I didn’t ask Tobin to come with me to LeVonne’s funeral because I didn’t know how, or even if, he’d fit into my life. Nor did I tell him about the plan I had set in motion for Monday. It was my thing with Cam, Herman, and Uncle Sal. They sat next to me in an oak pew toward the back, their gray heads bent during the service.
It was an overcast afternoon, muting the rich colors of the stained-glass windows. The church was spacious and dignified, but spare and dim. The only light was afforded by hanging brass fixtures, mounted too high to do much good. Oak beams braced the vaulted ceiling and there was a decorative carved arch over the altar. In front of the altar, elevated from the floor, was a coffin. In it lay a small, dark figure.
LeVonne.
He rested in a cushion of soft, ivory muslin, and his fine hands had been placed one over the other. He was dressed in a gray suit and black tie, with a white shirt that was too big in the collar. His lips were pressed together, as they had been so often in life, but without his eyes open, the warmth of human expression was gone from his features. As the service began, the funeral director draped a white cloth over his face. I don’t know why. It didn’t help any.
LeVonne’s grandmother wept in the front row, supported by her lady friends and a heavyset nurse in a white dress and starchy cap. Only a handful of mourners were present, fanning themselves with cardboard paddles that advertised the funeral home. An uncle and two cousins were there, but no mother or father. There were neighbors, but only one or two boys from LeVonne’s class. His teacher said the turnout would have been better if he had passed during the school year, like a boy killed last month in crossfire between gangs. I told her I understood, but I didn’t.
I listened to the organ music playing softly and watched the women weeping, rocking, holding their right hands high in the warm air as the preacher gave the eulogy. He spoke in a subdued baritone about how LeVonne had attended church each week with his grandmother, although he’d been too “soft-spoken” to sing in the choir. The preacher talked about how LeVonne worked hard in school and at Popeye’s Fried Chicken, then how he got a job at the butcher shop, where he seemed to “find a home.” And how he loved Star Trek and Batman, though he always got stuck playing Robin.
At the end, the preacher told us to celebrate LeVonne’s life and to take comfort in his death. To believe LeVonne’s death happened for a reason only God could know. And when he said that, I stopped crying and wiped my eyes. I knew better, you see.
I knew the reason for LeVonne’s death, and it had nothing to do with a divine plan. It was a matter of ballistics and bullet markings and soft tissue. It wasn’t about faith, it was about science. It was knowable, and proven. LeVonne died because a man fired a bullet into his heart, and this man had been promised money by another man to do so. And ultimately, the reason for LeVonne’s death traced back not to my father, for whom LeVonne had given his life, but to me. I was the reason LeVonne was at the front of the church, under a bower of small white roses.
And though I couldn’t bring him back or change any of that, I could take responsibility for it. I could set it right.
And I would. Tomorrow, at noon.