Agee was writing a thinly-disguised autobiographical account of the death of his own father in 1916 when he was just 6. Since the story is told largely from the perspective of Rufus Follet (Agee’s middle name was Rufus), much of it is allusive and impressionistic. But when Jay, his father, is killed in a car accident, the story grows suddenly more carefully detailed. We learn, along with Rufus’s mother Mary, exactly how the accident occurred, even though there was no witness, and the strangely perfect condition of the body.
In chapter 12, Mary’s family, including her father Joel, her hard-of-hearing mother Catherine, her Aunt Hannah and her younger brother Andrew, have gathered in a sort of vigil in her house while they wait for Jay’s brother Ralph to transport the body back home. Hannah and Mary have been drinking whisky toddies, and they are sitting around the large living room late at night talking to bring comfort to Mary, while Rufus and his little sister are sleeping upstairs. In the middle of this somber scene, something enters that is all the more strange for being presented so straightforwardly. At the time of the publication of the novel, Alfred Kazin mentioned that
There are several scenes in it that are really hair-raising – especially one where the family, sitting together, concertedly feel the spirit of the dead father coming into the room.
Everyone except Joel, who is a proud skeptic and contemptuous of his daughter Mary’s religious devotion, feels the presence, which Mary identifies as Jay, in the house. Here is Agee’s account in its entirety.
"Hark!" Hannah whispered.
"What is it?"
"Ssh! Listen."
"What's up?" Joel asked.
"Be quiet, Joel, please. There's something."
They listened most intently.
"I can't hear anything," Andrew whispered.
"Well I do," Hannah said, in a low voice. "Hear it or feel it. There's something."
And again in silence they listened.
It began to seem to Mary, as to Hannah, that there was someone in the house other than themselves. She thought of the children; they might have waked up. Yet listening as intently as she could, she was not at all sure that there was any sound; and whoever or whatever it might be, she became sure that it was no child, for she felt in it a terrible forcefulness, and concern, and restiveness, which were no part of any child.
"There is something," Andrew whispered. Whatever it might be, it was never for an instant at rest in one place.
It was in the next room; it was in the kitchen; it was in the dining room.
"I'm going out to see," Andrew said; he got up.
"Wait, Andrew, don't, not yet," Mary whispered "No; no"; now it's going upstairs, she thought; it's along the-it's in the children's room. It's in our room.
"Has somebody come into the house?" Catherine inquired in her clear voice.
Andrew felt the flesh go cold along his spine. He bent near her. "What made you think so, Mama?" he asked quietly.
"It's right here in the room with us," Mary said in a cold voice.
"Why, how very stupid of me, I thought I heard. Footsteps." She gave her short, tinkling laugh. "I must be getting old and dippy." She laughed again.
"Sshh!"
"It's Jay," Mary whispered. "I know it now. I was so wrapped up in wondering what on earth… Jay. Darling. Dear heart, can you hear me?
"Can you tell me if you hear me, dearest?
"Can you?
"Can't you?
"Oh try your best, my dear. Try your very hardest to let me know.
"You can't, can you? You can't, no matter how hard.
"But O, do hear me, Jay. I do pray God with all my heart you can hear me, I want so to assure you.
"Don't be troubled, dear one. Don't you worry. Stay near us if you can. All you can. But let not your heart be troubled. They're all right, my sweetheart, my husband. I'm going to be all right. Don't you worry. We'll make out. Rest, my dear. Just rest. Just rest, my heart. Don't ever be troubled again. Never again, darling. Never, never again."
"May the souls of the faithful through the mercy of God rest in peace," Hannah whispered. "Blessed are the dead."
"Mary!" her brother whispered. He was crying.
"He's not here any more now," she said. "We can talk."
"Mary, in God's name what was it?"
"It was Jay, Andrew."
"It was something. I haven't any doubt of that, but-good God, Mary."
"It was Jay, all right. I know! Who else would be coming here tonight, so terribly worried, so terribly concerned for us, and restless! Besides, Andrew, it-it simply felt like Jay."
"You mean…"
"I just mean it felt like his presence."
"To me, too," Hannah said.
"I don't like to interrupt," Joel said, "but would you mind telling me, please, what's going on here?"
"You felt it too, Papa?" Mary asked eagerly.
"Felt what?"
"You remember when Aunt Hannah said there was something around, someone or something in the house?"
