IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE - CHAPTER 6

 

 Wednesday January 16, 1963 is a day that will forever be etched into my memory. There have not been too many days since that I have not thought about that day and it's consequences in some form or another. We woke up as usual that morning and dressed for school. Daddy was sitting in the back room facing the kitchen in a rocking chair. He was dressed in his work clothes which were dark pants, a long sleeved white shirt and bow tie. I will never forget the look on his face because he sat there lifeless, expressionless, with eyes staring straight ahead. Much like you might describe a thousand yard stare. The look on his face stopped me in my tracks. As I was walked through the kitchen I paused for just a moment to gaze at him.

 I was irritated at mother that morning over something very minor. So minor that I can't remember today what I was mad about. Mother was lying in my bed next to the dining room door. She looked up and told me goodbye as I walked by the foot of the bed. I never failed to kiss her when I left for school but I didn't kiss her that morning. This was something that would bother me for a long time. I try to tell my wife and kids that I love them on a frequent basis. We are not guaranteed anything and life can end in an instant. Daddy, Roy, Alton and Mark were already waiting in the car when I walked out the front door. The front passenger seat next to daddy was empty as I hopped into our white Ford Falcon station wagon. Daddy was quiet as we drove the few blocks to our school on Greenwood Avenue. Roy remembered him absentmindedly driving past the school entrance. He said "Uncle Bill, you missed the school". Daddy turned the car around and according to Roy drove past the school again. Roy said that he told him a second time that he missed the entrance to the school. Daddy turned around and this time he finally found his way into the school driveway. If it happened this way I don't remember it.

 The only class I remember that day was band class because I was sitting in the drum section when I heard the school secretary, Miss Greer, make an announcement over the school intercom. She asked for everyone that had a transistor radio to bring them to the office immediately. Laughing, I turned to the boy next to me and said something like "Yeah, I'm sure everybody is going to do that". It never occurred to me that this announcement was meant for us. Mother and daddy died around ten o'clock that morning and it was all over the news. Miss Greer didn't want us to hear about it that way. At lunch I walked down to the cafeteria in the basement. I ate at the same time as Roy but he wasn't there. Jerry Perry was standing in the lunch line and I asked him if he knew where Roy was. Jerry and Roy were good friends. With a smirk on his face he said that Roy was in trouble because he had hit a little girl and that he was in Mr. Wades office crying about it. 

 Mr. Wade was our principal and was a small slender bald headed man who reminded me a lot of Harry Truman. Miss Greer was our school secretary and she was a young, full figured blonde, who was very popular with the students. Jerry was always cutting up so I wasn't sure if he was kidding. I ran up to Mr. Wades office and as soon as I walked through the door I saw Roy sitting in a straight back wooden chair. He was crying with Mr. Wade and Miss Greer standing behind the chair trying to console him. A feeling of panic rose up in me because I knew something bad had happened and I asked him what was wrong. Mr. Wade and Miss Greer were not prepared to see me. They told me that Roy wasn't feeling well and I needed to go back to the lunch room. I begged Roy to tell me what was wrong but he was too upset to talk. Miss Greer had heard about my parents death on the news and she called Roy to the office and this is how he found out. Which explains why she was asking everyone to turn in their transistor radios.

About this time I felt a presence behind me. I turned and saw daddy's 1st cousin, Howard Wilkinson and I knew then that something was very wrong. There was no way that he would be at my school in the middle of the day unless something bad had happened. Howard told me that he was there to take Roy home. Roy was the oldest and I guess the adults thought that he could handle things better than the rest of us. Howard wasn't expecting to see me and he told me to go back to class. I was determined that I was going home even if I had to walk. We argued back and forth until he realized that he was fighting a losing battle. Howard turned to Mr. Wade and told him to dismiss Alton and Mark because he would be taking all of us home. I don't know what they were thinking. Did they really think that I wouldn't find out about my parents at some point before the day was over? The news was already out. I was told that after we left the teachers were crying as they told their students the news about my parents. Teachers and students were crying and hugging each other all over the school.

