Stiller came back to school after Thanksgiving break with a broken arm. He was always coming to school bruised up. Since he never stopped looking for a fight, I figured the bruises meant he wasn’t having trouble finding one.
He still hated my guts, but he stopped his verbal attacks against me for a while. As long as I kept plenty of space between us, I could avoid getting tripped, shoved, or spit on. And I covered the books in my locker with sheets of plastic wrap. That kept my stuff from getting gunky when he used my locker for a trash can.
I puzzled a lot over what happened that day when Stiller wanted to beat me up after school. I’d never felt rage like that before, and I wasn’t proud of myself for it. I wanted to believe my anger was justified, that I had every right in the world to break his skull open. But something kept nagging at me, telling me that forcing him to kiss the concrete would not resolve the problem.
I’ve never believed in rabbit’s feet, lucky coins, or four-leaf clovers. But when I touched that purple plastic fishing worm, it distracted me enough to make me think twice about annihilating Stiller. I’d kept that worm in my pocket since Cletus McCulley’s funeral. I wasn’t sure why. Herb Conrad said that he and Cletus always carried bait in their pockets. But it was December, too cold to fish, and I still couldn’t leave for school in the mornings without checking to make sure I hadn’t forgotten the worm.
Why was I carrying something that helped me remember a dead man, a man I’d never met while he was alive? I could see his face in my mind, as clear as in the portrait that stood beside his casket. And I couldn’t forget the dream I’d had about him.
That dream had seemed so real. I’d read his thoughts as clear as if he’d been speaking, but I didn’t hear his voice—not until he looked at me and said, “There’s more to life than what you see.” How could something—or someone—be living if you couldn’t see it living? I understood that things like electricity or radio waves or wind couldn’t be seen but still existed. Once the graveyard became your permanent address, though, you were out to lunch for good. Right?
The first week of December, Mom decorated the funeral home for Christmas. When she brought up the idea, Dad winced and I told her that happy blinking lights and snowmen would look weird in a funeral home. And you sure couldn’t have any life-size replicas of the Big Red Guy. All it would take would be for one little kid to see a stiff Santa lying in repose at the Paramount, and all residents of Sherman County less than eight years old would be traumatized for life.
Fortunately, the effect Mom had in mind was peaceful and dignified instead of mistletoe and ho-ho-ho. She set up a tall artificial tree in the front hall and covered it in white midget lights, doves, satin balls, and plastic icicle ornaments. Then she draped garlands of gold beads on the branch tips and surrounded the base with pots of red and white poinsettias. Outside the front entrance, she wrapped pine boughs around the columns and encircled them with more poinsettias. Upstairs, in the living area, we had our old tree with all the ornaments I’d made in kindergarten, grade school, and Cub Scouts, finished off with the twinkle lights that flashed like the multicolored sign over the Cow Palace.
Business was too good. We were doing three funerals a week, and it was hard for Mom and Dad to keep up with everything. Even during the breaks between services, there were still chores to be done, supplies to buy, and the upstairs to care for. And Dad had been warning Mom since early fall that the public restrooms would have to be renovated in the spring. They tossed around the idea of bringing in an apprentice, but they couldn’t afford to do that until after the first of the year. So when school let out for Christmas break, Mom greeted me with a list of major jobs. Within a few days we were able to finish all the big tasks, which gave us a chance to get our Christmas shopping done in time for the holidays.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were quiet. I got up early both mornings and sat out in the back lot. Snow covered the ground, making it easy to see rabbit, deer, and bird tracks. I drew pictures of them in my notebook. I liked to call my notebooks volumes, and the current one was Volume IV. Sometimes I fantasized about finding a new subspecies and getting an award from the National Geographic Society. My name would be in all the scientific journals as Kevin Kirk, the bright young amateur biologist who discovered what for years more experienced researchers had been looking for. Mom and Dad were impressed with my hobby—so impressed that they gave me a pair of binoculars and some books on animal, plant, and insect identification for Christmas.
The day after Christmas, Dad went to the hospital to pick up a body while Mom and I hit the post-holiday sales. When we got home, I went upstairs to my room and Mom went downstairs to help Dad. I messed around on the computer, flipped through my new books, and before I knew it, I’d fallen asleep—rare for me, because I never take naps. I woke up about six. Mom and Dad still hadn’t come upstairs. It was odd for both of them to be downstairs for this long without taking a break.
I went to the refrigerator and took a swig of orange juice—out of the jug, since I was by myself—to take the taste of sleep out of my mouth. There was a note on the table from Mom:
Arlice,
Gone to Walmart. I forgot to buy
more panty hose.
