Point Pleasant

by Wood, Jen Archer

  “I don’t want to do this, Dad,” he said, his voice hushed as he spoke to the image of his father in the photo taken the day he gave Ben the Camaro.

  Ben’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He was still wearing the jeans and shirt from the day before and had forgotten to take his phone out before bed. He blamed the beer. And melancholy. He was unsure which had the greater influence. If pressed, he would guess the latter.

  Ben liberated the phone and expected to see a text from Nicholas, but the alert was for a voicemail from a numberless caller.

  “Ben Wisehart,” spoke the strange, atonal voice of the archangel who had disappeared after the explosion of light and sound at the factory. “Do not despair.”

  “Yeah, okay, Raz,” Ben said with a grunt. “I’ll work on that.”

  The phone buzzed again. “The answer is yes.”

  “What was the question?” Ben asked, confused.

  “Human souls. Yes, they go to Heaven. Those who deserve it at least.”

  Ben stilled as he gazed off out the window behind him. “And who decides who deserves it?”

  “That is not for you to know.”

  “Why not? Huh? You ever think maybe people would believe in this stuff easier if you weren’t so cryptic and mysterious about it all?”

  “Ben, there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  “Are you actually Shakespeare-ing me right now?” Ben gawked in disbelief.

  “I like it.”

  Ben pinched the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb and sank back in the chair. “Are my parents there?”

  “I told you not to despair.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  Ben waited impatiently for the phone to vibrate, and he glowered when it did not for nearly a whole minute. He was struck by the idea that Raziel was considering how to answer him.

  “You need not be sorrowful, Ben,” said a new message. “They are home.”

  “This is home,” Ben replied, though he knew he sounded petulant. “They should be here.” He dropped his head into his hands and was unable to speak again for a long moment.

  “What happened to your brother?” he asked finally, and his tone wavered in the wake of a fierce anger that gripped at his chest and held tight.

  “Smote.” The reply was terse, but, even with the peculiar distortion that accompanied Raziel’s voice, Ben could detect a note of vengeful pride.

  “That was quite a light show the other night.”

  “Sorry.” Raziel sounded awkward and apologetic.

  Ben laughed, though there was little mirth to the sound. “Yeah, it’s okay, I guess.”

  “Be joyful now, Ben. You are home.”

  “I thought Heaven was home?”

  There was no response.

  “Raz?”

  The phone remained still, and Ben sighed.

  “Well, bye to you too, then.”

  He pocketed the phone, grabbed his empty coffee mug, and returned to the kitchen for a refill. The orange glow of Mr. Coffee’s power button caught his attention, and Ben imagined it as an eye in desperate need of the monocle Kate had mentioned. In his head, he saw a flash of the light. He glowered, mulling over Raziel’s parting words.

  The neighbors exacerbated the sense of mourning that hung over the house like a cotton sheet draped over a piece of abandoned furniture in an attic. Ben answered a knock on the door at eight o’clock to find the small, frail form of Ruth Calloway with her pale, wrinkled hands outstretched to offer a covered cake dish.

  “My condolences,” Calloway said, and they made small talk long enough for another one of the neighbors—Ava Carmichael, the aging widow of the town’s pharmacist—to make her way up the walkway bearing a plastic container of what looked like ambrosia salad.

  Ben and Kate traded off trips to the front door until the fridge was stocked with Tupperware bearing familiar names of their neighbors. By eleven o’clock, they sat at the dining table, both dressed in black, and ate straight out of the open containers with forks and spoons.

  “Southern hospitality,” Kate commented, regarding a forkful of potato salad, and she let out a weak laugh. “I forgot what it’s like. Welcome to Point Pleasant…”

  “We’re mighty pleased to have you,” Ben finished and inflected the West Virginia twang he had managed to lose, for the most part, so many years ago.

  “I wonder if there will be a big turnout,” Kate mused. “Dad was pretty well loved around here.”

  “I’m sure,” Ben replied as he prodded at some of Mrs. Carmichael’s ambrosia and sighed. “We should be going soon.”

