The Tragedy of Dane Riley

by Kat Spears

  “You got it?” he asks, and he seems to be asking me more than just whether I am able to lift the bag on my own.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it.”

  “Because I’m heading out to watch Ophelia’s field hockey game, but if you need help…”

  “No, I’m fine. Really. Thanks for your help,” I say. I can feel Colonel Marcus’s eyes following me back up the driveway to the house as I struggle with the weight of the bag.

  I place the coyote bag just inside the garage and start to wipe my sweaty palms on the legs of my pants, then think better of it. I enter the house through the garage door.

  When I return to the kitchen Mom and Chuck are sitting at the counter drinking coffee. They are both looking at their phones, but Mom puts hers down when I come into the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” Mom asks me. “You should be resting.”

  “I have some stuff I need to do first,” I say.

  “Like what?” Mom asks, but not in a suspicious way, more like she is actually pleased I have something to do.

  “You know that coyote that’s been living in the yard?”

  “No-o, no. Coyote?” Mom turns a quizzical eye toward Chuck but he is deep into his phone. Either the conversation isn’t registering for him, or the phone is a prop he’s using to hide his guilt. It’s impossible to tell which. I have used the phone-scrolling technique to hide interest and emotion many times before and am at once frustrated and relieved to see how effectively it masks people and their innermost thoughts.

  “There’s a coyote,” I say slowly, my gaze still on Chuck. “Or, I guess I should say, there was a coyote.” Now Chuck does look up. He’s wearing his reading glasses and when he raises his head his eyes are startlingly huge, out of all proportion with the rest of his face. The effect makes Chuck look shocked by what I am saying, but then he removes the glasses and his eyes are normal again—a watery blue and set a little too close together.

  “The coyote, he’s been living around here. I’ve seen him coming from our backyard a few times. The first time I saw him was right after Dad died.” I pause and wait for them to catch up. They exchange a look, but it isn’t a look that says they are mystified by the coincidence of Dad’s death and the coyote’s sudden appearance.

  “And what about the coyote, Dane?” Mom asks, her tone cautious now, like she is wary of any discussion about Dad in front of Chuck, as if I might accuse her again of being unfaithful to Dad’s memory.

  “He’s dead,” I say, and Mom winces at the word. “The coyote. I just found him on the side of the road.”

  “Oh,” says Mom, glancing again in Chuck’s direction. “Well, that’s very sad.”

  “I put him in the garage, but I need to bury him,” I say. “It can’t wait or he’ll…” I stop. I had started to say that the body would start to stink, but now that Dad is a corpse, too, I don’t like to think about what eventually happens to living things once they are dead.

  “Dane,” Mom says, suddenly sure of herself now that she has been given something to make her worry, “that thing is a wild animal. You shouldn’t be handling it. What if it’s got fleas and you catch something? What if it has rabies?”

  “It’s in a plastic bag, Mom. I’m not going to catch anything from it.”

  “I think you can only get rabies if you are bitten by an animal,” Chuck says.

  “You think?” Mom asks. “You want to take a chance on rabies if you aren’t sure?”

  “God, Mom, no one is going to get rabies from a dead coyote in a bag,” I say.

  “Dane, why on earth would you bring a piece of roadkill into the garage? We should just call Animal Control and let them pick it up from the side of the road.”

  “I can explain,” I say, but when I start to talk, I realize maybe I can’t explain. “The coyote, he’s got a den or something near here. I used to see him around late at night. And I guess I got the idea…”

  “What?” Mom asks, her eyes wide as she looks at me, like it is the first time she has ever seen me, and she isn’t sure what I am.

  “I got the idea that he was … like … Dad. Reincarnated.”

  Now Mom and Chuck don’t look at each other. They are very consciously making the effort to not look at each other for fear of what they might see in each other’s expression. There is no logical place to take the conversation now. It reminds me of that movie with the woman who gets sent to a mental hospital and you think she’s not crazy because you’re seeing the whole thing from her perspective and then—surprise twist—turns out she really is crazy and she’s been tricking the audience the whole time.

