Twist

Death’s a real shit show. My whole life is death. I mean it in the non-tragic, but equally uncomfortable way. Betts and Sons Funeral & Memorial. It’s your typical midsize town Christian Methodist operation, with Dad sitting behind his big desk trying to remember his own name. After Pops died, I became the new “son” in sons, and Dad became the old Betts. I never thought I would actually work there with Daddy and my brother, Roy Gene. I still don’t really work there. I’m there every day, but I’m usually just sitting in my office with the door closed watching all of the old slideshows that I’ve made.

Roy Gene is different though. He’s got a little wife that crochets blankets for the county hospital auxiliary and calls him RG. She’s round and always wears sweat pants that ride up a little. They have a little kid named Bart with a lazy eye. He’s an alright kid. He’s always got his nose in some Confederate Civil War Memoir and I sometimes think he’s going to end up in a the paper for blowing up a black church with a bomb he makes out of Pine-Sol and lawn fertilizer and hides in a Bible. For all we know, his momma, Elizabeth could be a real racist and teaching him to avenge the south or whatever. She’s from Georgia and she home schools him. Elizabeth’s a real dumbass though so I feel for the kid even if he is a Nazi or something.

I know why Daddy and Roy Gene are funeral directors. Both their Daddys was. But, when I think about Pops and why chose it out of the blue, I don’t understand. I don’t know why a kid would get back from the war and want to brush dead people’s hair. Sadness sits in the air at Betts. Sometimes, I think the vents blow air out of some sadness tank. Maybe there’s a chloroform line that runs straight to it and blows the fumes out to make everyone  feel heavy and tired. And if anyone ever starts acting happier they should, Daddy can pull out a switch from his desk and open the valve up just a little to make them all solemn and respectful.

You know why it’s called a funeral home? Because the family that ran the place used to live there. Pops and Granny lived at the old Betts for thirty-five years. Then, a tornado came through and blew the place down in 1977. They rebuilt, but by then, new construction had to be rezoned after the tornado. The town decided to use the destruction as a way to redesign downtown. The new zoning forbid the rebuild from serving as a residence and a business. So, they built a new funeral home, and moved into one of the only houses left standing in the town. Since Momma was dead, Daddy, Roy Gene and me moved in with them and we never moved out.

There are faded pictures of me as a baby on the front lawn of the old Betts. I’m on a checkered blanket in the shade of the tree Pops planted. You can see my mother’s calves and feet in flat sandals next to me but not her face. It was an intimidating three-story thing. With a wrap-around porch and two pillars that rested on top of the rickety green steps. There was a Victorian round tower, with a top something like a church steeple at the front left corner of the house. The bay window in the tower on the ground floor was stained when the house was built, but not very well. By the time I was born in 1971, the deep reds and blues had turned pale pink and grey. That window framed the back of the funeral chapel. The chapel had eight oak pews without cushions. Nothing about the old place yielded comfort to the families. It wasn’t ever even air-conditioned.

Right above the chapel, on the second floor was Granny’s dining room.  The windows to the dining room were perpendicular to the stained glass beneath it and had permanent pock marks on the blue-painted aluminum frame from a hail storm back in 1952.  She had a china cabinet with two incomplete but similar sets of China. Not real china from anywhere exciting but hand-painted mass produced dishes from New Jersey. Her mother pieced it together from grocery store tickets and added each item to Granny’s mahogany hope chest along with a quilt made out of clashing snips of fabric and needlepoint picture in a splintered frame.

The old place had a basement that ran under the entire house. There is where all the bodies were prepared. It had an old elevator that raised the caskets from the basement to the front of the chapel. They used to be real common. It was a manual power rig, with a double pulley system that could hold about a ton. The shaft had been expanded in the fifties, because the modern caskets were wider, and couldn’t fit on the elevator. Roy Gene and I used to ride it when nobody was home. On the day of the tornado, we all huddled down in the basement next to the elevator. To my six year old self, the howling winds and downpour of water were all the souls’ ghosts that Daddy and Pops had cut up down there.

