The Cleaning

The Cleaning for James Still by Wade Hall 95 ("The Cleaning" was read at the 80th birthday celebration for James Still, held at the Hindman Settlement School, July 16, 1986. It is based on a Southern folk custom familiar to Alabama natives Hall and Still—the annual cemetery cleaning in preparation for the protracted meeting or revival in late summer.) It was hot and dry enough to drive a preacher to drinking. It hadn't rained for almost a month and the cotton and peanuts had just about burned up in the ground. People looked up hopefully at every wisp of a cloud that shaded the sun. Wells were going dry and Smuteye Creek had stopped flowing. Catfish flopped and gasped on the dry creekbed. Daddy and Mama had gone to town to renew a note at the bank. I was fanning myself under the scuppernong arbor next to the chicken yard when Mr. Daniel Driggers stopped his 1938 rusty red Ford oickup in the front yard. I could hear iim untying the haywire from the door before the dust settled. Bashful before strangers, I slipped up behind the back corner of the house next to the cape jessamine bush and peeped around. 'Hey," he hollered standing in the deep sand by his truck. "Hey, anybody home?" I slid down and crawled under the house. A hen, cooling on a nest by the chimney, cackled and flustered out, leaving a slick, speckled egg. "Joe Tom, is that you under that house?" I heard Mr. Dan 1 walking around. Then he tapped the clapboards with his cane. "You tell your papa and mama they's to be a working over to Macedonia next Saturday a week. We expect y'all to be there, seeing how you got more graves than anybody else to cut off. You hear?" I raised my head, hitting it on a sleeper, but didn't cry out. I knew Mr. Dan'l was too big to bend down. Soon I heard his truck door squeak and the motor start. I buried my head in the cool underhouse sand till I was sure he was out of sight down the Omega road. I told Daddy about the working when they got in from town just before dark. I carried in stovewood for Mama. She made biscuits and fried the steak Daddy bought at the Jitney Jungle. "It's gonna be a heap of work for us," Daddy said at the supper table. "You know I don't have nobody on the place who can help this year. Just me and your mama and you. I can't afford to hire nobody. But we got to have them graves cleaned off before meeting starts. It would be a disgrace to our name. Joe Tom, you got to help. Now, don't pout. You 11 have a master time. You can rake. There'll be good things to eat. Your mama can make a sweet potato pie to carry." Every year before I'd spent most of the day playing crack-the-whip and hiding and tag with the other younguns. But I knew 1 was getting too big for such games. Next February I would be twelve. It was about time for me to shoulder a man's responsibilities. Saturday fell on the hottest day of the summer. Everything green had turned a shriveled-up brown from the heat. We got up before day, gathered the hoes, a rake, and pitchfork into the bed of the truck, and set off by first light down Beaver Dam Road. We rumbled over the wooden bridge and pulled up Boswell Hill. The creek was so dry we didn't see any sign of beavers. The sun was just lighting up the old empty Boswell house when we passed. I could see through the open hallway to the well-house in back. They said old Mr. Boswell used to live there with his son and his son's wife till his son shot him for doing something to her he shouldn't have. But they never told me what it was. We halted across the road from the church under the tall pine...