“That’s all I’ve been thinking about all day. I can’t stop.”
“You better.”
“It scares me. I wonder if Karl was scared.” Jake held still a moment then looked back into the sun and said, “I wonder if Ariel was scared.”
Which was something I’d managed up to that point not to think about. It was the difference between being dead and dying. Being dead was a thing and not a horrible thing because it was finished and if you believed in God, and I did, then you were probably in a better place. But dying was a terribly human process and could, I knew, be full of pain and suffering and great fear and because I didn’t want to think about it I felt like grabbing Jake and shaking all those awful thoughts out of his head.
The Packard came down Tyler Street and thumped over the tracks and right behind it was my grandfather’s Buick. The two cars pulled into the church lot in an area outlined with yellow tape to reserve the spots for them. My father helped my mother from the car and even at a distance I could tell that if a solid wind blew it would tumble her.
“Come on,” I said with a sigh and stood up.
We entered the church together as my father wished. My mother took his arm and walked ahead and then Jake and I and then my grandparents. Deacon Griswold handed us programs and people broke off their conversations and made way for us. We walked to the first pew up front and filed in and sat down. Ariel’s casket had been laid before the altar rail, flanked with flowers that looked much like those that had accompanied the visitation. Although I’d had no trouble looking at the casket the day before, on that Saturday I did my best to keep my eyes averted. I stared instead at the stained-glass window behind the altar and imagined shooting the panes out with a slingshot. Lorraine Griswold came in from the side door and sat down at the organ. Pastor Stephens entered from the same door and took his seat behind the pulpit. Amelia Klement came up the aisle from where she’d been sitting with her husband and her son and sat alone in the choir section next to the organ. A hush fell over the church and Lorraine began to play, something soft and sad and classical, and I could have looked at the program to see what my father had chosen but I was already distancing myself from the whole experience. All day I’d been thinking that if something became intolerable you could simply remove yourself from it and that’s what I did. I thought about the things that had happened that summer, played them over in my head—sweet Bobby Cole and the dead itinerant and the day I pushed Morris Engdahl into the quarry and Warren Redstone slipping away across the trestle in the rain and riding horses with Ginger French and Karl Brandt plowing his little Triumph into a cottonwood tree—and the result was that I remember almost nothing about the funeral service except that it went on forever. People came to the pulpit and said things—later I learned that they’d shared wonderful memories of Ariel—but I wasn’t present and didn’t hear them. Everyone sang and I suppose I must have sung too because the music, what penetrated, was familiar. I don’t remember a word of what Pastor Stephens said but I had the sense that it was appropriate though dry.
And then it was time to go to the cemetery and I walked out with my family into the swelter and got into the hot Packard and sweated while we waited for Ariel’s casket to be loaded into van der Waal’s hearse and then we followed.
I’d hoped for a kind of miracle that day, hoped for something like the joy that had filled me on the Sunday before when my father had stood and delivered his brief, miraculous sermon. And if not joy then peace at least. But as we entered the gate of the cemetery I felt only grief knifing deep into my spirit. And when I saw the grave I was devastated. Somehow I’d imagined it would be as Gus said, a beautiful box carved from the earth. It was indeed a lesson in geometry, a perfect rectangle with ninety-degree angles and straight sides and rigidly perpendicular walls and a level floor, but it was still only a hole in the ground.
Pastor Stephens conducted the graveside service which was blessedly brief and then we prepared to leave. And oh that was the hardest thing of all. To abandon Ariel. I knew in my head that her spirit had long ago been released but to think of her as I’d known her all my life—funny and kind and smart and understanding and pretty—to think of my sister being lowered into the ground and covered with dirt and left alone forever, that was too much. I began to cry. I didn’t want anyone to see me this way so I kept my face bent toward the ground. I got into the Packard with Jake and heard my mother crying up front and saw my father reach out to take her hand and he was crying too.
I looked at Jake and his eyes were dry and I realized that he hadn’t cried at all that day and I wondered at this, but I didn’t have to wonder long.
35
We returned to the church, to the fellowship hall which had been set up with round tables and chairs. Food had been prepared in the kitchen—ham and fried chicken and au gratin potatoes and green bean casserole and a couple of salads and some rolls and cookies and dessert bars. There was cold lemonade and Kool-Aid and coffee. By the time we arrived we had all, except my mother, composed ourselves. Although she no longer wept, grief lay like a weight on every feature of her face and she walked like someone too long in a desert without water. My father stood on one side of her and my grandfather on the other and I realized they were afraid that she might fall. They sat her quickly at a table and Jake and Liz and I sat with her.
Some people had taken places at tables and others stood talking and no one had yet entered the serving line because the blessing hadn’t been said. That was a responsibility I knew would fall to my father who, after he’d seated my mother, had become involved in a quiet conversation with Deacon Griswold. Although folks spoke in voices moderated by the solemnity of the occasion there was still a lot of noise.
Amelia Klement separated from her husband and came our way and Peter followed a few steps behind. Mrs. Klement sat next to my mother and spoke to her quietly and Peter stood near enough to me that I figured he wanted to talk so I got up from my chair and went to him.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” he said.
“Yeah, thanks.”
“You know, my dad’s teaching me about motors and stuff. He’s showing me how to take them apart and put them back together and how to figure out what’s wrong if they don’t work. It’s fun if you ever want to come over and goof around with me.”
I remembered the day I’d stood in the doorway of the Klements’ barn and had been amazed by all the disassembled machinery inside and had seen the bruises on Peter’s face and on his mother’s, and I recalled how I’d felt sorry and was afraid for them as a family. I realized that although I hadn’t acknowledged it I’d thought that my own family was better, special somehow, and that we were indestructible. That day seemed to be on the far side of forever ago and now I saw on Peter’s face the same look I’d probably given him back then and I understood that he was afraid for me and for my family and I knew he was right to be.