by David Joy
“Jacob, my boy, how the hell are you?” Mr. Queen slithered up beside where I sat, smiled at me with nubby, yellowed teeth. Cheap whiskey and gas station cigars fogged his breath. He wrapped his hands around my shoulders and gave as tight a squeeze as he could muster.
“Ain’t worth a damn, Irv, but I reckon you knew that.”
Mr. Queen pulled up on one sleeve of my T-shirt, and I stood out of the chair. He pressed at the base of my back and opened out his other hand to gesture toward his office. “Good, good. Glad to hear,” he said, smiling and nodding at the secretary as he ushered me across the room. It wasn’t until we were in his office and the door was closed that his smile straightened and his eyes narrowed.
The wall behind his desk was lined with framed papers with cursive writing, fancy gold leaf seals, and wide-arced signatures. One of the bubbly glass windows on the sidewall looked out onto a pin oak in the front yard. Mr. Queen sat down at a chair behind an executive desk, reached into a drawer, pulled out a pint bottle of whiskey, and took a long, bubbly slug. He leaned back in the chair till I was certain it’d tip, propped his feet up on the dark wood desk, and rested the bottle on his belly where lapels flared away. I took a seat across from him, the leather inlaid desktop all that stretched between us.
“We’ll get straight to business. I’m a busy man with little time to fool with such piddly affairs. But seeing as your father has managed to keep hundred-dollar bills falling out of my pockets for all these years, I’m obliged to do what he asks. Just know that my obligation lies with him and him alone, and that is the only reason I’ve agreed to take any part in this. These types of things are generally the responsibility of the family, not an established attorney such as myself. So go ahead and tell me what you’re after, keeping in mind that I’ve got other things to tend.” Mr. Queen lowered his head and goggled at me with wide, impatient eyes. Tilting his head pressed what little neck he had flat, just a fat face spreading into a thick roll where his neck overlapped his collar.
“I don’t really know what you’re looking for.”
“Details, Jacob, I need to know details: what you want, where you want it. Do you want a preacher, or do you not? Do you want it in a church, or do you want it in a funeral home? Flowers, songs, what? Details, Jacob, and hurry along with it.”
“Well, I reckon I haven’t given it that much thought.”
“Then what in the fuck are you doing here, boy? Wasting my time? Is that it?” Mr. Queen slapped the chair back flat and bellied up to the desk. He slammed the bottle of whiskey down on the desktop and narrowed his eyes onto me.
“In a church, I guess.”
“Good, good. Now we’re getting somewhere. What church?”
“Hamburg Baptist. That’s where she grew up, and I guess that’d be my church too.”
“And I take it you’ll want a preacher with it being in a church?”
“Yes. I definitely want that.”
“And do you have a preacher in mind?”
“Well, Hiram Bumgarner, I reckon.”
“Who’s this?”
“His name’s Hiram, and he’s been the reverend there at Hamburg all my life. I guess he still is.”
“I’ll see if he is and if he’d mind holding the service.”
His agitation and the fact I really didn’t know what to say had me flustered. I picked at the wooden laminate of his desk along the edge with my thumbnail and stared at the floor. When a clear thought finally came to me, I looked up at him and spoke. “As far as burial, I reckon I’d like the casket to be—”
“Whoa, whoa, now. Burial? Who said anything about burial?”
“Well, I just figured—”
“There’s nothing left for burying, my boy. I mean you could bury the ashes if you want to, but I don’t see it justifiable of any dollars being spent.”
“Ashes? Did you say ashes?”
“Yes, son. Ashes. What did you think had been done with the body?” Mr. Queen took another glug and screwed the top down on his pint of whiskey. “She’s been cremated. I thought you knew that.”
“Cremated? Now, who in the hell told them to do that?”
“These things happen quickly, my boy. Your father made the call and it was done.”
I could feel the anger boiling my blood up into my face, my cheeks turning hotter than hell by what he said and how he said it. Mr. Queen leaned back in his chair and interlocked his fingers. His two index fingers pushed together and pointed upward like he was building a church and steeple with his hands. He raised his eyebrows as if to ask what else I wanted, so I told him. “Put one of those things in the paper, telling folks what time the service will be.”
