The Eyes of Heraclitus
“Lawdy Lawdy Lawdy Miss Claudie,” Silas always exclaimed when Daddy brought me around. When it was Daddy’s weekend, he’d take me to visit family, his sisters, his uncles, and we had a visit. One of my aunt’s would make homemade cakes and casseroles and set aside her parlor for visiting. Sometimes Daddy would take me to visit his uncle who owned the grocery store. Every visit he seemed to be in a hurry to get to the next stop. I never knew why he was in a hurry; they were all old and had nothin’ to do no ways.
The most curious case was Silas. Silas wasn’t family per se, but a permanent fixture. If you needed to fix the fence or dig post holes or load feed, then Silas would come over for a few bucks and a can of Schlitz beer. That was before I was born. Silas lived in a shotgun shack in Summersville. I didn’t realize he was poor; I was just a kid. Most of my family had a couple bedrooms and a couple cars, but Silas had a sofa that doubled as his bed and an old Zenith black and white TV encased in wood. It dawned on me later he was on housing assistance from the state. He was older than daddy, but I couldn’t tell by how much. Silas wore a straw hat to hide his bald skull and his white eyebrows framed his dark, manic eyes. They were jittery and darting, but not like a prey animal. Silas would hold his head steady, but his eyes always fluttered, flickering like an overnight campfire. Daddy and me would walk through to the second room in the back and just a few steps would lead us to the kitchen. Silas would hand me a fresh vanilla sandwich cookie and we’d chat about school and my Momma and family. Silas spoke with the saccharine voice of a man who never had kids and thought he had to speak like a child to be understood.
He’d say “Lawdy chile you growing like a weed. Would you like a vanilla cookie chile? Yes chile you wanna go swing you’un?”
It dawned on me later that Daddy likely brought the cookies ahead of time so they would be fresh when I got there. Just like it was Daddy that set up the tire swing on Silas’ hemlock tree so after our visits I could go swing. But on this particular visit it was gonna be different, we went Silas’ grave.
“Paul you should see what they got me,” Silas said to Daddy. “It’s a headstone but it’s in the shape of an anchor. You ain’t never saw nothing like it in your life hee-hee.”
Silas was always proud of his time in the Navy. He was in Japan during Korean war and so mostly he was in the rear with the gear but it was clearly the highlight of his life.
There was a radio personality named Paul Harvey and one of his popular programs was called, “The Rest of the Story” where Harvey would remind the listeners of a famous anecdote from history and then tell some of the backstory behind it. When I was in college, I found out the rest of Silas’ story from Momma. As a young man he had been married to a petite lady named Marjorie and apparently, they went round and round. Like most of the men he worked in the coal mine and over some triviality Margorie had slighted Silas. The next day he insisted she clean the gutters. When she got up on the roof, he took the ladder away. That was one example.
Momma always considered herself a kind of an aristocrat, being landed gentry. The land wasn’t much good for nothing but corn. Momma always kept the house immaculate and told me one particular time how Marjorie took up a job working as a cashier at the store and Silas didn’t take too kindly to that. You see Silas and her had a two-bedroom house with a separate garage. He was down in the shaft when she up and decided she wanted to make her own money and buy floral print dresses and make the house look nice. It was a cold cruelty that men would have back then to keep their wives in dire poverty. She already had started her job when Marjorie defiantly told Silas she was gonna work the cashier over at Franks. Silas’ normally manic demeanor turned quiescent at first. But once the liquor got a holt of him that Friday, those wheels started turning and Silas got back from the shaft before she back from her shift. Silas grabbed a gas can and poured gas all along the outside of his garage. He pulled his car out first you see. So, then he lit it, and and calmly sat in his rocking chair on the porch while the garage became consumed in that blaze of fire. When Darlene came home Silas sat there cackling, that blaze reflecting in his dark eyes.
“Let that son of a bitch burn. LET IT BURN.”
Fortunately for Darlene the neighbors already called the fire department and when the Nicholas County FD showed up the whole garage was smoking and burning. Silas chided them while they tried to put out the fire saying,
“Watch out they got some gas tanks in there you’uns never know when they gonna blow lawdy chile.”
In Summerville they look the other way a lot. After all it was Silas own property he destroyed. Marjorie went to stay with her sister for a little while, and from there she just settled in Summersville. After momma told me that story, she put her cigarette out in her immaculate glass ashtray. “So that’s who your daddy taking you to go visit on the weekends.” she said as she ground out her butt.
Looking back, I wondered why my Daddy brought me around this old man. Was it just pity for this old, withered soul? This lonesome old bachelor. On the day we visited Silas’ grave Daddy was so proud of himself. I had my vanilla sandwich cookie and Silas and Daddy got into the Silverado and Daddy drove us to the to the Summersville graveyard. Silas had bought himself a headstone and he wanted to show it off to us. Silas had dark sunglasses on and his straw hat, he was beaming like the cat that ate the canary. Silas was real proud of his anchor shaped headstone he had ordered and wanted to show us in person. Daddy asked Silas if he knew where the marker was laid. Silas warn’t sure so Daddy recommended we go look at the directory. In the northeast corner of the cemetery, they had the directory, so we went and looked up “Silas Bailey”. Plain as day Silas’ spot was plot number 219.
Daddy turned to Silas and said, “It looks like it’s about ten rows over towards the middle. We got back in the Silverado and slowly rolled down the cemetery driveway until we got to Silas’ row. Plot 219 was set back from the driveway, so we started walking back to the end of the row. I noticed a pile of dirt there but didn’t think too much of it until Daddy started rubbing the back of his neck which I noticed he did when he got antsy. When we got to plot 219 there was a grave marker with Silas Bailey’s name on it, but it wasn’t an anchor like he ordered, but just regular old headstone shaped headstone. Moreover, that big pile of dirt was right there, with a hole waiting for a casket.
Silas gave Daddy a look and that’s all there was to it. Next thing you know, Silas jumped right in, his straw hat blowing right off on the edge of the grave.
“HE GOT ME! HE GOT ME! DEATH COME TO GET ME PAUL HELP ME! HAAAALP ME! MY TIMES UP! PAUL! YOU’UN! COME AND GET ME!
Silas was flailing around so wild Daddy nearly swallowed his chaw, turning red laughing. Me and Daddy reached down and pulled Silas out all the while Silas is carryin’ on about death coming to get him. A simple enough explanation we sussed out later was that there was a second Silas Bailey in town, that hadn’t been in the navy, who just died and hadn’t been buried yet. Our Silas cursed his doppelganger claiming “that son of a bitch stole my spot.”
In between laughing fits Daddy asked:
“Maybe we oughta go check the directory again?”
To which Silas replied, “No way Jack, I ain’t takin’ my chances. I done cheated death once today that was enough. He can have that other son of a bitch.” and with that we went back to Summersville.
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