Sunday Afternoon in a Southern Church

Sunday Afternoon in a Southern Church
By Matt Miller
Sunday afternoon. A one-room church, wooden, old, partially dilapidated, but suitable. South Louisiana in the summertime. Unbearably hot. No air-conditioning. Humid heat hangs over everyone and engulfs them like a noxious cloud. Flies buzz around, now and then landing on someone’s head. Swatting. Sighing. Too much movement is painful in the heat.
In the front lies a body. It is that of a pudgy white man, the pallor of death making his skin gray and nauseating. His nose, now pointing up at the dingy ceiling, is large and bulbous. His eyelids, sewn shut, are puffy, as if he had not slept much before this, his eternal sleep.
The crowd is quiet, deathly quiet. No one is crying. Some of the women are wiping silent tears from their eyes, and many of the men are wiping the sweat from their brows. They take off their hats, wipe their foreheads (the bald ones wipe their entire heads), and return their hats to their proper place on top of their heads. They repeat this process every few minutes.
A stillness has oozed into the room like a thick paste, the sort of stillness that can only exist on a hot southern afternoon, a palatable, tangible stillness. You can taste it on the sides of your tongue. No one wants to move.