by Tim Sandlin
Chet spoke for the first time. “Is it just me, or does this strike anyone else as bizarre?”
Ron cracked. He’d held it together while everyone played their parts, but as soon as Chet vocalized the ironic weirdness of death, Ron’s face collapsed and his shoulders dropped as if he’d taken a blow in the back from a baseball bat.
His voice shook. “My wife was raised in the funeral business. She loves it, but I married in.”
Maurey glanced at me. I shrugged.
“It’s not the cadavers,” Ron went on. “I don’t want you thinking I’m squeamish over dead bodies.” His eyes begged us to believe him.
“I don’t think you’re squeamish,” I said.
“It’s dealing with the bereaved. I can’t help feeling what they feel.”
“You’re in the wrong job,” Maurey said.
“People come to me at the saddest moment of their lives and, instead of offering comfort, I’m expected to make retail sales. ‘That’ll be ten thousand dollars, ma’am. I know you’re penniless and your husband left you all alone, but we do take Visa and MasterCard.’” Tears dribbled down his cheeks. He made no move to stop the flow.
“We’re not penniless,” I said.
“And I’m not really alone,” Chet said. “I have friends.”
Ron sniffed. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”
Maurey stood and went to a Kleenex box on the desk. She handed him a tissue and said, “Buck up. You don’t want your wife to see you like this.”
He stared at her. “How did you know?”
***
We met Gloria Mildren herself downstairs in the showroom. Urns filled a shelf on the left with caskets in the middle of the room and on the right. Each casket had a card giving the price and number of years on the warranty. Naturally, I drifted right over to the children’s casket. They only had one on hand, sized for about a six-year-old. It sold for eighteen hundred dollars and had a twelve-year warranty. I was afraid to ask what the warranty covered. I immediately imagined the child in the box, her little arms crossed over her chest, her hair brushed till it glowed. I could see the expression on her mother’s face. I knew her father’s helplessness. Sometimes being a novelist is a curse.
Chet and Maurey chose a bois d’arc box with ivory inlay for the ashes and a simple pine cremation casket. Cremation caskets are much like the burial kind, only they don’t have handles.
A woman’s voice came from a back hallway. “Orifices plugged up tight.” She walked into the showroom wearing a yoked shirt and 701 jeans, drying her hands on a Motel 6 towel. On seeing us, she had a moment’s embarrassment, but she recovered nicely. “Gloria Mildren,” she said, shaking hands all around. “My prayers are with you.”
We pretty much looked at the floor on that one.
Gloria’s eyes traveled the circle from us to her husband’s face. “Has Ronny been crying in front of the mourners again?”
I said, “No.”
“He cried in front of some folks from Pennsylvania last week. Their son skied into a tree and, if that wasn’t enough, when they came to view the body their funeral director bawled like a baby.” She turned to me. “How would you like it if that happened to you?”
“Ron was totally professional with us.” I looked to Chet and Maurey for confirmation.
Maurey nodded and said, “Totally,” but I don’t think Chet heard.
The woman put her hands on her hips. She had the classic Western body of a barrel racer—wide shoulders, small breasts, tiny waist, strong thighs. “Do you want to see him?”
I said, “Pete didn’t want a showing.”
She seemed disappointed. “Are you the lover?”
“What?”
“We heard he had a male lover.”
“I’m…that’s me,” Chet said.
“Oh.” She studied him a moment. “Anything we can do to make your time of grief easier, let us know. I lost a lover once. I know how rough it can be.”
“Thank you,” Chet said.
“You two weren’t married? I suppose not.”
“No.”
“Being married makes it more bearable. Everyone admits you’re worthy of sympathy. My lover’s wife got the condolences, the money, and the name, and I had to keep up the act.”
“I’m sorry,” Chet said.
“I know what you’re going through. Believe me.”
“I do.”
***
Maurey blew across the surface of her coffee. “There’s nothing worse than a shallow person trying to be thoughtful,” she said.
