The Flicker of Old Dreams Read online

  “I hear Eddie looked pretty bad. He got real hot in there.”

  “Tell us what you know,” the girl said to me.

  They had not heard the details of the family photo. They had not heard of Mr. Golden’s outburst at our house, when he told my father that his younger son could not attend the service. His wife, either, if she complained. We feasted on this story as it passed from child to child, each adding grisly details overheard or simply imagined as we lay in bed, too jittery to sleep.

  We sat with our legs touching, the rail heating up with the sun. I’d never felt such a sense of belonging.

  Over the days that followed, as the gray tower stayed silent, men still drove their trucks to work in the morning and parked. In a little while, they drove away again. The spilled grain began to sprout, and the funeral attended by all those sobbing teenage girls came and went. But nothing returned to normal.

  I was only vaguely aware of the strangers who’d come to our town with their clean shirts and clipboards (the county inspector, contractors, people from the railroad and insurance companies), all collecting information, and with each visit, stealing a little more hope that work would resume. The men who grew wheat on the ranches seemed to understand right away, as they did not meet the eyes of the men they knew so well at the grain elevator. Because they would still grow wheat. They would just drive it farther to other towns and other men.

  The beating heart of Petroleum had stopped. And as word spread that it would not be revived, that the elevator would be closed from that day forward, its workers stripped out levers and dials. They cut out the little buckets that used to carry the kernels, scoop by scoop, to the top of the tower and tip them into the storage bins.

  Mr. Purvis, the plant manager, was the last to give up on the place, dressing each day for work (jeans and a button-up) and carrying his black lunch bucket. He’d just sit there in his office as we peeked through the window. The day he finally cleared out, lugging one large box of papers to his truck, a desk fan jammed under his arm, he wouldn’t let anyone help.

  It wasn’t long before the kids took over the grain elevator. We found Mr. Purvis’s office, the walls fireproofed with tin, and the only thing pinned there was a no smoking sign and a calendar with a different naked lady for every month. We explored the maze of wooden rooms and shafts, the place full of floor sweepings and rats, echoing as we climbed the rusted ladders. There in the dark, we played a game called Eddie.

  We stood in a circle and held hands—girls I hoped would one day play dolls with me, boys with calloused fingers whose touch felt electric. I thrived on the sound of our breath together, amplified inside those walls, the dusty air drying the backs of our mouths.

  We played with the savagery of children who’d learned not to burden adults with our fears. We shouted at one another at the volume many of us knew in our homes.

  “Do your job, you weakling!” the one playing Eddie might shout as he stomped into the center of the circle, where the younger brother kicked his feet at the clumps of grain like he didn’t care a thing about this kind of work.

  Everyone understood Eddie’s rage, how laziness in a town like this had consequences. We felt it then, the town spiraling around us, though we knew nothing about insurance hikes or the shiny metal elevators of bigger towns. Whether the accident was directly to blame or only seemed so, it marked the year the grain elevator shut down, the year the train no longer stopped in Petroleum.

  We played the game for hours each day. When the one playing Eddie jabbed his stick at the ground, the children all screamed and fell on him. This was the part of the game when injuries happened, boys and girls crushing each other, pushing sod into noses and mouths. The youngest, not yet invited to play, cheered from the sidelines, full throated.

  Whoever played the younger brother cried like a baby while the rest pointed fingers and chanted, “Sissy, sissy, look what you’ve done.”

  I loved all this touching, though many complained my hands were clammy. I even loved the pushing and tackling, the scrapes and bruises it left. I believed this was friendship. I believed it would last.

  From this frenzied scrum, we eventually emerged with hoarse voices and sweaty hair to reenact our favorite scene. The game always ended with a family photo. Everyone wanted to be Dead Eddie, slumped with his head at a tilt.

  For the men who had carried proud titles like manager, elevator operator, grain merchandiser, and industrial mechanic, the days no longer had structure. You’d see them in the diner or leaning against the outside of a building, not sure how to spend their time. Something hard had grown into their faces, and you could follow it down their tight jaws to the raised cords on their necks, and you just knew the tension kept going. They’d become rigid, like that tightness would never get itself unclenched.

