The Flicker of Old Dreams Read online

  I stop in the road. His trash bag rustles as he takes a long breath.

  “Come on,” he says. “I’ve got something in the oven.”

  We both look at the broken hotel sign on our lawn as we walk up the driveway. I wonder if it will be like the mattress or, on another street, the rusted stove where we all played pretend when we were young.

  We take the bags to the Dumpster behind the house. Hoist them in. When we open our back door, the timer is already beeping. Pop washes his hands, then pulls a tin of muffins from the oven. The steam smells of brown sugar and cinnamon.

  Pop takes off his jacket, loosens his tie, lets his posture wilt. He can use his regular voice and stop sounding so happy now. He removes two muffins from the pan but stays there at the counter.

  My mother has followed us into the house. My mother is the name I’ve given his grief. She was gone long before I knew what death was so, for me, she is an abstract loss, a game of guessing at the life I might have lived.

  My mother is a collection of stories and inanimate objects. She is a wedding ring in my father’s bedside drawer, a rosehips-flavored tea bag in the back of our kitchen cupboard that we both refuse to use or throw out. She is a picture of someone standing on the rims too far away to see. She is a book underlined only to page seven. She is a pair of burnt rosebushes in the yard that Pop won’t dig up. She is the line between his eyebrows, the groove where his smile would be. She is a feeling in the gut I can’t name or move.

  It is my father’s grief that we both suffer. I think of my parents in Doctor Fischer’s two-room clinic in what even people from Petroleum would call the tiny town of Kestrel. I’m certain Pop never imagined that he would come home with only me. That he would suddenly have to figure out every single thing without a partner. He’d never even held a baby before, not a living one. You can see it in our first photo together, taken weeks after he had buried my mother; still his elbows poked out awkwardly and I did not nestle into the crook of his arm.

  “Are you all right, Pop?”

  “I’m fine.”

  He opens a cupboard, a drawer, his back turned. We don’t talk about these burdens we carry. Maybe because there are no easy words for them and nothing we could do even if we found the words. Pop rinses his hands again and then comes to the table, carrying a small plate for each of us. The muffins are burned on the bottom, but it gives them more flavor.

  Here, where we sit most mornings with the windows covered in tinfoil (he likes to save on bills, too), I break open a muffin and let the steam warm my chin. Pop opens the newspaper, but he does not read. He does not eat.

  He has noticed the stain on the leg of his suit. He curls over it, making himself smaller. His thin wisps of hair flop forward as he scrubs at it.

  “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine,” he says. “It’s the stain.”

  Today his grief feels unfair. A way to stop me from telling him I’m not a child. That he doesn’t need to fix me. That shallow talk with our neighbors will not make me happier. But how can we have such a frank conversation when he has brought my mother into the room? When he’s folded over himself?

  I stand up to get the butter and a knife. Let him work on the stain.

  5

  A mortician is an illusionist. The goal is to cushion reality, slow down how fast the hurt seeps in. Cuts are filled, the gray pallor painted over. Lips moistened with tinted cream. Hair washed and combed but not overly styled. The embalmer’s threads and glue and brushstrokes must be invisible so that when a family looks into the face of a loved one for the last time, there is no sign of illness, injury, or suffering. The grieving can pretend that their loved ones are merely sleeping. That they will hear you when you bend over to whisper all you had meant to say.

  We need these illusions. Need to pretend the funeral will bring comfort. Closure. We need friends and family members saying, We’ve got you. You won’t slip away into a black hole of grief. You won’t. Look at the body again. See? No signs that he suffered.

  But don’t linger too long. Don’t touch the skin if you hope it will be warm and supple. Don’t rub your hand against the cheek or you will find makeup on your fingers and a smell, like lard, that you will try but not be able to forget.

  Mr. Mosley is due back at his family ranch in an hour. I’ve stuffed the chest cavity with cotton batting from the roll my father used to mend the couch in our parlor. Both our projects have come out lumpy and uneven. And I’m afraid this is as good as Mr. Mosley is going to look.