“Pete and I are used to it.” Chet inhaled on his cigarette. “She meant well.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. Artificially deep people are worse when they mean well than when they don’t.”
We were sitting in a window booth at Dot’s Dine Out and I was nervous because when we walked in Hank waved at us from the far booth by the jukebox, where he sat facing Lydia. All I could see was the back of her head, but that was enough to pull my trigger.
Maurey continued. “Take ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.’ Whoever wrote that was actually trying to be profound.”
“‘Listen to the Warm,’” Chet said.
“There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.”
I figured it was my turn. “Never take a rattlesnake by its tail or a woman by her word.”
Maurey poured creamer and stirred. “Doesn’t count. The author knew he was being cynical. We’re talking about sincere froth.”
“How about ‘Have a nice day’?”
Maurey smiled. “I can just hear Gloria Mildren chirping that as the hearse pulls away.”
Chet stared out the window. “Jesus loves me, this I know.”
Maurey and I glanced at each other, then down at our cups. I wondered if Lydia could hear us. I couldn’t hear her, but that didn’t mean anything.
Dot’s Dine Out may be the closest I have to a place that feels like home. It had a different name back then, but throughout junior high and high school I spent at least part of each day swilling coffee and trying to flirt with Dot Pollard, who was considerably more a mom than Lydia. Whenever the defeats and heartaches of puberty got me down, Dot was the woman I ran to, and I’d probably have starved to death if I had to depend on my own mother to feed me. That’s why when the owner, Max, died of hardened arteries, I loaned Dot the money to buy the cafe.
“Isn’t that your former husband?” Chet nodded toward Dothan Talbot coming from his real estate office across the street. “Pete pointed him out to me once.”
“I wish Pete wouldn’t go around exposing my shameful past,” Maurey said.
Dothan wore a camouflage jacket and light blue cowboy boots. He got into a new Ford pickup truck that sported an NRA decal and a bumper sticker reading
***
I didn’t get it.
“What’s the bumper sticker mean?” I asked.
“Filth,” Maurey said.
“Perhaps you should sue him,” Chet said.
“Oh, it’s okay. There’s been two ex-wives since me. Besides, it’s not considered cowboy to sue people in Wyoming. If he offends me bad enough, I’ll shoot his gas tank.”
“I still don’t get it,” I said.
Dot approached, carrying my chicken strip platter and Maurey’s chocolate malt. Chet was sticking to coffee. As far as I knew, he’d had nothing but coffee for two days, and it was starting to show on his face. Yesterday’s shock was being overwhelmed by today’s grief.
Dot watched with us as the truck pulled out of a handicapped parking space. She laughed and said, “Dothan tried to sell me a time share the other day. Took a lot of nerve, considering the grapevine says he’s bringing in a Roy Rogers roast beef franchise.” Except for adding twenty pounds, Dot hasn’t changed in two decades. She’s the only consistently cheerful person in my life.
“Where’d you hear that?” I asked.
“Where I hear ever’thing. Right here.”
“GroVont doesn’t need another restaurant. We’ve already got too many,” Maurey said. Dot’s Dine Out—under various names and disguises—and the Dairy Queen next to the Forest Service headquarters had been the only eating establishments in GroVont since the Second World War, until last summer, when a couple from Santa Barbara opened The Whole Grain out on the Jackson Highway. The Whole Grain specialized in hummus paninis and vinaigrettes.
“Hear from Jacob lately?” I asked. Dot’s son, Jacob, tends to go off on tangents, so it’s always risky to ask about him. You never know what you’re going to get. But if you haven’t seen Dot in a while, not asking about him is a pointed comment in itself.
Dot slid into the booth beside me and stole a French fry. “Jacob wrote a letter, said I was pedestrian and ruled by temporal lust and he’s chosen a new mother. Says she nurtures his inner spirit.”
Maurey stared me down. “Don’t you hate kids who turn on their mother?”
