Where the Broken Lie

by Derek Rempfer

  I drink my shot and refill. “Were you ever able to drown the demons that came after Uncle Joe died?”

  My Uncle Joe—Grandpa and Grandma’s youngest child—had died in a car accident when he was eighteen. It was the first time I had ever brought up Joe with Grandpa, and whatever he was about to say would be the first words I ever heard him speak about the dead uncle I never knew. His own dead son.

  Grandpa stares at the empty glass twisting in his hands before finally tilting it toward me. I pour, and he drinks.

  “Yeah, Joe,” the words escape him like a breath he’s been holding for near thirty years. “No, Tuck, I’ve never been able to drown those demons. Joe’s death did not change me for the better.”

  “What was he like?”

  Grandpa is still focused on that empty glass, as though all his answers are sitting somewhere inside of it. He smiles out of the corner of his mouth and suppresses a laugh. “Joe was a big dumb kid, you know. Always a dumb kid. Having fun, joking around, laughing and smiling. Everyone wanted to hang around with Joe. I can still see that goofy grin of his.” He finds it in the bottom of that twisting glass. Finally, he looks up at me. “Nothing ever got him down, you know? You ever know one of those people? The kind of person that always finds the good wherever they’re at? Well, that was Joe all right. Except he didn’t just find the good, he brought it with him. Wherever he went, he brought the good. That was Joe. That was my boy.” He dabs at his eyes with the sleeves of his housecoat. “Look at me. It’s been thirty years for Christ’s sake.”

  I pour two more drinks. He sniffs and shakes his head. “Anyway, I figure when he died, he took all the good with him there, too. Wherever that might be.”

  “Seems to me he left some good behind, too,” I say.

  Grandpa stares at me hard and then downs his drink. He sets the glass down and weakly, brokenly, pushes away from the table.

  “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go back to bed. The demons are gone for now.”

  The morning after my night of Scotch and demons with Grandpa, I walk to the Willow Grove Cemetery, which rests about a half-mile west of town. I stop first at Ethan’s grave and sit on the ground behind his headstone. Exactly where I had stood with my hands on his coffin until forced to let go and watch as they lowered it into the open-mouth of the hungry earth. I would never be that close to him again. I would never be closer than these six feet. Never farther than closed eyes and a quiet moment.

  “I love you, Ethan. Daddy loves you forever.”

  Katie Cooper’s gravesite is thirty feet or so from Ethan’s—from mine, too, for that matter, as my name was inscribed on one side of Ethan’s, Tammy’s on the other. I sat on the ground in front of Katie’s headstone, put my hands to the ground, and stared at the words on the headstone.

  Beloved Daughter

  Katie Cooper

  1969-1981

  I remember every moment with Katie all at once. I close my eyes and picture her face. See it, like one of those scenes in a movie where someone is remembered to music. Seasons in the Sun plays in my mind. Katie fades into shadow and when she comes back to light it is the face of Swinging Girl. She smiles her knowing smile then fades to shadow again. When Katie’s face returns, she is tilting her head to one side and pulling long, wind-blown hair away from mouth and eyes. Whether I’m Imagining or remembering, I can’t say. I opened my eyes and read the headstone again.

  1981—far away and getting farther. How many eyes had looked upon these engravings over the years? The long hard stares of friends and family wearing away the letter and number grooves. How many hearts had mourned here? More than just the Coopers and me, I hope. We can’t do it all by ourselves. Between what’s to remember and what’s to wonder about, the three of us can’t bear the load on our own.

  At that moment, a familiar car pulls into the cemetery. A long silver Lincoln Continental that I recognize from the church parking lot. It drives right in front of me and then slows to a stop on the far side of the cemetery. Soon, Phyllis Ross emerges. I wave, but she doesn’t see me. She pulls a spade and a colorful arrangement of wildflowers out of the trunk of the car and carries it to a nearby headstone. For the next several minutes, Phyllis does the meticulous work of planting those flowers by the grave of her deceased husband PJ. She works quietly, effortlessly. After tenderly tamping down the earth around the flowers, she returns the spade to the trunk of the car and brings back a water pail, which she fills at a nearby pump. After watering the flowers, she brushes off her knees, washes her hands, and shakes them dry. In front of the grave, with hands clasped together loosely—back bent from the years it carried and the burdens it bore—she looks down with the warm smile that she’d been wearing all along. When she leaves, I go over to PJ’s headstone.

  Beloved Husband and Father

  Peter Ross, Jr. “PJ”

  1911-1995

  Beloved. There it was again. That was the thing, wasn’t it? Daughter, husband, father, whatever. Year of birth, year of death, the dash in-between. If you were beloved, then, man, you had done something, hadn’t you? I thought about Beatrice Hart and her little girl Laura Jane, whose obituary was folded inside my wallet. That little girl who hadn’t lived to see the age of four had changed me forever. And so had PJ Ross who had lived to eighty-four. Once beloved, always beloved.

  I head back to Grandpa and Grandma’s to make more repairs to the hole in my barn. And to try to make myself more beloved.

