I had this impulse to drive away from everything fast but I jerked the wheel into the neighborhood where the elementary school where I used to play youth soccer was on a whim, to see if there were any kids milling around. Hoping there would be. Seeing anything like that, any humanness in them, confusion, fear, would have been better than to believe what we saw this morning at Butler Park.
I circled the grounds. They contained no life, no death, not a single stone cairn in the parking lots.
I wasn’t a great soccer player when I was ten, but I was decent. I wasn’t a thumbsucker and I tried hard. My coach liked that. This was when my dad was still around. He only came to about half the games. They were in the mornings on Saturdays and he and Mom seemed to always be at each other, if silently. But when he did come out, he got into it and cheered for me, saying nice job when it was over. He didn’t say ‘champ’ or ‘big guy’ like the other cheese-ass dads.
But the cheese-ass dads came to every game and didn’t move to North Carolina forever with some bitch named Beth. In retrospect, I’d’ve taken a ‘way to go champ’ any day. Go ahead, cheese-ass dad, tousle my hair and tell me ‘we’ll get ’em next time, big guy.’
I walked out onto a green field marked with faded lines for games that should have been played today and stood out among them. I paced a little and fought off despair. From my pocket I pulled out Mr. Fleming’s yellow note and reread it.
I KNOW YOU WILL SURVIVE…. I KNOW THAT YOU’LL NOT BE STAYING HERE FOR LONG…. THE DARK SIDE OF THE HELIX… THE WORLD WILL STILL NEED ITS STORYTELLERS…. IT’S YOUR WORLD NOW…. STUMBLED ONTO SOMETHING WE SHOULDN’T HAVE?…. IT NEEDS YOU TO NEED IT….
When I drove over there I had considered just driving away, never to return. Overwhelmed with that feeling, by those dark smiling teeth. But the turn into this neighborhood, then these fields, changed that. I’m glad I had his letter on me. The gist of his note wasn’t just ‘please bury us’ but ‘keep going, you’re the one who can’t give up’.
Late afternoon when I pulled up to the Flemings’ house. I opened the Bronco’s tailgate and then went steaming in. The smell intensified on the way back to the bedroom, almost overwhelming now just hours later. The imminent rot of the world tormented me, how all was going to become a decomposing slush.
He leaned against the wall under the window, his jaw unhinged and frozen. I grabbed his feet and through his socks I felt cold hard flesh and I bellowed in gall.
The eyes show you things. The nose pronounces it with depth. But when you touch, you come to know certainty.
I wrapped my fingers around his ankles and pulled. His head thumped to the floor from the wall. I didn’t look at his face as I dragged him through the house. There was no way I was going to get him up into the Bronco alone.
This made things real, the weight of the dead. The earth pulling the flesh back whence it came. His wet suit and hair left a trail on his wood floor. I kept saying I’m sorry, Dr. Fleming, I’m so sorry. On the porch I paused and looked across to see Bass and Kodie standing in my yard. They didn’t offer help at first, just stared, not understanding what it was that had gotten into me.
They asked themselves, I knew: Why did it matter? Who cares? Not in a crass way, just matter-of-fact.
It mattered. Mr. Fleming’s note said so and I believed him.
It matters. How we bury the dead, what we do from here. We can’t just throw up our hands and give up. This has happened and yet we remain. We continue. You’re here, dear reader, yes?
I dragged him farther and was almost crying with the effort and frustration, not understanding why he was so heavy, this slight, intellectual man.
Midway down the cement walk to the Bronco, Bass called out and they came jogging over.
They stood and stared at him, the abstraction becoming real. We’d seen bodies. Bass had watched his parents both die. Yet this stranger’s corpse, that I was pulling it and wanting to bury it, came down on them. The fact that the old world had to be buried somehow. We couldn’t just leave it to rot. But how? The children… they were changed, they wouldn’t do it.
“Help me,” I said through gritted teeth, pulling on him, putting my back into it. Bass took the feet. I went around and picked him up by the shoulders. His head lolled, his eyelids folded and I saw the death in them, the marbleized flesh of the man’s cold eyeball. Kodie supported in the middle and we managed to lay him in the back of the Bronco.
“If we do this, what’s to keep us from doing others?” asked Kodie. It was the first time I’d heard distance and coldness in her voice. “Where does it stop? My parents? Your parents, Bass? What about them?”
Bass looked at the street. “Yeah. Maybe later. Right now, I don’t know if I can even…”
“I know. Me too. I’m sorry.” Pause and quiet. The silence of the world. “But that’s what I’m saying. We can’t bury them all. And don’t be melodramatic and tell me ‘but, we’ve got to try, dammit.’ I say no we do not.” She sniffed and coughed. “When I go, I won’t expect it of you.”
We looked at her and froze, speechless.
“You’re not going to die, Kodie, okay?” I said, still sucking a little wind.
“No time soon,” said Bass with a wan smile.
Her eyes cutting to Bass, then me. “You’re my guarantors, eh?” she said with a dangerous laugh. “Screw you guys. Don’t soft-handle me. Don’t pretend.” She met and held each of our eyes on each word.“I’m. Dead. You’re. Dead.”
“Help me get Mrs. Fleming? Please?” I asked Kodie this directly.
“We haven’t been spared!” she bawled. Her voice echoed. “We’ve been passed over, but it’s… it’s circling back to take us. You know it’s true.” She flapped her arms out and slapped her hands back onto her legs. “No. No, we haven’t been spared. We are not the lucky ones. We are the ones who get to suffer the most, that’s all. We get to watch it all crumble, think about it, feel it, mourn, then die.”
Kodie refused to help more and walked back into my house. I heard her crying as she reached the porch. She closed the door and we began with Mrs. Fleming.
This was the first body I’d removed stones from, so its shock value was high though I tried hard to gird myself.
I started with the head. Bass picked off stones from her body and legs. Lifting that second rock, I saw her eye. It bored through me with a fear in it unlike her husband’s. Once I cleared away the others from her face, the total expression wasn’t fearful. It’s just that her eyes were open.
“Want to close those?” Bass asked. “It’s creeping me out.”
Now I felt the prickles on my skin, thinking she could sit up any second, gawking at us like we’re ghouls disturbing her place of rest. I saw that image in my head—Mrs. Fleming sitting up board-straight, her mud-caked, leafy hair sticking out in all directions, her greening skin loose and purple-veiny, then swiveling her head to me, blinking sluggishly one time and then letting loose a cry of the damned. A cry sounding just like the whalesounds at dawn on the day of.
Christ.
I made a V of my fingers and touched her eyelids. The chill of her flesh, cold as the stone I just pulled off her, ran through my fingertips and coursed all the way to a place behind my ear. The lids wouldn’t go down. Kept flapping back up like cheap window shades. I tried several times, pushing down and then pulling with my fingers.