A vacuum of wind from the elevator shaft began sipping up all the air from the basement, and eventually pulling at my hair. On the opposite side of the room, the stairs ran up to the ground floor. The door was sucked off, and the air became like rope in a tug-of-war between the two holes, sucking the air in opposite directions and my ears began to pop. Granny had her arms around me whispering a prayer that I couldn’t hear but I could feel her breath on my neck. Daddy was covering Roy Gene whose eyes were shut so tight it looked like it hurt even though it was really too dark to see much anyway. Blind as we were, we tried to inch ourselves away from the elevator, and the coffin cannonball that hung in the balance at the top. Momma couldn’t see me, and she was inching her way over to me when she slipped and her head hit the elevator platform.  She fell, and blacked out, and as Dad felt around for her in the dark, the old elevator pulley snapped from the pressure, and the whole contraption, including the lift, casket, and the heart attack case from the day before fell on top of her, crushing her head, and breaking her neck.

I remember the lightning flashing at intervals so short they must have been half seconds, but they seemed like little forevers. Each time the blue flashes of light entered the busted windows on the other side of the room, I could see Dad’s face. The veins in his neck bulging, his mouth shaking in a silenced  scream, and his eyes on fire with anger. He had blood speckled on his collared shirt. It was on his hands as he pulled out long pieces of wood and metal and chains. I could only see him when the lightning flashed though. The power in his heavy shoulders didn’t come from his arms and muscles but inside of him.  He was battling something that night, and it wasn’t the wreck.

Tornados only last for a few minutes, thank God. Then, they go on to break other things. But, they leave their ghost forever. After a storm like that, people always think they see a funnel cloud over their shoulder and think the hissing in the coffee pot’s the wind coming for them. When Daddy was pulling apart the wreckage, digging for Momma, he was trying to hit the twister back for its dirty blow, but really he was just swinging at the ghost.  When a tornado comes for you, it kicks your ass and then never lets you forget that you lost the fight. When it kicked Daddy down, he went down swinging hard. I couldn’t hear him over the howling storm. I’m glad that I didn’t.

Seven people died in the tornado. All the bodies had to be taken by the funeral home in the next county. It was ran by a real old man who wore a black double breasted suit. He took care of Momma for free because he and Pops went back a ways. His secretary wore a blue dress and kept candy on her desk. She had probably given out a real share of candy to kids whose mommas were in the basement. Her red hair was at the back of her head as though it were thread wrapped around an invisible spool. She had blue eyes with lines next to them so that it looked like a piece of carbon paper with all of the stray scratches on it.

The new Home looked at the following years as bored as one was to look back at it. Commonplace boxy vanilla colored brick and a new chapel without the faded stained glass but instead a wood paneling rib cage. The carpet’s a burgundy color with flecks of pink sprinkled on it. It blended in with the rest of the new town with standard 1970s architecture rising without any excitement on the several hills around the main square.

_____

There’s another picture of me under the same tree, with my cap and gown on and Pops, Granny, and Roy Gene next to me. It’s the only other picture I think anyone ever took of me.

That fall, I made my way across Oklahoma to go to school. My parents’ blood, which wrestled in me as violently as their wills struck each other when Momma was alive, had combined to make me a minority-scholarship winner. College was just one big keg party. I drank beer and touched girls like they were fucking pets that waited anxiously for their master’s attention.

I studied though. I didn’t know what I wanted to be, but I tried on a lot of ideas there for fit. I read all these books and made up my mind that the air there made me smarter. I was quiet, though. I liked being in the middle of all the people. I watched them for hours and made up stories about them. I made up their names, where they were from and what they liked. They all had secrets they were keeping.  I didn’t really make a lot of friends but I was always around, and nobody ever told me to leave. I didn’t want to be friends anyway. To me, they were all murderers, cannibals and cross-dressers anyway.  After I made up a story about them, I couldn’t see them as anything else.

I kind of thought that maybe I would just make up stories. Not a writer because I was never any good at writing in school and I just hated all the rules, but for movies. I could make up movies. I liked mysteries and horror movies the best. Not usually the ones with all of the blood and gore, but the ones where they don’t actually show what’s happening to the guy. Those were always scarier to me anyway.

I met Leese at a party. She had hair like Momma’s. Straight, shiny, and strong like black fishing line. I saw her copper skin and knew what she was. A scholarship case like me, only she grew up on the reservation like Momma. I walked up to her and said “I’m J.R., and I’m a Cherokee, too.” Then, in one drink, I finished the remaining two-thirds of my beer to prove it.

Leese wore a white dress with tan moccasins when we got married. She did that to piss her mother off. Her mother hated the Indian things as much as she fucking hated me.  Our wedding was in the chapel at Betts. Leese carried thee plastic flowers and had her long black hair down. I couldn’t afford a pretty engagement ring for her, but I bought a little gold band at the pawn shop the day before and shined it up with the polish we used to rub on the brass fixtures of the caskets. Roy Gene, Daddy, Granny were the only people there other than Leese’s sister, Priscilla, since Pops had already died. I wouldn’t have known they were sisters except they sounded exactly the same when they talked and laughed.