  “I realize that sounds crazy,” I add, just to give them the impression that we are all on the same team. See? I’m sane, just like you guys. I just don’t express it as well.

  Mom’s reaction surprises me as she says, “Dane, I’m not sure I understand what’s going on here. You’re worrying me.” She reaches across the counter to cover my hand with hers but then remembers the dead coyote I have been touching and thinks better of it.

  But even though she’s afraid I’ll give her rabies, suddenly she is transformed into the protective mother I haven’t seen since I was a little kid, when bigger kids would pick on me on the playground. Dad would tell her I needed to learn to settle things on my own, learn to survive in the wild, but Mom would go charging in, making threats and scolding the kids who were being mean to me. Even if it is only for this moment, that mom is back.

  “Anyway, I just wanted to give it a proper burial. I thought…,” I say, my gaze fixed on Chuck’s face as I speak slowly, “maybe Chuck could help me.”

  Mom’s eyes soften with pity and her head tips to one side. Now we are both looking at Chuck, Mom with a silent appeal for him to treat me gently, while I study his reaction.

  “I’m sure Chuck would be happy to help you,” Mom says when it becomes clear Chuck isn’t going to say anything.

  “Great,” I say, pretending as if Chuck has been the one to agree willingly.

  “I have a tee time scheduled,” Chuck says, at once hopeful and terrified.

  “I’m sure it won’t take long,” Mom says, her eyes pleading with him.

  Chuck stares at Mom for a few seconds while I act as if nothing is unusual. Mom’s pleading look is unrelenting. Finally, Chuck has no choice but to say, “Okay. Okay, yeah. I’ll help you after I get dressed and we eat something. I want to eat before … well … before.”

  “Forget it,” I say, my words acid on my tongue. “I know you don’t want to. Neither one of you gives a shit about anything.”

  “Dane,” Mom says, but not like a warning, just with alarm.

  “What?” I ask, my voice rising. “‘Dane’ what? I said, just forget it. Forget everything. Just leave me alone.” I’m afraid my voice falters on this last part as I hurry for the safety of my room, where I can lose it in private.

  After slamming my bedroom door I pick up my phone and sit on the end of the bed, rocking and holding my stomach, which hurts like hell. I stare at my phone, not knowing what I’m looking at or for, and then I text Dad. It’s a text that rambles and doesn’t make any sense.

  Just be calm, a text from Dad, Be calm. Take a deep breath. It’s going to be okay.

  But a message, coming from Dad right now, when he’s gone for a second time? It freaks me out.

  I want to text Ophelia or Joe, anybody who can help me to feel normal right now. But the normal world is in school or getting ready for a field hockey game and isn’t going to respond. I throw my phone in frustration and lie down on my bed, curling into a ball and holding my stomach as the ache becomes unbearable.

  * * *

  When I wake, the house is quiet. My face is puffy and damp, like I have been crying in my sleep. It hurts to open my eyes. The lids have to be peeled apart, glued together by sleep that scratches against my corneas.

  I go to the bathroom at the end of the hallway and splash water onto my face. I don’t know what time it is.

&
nbsp; Downstairs, the house feels empty, but I know Mom is there. I can feel her, hearing me through the walls. Mom emerges from her room and tries to smile, but fails.

  “How are you feeling?” she asks, and seems worried about what my answer will be.

  “Where’s Chuck?” I ask, ignoring her question.

  “Oh, he’s…” She waves her hand. “He went golfing. He thought maybe we needed some time, just the two of us.”

  “How long have I been asleep?” I ask, expecting her to say a month, or a year.

  “Just a couple of hours.”

  “I’m going to bury the coyote,” I say.

  “Dane.” Mom speaks to stop me as I am headed for the garage. “Maybe you should just leave it for today. I don’t want you getting upset.”

  “I’ve already been upset for a while, Mom. I want … I need it to be settled.”

  “O-okay. It’s not in the garage. I had Chuck move it.”

  “Where is he?” I ask.