  Beneath his clothes, he’s wearing plastic coveralls from neck to feet because there was too much of a risk that he’d leak. After the struggle to get him into his jeans, the tough work is over. I fit his checkered flannel shirt over the rustling plastic. With a quick look over my shoulder, I snip off a button and place it in my pocket. It’s a silly habit, but I can’t help myself. Later I’ll put it in the shoe box I keep under my bed, where I’ve saved a button (or if necessary, a snap) from each who’ve spent their final hours with me.

  One last check—remove lint from his sleeve, position hands just above his belt—and he is ready.

  We have two ramps in the basement, one to get bodies and caskets in and out of the driveway and the other to get them into our parlor. The gurney rattles out the basement door and into my van. The hearse is no good for this job because the Mosleys didn’t want a casket, and only the van has locks in back to keep the gurney from sliding around. After fastening the final lock, I bend over Mr. Mosley and whisper good-bye. I think his family will be happy with the look on his face—his mouth a stoic line, his cheeks still windburned, except where I shaved his thick stubble. There, his skin is smooth and pale.

  I start the van, knowing I’ll have to keep the heat off so Mr. Mosley will arrive at the ranch in good shape. I feel the engine’s temperamental chugging before it quits. It does this reliably in cold weather—maybe because I’ve been saving money by skipping checkups. Eventually I’ll have a mechanic see what the frequent stalling is about, but for now, I know a temporary trick: turn off the radio and lights, then wait.

  I pull the sleeves of my sweater over my hands and tap out a tune on the steering wheel to keep from trying again too soon. Then I remember the papers I’d meant to deliver to Robert Golden. I unbuckle my seat belt. I’ll have to make this quick. But, just as I’m about to open the door, the sheriff pulls in beside me with his white Ford—a fully loaded special service vehicle—the blue and red lights off.

  Sheriff Petersen gets out of his truck and moves around the front of it in his beige uniform, Smokey Bear hat, and the one monstrous orthopedic shoe he wears to even out the length of his legs. He waits by my window while I roll down the glass.

  Pop’s told me the story a dozen times, how Pete, as he has always called him, shortening his last name as if it’s his first, had been born in the breech position, and in the process dislocated his hip. Consequently, his right leg is three inches longer than the left. Even with the thick-heeled shoe and tall lift inside it, he has a distinct limp, leaning toward the shorter, weighted leg.

  I feel a kinship with him over our difficult births, how they each changed the course of our lives.

  “Need a jump?” he asks.

  “No,” I say. “It always starts eventually.”

  “You’ve got to keep it looked after, Button.”

  “I know, I know.”

  I wonder about the nickname for the first time, wonder if he knows about the buttons, or if, as I’ve always assumed until now, it’s just one of those names you give to people you’ve known from the beginning.

  “Headed out to the Mosley ranch?”

  I nod. “I did the best I could with him. He came to me in pretty bad shape.”

  “Rolled his tractor, I hear,” Pete says. “His wife’s having a hard time of it.”

  Pete knows all the families in his jurisdiction, from here to Agate. We stay a little longer, done with talk. At last, he taps his hand on the win
dow frame.

  “You must be getting cold,” he says.

  We each smile, close lipped. As I close the window, Pete limps up the back steps to meet Pop in the kitchen, where they gossip like schoolboys.

  I pump the gas and turn the key again. This time, the engine starts. I beep my horn at Pete, who pauses on the top step. He tips his hat—his jaw jutting out and up as if everything in that difficult birth got moved out of place.

  It’s twilight—the blue hour—the town silhouetted against the sky when everything seems to glow. The dirt road outside the funeral home snakes back to the paved one of Main Street. Some neighbors acknowledge my van as it goes by, standing still as Mr. Mosley passes through town one last time. I turn at the gray tower of the grain elevator.

  Highway 200, with its deep barrow ditches on either side of the road, crosses the entire state. When you’re on it for too long, it can play tricks on your eyes. You start to see curves and obstructions that aren’t there, shimmering water where the road is dry. Once I pulled over for a hitchhiker only to discover I was alone. Every day the road is littered with the carcasses of rabbits and pheasants, the only sign that trucks have driven through at all.

