Remains

by J. Warren

  “I didn’t let them do anyth—,” I started.

  “You did, Michael. You did. You didn’t tell either of them that you weren’t going to act as some little go-between for them to manipulate,” she said, and walked away a few steps. I thought maybe she was going to her car. I wondered what I would do if she did go get in it; stay or go.

  “God, why do I always feel like the token gay on one of those reality shows?” she asked, with her back turned.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She half turned, already reaching for a cigarette. I wondered how many packs a day she smoked. “It seems like,” she said, smacking the pack against her wrist three times, “no matter where I go, or what I do, it’s always some battle about me and my sexuality. And it’s just—,” she slid the pack out of the clear plastic, “just not like that for Diane. No one in her life even makes it an issue,” she pulled the little plastic tabs open, and removed one of the white cylinders. She placed on between her lips, “No one ever asks her to go to church, or when she’s gonna’ settle down with some nice boy—.” She lit the end of it.

  “Oh,” I said, “mom corner you again?”

  She inhaled, held it, exhaled, all looking off at some point beyond the houses. “Dad,” she said. I nodded. “You lucked out; they’ll let you go off for two years and not excommunicate you.”

  “Excommunicate?” I asked

  “Yeah, like when a bishop or someone in the Catholic—,” she started.

  “I know what it means,” I said, and the calm in my voice surprised me, “what makes you think that they would kick you out or whatever if you stopped coming around for a little bit?”

  She inhaled, exhaled, looked at a cloud passing overhead, then back at me, “They’re old, Michael. Katy is gone, you’re not ever here; who’s going to take care of them?” she said. I don’t know why, but it felt like she was dodging my question. She went on smoking, and neither of us said anything for a little while.

  Mom’s perfume hung heavy in the car. Staring at her white hair from behind, it seemed like a rock; dry and dull on the surface. She sprayed it into place so thick that when she moved, it didn’t. Her reflection in the passenger side window had a tiny little smile. I knew it wasn’t real. It seemed like she was practicing. We all knew the questions would come, and we all knew that she’d be the one to field them.

  My father drove, of course. That meant the entire way there I nearly got whiplash from his continuous speed up/brake suddenly approach to keeping the speed limit. Mom had put him in a white button down shirt, and the collar was too tight. I could imagine the little red marks under there. Later, when he took it off, it would look like someone had tried to hang him. His face was blank. His eyes matched.

  My mother had insisted on dressing me. Upstairs, I found she’d already gone through my suitcase and pulled out clothes for me. They were laid on the bed, the shirt even tucked into the pants, and the tie knotted around the empty collar. My mother’s definition of me was flat on the bed. While I stood there looking at it, feeling very weird, she walked by the door and said “Don’t forget to polish your shoes, dear.” For a split second, I was twelve again.

  The ride was quiet. My parents stopped listening to the radio a long time ago. “No big band jazz stations anymore,” and “talk radio is just as full of obscenity as the pop stations,” my father said. I heard the wind move around the car the whole time.

  When we pulled up in front of the church, I tried not to gasp. The last time I’d come in town, we hadn’t gone. In fact, I hadn’t seen the building in a while. It was falling apart. I could see the places on the roof where they’d patched, the job was so bad. One of the windows was covered over in brown paper bag duct taped to the frame. The antenna lay on its side at the crest of the building’s roof, and seemed ready to slide at the first major gust of wind.

  Five other cars were in the parking lot; all of them old, rectangular, like mom’s. Dad pulled the car into a space and I swear I heard mom hold her breath for a second, then let it out. The half-smile never moved.

  As soon as I got out of the car, I noticed a bee hovering around the radio antenna. I wondered how long it had been there; had the little guy followed us all the way from the house? It seemed unlikely. It seemed, too, that I was wondering about things a lot more than just yesterday. I thought about how, at some point, I was going to have to survive a plane ride home. It didn’t make me very happy.