  “Dane, please, can we just talk about how you are feeling? Dr. Lineberger said…”

  “Mom, I’m fine. I just need to bury him. Where is he?”

  She sighs and gives up. “It’s on the side of the house. Chuck said he was going to move the bag to the side of the garage.”

  I walk out the garage door and feel her eyes following me, but she doesn’t say anything to stop me.

  * * *

  The coyote’s funeral will be only the second I have attended in my life. The first, of course, was Dad’s.

  Dad’s funeral had been in a cathedral because Dad’s family was Irish Catholic, but as far as I knew, he hadn’t set foot in a church since I was baptized. I don’t know what he believed, because we never talked about it. Other than using expressions like “God damn it” and “Jesus H. Christ,” Dad didn’t have much use for God or any of his holy helpers. Maybe he believed in God and an afterlife and heaven and hell, but even if there was a heaven, Dad would probably never make it there. In addition to blaspheming God’s name, he used words like “fatty” and “retard.” Compelling evidence of his moral turpitude.

  Dad’s funeral had been almost like any other social event—it was catered and there was a bar and people got dressed up and a lot of them seemed happy to see each other. The church service was more like a business conference since most of the people knew Dad because of work or through the club. Though there were some people with tears in their eyes, I was the only person who cried. A few people got up to say nice things about Dad, but nobody said they missed him so much it might kill them.

  Chuck delivered the eulogy, which was full of jokes and golf references that I didn’t understand but that made the crowd rumble with chuckles of appreciation. I felt completely alone at Dad’s funeral, just like I did at any social event—always on the outside, even when I was right in the middle of everything.

  As I sat in the church listening to people talk about Dad, I could imagine him sitting beside me, delivering wry commentary about everyone there. Dad believed in unvarnished truths because he was never hurt by them.

  * * *

  I find the coyote in its death shroud on the side of the house, next to a pile of cinder blocks that are left over from the installation of the shed. The idea of the coyote being inside a plastic bag makes me uncomfortable, like it will suffocate him, though rationally I know the coyote is beyond caring, or breathing.

  I think about burying the coyote, but then I imagine the coyote under the weight of the dirt and rocks, imagine him panicked and smothering. I step back and turn away from the coyote’s corpse, willing myself to think of the coyote as just an object, nothing that can feel.

  When I was a kid, I remember thinking that even inanimate objects had feelings. I was always careful to make sure that my stuffed animals and toys were comfortable, not just dumped into a toy box. If Mom decided that I wasn’t playing with a toy, she would take it from my room, saying it was time to get rid of it. That always made me cry and I would promise, swear, that I would start playing with the toy again, just so that it didn’t get hurt feelings.

  The toys would eventually go into a box. Mom would help me pack them carefully, making sure that they were comfortable and safe, and she would tell me that the toys would just go into storage in the attic to save for later. The toys wouldn’t be unhappy, she told me, they would just go to have a rest until I had a child and then my own kid could play with them. That all sounded very reasonable to me at the time.

  Burying the coyote would feel wrong, the way it felt wrong to drive Dad to the cemetery and just leave him there. It still feels wrong, knowing Dad is in a box in the ground, a box from which he can never escape.

  I’m not going to let that happen a second time.

  There’s a pile of wood in the corner of the yard, not far from the garage along the property line. We don’t have a wood-burning fireplace, so the wood isn’t useful. It’s just a pile of branches deposited by the guys Mom pays to mow the lawn.

  I carefully place the coyote bag on top of the pile of wood, then go the garage to find the can of lighter fluid and the long-handled lighter Dad used for the grill. Mom wanted him to use a gas grill because of the mess the charcoal created, but Dad always insisted it wasn’t really grilling if you used propane. After I douse the pile with lighter fluid, I hold the lighter at arm’s length to set the pile ablaze.

  The lighter fluid burns quickly and releases an oily black smoke. It takes longer than I would expect for the flames to take hold, but once they do, the fire quickly spreads among the dead leaves that are still attached to the branches and sticks in the pile.