  “Let’s get all this back in the fridge,” Kate said, rising to her feet.

  Ben grabbed the plastic lids and replaced them, stacked some of the containers, and followed his sister into the kitchen.

  Kate opened the fridge and started shoving the Tupperware onto shelves. “It’s like playing Jenga,” she said while forcing one of the larger bowls in amongst the other containers.

  Ben said nothing.

  “I don’t want to do this, Benji,” Kate said abruptly. “I don’t think I can. It makes it…”

  “Final,” Ben said. The bluntness of the word was alarming even to his own ears.

  “Yeah,” Kate said. “Final.”

  “We’ll do it together,” Ben said. “And when it’s over, we’re gonna come back here, fire up Mr. Coffee, dust off his top hat, and drink a cup of the strong stuff in Dad’s honor. Bitter as hell—”

  “And twice as hot,” Kate finished.

  “Would you like to see your father?”

  Ben stood beside the same wall in the back of St. Luke’s that he and Kate had leaned against thirteen years prior. He felt Kate stiffen at his side, and he took a deep breath.

  The funeral director regarded them with genuine sympathy, but it was a professional sympathy nonetheless. Ben wanted to punch him in the ear. The man spoke of Andrew as if he were in the next room watching the Mets play the Yankees with a cold beer in his hand.

  “Yeah, okay,” Ben replied, and he was amazed by the steady tenor he managed to achieve.

  The director opened the door behind him, and Ben steeled himself as he moved forward. He could see the casket even before the director stepped aside. For a moment, Ben was certain that his lungs stopped working.

  Andrew looked like he was sleeping. His chestnut hair was combed away from his forehead, and he wore his neatly pressed navy blue uniform with its colorful patches of honor that stood as wordless representations of his heroism.

  Ben came to a halt just a foot away from their father’s body. Kate gasped. He reached out, took his sister’s hand, and squeezed tight. Kate squeezed back.

  The director left the room without another word and closed the door behind him.

  Andrew’s face was tan. Tanner than he had been the last morning Ben saw him. Tanner than Ben had ever seen him even after summer vacations to the beaches of South Carolina. Ben knew it was the makeup, he knew that the morticians did it to make the form easier to assess—to remove the cold pallor of death and make the spectators feel more at ease—but Ben hated it, resented it, and needed it gone. He was struck with the overwhelming desire to reach forward and wipe the makeup away with the sleeves of his suit jacket until it was just Andrew there with nothing else in between them.

  But this was not Andrew. Not anymore, not really. Andrew was upstairs in the celestial attic and eating his wife’s cherry pie. Maybe they finally got that trip to some heavenly version of Barcelona.

  Kate made another gasping noise from his side. Ben finally broke the spell that had overtaken him since they entered the room.

  “Katie,” Ben said, his voice cracking on the last syllable. “Don’t cry.”

  He felt treacherous tears form at the sight of his big sister’s red-rimmed eyes. Kate let go of Ben’s hand and covered her face before she moved away from the body.

  Ben swallowed hard and wiped at the wetn
ess that had trickled down his left cheek. “It’s gonna be okay.”

  “No,” Kate said. “It’s not. He’ll never meet his grandkid.” She choked out the final word and hurried to the corner of the room.

  Ben took a deep breath and exhaled to calm the way his lungs seemed to tremble in his chest from the effort. He shuffled forward a few steps until he stood beside his father.

  A part of Ben kept waiting for Andrew to move, to twitch, to open his eyes and smile, or frown, or do anything he wanted so long as he just moved.

  It makes it final.

  Ben shifted his gaze to the ceiling and clenched his jaw. He had helped Raziel. He had believed in him. He had aided his liberation and the retrieval of his grace. He had done everything the archangel had asked, but Andrew was still dead.

  Home is here, not there.

  Tears welled once more. He bowed his head, and the movement caused them to spill across his cheeks in hot, contemptuous little rivulets.

