by Tim Poland
Sandy signed without reading a word of it.
“This next is a receipt for the deceased’s effects, that you’ve received them. Sign at the bottom right there. Her things are in the bag there behind you.”
Sandy signed again, then turned in the chair. A large black garbage bag, which she hadn’t noticed when she entered the office, leaned against the wall in the corner.
“And this is a copy of the contact information you’ll need. The funeral home where the remains were taken and the lawyer in charge of the deceased’s estate.”
Sandy took the sheet of paper, scanned it, barely noting the information, and folded it away in the breast pocket of her scrubs.
“That concludes our business, Ms. Holston,” the manager said. “You can leave now.”
Sandy rose from the chair, but the manager continued as she gathered up from her desk the folders with the signed forms. “It would have served you well to keep in mind the realities of this business. We make our money, including your paycheck, not just from caring for the elderly, but by keeping residents living as long as possible. Live bodies in the beds, that’s the baseline for our source of revenue. You might want to remember that.”
Revenue. Edith, as revenue. The frail, treasured body she’d held up in the cleansing current of the Ripshin River, a source of revenue.
Sandy’s arm rose from her side in a precise arc, as if it moved with the same practiced skill she applied to a sidearm cast that would drop her fly into place on the surface of the water under a tightly overhanging branch. Her arm swept across the desk, and the flat of her hand caught the side of the manager’s face with full force. The folders flew from the woman’s hand and she slumped in her chair, momentarily stunned, her hair knocked askew across her forehead.
Without pause, her movements decisive, Sandy turned from the dazed woman, grabbed her purse from the back of the chair, lifted the garbage bag with Edith’s belongings from the corner where it sat, and walked out of the office.
Predictably, Joyce Malden was in position, pressed against the wall just beyond the office door. The garbage bag grazed Joyce’s hip as Sandy strode past, not saying a word, barely noticing that Joyce stood there, her eyes wide, her mouth agape. Bless her heart.
EDITH had entrusted her with her last worldly business, and the first thing Sandy had done was flee into her own night of private sorrow. She would now tend to Edith’s final affairs quickly, efficiently, with as little fuss as possible. The way Edith had wanted.
She tugged on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans and threw her work scrubs in the dirty laundry, not wondering when she might need them again. When she called Dawkins Funeral Home and Crematory in Sherwood, it was barely past 8:30 in the morning, but the funeral director picked up on the second ring. He had a funeral later that morning and a viewing in the evening but told her if she could be there no later than 10:00 he could meet with her for a few minutes, which would be all they’d need to take care of the paperwork. No answer at the lawyer’s office, so she left a message. On her way to the funeral home, she would leave the garbage bag of Edith’s clothing in the drop-off box at the clothing bank in Sherwood. The old woman’s few garments no longer contained anything of value.
The funeral director led Sandy through the odor of flowers and formaldehyde to a small office crammed with dark, cherry-wood furniture. He was tall, his white hair meticulously groomed, with an odd shine to it. His white shirt was crisply starched, the cuffs affixed with gold cufflinks. A red silk tie was precisely knotted in place with a full Windsor knot. He offered Sandy his condolences and slid a piece of paper to her, along with a pen, as he explained the basic terms of the form he’d given her. It occurred to Sandy that the most consistent feature of Edith’s death would be that it required her to sign things for well-groomed people. With the pen in her hand, hovering over the form, Sandy looked at the funeral director, trying to keep her eyes on his face, not his hair.
“How much will this cost?” Barely two hours since she’d struck someone for equating Edith with revenue, and now she was asking about the expense of fulfilling the old woman’s last business. She felt petty and hypocritical. Still, it had also been barely two hours since she’d lost her job.
“Oh, my dear.” The funeral director reached across the desk and patted Sandy’s forearm. His fingernails were also immaculately manicured. “Forgive me. I’m afraid I’m so busy this morning that I haven’t been as clear as I should have been. The expenses for Ms. Moser’s cremation have already been paid. Some time ago, actually.”