Leese had a long, slender body with legs so long her knees were higher than her hips when she was sitting and her thighs came down at an angle. Even though she was already three months pregnant, her stomach still laid completely flat under her dress. When she read she wore glasses and she always bounced her leg up and down under her desk. Usually, her mouth pointed straight across, but that day she wore a big smile. She had a dimple in her left cheek where her smile curved up a little bit more than the other side.

Unlike Leese, Priscilla had a stocky body and a single eyebrow that ran all the way across her forehead. She wore a powder blue dress with a lot of ruffles on the sleeve that day. I don’t know why she was trying to look so nice. I just wore my plain black suit I wore at the funerals, and if she was trying to pick up her own guy to knock her up, the only other single one there was Roy Gene and his standards aren’t exactly high enough to dress up for. He seems to like sweat pants just fine. I liked her though. Even though it looked like she had draped a table cloth over herself, I liked that she came to the wedding.  If nobody comes, it’s not a wedding it’s just an elopement. Family meant we were really getting married.

That night, I didn’t sleep. We didn’t make love because I was drunk and Leese had just thrown up on the way to the motel. Leese wore a dusty pink nightgown to bed that went to the top her calves. I snuggled in close to her and I could smell the cinnamon cake that Granny had made for us. I couldn’t sleep that night, because I wanted to look at her. I never did much at school. I didn’t make very good grades and when all the other kids had something smart or important to say, I just sat at the back and wrote my name over and over in my notebook so they would think I was taking notes. That night, though, I felt like I had actually done something important. I didn’t know if I would be a good dad and I wasn’t sure I would know if I was anyway, but I knew people would be impressed by Leese. Maybe, if all I ever succeeded in was marrying someone smart and pretty, that would be enough.

I was wondering why her stomach wasn’t growing. Until then, I kind of thought you started looking pregnant as soon the guy knocked you up, but Leese still looked the same. When I was packing up my dorm room to come home, my roommate told me I needed to make sure she was pregnant, because bitches will fake it to make you marry them. I laughed because I knew Leese wouldn’t marry me unless she had to. I watched her stomach all night. I kept thinking if I stared at it long enough I would see it grow.

Leese was going to stay in school. She was smarter than me. She was going to finish out at the junior college and I would go work at Betts. We moved in with Daddy. We lived in my old room and planned to put the baby in Roy Gene’s room.  He was already living across town in a little apartment all by himself. He liked it a lot better that way, especially since the baby was coming.

We fought about what color to paint the baby’s room at Daddy’s house. She wanted lavender and I wanted pink. The doctor said we were having a girl and I think all little girls should have pink rooms. We shuffled the paint samples around for an hour, getting more and more frustrated. Leese’s face got all red when I wouldn’t give in. Finally, she grunted, and then swooped in and kissed me. We turned around and looked up and saw Daddy standing there in the square doorway staring at us like we were on a TV or something. He didn’t say a word but walked back into the living room and sat in his chair.

The next day, Leese and I got home after we left the clinic and could hear the radio playing upstairs. We got to the baby’s room, and saw Daddy smoking a cigarette sitting on the floor staring at the newly painted purple walls. I looked over at Leese and saw a little tear shining on her brown cheek.  He stood up, smiled at Leese and walked out of the room.

The baby was born and was a shade darker than the walls. She looked like a doll. So still and perfect and quiet. Our little girl had hair like Leese’s.

____

I keep having this dream. I keep dreaming that I’m walking in the cemetery and suddenly a tornado comes. It’s coming from the sky as well as the ground. It’s stirring up the bodies pushing them to the top as boiling potatoes in pot. I keep trying to recover them, but they keep coming up. There are so many arms. Too many arms for the number of people. The bodies are intact though. They even look like they just got buried. Wearing neat suits and comb-overs. Some of them are washing over from the old part of the cemetery where people have buried for a hundred years but they are still so clean and neat.

I keep trying to match the person to the right headstone, but there are a few of them that I don’t remember who they are. I tell myself that no one will know the difference. Still, the more I rebury, the more that wash out. The rain is pouring down and I am slipping all over the place.

My black suit is getting wet and heavy and it’s getting harder to walk. All the women have smooth legs. It must not be true, then, that your hair keeps on growing when you die. I try to wipe the mud off of all of the bodies. Their families wouldn’t like it.