"Yes, and she told me to shut up, so I did."
"I simply asked you please to be quiet, Joel, because we were trying to hear."
"Well, what did you hear?"
"I don't know's I heard anything, Joel. I'm not a bit sure. I don't think I did. But I felt something, very distinctly. So did Andrew."
"Yes I did, Papa."
"And Mary."
"Oh, very much so."
"What do you mean you felt something?"
"Then you didn't, Papa?"
"I got a feeling there was some kind of a strain in the room, something or other was up among you; Mary looking as if she'd seen a ghost; all of you…"
"She did," Andrew said. "That is, she didn't actually see anything, but she felt it. She knew something was there. She says it was Jay."
"Hahh?"
"Jay. Aunt Hannah thinks so too."
"Hannah?"
"Yes I do, Joel. I'm not as sure as Mary, but it did seem like him."
"What's 'it'?"
"The thing, Papa, whatever it was. The thing we all felt."
"What did it feel like?"
"Just a…"
"You think it was Jay?"
"No, I had no idea what it was. But I know it was something. Mama felt it too."
"Catherine?"
"Yes. And it couldn't have been through us because she didn't even know what we were doing. All of a sudden she said, 'Has somebody come into the house?' and when I asked her why she thought so she said she thought she'd heard footsteps."
"Could be thought transference."
"None of the rest of us thought we heard footsteps."
"All the same. It can't be what you think."
"I don't know what it was, Papa, but there are four of us here independently who are sure there was something."
"Joel, I know that God in a wheelbarrow wouldn't convince you," his sister said. "We aren't even trying to convince you. But while you're being so rational, why at least please be rational enough to realize that we experienced what we experienced."
"The least I can do is accept the fact that three people had a hallucination, and honor their belief in it. That I can do, too, I guess. I believe you, for yourself, Hannah. All of you. I'd have to have the same hallucination myself to be convinced. And even then I'd have my doubts."
"What on earth do you mean, doubts, Papa, if you had it yourself?"
"I'd suspect it was just a hallucination."
"Oh, good Lord! You've got it going and coming, haven't you!"
"Is this a dagger that I see before me? Wasn't, you know. But you could never convince Macbeth it wasn't."
"Andrew," Mary broke in, "tell Mama. She's just dying to know what we're…" she trailed off. I must be out of my mind, she said to herself. Dying! And she began to think with astonishment and disgust of the way they had all been talking-herself most of all. How can we bear to chatter along in normal tones of voice! she thought; how can we even use ordinary words, or say words at all! And now, picking his poor troubled soul to pieces, like so many hens squabbling over-she thought of a worm, and covered her face in sickness. She heard her mother say,
"Why, Andrew, how perfectly extraordinary!" and then she heard Andrew question her, had she had any special feeling about what kind of a person or thing it was, that is, was it quiet or active, or young or old, or disturbed or calm, or was it anything: and her mother answered that she had had no particular impression except that there was someone in the house besides themselves, not the children either, somebody mature, some sort of intruder; but that when nobody had troubled to investigate, she had decided that it must be an hallucination-all the more so because, as she'd said, she thought she'd actually heard someone, whereas with her poor old ears (she laughed gracefully) that was simply out of the question, of course. Oh, I do wish they'd leave him in peace, she said to herself. A thing so wonderful. Such a proof! Why can't we just keep a reverent silence! But Andrew was asking his mother, had she, a little later than that, still felt even so that there was somebody? or not. And she said that indeed she had had such an impression. Where? Why she couldn't say where, except that the impression was even stronger than before, but, of course, by then she realized it was an hallucination. But they felt it too! Why how perfectly uncanny!
"Mary thinks it was Jay," Andrew told her.
"Why, I…"
"So does Aunt Hannah."
"Why how-how perfectly extraordinary, Andrew!"
"She thinks he was worried about…"
"Oh, Andrew!" Mary cried. "Andrew Please let's don't talk about it any more! Do you mind?"
He looked at her as if he had been slapped. "Why, Mary, of course not!" He explained to his mother: "Mary'd rather we didn't discuss it any more."
"Oh, it's not that, Andrew. It just-means so much more than anything we can say about it or even think about it. I'd give anything just to sit quiet and think about it a little while! Don't you see? It's as if we were driving him away when he wants so much to be here among us, with us, and can't."
"I'm awfully sorry, Mary. Just awfully sorry. Yes, of course I do see. It's a kind of sacrilege."