  They often stood clustered in town, demanding the dignity of work. You’d overhear their grumbling. They needed to do something with their hands. They needed something to fill the hours, something to talk about when they went home at the end of the day. Many developed strange ticks—rubbing their hands together and forgetting to stop, looking hard off to nowhere and not hearing if someone spoke to them. Whenever I saw these men in town, I’d walk way around them as I would a hot stove. By summer’s end, many had taken jobs as handymen, bartenders, short-order cooks, janitors, whatever was available—changes they probably thought were temporary.

  1

  I step onto the porch with a bucket of hot, soapy water, slip on long rubber gloves, and set to cleaning the plastic apron I wear for embalmings, laying it flat and then, on hands and knees, scrubbing with a sponge. It’s still mild for January, which worries many of us about how much snow we might get before winter is through. The worst blizzard in our history came after one of these mild spells.

  Neighborhood kids, coats thrown aside, ride their bikes in the last light of day, jumping the old train tracks covered in mud and the stubble of dead grass. I scratch at the dried lumps, soak them again, as coyotes howl in the distance. I look across the wide open land, bleached of color, to see if I can spot them.

  This has been my view all my life. Thirty years in this town. This house. Sometimes it feels like thirty years wearing this same ponytail at the nape of my neck, trying to keep my hair from blowing in the constant prairie wind. I turn the bucket over for the first rinse, then go inside to wash my hands and refill it.

  When I come back out, I see my father’s hearse pull off the highway. We’ve always called it a hearse because of how we use it. A traditional one couldn’t function out here on the rough dirt roads, often slopped in snow or the sticky mud we call gumbo. Pop’s hearse is just a black pickup with a hard cap over the bed. He keeps a three-by-five-foot American flag mounted on the antenna, and I follow it through town.

  I splash clean water over the apron and hang it over the rail to dry. Wiping my hands on my jeans, I meet my father when he pulls into the driveway.

  “Did you hear the news?” he asks as he steps out.

  “No.”

  I’m used to being out of the loop—part of the stigma of living in this house. Father and daughter. Funeral director and embalmer.

  “Younger brother’s come back to Petroleum,” he says, jingling his keys. “That’s what people are saying anyway.”

  I can’t help but look to the old grain elevator. That gray tower is still the defining monument of Petroleum, even now as it buckles in the middle, several boards stripped from those outer walls, exposing its skeleton.

  “What’s he come back for?”

  “To spend time with his mom, I guess,” Pop says. “I don’t think she has long.”

  “Have you seen him?”

  He shakes his head. Jingles his keys again. “I’ve got to get our guest inside,” he says.

  “Need a hand?”

  “Nope. But check the mail, if you could. See if we got anything to deposit.”

  I wrap my scarf higher over my chin and set out for the post office. Strange how I’
d just been thinking of the accident, almost like I’d heard someone humming the song from our old game. Sissy, sissy. I look for signs of the younger brother, can’t help looking for a fourteen-year-old because it’s all he’s ever been to me.

  Anyone who doesn’t live here stands out right away. Except for hunting season, when strangers visit with elk chained to the beds of trucks, the only outsiders we see are the high school basketball teams, here for a game, or the occasional stray driver who pulls off the highway, looking for gas or a bite to eat. We can only accommodate the bite to eat.

  I listen to the stamp of my boots against the cold ground. I like to walk these dirt roads when it’s just me, nothing but my footsteps and the swish of my parka. Our town has no streetlights, no traffic lights, so as soon as the sun sets, the houses and shops look like black cutouts against indigo, everything leaning south, away from the wind. I close my eyes against the dust. You can do this in a town as small as ours, walk in the middle of the street with your eyes shut.

  At the post office, I unlock the box marked Crampton. Every family name on the brass doors is deeply familiar. There are 182 residents of Petroleum. We all keep track of the latest number.