  “Susannah?” an old-woman voice called. I snapped back to find a turtle coming toward my mother. A huge old woman with a little metal cane was hobbling in our direction. She had shock white hair, and I could tell she’d recently had it styled, though it was dead. I tried not to think about pine trees a week after Christmas.

  “Mrs. Dodgeson,” mom said, turning to me, “come here and say hello to Mrs. Dodgeson, Mikey.” I walked just behind her. My father was just behind me. The old woman reached us, and I was almost knocked over by her perfume. Her eyes seemed to thin out and stretch along the edges through her thick glasses.

  “How are you today, Susannah dear?” Mrs. Dodgeson said. She kept glancing at me with these tiny little jerks of her eyeballs. I tried not to think of someone playing poker.

  “Just fine, Enola. This,” mom said and gestured toward me, her little half smile ironed on, “is Mikey. He’s in town with us for a few days.”

  “Mikey?” she said, her hand coming up and laying on my arm, “gracious. He does work in mysterious ways. Lord Jesus, but he does work in mysterious ways. Why, I haven’t seen you since you were yea high,” she said, and made a gesture with the hand that had been on my arm. She seemed relieved to be able to look at me, finally. I didn’t follow her gesture. I knew where she remembered me from. Like most old people, though, she assumed I couldn’t remember anything. “Why, you were even small for your age. Do you remember me, dear?” It seemed like she’d picked up this habit in her old age of exhaling on certain key words. It made them sort of shimmer, but like new paint over rotten boards.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I do.” Already I didn’t like her, because I didn’t like that she’d made me feel any of this. “You worked in the cafeteria at school.”

  “Oh, bless the children. I sure did. My my my my my but look at how you’ve grown,” she said. The ‘at’ she said was really close to the ‘look’, so it sounded like “lookit.” I tried not to think about the Sheriff.

  “How are you today?” I asked. Today was making me feel smaller and smaller. I had to keep checking myself to make sure I wasn’t growing younger.

  “Well, the hip acts up whenever the weather gets cold like this, you know,” she said and my mother made a sound, and cocked her head to the right. “And the left foot, you know. I may not make it through the winter with it still attached, they say. Thy will be done, though, I say. It comes and it goes, dear, it comes and it goes,” as if to illustrate this, she then began hocking up phlegm. I had to stop myself from grimacing. Even back in third grade, when we’d all sort of figured out about spitting, none of us had ever made sounds like that.

  I looked around. I guessed most people were already inside. Dad was shifting from foot to foot. “How are you today, Mr. Albert?” Mrs. Dodgeson asked. Her eyes shifted over to him, but kept glancing back at me. Again, I tried not to think about poker.

  “Just fine Enola,” he said, then leaning closer to my mother said, “maybe we should get on in, now.” Mom nodded.

  “Well, Enola, how about if Mikey helps you in to find a seat?” my father said. The second it happened, her hand clamped down on my forearm.

  “I couldn’t possibly impose in such a fashion,” she said.

  “Nonsense,” my mother said, “it wouldn’t be any trouble at all, would it Mikey?”

  I wished Sarah had come.

  “No trouble,” I said. It was mostly because I realized there was no getting out of it. She smiled at me, and began to maneuver herself around so that we were standing side by side.

  “Wel
l, it would be nice to come in on the arm of such a handsome young man,” she said. My father walked to the door, my mother just behind. They disappeared before Mrs. Dodgeson and I had gone half that distance. The organ was already warming up, inside.

  “My but you’ve grown, dear,” she said.

  She didn’t say anything else until I found myself standing stock still as she leaned at least half her weight on my arm, lowing herself down into the pew. Next to her was a younger man, though his hair was just as shock gray. He looked at me, then back at her.

  “Enola,” the man said, and I had the impression he’d have tipped his hat to her if he’d worn one.

  “This young man is Susannah Kendall’s boy,” she said.