 When we reached Howard's car Roy, Alton, and Mark sat in the back seat and again I sat in the front. As we were driving away I was begging Howard to tell me what had happened. Without saying a word he drove to the end of the school driveway and stopped. He was staring off in the distance and I asked him if something had happened to daddy. I am sure that he was trying to think of the best way to tell me the terrible news. I then asked him if something had happened to mother. He finally he looked at me and said both. I was feeling sheer panic at this point. He then asked me if I could be a man. Hesitantly I said yes, I guess so. Again, with more firmness in his voice this time, he asked me again if I could be a man. Almost shouting I said that I could. He then told me that daddy had shot my mother and killed himself. Fearing the worst I asked if both of them were dead and he said yes. Howard's words hit me like a ton of bricks. I lurched forward with my head resting on the dashboard wailing like a wounded animal. The whole situation was so unreal to me that it seemed like it was happening to someone else. It was as close to an out of body experience as I have ever had.

   As we pulled up to our house a crowd of people ran toward us. The only one I remember was Aunt Catherine who was the first to reach me sobbing as she hugged me. The yard and house was packed with people and almost everyone was crying. There were relatives that I had not seen in ages and relatives I didn't even know. There were also neighbors and people I had never seen in my life. Mama was walking aimlessly through the house weeping and talking out of her head. Every now and then she would say something I didn't understand what she was talking about and Didi would tell her not to talk like that. It might have been about the fact that mother was pregnant. My mothers side of the family was very private about their personal lives and things like that were not discussed openly. I couldn't quit crying and mama would say, "listen to that poor baby crying for his mother". Mark was ten days short of his eighth birthday and I don't think I saw him cry at any time. I just believe that he was so young that he really didn't grasp what was happening. He looked lost. Mark would ultimately pay a higher price because he was so young. Our life was chaotic after mother and daddy died and he would have to put up with the chaos a lot longer than I did.

  I remember my Aunts Viola, Margaret, Lillian, and Freddie, all of daddy's sisters, huddled together at our dining room table holding each other and crying on each others shoulders. Uncle Doug and some other men were still cleaning the front bedroom where my parents had died. Curious, I opened the door and walked in. Luckily they were finishing up and there was no blood left on anything that I could see. They were putting a mattress on the bed and when they saw me I was shooed away. There was a constant flow of people carrying tray's, plates and bowls full of food. We had enough food to feed an army over the next few days. Grief can be a strange thing. One minute you are weeping from the very depths of your soul and the next moment you are laughing. Or you just feel numb and devoid of any emotion. I would run the full gamut of grief over the next few days and weeks. One thing that stands out in my mind was how beautiful the day was. The sky was a deep blue without a cloud in the sky. For some reason bad things seem to happen on pretty days. In addition to the death of my parents, there was the Kennedy assassination, September 11th 2001, and the near death of my daughter Misty. These things all happened on beautiful days.

  This is what I have learned talking to my grandmother, Didi, and from other sources over the years about the sequence of events that day. After we left for school mother got up out of my bed and got into Didi's larger bed in the front bedroom. Before lying down she placed an Elvis album on the Hi-Fi, as we called a record player in those days, and was listening to it as she fell asleep. Mother loved Elvis and she had probably seen all of his movies. She had taken me to see several of them with her over the years. Mama told Donna that she looked at my mother lying there listening to Elvis as she walked through the bedroom that morning and she had a smile on her face. My sister Donna remembered the bed being at an angle in front of the fire place hearth. She said that mother liked to lay on the side of the bed nearest the large window facing McKennie Avenue. After returning from dropping us off at school daddy undressed and lay down next to her. After a while he got up, put on his pants, and walked to the back room to get his pistol out of the pocket of his trench coat. It was a Saturday night special .22 caliber, nine shot revolver. He had given this gun to mother because she had to make night deposits at Third National Bank on Church Street. For whatever reason she gave this gun back to him just before she was killed.

 Daddy walked through the bathroom into Aunt Arda's bedroom and then walked through the living room. As he walked through the big wooden doors into the front bedroom he closed the doors behind him and locked them. There were two sets of these doors. One set opened into the dining room and the other opened into the living room. Daddy left the doors to the dining room unlocked. He then sat down at a dresser on the right side of the bed where mother was sleeping. How long he sat here Is not known but there were a number of cigarette butts left in the ash tray. Which means he probably sat there for quite a while building up his courage. At some point he stood up, leaned over on the bed and fired three bullets into the left side of mothers head, just behind the ear. Almost immediately daddy shot himself in the right temple and fell backwards across the fireplace hearth.