  Those who’ve heard of Petroleum are often surprised it’s still here. The town is primarily known for what it no longer has: oil. In its heyday, when the pumps drew black fuel from the ground, the population spiked to almost two thousand. But many were only passing through, here to make a quick buck and then move along when the wells ran dry.

  Most who stayed are scattered over miles of cattle country. About a third of us live in town. I recognize all of them by sight even if we’ve never spoken. Everyone has to stop here if they want their mail, though some don’t.

  Pop will be upset to see more bills but no checks. I peek through other windows, always curious about magazine subscriptions and package slips.

  Back out in the night air, I push the hair from my face with a glove, but the wind swipes it right back. There’s a good number of coyotes out now, and if you know where to look, you can see the glow of their eyes moving closer to town. A mother shouts her child’s name across the dark. Then come more names and the sound of a bell as children are called home for the night. They begin to run and ride their bikes, shadows with coats tucked under their arms.

  It’s not long before I hear those thin tires and boys’ voices behind me. I pick up speed, but not enough to show fear. My home is just around the corner, the outline of the chimney distinct from here.

  The voices hush but the sound of pedaling and the rattle of bicycle chains draws nearer. I’m used to the nicknames: Scary Mary, Bloody Mary.

  The first boy rides past. Two more follow, rocks spitting beneath the tires. The one in front circles around me, so close I feel the handlebars brush my sleeve. I hear his gruff breathing and then the word “Freak!” said in a joyous whisper.

  I don’t even turn my head as he speeds off. The other two pedal after him, laughing as they go.

  I remember every name I’ve been called. Sometimes they are shouted, but most often they’re said in a whisper. Words to be remembered even when you’re apart, lying alone in the dark. My first instinct is to hate the person who has whispered the insult and to think, It’s not true! But then I ask, Is it?

  By the time I get home, the words have settled inside like stones. Like I’ve ingested them and they’ve become a part of me—freak, weirdo, spinster—clacking together with each step. I cross my yellow lawn. Crampton Funeral Home, like all the other buildings, leans to the south. Its steps are chipped, its gray clapboard faded, and the flooring on the porch squeaks so much, you can hear people at the front door before they ring the bell.

  My fingers grab the knob, and I am glad to be inside the foyer, barely lit with a small lamp on the table. I toss the mail beside our vase of plastic flowers and stacks of bereavement pamphlets, then turn around quickly, thinking I hear more laughter. I shut the door hard enough to cause the lamp to flicker.

  “Mary, is that you?”

  “I’m home, Pop.”

  He’s got the TV turned way up.

  “Mr. Mosley’s downstairs,” he shouts.

  This is the sound of my father in his pajamas. When he takes off his suit at the end of the day—earlier, if he can get away with it—it’s as if the role he’s been playing falls away with the costume. The energetic businessman rumpled on the floor. And beneath that suit: a sweaty, slouched man, so exhausted he can’t even make it to his bed.

  This time of the evening, he sits in his recliner with a whiskey. He likes to choose a show that’ll rile him up, shouting at someone on the screen who can assume the blame for everything that’s not going right in his life. All day he is polite, even-keeled. But now he can let go. Rage. Fall apart. Things he won’t do in public.

  I hang my coat in the hall closet, gloves tucked in the pockets. On my way downstairs, I pass the door to my father’s office, his desk covered with invoices, the carpet strewn with more pages, snack wrappers, and discarded clothes, including the suit he wore today. How tired he gets just living his life. I turn off his desk lamp and head to the basement workroom, where I’ll spend the evening with Mr. Mosley.

  I like my world in the basement with its alphabetized shelves and sharpened instruments, every surface wiped clean, every bottle lined up with sides touching, labels facing forward, the temperature a perpetual sixty-five degrees.

  The dead come to me vulnerable, sharing their stories and secrets. Here is my scar. Touch it. Here is the roll of fat I always hid under that big sweater, and now you see. This is the person I’ve kept private, afraid of what people would think. Here I am, all of me. Scarred, flabby, covered in bedsores. Please be kind.

