It is mid-afternoon when Mama calls, odd timing, sad news.

"It's Susan's youngest one," she says.  "They were looking at their daddy's loaded .45 in the dresser drawer.  Heard someone coming in the room and threw it back in the drawer too fast."

"When?"  I asked.

"Happened yesterday.  Funeral's tomorrow."

I go to the closet and find no proper funeral clothes for heat stroke weather for the funeral of my friend's son.  Nothing sleeveless in black or navy. I settle for drab.  I'll make the drive early tomorrow.

The earth never cooled during the night, so the sun feels like heat on a burn.  I wear my darkest shades for this, the white hot light of an Alabama August.

I zoom down the interstate and get off at the peach exit, my exit.  At the supermarket-style peach stand, tourists eat samples of watermelons and the late peaches, the white-fleshed freestones leaving an aftertaste of perfume.  Even the fruit flies are sluggish.

"Where is the corn?" insists a loud-voiced woman wearing a halter top that can hardly contain her sun-burned breasts.  She is obviously a half day's drive north of her Florida vacation.

Look around, I think.  Look at the fields, parched pale as ashes.  Better ask for okra, cotton. Ask for something cool to drink.

The two lane road I take now leads into the country where the tourists never go.  There are no restaurants, no hotels, no movie theatres, no doctors.  The road follows the up and down hills like a roller coaster.  It was built slowly, hill by hill, with mules.  The only improvement over the years has been an occasional long-overdue resurfacing.

The last time I saw my friend was only a year ago.  She had built a new house and had invited all the old girl friends for a re-union of sorts.  She had called all bubbly, excited.  "Bring pictures, " she said.

She had meant pictures of then.

I thought she meant pictures of now.

I got there late and the all-girl party was in full swing, the table filled with ice box cakes and melons cut to resemble baskets.  They were disappointed that I had not brought pictures from the good old days of cheerleading for them to borrow and show their daughters.

"I didn't like it much the first time," I remembered aloud, a mistake.

No one said anything for a minute, then they turned to admire a red-haired classmate who looks just exactly like their favorite country singer, they decided. They all have her latest.  She can really tell men off, they said.  She can really belt it out.

At this point, two young men walked through the front door.

"Oh, these are my boys," our hostess said proudly, but I already knew from the portraits on the walls, the coffee table, the TV.

It was the only time I ever saw him.  He was the younger son but was the bigger of the two.  He was only twelve, but the definite fuzz above his lip made him look as if he needed to shave, yet he was not embarrassed to be there, but was sure of himself, self-assured, easy.   I reached out and shook his hand, and he shook mine back firmly.  His mother adored him.  She pretended to scold them out the door.

The funeral home is in a large old thicket of tall pines.  The man directing parking has me leave my car right under a tree since the paved parking area is already full. I step out of the car onto a thick blanket of long pine needles. Inside, people are sitting and standing everywhere, some queuing up to see the family, others talking quietly among themselves.  For me, there is a strange dream-like quality as I see about four hundred people I have not seen for twenty years. I get in line to see the family, and it is a blur of hugs and tears, of whispered words, of nothing anyone can say.

The service overflows out into the labyrinth of hallways where the minister's words can be heard over a speaker.  "Closed casket," I hear someone whisper. Other than that, no one speaks.

I ride alone the twenty miles back into the core of these hills to Damascus Primitive Baptist Church near Susan's new house to bury the dead.  The cars, in a long, low procession, all have their lights on and follow the sheriff.  Oncoming cars we meet pull over and temporarily stop on the shoulder of the roadside out of respect.  Workmen take off their caps until we pass.

I am near the end of the long funeral procession, so when we arrive at the churchyard, I must park about a quarter of a mile away on the edge of this narrow county gravel road with no painted lines.  After the last of the cars is parked, its motor turned off, I notice how quiet it is.  So quiet I can hear the sigh of the slight breeze in the pines.  So quiet the whir of insect wings in the full sun is louder than the people, for the people are silent, not talking, not even crying, the few late stragglers closing their car doors more softly than I thought humanly possible.  In the distance I see the family, seated already under the canvas tent, perfectly still and waiting.  In the field across the road from the church, eight or so cows, witnesses, have come right up to the barbed wire.  They stand chewing their cuds, tails slowly swishing the occasional fly.

The family mercifully sits on folding chairs under a large canopy, but the rest of us stand unprotected from the bright white light of mid-afternoon.  This part of the cemetery is near the road.  I notice the red haired country singer look-alike, her black patent high heels sinking into the bare red clay.  People softly cry.  The cows keep their vigil standing there silently,  watching us.

People file back to their cars to leave, but I do not want to get in a tangle of traffic.  I want to wait awhile.  I want to watch.

I am drawn to the church and the cool, deep shade of the trees behind it where the older part of the cemetery rests. Why this church?  I think.  Why bury him here? Growing up, I had been to many funerals for Susan's family — a grandmother, a favorite aunt, a young cousin our age — but none were at this church.  I look for Susan's mother's grave (I was in another country when she died).  I seem to remember my mother telling me something about  Susan's mother and a different church. My eyes adjust to the shade.  I find no recent graves back here.     Nonnie M. Parker  —  1898 - 1918 — Beloved by All.  I remember that 1918 was the year of the influenza epidemic.  James Lee Virgil — 1873 - 1932.   I notice that many graves are marked by piles of stones or slabs of anonymous slate, no markings to tell who lies buried.

The heat is unrelenting until a small breeze stirs.  I look up and there is the side door to the church, stark and unadorned.  I walk up the two stone steps and take the handle of the unpainted door.  It is unlocked, so I walk in.

The wooden shutters are drawn, making the inside of the church dark but hot. Bright pinstripes of light break through the front shutters as I look around at the wooden floor, wooden pews, wooden walls, wooden ceiling, all with very little paint. I take off my sunglasses. Am I looking for something?  There is no piano; there are no hymnals.  The heels of my shoes make a hammering sound as I walk down the one center aisle.  Why has she buried him here?   A circle of wasps slowly chase each other through the tangle of cord and chain of the long, hanging light fixtures.

I stand there for a long time.  A drop of sweat runs down the back of my neck, then another.  I hear cars leaving with a crunch of gravel, the men in the distance removing the metal folding chairs.  I picture them stacking all of those store-bought flowers, heap upon heap of them, on top of the fresh mound of red clay.  The family will return later to view them.  Weeks later, they will not even remember them being there.  Weeks later, they will look at the snapshots they took to assure themselves the flowers were once there.

I start to leave by the same way I entered, but I think — if the back door was not locked, the front probably is not either.  I turn the knob of the double front door, and it is not locked, but it is stuck a bit.  I jiggle the handle slightly, push on it, then harder, and when I do, both doors jar open, filling the dark church with the afternoon glare, causing me to briefly stumble out onto the solid but very uneven top step made from a slab of stone, forcing me quickly and painfully to focus my eyes.

In that one faded instant I see it all  —- road, cows, trees, crossroads.  On the other side of the crossroads, I know,  behind the stand of pines that seem to never lose their needles, is Susan's house.  This is the road she will travel to work each day, gray and winding, no lines.  This is the road that is always waiting for her.

Perhaps the men who were there looked up, startled, to see me stumble out of the church.  Perhaps they thought I'd gone in to pray, or maybe they thought I was a thief.  Perhaps there were others still there, lingering, who saw me there, as surprised as anyone else to find myself standing on the threshold of this deserted church, understanding with my eyes the answer to a question that, until that moment, I did not even know I'd asked.  I do not know.  The bright hot light from above had stolen my vision, and I was feeling my way down the steps slowly, just one stone at a time.