She’s been keeping a countdown since before she could count.
Janie Lee and I have many similarities: A love of art and music. BBC shows and reruns of anything with Betty White. Neither of us is scared of spiders, and we both love the incessant humming of cicadas in a plague year. She’d kill a whole day lying beside me in the grass, face up to the sky, sun beaming down. But Janie Lee will not be lying in that tall bluegrass eleven months from now, because she does not share my love of our hometown. While I say, “I’m from Otters Holt,” she says, “I’m from Western Kentucky.” That’s as proud as she gets.
Janie Lee pulls me into the mother of all side hugs. She smells much better than the last time she side-hugged me.
“I’ll fix this church stuff. Somehow,” I tell her.
She believes me and says, “Last night seems like a million years ago.”
Two million.
She starts to say something else, but Davey reappears in a very non–Otters Holt, very new, and very shiny black Audi R8. Whoever is driving doesn’t get out or put the car in park. Davey slinks from the passenger side, eyeliner reapplied, one crumpled band shirt swapped out for the next. We wait on him to saunter over before we head to Mash’s room. Neither of us asks after the Audi, but I’m dying to. Sweet ride of Satan, it’s beautiful.
Fifty’s practically licking the windowpane when we all get inside. “Nice wheels.”
Davey coughs up a name. “Thomas.”
“Thomas,” Fifty mouths behind Davey’s back. He puckers his lips and makes a kissing noise.
Huh, maybe, I think. They could be a thing. Then again, Fifty thinks everyone will bag anyone.
Woods removes his fingers from the mini-blinds. Steps away from the window and falls on Mash’s bed. “Five things to do with an Audi,” he says in his rule-the-world way.
“Five things to do in an Audi,” Fifty corrects.
“Ah, Einstein,” Janie Lee says nostalgically.
“He’ll rise again.” Woods’s imperial face says, After the funeral, people, after the funeral.
Fifty claps Mash on the shoulder and pushes him sideways onto the bed. Fifty has four older brothers. Shoving people around is his love language. Except then he adds, “You know, I hate to say it, but your granddad dying saved our ass.”
We stare slack-jawed at Fifty.
“What?” Fifty says. “You’re all thinking it too.”
Nope. I’m thinking: Big T was an adult I genuinely liked. I’m thinking: He’s always held off the wolves from Brother Scott McCaffrey and his wayward daughter. With Tyson alive, this fire thing would have been a nonissue. I’m thinking: With Tyson dead, Dad could face serious consequences from my actions. Again.
Woods tells Fifty to shut it so no one else has to, and Fifty is maybe red-cheeked, but it’s hard to tell with all that facial hair. “I’m not glad he’s dead,” he corrects. “Mash knows that.”
He shoves Mash again. Mash shoves back. They’re fine.
Davey drops his phone in the back pocket of his jeans, rejoins the conversation. “Oh, we know what you meant.” It comes out more like, We know who you are.
Davey’s texting habits distract me. Was his last text—the one right before he stowed his phone—to Audi Thomas? Is that who Davey texts when the rest of us don’t need to text anyone because we are all there? He must have a whole group of friends back in Nashville. They must love him in a way we’re only scratching at, and I wonder if it’s lonely to be with us instead of them.
For the rest of the day, we distract Mash and Davey with cards, food, and more Best of Tyson Vilmer stories. The time he played Wiffle ball, put a pie in Tawny Jacobs’s face, rode Mash on the tractor, gave the library all his books. The time he did everything and anything needed. We even drive to the edge of town and try to sit mournfully beneath the Molly the Corn Dolly statue. Frankly, it’s difficult to sit mournfully beside a forty-foot-tall blazing-yellow roadside attraction. So we play a few rounds of Hacky Sack and brag to intermittent tourists that Mash and Davey’s granddad is the one who built Molly the Corn Dolly. The tourists seem suitably impressed.
In late afternoon, we’re back in Mash’s room when Jeanelle leans through the doorway. There’s a poker game and a box of chicken in the center of our circle. We quiet down. “If you’re willing”—she dabs her eyes with a Kleenex—“Harold would appreciate you helping out with the funeral. Big T wrote down what he wanted in the King James. You’re all a part.”
There are two things every old person in Otters Holt has: a King James with “arrangements” and a list of Corn Dolly winners taped to the fridge.
Jeanelle shifts a deep-pink hair wrap and gathers her thoughts. Even now, when she is so clearly sad, she wears a touch of pink eye shadow that makes her face look thirty instead of forty.
She starts assigning tasks. “Janie Lee and Woods, will you do your thing?”
Their thing is a musical combo: violin, and piano and vocals. They’ve been performing together since Janie Lee picked up a bow in fourth grade. I hate them a little when they play. I can sing; they bend notes to their whims and instruments to their wants.
“He has the rest of you as pallbearers,” Jeanelle tells us.
We nod, as if this is expected.
We do the other expected things too. Visitation. Sad hearts. More sleeping piles.
The morning of the funeral, I shower at my house and ask Mom about dress codes. I’ve been to dozens of funerals—a terrible by-product of having a minister as a father. They are the one time I venture into the recesses of my closet and emerge with one of the two black dresses I own. But today, I’m thinking black pants are the ticket.
“I can wear this?” I point to the clothes laid out on my bed. I’m still walking softly because of the fire.
Mom fastens pearls behind her neck and checks her nail polish after the clasping. That leaves her to survey my room.
“Yes to the clothes. No to your boots. And please move this stuff to the garage before your dad comes back here.”
My room is totally undone. A half-carved wooden elephant head is on my desk. Eight canvases lean in the corner. Another four are on the floor. The paints and dirty brown cup of water are out too. They’re from Thursday night. A whirlwind of clothes from this weekend’s comings and goings threatens to swallow the clothes I’ve laid out.
I’m not trying to be an asshole, but I’m wearing the boots.