  The few houses along the way sit in fields of dried and flattened wheat. There are skeletons of barns, pens without animals, unrepaired fences. Out here, only a couple years after a home is vacated, you can’t tell anyone ever lived on the land. Nature grabs it back, kicks down what doesn’t belong—house, barn, or fence—spreads its pale stubble and cactus and greasewood along its low hills again.

  When I pass another truck, likely the last I’ll see tonight, the driver lifts two fingers from the steering wheel in the familiar, local wave. Just out of town, I pass the old rodeo grounds and scattered ranches, some lit up, some long dark, with wooden signs above the entrances showing the names of local cattle brands: p half circle, bar f, rafter t. And soon, save the long stretch of telephone poles and wires, you see nothing at all made by human hands.

  Under the blue glow, mule deer and elk come out to feed. You can imagine what would happen if your vehicle broke down in this prairie—how very long you would walk before you met another human or even evidence of one; and how little this land could sustain you—not a berry to pick, no water to quench your thirst, so few trees for shade. In the relentless quiet, you are reminded how small you are against this vast space, utterly dependent on the strength of your own body and your own thoughts. Petroleum is no place for the weak.

  As I near the Mosley ranch, I see the shock of black Angus against all these muted colors, then worn-out machinery and trucks with hoods propped open. I assume the busted tractor is what crushed the man I’ve gotten to know over the past two days. I think of him in back, eyes sewn shut, hands crossed one over the other, dressed in his checked shirt and jeans. They didn’t send shoes.

  At the cattle guard, I hop out of my van to unlock the gate. Two blond dogs bark and trot my way. I keep my door open as I drive through, hop out again to close the gate, then drive slowly toward a man in overalls, waving his arms for me. I notice a hay wagon waiting in the field for Mr. Mosley.

  Family and friends slowly approach, walking silently toward me, from the house, the barn, the field, stepping over cow patties and spilled grain. They are casually dressed, many in rubber boots.

  The man in overalls helps me open the back of the van. Those who are ready to receive the body step forward. Others turn away or hold the heads of young children to their hips. I pull Mr. Mosley gently from the van, helped by men whose backs are likely sore from a lifetime of shoveling, pitching, lifting, falling. Someone in this crowd of mourners discovered the accident. Or maybe he was there and saw it happen, the tractor on too steep an embankment, pinning Mr. Mosley underneath. Someone here may have put the machine in reverse, hearing the last plea for help. Someone loosened the collar and felt for a pulse. Someone told his wife and children. Someone called the funeral home. Someone walked through the stiff grass the next morning in order to believe it happened and to view the now hallowed ground. As the family and friends come closer, there are quiet, muffled gasps. No one is ever ready to see a loved one this way, to feel his weight but see no sign of his spirit. To see the bare feet and wish they hadn’t.

  Together we carry Mr. Mosley to the back of the large wagon. His plastic coveralls crinkle as we lay him on a bed of hay for one last ride across his land, one last night in the cold, open air.

  When I return to my van, a man pulls me aside.

  “The payment’s going to be tough,” he says. “But we can pay in elk meat. It’ll be fair.”

  He tucks his hands into his pockets.

  “I’ll have my father work it out with you,” I say.

  At regular intervals, my father calls the clients who haven’t paid their bills. Then the bargaining begins. Some offer old cars that don’t work but have engines worth something. Some offer free goods from their gardens. In most cases, Pop takes what they propose as a fair exchange. It’s the way of people around here; you make it work.

  I hand the man a plastic grocery bag and he looks inside to find Mr. Mosley’s watch and glasses. He nods, then squeezes the top of the bag closed in his fist.

  “Join us if you like,” he says.

  “I’ll watch from here.”

