“You’re not a freak,” I said almost angrily.
“Do you think Karl’s a freak?”
I thought about that and decided there was probably something different about everybody and Karl’s way of being different was no worse than anybody else’s.
“No,” I said.
“Do you think he was telling the truth about him and Ariel?”
“Yes.”
We were quiet a long time. I didn’t know what he was thinking but I was thinking that I wanted desperately to be someone better than I was. Finally I heard him yawn and saw him turn toward the wall to sleep and the last thing he said to me that night was, “So do I.”
32
Friday was the day of the visitation before Ariel’s funeral. My father wanted us to look decent and he gave Jake and me money for haircuts and after breakfast we walked to the barbershop while he drove to my grandfather’s house to speak with my mother. Although I had no idea what he was going to say to her I figured it had to be about Karl Brandt. Maybe he was going to try to convince her to come home too. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. The house was a different place without her, and not necessarily in a bad way.
The morning was sunny and the day promised to be hot. We walked into the barbershop and found it already busy. There was a customer in the barber’s chair. Two others waiting. I didn’t recognize any of the men. Mr. Baake barely glanced our way. He pointed with his scissors toward a couple of chairs near the window and said congenially, “Have a seat, boys. May be a while.”
Jake picked up a comic book and sat down. I rummaged through the magazines until I found the issue of Action for Men that I’d started the day before. We sat down to read and the discussion that had been in progress among the men when we came in recommenced.
“I don’t believe it for one minute,” one of the waiting men was saying. “Why, I saw that boy lead the Warriors to two regional championships. Coach Mortenson said he’d never seen a more natural athlete.”
“I’m telling you,” Mr. Baake said. “The boy’s a fairy. Didn’t you ever think it was strange that he sings and acts pretty good?”
The man in the barber’s chair said, “John Wayne acts pretty good, too, but I don’t see anybody calling him a faggot.”
I looked up from the comic book. Jake looked up too.
“If that boy’s a flit then I’m a zebra,” the waiting man said. “And, Bill, seems to me a dangerous thing spreading a rumor like that. Can do a lot of damage.”
“Look, I got it from Halderson who claims he got it from a cop,” Mr. Baake said. “Cops know things, and they don’t lie.”
The man in the chair said, “Ouch.”
“Sorry, Dave,” Mr. Baake said.
The man named Dave said, “How about you finish this discussion when my haircut’s done? I don’t want to end up missing an ear.”
I put down the magazine and stood up. Jake followed my lead.
“We’ll come back later,” I said.
“Sure, boys. Any time.” The barber waved his scissors in good-bye.
Outside we stood in the shade of the awning that overhung the barbershop window.
Jake said, “What are we going to do, Frank?”
I looked across the square to the police station, wondering if Doyle was inside, wondering who else Doyle had told. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Maybe we should talk to Gus?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe Gus.”
Jake said, “I didn’t see his motorcycle at the church.”
Which didn’t matter. I knew where he was that day.
It was a long walk to the cemetery and we barely said a word the whole way. I was thinking how one bad thing seemed to lead miserably to another and how somehow I felt responsible for much of it. I hated Doyle who was not only a bully but a blabbermouth and I wished I was a lot bigger and could call him out. I figured we were going to have to tell my father everything and I wasn’t looking forward to that experience at all.
We found Gus’s Indian Chief parked near the little building where all the equipment was kept. The cemetery was large and I didn’t know exactly where Ariel’s grave was to be and we wandered awhile. The whole valley basked under a cloudless sky. The distant fields were vibrant green. The call of birds was everywhere. I was in a place I’d been many times before—on Memorial Day or attending a burial service for some member of the congregation and most recently for the burials of Bobby Cole and the itinerant—and I’d always thought of it as peaceful, beautiful even. But this time was different. I saw it now for what it really was, a city of the dead, and even though a wrought-iron fence was all that separated me at the moment from the rest of New Bremen I felt as if I’d stumbled a million miles from anything familiar or comforting. We passed Bobby Cole’s grave which was still mounded and upon which sat bouquets of wilting flowers. I came to the grave of the itinerant and remembered the day I’d helped lower him into the ground and how I’d thought then that it was a lovely spot, but now I decided there could be no such thing as lovely in a place where headstones grew.
“There he is,” Jake said.
It was on a slope on the far end of the cemetery beneath a linden tree. I could see a wheelbarrow and a pile of fresh dirt and Gus in a hole that was already knee deep.
Gus had once told us that he came from a long line of Missouri gravediggers. “Famous in that part of Missouri,” he said, only he pronounced it Missoura. “Folks would call on my grandpap or my dad to come dig the grave of a loved one. It’s not just digging, you know, boys. It’s carving a box in the earth that’s meant to receive and hold forever something very precious to someone. When it’s done right, folks look at it different from just a hole in the ground, and the time’ll come when you understand this for yourselves.”
Gus was a good storyteller but you never knew, especially when he was drinking, what to believe.
He wore a T-shirt soiled from the work and was so intent on his labor that he didn’t see us coming.
“Hey, Gus,” I said.
He looked up, the shovel gripped in his gloved hands and the blade cradling earth. He was startled and clearly not pleased. “What are you doing here?”
“Could we talk to you for a minute?”
“Now?”
“Yeah, it’s important.”
He added the dirt to the pile beside the hole and stuck the shovel there. He tugged off his leather gloves, stuffed them into the back pocket of his jeans, and stepped up to where we stood. “Okay,” he said.