  … he didn’t vomit, but for a minute there, he was sure he was going to. The longer Tucker had stood at Katie’s grave, the more convinced he was that Katie was telling secrets from the grave. He half expected Tucker to wheel around and look right at him accusingly. His heart pounded with the anticipation of this. What would he do if that were to happen? What if Tucker somehow discovered the secret? To what lengths would the monster go to make sure the secret died there? With Tucker …

  I have a pen, a notebook, and a vodka tonic. The paper remains blank until I figure out that what I actually need is a pen, a notebook, and two vodka tonics. But it’s the third drink that loosens the lid on my emotions and the fourth that pops it off. I tilt my head back in my chair, closed my eyes, and let the vodka remember what it wants to remember. Let it feel what it wants to feel. The past swirls before me, and I write. I think about good old PJ and jot down the memories that come. Coaching my park district baseball team when I was six. Greeting me with a handshake and a warm smile every time he saw me in church. How he could click a little wink at you and make you feel like he knew you inside and out and liked you anyway. It’s okay. We all make mistakes. I like you. You’re a good person. I picture him bouncing along on his John Deere tractor out in his fields of corn. Planting in the spring, harvesting in the fall. I think of that old tractor sitting in a dark barn, covered with cobwebs and buried in dust. As un-living as old PJ himself, and rightly so.

  By my fourth vodka tonic, I have managed to put words to the slideshow in my head. I carefully fold the letter with sharp even creases and slide it into an envelope that I do not seal. I can’t wait for morning. I leave right then and there and again walk the half-mile to that dark and lifeless lot. Old Man Moon lights my path, and I’m able to find PJ fairly easily. I stand in front of the headstone with my hands clasped together in front of me the same way that Phyllis had earlier that same day. Then I pull the envelope out of my back pocket and paper clip it to receptive flowery fingers.

  I go to the cemetery every day that week. Talk to Ethan and Katie, and keep watch on the letter I have left for Phyllis. By Saturday afternoon, it is gone, and so Sunday morning, I go to church just to see if Phyllis Ross looks different somehow.

  The last time I had been inside the Willow Grove United Methodist Church was for my son’s funeral. My breath quickens at the sight of the emptiness that fills the space where Ethan had lay in his coffin. The same kind of emptiness I saw occupying the hole in that barn.

  Mom and Larry aren’t here this Sunday, so I sit by myse
lf in the spot that Grandma Mueller used to sit in every Sunday. She is to be credited for this flat and faded cushion, having worn it down one Sunday at a time.

  The congregation is smaller as membership growth has been outpaced by attrition. Attrition by life that carried youngsters away from home. Attrition by death that carried the elderly farther than that.

  When Pastor Judy asks the congregation to share their joys and concerns, several hands shoot up. Alice Todd asks for prayers for our military overseas. Elmer and Millie Sands announce the birth of their nineteenth grandchild. Florence Howell gives thanks for the sun. A part of me was hoping that Phyllis would raise her hand and tell the congregation about her grave letter. She does not, however, and it saddens me because my joy is all wrapped up in hers.

  Pastor Judy leads us in a long passionate prayer, full of high praises, sincere gratitude, and humble requests. I close my eyes to add power to the prayer, but my mind drifts back to those Sundays when I would sit here next to Grandma Mueller and she would scratch secret messages on my back with loving fingers. Hi, T. Love you, T. My boy.

  When Pastor Judy has finished, she encourages everyone to take a few seconds for silent personal prayer, so I thank God for my wife and daughter and ask for more feathers.

  I don’t know that I get much from being here. I listen for messages but don’t find any in sermon or song. Still, just being seems to calm my soul a little.

  … it’s a Sunday morning, which means most of the citizens of Willow Grove are either in bed, in church, or in the fields. Nobody was ever around at this time on a Willow Grove Sunday. If a person were inclined to criminal behavior, this would be the time for it. Nobody around at all … other than that one little bundle of sugar and spice on a playground swing. And one little monster …

  In the fellowship hall after the service, I’m listening to Albert Todd talk about how the Church Trustees Committee is in search of a back-up generator so if you know anybody who has one or wants to donate one or … when, from behind me, a dramatic Phyllis Ross tells her friends Sally Coleman and Carol Carney about the “wonderful letter” someone had left by PJ’s grave. I swallow my donut hole and choke down the rest of the last bit of the ridiculously strong decaffeinated coffee in my Styrofoam cup. I feign an increasing interest in Albert’s generator talk, but back myself into a position where I can better eavesdrop on Phyllis and friends.

  “Goodness, how lovely. Who was it from?” asked Carol.

  “Well that’s the thing,” Phyllis answered. “It wasn’t signed.”

  Sally gasps.

  “It wasn’t signed?” Carol whispers. “Oh my, an anonymous letter.”

  “At the bottom of the letter it said, He won’t be forgotten.”

  I shift a half-turn on my feet and can see them out of the corner of my eye. I nod toward Albert, but fine-tune my ears into the ladies’ conversation. Carol and Sally pepper Phyllis with questions from the left and the right. Breathy and desperate, they gasp out their speculations. All at once it seems important. I feel like part of something bigger than my curiosity and lighter than my grief. I know something they don’t. There’s an odd power to it. They continue guessing, shooting out names like firecrackers on the fourth of July until they begin to run out of steam.

