“This is about Papa, isn’t it?” Caleb asked Jonah.
His older brother shrugged. “Probably.” He fidgeted in his seat and tried to get comfortable, resting his head against the cinderblock wall, eyes closed.
“Is he sick?”
“I heard Mom and Dad talking. He’s got cancer. Had it for a while now.”
Caleb’s head felt heavy, his eyelids. In one moment he was back in the desert, the next he was sitting next to his brother. “Why didn’t they tell us?”
Jonah shrugged. “Mom’s been acting crazy. Guess they figured if she couldn’t take it, we wouldn’t be able to either.”
“You ever know anyone who died before?”
Jonah shook his head. “A guy in my class hit a tree while skiing. Didn’t really know him, though.”
For a while they just sat there. Caleb fought off sleep, his head drooping toward his chest, then jerking upward. Once, he smacked his head against the wall behind him. It caused the family on the other side of the waiting room to jump, to blink at him, but then they returned to their infomercial, learning more about the weight loss miracle: The Tread Climber.
“Do you think he’s scared?” Caleb asked.
Jonah shrugged. “Sure. Wouldn’t you be?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Whatever.”
“I’d be going to heaven. What’s there to be scared of?”
“You really believe in all that, don’t you?”
“You don’t?”
Jonah grabbed the remote from the table between him and the other family and flipped through the channels. The other family looked at him in disbelief, but Jonah didn’t pay them any mind. He found an old Western playing, John Wayne in True Grit.
“Nah,” he said. “Just seems too good to be true.”
An hour later, Caleb visited Papa for the last time. It wasn’t anything like Caleb had expected. Tubes plugged Papa’s nostrils. An IV was stuck in his arm, the tape stained red with blood. He hadn’t shaved, and gray stubble spotted his chin and cheeks. His beard was sparse and thin like he was too weak to grow facial hair, the strands themselves infected with cancer. A machine beeped next to his bed. Beep. Pause. Pause. Pause. Beep. Pause. Pause. Pause. Caleb’s heartbeat filled the pauses. He could feel it pounding in his ears.
“If you want to say goodbye,” Mom said. “Now is the time.”
Caleb tried to think of something to say—a reassurance, a prayer, a simple goodbye—but he couldn’t bring himself to form the words. He couldn’t bring himself to take a step closer. It took all he had to just look at Papa. He didn’t appear to be in pain, which Caleb was thankful for, but he wasn’t the same man. He was weaker. Debilitated. Strange. The light and fire that had once filled him had blinked out, and all that remained was a viscous shell. Papa wasn’t there anymore to say goodbye to. He was already gone.
Finally, Caleb’s mother told him he could go, and he breathed again. Jonah was asleep. The other family had gone home. The television had been muted. The place was quiet, the only sound the soft buzz of an ice machine at the end of the room. Caleb took a seat next to his brother and tried to sleep, but he couldn’t. The sun would be up in a few hours, he’d have to go to school, and things would carry on like normal, but they weren’t. The world was emptier somehow, a large balloon slowly leaking air.
THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL, the water was murky, thick with silt. A stiff breeze came over Bluestem Lake, carrying with it the stench of mud and smoke. The lake was abandoned this time of year. There weren’t any boats or swimmers or wakeboarders. Nobody camped along the shoreline or grilled hamburgers next to the campgrounds. It was cold—not quite freezing, but Caleb’s nose wouldn’t stop running, and he wiped the snot on his sleeve. His skin was dry, cracked, and burned. Mom carried the urn, but Grandma led the way. Dad, Jonah, and Caleb followed behind, taking careful steps over the warped boards of the dock.
On the other side of the lake, smoke billowed over the canopy. Caleb couldn’t tell if it was controlled or if it was a forest fire. The smoke was thick and dark, too black to be a simple campfire. Some kids might’ve been setting off fireworks, maybe caught a dead oak with a Roman Candle. It had happened before. The previous summer, ten acres had burned before the fire department was able to get it under control. It was a ranch that had burned, the fields burnt brown, the ash swirling up into the sky and covering the hillside like a dense, thick fog. A couple of teenagers were found responsible, charged with arson, sent to juvenile hall. Mom had used the episode as a warning to Caleb and Jonah—if they ever did anything of the sort, the cops wouldn’t get a chance to punish them. She’d bury them before anyone else could, and Caleb believed her. His mother never lied.
