Rocks in the Belly

by Jon Bauer

  I slam the door harder than intended and wander down the road, focusing on the trees moving over me as I walk, the shapes they cut out of the sky, my shoes sounding on the tarmac, mud at the verge, small birds hopping and twitching in the trees. My senses alive to everything.

  The church spire grows larger through the trees. I kick a stone and a bird flees, tweeting warnings.

  There’s the dried-up old pond sitting at the crossroads, and the common with the tree on it, a small bench underneath. The pathetic war memorial standing there as a cold, stone thank-you to the dead and buried — a littering of cigarette butts and bottles left around it from where teenagers must congregate, already disenchanted with life and so turning to the blunt tools of inebriation and sex. My tools.

  Robert’s funeral was in that same church six years after he fell. He didn’t just lose his mental configuration in the fall, he lost his immunity. Pneumonia took him in the end, then an ambulance. No lights, no siren, no rush. Dad watching it go, his hand coming out and touching the back of it as it pulled away, Mum inside the house somewhere.

  Just like it was with Michael — the way Dad was big enough then and Mum distant. The way Dad hugged Michael’s body and Mum didn’t.

  I suppose you only know who you are in the extreme moments because that’s when you can’t help but be how you really feel.

  I remember Robert’s parents at his funeral, sat on one side of the church, my parents on the other. Everyone who’d come to support us sitting on Mum and Dad’s side, so that it was just Robert’s parents with a whole half of the church to themselves. Me at the back feeling like I should have been with them. The bad parents, and me the bad son.

  A lot of people came out to see the burial. People who had vanished from our lives since the accident. They came to gape at us. Mum leaning on Dad, both of them putting on a united front for the day. Mum touching him for the first time in so long. I remember being jealous of that touch. And I’d dared hope she’d touch me again too. Or look at me. Even with the valium blur behind her eyes.

  I step over the low, dilapidated fence and meander through the graveyard beside the church, walking to their grave — my father and my adopted brother’s names carved into the stone. Only it says Robert McCloud. A little cloud carved there too.

  At Dad’s funeral I had to sit up the front with Mum. Then once everyone had wandered away from his lowered coffin, those handfuls of soil on its lid — slamming car doors, starting engines — I loitered on the church green drinking beer, avoiding the wake. Hating them all for showing up after Dad’s death but failing him in his life. Resenting the mourners for being alive and my dad gone.

  When I stumbled in late that night, Mum was waiting up in her dressing-gown and pressed a cheque into my palm. I was on a plane as soon as the cheque had cleared.

  I step back over the fence and head across the common, some dewy grass sticking to the shine on my shoes. The suit uncomfortable around me, the trouser waistband pinned at the back where I adjusted it to fit my size relative to Dad. He would have worn this to Robert’s funeral.

  I take my place on the little bench under the tree, pulling out the rolling tobacco and building myself a cigarette. What’s left of the marijuana is in the packet too and I’m wondering if I should.

  I sit here, my mind panning up out of my head and hovering high above the church and looking down at me dwarfed by this oak tree in the middle of this bit of green — a man on a bench in a suit under a tree in front of a church. That’s the reality but there’s so much meaning we heap on top of that.

  I pack the cigarette tobacco tighter by tapping it on the bench, teenage names scratched into it. Pronouncements of invincible forever love, now coated in mildew and time.

  Maybe all this will be like that one day, carved into me but softened by the elements of time.

  The clouds are out, one of them looks like a dragonfly. Or a biplane. I light the ciggie and there’s a head between my legs making me jump.

  ‘Rocket! Hello boy.’ His tail is flashing a swatch of white as it wags his behind. ‘Rocket,’ my hand lost in the hair on his back then twirling his ears.

  I reach down and gather him up. He issues a grumpy noise but lets me, settling on my lap, his bony elbows digging in. I lean over him and take in the contact, smothering him, my eyes closed, my face in his fur.

  A man on a bench under a tree in front of a church, hugging a dog.

  ‘Good boy. Where’s the old man.’

  Then I see him smart and upright in his suit, smoke trailing behind like an old steamer.

