.

I changed names and created composite characters for the living generation to protect their privacy. I also reconstructed and simplified a few events to tighten the narrative. Since my life has been long, I omitted nearly half a century, including a third husband, and focused on the more unusual Arkansas years.

Who do you thank you are, the Quane of Anglund?

My daddy, Goode Hall, used to say these words to me on our small farm in Arkansas. Hes been dead now for over two decades, but his words are more profound to me than any of Shakespeares I ever read. Every time I take a step out of my place, I hear, Who do you thank you are, Grace-Mayree, the Quane of Anglund?

California, December 1995

Give your kin a decent burial.

I buried Daddy on Christmas Eve in Arkansas. Even in death, he was inconsiderate. Nick and I were getting ready to go to a private party at our tennis club when Aunt Desser called with the news. It was always my aunts, Desser or Guster, Daddys younger sisters, who called with bad news. None of my older relatives had owned a telephone long enough to feel free to waste hard-earned money on a long-distance call just to chat. I had longed for this call all my adult life.

In my recurring premenstrual murder fantasy, Daddys death is always dramatic. The setting is always the middle of the night, in the sharecropper shack. He is driven over the edge, by despair or, perhaps, by some act of disobedience, maybe mine. He and Mama are in the front bedroom. He shoots her first with the .22 rifle he uses for squirrel hunting.

Asleep in the side room, I am awakened by the shot and filled with dread, but I am unable to move. I conveniently remain frozen while he continues his bloody path through the front room, where my younger, handicapped sister, Violet, is asleep on a pallet. I hear Violets piteous cries as she begs him not to kill her. One more shot, and I am up. I stumble over the trunk on the floor and am unable to save my sister.

I hear him thump heavily into the middle room, where so many bad things happened. I turn on the light and fling myself fearlessly at him before he shoots my older brother, Joe Buck. Sometimes, I allow Daddy merely to wound Joe Buck,so I will have to drag us both to the hospital later. Daddy is always wearing the dingy white Jockey shorts he wore when he walked around the house at night, when he sat in the pink plastic platform rocker and read or watched television. With superhuman strength, I wrestle the gun away from him. Sometimes he shoots me in the strugglea serious wound, but not mortal.

He throws me against the wall, but I keep coming back. Sometimes, I beat him to death with his own gun. I never shoot him. Thats too quick and impersonal, letting a bullet kill him. I prefer a hands-on approach. Touching him in real life repels me, but, in my revenge fantasy, I am thrilled to grab him by his leathery neck and beat his head against the wall until his skull turns to mush and his brains drain through the hole in the floor where I used to sweep dirt. His last breath makes my breath quicken.

The reality was less dramatic. Aunt Desser got right to the point. Grace-Mayree, your daddys dead. Nobody in my family pronounced my middle name, Marie, correctly. I heard her cry softly. I felt the blow to the belly people are supposed to feel when a parent dies, but I tightened the stomach muscles around it. I needed time to examine my reaction and decide how to respond without being a hypocrite.

She continued, He died suddenly. A heart attack, they thank.

I waited for more, something more dramatic.

Aunt Desser broke the silence. I dont thank he suffered much, Grace baby. His heart just give out, Ruby said. Your stepmama was with him.

Didnt suffer much? That wasnt what I was waiting for. Right before I numbed myself, I felt a flash of anger. It wasnt fair that he died quickly and quietly. He should have died in agony, moaning and begging for mercy and forgiveness. An ordinary heart attack, his first one, and he died? Maybe at eighty he was too old to die in the midst of a scandalshot or beaten to death. But couldnt he have died from a brain tumor? Or crazed from a venereal disease? Or from lung cancer after chain-smoking all those unfiltered Camels? Instead, he died peacefully at home with my stepmother, Ruby, at his side.

With the phone at my ear, I pictured Aunt Desser, smart and energetic enough to run a large company, solid and block-shaped like her motherMee Maw, we called her. My aunt would be sitting heavily, knees apart, in her spotless little house, built by her late husband.

After another long pause, Aunt Desser spoke again, hesitantly, maybe to see if I was still there. Im sorry to bring this up, Grace-Mayree, but we have to make arrangements.

Arrangements. I knew this word. It meant funerals and coffins and flowers. I tried to snap back and sound normal.

Of course, I said. I couldnt leave Desser and Guster to handle this alone. Aunt Guster was prone to nervous spells and not as strong as her older sister.

Is he at Wilson Funeral Home? I knew he was. All my dead relatives were arranged there.

Yes, he is. But we cant get anybody to bury him on Monday, that being Christmas Day and all. It has to be either Sunday or Tuesday.

That makes it a little tight, doesnt it? I knew without being told that I was the holdup, since I would need time to get there. It was just like Daddy to expect everybody to work around his schedule. I made a quick decision. Lets shoot for Sunday, Christmas Eve, and get it over with. Ill try to get a flight out tonight or early tomorrow.

Thats good, honey. Im glad you said that. She didnt even try to hide the relief in her voice.

Im sure youve had enough of funerals, I said.

We talked a little then about the coincidence that her husband and Gusters and now Daddy, all three of the patriarchsthough we didnt use the word patriarchhad died this year, within two weeks of one another.

Aunt Desser spoke again hesitantly, elliptically, but I could fill in the gaps. I knew the language.

Theres another problem. Nobody has called Joe Buck or Violet.

Ill call them. I knew it was my job to call my older brother and younger sister.

Well, she said, thats not all. Ruby said for nobody to call Joe Buck. She said your daddy didnt want him called when he died.

I had heard Daddy say that myself: I dont want Joe Buck called. He dont care a thang about me. He thought excluding my brother from his funeral would be the ultimate punishment.