Caleb was surprised at how loud it was out there: the wind, the blackjack limbs rustling, the kickback of a pickup muffler, a doe and her fawn roaming through the underbrush. It was louder than the city even. Every once in a while, a hunter’s rifle shot echoed over the canopy. Waves crashed against the shore. Everything seemed to accumulate into a cacophonous bubbling, humming against the backdrop.
Caleb found it odd it was just them saying goodbye to Papa. He’d been a well-liked man. Respected. It had been rare a neighbor wouldn’t come visit when Caleb was at their home. They’d come by to borrow the table saw, to drop off a casserole, or just to share a pot of coffee, smoking cigarettes and swapping stories about the high-school football team or a mutual friend’s big win at the casino over in Tishomingo. Caleb was sure this was his grandmother’s and mother’s decision, to keep this private, but it just seemed selfish.
At the end of the dock, they stopped and stood in a line overlooking the lake. The urn they’d chosen was simple. Made of cedar, it had no engravings, no stain. Mom held it tightly, pressed it against her belly as though she feared she might drop it. Or maybe she just wasn’t ready to let go yet. Caleb wouldn’t have been surprised either way—she had a look of disbelief about her. Seeing her cry affected Caleb more than he thought it would. His insides dissolved, and his lungs shrunk in size. He found it hard to breathe. He had to will his heart to continue beating. He had to beg his legs to keep from collapsing, and soon the world blurred and he felt dizzy.
Grandma took the urn and began her prayer. She thanked God for allowing her to know Papa. She thanked him for bringing him into her life when she’d needed him, for his strength and support over their twenty years of marriage. She said she would miss the way he brewed his coffee so strong it would make her tongue tingle, how he wouldn’t wash his jeans until he wore them three times, and how he would save a rock every time they went on a road trip, down to Branson or Galveston, displaying it proudly on their mantel as the only keepsake they could afford. She prayed that he’d made it to him safely, and that he would continue to look down on her family during these troubled times. She then held the urn up to her face like she was kissing it and handed it to Caleb’s father.
He didn’t say anything. He just turned it in his hands, looking at it like he might be picking out produce at the supermarket, eying for imperfections. Bruises against the soft skin of a tomato, a yellow lemon turned brown. He then passed it to Jonah, who stared at it with more curiosity than anything, like it was some alien thing dropped down from a flying saucer. It then found its way to Caleb. His hands shook when he took it. He was holding his grandfather. The thought was almost too much for him to bear. A man he’d loved, a man he’d spoken to, a man who had frightened him, now reduced to a pile of ash. Caleb understood death. He did. The failure of the body, the ascension of the soul. Judgment. But before, it had always seemed like an abstraction. An idea. Now he could smell it, reeking of copper and fear.
Caleb opened the urn. Inside, the ashes were brown, packaged in a cellophane bag. It amazed him such a large man could fit in such a small place. To be reduced to ashes, it felt like a desecration. But Caleb hadn’t been consulted. He hadn’t been allowed to see Papa one more time after his passing, to remedy the shameful goodbye he’d had i
n the hospital. He’d just been told Papa was gone, and then he was handed this urn, expected to discard Papa into the lake he’d loved.
The bag was heavy, more so than Caleb had anticipated. The top opened by a zipper, and he paused before dumping the ashes. He thought he should say something, tell his Papa goodbye, that he loved him and would miss him and would pray for his soul, but nothing sounded right. It just sounded hollow and insincere, like it was something he was supposed to say rather than something that resonated in his bones. He did wish his grandfather well, he did, but he also felt the glaring absence of him, too. He’d left behind an emptiness, a gaping hole that had once been filled with granite and smoke. Even the sound of Papa’s voice was starting to fade from Caleb’s memory, even though he’d only been gone a few days, and this confused Caleb. But he was too afraid to ask his mother about it, and so he didn’t say anything. He just turned the bag upside down. Most of the ashes landed in their destination, the murky waters of Bluestem Lake, but some of them had been captured by the wind, carried up and back, swooping and accelerating, like Papa was trying to return to the earth.
