CityView Magazine

10 | Januar y 2020 Sometimes, members of the Peter McQueen crowd from Clinton would make their appearances as well. I remember Uncle Bill losing his glasses in the water and my brother Malcolm collecting the $10 reward for finding them. ere was also a fly-killing contest where each child had one of the metal-handled fly swatters with the screened-porch-looking business end. Uncle Bill offered 5 cents per fly, payable at the end of the week. Visual confirmation of the winged corpse was a prerequisite before recording a mark on the tally sheet. And I remember Aunt Wezy laughing from deep in her belly as she watched us crashing into each other in the bumper cars at the arcade. In 2004, while returning from a morning turkey hunt in Atkinson, I made an unplanned stop at the lake in response to a for-sale sign in the Timberlodge neighborhood. Completely on impulse, I bought a waterfront place a few weeks later for me and my wife Susanna. Our next-door neighbors became our best couple friends. eir daughter and ours lived together at college in Wilmington for a year. We had parties in the yard and fireworks on the Fourth of July. e children learned to wakeboard. And we crashed into each other in those same bumper cars that made Wezy guffaw so in the late 1960s. And in those years, my mom would sit sunning on the end of the pier, looking across at where Kate's house had been. e pathway that tied her childhood to her old age was still in very good shape. She could see herself with Cousin Peg McQueen and Aunt Catherine McQueen lounging in the water. She could then look down at her own grandchildren doing the same thing in that moment. e continuity through time was still very clear to her. Mom was happy. Later, at the height of her confusion, I arranged to check her out for the day and take her to the lake for what would turn out to be her last visit. I have no real recollection of our conversation on the trip from Village Drive in Fayetteville through Cedar Creek, past the fire tower, or into Bladen County. I suspect it was forced and unnatural. We slowed as we drove into White Oak, passed by Cain's Grill and accelerated toward the White Oak Baptist Church and the resumption of the 55mph speed limit. I confess that I was probably thinking how many more quarter hours it was to the lake where I could get some help from Susanna with Mom's basic care. Somewhere from off to the side of that potholed and washed out road inside her mind, my mother suddenly took on an appearance of stark clarity. I remember it vividly, the color rising in her cheeks. From her perch in my truck, she pointed just ahead into the cemetery of the White Oak Baptist Church. "ere is Owen's grave," she stated. Something about the way she looked made me decelerate. "Owen who?" I said. "Owen McQueen," she said. e name meant nothing to me, and I guess that showed. Daddy's little brother," she added. I had been going to White Lake with my mother from the time I was a little boy. Always, we took Highway 53 through White Oak. I had taken her to the lake several times myself since buying my own place. To my recollection, I had never heard the name Owen McQueen, much less visited a cemetery where he reputedly lay. I had heard the story though. A little boy in a turn-of-the-century house, who got too close to the cook fire, had his clothes ignite, and, in pain and panic, bolted out of the house and into the yard. No one could catch him. e little boy died of his injuries. In fact, I remember the story being told to us as a warning not to play with fire and as a warning to roll on the ground, not run away, if something similar ever happened to us boys. In that moment, I failed at the strategy of going to wherever my mother was in her own mind. Instead of saying, "It sure is" and driving on, I said, "Mom, that is the Baptist church. Your Dad's family went to the Methodist church." It did not deter her, though she did retreat somewhat into the fog. Again though, she said declaratively, "at was Owen's grave." Why did I decide to abide her knowing it would delay my arrival at the lake? I did not believe her. She had Alzheimer's disease and it was progressing on a downhill slope. Plus, by then, I was probably a half mile beyond the White Oak town limits. Still, I turned around and eased into the dirt drive between the gravestones. I turned to looked at my passenger, who was growing more and more difficult to recognize with each passing day. "Mom, where is Owen's grave?"

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