The ones who’d said they would. Shot him down this morning.
Darren speaks flatly, bitterly. Of course, it is true. All this while we have known.
Except, Melissa has not known. It will be a long time before Melissa ceases to ask—Where is Daddy? When is Daddy coming home?
Why can’t we go live with Daddy?
There will be a funeral for Gus Voorhees, but not in Ohio. The funeral will be in Ann Arbor where we will all be staying.
Not today, not tomorrow.
But when is today, and when is tomorrow?
Darren speaks flatly, bitterly. Darren has said he will never forgive our mother.
Why?—Naomi asks; and Darren says because our mother didn’t want to move to Ohio to be with our father, if we’d all been living there this would not have happened.
But how do you know that? How can you say that?—Naomi asks, astonished; and Darren says Just go to hell. You don’t know shit.
Soon after, Naomi hears a furious braying sound outside, in the old hay barn—her brother playing his trumpet like a summoning of the dead.
BY THE TIME Leonard McMahan arrives at the house at Salt Hill Road the sky has darkened. Our mother has not yet called home and Ellen Farlane has heated chicken noodle soup for us and has helped us pack our things—pajamas, toothbrushes, socks and underwear, clothing and school things.
“I hope we never come back to this fucking place.”
“We have to come back. We have school.”
Naomi has considered saying We have fucking school to impress her foul-mouthed brother but at the last moment she doesn’t dare.
Soon, however, she will dare. Fuck this fucking place she will dare.
Fuck you I hate you fuck-face who the fuck do you think you are just go to hell—will you?
Seated in the Michigan State Police cruiser two police officers remain on the property, at the crest of the driveway. When Naomi listens closely she can hear the cacophonous sound of their radio.
What are the police officers talking about? Are they laughing? Are they thinking—Well, he got what he deserved. Killing babies like he did what’d he think would happen to him someday.
Driving to Ann Arbor in pelting icy rain. In the front seat Leonard and Chrissie McMahan sit stiffly, not knowing what to say to the Voorhees children who have lost their father—who will never see their daddy again. The McMahans’ words of sympathy and comfort have trailed off into an awkward silence. So many times they have said You will be all right. Nothing will happen to you. Your father was so proud of you and he loved you so much. Your mother is a very brave woman.
It is all bullshit, Naomi thinks. No one wants to be brave! What you want is to be alive.
This is the beginning of a succession of displacements. Being driven from one (temporary) residence to another. Sometimes their mother is with them, and sometimes not. Sometimes the three of them are together, and sometimes not. (In time, increasingly not.) Being sympathized-with, comforted. Hearing the formula words. Your father was a great, brave man. Your father was loved by all who knew him. Your father would be so proud of you if he knew.
Proud is like brave, Naomi thinks. Alive is what matters.
After a while there will be fewer tears. A kind of wet ash instead of tears streaking their young faces.
It is the abrupt end of childhood. Even for Darren who is fifteen years old who might (plausibly) have thought that he wasn’t a child any longer, it is the abrupt and irrevocable end.
On this trip to Ann Arbor along icy-rain-lashed roads Darren has let his head fall against the car window beside him numbed to the vibrations of the glass against his skull, he has not been listening to anything the McMahans have been saying and if he had been, he would have taken no comfort, for it isn’t comfort Darren wants, it is revenge. Melissa is just a little girl, she has only a vague comprehension of dead, death which is like an enormous space it hurts to try to see, the up of it, and the down of it, and it’s a whitely blinding space like a vast warehouse, her brain hurts seeing it; and so, Melissa has fallen asleep exhausted. Beside her Naomi has been rethinking the situation, maybe she isn’t being punished, maybe she isn’t important enough to be punished, or to bring about a punishment of her father; in fact, there might have been a mistake, her father is in another hospital in Ohio not the one her mother was told he was in, her father was shot by an anti-abortion protester but it was only a warning shot and when they arrive in Ann Arbor there will be a message waiting for them from their mother. Good news after all! Sorry to alarm you but Daddy says hello.
Beyond this, Naomi hasn’t imagined. Not just yet.
“REMAINS”
Mrs. Voorhees?”
Was this a question? Did such a question imply that she had a choice?—she was, or she was not, Mrs. Voorhees.
“Step through here. Please.”
So it wasn’t a question. It was a commandment.