Sandy looked at the form more carefully and saw that it was an invoice, marked paid in full and dated several years before. She estimated shortly before Edith moved into the nursing home. Edith had taken care of things, leaving Sandy simply to oversee.
“Ms. Moser did, however, make arrangements only for her cremation.” The funeral director leaned back into his chair and brought his fingertips together. “In fact, she left instructions that there be no service, but that’s certainly not legally binding. Often family still feel the need for some sort of ceremony, and we could arrange one for you at a very reasonable cost.”
“No, thank you.” Sandy brought the pen down to the page and signed her name. “It’s not what Edith wanted.”
“Of course, Ms. Holston. What was your relation to Ms. Moser, if I may ask?”
Sandy handed the invoice and the pen back across the desk, unsure what word could ever articulate what Edith meant to her. “She was my friend.”
“I didn’t know her,” he said. “We met only the one time, when she made her arrangements. But I’ll never forget. My Uncle Wallace told me once that he worked with her at Old Dominion. Said when he was hired, he hardly knew what to make of the fact that a woman was going to be his line supervisor. And he said after he’d been there a month or so, he’d have done most anything in the world for her. She was apparently quite a character.”
“She was very special,” Sandy said.
He told Sandy Edith’s ashes would be ready on the afternoon of the following day. She thanked him and left.
Her truck was parked underneath a tree at the back of the lot behind the funeral home, so Stink would stay cool in the shade while he waited. Sandy walked past two other well-groomed men in dark gray suits who were lining up parking cones in the lot in preparation for the pending funeral. At the far corner of the parking lot sat the crematory, a squat, stone building, little bigger than a typical garage, with a thick cylinder of a metal chimney rising from its roof. Sandy gazed at it for only a moment as she walked to where Stink waited, his head protruding from the half-opened window. Sandy could feel a slight cooling in the air and a hint of a breeze across her skin. A few fat clouds had begun to gather off to the southwest. The rain Edith had mentioned was, perhaps, approaching.
THE laundry room off Margie’s kitchen was tiny, little more than a closet. She and Sandy were folding newly laundered clothes, wedged in between the washer and dryer on one side and a single shelf on the other side that contained assorted laundry products and doubled as a folding table. Stink lay curled on the floor, just outside the laundry-room door. A small window on the back wall of the laundry room looked out into the backyard, where Margie’s two sons were playing a desultory game of catch. Margie stood at the washer, Sandy behind her at the dryer. If Sandy wanted to leave the laundry room, Margie would have to exit first.
“They play nicely together,” Sandy said, looking out at the boys as she folded a worn pair of jeans.
“They do,” Margie said. “On those rare occasions when they do go out and play. Most times, Matthew’s lost in some creepy video game and Luke’s out there in those trees with his bird book. If it wasn’t for baseball, I don’t know they’d even be able to recognize each other.”
Sandy smiled, took a pair of Margie’s panties from the laundry basket, and folded them in half.
“Yes, my panties are twice the size of yours,” Margie said, “but no jokes, little Miss Skinny-Butt.”
“Stop it. They’re not so big as that.” Sandy removed a sock from the basket and pawed through the other clothes, looking for its mate.
“This is nice and all, get in a little girl talk while you help me with housework.” As the washer kicked into the rinse cycle, Margie leaned against it and eyed her friend. “But I’m thinking there’s something else up besides your need for womanly gossip and chit-chat. Hmm?”
“I was in town. Saw your van in the driveway and thought I’d stop by.”
“I know that’s bullshit. You’d have to drive half a mile from anything you’d come to town for to see that my van was in the driveway. What’s up, honey?”
Sandy looked out the window again. Luke lofted the ball high in the air. Matthew camped under it, punched the palm of his glove a couple times, and watched it fall toward him. The ball glanced off the fingertips of his mitt and landed in the grass.
“Edith Moser died.”
“That woman at the home you were so fond of?”
Sandy nodded, looked away from the window, and kept nodding. Margie reached her arms around Sandy and drew her tight.
“Oh, honey. I’m so sorry. There now, there now.” Margie held her close and patted Sandy’s back. “There now.”
