Ever After

by William Wharton

  The trip to Dallas is quick and we don’t talk much. We stop first at the photo shop and buy three rolls of film, thirty-five millimeter, color, print, twenty-four exposures. We figure that should do it. Then we drive over to the mortuary. It isn’t as ugly as I thought it would be; in fact it’s quite handsome, natural woods and tinted glass. It’s also bigger than I’d expected. I guess people die a lot around here.

  But when we go in, it’s a mortuary all right. There are the smells and the quiet non-sounds. A sandy-haired, slightly balding man comes out from a small office to greet us. Steve shakes hands with him and introduces us. This is John. He looks at me quizzically.

  “Are you sure you want to do this? I don’t recommend it at all.”

  I nod. I don’t want to talk much. I’m on the edge of what I can handle. Actually being in the mortuary where my family is being stored is getting to me.

  “Have you ever seen badly burned human bodies before?”

  I nod again, not trusting myself to speak. I must look white or green. He suggests we sit down in some comfortable chairs grouped in a semicircle in a small antechamber. We sit. I feel I should say something but I don’t want to tell him about Bert’s visit to me. I’m sure morticians hear more such crazy stories than they really want to. I try answering his questions.

  “I was in World War II and helped pull bodies out of tanks after they’d burned, both American and German. I have a good idea of what it’s like. Mostly I remember the smell.”

  “Well, this will be different. This is your family, not complete strangers or enemies. I’ve sprinkled formaldehyde over the bodies to keep down the smell and to slow down the natural processes. Because we’ve had to hold the bodies for so long, we’ve also kept them in a cold locker. That’s one of the reasons they were at the coroner’s, because I don’t have enough cold storage space for them here.”

  “I understand.”

  I understand, but I’m beginning to want to back out of the whole business. I can see by Steve’s color he’s having the same feelings. I check my camera and stand up. Steve stands, too. John, the mortician, stands with us. He leads the way down a narrow corridor to the back of the building. There’s a door at the end of the corridor. I guess that’s the entrance through which they bring the bodies to cause a minimum of disturbance for the neighbors.

  We walk in the last door on the right. There’s the smell all right but it’s covered partly by a chemical smell. It reminds me of my anatomy class at UCLA. There are four tables, a small one just where we came in, then another small one, then two larger tables deeper in the room. There are high windows over the tables. The ceilings are high, too. Each table is covered with a waterproof cover, black on one side and yellow on the other. John steps ahead of us. He takes hold of the cover on the first small table and turns to us.

  “This is going to be difficult for you. If you feel it’s too much, just give me a signal. I’ll cover the body and we’ll get out of here.”

  He pauses, watching us.

  “This first one is the one who burned the least, the little baby, Mia.”

  Steve and I back off a little, and John slowly, gently removes the cover. My first reaction is that she looks exactly like the bodies which were dug up at Pompeii and Herculaneum. She’s all white and her features are obliterated but it is definitely the form of a little girl. Her left foot has been broken off just above the ankle but is still hanging by a piece of what was once flesh. In places, we can see the charred sections of her body which were not covered by the formaldehyde powder.

  Steve and I look at each other. We’re both sighing and taking deep breaths. John is watching us carefully.

  “Do you want me to cover her again?”

  I figure I can make it. I look at Steve. He nods. I think he nods that we should go on, but I’m not sure. My hands are shaking so, I can hardly make the settings for my camera, then focus on the baby. I know I’m crying. This is so different from every memory I have of Mia. The last time I saw her she was smiling at me while Kate was holding her in the car. It’s hard to keep it together. I take shots from the side; then from on top, leaning over; smelling this cloying yet sharp odor, the combination of the chemical and decomposition. Steve is doing the same thing. John covers Mia and leads us out into the corridor.

  “Look, I don’t know why you two are doing this but I don’t want to have any more dead bodies around here. I think you’re pushing yourself beyond what you can handle. I’m a professional, but I don’t think I could take pictures like that of my family if something terrible like this happened.”