  When a body comes to our funeral home, it comes draped in a white sheet. The sheets begin clean, but soon, they carry the essence of the one who died, first in silhouette, the contour of the nose, a valley or mountain at the stomach, the feet turned slightly in or out, the bumps of shoulders, breasts, chin. Before I move the sheet aside, I study this landscape. At first glance, it is like a field covered in fresh snow. Then the details become more visible. Just as a field of snow, upon closer inspection, shows signs of the life that has tramped through it, so will the sheet show something beyond its surface. There are smears and drips, a spot of blood from where the IV was removed, a stain from loose bowels not thoroughly wiped, the sticky smear of saliva, the gray shadow of one final sweat.

  I pull back the sheet and welcome Mr. Mosley to the bright white silence of my workroom, take his cold hand and hold it gently in my own. His face, neck, and hands are red and toughened from years of working in sun and cold and wind. The rest of him is quite pale, soft. I don’t often get to know my neighbors until we meet this way, and that is the case with Mr. Mosley. His wrecked body lies on the stainless steel table—a faucet near his head, a drain near his feet—and there is much to do. But first this. His hand.

  Here is the man, nothing to hide behind. No sheet or uniform or name tag. This is the man without his possessions, with chores left undone, with mistakes he can’t make right, with nothing more he can prove.

  I’m right here, I tell him.

  It is what I have longed for my whole life. Perhaps everyone longs for this. Just to be and to have someone stay near. He does not complain that my hands are clammy. There is no pressure to be charming or clever. We are simply here, together in this quiet.

  Even if I didn’t know Mr. Mosley was a rancher, I’d be able to tell by the missing tips of two fingers (probably jammed in machinery), and the scars from hooves, horns, ropes, and amateur sewing. I trace the bruises on his face down to the fatal gash where his ribs were crushed when the tractor overturned.

  My mind is at work now, taking a mental inventory of the damage: broken collarbone and ribs, crushed chest, fractured hip. There’s not enough time for a major restoration, and his family can’t afford it anyway. I imagine the chest rebuilt and stuffed, his bruises masked with concealer. This w
ill not be my finest work, not when they want Mr. Mosley back tomorrow evening, the only time all the relatives are able to gather. But I will make it happen, even if I have to work through the night.

  “Don’t make him fancy,” his family wrote in the note my father left for me. “Don’t send him back in makeup and a monkey suit.”

  They want to see the man they knew, in his checked flannel and a clean pair of jeans. But I want to protect them from reminders of his last moments—the buildup of mucus in his lungs, the coughing up of blood, the struggle for his last breath. I tighten the waterproof apron around my waist, secure the paper mask over my nose and mouth. I want to provide his family with a face they aren’t afraid to kiss good-bye.

  Water streams from the faucet for his final bath. A moment to wash and say good-bye to this skin that has held his soul. This skin he has probably loved and hated and mistaken for who he was. I notice the scabbed elbows, hands nicked and calloused. A man made of the same nature as this land: rugged, persevering, wind carved. I rinse the dust and dried blood from his hair, run a soapy sponge from head to foot, honoring what of this man will and will not last. I bend and flex his limbs to keep them from stiffening.

  I work without music, appreciating the clang of tools, the whir of machines, and the silences in between. Occasionally, the sound of the TV, two flights up, and my father’s outbursts drift through the house. I know he drinks too much, but I’m glad he has this time to let off a little steam.

  After rinsing and wringing out the sponge, I wipe Mr. Mosley’s behind and insert three cotton balls into the rectum. Every orifice, if not plugged up tight, can leak when he’s on display for his loved ones. My first embalming job, I forgot some steps, and the old woman foamed at the mouth and nose during visiting hours. Ever since, I’ve followed a precise sequence. Abrasions I fill with lime—Pop prefers bleach—then seal with soft wax. I spray disinfectant over the tongue, palate, clouded eyes and huge pupils. When people ask me what I do at my job, I’ve learned they don’t really want to know.