I’m slipping down the hillside, I can’t stop. I don’t try. I’m caught by the water-mud current and I let it swoop my jacket off. I wash into a grave. Six feet down I fall into the comfortable nest. The water rushes over me. I wake up.

____

Mr. Rogers died when he had a seizure during sex with a hooker. The girl thought he was coming, but he was dying. Strange, that he died from a seizure. I figured there had to be some kind of choking involved too, but he has a clean neck. It wouldn’t be the first time we had to cover a ring around the neck with a little makeup.

Mrs. Rogers keeps going on and on about what a great man he was. Her name is Rachel which I think is the prettiest name for a girl. Either she doesn’t know how he died, or she thinks we don’t. We have an agreement with the ambulance men. Otherwise, we’d be going in blind to what kind of family issues we are dealing with. We need to know if there are illegitimate love children, ex-wives, or hookers to account for. It makes for complicated family seating sections. Also, we want to be sensitive when discussing the arrangements. We don’t want to refer to any gold-digging step mothers as the children’s mother if they’re in the room.

The D.A. won’t be prosecuting the girl for prostitution. I mean, she probably won’t be doing it anymore anyway. It’s a liability I’m sure she hadn’t thought of.  Mrs. Rogers doesn’t want the story to get out and it’s sure unsightly to have the paper feeding on the case of the school board member who had a fatal blowjob. I feel for the poor girl. Just down on her luck, trying to get by and then she goes and wipes out the head Deacon at the Baptist church who happens to have a street named after him.

When a public official kicks off, you can add about an hour to the standard amount of time it takes to get them in the ground. More speakers and more accomplishments to discuss. There’s even more secrets to cover up. Most of the time, the families opt to have their organs redistributed as something like a last charity donation. This seems like it would make our job simpler, but in reality, it just means more paperwork. See, all the parts have to be accounted for, and it’s easier to do the job myself than try to get evidence that the guys kidneys are in a very grateful mother of three, rather than the surgeons freezer.  You think it doesn’t happen, but you’re wrong. Like I said, unless you’re born into it like me, good people don’t do this job. 

On the day of Mr. Rogers’ viewing, we open the expandable wall to make room for all the important city councilmen and their egos. We wait at the door and hold it open for all the ladies who come through. This act isn’t really part of the job, it’s just standard mid-west hospitality. I like to listen to the gossip during the viewing. Everyone is wondering whether Mrs. Rogers will remarry. They are hoping that Mr. Roger’s mother, the old Mrs. Rogers, won’t be too shaken by this. After all, they just had to put her in a home. The flowers are so lovely. There’s the president of the high school student council.

The next day we load Mr. Rogers up and escort him to the Southern Baptist Church down the street. Our hearse is white and about ten years old. I’m usually the one that drives it with some part-time kid and Roy Gene usually follows behind in his sea foam green Ford Taurus. I don’t really have another car so if I drive, I usually drive the hearse even when the back’s not full. Usually, I listen to the classic rock station, but in consideration for today’s company, I turn it to some political talk radio.

The kid with me is named Tyler. His tie is crooked and I can tell he is nervous. I think for a while about what to say to him to get his mind off of the stiff in the back, but I honestly can’t think of anything. I remember nothing about him, especially whether or not I’ve already asked him anything. If I were to ask him about school, his girlfriend or anything there’s a good chance that he’s already told me about that shit and then I’d just sound like a jackass. I also consider offering him a sip from my whiskey bottle under the seat, but then I remember that his parents sent him to work her because we are good Methodists and I don’t really want to corrupt the kid. Luckily, the church is around the corner and we get there before my mouth gets the best of me.

I’m trying hard to remember whether the funeral will have an open casket. I decide to take a look at the body just to be sure he looks alright if someone needs to check him out. He looks better than he probably has in years. It’s funny because he’s been dead four days and looks about as fresh as can be, but it’s possible that he may have showered since I have. When you spend your life fixing up dead bodies, your own hygiene seems a bit unnecessary. After all, I know I’ll be clean and fresh when it really counts anyway.

