But I would be wasting my shot, because the kid was in no mood to hear it. I can still feel in my bones how being mad was the one thing holding me together. Mad at everybody but mostly her, for marrying Stoner and then ditching us both, running off to some heaven where she could throw her shit anywhere at all, and nobody would ever lay a hand on her again.
And I’d have to go on living with what an asshole I’d been to her, especially at the end that I didn’t know was the end. Last time I’d seen her at the house, did I even say goodbye, or let her hug me? I can’t tell you. I’ve tried and will go on trying to see those last minutes again, pounding on them sometimes like it’s the door of a damn bank vault, but if there’s anything in there at all to be remembered, it’s not coming to me. Access denied.
Instead, I get to remember every single thing about the funeral. That day sits big and hard in my brain like this monster rock in the ocean, waiting to wreck me. I wish to God it would leave my brain. It stays. All of it. The itchy black socks borrowed from Mr. Peg because I’d outgrown all but my gym socks. The smell of sweat and shoe polish. The toothpaste green of the walls, a color Mom hated. The sound of the quavery organ, old ladies stinking of perfume. The wasps, this whole slew of them, buzzing and buzzing at the colored windows way up high. It was a warm day for November and I guess they woke up. I watched them all through the service.
The people in the church looked like strangers. Some or most I’m sure I’d met before, but I wasn’t seeing faces, just the rock-hard hearts. All of them thinking Mom brought this on herself, and was getting the last ride she deserved in that cheap white casket. A mean side to people comes out at such times, where their only concern is what did the misfortunate person do to put themselves in their sorry fix. They’re building a wall to keep out the bad luck. I watched them do it. If that’s all the better they could do for Mom, they were nothing at all to me.
What I had felt at the Peggot house with the too-quiet cousins wasn’t wrong: I was a strange new being, turned overnight. Creaky liked to call us orphan boys, and I always felt proud inside for not actually being one. So that was me doing the same, building the wall with me still on the lucky side. Now I’d gone over to the side of pitiful, and you never saw a kid so wrecked. At the start of the service they did that song about Amazing God, and I felt exactly the opposite: I once could see but now I’m blind, was found but now I’m lost.
The preacher and his sermon, the sin and the flesh, all that I won’t go into. I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about my little brother being in that casket with her. That part hadn’t dawned on me until I’d gone up to view her with Mrs. Peggot. She patted Mom on her dead hand and said, “Poor little Mama, you tried your best,” and that’s where it hit me: my brother was in that casket. I was robbed. What a goddamn waste.
I’d had no intention of going to look at her with Stoner up there holding court, and anyway what kid wants to get that close to a dead body, let alone his mom’s? My plan was to hang back and let other people do the viewing. But Mrs. Peggot had her eye on me, and right before it was time to sit down, she told me I would always regret it if I didn’t go say goodbye before they closed the casket. It hadn’t really sunk in that they were about to shut her in there. Permanently. I let Mrs. Peggot take hold of my shoulders and walk me up the aisle.
And even still, I ended up not saying goodbye. Too shocked. Not just by her being dead, which was expected. And the part about my little brother, unexpected. The worst was how pissed off she looked. I’ve heard it said that the dead look peaceful after they’re laid to rest, but they’ve not seen the likes of Mom that day. If I was burned about this, she was righteous burned. It messed with my head, as far as my theory of her running off and getting away with it.
So I sat in that church hating on the world. The service took forever, and the burial more so. To get to the cemetery, I ended up riding in a limo that was supposedly for the family. The funeral director put me in there even though the Peggots brought me, and Stoner being Stoner drove his precious truck. As far as Mom and family, I was it. In a car the size of a living room, with extra seats and push-button everything. Every kid dreams of riding in a limo at some point, prom or whatever, but count me out because I had my shot and it was the saddest ride of my life.
The driver was the funeral director’s son and he had a girl riding with him up front. Her hair was all on top of her head in one of those clip things, and she kept playing with the curly blond baby hairs on the back of her neck while the two of them talked nonstop. I could hear something about a forfeited basketball game, something about somebody getting a restraining order, something about a guy caught cheating and getting slapped walleyed. High school type information. He was one of those overly tall kids you see with the too-big Adam’s apple and giant hands, the backs of his ears red, even though it was late in the year for any work that would sunburn you. He mostly nodded and laughed while she talked. She took off her shoes and put her stocking feet up on the dash. My first thought was huh, she’s not family, and my second was, she didn’t go to this funeral at all, she’s dressed pretty slutty actually, and they are flirting up there.
After a while his arm stretches out on the seat and it’s him running his thumb over the back of her neck. He’s putting moves on this chick, thinking of pussy while driving me to see my mom get put in the ground. It hit me pretty hard, how there’s no kind of sad in this world that will stop it turning. People will keep on wanting what they want, and you’re on your own.
Mom got buried over in Russell County in a plot with Stoner’s dead relatives. Probably he already owned the plot, and with him paying for everything, the shots were his to call. But she should have been buried with my dad. It looked like I’d lost all chances now for seeing that grave, wherever it was, and I’d be damned if I was ever coming back to Russell County to hang around dead Stoner kin, so that was that. I was in the same boat with Tommy. If I wanted to visit my parents, I would have to make little fake graves to leave behind me on my road to nowhere.
What’s an oxy, I’d asked. That November it was still a shiny new thing. OxyContin, God’s gift for the laid-off deep-hole man with his back and neck bones grinding like bags of gravel. For the bent-over lady pulling double shifts at Dollar General with her shot knees and ADHD grandkids to raise by herself. For every football player with some of this or that torn up, and the whole world riding on his getting back in the game. This was our deliverance. The tree was shaken and yes, we did eat of the apple.
The doctor that prescribed it to Louise Lamie, customer service manager at Walmart, told her this pill was safer than safe. Louise had his word on that. It would keep her on her feet for her whole evening shift, varicose veins and all, and if that wasn’t one of God’s miracles then you tell me what is. And if a coworker on Aisle 19 needs some of the same, whether she borrows them legit or maybe on the sly from out of your purse in the break room, what is a miracle that gets spread around, if not more miracle?