Chapter 3
CHAPTER
THE INCENSE SURPRISED NASH BECAUSE this was a nondenominational church.
His mother had been raised Catholic and she had done the same for him, so he was well used to the smells and bells.
His father had not attended Mass with them.
He had explained to his son that the concept of God was for those who chose not to think for themselves.
“When you need to look to the sky for guidance, sonny boy, it’s time to call in a damn shrink,” he had told Nash, well out of his devout mother’s delicate earshot, for Ty Nash tried mightily not to upset his beloved wife.
Nash was also surprised that there was even a church service being held for his father.
Or a casket. He had also assumed his father would go the cremation route, the pathway that his mother had chosen.
Her funeral service had been the last time father and son had occupied the same space.
A devastated Ty Nash had perched in the front pew, staring at the floor and looking like all substance and soul had left him.
Nash had been three rows behind and sobbing heavily, as his wife and daughter took turns consoling him.
He had kept in touch with his mother throughout the estrangement with his father.
She had been there for the birth of Maggie and later attended his college graduation.
They would see each other for dinner occasionally, or she would come to his house for birthdays and holidays and the like, but he never went inside his childhood home.
When they were together, they never spoke of his father, although Nash could tell, in his mother’s looks and the questions she sometimes phrased, that she wanted to broach the subject.
Yet Nash knew a reconciliation was not possible.
Unbeknownst to his mother, he had attempted one, soon after she had been diagnosed with the disease that would later claim her life.
While his mother was in the hospital for treatment, he had shown up unannounced on his father’s doorstep, with a hot takeout dinner for them to share in one hand, and a six-pack of his father’s favorite beer in the other.
His father had taken one look at the offered food and his son’s sympathetic features, and then knocked the food out of Nash’s hand and grabbed the beer.
He followed that up by violently sending Nash off the porch with a vicious right hook to the head that his son had never seen coming, because Nash had ventured there to make peace and break bread with his dad, not pummel him. His jaw and back had ached for a month.
The church crowd today was fairly large, and somewhat rowdy, the latter condition due entirely to one set of mourners.
The Harleys he had seen parked outside had portended the presence of Ty Nash’s Vietnam veteran chums. His father had been a founding member of this motorcycle group, which they’d called the “Fuck Off” club.
They’d even had leather jackets made up with that phrase stitched on the back.
The vets sat together, their suits mostly ancient and rumpled, but their hair combed and their faces clean, and none of them seemed to be too stoned.
But he was certain they would all get shit-faced afterward and go on ad nauseum about the exploits of Ty Nash, soldier, husband and…
father. Now they were talking in voices that carried and their words were not all that appropriate for a house of worship.
However, Nash was sure no one had the guts to tell the battle-hardened wild bunch to knock it off. He certainly didn’t.
The Nash family sat in the second row of pews, behind a woman who was the only one perched in the first row, which had been marked as reserved.
She had been introduced to them as Rosie Parker by Harriet Segura, a longtime friend of the family.
Segura had also been the elderly neighbor to alert Nash to his father’s death.
Parker was in her sixties, tall, thin, and big-boned with a long, flattened face, and eyes that seemed to bite into Nash’s flesh like no-see-ums. Her dress was ill fitting and seemed decades old.
After the introduction to the Nash family, she mumbled something incoherent, seeming to tremble with the slight effort.
What the hell was that about? thought Nash. His wife squeezed his hand in support and sympathy; his daughter was glued to her phone while she twirled a strand of her bouncy blond hair.
Harriet Segura leaned forward from the row behind and said quietly into Nash’s ear, “She’s been living with Ty for the past couple of years or so, his girlfriend of sorts.
Least he held her out to be that.” Segura, a grim, matronly sort, had added, “Ask me, she’s a damn gold digger and your father too sick to notice. ”
Nash was blithely unaware that his father possessed any gold to dig, nor did Parker look remotely like a gold digger, but he decided to table that, for now. He tried never to draw conclusions without sufficient data.
He had not been asked to speak at the service and was glad of that.
He was startled when Parker rose and went to the altar after being called on by the minister.
She quietly and haltingly read a psalm, and then spoke more forcefully about Ty being a wonderful partner, and lover.
Nash gasped at this last word, although there were hoots and catcalls from the Harley section of the church.
Judith’s fingers tightened around his.
The final speaker called upon was a mountain of a man whom Nash knew well from his childhood.
Oh shit.
His name was Isaiah York, but he was universally known as “Shock.” Nash had never known from where that moniker had originated. As a boy he had once asked his father about it. Ty Nash had growled, “Maybe I’ll tell you at some point, sonny boy, but you have to earn that right.”