  I sit on the rear bumper of my van as the family gathers, bats swooping, dogs barking. The hayride begins with a young boy out front, carrying a lantern. And so Mr. Mosley rides beneath the great sky, family and friends walking beside him, not making a noise except to shout occasionally for the dogs to be quiet. The hope is that he might experience this moment, a last blast of color in the west, black in the east, pinpricks of stars overhead. This is their parting gift to him—the smell of earth and cattle, the steady crunch of wagon wheels against dry stalks, the jingle of dog tags.

  One woman—the wife, I assume—has withdrawn from the crowd, hand pressed against her mouth. She bends over, hands on knees, lips moving. She waves away all who come close to offer comfort. Perhaps their last night together was one of silence, of one back turned toward the other, each waiting for an explanation or an apology. Pop said once that relationships are more often like old houses—the place where you want to live, but an ongoing project—something always leaking, peeling away, breaking down. The woman stays there, bent, talking, talking, talking into the wind.

  The others continue their slow march, figures more and more in shadow, following the blurred orange of the lantern. Slowly, the wife straightens and begins to walk toward the hay wagon, still paces behind, but soon they will all arrive at the hole they’ve dug.

  6

  I was five when I saw my first dead body. Pop had always kept a Do Not Disturb sign on the door to the embalming room. And beneath it, because I needed reminders for what the words meant, he’d drawn a frowning girl. It was a sign that told me, No, Mary. Not now, Mary. I’m working, Mary.

  I sat, as I often did, on the steps, staring at the large swinging doors where he disappeared for hours. Most times I’d listen to the sounds of whirring machines, rolling wheels, drawers opening and closing. But this time the room on the other side of the sign was quiet.

  I scrunched the fabric of my nightgown in my fists, and slid, step by step, to the bottom, needing to hear the noise of my father working. Since the accident I was frightened by the quiet. Stories of Dead Eddie and playing the game were fun when I was with other kids, but alone, all that was left were the dark stairwells, the rats, and the memory of those yellow work boots.

  I hadn’t made a conscious decision to disobey the sign. I was simply outside of the swinging doors and then I was inside, the room cold, the shiny floor tiles continuing up the walls. I couldn’t take my eye off the metal table in the center of the room or the heaping mound on top of it, draped in a sheet.

  I set my foot inside the perfect square of one tile and let the other land beside it. A strange and powerful scent drew me deeper into the room. A scent I’d known all my life from my
father’s hands.

  At any time I could run back through the swinging doors and up the stairs to the part of the house I knew. That is what I thought as I began to skate, zigzagging around the edge of the room, my slippers making a shushing sound across the floor.

  Oh, but the feeling of skating through the shiny room where I wasn’t allowed, the feeling of my impulses triumphing over the sign—it all thumped through me like a song turned up loud in Pop’s hearse. I skated with my arms out to the sides. I skated round and round the table, near the great lump, then away toward the white cabinets, near the shiny tools, then away toward the wall.

  When I finally stopped, I saw up close what I had tried to convince myself I could not possibly have seen: a foot. A bare foot—waxy, the color of an unpeeled potato, a Yukon gold like we grew in our garden. Right away I thought of questions I was in no hurry to answer: Why was there a foot lying on the table? Who did it belong to? And what else was under that sheet?

  I let the white cloth brush against my arm, but that was all. Water gurgled through a pipe along the ceiling, and the swinging doors suddenly seemed very far away. When the room quieted again, I heard my name, just a whisper. “Mary.” I looked to the toe as if it had spoken to me. The voice grew louder—“Mary”—and when I turned to run, it was right into my father.

  What relief to fall into his arms, my cheek against his plastic apron. He bent down, the plastic crinkling, until we were at eye level. I felt the warm weight of his thumb on the tip of my nose, his indication that I was in trouble but not very much. I was now safe to lower my shoulders, to breathe out. Because this was why I had come downstairs: to find him. To ask if it was time for breakfast and if I could have the pink cereal.

  Still holding my shoulders, he leaned back as if to see me more fully, inspecting me the way he might if I’d fallen off my bike.

  “Pop?”

  “Yes, Mary, what is it?”