  Steve and I are leaning back against the wall of the corridor, breathing deeply, trying to recover. I have a feeling I could easily up-chuck if I let myself go.

  “We’re OK. It’s just hard. We really want to have these pictures, the last part of what was once, for us, some of the most lovely people in the world. OK, Steve? Shall we go back?”

  He nods his head. John opens the door again. The smell this time isn’t so bad. It’s in our clothes now, so the shock isn’t so great. John goes to the other small table. He pulls off the cloth. This time it’s much harder. Somehow, in the accident, Dayiel lost the top of her head. I think of JFK, of his wife stretching across the back of the limo in Dallas trying to retrieve his skull.

  The striations of her brain are visible. She’s also lost her arms from just above the elbows, and her legs from just above the knees. If she were alive, she’d be a “basket-case baby,” like some of those Thalidomide cases in Germany. I can’t believe this is the beautiful Dayiel, a child who never stopped, with deep blue eyes, a lively expression, and golden hair. There is a clump of darkened hair at her neck that I think could be her hair but there’s no color, no life in it.

  I start photographing and feel the room beginning to turn around me. I try to grab hold. I actually do grab hold of the edge of the table that Dayiel’s on. John moves toward me, but then I’m better. I lean over to take a photo from on top. It’s then that I hear Steve. He’s leaned against the wall behind us and is slowly sliding down. John grabs him by the arm and takes him out. I stay on and take two more photos of Dayiel, knowing it isn’t really her, impressed by how we are all fooled by the physical, thinking that’s what we are. It might be the biggest farce of all. What must it be for her, having to change everything, be in another world when she’s so young? But then the whole idea of age is only one of our limitations, our time-locked idea of reality. At best, it only deals with how long we’ve been in a particular body.

  These thoughts comfort me, so I regain my equilibrium. I go out in the corridor. Steve and John have gone up to the antechamber and are sitting down. I join them. John turns toward me.

  “Steve says he’s ready to go back. He wants to see his brother for the last time. I’m not so sure it’s a good idea.”

  I look at John and then at Steve.

  “Don’t come back, Steve, if it’s too difficult. I know your family is Catholic. I don’t know how much of it you believe, but if you accept the idea of the spirit, then you know that in there we’re only looking at the empty body of what’s been left behind. I know it’s horrible, but it just isn’t them any more. I know they’re fine. Bert told me.”

  Steve has leaned over and is looking at his hands, fooling with his camera. His color is coming back. He looks up at me.

  “OK, you’re right. I’m ready. I have a feeling this is what Bert meant and this is a kind of test or something. Let’s go.”

  We walk down the corridor again, John leading the way. I check to see how much film I have left on this roll, enough for two pictures, then I’ll need to change rolls. I have a roll in my pocket.

  We go into the room. I try not to breathe too deeply. John lifts the cover off one of the larger tables. It takes my breath away. It’s Bert! He has his head arched back so I can see under his neck. This time it’s like that wonderful statue in Rotterdam by Zadkine. The stumps of both his arms are thrown up over his head as if he’s reachin
g for the sky. His mouth is full open as in a scream. It’s a dreadful sight as a reality. Steve just stares. I look into his face. He’s smiling a mirthless smile.

  “It’s the way I’d think he’d go, isn’t it, screaming, reaching for a way out.

  “I’m glad I’ve seen this. It helps me accept things. Bert was my big brother. He never gave up. Part of this whole horror for me has been that he didn’t do anything. I see now he was trying the best he could, fighting to the end. He was good old Never-say-die Woodman, giving his all.”

  We start photographing. It’s obvious that, even though burned to the bones, Bert was a big and powerful man. His legs are shattered into pieces, the largest one not more than three inches long. His arms are above his head, but his shoulders have been driven out of the sockets. In his open, screaming mouth, all his teeth are visible like a skull, the skin of the face burned away.