“You mean an obituary. Well, how do you want it to read?”
“I don’t know, Irv, however they’re supposed to fucking read. Something about her being in a better place or some shit, I don’t know. Just let folks know she’s gone.”
“One problem, my boy. The papers have already run, both of them weekly, you know. That little rag out of Cashiers ran Wednesday, and The Sylva Herald ran two days ago. So if you really want to get it in the paper, we’re going to have to hold the whole thing off for a week, which won’t be too big of an issue as I see it, with there not being any sort of burial. So, is that what you want to do?”
“No, I want it done.”
“So then no obituary?”
“Just scratch the fucking newspapers and get it done. Get it done as quickly as possible, tomorrow if you can. See if the reverend is willing to say a few words and call it done. I don’t want to be waiting around for it.”
“I understand, boy. Say no more. I’ll see what I can do.” Mr. Queen jotted a few notes down on a long legal pad, yellow paper scribbled with chicken scratch that only he could read. “So, is there anything else?”
“No, I don’t reckon there is.” I was seconds away from coming across the table and sinking my hands where a neck should’ve been. I’d pop the head off that snaky bastard like the old-timers had done, grab him by the rattles and snap him like a bullwhip till his head severed clean off. That’s what snakes were fit for.
“Good, good, my boy.” Mr. Queen bellied back up to the desk and opened his booze. He took a long sip and let the whiskey roll around in his mouth for a bit before he swallowed. A tiny dribble leaked from the corner of his mouth, and he leaned back in his chair and rested the bottle on his gut. “I trust you can show yourself out,” he said as he fanned out one arm, his hand opening as if to direct the way. I was just about through the door when he spoke up from behind the desk. “One last thing, Jacob.” He spoke loudly to try and overrun the clatter of box fans. “Seems there’s going to be a trial after all for that assault. Just couldn’t get Mr. Hooper to go along with it, you know?” Mr. Queen smiled slyly and licked the dribble of whiskey that beaded at the corner of his mouth. “I won’t be able to represent you since you and your father have parted ways. Conflict of interest, but you understand.”
I turned around and stopped myself just before I rushed him. “Oh, I understand. I’ve understood most of my life.”
“Good, good, my boy.” Mr. Queen squirmed in his chair, all of his movements slithering and serpentine. He opened a desk drawer, took out a three-dollar cigar, and sliced the end off with a razor blade against his desk. The cigar angled toward the ceiling as he slobbered it between his lips and squinted. “And if it wouldn’t trouble you, how about shutting the door.”
26.
I remember the first time I knew I was capable of killing, and I mean really killing, not just rabbits and chickens and such, was when Daddy took me way back in Whiteside Cove after hogs. I’d never gone with him before, and until then all of my hunting had been distant, nothing hands-on, just .22 rimfire, gray squirrels and cottontails.
The Walkers had a hog bayed in a dried creek bed where smoothed river rocks lay like dusty cobble.
“Stick him up under his arm, Jacob,” Daddy yelled over squeals and snarls.
I’d never heard anything like that sound, but when Daddy unsheathed the knife and the cutting edge he’d sharpened that morning on whetstone caught sunlight, I knew what I had to do. He handed me the knife, and I clenched the leather-wound handle as tight as I could, my fist squeezed into a knot, and fought my way through the hounds till I could see the blacks of the pig’s eyes.
Eyes wide, chomping cutters, and screaming, the pig seemed fueled by some blend of fear and rage, and I felt tears dam up in my eyes as I pulled the butt end of the knife into my stomach and thrust hard until the steel bolster rested flush against coarse hair and tight skin. All seven inches of blade was in him now and the squealing grew louder, and I pulled out and stuck him again and again until the sound was wet, fell silent, and blood pooled onto dried oak leaves. I wiped the tears across my face with my shirtsleeve as if I was swiping snot from my nose so as Daddy wouldn’t see, and the hounds were still clenching firm to the hog when I watched the last bit of light go out of his eyes. The muscles tightened up one last time, then fell lifeless and limp.
