Montgomery took a break from his writing, poured a cup of coffee and picked up the gold framed portrait of his parents from the gallery of pictures stacked across the top of the spinet piano in his library. Elizabeth’s smile was gentle, understated, as if she knew not to get too complacent. Life had a way of ambushing happiness. Truth be told, life as she had experienced it, was a series of shocks, unforeseen body blows administered by either providence or fate, that were meant to be overcome by force of will and unquestioned faith in the sovereignty of God. There was no room for bitterness, no time for selfishness and no point in questioning one’s lot in life. You get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit, she would say. Montgomery placed the picture back on the piano, sat back down and begin to think about what was perhaps his mother’s most difficult body blow.
He had been eight years old. He was alone with his mother in their tiny cramped apartment in New Orleans, the result of her husband’s midlife religious conversation. In five short years since he had seen the light, everything about their lives had changed. Edward Duncan, with a wife and four kids, had quit the best job he ever had, enrolled in college and taken the graveyard shift at a factory in town to pay the bills, all in obedience to what he claimed was the audible voice of God calling him into the ministry while driving to work on Jefferson Davis highway in his beat up Plymouth Fury III. New Orleans was home to the Seminary to which he was accepted as the oldest student of the class of 1968. Now, six Duncans were shoehorned into a two bedroom apartment in the hottest, most humid place in the world.
It was another June 5th, a momentous date in Taylor family history, this time in 1966 when a sharp knock on the door surprised Montgomery’s mother. She had been cutting up vegetables in the kitchen and dropped the knife on the tile floor at the sound of it. She quickly dried her hands on a towel and opened the door. A tall dark haired man in a stiff black suit and a Bible in his hands stood in the doorway. He looked to be sweating around the collar of his stiffly starched shirt. His eyes were thin and glassy, his extended hand ghastly white and shaking. The angel of death.
“Elizabeth Taylor?” He asked politely.
Montgomery had been on the floor in front of the grainy black and white television with aluminum foil wrapped around its rabbit ears, trying to watch The Lone Ranger, but the appearance of the stranger at the door had turned his head just in time to see his mother lift both hands to cover her mouth as she responded, “Oh Lord, it’s my mother, isn’t it?”
Twenty four hours later the Duncans were crammed into a 1962 Chevy Impala station wagon headed back to Blue Hill for Edna Taylor’s funeral. Montgomery had picked up tidbits of the details surrounding the tragedy but not enough to understand. But as the roar of the recapped tires against the interstate hummed him to sleep he wondered how it was that his mother knew who had died before the weary man in the black suit had even spoken.
On the morning of the 5th on Blue Hill, Edna was scurrying around trying to get everything together for her weekly trip into Buckingham Courthouse with her impatient, whirling dervish of a husband, Madison Taylor, older brother of Uriah and the clear alpha dog of his loud and boisterous clan. Montgomery’s grandfather had always been a source of fascination to him. His voice boomed out from his throat like the words had been shot out of a cannon which always startled him. He was perpetually in motion, a man of action who never slowed down for anything, even to eat. Montgomery remembered watching in awe as his larger than life grandfather devoured a bowl of cereal in what seemed to be a matter of seconds. The man was stone cold deaf and no doubt could hear very little of what his talkative grandson was saying while he followed him around as he did his morning chores in the barns at Blue Hill. This morning was unlike any other, Madison Taylor was in a hurry. He had loaded the metal jugs of milk in the back of the pick up truck and had been ready to leave fifteen minutes before Edna finally climbed into her seat. “You’ll be late for your own funeral,” he teased. “Maybe so,” she responded, “but I’ll be well dressed.”
The dirt road that split the property was notoriously hilly and narrow, its one lane barely wide enough for one car, let alone two. As it left the farm and got within a stone’s throw of the State road, there was a steep hill where if you made the trip in the morning you looked directly into the sun, temporarily blinding you until you reached the crest. At the top of the hill on this morning, Madison Taylor’s pickup truck was going fast, wheels spinning, trying to get a grip in the loose gravel. When he broke through the bright sunlight it was too late. He collided head on with a vehicle breaking through the sun at the same time sending Edna, in the days before seatbelts, headlong into the windshield. She died at the scene and for all practical purposes her death put an end to the idyllic life the Taylor family had built at Blue Hill. Within a couple years a grief stricken Madison Taylor had sold the house and land. He couldn’t bear being reminded of Edna at every turn in the great empty house. The loss of Blue Hill being the biggest ripple from Edna Taylor’s tragic and untimely death.