  I’m noting all this as I take two photos, then change film. Mine is an old-fashioned camera with no automatic rewind and load. I hand rewind, then engage the spool with shaking hands, close the cover, cock it a few times, then start taking pictures. Steve is finished, and just stands there, looking at his brother. He’s crying.

  I ask if we can take a little break before I look at Kate. I know this is going to be the hardest part. All the games we’ve played together, the thousands of books I’ve read to her, the nights we’ve been up with her when she was sick, the fun of pushing her on a swing or on a playground carousel, or sometimes riding on a real carousel: trying to grab rings and never getting any. And she’d laugh. There’s so much that binds people together, it makes it hard to let go.

  We go back in. John pulls the cover back down toward her feet. The yellow and black plastic reminds me of so many auto accidents I’ve seen or helped with in my more than sixty years on the road. I never thought I’d see our first-born wrapped up in one.

  She’s the least recognizable. The lower part of her trunk is a mass of unburned but seared intestines, other organs. Here, she seems the least burned. But her legs, her wonderful, beautiful, long legs, are broken into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle or like the bones found in the ground and then pieced together to make a dinosaur. When I look at her face, calm, the mouth closed, her beautiful deep, green eyes, now only holes in blackened bone, I almost can’t make it. I try to keep my eye to the viewfinder of my camera. It’s as if I’m seeing it on TV, something artificial, not real.

  Finally, I can’t take any more. I go out the door into the hall. Steve follows me; John covers Kate, then comes out, too. Steve and I are both soaking wet from nervous sweat. My knees feel weak. The sweat on my forehead is cold. John leads us down to the couches and comes back in a few minutes with a shot of whiskey for each of us. I sip mine, Steve puts his down like a true Oregonian. John stands in front of us.

  “Well, I didn’t think you’d make it. That was bad. I want you both to know how sorry I am this had to happen. There’s no excuse for a beautiful, civilized state like Oregon to have something like field burning still going on. These four young people aren’t the first field-burning victims I’ve buried. It’s a disgrace.”

  We take the film out of our cameras. John goes back into his office. By the time I’ve finished rolling the film out of my camera, I feel somewhat better. At least I’m not sweating. I head for the restroom. It’s such a hot, sweaty day I want to freshen up some. I find the restroom in a corridor that leads away from the one where we saw the bodies.

  I take off my shirt and undershirt. They’re soaking wet. I’m a big sweater. I fill the little basin with water and dunk both shirt and undershirt into it. I push down and slosh it around to soak the nervous smell out. I can’t get any wetter. Then I wring them out as best I can and slide them back on. It’s refreshing. I’m just finished when Steve comes into the restroom. I tell him what I’ve done. He’s only wearing a T-shirt. He pulls it over his head and does the same thing. He’s thin but with strong arms and more hair than I thought he’d have, although still not as much as Bert or me.

  “Lord, I smell like a stallion with the scurvy.”

  He uses his wet T-shirt to wipe under his arms and down his stomach, then rinses it before he wrings it out again and slides it back on. We go out of the restroom refreshed, wet, and ready for the Oregon heat.

  The film place is nearby. We ask to have the negatives made first, then we’ll choose which ones to print. They can do this all in one day.

  We go out and head for Capitol Monuments. They’re open. I lift the model out of the car. Steve is already talking to a round-faced man. They’re surrounded by a stone forest of varying monuments, with slabs of marble against the wall. It’s like an indoor cemetery. Steve is telling how he’s the brother of Bert Woodman who was killed in the I-5 crash. He introduces me and the man is very sympathetic. Probably tombstone-builders need to learn sympathy almost as much as morticians.

  I show him the model and explain what I want. He has trouble catching on that I’m not concerned about its being a functioning sundial or a religious symbol. I want it to be a symbol of the everlasting life, like the constant revolving of the sun, or at least its seeming revolution: another one of the delusions of time which has fooled men for thousands of years.