“You done good,” Daddy said as he squeezed my shoulder. That was one of those few times he’d been proud, but I could hardly hear him or feel his touch. My ears rang. My body numbed.
The high-pitched drone that wailed in my ears went away by nightfall, but it was that numbness that stayed with me. It was the fact that the tingling never left that let me know from then on that, when the time came, I could do it again.
For some reason, that was the memory that played out in my mind over and over as I stared at the back of my father’s head in the sanctuary of Hamburg Baptist on the day of Mama’s funeral. Daddy sat on the opposite side of the church and about five pews ahead of me. Mr. Queen sat beside him, having brought the ashes and urn up the mountain from Sylva. Queen, his bald head gleaming with candlelight, never turned around to look at me, but Daddy did. Daddy fixed his eyes on me and stared for a long time, a solemn look about his face. I tried to hold his eyes, outlast his stare, but like always he wouldn’t be proven weak.
A handful of the regular congregation had stayed behind that Sunday to offer support. I imagined the reverend had asked them to stay, and it meant something that he didn’t want the place empty. When I was a kid, Papaw brought me here to this pew every Sunday. Just down the hall was where I’d had to memorize all of those verses. A mean old woman named Mrs. Jones beat those verses into our heads and tanned our hides when we didn’t remember. She’d managed to hammer those verses so far down into me that even now, after all these years, I remembered. I’d never believed in any of it, though, even as a child. The only reason I’d gone was because it made Papaw happy, and I liked spending time with him, so I never put up a fuss. I guess it was once the cancer ate him up that I quit going. Never was much use for God after that.
I stared at the back of Daddy’s head, greasy hair slicked and combed, while the five-member congregation stood and sang the opening hymn, “Be Thou My Vision.” I knew those words well, but for some reason, they failed me that afternoon.
Sharp angles of colored light shone through stained glass and glowed where the light touched pews. A dark brass urn holding the ashes of my mother stood atop a tall pedestal at the front of the church with summer wildflowers spread in a vase behind it. The pedestal was nearly the same height as the podium where the reverend stood. He was the reverend that had been there when I was young, though time had started to wash away the picture I held of him. The reverend was old now, his belly fattened, but all that seemed to disappear behind a curtain of fist-pounding, sweat-dripping hallelujahs. Though his God-given name was Hiram Bumgarner, I’d only ever known him as Reverend, and he spoke with fire, a locust kind of heat kindling on every word. He wore no robes, stoles, or clericals. Never had. He always stood in front of his congregation in nothing more than a white, collared button-down and slacks.
Baptist funerals were revivals. There wasn’t time for looking back on lives lost when there were souls that still needed saving. Ten minutes into the sermon, spit flew from the reverend’s lips. Sweat beaded on his forehead and bled over him. The summer heat was inescapable in that tiny sanctuary, everyone breathed heavy, and the reverend unbuttoned his top two buttons, his yellow-tinged undershirt visibly wet. The five-member congregation, who had already sat through one sermon that morning, fanned themselves with folded bulletins, sweat gathering on them as well, and they glared on at him, never seeing the man, only hearing the words.
I found myself gazing up at the giant cross above the altar in the same way I’d done every Sunday as a child, and waiting for some sign, some light, to shine down and show me God was real. I’d been waiting around all of my life for that light, but so far nothing had ever come. When I was a kid, I expected it would appear like magic, but even then the idea seemed silly. I did wonder what happened when we died, though, and I’d wondered about it for most of my life. Thinking that nothing happened, that there was absolutely nothing following all of this pain, seemed just as silly as magic. No, there had to be something. And if there had to be something, then there had to be God, so in some way or another I was a believer.
