by Mark Dunn
It has been said that death will either bring a family together or pull a family apart. Because death has the tendency to play havoc with relationships and sensibilities as it reshuffles the deck of the card game of life, it rarely makes only a glancing impression upon a family member. However, with the death of Shelby Ramsey, his surviving siblings displayed every point upon the spectrum of familial response, including the one that rests squarely in the middle: marginal interest bordering upon indifference.
Let us begin our examination of these varied responses with Carla Guinter, wife of Captain Virgil Guinter of the United States Navy, and, within the timeframe of our story, a resident of the Mission Hills neighborhood of San Diego. Carla, first in the family birth order, has just received a phone call from her sister Mellie about the death of said brother Shelby (fourth oldest), who for the last twenty years has gone by the name of Sawyer. He chose Sawyer when he began to include in his juggling act three active-duty two-stroke-engine-powered chainsaws. Sawyer used to juggle rubber balls. Then he moved up to dessert plates. He finished his life juggling chainsaws. It was, in fact, one of the chainsaws that prematurely (and violently) brought the curtain down on Shelby/Sawyer’s neo-Vaudevillian life.
Mellie is calling from Burnsville, a suburb of Minneapolis. Mellie and her husband Artie are both high school teachers.
“How did he die?” asks Carla, who tries very hard to be attentive to news of her brother’s death—the brother she has not seen except on an occasional television variety show for the last dozen years.
“He was performing at Circus Circus Tunica, one of those new Mississippi River casinos, and he lost his concentration, and one of the chainsaws sliced the jugular vein in his neck.”
This statement of gruesome fact is followed on the other end of the telephone line by silence.
“I’m sorry, Carla. I didn’t know how else to say it. Hello? Carla?”
“I’m back. I dropped the phone. I didn’t hear what you just—There is a man on a rampage on channel ten. He’s stolen a tank and he’s flattening cars and trucks like he was Godzilla’s own feet.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“On the television. They’re showing it right now. He’s destroying a whole street in Clairemont. It’s hard to even watch. He just tried to knock over a house. Now he’s backing up. He’s running over a fire hy—Jesus God, Mellie. The man has just unleashed a geyser of water three stories high.”
“Our brother is dead. He was nearly decapitated.”
“Who did it?”
“What do you mean ‘who did it?’ He did it to himself. It isn’t just a severed finger from a misthrown Ginsu knife this time, Carla. It’s his neck.”
“That’s awful. Oh Jesus God, Mellie—the tank maniac just ran over some kind of recreational vehicle. Opened it right up like a loosely wrapped Christmas present.”
“Would you turn off the television?” There is the sound of undisguised impatience to Mellie’s voice.
“Just a minute. I’m turning the sound down. I’ll turn away for a moment, but I have to know what happens. I have friends who live in Clairemont. I fear for their safety.”
“Buck is handling the arrangements. He’s flying down to Memphis tonight. He wants to know if we’re okay with cremation.”
“I don’t have a problem with cre—oooooh!”
“You turned back around, didn’t you?”
“I can’t help it, Mellie. There’s all manner of mayhem being broadcast on my television right now.”
“You’re disrespecting our brother.”
“I hardly knew him”
“That was cold, Carla.”
“That didn’t come out the way I meant it. I just mean that Shelby and I had so very little to do with each other. He really was a stranger to me. Just as, no doubt, I’ve always been a stranger to him. I’m a navy wife. Whereas he juggled things for a living. Can you think of any other two people less alike?”
“So you’re fine with Buck having him cremated?”
“Yes, of course. Is there going to be a funeral?”
“His friends—his juggling friends—they want to do something special for him at the casino.”
“Something like what?”
“They want to put his ashes in little hollow balls and juggle them in tribute.”
“Well, that certainly sounds in keeping with the crazy kind of life our brother led. Who am I to object?”
“That’s what I needed to know. Buck doesn’t like the idea. He thinks it’s kitschy. I’ll talk to him. What is the tank doing?”
“I can look now?”
“Have they been able to stop it?”
“How do you stop a tank?”
“With an anti-ballistic missile?”
The two women hang up.
Mellie gets her youngest brother Troy on the phone. Troy lives in Oklahoma City.
“Hello, Troy. Has Buck called you?”
“Yeah. Did you know there’s a tank on the rampage in San Diego? Is Carla okay?”
“It isn’t in her neighborhood.”
“I think the whole world has gone batty. We have a little girl who lives next to us. She won’t come out of her closet.”
“Is it because of the bombing?”
“That’s what her mother says. The girl is friends with another little girl whose baby sister was in the Murrah Building when it blew up last month. You can’t keep the kids from watching all the coverage on TV. You can’t protect your kids from all the shit that’s out there these days. Nowhere is safe. Not even the heartland of America. I’m glad Taffy’s grown. I still worry about her, though. She’s in New York. There could be a sarin gas attack in the subway. She could be downtown when they try to blow up the World Trade Center again. Who’s driving that tank? Is it O.J. Simpson?”