  Then we start talking about what kind of stone. There must be fifty different sorts of stone to choose from. I like one which is a rich, warm gray but he tells me it wouldn’t hold up against the weather the way another granite called “sierra” would.

  There’s not that much difference so I say OK to the “sierra.” It turns out he doesn’t have any in stock but he can order it. That’s OK with me. There’s no way I can stay around to see it anyhow. I’ll most likely never see this monument.

  Steve looks at his watch. We leave the graveyard of polished stones and enter into the heat again. We drive back to the film place. Steve has air-conditioning, but even so, it’s hot. We’re disappointed when we look at the negatives. Practically none of them is usable. We were so nervous and shaken up we seem to have made every mistake possible. It’s three o’clock. The next day is Sunday and Tuesday’s the funeral. We ask how soon they’d need to have new film in order to have them ready by Monday. They close at six. Steve uses their phone to call the mortuary. John says he hasn’t sent the bodies back yet but can’t hold them past four because the coroner’s office closes at five on Saturdays.

  We buy more film. We drive like madmen to the mortuary. We’re out there and in the back room in five minutes. John shows us some Polaroid shots his son has taken. They’ll probably be good enough if we don’t do it right this time.

  We’re much more calm and collected as we work. I check every move, every setting on my camera to get it right. It’s astonishing how the human mind can adjust to almost anything. We have the photos shot in half an hour. We’re both crying as we go along but we’re functioning. We thank John profusely. Nobody could be nicer under such conditions.

  We take the film out of the camera and deliver it to the photo shop with time to spare, if there is such a thing as time to spare. Steve takes his camera from me. I was unloading as he was driving. They tell us we can see the negatives and maybe positive prints before they close, if we want to wait. I think they’ve looked at the work we did before and know what we’re doing. Two young women run the place and they’re very considerate. We say we’ll be back at ten minutes to six and walk out into the heat again. Nobody should have to die in weather like this. Steve turns away from his car.

  “I need a beer. I know a good, dark, air-conditioned place about half a block from here.”

  “Sounds good to me, Steve; I’ll go any place that’s cool.”

  We walk into the back of a wood-paneled inn with the bar up front. Steve orders two draft beers on the way past. I can feel myself fading. I lean back in my chair. Steve quaffs off his beer with only one stop. It’s so cold it hurts my eyes.

  “Steve, you know what I’d like to do while we’re waiting for those photos to be done?”

&
nbsp; It’s obviously a rhetorical question, but I think Steve’s expecting just about anything from me.

  “How far is it from here to where the accident happened? Do you think we could make it from here to there and back before the photo shop closes?”

  Steve stares at his watch, then sucks out the foamy dregs of his beer.

  “We could do it, but it’d be close. I don’t think we’d find anything there though. The road is all black and the grass is burned, and they’ve cleared everything away with big equipment. I watched some of it on TV.”

  “I’d really just like to see the last things they saw. I think it would bring me closer to them.”

  Steve stands up, pushes back his chair, leaves money on the table.

  “OK, let’s get going then. We’ll have about two hours, that should do it.”

  He’s already going out the door. I take one last slug of my beer and I catch up behind him. The heat hits us again.

  Steve drives faster than before but still not so fast I’m uncomfortable. We don’t talk much. Steve keeps looking at his watch.

  “We’ll make it and have ten minutes to look around if we want. I haven’t been there myself, just didn’t have the nerve. We’ll need to drive about twelve miles past the place to find an on-ramp to the I-5. There’s some kind of construction on the southbound lane. But I think we’ll make it OK.”

  We drive onto the I-5 going north and I look out the windows, wondering what Kate or Bert, or either of the kids, might have seen. I’m also hoping for some contact from them. I’m now so close to where they last were in this world, although four days have passed. The newspapers said the accident seemed to have happened about four o’clock. We aren’t far off that.

  But all I experience is a weird frozen quality to the landscape, as if nobody has ever been here. To my right there’s a lovely little hill in the generally flat country. Kate must have noticed that. As a geologist, this strange formation would have meant something to her.