Free After the Flag Has Been Folded by Karen Spears Zacharias

one side of Mama, Frankie on the other. I sat next to Linda. Grandpa Harve sat beside Uncle Woody and his family.
    Six young soldiers—four of them white, two of them black—carried my father’s flag-draped coffin into the church. They were dressed in heavily starched khakis, red neck scarves, and green hats with brass insignias. A contingency of other soldiers stood at attention and saluted my father’s coffin as it was carried past.
    There were no fancy choirs in robes or special solos. Daddy’s beloved cousin Mary Ellen, the lady with the beautiful red hair, played the organ. She must’ve played the music from memory, because she couldn’t have seen any sheet music through her own tears. Mama grasped Linda’s hand in her gloved one while the congregation sang “Rock of Ages.” She kept reaching up, wiping away tears, but Mama wasn’t sobbing in hysterics or anything like that. Nobody was. There was simply a constant sound of muffled weeping from throughout the church. I can’t remember anything Preacher Jinks or anybody else said about Daddy at the funeral.
    Echoes from the battlefields of Vietnam’s Central Highlands settledinto the foothills of Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains that morning. It was the sound of a shattered, shell-shocked people wandering helplessly, hopelessly, searching for a comfort that could not, would not be found. I didn’t know it then, but my father’s death had intricately linked the mountain people of these two countries together in a spiritual way that had nothing to do with churches and preachers and traditional hymns but had everything to do with blood sacrifice.
    Shortly after the congregation opened up their hymnals and sang “In the Garden,” Granny Leona passed out. She was sitting behind us, so I didn’t see her collapse, but I heard the commotion. A couple of people gasped. Somebody said, “I’ve got her.” Linda, Frankie, and I turned to see someone carrying Granny out of the church. For the rest of the day her sons carried her, lifting her by the elbows or scooping her up into their arms. The family could see that Granny was really sick and needed medical attention, but she absolutely refused to go to the hospital, and everybody knew better than to try and argue with her. There was no sense upsetting her further, so they put her in the car for the trip to Greeneville.
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    T HE FUNERAL PROCESSION from McCloud Baptist Church to Andrew Johnson National Cemetery in Greeneville was grueling for everyone. The two-lane road was nothing but S curves snapped together. Greeneville was a good piece up the road from McCloud, about forty minutes if you’re driving regular speeds, much longer when police escort is leading you along. Mama, Frankie, Linda, and I rode in one of Nash-Wilson’s long shiny black cars, following the hearse that held Daddy’s casket. Ahead of the hearse were the flashing lights of police cars and military escorts, and following behind us were long, long miles of cars and trucks, every single one of them with their headlights switched on.
    Linda got violently sick on the ride. Without any forewarning, she bent over the floor of the limo and threw up that oatmeal Aunt Gertie had fixed for breakfast. When she leaned back against the seat, herbangs were matted into sharp pencils across her forehead. Her face was white as a summer cloud, and her dark eyes looked like sinker holes. Mama pulled a handful of Kleenex out of her pocketbook, placed a couple over the upchuck on the floorboard, and began to wipe Linda’s face with the others. “This is too much for her,” Mama said to no one in particular.
    Frankie and I didn’t dare say a word. We just looked at each other in that knowing way siblings do when they realize the whole world has gone topsy-turvy. Mama reached over and rolled the windows down halfway, hoping the fresh air would ease Linda’s tummy