The death of Charlie Huff

The night before, we drove down in my brother’s old Toyota. The heater was broken, so in November, the windscreen fogged up. My brother watched for cars. I watched for signposts.

The funeral was on Thursday. I wore a navy jumper and my good coat. My mother said the Huff men bought new black suits, though they looked shiny and cheap. She had brought them ham sandwiches and a basket of fruit. They ate the sandwiches.

 

Charlie Huff, who had died aged seventy, did not eat sandwiches. He ate two big dinners a day: meat, potatoes, and onion gravy, along with whole packets of biscuits. He drank Lucozade and Guinness. He ate fruit once a year at the Strawberry Fair in Stradbally. When my brother and I were kids, we sometimes stayed over in the Huff house, and we ate mini pizzas and chips. At home, we asked our mother why we couldn’t have chips for tea. She said we had home‑cut chips on Saturdays. I said it was unfair, and that we should eat like the Huffs.

I sat in the back, my mother in front and my brother drove. The river had burst its banks and flooded Charlie’s fields. I remembered the welcome sign we had once made for our townland; a bridge, rushing water and a trout. Charlie Huff pulled it up and threw it in the river. I was twelve at the time; my brother ten. My brother told him we were joking. Charlie stared at us.  

“We were messing,” I said.  

He kept staring. “There’ll be no messing around here.”

Charlie had a crest on his lorry; a hound on a red field. In school, Gemma Huff said it was the Huff crest. The teacher showed her a different one in a book; three lions on amber. She said it was the crest of the O’Heachach family, the Gaelic name for Huff. The next wet morning, Charlie parked his lorry across the school gates. The teachers had to park on the road.

We arrived at the house as the men carried the coffin to the hearse.  

I said, “Sorry for your troubles,” to the family. I felt embarrassed. I no longer knew them.

We followed the cars to the church.

At the end, Charlie lay in a bed by the range, yellow‑skinned, staring at the ceiling. Before he passed, his sister, Margaret, visited him from Boston.

“Cha,” she said, holding his hand. “Cha.”

This was all she could say. He said nothing.

As we followed the hearse over the bumpy roads, my mother began to cry.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.  

“He was such a handsome man,” she said.  

“So?”  

“So, he got old... I remember when they built the house. We were the only two houses on the lane. You and the Huff girls picked berries. You were so small.”

She covered her face.  

“Your grandfather came home this way,” she said.

She meant after he died in the nursing home, twenty years ago. There was a flood then too.

“Sorry,” I said.  

I had not expected this. I felt sad for her, for everyone.

We parked beside the village technical school. My brother and I had attended there. Our uncles too. The school was open seventy‑five years. Charlie had attended for three. A row of boys sat on the wall in front. Maroon jumpers stretched at their broad shoulders. It surprised me that the school was open. The bank was open too. But the world did not stop for the death of Charlie Huff.

In church, our neighbours sat at the front. My father sang with the choir. Father Conor said Charlie was known as “Cha”. He said Cha was loved and respected. That he liked tractors and cattle. That he enjoyed a few pints and fun. I could not remember the fun. There was a crowd because the family was big and kind. Charlie was a hard man. But here he sounded like a rogue. Maybe he was. I don’t know.

The Huff women followed the hearse in the undertaker’s car. The men walked behind, down the road then up the long hill to the graveyard. Mist turned to drizzle. The family had no umbrellas.

At the graveyard, Father Conor rushed the blessing. Suit trousers got wet. Rainwater filled shoes and socks. Trucks rattled past and it was difficult to hear. People were unsure if they should go to the hotel for sandwiches. In the car park, my brother swerved to avoid a dog and broke the headlight of a white Range Rover.

1. Charlie Huff was carried to his funeral in an old Toyota.    
2. When he was a child, the narrator liked to eat chips.    
3. Charlie Huff liked eating fruit and vegetables.   
4. As a child, the narrator thought the Huff family’s meals were better than their own. .
5. Charlie Huff was very well educated.   
6. Charlie Huff used to live alone by himself.
7. The narrator’s brother accidentally damaged someone’s car in the car park. 

Exercise - comparisons 

1.  Five words that express family relationships.          
2.  Four words describing a type of vehicle          
3. Five types of building            
4. Six colours.              

3. Memory test - verbs