by Robert Reed
I insisted that my people were first to receive the vaccine, and that
included our contractors . Most of us are already dead . That I’m alive
is a small miracle . I can’t count all of the suicides…of friends and
colleagues…yet in all good conscience, I can’t tell you that a few
people haven’t managed to slip away in the chaos…”
The Senator considered his next question .
PALLBEARER, by Robert Reed | 56
But the dying woman beside him rose to her feet . With a ragged,
ugly voice, she asked, “But why? Even if it’s as you claim, a small
group trying to save the world—?”
“I didn’t claim anything, madam . I’m just speculating .”
Behind me, our mayor jumped to his feet, his squeaky voice or-
dering the television to be turned off .
“I don’t care about the reasons,” the Senator continued . “Reasons
are excuses . This is a cruel, vicious assault on humanity, and believe
me, whoever’s responsible is taking great pleasure from our misery
and terror .”
The television went black .
I turned . Mom was standing beside the mayor . The crying was
finished, replaced with the old steel mask that I knew by heart.
To the class, the mayor said, “Obviously, this is a very painful
subject .”
But we weren’t crying . This was ten times easier than watch-
ing shaking people fighting over poison pills. My mother whispered
something to the mayor, and he nodded and came forward, unfold-
ing one of the green sacks leftover from the old grocery . The DVD
was removed from the player . Then Mom helped collect every other
disk, and while she carried the full sack out into the parking lot, the
mayor explained that these items were going to be burned . The old-
est kids were surprised, and our teacher seemed puzzled, even hurt .
But to give the action purpose, he explained, “Yes, people did play
a role in what happened . But what is important—what you need to
remember, children—is that only the hand of God can move this
world . No other force has such power or majesty . A judgment as
enormous as the one we have lived through demands Our Father,
and we should be thankful . He has given us the gift, this new Eden,
and we are more blessed than any people to ever walk the earth .”
With that, he retreated .
We soon smelled smoke, ugly black and probably toxic .
My teacher wandered to the front of the class, offering clumsy
words of support for this disagreeable policy . Most of the students
got busy making paper gliders and passing notes about small, fun
PALLBEARER, by Robert Reed | 57
nonsense . But I remained busy: Closing my eyes while holding my
breath, I wished that my mother would breathe in those fumes, grow
sick and die .
* * * *
Winston stands in the cold bright sunshine, hands at his side, eyes
down and his mouth clamped shut, chewing hard at nothing . He isn’t
as red as I imagined, but it doesn’t take any special skill to see the
anger under his skin . Passersby want to talk to this newcomer, but
they see his face and steer clear . Even a couple children approach
and then think again, retreating past me, one asking the other, “What
demon is in his heart?”
I put myself in front of Winston, and I wait .
He doesn’t react .
Nobody else is close, just him and me standing in the open . I don’t
know what to say, but once I start talking, my mouth finds words and
logic . I say, “Families,” with easy scorn . I tell him, “Families aren’t
easy .” Then I offer up a few curse words, laying the groundwork
before admitting, “My mother was an extraordinary bitch .”
He blinks, eyes focusing on me .
I wait .
He starts to turn away .
“What about your grandmother?”
I want him to look at me again, reacting to my open-ended ques-
tion . But he avoids my eyes and the topic, big legs carrying him
back toward the RV .
Walking beside him, I talk about the recordings of those old news
stories . In a few crisp sentences, I try to recapture two days in class
and the reaction of the important adults, plus my own raging scorn .
“I mean, we had this window on the past . And what did the adults
do? Destroy it . They didn’t see any value in the disks, only danger,
and they destroyed them before anybody could figure out how to
make copies . So these kids here today…they don’t know anything
about what happened, except what their parents choose to tell them .”
Winston seems to listen, but he refuses to even glance at me .
PALLBEARER, by Robert Reed | 58
“Here’s something funny,” I continue . “When I was twenty-one,
I left Salvation . There was this local girl named Lola, and I loved her
as much as my mom hated her, and we decided to move into a solid
old house up in the hills . Live with each other and our dogs, no idiot
Believers within miles of our front door .”
We reach the wheeled house . Winston grabs the door handle and
pulls, the hiss of compressed gas helping it swing open . But as he
takes one step inside, he hesitates . He can’t help but look at me,
asking, “Why in hell should I care about any of this?”
“My wife’s smart, but in odd ways .”
The boy is just a little curious now . But that’s enough . He steps
back down to the bricks and looks at the top of my head, asking, “So
what?”
