The next morning, Wunder and his father walked silently through the woods together. Wunder had his hands in the pockets of his black pants. He was cold in the early-autumn air, especially in the shade of the trees, because he hadn’t worn his jacket. His jacket was sky blue, and sky blue was not a funeral color.
His father was wearing khaki pants and an olive windbreaker, but he couldn’t help it. Wunder’s mother still had not unlocked the door.
Wunder had now been in the woods hundreds of times. He rode his bicycle through them to and from school every day. They weren’t really on the way—in fact, they were very much out of the way. But he liked to stop at the toweringly tall live oak and stare down the dirt path, stare through the leaves and limbs at the DoorWay House.
Just looking at the house had always been enough to give Wunder the heart-bird feeling. And he had always hoped that one day, he would see the spinning again. Or even hear the cawing bird.
What he had never thought much about was what was on the other side of the woods—Branch Hill Cemetery.
Now that was all he could think about. He didn’t even glance at the DoorWay House as they walked past. He knew there would be no spinning today.
The woods ended at the cemetery gates. Inside them, a man in a long white robe was waiting. The man was very, very old with a stooped back and a frizzy halo of dark gray hair and glasses with thick black rims. In one hand he clutched a wooden cane. In the other he held some papers. With a scowl, he thrust them toward Wunder’s father.
“Are you Mr. Ellis?” he cried. “You’re late, you know! And where is the mother? Where are the other mourners? Here, take these.”
Wunder’s father took the papers, then stood, staring in confusion at the old man.
“Where’s Father Robles?” he asked.
“What?” the old man yelled.
“Father Robles!” Wunder’s father said, louder. “He’s supposed to be here.”
“Father Robles is out of town, you know! Come along!” The old man began to hobble down the cemetery path.
Wunder looked up at his father, who was frowning now.
“Well, then, where’s Deacon Brannon?”
“They’re together! Meeting with the bishop, you know. Very important. That’s why I’m here.”
“But who are you?”
The old man didn’t answer.
“Who are you?” Wunder’s father yelled.
“I’m the Minister of Consolation, of course!” the old man cried over his shoulder. “I’m here to minister, you know. I’m here to console. So let’s get started!”
The minister turned off the path and into the grass at the base of the cemetery’s hill. Wunder’s father seemed like he was about to protest further. But then he sighed a deep sigh and followed the minister, his hand on Wunder’s shoulder.
“Maybe it’s a good thing your mother didn’t come,” he said.
Wunder had to agree. This very unconsoling Minister of Consolation would not have changed his mother’s mind. He certainly wasn’t changing Wunder’s.
Wunder hadn’t understood before why his mother was so opposed to the funeral, why she had sent her parents and her sister home, why she had refused to speak to visitors, why she had shut herself in her room. But after last night, he understood. Because now he felt the same way.
He didn’t want to listen to anyone read verses or pray or talk about how his sister was in a better place. He didn’t want to see the casket or the grave. He was glad no one else had been invited. He didn’t want to be there at all.
So when the minister tapped his fuzzy temple and yelled, “I have the whole rite up here! The beginning is ‘Dear friends, death shows us how little we truly know’ or something like that,” Wunder shoved his hands into his pockets and tried to stop listening. He didn’t look at the minister. He didn’t look down. He stared, instead, at the top of the hill.
The cemetery’s hill was the Branch Hill, the hill the town was named for. There were, however, no branches on top of Branch Hill. No trees. Not even a bush. While the minister yelled his way through the greeting, Wunder imagined each of the trees of the world up there, one after another.
When he ran out of trees, he let his gaze drift back down the hill. There was another family there, a short, dark-haired woman and two girls standing in a semicircle around a gray gravestone. They were the only other people in the cemetery. All three wore black, but the smallest girl’s dark clothing billowed around her, like a flag, a black flag. Wunder thought he recognized her.
“‘Behold! I tell you a miracle’!”
Wunder turned from the empty hill and the girl with the black-flag clothing.
“‘We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed’!”
The minister bellowed these words. The sun was behind him, lighting up his halo of gray hair and his white robe.
Wunder felt the stone of his heart—cold, dark, and heavy—grow suddenly, slightly warmer.
Then the sun disappeared behind a cloud. The world became dark again.
Wunder glanced over at his father and found that he was crying. Silent crying, tears drip, drip, dripping. Wunder watched as one teardrop slipped off the end of his nose, past the papers he clutched, which read RITE OF FINAL COMMENDATION FOR AN INFANT. Down fell the teardrop, down toward the ground, down where Wunder had been trying not to look.
There was the grave.
And there was the casket—bright white, shiny, so small. He hadn’t known they made caskets that small. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected exactly—a normal-size one maybe, like there were at funerals in movies.
But, of course, that wouldn’t make sense. She wouldn’t need all that space.
As long as there were caskets so small, there were no miracles.
The stone of his heart went cold, cold, colder than cold again.
“Consolation, you know, and comfort and peace and good things!” the Minister of Consolation cried.
“Amen,” Wunder’s father said.
Wunder was silent.
“I have found that it can be consoling,” the minister said, “for the bereaved to put some dirt on the casket. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, as they say. So you can do that now, if you want.”
Wunder did not want to do that. He did not feel like it would be consoling, not at all. But his father’s hand was still on his shoulder, and there were still tears drip, drip, dripping from his eyes. So Wunder went with him.
There was a pile of earth on the other side of the grave. Wunder and his father each took a handful and placed it on top of the casket.
Like they were planting something.
Like something alive was going to rise out of the ground.
But it wasn’t.
She wasn’t.
His sister was dead.