Be right back.
Love u, Freda
I went downstairs to look for Dad and found him in the chapel. He was standing beside a small blue casket, and he was crying.
I had never seen my father cry.
I stepped back quietly and slipped upstairs. I’d seen Dad act goofy, mad, worried, and frustrated, but I’d never heard him sob as if his heart were breaking. It was an unfamiliar, frightening sound, like the sickening pop when two cars collide.
That night after my parents were asleep, I snuck down to the chapel. I flipped on the front lights and walked up to the casket. I lifted the lid and inside, nestled in the palest blue satin, was the body of a baby girl.
She couldn’t have been more than three months old. She wore a white cotton gown spotted with white satin rosebuds, a white lace cap on her head, and white knit booties on her feet. Inside the lid of the casket, someone had pinned a blue card to the lining. The baby’s name, Gretchen, was on the card, written in calligraphy. And below that, the definition: “Little Pearl.”
At first glance, Gretchen would have appeared to be more at home on a toy store shelf, peek-a-booing through the clear plastic window of a cheerfully colored cardboard box. But she had once been a living child; her body was definitely flesh, not plastic. I touched the tip of my finger to her forehead, in the same spot where her mother and father had probably kissed her many times. Then it would have been warm and soft. Now it was cool and lifeless, unresponsive to contact.
All the funerals we’d had at the Paramount so far were for people who had lived so long their bodies wore out from years and years of use. But this was a baby—a new body, a new life, a new promise. It didn’t seem fair. Gretchen had died before she was even old enough to learn to say Mommy or Daddy. Before she could learn to read or write. Before she could learn how to cross the street alone or ride a bike. Before she could go to school, win a spelling bee, hit a home run, drive a car, graduate from college. Before she could marry and have a baby of her own.
A blanket of sadness draped over my chest. I could understand why Dad had been so distressed. I wondered about Mom’s reaction.
I slowly lowered the lid, shut off the lights, and left the chapel. I eased the double doors closed and started down the hall to the stairs.
“What are you doing, Kevin?”
I’d been caught. The light was off in the guest kitchen, but Mom was in there. She popped the top on a can of diet soda and poured it over a glass of ice. How long had she been down here? She was wearing a pair of Dad’s old sweats and a Habitat for Humanity T-shirt. Her furry frog slippers stared at me from under the table. “I thought you didn’t like having dead bodies in the house at night.”
“I couldn’t sleep.” Well, at least it wasn’t a lie.
“Grab a drink and sit down,” she gestured to the chair across from her. “There’s some ice in the freezer. And hit the light switch.”
I turned on the light, then got the key from the cabinet and opened the vending machine. There was one cold root beer, so I sat down and drank it straight from the can. I was halfway through when Mom finally spoke.
“I saw you touch the baby.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you didn’t want to have anything to do with the bodies.”
I remembered Dad’s promise before we moved, that I’d never have to touch a dead body. He’d said it in a joking way, but here I’d just gone and touched one without anyone making me do it. “I don’t know,” I said. I studied my can so I wouldn’t have to look at Mom. “It seemed like . . . well, it doesn’t seem right for a baby to be dead like that. She was only a baby. I could see why Dad was so upset.”
Mom raised her eyebrows. “Your father was upset?”
I wished I hadn’t said anything. “Well, yeah, a little. I mean, well, I saw him earlier and he seemed kind of sad.”
“How sad?”
“He was crying.
“Crying,” Mom echoed, her voice flat. The color drained from her skin, like it does when you have the flu and you’re just about to throw up.
“Well, more like bawling, actually. Sobbing, really.”
Mom put her elbows on the table and dropped her face into her hands. She was quiet for a minute, and then she looked up to the ceiling, like Dad did when we had our talk at the Cow Palace. “Oh Arlice,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I got up to go to bed. This funeral home business was making us all crazy: me hearing voices and carrying a worm in my pocket to remind me of a dead man, Dad crying over somebody else’s dead baby, and Mom talking to the ceiling. Maybe we could still get out of the Paramount and go back to the way things used to be, back before Stiller and moving and living with death every day. Back to when the toughest thing to digest was Mom’s cooking.
Mom looked down at the table and shook her head. “It’s Kelsey. He’s still upset about Kelsey.”
“The baby’s name was Gretchen, Mom,” I said over my shoulder as I started out the door.
“I’m not talking about the baby in the chapel, Kevin. I’m talking about Kelsey. She was your sister.”