  Ben reached out on impulse and put his hand over his fathers’, which were folded together over his chest. The skin felt cold, clammy, and uncomfortably concrete. Ben had almost expected his fingers to slip through Andrew like those of the man who grasped for the spectral blue tulip that would disappear before contact could be made.

  “I’m so sorry, Daddy.”

  Ben let go, pivoted, and strode to the other side of the room. He propped his head against the wall and struggled to breathe. He heard Kate behind him as she spoke muffled words to their father for the last time.

  Ben took in a deep lungful of air despite the clench of his throat. Kate was quiet again. He rubbed at his face as she moved to stand beside him.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Kate’s eyes were redder than before, but she had wiped away the traces of her tears. She shook her head, and they sniffed at the same time. Kate took his hand in hers and laced their fingers together. Ben spared one last look at their father before the pallbearers would come in, move the casket into the chapel, and turn the whole thing into some ungodly spectacle.

  Bye, Dad.

  The chapel was packed. People from town were dressed all in black. Men in ceremonial army uniforms were dotted throughout the congregation. The Nolans were seated on the second row.

  Ben shared a silent, pensive exchange with Kate as they moved to the front row and took their seats on the empty pew, their hands still linked. He nodded to Nate and Leslie as the former reached over and patted his back. Nicholas’ face was hooded with sympathy.

  Ben faced the front of the chapel. He did not want to cry, not here, not where everyone could see. He listened numbly as Nate and Leslie spoke to Kate in hushed voices to offer not only their condolences but also their congratulations over the baby. Ben felt Nicholas’ hand on his shoulder. The contact was brief but solid. Ben closed his eyes.

  The congregation rose when Pastor John Thomas entered the chapel. The pallbearers followed, carrying the wooden box that held Andrew. The service began, and Ben stared forward. He sat down when everyone else did and considered his father’s unmoving form.

  Ben thought of hot summer days when Andrew used to work on the Camaro in the driveway with hands that were stained black with motor oil. He thought of the way Andrew used to shave in front of the mirror each morning and how captivating the white foam had seemed to his childhood self. He thought of the bottle of cologne that always sat on the edge of the bathroom sink; it had a little ship on the label. Old Spice. He thought of the beat-up leather jacket Andrew always wore when he went down to The Point to play pool. Ben wondered if it was still at the house, now ownerless as it hung in one of the closets.

  “Benji, just pedal, I’ve got you,” Andrew’s voice crooned from a deep cavern in Ben’s memory. “That’s it, go on, I’ve got you!”

  When Ben had turned—six years old and learning to ride his bike without the training wheels for the first time—Andrew had been twenty feet behind him. He had let go, and Ben had been pedaling on his own.

  Ben stood again and mumbled along with the hymns as the congregation sang. He shifted his weight from one foot to another, and his voice lifted a little louder when the hymn selection changed to ‘The Old Rugged Cross.’ Ben smiled despite himself, remembering how Andrew used to play Johnny Cash on Sunday mornings when he made breakfast for the four of them long before Caroline died.

  He resumed his seat when the singing was over and zoned out once more in favor of his recollection of a spring afternoon from his childhood. The dogwood trees on the road had been in full bloom as Ben helped Andrew to wash the Camaro. The chore had evolved into a game of war; the garden hose and heavy, wet sponges served as their weapons of choice. They had chased one another around the yard and down the street for what seemed like hours in Ben’s memory but had probably lasted only a few minutes in reality.

  He loved that fucking car. And he gave it to me.

  Ben clenched his jaw, and his resolve grew fiercer to make the Camaro shine and gleam as beautifully as she had that day in the yard.

  The eulogy featured kind words about Andrew, about Ben and Kate, and promises of eternal glory in the fields of the Lord.

  Be joyful now, Ben. You are home.

  Ben found little joy as he sat through the rest of the service. He burrowed deeper still into his memories and let them shield him like the three-piece suit he wore as armor.

  The casket was perched atop a freshly dug hole in the ground. The headstone, which had once only featured, ‘Caroline Preston Wisehart, Beloved Wife and Mother’ now bore a new engraving: ‘Andrew Wisehart: Husband, Father, Healer and Hero.’