As soon as the minister begins his prayer, Mrs. Rogers begins crying. Softly. She’s something like Oklahoma’s own Jackie O. She has the same dark brown hair, but fiery green eyes. She’s wearing a navy dress suit with a button shirt under it that’s kind of white, but kind of grey. She lets out a sigh and dries her eyes with a monogrammed handkerchief. I hadn’t seen one of those in years. Granny used to carry one for all of the widows, but I have never seen someone carry their own. She stares right at the casket, which is actually closed. She looks like she’s afraid that if she lets him out of her sight, he’ll run off again and start banging another hooker.  I imagine those green eyes shooting x-ray beams right through the wood and enamel onto the body. Her gaze stays fixed through the entire service and at times looks almost like a trance.  She doesn’t cry anymore though, and I think she knows that if she looks at anything else she’ll start up again.

I study her. She has narrow shoulders. A broach is on her left shoulder and moves gently up and down with each breath. She has long, slender legs. They sit gracefully parallel to each other, not crossed. Her face says that she is in her early fifties. She could pass for younger though, if she tried. I don’t think she wants to.

____

A few weeks later I’m in my office watching Mr. Roger’s slide show for the hundredth time. I stop it whenever picture of Mrs. Rogers comes up. I study her face and try to figure out why Mr. Rogers would go to that dirty hooker anyway and put his wife through the embarrassment. That’s when I realize that there are no kids on the fucking thing. No pictures of Mr. Rogers with a little kid on his shoulders or playing baseball or anything. I check the obituary and see that there aren’t any kids listed. I think it’s strange that a guy that’s not even a dad would want to serve on the school board.

I start to make up a story about Mr. Rogers like I did back at college about everyone. It’s not a pretty picture. He’s a power hungry man that tried to run for city council but lost so he decided to take the next best thing. For a little while I think he’s some kind of pervert that just wants to be around little kids so he can molest them, but then I remember that guys on the school board don’t ever really come around the schools. Next time I bury a teacher I don’t like, I’ll remember that though.

I lean back into my mustard colored rolling chair and replay the pictures in my head of the graceful dark-haired lady crying on the front row. Sometimes, in my mind I move myself so that she is staring at me instead of Mr. Rogers. I take out the bottle in my desk, take a sip of the whiskey, and lean back further than before into the chair.

I’m jolted awake a few hours later by Roy Gene slamming my office door shut. I can hear his uneven heavy footsteps thudding down the hall. His shoes are too big and the tips slap the floor like duck’s feet.

It’s darker outside now. Since, the time changed last weekend, the sun has been in a bad mood. Instead of bringing warmth, the painfully bright sun seems to beam down rays of cold. The sharp angle at which the sun slices through my window every morning tricks me to think it’s a warm day until I step outside.

So, as the sun sets, I take the CD from my computer and walk out. I leave my computer on and the lights in the entire building blazing. Fuck Roy Gene and his electricity budget. I climb into the old hearse and drive three blocks before I remember to turn on my headlights. Rogers lives on ROGERS. It’s not hard to find the house. There’s a marker in front of it that details the long history of the Rogers family and their contribution to the town. I don’t read it though.  I sit there in the driveway for a few minutes looking at the house. There’s a light on in and the beige curtains are drawn away so I can see right into the living room. There’s a green wing-backed chair in front of the window. Mrs. Rogers walks over to the window. She must have seen my fucking headlights.  Why did I even bother to turn them on at all since I was halfway there by the time I realized I couldn’t see the street signs. There’s no backing out now.

I get out of my car and walk up the drive to the door. Mrs. Rogers turns from the window and meets me at the wide double doorway. She opens the door and stares at me. She doesn’t look confused or anything about why I am there, and that bothers me.

I reach into my suede jacket for the disc. I pull out the green cover along with a piece of lint. I dance my fingers back in forth for a second trying to get the grime to let go of my hand.

“Mrs. Rogers,” I hesitate as she lets out her first breath since she opened the door. “Rachel, I have the slide show on CD for you. I thought you might want it.” There’s a rush of water running into my mouth as if to replace the void left by the words that just tumbled out of it.

“Come show me.”

____

A baby died.  A little girl five months old named Becca. She’s so tiny. Her arms and legs are so chubby, but she has long, slender fingers and toes. She has little dark wispy curls all over her head.  Her nose is round and small. Her skin is smooth and soft and light. Her babysitter shook her, and her eyes are swollen.

I wouldn’t look at her except I have to. I wouldn’t look at her Momma, but I can’t stop. She’s smoking a lot of long cigarettes and her lips are cracking and bleeding and scabbing over again with each one. She has puffy purple circles under her eyes and her clothes don’t fit her well.  She has olive skin and straw yellow hair that I think she colored herself. She’s wearing a green sweater with little pieces of wool crumpled up all over it. I can’t tell if it is old and worn out, or if she bought it that way. The little balls of lint are all over, and perfectly spaced. The material looks soft, but the texture looks rough. She reaches into her purse and pulls out some Car-Mex. The tendons and veins in her hand show through and twist and stretch across her wrist as she unscrews the red cap.