Apparently, Nash never had, and thus the genesis of “Shock” remained a mystery.
The size of a Mack truck, the Black man had been Ty Nash’s best friend growing up in Mississippi, and then his chief mate in Vietnam, although Nash senior had not been the most enlightened when it came to race relations.
As a child Nash had even heard his father call Shock the N-word, but the enormous man seemed to somehow take it as a sign of respect or affection, or something.
Maybe it was an Army or perhaps a Vietnam thing, Nash didn’t know. He just thought it was weird as hell.
Shock, stylishly attired in a dark pinstripe suit that fit his enormous body well, reached the lectern, turned to face the crowd, gave his old comrades a thumbs-up, and, in a voice that mirrored his size, boomed, “Some folks here who should be here all right.” Hoots and hollers came from the Harley club.
Shock let it quiet down before turning to look directly at… Walter Nash.
Oh, for the love of God, thought Nash as he sensed what was coming.
“Then you got you folks never should be sittin’ their damn asses down on these fine pews to send off this man’s man to his eternal rest and reward. No sir. To hell with ’em, I say, right, crew?”
The Harleys all started to clap and hoot their agreement.
As Shock’s gaze bore into Nash he closed his eyes for a moment and felt his wife’s fingers clutch ever tighter over his. When he opened his eyes, Maggie was no longer manhandling her phone or playing with her hair. She was staring up at Shock, along with everyone else.
The elderly minister had looked like he’d been electrified when Shock had cursed from the altar. “Sir, really, that is hardly—”
“Now,” boomed Shock. “We here to see us off a good man, a brother, in peace and war. Die for the dude and he do the same for me. In Nam. And right here in the good old US of Fuckin’ A.” He held up a knotty fist the size of a pineapple for emphasis. “Truth. No lie.”
More hoots, hollers, and claps came from the Harley crew.
The now red-faced minister rose and made a few tottering steps along an altar that had been verbally desecrated by a man who did not look remotely finished F-bombing out.
Shock swiveled his gaze to the flag-draped casket, which stood on a wheeled platform in the center of the aisle.
“Ty, you be gone but I’mma tell you somethin’.” Shock pounded his beefy chest. “This Black ass is gonna miss you, Ty, like I ain’t never missed nobody in my whole goddamn life. No lie. No lie!”
Nash glanced at the minister, who had now frozen in his walk.
Shock first pointed to the sky and then to the floor.
“Ty, ain’t sure where your ass be endin’ up there or down there, just like my ass when it be my time to kick off.
” Shock looked back at the fine coffin. “But wherever you be, Ty, I’mma always have your back, man.
When I get there, you see. We endin’ up in the same place, that be for damn sure.
” Shock pounded the lectern. “God or the devil, here come Ty Nash, right to your sucklin’ breast.”
Nash again eyed the minister, who still seemed rocked by the goddamn comment, but the suckling breast reference appeared to have scored an impact, too.
Shock glanced at the shocked minister. “Okay, Man ’a God. All yours, baby. Let’s finish this thing. Ty got to get on goin’. No lie! But first things first. Men! Tention! Forward, march!”
The Harleys stood as one and lined up in formation like the fine soldiers they had once been.
They trooped single-file to the casket. There, Shock joined them.
And each man took a turn pounding on the casket three times.
Six men, eighteen blows. And then Shock finished it off in a voice that boomed like cannon fire: “Can I get me an Amen for this man gone to his eternal salvation, or damnation? Can I, people? Come on now! Do your duty!”
Everyone in the stunned crowd, including Nash, his wife and daughter, and even the stricken minister, joined in with a hearty Amen.
Shock then marched over to where Nash was sitting, pointed a long finger at his head, and bellowed, “He thought you was the biggest stuck-up prick in the whole goddamn world. And I’mma tell you what.
Where I lookin’ from, man be right on the money.
Just like always. Ty know. Ty know. No lie. No lie!”
“Good God!” exclaimed Nash. “My choosing tennis over football in high school? That’s the reason for all this!”
Shock eyed him steadily. “If you think that, you ain’t nearly as smart as your daddy said you was.”
He then glanced at Judith and Maggie and said tenderly, “Ladies, my heartfelt condolences on your loss.”
Shock looked once more at Nash and mouthed one word: prick.
On that final note, Shock turned and walked out with his crew.
A minute later, the Harleys powered up, and they all listened to the throaty roar of side pipes and rubber winding up across asphalt. Nash thought he could hear Shock scream above all this cacophony of baffling noise, “Bro!”