“I’m okay,” Sandy said.
“Like hell you are,” Margie said. “You loved that old gal.”
Yes, she had loved her, and Sandy leaked a few stubborn tears within the arms of the only human being who had ever seen her weep.
“How’d she go?” Margie kept stroking her back and listened.
Sandy patched together a version of what had happened the day before. She told Margie about going for a picnic at Edith’s special place, just as they’d done on other occasions. Sandy had to admit, though, that going yesterday had seemed more urgent to Edith this time than usual. Sandy said, though it was obviously ridiculous to think so, that it was as if Edith knew and wanted to die in that place.
“Not ridiculous at all,” Margie said.
Sandy explained that by all appearances Edith had passed away easily from simple heart failure. She couldn’t imagine how to explain carrying Edith’s body into the river, how to explain what she’d done or why, so she said nothing of it to Margie. She told Margie she’d driven Edith’s body back to the nursing home, that she hadn’t called for transport, because her cell phone battery was dead.
“Figures,” Margie said.
Sandy admitted she must not have been thinking clearly and related to Margie a quick version of how she had returned Edith’s body to the nursing home.
“Just rolled her in the front door, right in front of everyone?” Margie said. “Holy shit.”
Sandy said nothing of her night on the stoop behind her house with Stink.
She told Margie that it hadn’t really come as much of a surprise that the manager had fired her that morning. She would probably have fired herself under the circumstances. What had come as a surprise was Edith listing her as next of kin and apparently making her executor of her estate, whatever that might be.
She said nothing to Margie of slapping the nursing-home manager.
“Oh, Jesus, honey.” Margie hugged her again, then leaned back and looked at her, sincere concern spread across her face. “What’re you going to do now?”
“Finish taking care of Edith’s business. Have to pick up her ashes tomorrow. Haven’t reached the lawyer yet.”
“I mean, what are you going to do?” Margie said. “You know, work, a job?”
“I’ll be okay for awhile.” Sandy pulled more socks from the laundry basket and began pairing them. “I have some savings.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Margie said. “You live like a goddamned monk out there. Never buy yourself clothes or anything.”
“I’ve bought clothes.”
“Oh, really?”
“Bought a new fishing vest a couple years ago.”
Margie laughed and opened the lid of the washing machine as the spin cycle ran out.
Before she left, Sandy called the lawyer’s office again, but still got no response. She didn’t leave a second message.
Margie leaned out the screen door on the front porch and called after Sandy as she and Stink got back in the truck.
“Hey, I don’t suppose you’re going to be up for going to the baseball game tonight like we planned?”
Sandy helped Stink climb up onto the truck seat and closed the door. She rubbed her hands on her jeans and took her keys from her pocket. “Sure. Why not?” A wry smirk worked across Sandy’s face. “Not like I have anything else to do, right? We’ll meet you there.”
Margie laughed again and waved as the screen door fell shut and she returned to her little laundry room.
WHEN Sandy and Stink arrived at the bungalow, Keefe’s truck was there, but he wasn’t. She hadn’t noticed him anywhere downstream as she drove up the fire road; he would be off somewhere, further up the headwaters. Nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, it was often the case when he wasn’t expecting her. Often the case when he was, for that matter. And why shouldn’t it be? This was where he lived. The bungalow was his house; the headwaters were his home. Still, she found herself a little disappointed he wasn’t there just then. Edith was gone. For the moment, so was Keefe. She couldn’t have Edith back. She needed Keefe, to see him, to touch him, to confirm his existence. And she would need to fish. Soon.
She hadn’t eaten since gorging herself on the picnic lunch she’d made for Edith. Rushing out so quickly that morning to the job she no longer had, she hadn’t had time for breakfast. When she stopped back by the house on Willard Road before driving to Sherwood, she’d fed her dog but hadn’t thought to feed herself. Now it was nearly midday, and she was famished.