She gives me lots of pictures of Becca. Smiling and crying and naked in the bathtub. There are about forty pictures, all taken within a few months.  I think about how the number of pictures in a funeral slide show doesn’t change no matter how long the person lived. The eternity stretching before and after them doesn’t really change. There’s the same forever in front and back of everyone’s life.

When I’m working on getting Becca into the little white casket, I imagine her smiling like she is in the pictures. I think about how I never knew what my baby looked like alive. I saw a grainy picture of her inside Leese, but it could have been a picture of the doctor’s ass for all I knew. I keep the picture in a box in my closet, because I believe it is her and I want to know where it is if Leese ever comes back for it.  I try to imagine that she’s smiling in it. I don’t really know if she is. I think she looked like Leese. I could tell her hair was thick and dark. They let us see her, and she had a round face like Leese.

Becca’s daddy is coming home from Afghanistan tonight for the viewing.  His mom’s here and talking to me about him for some reason. She doesn’t want me to think that he’s a dead-beat or something. He’s been there for almost a year. He never met his baby girl. He named her after he saw a picture of her when she was born. I don’t understand why he didn’t come when she was in the hospital. My head is throbbing. I think that maybe Becca’s momma probably doesn’t sleep well at night because her husband’s over there. She’s probably always been scared that he would die and she would be all alone. 

Becca’s wearing a purple dress and she has a yellow bow in her hair. I want to give her a blanket. Babies belong in blankets, not coffins. She almost looks like she’s sleeping. Kids always do. Adults look half dead when they are alive, so when they’re dead they look real dead. Kids look so alive all the time, so when they die, they just look asleep.  If you live very long, you start doing bad things, and that kills you. Becca never did anything wrong, so that babysitter probably looks dead. 

Becca’s parents are different. Her Momma wasn’t pregnant when they got married. They’ll probably stay together. Leese never really saw any reason to stay with me, since I couldn’t convince her we would have gotten married even if she hadn’t gotten pregnant.  I never could make her believe me that I liked her. I could never really make her like me either. She wanted to, I think. She wanted to like the guy that knocked her up and worked in a funeral home, but I don’t think she really could. The day she told me she was pregnant I thought she was going to break up with me. I’m still not sure she wasn’t.

When we lost the baby her mother cremated her. I don’t like that I don’t really know where she is. Leese left while I was at work and Dad sat in his chair in the living room, reading a thin paperback copy of The Pearl. I didn’t get mad at him for letting her go. If she had stayed because he convinced her, I would always hate him. It already seemed like he knew her better than I did. Like he was somehow her father and he hated me for ruining her life more than for ruining my own.

If Leese had finished school, I don’t think I would mind so bad that she left me, but she didn’t. I hated her for going back to her mom’s. The woman ran a liquor store. She was big, fat and mean and dipped tobacco. She’s an old Cherokee. She speaks the language and wouldn’t let Leese speak English in the house. When Leese married me, she pretended like she didn’t remember any of it if I asked her to speak it, but I knew she was lying. Anytime she got mad at her mom, she would start spitting it out. It always sounded like her normal voice, but like someone had it playing backwards, like the way they blur out cuss words on the radio.

_____

I came home from the bar last night and found Daddy in his chair. I knew he was dead as soon as I saw that the TV had a baseball game on. He loved to watch football, but he couldn’t even sleep through a baseball game.  He always said that a real sport doesn’t stay in one place that long.

Since there was nothing to do, I sat down on the couch across from him and stared at him. I turned off the baseball game, because I knew he would rest a lot better without it. I thought about all of the people who find their parents dead and all of the stuff we have to do for them because they can’t do it themselves.  Since I’m the one that they call I didn’t know who to call to tell them to come pick up my father. I knew Dad had everything planned and ready. I knew he had a plot and probably already had the pictures in an envelope in his desk. Nobody was going to have to help us.

I didn’t have to call an ambulance. They couldn’t help, and they didn’t need to be here.  He always said that everything needed to stay in the family. When a corporation bought out the other funeral home in town he said the director was an idiot for getting out of such a stable business. He said the one thing you could count on was dying, and as long as doctors were still fucking up their jobs, we would keep doing ours right.

