“No!” he shouted, but I didn’t think he was shouting at me or shouting about what I’d done. He was shouting at God for taking away his cat. He was shouting at his own unhappy heart. “Aw, shit! Aw, shit, Roswell.”
He slid off the bottom step of the bus and onto his knees. Roswell was curled up on his side in a red splash of blood. Marc DeSpot took his limp body in both hands, pulling him close, lifting him up, hugging him.
I touched DeSpot’s arm, and he knocked my hand aside with his elbow.
“Get the fuck away from me!” he cried. “I didn’t ask you to do that! You didn’t have any right!”
“I’m sorry. But it was for the best. That cat was in agony.”
“So who asked you? Did I ask you?”
“There was nothing that could’ve saved Roswell.”
“You don’t get moving, you filthy lez,” he said, “there’s nothing gonna be able to save you.”
I didn’t pay any mind to that. He was hurting. The whole world was.
I dug in my bag and offered Marc DeSpot a bottle of water. He didn’t look at it and he didn’t look at me, so I put it down in the road next to his hip. Close up I could see he was younger than I’d thought at first. He might’ve been no older than me. I felt sympathy for him, in spite of his nasty mouth and childish ways. I was all alone in the world, too.
I got up and went on, but when I’d covered another three blocks, I happened to glance back and discovered that Marc DeSpot was following me. He staggered like a drunk, about a hundred feet behind, and when I looked at him, he quickly turned away and pretended to be staring through a smashed plate-glass window into the darkened interior of a secondhand-electronics store. He had produced a white straw cowboy hat from somewhere, and with that on his head and a red bandanna around his throat he looked more like a youthful vaquero than ever.
The sight of him trailing along behind me made me ill at ease. In our brief encounter, he had struck me as the kind of person who is a victim of his own emotions, impulsive and immature. It occurred to me now that he might have made up his mind I was a sadistic breaker of hearts and slayer of felines and that he was cruising to express his displeasure with a closed fist. Or maybe he was looking to improve his fighting record to six wins by hauling off and belting a lonely lesbian with an unfortunate resemblance to Squiggy.
I went on, though, and in another block was able to take a deep breath. If he’d been hoping to jump me, he’d lost his chance. As Broadway descended south into Lower Chautauqua, it became steadily more crowded. I heard a noisy rumble, and an enormous dump truck with chains on its tires turned onto the street in front of me. Shiny nails of crystal imploded under its wheels. A big dude in a filthy yellow jumpsuit and elbow-length rubber gloves rode on the back end. Behind him the flatbed was stacked three deep with corpses.
The truck wove around abandoned cars, and when there wasn’t room to go around, it went through, bashing wrecks out of its way. It joined a slow-moving caravan of other dump trucks. They were lined up to turn into a football field behind the high school.
It seemed like half of Boulder was there, wandering in a daze—packs of children with grimy faces, old ladies in housecoats. When I got closer, I could see dead people laid out in rows along the yard lines of the football field, from one set of goalposts to the other. The trucks were collecting the dead, and family members had followed in their wake to see that the remains of their loved ones were treated right.
You would expect them all to be sobbing, for the field to be a Greek chorus of wails and screams, but people were better behaved than that. We’re people of the heartland, we don’t make too much of a fuss. It seems impolite. I imagine that a lot of people were too sleepless and shocked to carry on. Maybe it would’ve felt rude to rend your clothes and tear your hair with so many other grief-stricken people around.
There were folding tables set up at one end of the field, manned by two crews: a team from Staples and a gang of kids from McDonald’s. The McDonald’s squad had a few charcoal braziers going. Under the diesel stink of the trucks, I could make out the cheery, greasy odor of McMuffins and burgers.
A line of about twenty people led up to the tables. I don’t know why I got into the queue. Maybe it was that hungry-making smell, or maybe I was thinking I could see if there was a place here for Yolanda and her mother. Maybe I was just hoping Marc DeSpot would lose interest and decide to stop trailing me now that I was in a crowd. He was still there, pretending not to look at me but hovering at the outskirts of the action.
I waited my turn, and when I got up to the table, a tall, gawky gal wearing a pair of giant glasses and a red Staples shirt said, “Are you looking for someone or bringing someone in?” In front of her, she had a set of rotary files and a bag full of manila tags.
“Neither right yet. How does it all work?”
“Staples will tag your loved one and file their location on the field for future reference. If you have a Staples Rewards account, we’ll even e-mail you all the burial information. It’s all free to show our commitment to rebuilding the greater Boulder area through the combined forces of local volunteers and Staples’ great products and services.” She recited her lines in a dazed drone.
“I might want to bring my friend and her mom down. I don’t know yet. It’d be a long way to haul them.”
“We’re arranging pickups, too, but it might be three to four days.”
“Will there even be any room left on the field by then?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yes, absolutely. We’re burying the first wave at one P.M. There’ll be prayers from six different faiths, and Sizzler will provide catering.” She pointed to some other trucks under the goalposts, filled with dirt and rocks. “After we cover them over, I’m afraid it’ll be necessary to bury another group on top of them. We’re hoping to manage three a plot.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, and she nodded, and then a teenager standing beside her asked if I wanted large fries or an Egg McMuffin and told me that McDonald’s wanted to express their sorrow for my loss. It was the end of the world, but you could still hit the drive-thru on your way to oblivion.
Of course it was good of them all to be doing what they were doing, helping folks lay their loved ones to rest and making sure everyone got fed. When the sky starts raining nails, you find out pretty fast what parts of a culture are the sturdiest. One thing Americans do well is make an assembly line. Not twenty-four hours after a few thousand people were ripped to shreds by falling needles, and we were burying our dead with all the efficiency of packing a Happy Meal.