This one is from Joyce Evans…
Azaleas spread their sweetness through the mid-morning spring air. Mama stood in front of the stove frying ham while Malachi, child No. 6, checked on her cooking minute-by-minute. Standing with his back against the kitchen wall, he looked fragile for his twenty-one years and too young to have a disabled veteran identification or a death prognosis. Four years earlier, Army doctors had sent him home on a medical discharge because of catatonic schizophrenia, a psychiatric disorder.
I had dreamed about death, and knew it was Malachi. I mentioned the dream without saying who it was, but Malachi knew, and said as much.
Everyone hated to hear about what they call my “dead folk dreams.” Every time I had one, they groaned. I actually saw the pallbearers lower his bronze coffin into the ground. My brother believed he would die because he gave me a congratulatory card a year before my college graduation. “I might not be here next year,” he said.
Six months from the dream, he was killed in an accident. We buried him in a bronze coffin that Mama selected. He was dressed in a light green suit with a vest and beige shirt and a green and beige geometric designed tie. At the grave taps played and the soldiers gave a twenty-one gun salute.
That October 17, 1979 day of the accident he seemed better after being in bed all week. I stopped by home at lunch to check on him. Mack was sitting in the white Oldsmobile with black vinyl top with his white suit on. I asked how he felt and why he was sitting outside with his church suit on.
“Just meditating,” he said. “I’m doing much better.”
Relieved, I went back to work. Later that afternoon, he ran out the door as I came in from work. “Where you going?” my mother yelled.
“Got to run an errand,” he shot back.
I thought it odd. Usually, he’d ask me to drive him. I noticed he had changed into jeans and a light sweater. It was a gorgeous fall day, the air so brisk and pumpkins were already on people’s porches. Our pecan tree was dropping so many nuts that we couldn’t pick them up fast enough.
When the emergency call came, my sister Brenda and I were at the mall buying an Atlantic blue luggage set for me. We heard the rescue truck and got a strange feeling and rushed home. Before we could get out of the car, Mother came outdoors and told us we needed to rush to the hospital. “Malachi has been in a bad wreck.”
“We told him to stop driving,” I screamed. My chest tightened and the tears stood behind the walls of my eyes.
When we got to the emergency room, we expected to see Mack, but they took us to a back room. We waited for the doctor to tell us how he was doing. “I’m sorry. There was nothing we could do.”
Joyce Evans