“We talk,” I say . “All day long, we chat . But since we don’t see
other people, and since nothing important changes day by day, our
best topic is the past . Our childhood . She didn’t go to school with
me, but she remembers the day when they burned the disks . She
heard all about from me . And a couple years ago, after talking it over
a thousand times, Lola turned to me and asked, ‘Don’t you think it’s
strange? Why would an ordinary person go to all that trouble?’
“‘Because it’s history,’ I told her . ‘That’s why .’
“‘But it wasn’t history yet,’ she pointed out . ‘It was just a plague
in China when it started . Most of the world was still safe . Yet some-
body started saving news stories about that disease . And they re-
corded everything about the vaccine, even when everybody else in
the world thought that this was the answer to all of our troubles .
Which is a crazy thing to do, isn’t it? Unless of course you knew all
along what was going to happen .’”
I stop talking .
Winston looks more like a boy than ever . His face is empty and
pale, his mind pulled back to some private place, leaving me almost
nothing to see . But before I go on with my tale, he asks, “Where
were those disks?”
“In a box,” I tell him . “Unmarked and probably left behind by
mistake .”
PALLBEARER, by Robert Reed | 59
“No . What house were they in?”
“I don’t know .”
“My grandmother’s?”
“Probably not,” I admit .
He gives a deep snort before
telling me, “You don’t know any-
thing .”
“I know the old lady saved the world .”
Winston moves closer, looming over me . “She’s nuts .”
“No, she isn’t .”
He licks his lips and says, “Forget it .”
I say nothing .
Then he remembers where he was headed . Again, one of the big
feet steps up into the RV, and just to be sure that I know it, he tells
me again, “Grandma is crazy .”
“Was she a scientist?”
He keeps climbing .
“It must be tough,” I say, stepping up after him .
He turns, surprised to find me sticking with him. “What’s tough?”
“Being stuck with them: A senile woman who saved the world,
and your father who grew up with a legend . Because he’s always
known, hasn’t he? Families can’t keep secrets . And you grew up
hearing how Grandma helped built the bug or the vaccine, which
were good things . Great things . Without them, there would have
been too many people in the world, and civilization would have
crashed just the same . But with the climate in every worse condi-
tion, everything falling apart in ways a lot worse than what we got .”
The boy’s face grows red again . I make plans about what to do
if he takes a swing at me . I’ll jump down the stairs and run—that’s
my heroic scheme . But he doesn’t lift a hand . Instead, he says, “You
don’t know shit .”
“Billions murdered, and that old lady is partly to blame .” I smile
and halfway laugh, adding, “It’s got to be hard, sleeping under the
same roof with one of the world’s great criminals and her proud son
and a sister who thinks that old Grandma is just about the best, most
special person ever .”
PALLBEARER, by Robert Reed | 60
Winston sighs .
A moment later, he straightens his back and lifts a hand, that
broad hard palm driving once into my chest, pretty much wringing
the breath right out of me . Without trying .
I want to run and don’t .
“No,” he declares . “That’s not it .”
“Oh yeah?” I ask doubtfully . “What is ‘it’?”
A smirk rises, and he laughs . “I’m not telling you anything . But
if I did know somebody like that—I’m just saying ‘if’—the killing
wouldn’t be what pisses me off . No, the trouble is that the wrong
people got killed . If you’ve got this wonderful weapon in hand, you
don’t just slaughter your own. You don’t save the world just to fill it
up with idiot Christians and black savages . That’s a dumbshit waste,
if you want my honest opinion .”
* * * *
Butcher Jack would have brought the news, but it was summer
and scorching hot and his main freezer was in some kind of trouble .
That’s why Old Ferris made the journey instead . I was out back in
the junkyard, hunting for pipe that I could splice into our grow-
ing irrigation system . The rattling roar of a little motor brought me
back to the house . I came around to discover Lola standing on the
porch, flanked by several dogs, her favorite Bushmaster assault rifle
propped just inside the front door . Our visitor was straddling his
little motorcycle, the dust of his arrival finally settling on top of the
heavier dust . Lola was talking . With a voice friendlier than any she
used on me, she told the visitor that he was welcome to come inside
or at least into the shade of the porch and would he like a drink of
water because we had plenty, it was no trouble, and he looked hot,
did he feel hot, and how was the ride out from town?
Ferris was pleasant about his silence—no grimaces, no uncom-
fortable looks at the cloudless sky . But even miles from Salvation,
he refused to speak to any person who had been officially and per-
manently shunned .
I called to him .