  The man looked at me, again. Something was in his eyes, but I have no idea what it was. I just wanted to sit down so this could be over faster. In the back of my mind, I started to wonder what cigarettes tasted like.

  “No,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, grinning.

  “Well, isn’t that something,” he said, standing. He extended his hand to me. “Bud Gantner,” he said. The way he said it seemed to mean more to him than it did to me. I think I was supposed to know who he was.

  I shook his hand, “I’m sorry, I don’t—um—I sort of don’t—,”

  The smile on his face fell just a bit. “Well, that’s alright. I—,” he started.

  “Robert delivered you, dear. Your older sister, too,” Mrs. Dodgeson said, “You’ll have to pardon me, though, I don’t remember her name. Memory is the first thing to go, you know,” she finished. He looked down at her, then back up at me. His smile was back to full power.

  “I’m retired now, though,” he said.

  “Didn’t he turn out to be just as handsome as he could be?” she asked.

  “Filled out a damn sight more’n we thought you would, that’s for certain,” he said.

  “Robert!” she exclaimed, but in a whisper.

  He shrugged, “The lord is well aware I cuss, Enola. If he ain’t made peace with it by now, I suspect he never will.” I laughed.

  “I hope I wasn’t—um—I hope I wasn’t too much trouble to deliver, Doctor Gantner,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Nah. Hell,” he said, and Mrs. Dodgeson flinched, “you wasn’t no trouble ‘till you came all the way out. No. Susannah had some trouble with your little sister, bless her heart, but you and Katy weren’t anything but baseball.”

  “Baseball?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I just had to play catch, was all. Most babies are like that,” he said, “just have to find a comfortable place to sit and wait for ‘em to make up their minds. Lord, though, your sister Sarah,” he said, and shook his head, “we had the devil’s own time getting her out. It was like she was busy watching her favorite TV show and didn’t want to leave until she found out who dunnit.” He grinned. I did, too.

  “Robert!” Mrs. Dodgeson whisper-yelled again. Still grinning, he looked down at her, then back up at me.

  “Listen, why don’t you come over to Sully’s tomorrow night? We all kind of gather over there to blow off some steam post-turkey, you could say.”

  “I’d like that,” I replied, and actually meant it.

  “Honestly, Robert,” she said, shaking her head, then looking up at me, “a bunch of heathens, that’s what they act like. Drinking, cussing, playing cards—,” she said, and I could tell she was going to go on, but just then I heard a door shut. I felt the pressure on my ears go up. I looked over to find a nervous man standing behind a tall podium. Someone had closed the front doors, too. He was shuffling through his notes.

  “I guess I better get back to mom and dad,” I whispered.

  “Don’t forget, now,” he said.

  “I won’t, Dr. Gantner.”

  “Bud,” he said. I nodded and walked over to where my parents were sitting. When I sat down, my father leaned across my mother as if he was going to say something to me, but the man behind the podium began to speak.

  “Brothers and sisters,” he said. His voice was quiet and smooth. “The devil is among you every day. Every day, he walks through the center of our towns, our cities, unrecognized. This is why we come to church; we must learn to recognize the devil. We must learn to see him for who he really is,” he said, looking up finally. His eyes were glassy and blue.

  At that moment, my ears popped. Someone had opened the front doors. We all turned in our pews. The Sheriff had just walked in the door. They slid closed just as he took his sunglasses off. He put them carefully into his pocket.

  “Rev’rund,” he said, nodding. He slid quietly into the last row of pews. We all turned around at different speeds, and I think I was first.

  The young man swallowed, and I wondered if the Sheriff made him as nervous as he made me. I remembered the last time I’d been here, they preacher had been an old, old man. I assumed he’d died. A part of me wanted to ask mom, but I knew she’d just say “I’ll tell you later, dear,” and then she’d forget or I would and it wouldn’t matter.