So they sat quietly and in the silence they began to listen again. At first there was nothing, but after a few minutes Hannah whispered, "He's there," and Andrew whispered, "Where?" and Mary said quietly, "With the children," and quietly and quickly left the room.
When she came through the door of the children's room she could feel his presence as strongly throughout the room as if she had opened a furnace door: the presence of his strength, of virility, of helplessness, and of pure calm. She fell down on her knees in the middle of the floor and whispered, "Jay. My dear. My dear one. You're all right now, darling. You're not troubled any more, are you, my darling? Not any more. Not ever any more, dearest. I can feel how it is with you. I know, my dearest. It's terrible to go. You don't want to. Of course you don't. But you've got to. And you know they're going to be all right. Everything is going to be all right, my darling. God take you. God keep you, my own beloved. God make His light shine upon you." And even while she whispered, his presence became faint, and in a moment of terrible dread she cried out "Jay!" and hurried to her daughter's crib. "Stay with me one minute," she whispered, "just one minute, my dearest"; and in some force he did return; she felt him with her, watching his child. Catherine was sleeping with all her might and her thumb was deep in her mouth; she was scowling fiercely. "Mercy, child," Mary whispered, smiling, and touched her hot forehead to smooth it, and she growled. "God bless you, God keep you," her mother whispered, and came silently to her son's bed. There was the cap in its tissue paper, beside him on the floor; he slept less deeply than his sister, with his chin lifted, and his forehead flung back; he looked grave, serene and expectant.
"Be with us all you can," she whispered. "This is good-bye." And again she went to her knees. Good-bye, she said again, within herself; but she was unable to feel much of anything. "God help me to realize it," she whispered, and clasped her hands before her face: but she could realize only that he was fading, and that it was indeed good-bye, and that she was at that moment unable to be particularly sensitive to the fact.
And now he was gone entirely from the room, from the house, and from this world.
"Soon, Jay. Soon, dear," she whispered; but she knew that it would not be soon. She knew that a long life lay ahead of her, for the children were to be brought up, and God alone could know what change and chance might work upon them all, before they met once more. She felt at once calm and annihilating emptiness, and a cold and overwhelming fullness.
"God help us all," she whispered. "May God in His loving mercy keep us all."
She signed herself with the Cross and left the room.
She looks as she does when she has just received, Hannah thought as she came in and took her old place on the sofa; for Mary was trying, successfully, to hide her desolation; and as she sat among them in their quietness it was somewhat diminished. After all, she told herself, he was there. More strongly even than when he was here in the room with me. Anyhow. And she was grateful for their silence.
Finally Andrew said, "Aunt Hannah has an idea about it, Mary.„ "Maybe you'd prefer not to talk about it," Hannah said.
"No; it's all right; I guess I'd rather." And with mild surprise she found that this was true.
"Well, it's simply that I thought of all the old tales and beliefs about the souls of people who die sudden deaths, or violent deaths. Or as Joel would prefer it, not souls. Just their life force. Their consciousness. Their life itself."
"Can't get around that," Joel said. "Hannah was saying that everything of any importance leaves the body then. I certainly have to agree with that."
"And that even whether you believe or not in life after death," Mary said, "in the soul, as a living, immortal thing, creature, why it's certainly very believable that for a little while afterwards, this force, this life, stays on. Hovers around."
"Sounds highly unlikely to me, but I suppose it's conceivable."
"Like looking at a light and then shutting your eyes. No, not like that but-but it does stay on. Specially when it's someone very strong, very vital, who hasn't been worn down by old age, or a long illness or something."
"That's exactly it," Andrew said. "Something that comes out whole, because it's so quick."
"Why they're as old as the hills, those old beliefs."
"I should imagine they're as old as life and death," Andrew said.
"The thing I mean is, they aren't taken straight to God," Hannah said. "They've had such violence done them, such a shock, it takes a while to get their wits together."
"That's why it took him so long to come," Mary said. "As if his very soul had been struck unconscious."
"I should think maybe."
"And above all with someone like Jay, young, and with children and a wife, and not even dreaming of such a thing coming on him, no time to adjust his mind and feelings, or prepare for it."
"That's just it," Andrew said; Hannah nodded.