CHAPTER 3
CALEB’S MOTHER TOOK TO SLEEPING. USED TO, she’d wake before everyone else, and by the time Caleb pulled himself out of bed, she’d already have a pile of waffles cooked, coffee brewing, mopping the kitchen floor or watering the flower bed, the stream splashing against the windows. But after Papa’s death all she did was sleep. Caleb would hear her alarm go off, shrill, short bursts of noise, followed by silence. After nine more minutes, it would go off again, and again she would turn it off. After the second or third time, the alarm would stop altogether, and Caleb would expect his mother to emerge from her bedroom, head wrapped in a wet towel, her bathrobe tied a bit too tightly, but she never did. When he went to wake her, she’d pull the blankets over her head and roll over to her side, and he’d grab a granola bar before running out to the school bus. Dirty dishes filled the sink. The milk spoiled. Unopened mail piled up on the dining room table. Dad worked later and later, not coming home until Jonah and Caleb were already in bed, and none of them did anything about it. It all just got pushed to the side, ignored as if it weren’t growing into a problem.
On weekends Mom wouldn’t get out of bed until after ten. Then she watched television: game shows and daytime soap operas. She blinked when Oprah gave away new cars, and she stifled a yawn as Judge Judy disparaged a deadbeat dad, flipping through the channels as soon as a commercial break interrupted whatever it was she was watching. After a lunch of cold ham sandwiches, she turned on the news. That’s what she watched the most, the 24-hour news cycle, flipping back and forth between CNN and MSNBC and Fox News. She wrote notes in a spiral journal with a blue ball-point pen, always careful to keep whatever it was she scribbled away from him and Jonah.
At night she’d order takeout or pizza for dinner, tipping the delivery boy with a verse from Matthew rather than cash, then laughing about the kid’s stunned face after she closed the door. She chewed with her mouth open and wiped her mouth with dirty towels. All they had to drink was tap water, and the ice machine had gone on the fritz. After dinner, she piled the empty boxes and bags around the trash can, circled by flies and stinking of hot garbage. The first week or so, Caleb and Jonah enjoyed the change in their mother. They stayed up later and put off homework, playing video games until they heard their father’s car parking in the garage. They went days without brushing their teeth and wore the same jeans until they were crusted with mustard and the pockets lined with M&M shells. It was sort of like spending the night with a friend when their parents weren’t home.
The only thing that remained constant from before was church. First Baptist was the second largest building in Bartlesville, the largest being the Frank Phillips tower. Red-bricked and white-steepled, it had a service hall the size of a basketball court, and its corridors ran deep with Sunday-school classrooms, a kitchen, gymnasium, the offices of the minister and church elders. Despite spending three evenings per week there, Caleb often found himself lost, exploring the snaking and confusing hallways, he and a few other children searching for something exciting, secret, taboo even. Once, they found some confiscated Black Cats, but other than that their searches wound up fruitless, resulting mostly in a disapproving glare from the minister. This didn’t bother them, though—they were content being on the hunt, on the trail of some nameless, otherworldly thing.
Everything in it was big, too: the organ; the ornate pews; the giant, lifeless, crucified Christ upon the wall. The windows ran floor to ceiling, flooding the service hall with crisp sunlight. The nursery offered life-size dollhouses and plastic slides. Double ovens in the kitchen, a cemetery that brushed against the horizon. Even the people were big. The mayor worshiped there, the president of Phillips 66, Douglas Swenson of Swenson Chevrolet, even the elementary school principal, Mr. Owen. It was a place that towered over the city, casting its long shadow upon every street and hill, and it was a place Caleb loved. His earliest memories were set there, playing soccer out in the field with Jonah and Clifton and Russel and the rest, or rehearsing a nativity play at Christmas. He’d prayed there, worshiped there, had been baptized there. It was a second home to Caleb, wrapping around him like another skin.
