Driving With Dead People

by Monica Holloway

“Did my dad film the accident?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “My dad takes home movies of accidents,” I explained. Julie gave a pretend shiver. I felt embarrassed to have a dad like that, but I needed facts.

  “Why do you want to know about Sarah Keeler?” she wondered. No one had ever asked me that, because my obsession with Sarah Keeler was a secret. I thought up a lie.

  “I met her once at a church picnic,” I said quickly. “Then I saw her picture in the paper and wondered what happened.”

  “At St. Mary’s?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “The picnic, was it at St. Mary’s?” she asked again.

  I nodded. Julie shrugged.

  “Do you want to make bracelets?” she asked, grabbing a shoe box from under her bed.

  I wanted to say, No, I don’t want to make bracelets. I want to go out to the road, in the dark, and lie in the place where Sarah died. I want every detail. I want your dad to tell me what she looked like when he saw her. Did she look sad or scared or just dead? Were her eyes open or closed?

  “Sure, let’s make bracelets,” I said, pulling out some colored yarn from the box. My stomach was flip-flopping all over the place.

  I couldn’t sleep that night even though I was exhausted—because if I did, I’d wet the bed.

  While Julie slept on the top bunk, I sat crouched on the bottom, humming to keep myself awake. I thought about exploring the basement, but it was too dark to do anything but stay where I was.

  Besides, I started hearing scary creaking sounds coming from the Kilner’s basement stairs. I was afraid it might be Sarah’s ghost coming back to kick my ass for pretending to know her.

  I imagined all the ghosts of all the people Dave had buried traipsing through the house, and prayed that Julie’s louvered door was strong enough to keep them out.

  There weren’t windows in the basement, so I couldn’t tell when the sun was rising, allowing me to pee one last time and still get a little sleep.

  The next morning Mom picked me up in her black Oldsmobile Cutlass wearing large Jackie O sunglasses. Dave and Joan came out to the car to chat with her. Julie and I stayed inside until Mom yelled that it was time to go.

  Driving away from their house, Mom asked how it went.

  “Really fun,” I said, “but Dave’s kind of weird. He hung around the whole time. He didn’t leave once. And he kept asking us questions,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “That’s the way it should be,” Mom said. “That’s the way dads are supposed to act. They stay home.” She turned onto Highway 64 leading to our house. “They like having families and want to spend time with them.”

  My chest hurt. I looked at the cornfields barreling by.

  We were the weird ones.

  Part II

  Father of the Year

  Chapter Six

  The following Saturday the phone rang and the woman on the other end told Mom she was dating my dad. Mom called Casanova at work.

  “Get your butt home,” she barked into the phone.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I just got a call from your ‘girlfriend.’” Mom slammed down the receiver.

  JoAnn, sensing things were about to blow, grabbed her single-shot twenty-two rifle out of the coat closet and headed out across the field to find Cousin Ben. When things got tense, they hiked back to the creek and shot cans off fences and chain-smoked Lucky Strikes.

  Jamie wasn’t home; he was at practice. He was fourteen years old and a freshman track star. After practice he’d tie his long pole to the top of Mom’s Cutlass and bring it home so he could pole-vault over everything. I’d look out the kitchen window at Jamie vaulting over the back fence or an old tree lying out in the field. He catapulted his skinny body over anything higher than four feet. Girls were calling him all the time now.

  Becky and I had spent the day building a rambling Barbie village under the baby grand piano, complete with beauty parlor and roads made out of masking tape. We somehow missed the urgency to clear out.

  It took Dad under four minutes to make the eight-mile trip from Elk Grove to Galesburg. He was pronounced guilty by the speed at which he drove home to deny the “girlfriend.”

  When Dad skidded into the driveway and we heard Mom yell, “That son of a bitch!” Becky and I jumped up and ran to the backyard, leaving Barbie and Skipper to fend for themselves.

  We sat on the metal swing set listening to them fight. We didn’t swing or go down the slide or even look at each other. Buddy sat tucked under my grass-stained feet.

