I don’t know how we got to the point where Vince Gill was finally singing “Go Rest High on That Mountain” over the sound system to signal the end of the Dwayne Duffy service without anyone having gotten arrested or worse, but the Duffys and their friends at long last shuffled out of the funeral home and quiet mercifully descended.
And, what a mess. Especially the parking lot. Cigarette butts, coke cans, beer cans, candy wrappers, potato chip bags. Joel and Charlie worked outside as Mama, an exhausted Miss Shelly, and I went through the funeral home, trying to set things to right. It was like the disastrous visit of The Cat in the Hat.
We left the recently decapitated Dwayne to lie in state in the main chapel. In the morning, Charlie, Joel, and I would load him into the hearse and make th