"Why he'd feel, 'I'm worried. This came too fast without warning. There are all kinds of things I've got to tend to. I can't just leave them like this.' Wouldn't he! And that's just how he was, how we felt he was. So anxious. So awfully concerned, and disturbed. Why yes, it's just exactly the way it was!
"And only when they feel convinced you know they care, and everything's going to be taken good care of, just the very best possible, it's only then they can stop being anxious and begin to rest."
They nodded and for a minute they were all quiet.
Then Mary said tenderly, "How awful, pitiful, beyond words it must be, to be so terribly anxious for others, for others' good, and not be able to do anything, even to say so. Not even to help. Poor things.
"Oh, they do need reassuring. They do need rest. I'm so grateful I could assure him. It's so good he can rest at last. I'm so glad." And her heart was restored from its desolation, into warmth and love and almost into wholeness.
Again they were all thoughtfully silent, and into this silence Joel spoke quietly and slowly, "I don't – know. I just – don’t – know. Every bit of gumption I've got tells me it's impossible, but if this kind of thing is so, it isn't with gumption that you see it is. I just – don’t – know.
"If you're right, and I'm wrong, then chances are you're right about the whole business, God, and the whole crew. And in that case I'm just a plain damned fool.
"But if I can't trust my common sense-I know it's nothing much, Poll, but it's all I've got. If I can't trust that, what in hell can I trust!
"God, you'n Hannah'd say. Far's I'm concerned, it's out of the question."
"Why, Joel?"
"It doesn't seem to embarrass your idea of common sense, or Poll's, and for that matter I'm making no reflections. You've got plenty of gumption. But how you can reconcile the two, I can't see."
"It takes faith, Papa," Mary said gently.
"That's the word. That's the one makes a mess of everything, far's I'm concerned. Bounces up like a jack-in-the-box. Solves everything.
"Well it doesn't solve anything for me, for I haven't got any.
"Wouldn't hurt it if I had. Don't believe in it.
"Not for me.
"For you, for anyone that can manage it, all right. More power to you. Might be glad if I could myself. But I can't.
"I'm not exactly an atheist, you know. Least I don't suppose I am. Seems as unfounded to me to say there isn't a God as to say there is. You can't prove it either way. But that's it: I've got to have proof. And on anything can't be proved, be damned if I'll jump either way. All I can say is, I hope you're wrong but I just don't know."
"I don't, either," Andrew said. "But I hope it's so."
He saw Mary and Hannah look at him hopefully.
"I don't mean the whole business," he said. "I don't know anything about that. I just mean tonight."
Can't eat your cake and have it, his father thought.
Like slapping a child in the face, Andrew thought; he had been rougher than he had intended.
"But, Andrew dear," Mary was about to say, but she caught herself. What a thing to argue about, she thought; and what a time to be wrangling about it!
Each of them realized that the others felt something of this; for a little while none of them had anything to say. Finally Andrew said, "I'm sorry."
"Never mind," his sister said. "It's all right, Andrew."
"We just each believe what we're able," Hannah said, after a moment.
"Even you, Joel. You have faith in your mind. Your reason."
"Not very much: all I've got, that's all. All I can be sure of."
"That's all I mean."
"Let's not talk about it any more," Mary said. "Tonight," she added, trying to make her request seem less peremptory.
The word was a reproach upon them all, much more grave, they were sure, than Mary had intended, so that to spare her regret they all hastened to say, kindly and as if somewhat callously, "No, let's not."
It may surprise you to know that I felt a little trepidation reading this passage in the novel because I was having something of a health scare of my own at the time. I even stopped reading the novel after the point of this scene for two weeks, and only finished the novel in July.
It’s unique in literature, this incidental intrusion of a supernatural element, and Agee didn’t live long enough to have to explain it. In January 1951, in Southern California to work on The African Queen with John Huston, Agee suffered his first attack of what was diagnosed as “coronary thrombosis.” After working on a few other movie scripts (including Night of the Hunter), in his last months he set everything else aside to work on A Death in the Family, which he started writing in 1948. He wrote to Father Flye, a long time mentor and friend, in March of 1955 that he was “dropping, by and large, from an average 12-17 [heart] attacks per day, 6-8 of them mild, to an average 6-8, nearly all of them mild.” On May 16, a heart attack killed him in a New York City taxicab.
An interesting coincidence ties the deaths of Agee and his father together. They both died on May 16.
I was born on May 16 three years after Agee’s death.
Happy Halloween.
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