April 2010
2 posts
“At noon on Good Friday, my grandfather lifted the wooden cross and laid it upon his right shoulder. He was dressed in a white choir robe and he was wearing a pair of sandals he had bought at a K Mart in Charleston. Luke made last-minute adjustments on the wheel with a set of pliers.
Mr. Fruit directed traffic and waited for my grandfather to signal that the walk was about to begin. Since Mr. Fruit directed traffic and led all parades, he always had to perform double duty on Good Friday. For reasons known only to him, Mr. Fruit considered my grandfather’s walk a parade. A small parade, and not much fun, but a parade nonetheless.
Mr. Fruit put the whistle to his lips and my grandfather nodded his head. Mr. Fruit blew the whistle and strutted up the Street of Tides, high-stepping it like a drum major, his knees pumping as high as his chin. My grandfather followed ten yards behind. I heard a couple of people laugh when they saw the wheel. Up by Baitery’s Pharmacy, I watched my father filming the first part of the walk.
About halfway down the street, my grandfather fell for the first time. It was a spectacular fall and he hit the street hard, with the cross falling on him. He loved the falls best of anything in the three-hour walk. They always surprised the crowd, and besides, he was a good faller. My father was zooming in when my grandfather fell and it was evident that the two of them had worked out a system of signals whenever the highlights of the walk were coming up. Amos was also a good staggerer, and his knees buckled under him when he tried to rise. My grandfather knew nothing about the theater of the absurd, but he managed to invent it for himself year after year.
After the first hour, the wheel broke and had to be discarded. Sheriff Lucas appeared at the traffic light by the bridge and wrote out the annual citation for obstruction of traffic. Mr. Fruit stopped marching and directed cars through the intersection as some of the crowd booed the sheriff. Mr. Kupcinet, a deacon at Grandpa’s church, read aloud from the Bible about the walk of Jesus through the streets of Jerusalem, his crucifixion on Calvary flanked by two thieves, the darkness over the city, the great cry of agony Eli, Eli lama sabachthani (“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”), and the centurion saying again as he would say for all the centuries that would pas, “Truly this is the son of God.”
And my grandfather would walk back and forth between stores that sold shoes and real estate and lingerie, sweat pouring from his face but his eyes serene, knowing he was serving his God as best as he knew how. Savannah and I sold lemonade in front of Sarah Poston’s dress shop and Luke had the job of stopping my grandfather in the middle of his walk and forcing a Dixie cup of vinegar between Amos’s lips. Then Luke played the part of Simon of Cyrene and helped bear the weight of the cross for one whole transit of the street. By the third hour, my grandfather would be staggering for real. When he fell the last time, he could not rise to his feet until Luke reached him and lifted the cross off his body. There was blood in a thing strip along the shoulder of the choir robe. He rose, smiled, and thanked Luke, promising to cut my brother’s hair later on in the day. Then he continued down the street, lurching and weaving from side to side.
I did not know then and do not know now what to make of my grandfather’s awesome love of the Word of God. As a teenager I found his walk humiliating. But Savannah would write about his walk in poems of uncommon beauty. She would celebrate the “she Oberammergau of the itinerant barber.”
And when Amos Wingo’s walk ended that day and we caught him as he fell and carried him to the lemonade stand, where we rubbed his face with ice and made him drink a cup of lemonade, I had a feeling that sainthood was the most frightening and incurable disease on earth.
He was trembling, and delirious as we laid him out on the sidewalk. People pressed forward to get Grandpa to sign their Bibles and my father filmed his collapse.
Luke and I got him to his feet, and with his arms around our shoulders, we bore his weight and carried him home, with Luke saying the whole way: “You’re so beautiful, Grandpa. You’re so beautiful.” —The Prince of Tides, Pat Conroy
Mr. Fruit directed traffic and waited for my grandfather to signal that the walk was about to begin. Since Mr. Fruit directed traffic and led all parades, he always had to perform double duty on Good Friday. For reasons known only to him, Mr. Fruit considered my grandfather’s walk a parade. A small parade, and not much fun, but a parade nonetheless.
Mr. Fruit put the whistle to his lips and my grandfather nodded his head. Mr. Fruit blew the whistle and strutted up the Street of Tides, high-stepping it like a drum major, his knees pumping as high as his chin. My grandfather followed ten yards behind. I heard a couple of people laugh when they saw the wheel. Up by Baitery’s Pharmacy, I watched my father filming the first part of the walk.
About halfway down the street, my grandfather fell for the first time. It was a spectacular fall and he hit the street hard, with the cross falling on him. He loved the falls best of anything in the three-hour walk. They always surprised the crowd, and besides, he was a good faller. My father was zooming in when my grandfather fell and it was evident that the two of them had worked out a system of signals whenever the highlights of the walk were coming up. Amos was also a good staggerer, and his knees buckled under him when he tried to rise. My grandfather knew nothing about the theater of the absurd, but he managed to invent it for himself year after year.
After the first hour, the wheel broke and had to be discarded. Sheriff Lucas appeared at the traffic light by the bridge and wrote out the annual citation for obstruction of traffic. Mr. Fruit stopped marching and directed cars through the intersection as some of the crowd booed the sheriff. Mr. Kupcinet, a deacon at Grandpa’s church, read aloud from the Bible about the walk of Jesus through the streets of Jerusalem, his crucifixion on Calvary flanked by two thieves, the darkness over the city, the great cry of agony Eli, Eli lama sabachthani (“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”), and the centurion saying again as he would say for all the centuries that would pas, “Truly this is the son of God.”
And my grandfather would walk back and forth between stores that sold shoes and real estate and lingerie, sweat pouring from his face but his eyes serene, knowing he was serving his God as best as he knew how. Savannah and I sold lemonade in front of Sarah Poston’s dress shop and Luke had the job of stopping my grandfather in the middle of his walk and forcing a Dixie cup of vinegar between Amos’s lips. Then Luke played the part of Simon of Cyrene and helped bear the weight of the cross for one whole transit of the street. By the third hour, my grandfather would be staggering for real. When he fell the last time, he could not rise to his feet until Luke reached him and lifted the cross off his body. There was blood in a thing strip along the shoulder of the choir robe. He rose, smiled, and thanked Luke, promising to cut my brother’s hair later on in the day. Then he continued down the street, lurching and weaving from side to side.
I did not know then and do not know now what to make of my grandfather’s awesome love of the Word of God. As a teenager I found his walk humiliating. But Savannah would write about his walk in poems of uncommon beauty. She would celebrate the “she Oberammergau of the itinerant barber.”
And when Amos Wingo’s walk ended that day and we caught him as he fell and carried him to the lemonade stand, where we rubbed his face with ice and made him drink a cup of lemonade, I had a feeling that sainthood was the most frightening and incurable disease on earth.
He was trembling, and delirious as we laid him out on the sidewalk. People pressed forward to get Grandpa to sign their Bibles and my father filmed his collapse.
Luke and I got him to his feet, and with his arms around our shoulders, we bore his weight and carried him home, with Luke saying the whole way: “You’re so beautiful, Grandpa. You’re so beautiful.” —The Prince of Tides, Pat Conroy