An eight year old’s memories are famously obscure and befuddled. Such was the case with Montgomery Duncan’s as he tried to piece together the details of the funeral. He remembered not being allowed to go inside the church. He was kept in a car in the parking lot with a group of other young cousins. It was 1966 and perhaps the thought was that young children might not be ready for an open casket. The one image that remained crystal clear was that of two strong uncles holding each arm of his oldest cousin, Richie who seemed beyond consolation as he staggered into the church. Richie was the oldest son of Edna’s first born war hero, Johnnie, the one who had appeared to her the night before D-Day twenty one years to the day of her death. As her first grandson, Richie had been particularly beloved. He had loved his grandmother back with equal devotion, so her loss had hit him especially hard. But the sight of him being helped into the church, so distraught and overwhelmed had brought tears to Montgomery’s eyes. It had been Richie who had been behind the wheel of the car that collided with Madison’s pick up truck. The trauma the accident would prove to be the most difficult chapter of the Taylor family’s history.
Richie went on to live an extraordinary life, overcoming the sort of tragedy that might have forever damaged a lesser man. Within three years he was earning combat medals in Vietnam as an Army Ranger. Upon returning to the States after the war, he married well, raised a family of beautiful children, and worked heroically in local law enforcement for years. For Montgomery, Richie Taylor would forever be a hero, a man who overcame the tragic fate that had visited him on a clear morning in the summer of 1966.
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Edna Taylor tossed and turned on the night of June 4th, 1944. It had been a rough Monday. Her knees were aching from being on her feet all day. Her back throbbed from a muscle she had pulled trying to lift a sack of flour from the truck that morning. But there was something else contributing to her insomnia. Her oldest boys were in the Army and rumors had been flying all around Buckingham County that something was up. Something over there. In all the time they had been gone she had received precious little communication, her boys not being big letter writers. What letters she did get were all weeks after the fact. They had survived North Africa. They had made it through Sicily. Still, she worried all day every day that she would get a visit from the man in the black car, the angel of death from the Defense Department. Every time she would see dust rising on the road in the distance her heart would skip a beat. Her husband would tell her, “Johnnie and Billy can take care of themselves. Rest easy, Edna.” But, at night after he had fallen asleep she was left in the bleak darkness of Blue Hill to battle her doubts and fears alone.
She wrapped her gown tightly around her shoulders and walked downstairs to the kitchen. Even though it was summertime it was still cool in the house late at night. She lifted a biscuit from under the checkered cloth of the bread basket, spread some jam on it and ate while she stared off into the distance. She thought about how painful it had been to lose Chesty. She tried to imagine if she had it in her to survive losing another. The tears overcame her quickly. She threw the biscuit to the side and buried her head in her hands, weeping like only a grieving mother can.
She felt a warm hand on her shoulder. She immediately regretted her outburst. Her husband needed his sleep more than anyone and all of her blubbering had woken him up. But when she looked up she felt a rush of cool air. Her heart raced. She could feel the hairs on her neck standing up as she looked into the face of her oldest, Johnnie.
He smiled down at her, his wire rimmed glasses shimmering in the lantern light. He was in his dress uniform, medals on his left breast pocket, boots sharply polished and gleaming. He spoke, “Hello, Momma. It’s me, Johnnie. I don’t have much time but I wanted to let you know that me and Billy are going to be fine. We don’t want you worrying yourself to death, you hear? We love you and we promise we will be back before you know it.”
And just like that he vanished and she was alone in the kitchen, her heart pounding but now filled with joy. When weeks later word came that both of them had been on the beaches at Normandy, Edna Taylor, like Mary the Mother of Jesus 2000 years before, pondered these things in her heart. It would be years before she told the story.
By the time the story got told to Montgomery, his mother had been a bit foggy with the details. Did he appear in the kitchen or at her bedside? Was he wearing his dress uniform or his bloodied and stained combat clothes? But in every iteration he had heard, the consistent facts were that on the night before the D-Day assault in France, her tank-driving, war hero son had made a visit to Blue Hill to reassure his mother that he was going to make it.
But as Montgomery wrote the story down it occurred to him that the Taylor family lore wasn’t just stories of comforting visitations. Like all family histories, it’s a mixture of comedy and tragedy, ghosts from the past who bring both life and death. Just four years after D-Day came such a story.
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