Tom Hubbard Is Dead

by Robert Price

  Chapter Thirty

  A heavy mist and a light drizzle burdened the already dark November evening. “Was his father buried here, too?” Julian loudly called back to Melanie anxiously pushed fingers through his damp hair.

  An ancient White Oak stood out against the colorless cemetery landscape. Julian, drunker and less stable than earlier, teetered cautiously over the slippery leaves that had collected on the grass. He thought of stopping to let her catch up. And if she did, he plotted to slip his arm around her waist and pull her close. Even bolstered by alcohol’s courage, however, he worried she might reject him, so he continued moving forward instead.

  “Everybody’s buried here,” she shouted ahead, trying to keep up. The drinks she had had back at the reception and in Julian’s car on the ride over to the cemetery challenged her equilibrium and made walking difficult. She had already fallen twice, so not only was her hair wet but her clothes were as well.

  “Whereabouts?” Julian yelled, now frustrated with her slowness. He stopped, lit a cigarette and surveyed the hillside, dotted with hazy gray marble gravestones. Then, just off to his left, on the top of a rise, he noticed a blue tarp over a rounded lump. He let her catch up.

  Melanie had heard the frustration in his voice and felt the need to apologize. “I’m sorry,” she said as she made her way to him. “I thought it was just here, not too far from the tree.” She had recognized the big Oak; it marked their family plot. Upon seeing the tree from the cemetery road, she had suggested they walk.

  “It’s so dark, and the rain … I’m sorry, should we turn back?” Her voice trailed off, hoping for his approval.

  Julian inhaled several times off a cigarette and resisted the urge to slip an arm around her, still nervous about her reaction. But after seeing that his frustration held her in a different way, suddenly the fear of rejection disappeared. “Turn back?” he said, almost angrily, as if the suggestion was an insult. He remained silent, deliberately making her feel guilty with his obvious dissatisfaction, forcing her to keep all attention on him. After a moment, afraid she might notice Tom’s gravesite before he could point it out, he announced, “There, over there, under the tarp; is that a pile of dirt?”

  “That must be it,” Melanie agreed, relieved.

  Julian grabbed Melanie’s hand and together they headed toward the mound.

  Yards away, a sheet of plywood lay under another tarp that had been placed over a rectangular hole in the ground. “Holy shit,” Melanie gasped, grabbing Julian’s arm.

  They walked around the perimeter of the covered hole. Although the plywood hid what lie underneath, they each felt certain that Tom’s coffin and body lay at the bottom of the pit. Julian stopped at what he figured was the head of the grave. He stood in the spot where he assumed the priest had stood and delivered the final prayers. Melanie stood next to him, hands now deep in her pockets. The drizzle had stopped but the mist hung thickly over the site. Neither spoke.

  Julian kicked at the edge of the sheet of plywood. Rainwater dripped from the tarp onto the ground. Melanie returned her hand to his arm to still him.

  What am I doing here? he asked himself as he slid an arm around Melanie’s waist. She allowed her body to fold into his and he felt the head of his penis twitch with anticipation. But he overlooked this sexual urge and tried to concentrate instead on how he thought he was supposed to feel at the gravesite of a dead friend. Something attuned to loss, is what he determined. But his body and emotions, reeling from years of drinking, had forgotten how to feel anything. Mostly, he needed a drink. He would cry later, he told himself, if he could, in private. He kicked at the plywood again.

  “Stop kicking,” she whispered, rubbing his arm lightly, almost flirting.

  She wanted to be with him, like a wife, joined at the hip, sharing this dark moment together.

  Gazing into the misty evening, she let her mind take her away from where they were and began to fantasize that this had nothing to do with death and dying—this was her and Julian’s wedding. Her cousin Tom would be there, too, as Julian’s best man. She could almost see a shadow of the shape of Tom’s body positioned next to Julian. She fancied the rectangular grave a runway and the foot of it an altar. And the family headstones scattered about the hillside plot became the folding chairs at an outside nuptial ceremony. The mist and the reaching limbs of the Oak tree formed a canopy, an arbor and a tent. And there, smiling like the sun, sitting in the chairs, were her mother and father, her grandparents and relatives, relations she hardly knew and others she had never met. In a white gown with a silk veil, she eagerly awaited Julian’s confirmation kiss. And Julian, in a black tuxedo with a light blue cummerbund, opened his palm for Tom, who, ring in hand, stood impressively in his military dress uniform, a shiny sword dangling at his side.

  “Wow,” Julian said, feeling an uncomfortable pressure created by their silence. “Uh, should we go?”

  “Yes,” Melanie responded, still dreaming. She turned toward him, her lips wet and parted.

  Hoping he could manage to conceal his usual clumsiness with women, Julian opened his mouth and leaned forward, accepting her.