I would have attended his graveside service had I learned about the passing of my boyhood chum sooner. Unfortunately, the newspaper obituary notice appeared mere hours before the burial.
Alan and I hadn’t spoken in over sixty years, nor have we exchanged letters. The only communication I’ve gotten from him was an inscription in the guest book at Gallery East, which in 2009 had featured an exhibit of my photographs. I immediately dashed off a letter, expressing a hope that we might meet up for coffee, or at least correspond. But I never heard back.
Alan was the smartest member of my high school class, although I don’t remember seeing him in a cap and gown, nor has he ever attended a class reunion. He never married, and—except for a brief stint in the U.S. Army—never moved from the house where he’d grown up, the seventh of six children, all of whom had flown the nest before Alan came along. So his parents were quite old when he was born, as was his widowed grandmother, who lived next door. Her vacant house has never been reoccupied, and to all outward appearances, Alan’s domicile is also derelict. The lawn and flowerbeds died of thirst years ago, the only landscaping to have survived being some scraggly bushes huddled against one side of the house, underneath the dripline.
Last time I visited my hometown, I stood on the sidewalk, afraid to knock on Alan’s door or even to step onto his property. I’d been led to believe he was a cranky hermit, and yet now I learn that he was convivial with his next-door neighbor and friendly with whomever he encountered on his daily walks to and from the public library. Go figure!
Alan’s graveside ceremony was streamed online, so I was able to attend vicariously. Because he was a veteran, there was a three-gun salute followed by a plaintive sounding of taps. After being removed from atop the coffin, the American flag was carefully folded and presented to Alan’s sole surviving sibling Elsibeth.
The story goes that Alan shot himself in the foot in order to get out of the Army, but what do I know? I mean, I had pictured him as Boo Radley, not Mister Rogers.
Nor did I ever think of Alan as being religious, and yet here was a former ward member, recalling him as a young Mormon, followed by a holder of the Melchizedek Priesthood, who offered up a consecration of the grave. As he did so, a tremendous gust of wind swept across the graveyard. Treetops bowed and mourners were pelted with freezing rain.
Fact is, the Alan Williams I knew would have shot himself in the foot if it had gotten him out of Sunday School. But, then again, what do I know? Turns out all I really know about the life and times of Alan Williams is what I’ve learned second hand, save for those boyhood days of yore when the two of us, armed with a Crossman pellet gun, roamed Wood Hill, taking turns channeling the mercurial Old West gunslinger Jack Slade.