  The preacher cleared his throat, “As I was saying, we must learn to recognize him in all of his disguises. Perhaps if we had recognized the devil in time, whoever once was the puzzling set of remains our city has recently recovered,” he said, and I felt that word snap at me like a whip, “might still be a walking, talking soul.” I wanted to turn around and see what the Sheriff did, but I couldn’t. I thought, for some reason, that if I turned around, he’d be looking right at me.

  “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; the Sermon on the Mount,” he said, and my mom’s eyes closed. “This contains the reverse, of course: Whatever is hurtful to you, do not do to any other person,” the young man said. He waited a moment, and I could see he was on his way to gathering back all of the steam he’d hoped to start out with before the Sheriff had walked in. I began to get the feeling the preacher wasn’t much older than me.

  “If more people learned to recognize the devil in all his disguises, then perhaps the killer of this person of our town would have thought twice beforehand,” he said. I saw quite a number of heads nod. I couldn’t help but think that if Sarah were here, she’d say “Duh.” “Unfortunately, even on this day of thanks, there are posters up on the walls of the Post Office. Little boys and girls who won’t get to eat cranberry sauce or come to church, anymore. This saddens me. This saddens me a great deal,” he said. I got the feeling that, in someone older or smarter, what we were hearing would be something powerful. Instead, it was sort of silly, almost. It seemed like something was important, to him, though. I felt like maybe he was building to it, so I stayed tuned in.

  After thirty minutes, though, the Preacher either gave up on trying to get to his point, or never had one. We sang for another ten minutes, after. The whole time, I kept getting icy chills down my back. I wanted to turn around and look, but I couldn’t. I was still afraid the Sheriff would be looking right at me.

  At the end of the last song, the preacher closed his book with a thunk, and set it down. He made a prayer of thanks to the lord, asked us all to thank Mrs. Theodore for playing the organ for us this evening, and reminded us all that the collection plate was beside the door on the way out. He then walked to the small door beside the altar, and disappeared through it. It seemed very anti-climactic.

  “New preacher,” my father said. I think he meant to explain something by saying it, but I didn’t know what. Everyone was standing up with grunts and sighs. Mrs. Dodgeson was rubbing her legs, and Robert—‘Bud’, I corrected myself—stood next to her.

  The rest of the congregation was already on its feet. Everyone was anxious to get home to dinner, I guessed. The smiles that had disappeared behind empty faces came back. People milled out the doors, talking. Through it all, I kept expecting to see the Sheriff appear next to me, but he never did. In fact, I didn’t see him again until we’d all filed out of the church and into the parking lot. He was standing next to his
patrol car, smoking. His eyes were squinted off into the distance. I’ve seen movies where actors try to imitate that exact look, but not one ever gets it right.

  My father made a bee-line for the car. My mother hesitated as though she wanted to talk to some of the women, but they all brushed past her with smiles. She would take in a breath as if to say something and hold it as the women sailed to their cars. She’d exhale and keep that same ‘nothing’s wrong’ smile on her face.

  “Come on, mom,” I said, “let’s get home. I’m starved.” She looked at me, and though her eyes said something, her face never changed.

  TWELVE

  My father had already started the car. If I asked, he’d claim that it was to get the heater started, but I knew better. He sat in the driver’s seat, facing forward. He was waiting to leave the church grounds. I know for a fact that if mom had gotten into a conversation, dad would be revving the engine. “To get the heater warmed up,” he’d say, but I would know better.

  Mom walked slow to the car. I was beside her the whole way. The exhaust came out of the pipe thick and gray, hanging in the air for a few moments before disappearing. The engine sounded much better, though. Maybe I’d jigger the timing a bit before I went home. I thought for a moment, though, about that. Wasn’t this home? It didn’t feel that way. I watched water drops streak down the window as I opened the car door.

  The second I closed the door, my father slid the car into reverse. I tried to look at his face in the rearview, but got only his eyebrow. My mother put her seat belt on; my father never wore his. He backed out of the parking spot.