That day all those years ago had stung me so much, I reverted back to seeing him as much of Berwick did: the dirty man who worked for Pap in the cemetery. He was mean and ornery, though to me, he had seemed to soften over the years, until that last day.
As a child I was scared of him. Ma or Gram would have him over for Sunday dinner, and I was always tense throughout. I knew what the kids at school said about him. Those words stuck to my brain like the dirt clung to him no matter how hard he tried to clean himself up.
More often than not he’d had so much to drink he couldn’t string clear sentences together. His efforts at civility ended in a slurred jumble that furthered my imagination’s opinion he was some type of ogre. He was never able to leave the dark cloud of hate at the door. It hovered above his head throughout the meal. He seemed so unhappy. I don’t know why they invited him.
On the rare occasions I put my old fears and fresher resentments aside and remembered to ask, Ma would give small updates on his condition. For quite a while he was able to go on working at the cemetery.
“You wouldn’t know he was sick. He’s still working seven days a week. As he says, ‘people keep needing to be planted, god knows they won’t stop for me.’ He also mutters something to the affect of joining them soon enough. Have I told you he’s taken to calling it the ‘bone orchard?’
“I don’t think anyone in Berwick knows about his condition, and if they do, they don’t care a hoot. Did you know the cemetery committee hasn’t let him hire a helper in all the years since Pap passed? Incredible.
“I think there was some sort of pressure from one of those old coots who used to drink at the Tavern who never forgave Santiago for being a Holmes. These grudges are so foolish, as though one person, or one family could be responsible for the death of those mills. It was a collective effort by the whole town. No one shirks the blame. I’m sure there is something every last one of us could have done to keep them running.”
Another time when I asked, when he was further along, she said, “I’ve known a few people from work who’ve gotten cancer or been dealt other bad health hands, and not a one of them have reacted the way Santiago has. A few have jumped in and said, ‘hey, I’m going to fight this,’ but most have found themselves victims of some power not their own. They’ve blamed everyone and everything but themselves.
“Santiago has done neither. He’s just accepted it and tried to make some sore of peace with it. I think he feels guilty for the way he’s handled some parts of his life – though god knows if the people of Berwick didn’t push him to the edge. I think his guilt is driven by loneliness, and now, faced with the end, he’s alone and I think he has regrets. Of course, he never says it in so many words, but it’s in there when we talk, hidden below the surface.”
At my mumbled surprise over the mention of their talking my mother laughed, “you didn’t think I came down here everyday and puttered around without speaking to the man? No, I talk to him.
“I know you two had a falling out, but I don’t wonder if you were being too sensitive. Santiago’s bark was always so much worse than his bite. It was the drink. I tried to get him to stop, or relax it some, but I don’t think he could have lived with the hate in his life without it. I never quite understood if it was the hate that fueled the drinking or vice versa, but the drinking has won out and will rule this last act of his life.
“You’d think he might have stopped drinking, but he hasn’t. He knows the diagnosis and knows it’s killing him, but he’s the same old Santiago; ‘live by the sword, die by the sword’ he says to me when I chastise him at the end of each evening.
“You won’t believe this, but he has almost an embarrassed smile when he says it. It’s almost as if he knows how ridiculous the sentiment is, though I can’t argue the position with him. It is how he lived his entire life, right on the knife-edge. If he hadn’t fought back against them…
“But he did, and that’s what has kept him alone,” the sadness in her voice that day almost broke my heart.
When Santiago Holmes passed, two years after his diagnosis, Ma called me.
“He was stubborn until the end,” she said, “he kept working right up until his body gave out. They found him besides a push mower on top of the hill you used to hate mowing. He had a good view of the entire place at the end. For some reason, it comforts me to know that.”
“He was a hard worker,” was the reply I found, “despite the beer, which might have made the work he did get done all the more impressive.”
“He was more than that. He was a good man. Misunderstood by most, but a good man all the same. I learned a lot from him.”
“That’s good Ma,” I replied, the disbelief in my voice – even as a middle-aged man – was the unspoken thought what could you learn from a drunk, aside from how to drink, or the numerous reasons to never take up the habit.
“You don’t give him enough credit. You think he was a dirty drunk who wasn’t worth a spare thought.”
Mother’s have a particular talent for reading their children’s minds, the shock at which dulled my protest and Ma was not to be slowed.
“You didn’t see the beauty of the man, fighting his own David vs. Goliath styled battle against a town pre-programmed to hate him. Did you know there were teenagers in this town, young ones, 13, 14-years-old who would scream hate at him in the streets? What did these kids know about the name Holmes? No one even calls them the Holmes Mills anymore. And these kids, how have they been affected? It wasn’t their parents who worked in the mills. Their parents were just starting to have their own thoughts when the mills closed for good.
“Maybe their grandparents were affected, but then they carried that ridiculous hatred down through the generations, passing it to their children, who passed it on to their children. Not one of those generations stopped to say, ‘wait a minute, what did this family do to me? Who were the Holmes’s? What did this guy who works in the cemetery do to me?
“No one in this town has ever asked that question. So it is no surprise that right up until the end, Santiago raged back at them. Who can blame him?”
“The people of Berwick?” I offered in crude jest.
“Right, but don’t you think , if they’re going to spit on someone because of their name, they should know something about that name? The Holmes family was not just the one in charge when the mills shut down. They also opened them and kept them running for over 150 years, providing a wonderful living for all these angry children’s ancestors. Why is it that history, which also didn’t affect them, isn’t remembered and taken into consideration?”
“I don’t know Ma.”
“It’s the epidemic of our time, this lack of touch with the past. It’s a shame that poor man had to stand on his own in the face of such senseless stupidity.”
I’d never heard this type of fire in my mother’s voice. I was conditioned to hear only weariness. I should have taken a hint from this new tone and not asked why he mattered so much to her.
“Ma, I get that he’s died and it’s sad, and I know it was awful how everyone in Berwick treated him, but he wasn’t the most pleasant guy. I know, you’ve outlined why we shouldn’t blame him for that, but don’t you think if he’d tried a little harder things might have been better for him?
“I mean, putting aside our differences, he was good to me when I was younger, but I’m not broken up about his death. He drank like a fish. It was only a matter of time before his liver gave up the fight. I dunno, he had a good run, but it was like he used to say, ‘we all gotta die at some point.’ So I don’t quite understand why he means so much to you.”
I could her gather herself on the other end of the phone, “I was never as good to him as I should have been. I tried so hard, but I felt the stupid pressure of the town’s gaze. I wish I’d been more like Pap and not give a shit what they thought of me, but I wasn’t.
“Now, I find I was too late in my kindness. By the time I had the courage to stand up to the town and stand beside him, I had run away and Santiago was dying.
“I learned so much from his death. This hard, undignified man approached it with such grace. Yes, he was bitter for a time, but in the last six months, he had found peace with the inevitability of the outcome.
“I don’t know if I could have approached death in the same way without seeing him do it first. Now I’ll have a better idea how.”
“Ma, you still haven’t answered the question: why did he matter so much to you?”
She sighed through the phone, “Santiago Holmes saved my life. Come up for the funeral and I’ll tell you how.