Caleb’s mother was a Sunday-school teacher in charge of about fifteen or so kids between the ages of seven and twelve, including Caleb and Jonah. They were kids Caleb knew well. Kids Caleb went to school with, played basketball against, shared slices of pizza at birthday parties with, and they all liked and respected Caleb’s mother. They asked her questions about God, about Genesis, about Jesus and the resurrection. They even asked her stuff about home, a father who drank too much or a mother who gambled away the family’s food money, about long division and late-night HBO specials, and Caleb couldn’t have been prouder. His mother was an authority figure, a servant of God, and so was he—by extension.
“Revelation says the Seven Seals are only to be opened by the Lion of the tribe of Judah,” Mom said.
The classroom, like everything else in the church, was large. Sharp morning light bounced across the room like it was covered in mirrors. There was a large poster of verses from Matthew and John, renditions of the Last Supper and the Sermon on the Mount. Behind his mother was a chalkboard where she’d scribbled a diagram of the Seven Seals and the description of the churches of Asia. Most of the lessons his mother taught, he’d heard repeatedly: the story of Noah, of Adam and Eve, of Lazarus, and of Moses and the Ten Commandments. She taught them about pride and sloth, about honoring their mother and father. Revelation, though, was a subject never before taught in Sunday school. He’d heard about it often at home, of course, almost daily even, but never had she broached the subject of the Seven Seals at Sunday school. Usually it was ignored both by the minister and by the other children’s parents. Mom called it cowardice, the premeditated revision of God’s word to placate the congregation’s fear, and said she would have none of it anymore. Sooner or later these kids would be forced to learn the truth of the world.
“The First Seal opened by John the Lion will contain a white horse. ‘And he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.’”
Caleb’s mother stood at the front of the classroom, the children sitting around her in a half-circle. They were much more attentive this morning than others. Most Sunday mornings they’d sit there with eyes like mirrors clouded by steam, their heads bobbing from sleep as they twirled their shoelaces. But that morning, after hearing the end of the world was coming soon, that the dead would rise, that a plague would ravage the earth, their wild-eyed gazes locked on Caleb’s mother as she read from her bible. They were enthralled. They were quiet. They were, it was obvious, afraid.
“From the Second Seal will advance a red horse. ‘And power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.’”
Thi
s might’ve been the first time the other kids had heard this sermon, but it was one Caleb had heard countless times, perched in bed, his mother sitting on the edge. It was one of his favorites, for his mother told him they were amongst the chosen, the 144,000 righteous and devout priest-kings who would rule with Christ over the restored paradise after the apocalypse.
“A black horse came from the Third Seal. ‘And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a denarius, and three measures of barley for a denarius; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.’”
Caleb’s mother read from her personal bible, given to her by Papa. It was old, and it was large, bound by black leather, inscribed with golden print. Never did she allow Caleb to read from it. It was locked away in her room, and she only brought it out on special occasions: Good Friday, Easter, Thanksgiving, birthdays, and Christmas. In the margins were years of faded notes explicating certain passages, about what she’d seen and about what she expected.
“And from the Fourth Seal came the final horse, a pale horse. ‘And his name that sat on him was Death, and hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.’”
Time was up, Sunday school over. Usually the kids would bounce from the floor, buzzing with energy to return home to play video games and basketball and ride their bikes, stalling with all of their might the sun setting on their weekend. But not that morning. Their faces looked bruised and jaundiced, as if all the blood swirling in their cheeks had drained to their feet. Caleb knew the look well. He’d felt it when his mother had first told him the story of the end of the world. They’d been accosted with the inevitability of their death and their judgment, and they feared that the accumulation of all their choices—their lies and their deceit, their theft and their destruction—might leave them unredeemed, estranged victims of the horseman Death.
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