  “What do you think, Phyllis?” Sally asks.

  Phyllis sounds dubious. “I don’t know. This doesn’t seem like anything these folks would do.”

  “Well, who then?”

  After church and still feeling spiritual, I walk up the playground. But I’m almost relieved to find that Swinging Girl is not there. I was starting to feel weird about our relationship and she wasn’t, which concerned me.

  So I leave the playground and head out to the cemetery to visit Ethan. Tammy had not wanted our son buried here, nearly an hour from our home in Westfield. But the Gaines family plot is here and this brings me some measure of comfort. I should not have insisted, I suppose. I should have let her keep him as close to her as possible, but I did not.

  It is so much warmer today than it had been on the day of his funeral. And so quiet. I lie down flat on my stomach and my heart beats against the earth and back again against my chest. As if it is Ethan’s beating back at me, or just the one heart we are sharing for a moment. Somebody once said having children is like letting your heart live outside your body. Yeah, it’s exactly like that.

  To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die

  That is the quote we put on the back of Ethan’s headstone. I close my eyes and try to feel him living there inside me, but the truth is that it feels almost like the opposite. Like something that had once been there is now missing.

  I wipe away tears and pull a blade of grass from above his resting place and tuck it inside my sock against the angel tattooed there. “I love you, Ethan. Daddy loves you forever.”

  Mr. Innocent

  I see and recognize Charlie Skinner the instant I step into Mustang’s Bar and Grill. I’m not sure how I am able to so quickly recognize someone I haven’t seen in well over ten years, but I do. Maybe it’s his slouch—even more pronounced than my own. Like some street urchin, hunched over and enclosed within himself to protect his last warm thing—the beating heart inside his chest. He’s propped up on a barstool, elbows on the bar and an empty glass in front of him.

  For a long time Charlie Skinner was my best friend. He might even still count as the best friend I’ve ever had if such rankings are based on Wiffle ball games played, imaginary bad guys killed, and giggles. Man, could we make each other laugh.

  But there was a marker that had ended my friendship with Charlie the same way that the carbon engine had ended the horse and buggy. It was the arrival of Katie Cooper.

  “Yep.”

  “Well, filler up for me would ya, Stan?” he says to the bartender I am not familiar with. Son Settles must have the night off.

  Stan the bartender returns moments later with a full glass. There are only four other patrons in the tavern. The only one I know is Old Man Keller who is sitting at the table behind Charlie and hovering over a glass of something dark and icy. Strange to see the Old Man sitting atop anything other than that mower. Like seeing a cop out of uniform.

  I remain standing just inside the door trying to decide whether I want to turn back around and go home or sit on the stool next to Charlie. There are no other options.

  “Is this seat taken?” I ask.

  Without turning his head, Charlie says, “Depends.” And then he sips the foam off the top of his draught and sighs. “You aren’t going to make me eat grass, are you?”

  Charlie and I used to wrestle around a lot when we were kids. There were a few times that things got heated and I would pin him down, rip grass from the ground and shove it between his lips with prying fingers until he surrendered and opened wide. It was such a ridiculous form of torment that invariably we both laughed ourselves out of our rage. At least that’s how I remember it.

  “You were always stronger than me. Why did you let me do that?” I ask.

  “Because you were always angrier.” He motions down to the bartender that I need a drink. “Put it on my tab, Stan.”

  “That’s okay, I’ll get it,” I protest.

  “Stan, put it on my tab,” he repeats in such a way that Stan will not question further. In such a way that told me that Charlie had heard about Ethan, which was as close as we’d come to actually talking about him.

  Charlie and I have the “how ya doin’” and “whatcha been up to” conversations. We have the “remember that time” laughs. We talk about our families without digging below the surface of name, rank, and serial number. And we dance around how we had drifted apart and how different we really were back then, or explore how different we are now. Sitting on the bar in front of him is a panama hat. I was going to ask him about it, but thought better of it. Wearing a weird hat is the kind of thing you do when you want the world to think of you in a way they hadn’t before. That’s all I really need to know.r />
  “You see much of Moose anymore? Whatever came of him?”

  “I don’t see any more of Moose Thornton than you see of Katie Cooper,” he replies.

  I let the beer swish around in my mouth as the words swish around in my head. I slowly swallow everything.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that Moose has been dead for about seven or eight years now. Was hot-rodding in town on his Harley when some old blue-hair ran a Yield sign and pulled out in front of him on south 3rd.”

  “Jesus. Were you there when it happened?”

  “I was. Moose flew over the top of that friggin’ Buick and skidded about 200 feet. Blood and brains halfway down 3rd Street. Dead. Just like that.”

  He says this last part with an emphatic snap of his fingers. He drains the rest of his beer and motions to Stan for two more.

  “The old lady stopped in shock, looked over at Moose lying there, looked at us and raced off at about twenty miles per hour. Not a whole lot of ‘run’ in her ‘hit-and-run’.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know. Some out-of-towner on a visit. She could have took off at a hundred-and-twenty and it wouldn’t have made a difference. Nothing happens in Willow Grove that somebody doesn’t see or know about.”