After a few minutes I was having trouble believing that Dad was actually dead, so I knew I needed to get him out of the house before this illusion got out of control. If I didn’t hurry I might leave him there for weeks, convinced he was just asleep. I looked out the window at the old white hearse. I grunted a little chuckle and then straightened my face up again when I turned back toward Dad. I walked out over to the door, turned on the porch light and made my way through the yard to the big truck. I briefly considered whether Dad should ride in the back or the passenger seat. Though funny, the thought of Dad riding shotgun to his own funeral seemed pretty disrespectful so I propped open the back door. I walked slowly back inside, grabbed one of Granny’s quilts and wrapped Dad up tightly and pulled him up to my chest. With one arm around his legs and the other around his shoulders, I glanced out the door to make sure that the coast was clear; though I probably wouldn’t have waited for the entire National Guard to pass by before I made a move. Some things are just too weird for most people to interfere with

There aren’t very many people who can take a dead body, put it in their car and drive away with it without committing a federal offense and I wasn’t entirely sure I was even one of them, but a vehicle with only one function has certain rights of its own. The rain started in on my way back to Betts. On the way there I turned the radio on to some kind of classical country or mountain music or whatever. I knew Dad would be pleased. I looked into all the shops and restaurants on Main Street and tried to imagine getting as uncomfortable having a hearse drive by during their meal as I was by having to watch normal people carry on their lives.

I pulled under the car port at Betts and left the motor running and heater blowing as I went inside to find Roy Gene.  He was sitting at his desk with two neatly stacked piles of bills in front of him. He didn’t say a word to me as I walked in. I realized then just how this wasn’t even going to really change us.

_____

I don’t work at Betts anymore.

A few days after Dad’s funeral Roy Gene comes over to the house with his lawyer and Dad’s will.

“You can’t work at the Home anymore, J.R.,” he says.

“I didn’t really work there anyway,” I mumble and take a drink of my beer.

“Dad left you the house, but I’m supposed to run the business.”

It doesn’t really matter. I wasn’t going back anyways. I look down at the coffee table where Dad’s obituary is. His picture is staring me down. Usually, the family uses pictures of the guy young and smiling. The only picture we could find of Dad was his mortician’s license ID photo. He’s a little cross-eyed. I don’t really like the obituary. It’s appropriate and standard, but I realize now that they don’t really tell much about the person. Just facts that surrounded them. Like trying to sum up the whole earth by describing the clouds on top. I think a real obituary for Dad would go something like this.

Born in Oklahoma 1951. Technically died yesterday, but mostly dead since 1977. Married Tess John Betts and didn’t love her until she died. Had two sons but never talked to them. Smoked Camel Cigarettes all day for sixty years. Wrestled a tornado and lost. Wouldn’t wear the color blue. Painted a baby’s room purple once.

I sign the deed to the house and watched as the lawyer puts it in a folder and takes it away. After he gets into his car and leaves, Roy Gene leans back into the couch with his hands behind his head and shuts his eyes tight. He breathes deep for a minute or so, like something really serious is over. To Roy Gene, we aren’t brothers anymore. Everything about our life in that house can finally be forgotten. He won’t have to clean up after me anymore.  Roy Gene can walk away from me that day like he walked out of that basement after the tornado. Roy Gene doesn’t know what Daddy’s face looked like that night next to the elevator. He doesn’t know what color a dead a baby is. He doesn’t know what Rachel looks like when she is crying. He doesn’t know because his eyes are still shut.

He gets into the white hearse and drives it away. I smile because the last time anyone was in the hearse it was me and Daddy. 

Later in the afternoon, after I finish a few more beers, I walk up the stairs, skipping every other one. I go into the baby’s room and sit where Daddy sat that day after he finished painting it. The color is still the same and now with the winter sun piercing through the window it practically glows. The air in the room is dry because it’s the only one in the house without a humidifier. The paint on the base boards is chipped.

I try to make up pictures and designs out of the chips, but they really are random. They weren’t just there waiting for me to make them make sense and it’s okay that they won’t.  I pick at the chips for a while and then lay down on the cold wood floor for a while.

When I wake up the sun has moved away from the window. I figure it’s about three o’ clock. I look harder at the chipped paint this time. I pick up a piece, put it into my jacket pocket and start down the stairs. I leave the TV on and don’t lock the door because my house key is on the ring with hearse key.  I climb into Dad’s station wagon and turn down the sun visor and the key strikes the steering wheel with a clang and then pads onto the seat.