PALLBEARER, by Robert Reed | 61
He brightened instantly . One stiff leg swung over the seat, and
he propped up his bike and looked at me, forgetting for a second or
two why he had come . Then he remembered . A fresh sorrow went
into his eyes, and that’s when I knew that he’d brought bad news .
It was easy guess what he would tell me, but there was still shock
in the words . “It’s your mom, Noah,” he began . Then with a slow
shake of the head, my old friend said, “She died this morning . Just
before sunrise .”
I didn’t say anything .
So he answered the questions that he might ask, put in my place .
“It was the cancer . She didn’t suffer too much . The right prayers got
said . In the end, I don’t think she even knew where she was . Which
isn’t a bad way to be, all things considered .”
He paused and stared at me .
“What else?” I asked .
“She was talking about you . These last days, she kept asking
where you were . She didn’t remember .”
I stepped up on the porch, one sweaty hand pushing into my
wife’s damp back . “Well,” I began . Then after some consideration, I
admitted, “I guess I should know she died . So thank you .”
He wanted to look only at me, but his eyes kept jumping back to
Lola .
“Want some water?” I asked .
He almost said, “Yes .” But he had so thoroughly ignored the
earlier offers that he couldn’t agree now . So he took a deep breath,
pushing into the rest of his important news . “She planned her fu-
neral . Weeks ago, before she was real sick, she told us that it was
important to her that you come and serve as one of her pallbearers .”
“No,” I said, out of reflex.
Lola moved against my hand .
I shook my head and stepped off the porch, suddenly angry with
this man that had never said one cruel word to either one of us . He
was a simple decent creature who helped my family many times
over the years . But there was a lot of emotion to deal with on a day
best spent in the shade . I approached and stopped short of him, and
PALLBEARER, by Robert Reed | 62
he watched me . His little mouth looked as if it was holding some-
thing sour, but nothing in his eyes was worried . I wasn’t scaring
him . He was sorry and wished that somebody else had come on this
tough errand . But he was brave enough or stubborn enough to wait,
and when my emotions simmered down, he said, “It’s your choice,
Noah . The funeral’s tomorrow morning, and it starts in the town
center .”
“Won’t be there,” I promised .
He nodded and climbed back on the bike and kicked it twice and
left again—a wiry little man vanishing into a fresh cloud of dust .
Exhausted, I returned to the porch . To Lola . But the only affec-
tion and understanding that I got were from the licking, panting
mutts at her feet .
“What?” I asked .
She turned and went inside .
I followed, again asking, “What?”
Cleaning up the kitchen was important just then . Lola started
pushing plates into cupboards and sorting the silverware and cups,
and I watched un
til I didn’t think there was any chance that she
would volunteer her thoughts . So I took a shot, saying, “You think
I should go .”
Her response wasn’t to agree with me . Because saying, “Yes,”
wouldn’t say half enough . Instead it was important to throw a hand-
ful of knives into the wrong drawer and then turn, lifting a china
plate over her head as if ready to bust it . We have very good dishes
in our household—fine work from Germany and England, some of it
older than the old farmhouse that we took over for ourselves . Maybe
that’s why she held her hand . Or maybe she wasn’t all that upset, but
it was important to get my attention before saying, “She was your
mother .”
“I think I know that .”
Lola bit her bottom lip . Then she offered up a few words that
must have lived inside her for years, never mentioned and never
even suspected by the man who slept with her every night . “She was
PALLBEARER, by Robert Reed | 63
your best parent, Noah . So yes, I think that mean old bitch deserves
to have you at her funeral .”
Leaning against the nearest wall, I asked, “What do you mean?
My best parent how?”
“Your father left you . Your mother didn’t . Your father could have
taken you, but he chose not to .”
“Life on the road? He didn’t want to put me at risk .”
“And for that matter, why the hell did he leave in the first place?”
If anger was a race, Lola was in the lead now . “He wasn’t banished .
He wasn’t even shunned .”
“He would have been,” I said .
“Shunning isn’t death,” she pointed out . “How many years did
my family live in that miserable town, not one Believer offering us
anything more than some secret whispered words?”
Never in my marriage did I feel like hitting Lola .
That was the nearest that I’ve ever been, and there was still a
good gap between the urge and the deed . But my hands closed, and
I was breathing hard with my heart pounding, doing nothing else
while she watched me .
“What else?” I finally managed.
“Your mom stayed . Believe me, she would have talked your fa-
ther into taking you, if that’s what she wanted . But she thought it
was best for her and for you that you stayed behind . And bad as she
was as a parent and a human being, she probably did her very best .
Which is enough reason for you to go into town and do the service