Dot dipped my fry in ketchup and went on, unaware of the arrow I’d just taken in the chest. “Ft. Worth Jones saw him in the Salt Lake Airport last month. Jacob was wearing a sheet and passing out free flowers. His head is shaved.”
If anyone deserves to be treated right by their son, it’s Dot. Had she been my mother, I’d buy her chocolates every day and a condo when she retires.
“Maybe we ought to drive down there and drag his cosmic butt home,” I said.
Dot laughed like I was kidding. “Lydia says it’s nothing but a phase they all go through and he’ll outgrow it.”
“I never went through an airport beggar phase.”
Dot popped the fry into her mouth. “Speaking of Lydia.”
“We weren’t,” I said.
“She’s sitting over there at Hank’s table. Maybe you should go visit with her.”
“Not likely.”
Maurey pointed her straw at my face. “When a loved one dies, all grudges are called off, Sam. That’s the rules.”
“Lydia doesn’t play by the rules.”
“If I can forgive her for mailing poison to Ronald Reagan’s dog, you can forgive her for faking rape.”
“The two sins aren’t equal.”
“How would you feel if Shannon refused to speak to you? Lord knows you’ve pulled stunts not everybody’s child would forgive.”
I considered this carefully. “At least if I ruin my daughter’s life, I won’t do it on purpose.”
“Nobody’s ruined your life on purpose.”
I stared down at my plate on the table. “Could of fooled me.”
At the top of my line of vision, Maurey’s hands doubled into fists. “You got a lot of nerve sitting in the same room with me and Chet and saying your life is ruined.”
“You guys are capable of a loving partnership. I’m not.”
***
Everybody ate or looked out the window in silence. I felt bad about saying my life was more ruined than Chet’s. It obviously wasn’t. He’d lost someone close and I hadn’t because I didn’t seem capable of having someone close. Up until Halloween, my purpose had been to give pleasure to women, and I’d been fairly good at it, but while I was busy giving women pleasure, I’d been unable to fall in love with one. I could love women I wasn’t romantically linked with—Shannon, Gus, Maurey as an adult—but the moment I found a clitoris I forgot the person it went with.
Dot unscrewed the salt shaker lid and began poking a toothpick through it from the underside. She said, “Oly’s licking salt shakers again. He drools all over the top and spit gets in the little holes.”
“I wish you’d told me that before I salted my French fries,” I said.
Dot polished the lid with her apron. “He must have a salt deficiency. Why else would anyone go around licking salt shakers?”
I snuck a look at Maurey to see if she was still angry, and she was. A dime-size red circle burned under each cheekbone. Her eyes had drifted far away. I said, “I could have sworn Oly Pedersen was the oldest man in the valley when we moved here twenty years ago.”
“He turned ninety last summer,” Dot said. “He’s holding out for a hundred so Paul Harvey will say his name on the radio. I don’t think he’ll make it with a salt deficiency.”
“Oly’s going to outlive us all,” Maurey said with some bitterness.
“I guess I don’t mind so much.” Dot screwed the more or less clean top back on the salt. “This way I don’t have to fill the shakers half as often as I used to.”
“Every cloud has a silver lining,” Chet said. I noticed he was falling into the habit of dry irony. That’s not a habit you want to fall into permanently.
Dot went on. “Lydia says he’s doing a public service. The collective blood pressure of the county is going down from lack of salt.”
“I thought we weren’t talking about Lydia,” I said.
“Why aren’t we talking about Lydia?” Lydia hovered, the other side of Dot. I kept my head down. No one answered her question, so she went right on.
“Sam. Son of mine. The county plowed in my car last week and now it’s almost buried. I’d like you to come by and shovel my car out. Are you willing to cooperate?”
The secret was to study details. Count my remaining fries. Quantify the slaw. The white gravy next to my last chicken strip had congealed. The surface shone like a bald head.
“I’ll do it,” Chet said.
Lydia made a click sound in her throat. “Thank you, no. Shoveling out a car is a son’s duty.”