  Rocket leaps from me, a foot in my groin and he’s flat out across the common, ears forward.

  I can’t help but stand and come out from under the tree and Reg notices me. I wave and he lifts an uncertain hand and heads self-consciously over.

  I go back to the bench, fidgeting during the time it takes him to get to me. Rocket coming back, barking, shuttle-running between us.

  ‘What are you doing here, Reg?’ I say when he’s in hairy earshot. He stops in his tracks.

  ‘It was you who wrote on the path. Surely.’

  I grin at him and he resumes his approach, grinning back.

  ‘I felt I should like to come. Pay my respects,’ he says.

  He takes a puff of his rollie but it’s gone out. I hand him a lighter instead of the hug he looked like giving.

  ‘Clever of you to leave that message,’ he says. ‘These still work alright,’ and he’s pointing at his eyes, pleased with himself. ‘I kept checking The Church News anyway. You did say Mary was your mum’s name?’

  I nod.

  He relights his cigarette then puts my lighter in his pocket, making me smile. He looks dapper in his suit, his hair wetted down, mostly. His face seeming even realer in the daylight — careworn. I slide over and he wipes at the bench and sits, plonks one bony leg over the other.

  ‘Reminds me of Ghana, that weed we smoked. Merchant Navy. Eighteen years. Africa, now that’s where women come from. Girls everywhere else in the world. Did you kiss and make up with yours?’ He looks at me for the first time really. ‘How you keeping, son?’

  My turn to look away.

  ‘Tough times, eh. Tough times,’ he says and we both fall into staring.

  I take out my bits and bobs and start rolling another cigarette.

  ‘Thanks for coming, Reg.’

  ‘Not at all. Try and keep me away.’

  A car pulls up outside the church and Reg calls Rocket closer.

  ‘You expecting many?’ he says and I give my head a shake. ‘Oh I brought you something,’ his posture lifting a notch, then he’s going through his pockets. Another car pulling up at the church, causing that familiar stirring inside my guts — Reg still rifling, taking out his tobacco pouch and my lighter, swapping them from hand to hand in order to pat his pockets.

  He comes up with a neatly folded white hankie and hands it to me. ‘In case of emergency,’ he says, happy with himself.

  ‘Thanks, Reg.’

  ‘That’s been with me eleven years.’

  ‘You’ve washed it once or twice, I hope.’

  ‘It was given to me at my wife’s funeral,’ he says, rejecting my attempts at dilution, ‘by my brother-in-law. A shy man, so the gesture meant all the more. Kept it ever since. That white flag’s been waved many a time. Not much call for weddings at my age — the funeral years. Anyway, it’s yours now. Just in time by the look of you,’ and he turns his face away from me for a moment, Rocket’s wet nose appearing in my lap. Doors slamming, people heading into the church.

  Another car arrives. I wipe my eyes, check the time, my stomach making its presence felt. There can’t be a service before Mum’s. My heart ups its ante. You aren’t vulnerable unless there are witnesses. Without witnesses it’s just sadness.

  ‘Don’t forget the healing’s already started, son. That’s it. You cry a river if you like,’ Reg says, looking stoically into the distance. ‘Oh you bugger, you’ve gone and started me
off.’

  Two men on a bench under a tree, crying.

  There’s the hearse. There she is. Reg standing in the middle of the green now, not knowing whether to come over to me, stay where he is, or head into the church. He does his hair though because he has no hat to remove, his hands slipping behind his back.

  The people congregated outside catch sight of her funereal approach and make for the church, away from the body coming in the back of a car.

  I cross the common and put a hand on Reg’s shoulder. ‘Will you help me carry her?’

  He’s confused for a second then looks over at the hearse cruising with false solemnity up to the front access to the church. ‘I’d be glad to.’ He tries to say it brightly.

  The men get slowly out, their suits befitting a courtroom as much as a funeral. Whereas the dignity of pallbearers is so beautiful. A part of me wishing I could just watch her carried by these men — see her honoured in that simple way. That’s if I didn’t need the weight of her on my shoulder, the cut of the wood.