  The fight escalated into Mom slamming out the door, jumping into her Cutlass, and squealing out of the driveway. Becky started crying.

  Dad came out a few minutes later in just a pair of shorts and tennis shoes. He walked to his truck, grabbed a sledgehammer out of the back of it, and began attacking the neglected one-car garage that Mom had been harping on him to tear down. I guessed today was the day.

  Boards and nails started flying, so Becky, Buddy, and I moved to the back fence. Obviously, he wanted to kill something, and we’d rather it be the garage than us. We sat in the grass watching that building collapse around Dad. Becky and I were picturing Mom’s car crashed up against a tree by now, or her deciding to drive away forever.

  “She should have married Dave Kilner,” I told Becky.

  “What are you talking about?” she snapped.

  “Mom had a chance to marry Dave Kilner, but she married that.” With my hand I indicated the maniac on the lumber pile.

  “Thanks a lot, Patricia,” I said to Mom, who wasn’t even there.

  “You’re a weirdo,” Becky snapped, and tears started running down her face again. “Mom can’t help the way he is.”

  “Maybe she shouldn’t have bothered with him in the first place,” I said.

  “Maybe she shouldn’t have bothered with YOU in the first place,” she said.

  “She would have done me a HUGE favor,” I countered. “I could’ve missed all of this.” I made another huge sweeping gesture with my hand.

  “And she would have done me a huge favor too, because I wouldn’t have to put up with YOU,” she cried.

  “Why are you attacking me?” I asked.

  “Why are you attacking Mom?”

  “You’re just mad because she left without you,” I snapped.

  Becky pounced on me with all her ten-year-old strength. She thumped me in the chest with her fist and I yanked her ponytail. She knocked me onto the grass and I kicked her legs. She smacked my arm as I was trying to get up so I hit her as hard as I could in the back. She stopped, looked right at me, and yelled, “I HATE YOU!” She yelled it over and over again as she ran toward the house.

  I started crying because it shocked me to hear her say she hated me, but I hated her too.

  I hated all of us.

  A half hour later Dad was standing on top of a pile of broken lumber, sweaty and panting, covered in dirt and sawdust. His thumb had been ripped on something and he kept flicking the blood off it.

  He screamed my name. Oh shit. I ran to where he was hulking over the lumber pile.

  “Grab those boards and carry them out to the field,” he hollered.

  I stared at that lumber in disbelief. It would take me weeks to haul it to the back field, but I was in no position to argue. I started dragging boards, heavy and filled with splinters and nails, out to the field, where he was going to set “the whole damn thing on fire.” A weenie roast was probably out of the question.

  In between trips I hustled Buddy into the house. I was afraid she’d get a splinter in her paw if she kept following me around, or that Dad might kick her in the side if she accidentally got in his way. He’d kicked her before.

  I picked up a board, and a nail went clear through to the other side of my hand. I pulled out the nail, which was probably a mistake, because then it really started bleeding. I held it up to show the monster.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked. I stoo
d there, staring him down. I was really pissed off now. In fact, I felt like knocking down a building myself, preferably with him inside.

  Finally, realizing I wasn’t going to walk away, he took a used white hanky, crusty and wrinkled, out of his back pocket and tied it around my hand. It stopped the bleeding.

  Then it was Becky’s turn.

  Dad found a huge rat’s nest in the back of that garage. He filled a tall white plastic bucket with water, scooped up the nest—babies and all—with an enormous snow shovel and threw it into the bucket. He gave Becky a wooden yardstick and made her stand there and stir until they were all dead. She did it, tears pouring down her face, stirring and stirring. I could see shadows of all the little bodies swirling against the side of the plastic bucket.

  Becky could not look at me the rest of the day. Mom didn’t come back until after dark.

  The next morning we all ate bacon and eggs as if the garage were still standing.

  Three days later, when the four of us kids got home from school, Fielding Brothers Home Furnishings had delivered a brand-new living room set, the one Mom had been coveting for more than two years.

  There was peace (and new furniture) in Galesburg.

  Summer came, and that meant long, warm nights where we could stay out and away from home as long as we wanted.

