Chapter 105
Sofia, the documentary filmmaker who had interviewed Marcus eight years before, completed her film and it was shown at a Caribbean film festival. Marcus attended with Nia and Elise and Joseph and several grandchildren.
He watched himself on screen older than the man in his mind, the way filmed versions of yourself always are and listened to what he had said and was surprised to find that he still agreed with most of it, what Thomas Said about the Film Thomas said: Pa Marcus, you look like yourself. He meant it as a compliment. He was right. Leroy's last good year was his seventy-fourth. Marcus knew it was his last good year not because anything specific announced itself, but because of the quality of the days full and present and somehow also aware of their own fullness.
On a Thursday in October when both of them were seventy-four, Marcus and Leroy sat in Leroy's garden from two in the afternoon until the dark came, talking , about everything. About the yard and the boys they had been and the men they had become and what the whole of it meant. what Leroy Said That Thursday , Leroy said: I've had a good life. I want you to know that I know that. The people were right the work was right Sandra You the children all of it right I just want to say it clearly while I can say it clearly.
What Marcus Said Back
He said: I know. I've known for fifty years that you were going to have a good life because you were always going to make one. The loyalty and the love you were always going to build something good from those you did.
Leroy died at seventy-five, in February, in his own bed, with Sandra beside him. The heart, which had been repaired and managed for seven years, finally settled into stillness.
After Leroy
He did not describe the weeks after Leroy's death in his journal until a month later, What he wrote, eventually: He was my first my longest my most constant there is no sentence adequate for that. There is only the fact that he was in my life from before I knew what a life was, and that his presence in it made it possible to be fully myself. That is the whole of it , He gave the eulogy at Leroy's funeral and held himself together with everything he had, because Leroy would have wanted him to not from performance, but because Leroy believed in facing things straight.