As Stink slept in his usual spot on the sofa, undisturbed, Sandy rattled around the kitchenette. She sliced a potato and set it to fry in a cast-iron skillet. While the potato slices sizzled, she brought some water to boil in a small saucepan—Keefe had no tea kettle. Rummaging around in one of the cupboards, she located an old box of herbal tea bags she’d left here, lowered one into a cracked coffee mug, and poured the boiling water over it. In a small stainless-steel mixing bowl, she cracked three eggs and whipped them into a yellow froth with a fork. In one of the vegetable drawers in the refrigerator, she found half an onion, unwrapped. She peeled off the withered layers, chopped it up, and tossed the onion in the skillet with the potatoes, giving the mix a thorough stir. She peeled the wrapping from an unopened block of farmer’s cheese, sliced off a wedge, and tightly rewrapped the remaining cheese in a piece of foil. Her tea had steeped by then, and she paused and took a few sips, stirring the potatoes and onions as she did so. As best she could with the paring knife she’d used on the onion, she shaved the cheese into the bowl of eggs, and folded the shavings into the eggs with a few strokes of the fork. After a few more sips of her tea, the potatoes looked to be done, so she poured the eggs into the skillet and stirred and scrambled the whole mess together with a little salt and pepper. Her stomach churned eagerly as she inhaled the thick scent. She dished the contents of the skillet onto a plate, picked up her mug of tea, and joined Stink on the sofa.
The potatoes should have been fried a few minutes longer, but the flaw was too minor to diminish the savory flavor or the pleasure of her stomach closing readily around the food. Stink lifted his head and stretched his neck and snout toward her plate.
“Want some?” Sandy selected an egg-caked slice of potato, blew on it to cool it some, and fed it to her dog. Stink gave the mouthful a couple of perfunctory chews, gulped it down, and extended his snout again. Sandy gave him another bite. “That’s it. You already had breakfast today.”
Sandy’s late breakfast sat well with her, like a stone in her belly. It would last her the rest of the day. She let Stink lick her empty plate, then set it on the coffee table. From the half pack on the table, Sandy took one of Keefe’s nonfilter cigarettes and lit it. Keefe smoked so infrequently that a single pack o
f cigarettes could last several weeks. Sandy had never been a smoker, but on rare occasions the act had a certain appeal for her. Today was such an occasion. She smoked judiciously, inhaling only a small portion of the smoke and waving her hand over Stink’s head in a feeble attempt to fan the smoke away from her dog’s breathing, which had settled again into a snore. Keefe’s ragged, well-worn copy of Leaves of Grass lay on the table, open, face down, its spine wrinkled and cracked. Sandy pushed the book aside, drew the ashtray closer, and tapped the ash from her cigarette into it.
With the burning cigarette notched in her fingers, she walked to Keefe’s tying bench. She ran a fingertip around a tray of newly tied flies, stopping to flick her finger through the compartment of the tray containing yellow stoneflies. The bright yellow flies infused her with a feeling of quiet simplicity, and she looked forward to the late spring, when the living yellow stoneflies would hatch from the headwaters and she might tie one of these simulated flies to the end of her line and catch a good fish with it.
Every fly in the tray under her fingertips was tied correctly.
Her gear waited on the porch. It was time to fish. She mashed out the cigarette butt in the ashtray, ran her palm along Stink’s spine, and stepped out of the bungalow.
CLOSE to a couple hours after her late breakfast, maybe a quarter mile or so upstream from the bungalow, and still no sign of Keefe. Sandy began to wonder if it was really so imperative for her to see Keefe today. What special wisdom or solace had he to offer her, this man who had been so incurably mired in his own rituals of grief when she first encountered him? This man who was not yet fully free of that grief, would likely never be?
In less than the cycle of one day, she’d lost her friend and her job, yet she was at ease. The cooling pools of the headwaters had spoken in the eloquent language she knew and needed, drawing her out of the bruised creases of her head and heart, keeping her stance steady and rooted in the woven world that would outlast her. The clouds that began to roll in earlier had fully arrived, wrapping the watershed in a steely gray, shadowless light. Since leaving the bungalow, she’d caught several small fish, and three good ones.