  I stand only a few feet from the fire and watch for a few minutes, but then there is the smell of burning plastic and hair and I have to step back.

  A shimmering red outline of the coyote is visible in the flames now and I don’t want to look anymore. I have to turn away. My heart aches and I have to tell myself over and over that the coyote can’t feel it anymore. He can’t feel. He can’t feel. Dad can’t feel. Only I can feel. And that part seems really unfair.

  The flames are lower now that the lighter fluid has burned away and I hear the weight of the coyote sink into the burned leaves that collapse into ash beneath it. It is not a raging fire anymore, just a smoldering heap, the coyote’s shape, I am grateful, indistinguishable from the rest of the pile.

  I walk inside, the last of Dad disappearing into the swirl of smoke from the funeral pyre behind me. I’m careful to take off my shoes before I enter the sliding glass door on the deck and start upstairs, thinking I’ll take a shower, maybe make a sandwich. Despite my nap earlier, I am tired and my hunger has returned.

  In my room I strip out of my clothes. My shirt smells powerfully of smoke even though I barely got close to the fire. I am tangled in my sweatshirt for a moment as I struggle to pull the hood over my head. The removal of my sweatshirt leaves me spent and exhausted and all I can do is lie down on the bed until my head stops spinning.

  The smell of smoke is still strong in the room. I take deep breaths, hoping that the smell will start to dissipate now that my sweatshirt is off and lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. But the smell seems to get stronger and stronger.

  I’m just so tired. So very, very tired.

  When I hear Mom from the first floor her voice is a high screech, so I can’t understand what she’s saying. My head protests as I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. As I open my bedroom door I hear Mom clearly now, and her screams take on meaning.

  “Oh my God, oh my God! Dane, are you in the house? Dane! Where are you!?”

  * * *

  I’m not sure what I had been expecting. “Involuntary admission to a mental health facility” sounds bad. You imagine there would be shouting and/or restraints, or some kind of tranquilizer involved. In reality, Mom just fills out a few forms and, because we have awesome insurance, I am no longer her problem.

  I tried to explain to Mom, to Chuck, to the firefighters, to anyone who would list
en, that I hadn’t been trying to burn down the house. The fireman said it only took fifty gallons of water to put out the fire, barely more than a bathtub full. He said that we were lucky.

  He meant that we were lucky the fire hadn’t spread to the garage or the deck. He meant that we were lucky we hadn’t lost our house, or our lives.

  But Mom hardly feels lucky to have a son who is an arsonist who builds funeral pyres in the backyard. She doesn’t feel lucky that neighbors came out to watch as three fire trucks, an ambulance, and several cop cars blocked all traffic on our street while the fire was extinguished. She doesn’t feel lucky to have a son who is a lunatic.

  And now I’m confined to a facility with rooms that are a lot like the cheap hotels you see in movies when the bad guys are trying to lie low.

  I have a twin bed with a plastic cover on the mattress and a matching nightstand and dresser with no pulls on the drawers and nothing inside them. I also have a bathroom that is just a toilet and sink but the toilet has no lid, or even a seat, really. It’s just a smooth stainless-steel bowl with a wide lip on it. This makes me wonder about what type of self-harm I could do, or if anyone has ever successfully committed suicide, with a toilet seat. But I can’t Google it because they have taken away my phone. There isn’t anything electronic in my room except for overhead lights in the bedroom and bathroom, and these are recessed into the ceiling with covers on them that can’t be removed without a tool.

  I am issued a pair of rubber slides with a Velcro closure over the toes and an outfit that is like hospital scrubs but in a pattern that designates me as crazy rather than employed by the hospital.

  My room is so quiet that the only sound is a persistent hum from the lights and the occasional sound of a toilet flushing from the rooms on either side of me. It is morning, and as I lie in bed after a mostly sleepless night, I stare at the ceiling and mull over the events that have landed me in the hospital, replaying all of it in my head like a movie. At first glance, I suppose my reaction to the coyote’s death could be interpreted as over the top. It wasn’t the same as Dad dying, even if in my mind, the coyote was Dad.