The preaching was just a murmur in the room now, white noise that played in the background while my thoughts spoke and held me in a trance. I reckon the closest I’d ever come to understanding an idea as big as God was the light that flickered in the eyes of the living, the light that Daddy never had. I’d seen that light in every living thing from squirrels to elders, and I’d seen that light burn out when it ended. I thought about that hog in Whiteside Cove, and I could see that hog’s eyes clear as day, the way those lights had cut out like a switch had been turned when that pig huffed one last bloody breath. Then I thought of Mama, the way her eyes had glimmered that afternoon we spent talking, and the way those lights were long since gone when I found her there, eyes open, mouth gaping, brains blown sideways. There was a place where all light tends to go, and I reckon that was heaven. That lighted place was what that Indian had his eyes fixed on in the picture Mama fancied, and I guess that’s why she’d wanted to get there so badly. The place where all that light gathered back and shined was about as close to God as I could imagine.
On the pew where I sat, though, there wasn’t a damn bit of light to be had. Light never shined on a man like me and that was certain. In a lot of ways, that made men like Daddy the lucky ones to have only ever known the darkness. Knowing only darkness, a man doesn’t have to get his heart broken in search of the light. I envied him for that.
As the first notes of the closing hymn rang from the mouths of that five-member congregation, the five of them and that reverend belting an off-key a cappella rendition of “I Will Sing the Wondrous Story,” I shot back out of that dream I’d fallen into. When the last word echoed, Daddy and Mr. Queen made their way to the back of the church and stood by the door to shake hands and swap niceties with the churchgoers who had stayed. I eyed the two of them, everything inside of me wanting to jump up and kill them both right where they stood. Didn’t matter to me that it was in a church. If there was a God, He’d understand.
The reverend tucked his Bible under one arm and headed toward the back of the church. The reverend strode as if he’d been beaten, as if every bit of energy that still held inside of him had been laid out on the altar for sacrifice. The three of them waited there by the open door and talked for a minute. When no words were left between them, the reverend patted my father on the shoulder and all three headed outside into the summer heat. I was the only one in the sanctuary now, and I didn’t move from that spot for a long time.
I don’t really know why it had been so important for a preacher to say something over the remains of my mother. There was a part of me that thought those words washing over her might be enough to lead her to where that Indian looked. In some ways I believe Daddy had always had those same kinds of
thoughts. Though he wouldn’t have said it, there had to be a reason for those Bibles he left. The two of us both seemed to think we could fool God into letting the wretched slip through the cracks.
There was nothing ornate or fancy about the dark brass urn that held Mama’s ashes. Still, it was better than the Folgers can Daddy would’ve chosen if he’d had his way. I rose from the pew, ambled to the front of the church, and stood facing the white pedestal that displayed her ashes. The urn was too tarnished to reflect what little light shined in the sanctuary, just a dull, hazy glow reflecting golden off the brass. I picked the urn up, turned it around with my bandaged hand against my bare palm until the metal seemed to hum. It was heavier than what I expected, and I lifted the lid to look inside. The urn was nearly full with fine ash that rose into a mound like an anthill near the top. The mound was peppered with whitish-gray fragments of ground bone, and I shook the urn around till that ash evened out. A small cloud puffed from the opening, powder holding on the air for a minute right above the urn. It didn’t smell like cigarette ash, nor did it stink with the thick acridness of doused campfires. The scent was something I’d never really smelled before, a dusty kind of odor that didn’t really hold much of a smell at all.
Something shimmered in the pile of ash, and I shook the urn to bring it to the surface. Daddy’s wedding band, a ring that had sat on his dresser ever since that day he sent her away, shuddered to the top of the pile. I stuck my hand inside and pulled it out, a white-colored ash powdering the tips of my fingers. The ring rested in my palm, and I looked it over for a minute, its presence raising more questions than answers. The short of it was that there were things my daddy would never say, things I couldn’t and wouldn’t ever understand. There was a reason he’d given her that cabin after all those years of her running around and stealing from him. There was a reason he’d spent the money to have this service, and just as he’d said, it didn’t have a goddamn thing to do with me. I was finished thinking about those things, though. There was already too much shit eating at me to worry with making sense out of something like that. I dropped the ring back into the urn and it clinked inside. I shook a couple more times until the wedding band disappeared under the ash. Some things are better off buried and forgotten.