At the hardware store a kid about sixteen years old is at the paint counter. I hand him the chip and ask for the color. He says he’s not sure he can match it exactly, so I’ll have to repaint the whole room. I think he was about to piss himself thinking this drunk was going to get mad at him but I just smile and nod. It’s not like I have a job or anything else to do.  I watch the can shake on the paint mixer. It looks like it’s doing some kind of complicated dance there. I like the beat and think it kind of sounds like one of the mountain songs that Dad liked. I walk around the store and grab a pan, rollers, and various sized brushes. I pick up some blue tape and light a Camel while the kid rings me up and doesn’t make eye contact. I hand him the green Betts American Express and try to imagine Roy Gene’s face when he gets the bill.

By nine o’ clock, I’ve drained a six pack, gone out for thirty and taped the ceiling off in the baby’s room. By midnight, I’ve got a whole wall done and half of The Pearl read. It’s a quick read and light enough that I can hold onto it while I roll the paint onto the wall. I put it down, though, and the rest of the room goes pretty quickly. By dawn, I’m putting on the finishing touches to the corners and around the baseboards. The purple is really close to the original color, and actually more like the sample the Leese had liked to begin with.  The room glows as the sunlight begins to pour into the room again at about nine. The paint is dry by then.

I look into the room from the hallway now and try to imagine the crib and rocking chair in the room. I can’t really picture it. We never put furniture in the room.  Then, I look across the hall into my bedroom. The light never shines in there. The window is big, but it faces north and the whole room stays grey and cold like a tomb. I notice they are the exact same size, reversed copies of each other. I’m already tearing down posters and moving stuff before I can even finish what I’m thinking. All my clothes are out of the closet and my desk is on its side like a casket waiting to taken by pallbearers from the hearse to the grave. It takes me a little longer to get my bed apart so I can move it piece by piece across the hall.

When I’m done I look into my old room and try to remember what it looked like with all the stuff but I can’t. A plan is building in my mind but I am too drunk to realize I am actually doing it. Starting with Daddy’s room and then every room on the second floor, then the first floor, I start pulling shit off the walls. Pictures come down. The piano gets moved somehow. I rip the plaid fabric on one of the couches and then push it out the front door, across the yard, and next to the dumpster. I pull hard on the TV until the cord comes out and drop it out of the way into the bathtub. I throw all the food in the refrigerator into the garbage and push it into the garage. When I can’t get one of the bureaus out I unscrew the door from the frame and throw it into the back yard. The china cabinet with the unmatched dishes is scooted inch by inch into the center of the room until I can fit between its back and the wall. I sit down on the ground, lean my back against the cabinet and push my legs off of the wall. Grunting with the effort, I slowly push my legs flat on the ground. A few of the dishes in the cabinet are shattered and I can’t even tell which set they belong to. On the top of the cabinet, there is a triangle shadow box hanging on the wall with a flag that went on Pops’ coffin. It comes crashing down and the lid flings open and the glass breaks cutting my wrist and sending a speckle of blood onto the white stars. A vase full of silk flowers is thrown from the bookcase onto the floor. Frames with old pictures of Granny and Pops are broken because I am moving so fast. Every piece of furniture and knick knack shoved to the center of each room. Sometimes, there’s so much stuff in my way I’m digging out of it as it’s collapsing in on me. The walls are bare. I look down and my T-shirt is spattered in purple paint, my arms are scratched and my head is throbbing. My lip is bleeding and I don’t know why. My pants are ripped and my hair hangs like wet string onto my face.  I look around the living room. My heart is pounding.

Outside, the chill and sunshine are sobering, but only a little bit. I climb back into Daddy’s wagon and it practically drives itself to the hardware store. The vents are blowing on me and I can smell myself, like sweat and yeast.  I can feel all the people staring at me as I limp into the store. I can already see the same kid from yesterday at the paint counter. I notice a rack of brushes and pans in the open area in front of the counter I hadn’t seen yesterday when I went down every aisle looking for them. There’s also a “NO SMOKING” sign posted on the register that I am sure was put up after my little episode yesterday.

The kids looking at me like I’m dead. He’s not going to ask me what I need because he’s scared of what I might say. My left eye is a little droopy and I can see my brow over it. I touch it and immediately jerk my hand away because it hurts. The kid is just staring at me.  Finally, he clears his throat and blinks three times before he speaks.

“You look like you just got in a fight.”

“I need more purple paint.”







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