  We’re standing at the back of the hearse, the tailgate open and the coffin protruding. One of the men explaining everything to Reg and me, Reg listening intently, his face emptied of colour, his tongue repeatedly licking at his dry lips.

  The undertakers arrange him at the front, me in the middle behind him. Perhaps to help me hide my face.

  As we carry her I focus on Reg’s back, my feet, my hand on his shoulder, the undertaker’s hand on mine. Reg trembling under the weight, his body leaning out occasionally and his footsteps stuttering.

  I shut my eyes at the simple weight of a stranger’s hand on my shoulder, my cheek wanting to rest down on it. Nobody out here watching us carry her, except Rocket, tied to the fence. And yet we still go one slow step at a time, shiny shoes on the gravel path, the gravestones sitting up like an audience.

  Soon we’re swallowed by the dank stone of the church interior. Thirty or so people in here waiting, spread over both sides. The pallbearers giving Reg and me subtle, instructive encouragement as we turn to enter the aisle.

  Everyone stands for her now, everything rising on my body too, goosebumped and proud. The feel of her on one shoulder, a stranger’s solidarity on the other, Reg’s trembling, everyone standing for my mum, people having come out to honour her — pride filling my chest until it’s as expansive as this church. The darkness inside me lit up with stained-glass sunshine. I can feel it all, all the solemnity, all the respect. All for Mum.

  She’s so heavy though, despite the moment. Both of us are. Heavy enough that I think the floor tiles will crack under each of my footsteps, all the way up the aisle.

  The priest waits at the front, the congregation trying not to look at the coffin but staring. A child calls out and her mum hushes her. Reg’s ribs going in and out. Hang on, Reg, hang on.

  We reach the front and again the undertakers are whispering tips as we lower her down onto the stand.

  I regret thinking ill of these men because I couldn’t do this without them. I couldn’t stand up here in front of everyone, with this coffin — such a blunt motif about the reality of life. I don’t care anymore who these men are or where they’re from or what their house is like, how good they are at spelling, they’re helping me. They’re the people who do these simple things in your most enormous moments.

  She’s on the stainless-steel stand and everyone has peeled away. Reg walking back down the aisle, wiping at his forehead, the undertakers retreating towards the sides of the church and me stranded up here so that I feel I should say something but the priest arrives beside me, a hand at my back to show me the way.

  The front pews are empty on both sides of the church. I want to go and take my place at the back again but allow myself to be led to where I sat with Mum on my dad’s last day.

  Today I’ve got the pew to myself, sitting on the hard wood, eyes down, waiting for the priest to start but he leans in towards me, arms holding back his robes, telling me that he tried to call but didn’t hear back so he’s gone ahead and chosen some hymns, and someone has asked to speak about my mum and do I want to?

  I nod without meaning yes or no. He touches my shoulder then walks away beginning the ceremony as he goes.

  I take out Reg’s hankie and almost fill it in one blow, wipe at my eyes, looking down at an undone button on my shirt and the colourful front page of an old comic showing through, the feel of it reassuring against my skin.

  Rocket barks from outside and I feel this strange urge to laugh but stifle it with a glance at her coffin.

  Everyone stands and the organ starts.

  I get uncertainly to my feet and reach down for a book, finding the page, the organist leading us awkwardly into the hymn.

  All Things Bright and Beautiful.

  And I sing it. Sometimes turning to the congregation with a confused pride — glad they’re here but wondering who. Eventually finding Auntie Deadly’s sly face looking back at me from the strangers. Then Marcus. Mandy. And from them I can guess who these people are.

  After the hymn we all sit down and the priest introduces Mandy, saying that she was the social worker who liaised with Mary for many years.

  I don’t look around, just sit stiff and staring while she makes her way to the front.

  She ignores the steps up to the lectern, takes her position in front of it, everything about her held in and controlled. She pauses for a second, a few papers in her hands, a lilac dress on and some sort of elaborate brooch on her lapel that looks like a chewy sweet that melted in the sun.

  The congregation is stilled, Mandy holding everyone’s attention the way she always did. Something in her commands it. She puts on her glasses and looks up at us all for the first time.