  One night the Whitmores invited us to play a new game up at the cemetery. It was called Dark Side of the Moon, after Pink Floyd’s album.

  During the game, we walked cautiously up the gravel path toward the pitch-black cemetery, and when we least expected it, Jamie or an older Whitmore would rise up behind a headstone with an old flowered bed sheet over his head and howl. We’d turn and run as fast as we could, but if you were too slow, and I always was, a sheet dropped over your head and you were captured. Prisoners lay flat out on top of someone’s grave until everyone was declared dead.

  JoAnn refused to play because, as she put it, “I don’t like to be stalked.” Becky loved to play but insisted on bringing Mrs. Beasley. I played, but got so terrified every time I was captured that Jamie let me sit cross-legged behind the tombstone he was haunting instead of lying parallel to a buried person.

  The only problem with playing in the graveyard was Alton Cotterman. His property butted up against the cemetery, and he used to sit in his green-and-white metal glider with a shotgun across his khaki-covered knees, ready to shoot any animal that dared step foot in his yard. During the day, shots could be heard on and off all summer long. All of us kids kept a close eye on Buddy.

  He mostly shot cats, but we were positive he’d shoot a kid one of these days. I always picked out brightly colored T-shirts to wear so as not to be mistaken for a fur-bearing creature, thus improving my chances of survival. With Alton nearby, Dark Side of the Moon was a life or death situation.

  One Saturday afternoon JoAnn saw Alton Cotterman walking up the lane, holding a yellow cat by its tail. It was still wiggling, but there was blood all over its side. When he got to the cemetery, he swung the cat over his head and banged it against a headstone until it was a mush of blood and fur. Then he tossed it over the fence and into the field. JoAnn ran and got Becky and me so that poor animal would have a decent funeral.

  We were all in tears looking down at that cat, bones busted and skin split. Bullies chose the smallest and most silent. We were all at risk.

  JoAnn brought over a shovel and we gingerly scooped the goopy, bloody mess with the torn ear into an old striped pillowcase and buried it under a locust tree. We cut peonies out of Etta Mae Shaw’s yard, and the Whitmore kids came, out of respect.

  It wasn’t a classy Kilner and Sons funeral, but I did make small remembrance cards out of white envelopes cut in half. I drew a cat on the front and wrote the date he died on the back.

  As we lowered the pillowcase into the ground, JoAnn recited a poem from our old nursery rhyme book that Granda had read to us many times. It seemed appropriate.

  Dear Father, hear and bless

  The beasts and singing birds,

  And guard with special tenderness

  Small things that have no words.

  One day, while I was sitting on Mammaw’s front porch shelling peas from her garden, I heard this coming from the Zenith clock radio sitting in the window behind the screen: “WMCR is holding its annual Father of the Year contest. Write an essay about why your father is the number-one Father of the Year, mail it to our studio here at 120 South Orchard, Elk Grove, and the winner will be announced July twenty-fifth at three p.m.”

  I knew where the radio station was; it was right next to Dad’s store. I decided to write an essay.

  I wrote about how Dad tried to save his store from the fire, how he cooked steaks for us on Saturday nights and always provided money. When I was at Dad’s store the following week, I walked the essay over to the radio station and handed it to Eugene Fox, who was sitting behind the front desk.

  It was my attempt to enter Dad’s fan club. If he were chosen, people would see that I thought he was a great guy too. It would also convince Dad that I saw what other people saw in him, and maybe things would change.

  I knew from church that he had a soft side, and I knew from the Rotary Club barbecue that he liked to have fun, so it was possible he might include us someday.

  Dad was not chosen on July twenty-fifth at three p.m. I figured whoever was choosing the winner either didn’t buy my story or my letter lacked the passion necessary to win a title as impressive as “Father of the Year.” Whatever the reason, I received a note thanking me for my submission, and life went on as before.

  Chapter Seven

  Despite the lack of invitations coming from me, Julie continued to have me sleep over at her house. I managed to stay up and never wet her bed. Each time I stayed awake, the night seemed longer and spookier, but I would rather have been at the Kilners’ than at home.

