I’ll be talking to Eddy about guns because Eddy, like Cal, is a bit of a gun nut. I'll tell him about Cal’s Uzi or about my Ruger. Eddy likes to hunt big game. I myself have never gotten into hunting, but it’s interesting listening to him talk about some caribou or something that he’d taken down with a bolt-action .308 Winchester Model 70 from two hundred and fifty yards out. A fly-in camp near the Arctic Circle, no less, and the trekking across spongy tundra and the big sky filled with waterfowl and distance in all directions like nothing he’s ever seen and the great wash of fast moving rivers across gravel and the brown bears like spots on the horizon that you would peer at through your scope to get a better look and nighttime in a flimsy tent listening to the noises outside and the aurora borealis that was so beautiful he named his kid after it.
The way Eddy talked it would take you away to a different place, and one morning two hundred yards outside his tent he saw a small gathering of caribou cows and some juveniles and fifty yards yet further out there was a big bull standing all by himself sniffing the air with his nostrils then dropping his head to nibble a bit at the tundra and then came the scramble for the Winchester as Eddy tried for the shot of his life and he felt the throb of heart in his head as he tried to steady the gun and there it was the big bull with the massive rack jerking around the inside of Eddy’s scope and then the gentle squeeze of the trigger and Eddy got him straight through the carotid artery first the bullet hit the bull then almost in slow motion the caribou turned its head around as if scanning the horizon for something—that peaceful, curious look animals get—almost human on its face—a human with horns—and then as if it had been detonated from within the bull collapsed like a building—boom—hitting the turf and then they had to call the fly-in plane and while waiting, there was the cleaning of the caribou and the eating raw of the nearly-still-beating heart. Just then the door opens and to my surprise it’s Rita come to claim me while Eddy is mid-sentence and holy shit why me because I want to know what happens next.
Hi Art, she says, grabbing my arm.
Hi Rita.
Time to go, Art.
One more drink and then let’s go, OK?
No. I want you out of here now, OK?
OK, I say. For what other choice do I have but to say OK and goodnight Eddy?
Goodnight Art.
Nice talking with you as always, Eddy.
Same same, Art.
By the way, how was the heart?
The heart?
The caribou’s heart? You said you ate it raw?
And before he can answer Rita’s tugging at my arm.
I don’t want to listen to this.
And how do you do it, I yell into the place, as she drags me out. I scream into the place as she drags me out: How do you, Eddy? How do you run a successful business and live a successful life? Tell me how do you to it? I need to know!
Shut up you crazy drunk, Rita says, pulling on my arm and dragging away. You’re talking stupid.
Off Rita and I go, off into the night. With her shouting: Truthful, truthful, I need you to be truthful, Art.
Truthful about what, Rita?
Truthful about what you’ve become.
What have I become, Rita?
You’ve become a loser, Art, just like all the rest. And tell me, what would your daughter Meg think if she saw you like this?
What if?
Yeah, Art, what if?
?
The crowd at Albert Volares’ funeral is getting antsy.
The kid in the pink housecoat steps away from the gathering and sits on a tombstone with a girl who has long blond hair that blows in the breeze. Another boy stands in front of her.
The one kid in the housecoat tilts his head upward, and the girl pushes the hair from her face and looks at the dirt near her feet. The other looks off in the direction of the priest. They seem nonchalant. Disconnected. Sculptures to eternally disaffected youth. Some way to get out of school, witnessing the grief of others. I feel I don’t understand them. I feel born of a different generation.
The mother of the deceased, on the other hand, I know what she’s going through. I understand what I’m seeing there. She is trying mightily to keep from breaking down. Her husband stands behind her and grips her around the waist trying to keep her from exploding. The priest speaks in a monotone as if he’s done this thing a million times before, which he probably has.
Albert was a good boy, the priest says. Now he is an angel in heaven. He was an altar boy who helped serve communion. Now he is an angel in heaven. It is in communion that we are gathered here today to put Albert to rest. Let us pray that his life was not in vain. Some of us are given to living long lives, others of us, the Lord will take before our time, but it is not incumbent on us to divine the Lord’s will. It is only enough to understand that the Lord has a will and a plan for each of us and it is his will that we pray, may be done.
¤
After that Italian dinner when we first met, Rita and I wandered into the hotel across from my office. We took a room on the thirteenth floor. Neither of us had bags, and the fact that we found ourselves here, going up in an elevator, astonished me a little. It’s funny the curveballs life can throw you. One minute you’re throwing flowers on your wife’s grave. The next moment you’re going up an elevator with a strange woman you just drank too much Chianti with.
I never do this sort of thing, she said.
Neither do I.
I hope you know I don’t normally do this sort of thing.
No need to apologize.
I never do this.
Neither do I.
I’m not so easy as this. It’s only…
Listen I’ve been married forever. It’s new to me too. Nothing to worry about.
It’s only that I. You have been a real comfort to me today. I want to thank you.
She wore just the faintest perfume that was slightly alienating.
I tried to ease the situation with a smile.
It’s OK to try something different. We only live once.
Yes, isn’t this what this is about?
What do you mean?
About living once. We met in a cemetery. This is about life, living, the recognition that we…that we live once and then we die.
OK…
She paused, took a breath. What are we going to do in this hotel room anyway?
I suppose we’ll just have to go into the hotel room and find out. By the way, let me say it again, that’s a nice sweater.
My mom knit it.
She must have been something.
She understood me.
I’m sure that was nice.
For me, it was everything.
The elevator binged and we got off.
?
She sat down on the bed and I sat in a chair across from her.
How have you been since your wife died?
How have I been? Terrible.
But do you feel like I feel?
I don’t know.
You don’t know how you feel?
A little. And I suppose I don’t know how you feel.
Alone is how I feel.
I do too, I suppose. Though I have a daughter. And my office is across the street. And I know lots of people so I don’t feel quite so alone.
What’s her name?
Who, my daughter?
Yeah.
Meg. She’s down in New Orleans. Tulane. We sorted through a bunch of things after the funeral and then abruptly, she left. And so she’s there and I’m here. But yes. I don’t feel alone so much as…
What.
Uprooted. Broken. Hurt. Unable to go on…Shall I go on? I feel disoriented. Lost. I don’t have much desire for anything.
They say it will pass.
I hope so.
It will pass.
I don’t know. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. We’ll see.