I compared the ketchup glint to the gravy glisten. The ketchup shone brighter. By moving my spoon an inch, I could reflect the fluorescent ceiling tube into the ketchup gleam.
Lydia said, “Hey, big shot, I’m talking to you.”
I said, “I am not prepared to deal with you at this time.”
She used her ugly voice. “I am not prepared to deal with you at this time.”
I risked a glance at Maurey and Chet. They’d opted for false deafness. “Lydia,” I said. “I will never be able to compete with you at sarcastic banter. I doubt if anyone can be as verbally cruel as you, so I choose to shut up.”
She slammed her fists on the table. Both Dot and my plate jumped an inch. “I’ll show you verbal cruelty, you little in-grate. Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
I slowly turned my head. She wore tight jeans and a blouse that had been popular back in the fifties. She carried a leather purse shaped like a Western saddle. Because of my low angle and her eye makeup, she came off as fierce and forthright—the proud holder of righteous indignation.
I said, “I destroyed three families and a boy tried to kill himself.”
“And that’s my fault?” The vein in her forehead bulged out, pulsating in an almost sexual manner.
“Yes.”
“Sam, you’re thirty-three years old. You haven’t lived at home since you were eighteen.”
“Seventeen.”
“It’s time to stop blaming me every time you wet the bed.”
“What?”
“My not breast-feeding you had nothing to do with that boy resorting to suicide.”
Breast-feeding? The woman’s self-delusions floored me. “You said my fathers raped you when it was you who paid them two dollars each.”
“So I forgot some details.”
I studied Lydia’s face. As she’d aged, her neck got stringier, and a network of lines came off her mouth, but the eyes were the same. Did she not know what that lie had done to me? Did she honestly feel no remorse? “Mom, those details affect the way I see men. Women. Myself. Because of the rape story, I don’t think I’m capable of love. And I’m afraid it’s too late to change.”
She stared at me for a two-count, then she snapped open her purse and pulled out a Kleenex. “Here. Cry on something that cares.”
4
By early afternoon the bunkhouse twenty-gallon water heater had recovered from the morning rush and it was my turn to shower. I like showers. Generally, they make me feel renewed, as if a clea
n body equals a clean slate, but TM Ranch bunkhouse showers leave a lot to be desired. That’s because the stall has rusted seams that turn the water brown as it passes over your feet, and after you dry off you have to go back outside and circle around to your room. Nobody much minds in summer when all it takes is flip-flops and boxer shorts, but winter means completely redressing, boots included.
During the rinse cycle I went into a daydream where Shannon wins the first Nobel Prize in Anthropology. The Swedish government flies both of us to Stockholm and puts us up in the finest hotel in Europe, one of those places where the maid turns down your bed at night so you don’t have to fluff your own pillow. At the ceremony, Shannon, vibrant and beautiful as she is, stands before the hall of intellectuals and gives me all the credit.
“I never would have discovered the lost civilization of Borneo if not for the continued love and support of my dad,” Shannon says, “and I am here to announce that I have named the era that these people flourished as the Samcallahantic Period.”
Then Shannon kisses me on both cheeks and my stomach goes soppy nauseous. The nausea-from-love stomach part actually happened in the shower. Just thinking about my daughter could do that to me.
When I turned off the water the pipes made a painful shuddering sound. I stepped from the stall to find Hank standing between me and my towel, holding a chain saw.
He said, “The boys and I are going after a Christmas tree.”
I don’t do well when I’m naked and other people aren’t. “Won’t a Christmas tree be kind of maudlin, what with Pete dying and all?”
“Maurey decided Auburn and Roger deserve a Christmas. There hasn’t been much cheer the last few months. She gave orders no one is to be depressed from after the funeral through New Year’s.”
I shifted to slide past him to my towel on the nail on the wall, but Hank didn’t take the hint. Instead, he averted his eyes the way Blackfeet are supposed to when they have something serious to say.
“Your mother cried this morning,” he said.
“Lydia hasn’t cried since the day she was born, and that was only a rumor.”