  One Saturday morning Julie and I were riding around town in Dave’s white station wagon when he said seven magic words: “I have to stop by the mortuary.” I couldn’t believe it. I’d waited so long to get back there.

  Julie said, “Can we stay in the car?” but I immediately countered with “I have to go to the bathroom.” No parent would take the chance of letting a bathroom request go unfulfilled. I was definitely in.

  The place was quieter without the line of mourners, but I could still imagine all the funerals of all the women and men and children. Julie headed upstairs to the office for a soda, but I stood in the entryway, mesmerized and sweaty from my proximity to death. Where were the bodies, and what were they doing to them?

  This was my first time in Kilner and Sons since Sarah Keeler’s funeral, and even though I hadn’t been there in over a year, I felt like a regular.

  Dave pointed to the bathrooms, which were near the front doors. I managed to force a little bit of pee out, flushed, and, of course, washed my hands. If Dave Kilner were listening at the door, and I imagined he was, I wanted him to know I took personal hygiene seriously.

  As I came out of the bathroom, immediately to my left I saw maroon carpeted steps leading down into darkness. I stood on the first step and leaned over at the waist to see if I could get a look at anything down there, but it was too dark. I walked down two more steps, and then I saw something: two large wooden doors slightly ajar so that fluorescent light was spilling out of the crack between them and onto the carpet. I heard water running and eerie suctioning sounds. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

  Suddenly a tall man with a rectangular-shaped head and black glasses swung open one of the doors and growled, “Who’s there?”

  I turned—in midair—and bounded up those steps, slapped my palms on the glass doors, and pushed my way into the bright parking lot, where a black hearse was parked. I was frantically looking for a place to hide when the rectangular-headed man opened the glass doors behind me.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He laughed. “I thought you were Julie. I’m Max Cooper,” he said, holding out a glo
ved hand that until a moment before had probably been working on the body behind the door. I stared at his hand and he laughed and pulled off the glove.

  “Okay,” I said, still unable to shake that hand. “Okay.” My chest was heaving up and down.

  Julie and I began frequenting the mortuary.

  There were parks and grassy backyards in Elk Grove, but I preferred the spiffy casket showroom in the basement of the mortuary. It was down the hall from the dreaded embalming room but was cheery with light yellow paint and it showcased all types of wooden caskets with silk interiors in various colors.

  At first I was petrified of the coffins, imagining a corpse rotting in each one. But it was peaceful down there, and here was a chance to lie in a box where someone would spend eternity. If I looked at it that way, it was almost an honor. In the showroom, I could be dead without dying.

  Julie and I took turns lying in our favorite coffins. Mine always had a pink interior (like Sarah Keeler’s) encased by a light-colored wood, usually maple. Julie, being somewhat introspective, chose walnut, always with a blue interior.

  When I kicked off my tennis shoes the first time and crawled in, I was surprised that it wasn’t comfortable. Lying in a coffin was like lying on a barn door. How was I supposed to make it through eternity laid out like that? Where was the fluffy mattress? Of all the times I needed to be comfortable, “dead forever” was at the top of the list.

  It was cold inside a coffin, especially where my feet were. I’d remember to tell Dave to put tube socks on me if I ended up in a casket—which, of course, someday I would. Regardless of my pink fancy dress, I needed thick socks on my feet.

  Inside my maple coffin, I placed my head on the small silk pillow so the top of my hair was showing, like Sarah Keeler’s. When I peeked out, I could see Julie in her casket. She was relaxed with one hand behind her head and chewing the thumbnail of her other one. I wondered what she was thinking.

  I looked up at the ceiling and imagined faces walking by, peering down at me. Who would come to my funeral? Granda would be there, and Mom would make JoAnn and Becky come, and Jamie wouldn’t miss it. Dad would be there for sure. I felt gooseflesh on my arms thinking of Dad looking down at me. If he decided to haul off and slap me, I wouldn’t be able to move my hands to defend myself, not that I ever did defend myself. Still, laid out powerless in front of Dad was a lethal place to be, even as a corpse.