“I don’t think they know who it is. Maybe it’s the Unabomber. That would make sense. Buck wants to have Shelby cremated. He doesn’t want all those jugglers juggling Shelby’s ashes around, though.”
“Yeah, he told me.”
“Do you have an opinion one way or another?”
“I think it would be disrespectful to juggle his ashes. Even though this is how he made his living. Mom would have disapproved. But Mom is dead. I don’t think Shelby would have minded, but Buck’s the one doing all the heavy lifting here. So I vote to let Buck have the final say. And that’s what I told him.”
“How is it there in Oklahoma City?”
“There’s still a pall over the city. You see it in all the faces. And such anger. Before they found out that it was a homegrown lunatic who did it, this East Indian who runs the convenience store in my neighborhood—somebody shot at him with a BB gun. They thought he was Muslim, like the guys who tried to pull down the Twin Towers. He isn’t Muslim. He’s a Sikh. They wear turbans too. I hate this country. Full of idiots and crazies.”
“I should call Buck.”
“Sorry.”
“About what?”
“Going off on my rant. And Clinton’s no improvement on Bush.”
“I’ll talk to you later.”
“Love you, Sis.”
“Love you too.”
Mellie phones her oldest brother Buck. Buck owns a ranch on the eastern slopes of the Pryor Mountains, south of Billings, Montana. He breeds champion Friesian stallions.
“He was a crazy sonofabitch, but he always made me laugh.”
“Are you flying down tomorrow?”
“Yep.”
“Did he have money? Do you need Artie and me to pitch in for the funeral expenses?”
“I talked to his girlfriend. Dawn. She’s helping me with the arrangements. She said he was set up okay. Shelby never lived beyond his means. Those chainsaws were probably his biggest expense. How are you doing—you and Artie?”
“I’m in shock. You’re never prepared for something like this. Although he did live dangerously.”
“Everybody seems to be living dangerously these days
. How are you doing otherwise? I don’t think we’ve talked since somebody tried to burn your high school down.”
“They didn’t just try it. They actually succeeded.”
“Some literal-minded teenaged hoodlum.”
“You mean because the school’s in Burnsville? Because the name of our varsity team is the Blaze?”
“No. Because your mascot’s called ‘Sparky.’”
“This isn’t the time to make me laugh, Buck.”
“What else can you do? Troy says the whole country’s gone off the rails.”
“If you live in Oklahoma City right now, you have every right to see things that way.”
“This kind of stuff goes in cycles. We’re presently in a bad cycle.”
“I hate it. Oh, and Carla’s bonkers.”
“I’ve known that for quite a while.”
“And one of our brothers sawed his head half off.”
“The tabloids are having a field day. Some of their reporters have been calling. I guess Dawn gave them my number. But what could I tell them? I hardly knew Shelby. Dawn said he was good soul, though.”
A silence.
“Are you still there, Mel?”
“I was looking for a Kleenex. I’ve never been to your ranch.”
“It’s nothing special.”
“I’d like to see your horses.”
“Come on up.”
“I will.”
“And I wouldn’t put it off. You know that we’re in the End Times, right?”
Mellie blows her nose. “I feel sometimes like the Rapture’s already happened and we all got left behind.”
Buck laughs.
Mellie says, “I was reading something in a magazine about Christopher Reeve. He’s doing equestrian events now. When he’s not acting. Take a guess at the name of his horse.”
“I know the name of his horse. I pay attention to these things, Mel. It’s Buck.”
“The world can’t just be all doom and gloom, right, Buck? Especially now that we’ve got Superman riding around on a big, beautiful steed, ready to make things right again.”
Nine days later…oh, must I say it?
1996
COPROPHOBIC IN MISSISSIPPI
The Realtor’s name was Maggie Kessler. Bill Hollon, the newly married husband of Heather Hollon, sat in the front seat of Maggie’s 1995 Buick Century, Heather in the back.
Maggie had jowls. She wore thick mascara that made her eyes pop. She kept her hair short and feathered like Angela Lansbury when she was playing Jessica Fletcher, the mystery-writing sleuthess.
“As you can see, this subdivision is relatively new. In fact, there are several lots still for sale. But I want you to see a finished house which I feel would be just perfect for you.”
“Trees are tall,” said Bill Hollon, looking at the great leafy oaks that crowded the main entrance to the subdivision.
“You rarely see stands of old growth trees so nicely preserved in this part of Mississippi. Most of the forests that used to cover Desoto County were chopped down and converted to farmland years ago. Not that the developers didn’t have to do their own share of bulldozing and leveling off to put these houses in here. It’s always a trade-off.”
Heather hadn’t heard a word Maggie said. She was fascinated by the ducks.
“Look at the duck pond, honey,” said Heather, touching her new husband on the shoulder.
“Oh yeah,” said Bill. “Nice duck pond.”
Maggie the Realtor handed Bill a brochure from her bag on the floor. “There are ten different models in this subdivision, but the builder has been very generous with customizing allowances. I don’t work for him, though. I just thought you’d like to—do you like that one? It’s Number Seven. The Tuscany. Anyway, the one I want to show you is a resale. That’s why they’re letting an outside broker like me come in here.”