  ‘Today is a sad day, saying goodbye to someone like Mary. But it’s also a chance to celebrate her life. Mary wasn’t just a mother, a niece, a wife — as amazing as all those things are — things which nothing can change or come between. Mary was also a foster carer.’

  She puts her lips away, takes off her glasses and looks at us, some particular emotion seeming to pass through her.

  Her glasses back on, she consults the papers fluttering just slightly in her hands, looks up and takes her specs off again. ‘Our legacy is all that’s left of us once we’re gone. That and memories, of course. And love. So when I heard Mary had lost her battle with cancer I didn’t have to think about what I’d want to say.’ She turns to me. ‘And I appreciate the opportunity to do so.’ She smiles, my hair floating up on end from all the blood in my head.

  ‘Are we all here?’ she says, peering at the congregation and blushing slightly now that her attention is directed at, as yet, unseen individuals. ‘Marcus?’

  All the pews creak as people turn this way and that looking for Marcus who half stands, adjusting his shirt and tie, his face reddening too.

  ‘Toby?’

  And I recognise the man who waves, the same freckles and grey eyes. The one who set fire to the back of the shed.

  Mandy squints at the papers again, her glasses forgotten in her hand. ‘Oh, would you all stand up. All of Mary’s foster boys, if you’re here,’ she says, smiling. ‘Come on.’

  There’s a lifting of noise now as people turn to look at the men appearing from the congregation. All of them standing there with varying reactions to the scrutiny.

  ‘Mary fostered nine boys in total,’ Mandy says, just a fraction of wobble in her voice. ‘Which adds up to about three years of twenty-four-hour care. Not to mention the seven years she gave Robert. Difficult years.’ The spectacles go on again. ‘What were once neglected children, taken in and given crucial care and support by Mary and her family. Now look at them. Strapping men.’

  Reg starts to clap at the back but finds himself alone and stops. Others laugh.

  ‘Foster carers are scarcer than angels,’ she says. ‘I missed Mary dearly after Robert. Our department let her down then — another of the great tragedies of a system that doesn’t just repeatedly fail the
children who most need it, but the people it most needs. Even still, Mary carried on with Robert. She didn’t let many things come between her and what she saw as her role in life.’

  Mandy takes her glasses off and smiles. ‘Mary’s left us now, but those nine stand like milestones beside a great life. Mary’s life.’

  Small sniffs and sighs of emotion are coming from different parts of the assembled now. Mandy looks at me, gesturing for me to stand up but I shake my head at her.

  ‘Please,’ she says, giving me a soft look.

  Somehow my legs stand me up. She comes over and I can’t help but lean away until the back of the pew traps me. She drops her voice, her eyes shining but she’s bolt upright. ‘Your family made sacrifices so that these lives could thrive. Even go on to have their own families, look. Your mum did amazing things. But your family did amazing things too. You did amazing things. Look around you.’

  She puts a hand on my shoulder then turns it into a hug and I cling on because if she pulls away everyone will see me like this. Then she does pull away so I have to sit and lean on the unforgiving wood of the pew, somebody patting me on the shoulder from behind. People blowing their noses, Auntie Debbie falling into some old lady next to her.

  I’m looking at all those faces.

  ‘That’s some legacy,’ Mandy says and folds the papers she’s holding, puts them away. ‘Mary’s legacy.’

  I’m looking at the congregation but it’s Mum’s life gazing back at me with its eyes shining. Children with thumbs shrivelling in their mouths. That’s my mum there. These people are what my childhood was for.

  32

  I’m at the wheel, Reg beside me with Rocket on his lap — head out the broken car window, ears flapping in the wind. The hearse up ahead.

  ‘Well, it was a touching tribute to a good woman if you ask me, son.’

  I turn my head enough for him to see me nod, then loosen Dad’s tie and collar.

  ‘Who was that hot young thing you introduced me to outside the church?’ Reg says.

  ‘Auntie D?’

  ‘Bugger off! Cheeky bastard. I’m talking about the other hot young thing. Leticia, was it?’