  Ben thought these words—concise and moving though they were—did not describe his parents at all. Champion pie baker, soothing balance-bringer, and world’s most enthusiastic Bob Dylan fan, perhaps. Coffee fanatic, classic car aficionado, and man-you-wish-you-had-lived-up-to, as well.

  Gunfire jolted Ben from his reflection on the limitations of elegies. The horn player had ceased his mournful melody, and two men in uniform folded an American flag.

  One of them stood—his back as straight as the pole the flag would have hung from—in front of Ben and offered the red, white, and blue parcel. The man’s eyes stared forward at Ben but also through Ben. His rigidity was unsettling. Ben took the flag and held it like a precious, breakable stone as the soldier saluted him and stepped away.

  There were more gunshots, and the casket was lowered into the ground. It sank until it was out of eyesight. The crowd was quiet and still as the mechanical device responsible for moving the casket creaked and whirred until it stopped when it reached the bottom. Ben felt an odd disconnect. It was as if something inside of him had switched off like the device.

  Pastor John was speaking again. His words were brief but affecting. Ben went away once more.

  When he looked up, the service was over, and the crowd had started to disperse. Pastor John was talking to him and Kate, and Ben blinked as he tried to catch up on what the man was saying. The pastor wanted them to move, Ben realized. He needed them to stand several feel away from the grave so that the attendees could shake his and Kate’s hands and pay their respects. Ben let himself be led.

  When Ben looked over to his sister, he was almost relieved to see that Kate looked as vacant as he felt. He clutched the flag in one arm and shook hands with the queue of grievers, friends, and neighbors.

  Mae was teary-eyed as she hugged him and remarked on the beautiful service. Stewart was as phlegmatic as a concrete statue while he told Ben that Andrew was ‘a good man.’

  Tucker appeared. Without his baseball cap, Ben hardly recognized the older man. Tucker clapped Ben on the shoulder before he disappeared into the throng of mourners.

  This went on for what seemed like an eternity, and Ben struggled to remain there with his focus on the funeral-goers. The whole process struck him as odd; Ben felt as though he was comforting them somehow. He remembered feeling something similar at Caroline’s service. The entire affair of funer
als and grieving was like a circus arranged only to make other people feel better about death.

  The majority of the crowd had disappeared to their cars and driven back home, back to work, back to wherever people went after such events.

  Several feet away, the Nolans huddled together in a tight circle. They waited until Ben and Kate were alone before they came over. Leslie pulled Ben into a hug, and he closed his eyes.

  “Oh, Ben,” she said, “and Kate,” She leaned away and hugged Kate as well. “I’m so sorry. I said it before, I know, but I truly am.”

  Nate and Nicholas stood to Leslie’s left. Ben put on a smile and realized he had not spoken since he entered the chapel with Kate.

  Nate shook his hand. “You okay, kiddo?”

  Ben nodded and looked off when he caught sight of Nicholas’ concerned expression. Ben’s throat tightened, and he was thankful when Nate turned to talk to Kate. Ben moved on autopilot when Nicholas led him a few feet away.

  “What can I do?” Nicholas asked.

  Ben shook his head in response. He wanted to speak, to say something, anything, but he could not find the words. Nicholas seemed to understand. He stole closer and took Ben’s right hand in his own. The earthy scent of Nicholas’ cologne drifted from the collar of his coat, and Ben relaxed.

  “Come back to my parents’ house,” Nicholas said. “They’re asking Kate now. They’d really like you all to come over.”

  Ben shook his head, and Nicholas’ lips tightened with disappointment.

  “You all should come over to Casa Wisehart,” Ben said. “The neighbors swooped in this morning. We have so much food, it’s ridiculous.”

  “That was nice of them.”

  “Southern hospitality,” Ben remarked.

  The Wiseharts and the Nolans were in the living room as Kate chatted to Leslie and Nate about babies and pregnancy.