“How long did the previous owners live there?”
Bill asked the question; Heather nodded with equal curiosity.
“Not a single day. The house has been empty ever since it was finished last November. Nothing sadder than an empty house. I was here early this morning checking the keys and making sure the power company hadn’t turned off the—here we are. Isn’t it lovely?”
The house sat on a little hill. It had a steeply pitched roof suggesting a very high living room ceiling. The architectural style was nothing recognizable: an exaggerated Mediterranean arch over the front door, mansard eaves shading the front bedroom windows, a mishmash of different elements that maintained a sense of unity through color and texture, even if a cohesive architectural vision was lacking.
“I like the decorative glass,” remarked Heather after the threesome had landed on the porch. She ran her hand along the narrow etched-glass panel next to the front door and went, “Um.”
“Yeah. Real nice.”
Maggie unlocked the door and opened it upon a large vestibule that led to the expansive living room. “It’s 2,200 square feet overall, but the vaulted ceiling makes it feel even bigger—palatial almost. In the summer, all that hot air goes right up to the top. Then in winter the ceiling fan pulls it all right back down.”
The Hollons nodded. This was only the third house they’d looked at. Everything about the process of buying a home was new to them. There was a definite mystery to it. Maggie the Realtor was revealing great truths and they were imbibing them, absorbing them into their unformed, protean consciousnesses. They trusted Maggie, welcomed her as their house-buying sherpa, because she had been doing this for over twenty years, and because she was a member of the same Hernando, Mississippi, garden club as Heather’s mother.
There were two porthole windows near the ceiling of the living room. Maggie pointed to the one on the right. “When I got here early this morning the sun had just come up, and there was the most beautiful cascade of light coming down. It was dappled by the branches of the tall trees in the backyard. Quite magical. I felt like I was standing in the nave of some great cathedral.”
Heather had tuned Maggie out again. She was staring at an electrical outlet on the wall. The top screw had fallen out of the plate and it hung slightly askew. It was a minor thing, really, but her eye was drawn to it.
Bill and Heather followed Maggie into the kitchen. All of the appliances were matching black. There was an island beneath an impressive pot rack. The cabinets in the kitchen were either cherry wood or cherry stained—Maggie wasn’t sure which—but Heather thought they were pretty either way. She ran a couple of fingers through her Jennifer Aniston shag and nodded her appreciation.
The two smaller bedrooms shared a Jack-and-Jill bathroom. They seemed perfect for the family that Bill and Heather Hollon planned to start as soon as Bill got his promotion at the bank and Heather had put away some money from her job as a receptionist for a garden seed company. Heather looked out the back bedroom window and noted the large backyard. “A lot of room for a garden,” she said to Bill.
“Or for a couple of Golden Retrievers to romp around.” Bill winked. He drew Heather to his side and gave her a little squeeze about the hips.
The master bedroom was spacious. There was crown molding around the room and a large walk-in closet nearly the size of a fourth bedroom.
Maggie led her clients into the master bathroom. It was roomy as well. There was a large soaking tub in one corner and a separate shower. The toilet was sequestered in a closet. Bill stepped over to the closet. The door was open. The lid to the toilet was down, but in keeping with his inquisitive nature, he leaned over and lifted it. There, floating in the water, was a large umber-colored turd. It was solid, yet discernibly segmented. There was nothing else in the bowl. No toilet paper. Just the floating turd.
Bill closed the lid, but not fast enough for Heather and Maggie to miss seeing the turd.
Had he been alone in his discovery, Bill would simply have dropped the lid and walked away. But the fact that there were other witnesses to his find required that he do the thing this situation c
ustomarily required: he flushed the toilet.
For a long moment no one spoke. Bill could not keep himself from looking at Maggie. Maggie looked at the wall. Heather, for her part, could not avert her eyes from the toilet as hard as she tried. The toilet took its time emptying its tank and then refilling itself with fresh water. The sound of lavatory hydraulics echoed throughout the cavernous bathroom.
Eventually, Maggie led the couple out. A minute or so later, the Hollons and their real estate agent were standing in the backyard, looking at a few of the beautiful oak trees that had given their names to the subdivision: “Towering Oaks.”
Maggie, who had previously been sunny and quite chatty in her description of the many winning features of the house, now spoke in dull monosyllables. “Well-kept lawn. Um. Nice deck here.”
Heather cast an uneasy glance over her shoulder at the part of the house where the master bathroom was. Where the toilet closet was. Where they had all seen the big, brown, floating fecal log.
Not much was said in the car. Nor did conversation pick up in the fourth house that Maggie showed the Hollons. Bill avoided looking at either of the two toilets in this house, although Heather found herself staring at the closed lid of one of them, her face rigid with worry over dangerous possibilities.
That evening, after Bill and Heather had finished their slices of pizza and Bill had downed almost all of his second beer, the new husband said to the new wife, “So which house did you like the best?”
“The third one,” said Heather.
“The one with the shit log?”
Heather nodded. Then she said, “Bill, was that her shit log?”
“We’ll never know, honey. But probably.”