In Lieu of Flowers
Barry’s just trying to be nice, waiting to see if today is the day I’ll need help getting to the elevator, even though I’ve never made the slightest effort to hide my surliness about his Boy Scout routine. He’s been even worse since I started coming into work without Jake. After putting the headphones in my desk drawer, I bang it shut real loud, hoping the sound will scare Barry off or at least give him an idea of how badly I don’t want him hovering around my cube. I know I shouldn’t be rude, he means well.
Like anyone, I blamed myself when Doc Prichitt told me Jake had developed diabetes. He said that it was hard to determine with exact certainty what had caused it, probably a whole host of factors including a genetic predisposition. I’m sure diet played a part too, however large or small. I just had such a time of it finding a food he liked when I first got him that when I finally hit upon the kind of kibble he’d really chow on, I didn’t give it any more thought. Not like they print the nutritional information on the side of dog food bags in Braille, at least not where I buy it. My fault all around’s how I feel about it.
If the insulin injections hurt, Jake’s too proud to whimper about them. I’ve gotten pretty good at finding that pinch of flesh on the neck just above his shoulder blades, the scruff where his momma used to get hold of him. I take that bit of skin between by my thumb and first two fingers, slip the needle in and depress the plunger. The trick is to do it real quick, one fast motion.
Bitch of the whole thing, I mean besides my pal’s sight going now too, not to mention the general decline in his health, is that I’ve had to get reacquainted with my walking stick. I hate the way the damn thing clicks and clacks all over the place. It practically screams, here comes the old blind man, everyone. Though mastering how to read the sound of the cane striking ground, I’ve relearned, can mean the difference between looking like I know what I’m doing or like a drunk in eminent danger of walking into something.
With Jake, I used to be able to sneak up on people. We secreted down the sidewalks and across intersections like a damned six-legged ninja, earning many a gasp. I think the reactions were borne not out of surprise but from people realizing they’d just witnessed two beings who’d figured out something about the inherit interdependence of all living things; a fact few pause to consider. I imagine, once they did, it made them realize how alone they’d let themselves become.
Social services’ll tell you when you first get a seeing-eye dog to try and not get too attached. For maximum mobility, try to think of the animal as a tool to be used, they say, or an extension of you. I don’t know about others of his kind but ol’Jake’s got too much personality for me to assume even the smallest portion of his existence.
I don’t have to be able to look someone in the eyes to know how they feel about me. Jake and I, to use a term I hate because it’s the way flakes talk about life’s mysteries, ‘got’ one another right from the start, knew who each other was in this bittersweet world where a man can get a companion of such total loyalty, more than most of humanity is even capable of imagining, and all it costs him is his sight. True love comes without claims or conditions, only circumstances and the wisdom to navigate them.
Since Jake’s vision’s probably gone by now, I have to leave him at home pretty much all the time. Sometimes, I think about getting another dog to lead the two of us around, like some freak, handicapped sled dog team. That’d get some reactions on mass transit and in line at the market. My favorite driver on the 39 bus, Ramon, would get a real kick out of it, I’m sure. He’s been a little down since I started clicking my way onboard. Still no Jake, he says and I hear the emptiness in his voice. I haven’t yet the heart to tell him the truth.
It takes me a bit more time getting around lately, not sure how long that’s going to last. I came to see the world through Jake’s eyes, feel it as he felt it and trust his instincts, which seem to have blunted my own. I’m like a baby learning to walk, feeling my way through the world again. I go out much less than I used to. There are parts of this city, this world that no old blind man and his cane need to be stumbling into. I still go to work, of course, and the market and the Chinese place at the top of the hill. The family that runs the joint, the Yu’s, are very nice. They miss Jake. They always give me a little extra to take home for him. Beef and broccoli light on the sauce, Jake eats every bit of it.
Getting home from work is my favorite time of day, now more than ever. Jake licks his chops as soon as I get the key in the deadbolt. If I struggle with it, he’ll scratch at the door a little, he wants to help. Once I get it open, he gets on his hind legs so I can hug him on my way in. We can walk over to the stereo together. He loves for me to put on some dinner music. Usually it’s the blues; Long John Baldry and the same food that’s been killing him all these years.
Every time I go to change the record or even flip one over, he walks with me. Not sure if he fears for my safety or just wants to make sure I put on stuff he likes. For blues and jazz, his ears are always perked up. I can get them laying back closer to his skull and twitching a bit by putting on some opera. Jake’ll just about abide opera now. He used to leave the room and not come back in until the last echoes of the finale had died away. I assume he’d hate rock and rap and country and pop and all that shit, just like I do.
In bed, he stretches out next to me rather than lie on the floor. He can’t really help me if I have to get up anyway so he might as well get comfortable. We sleep back to back just like Linda and I used to. The act seems less cold now then it did at the end of that fiasco. It’s nice having another body there to keep things warm but I don’t kid myself that it’s like having a woman there. It isn’t even close.
I’d spent my youth with Linda but not much beyond it and that always seemed right to me. She left just as we were both starting to get old. A young couple seems nice and right and beautiful, a gift to the world and its possibilities, while an old couple’s faintly ridiculous and desperate, clinging on to each other when they’ll only end up alone, one of them anyway.
One morning, having to cross town all the way to the south side, I get up early. I’d taken the day off from work and dress nicer than normal, no khakis and Kitchen Gorilla polo, it’s the full-on fancy for me today. Surprisingly, my sports coat still fits. I hadn’t worn it since Ma’s funeral, seven years ago. The slacks that go with it pinch a bit in the wrong area but I’ll just adjust my walk. My dress shoes, which I still mentally refer to as my church shoes, even though it’s been an age since I last darkened a blessed doorway, feel stiff not that I’ll be dancing any steps.
I have to take the 347 that stops all the way on the other side of the square, which means I have to cross the street outside my building, walk across the park then cross another busy street to make it there. Since it’s the start of the route, the bus sits there idling, a choked rumbling coming from it as I get on. A couple of gals are chatting away in back. In whispers, I hear flashes of a tale about their boss sleeping with someone he shouldn’t be, Julie seems to be her name. A couple of rows closer to the front sits one, probably two silent schoolboys who’d yet to learn the importance of deodorant. A woman with a small yappy dog sits on the bench up front, near the driver. She keeps shushing him and he keeps yammering on. Jake could sure show that pip-squeaker a thing or two about how to behave on the bus. I’m glad the seat across from her, which is reserved for types like me, is free. It embarrasses me when people get up to offer it for my blind ass. I always tell them that I don’t need it, that they should sit back down, then I grab the strap and hang on for grim life.
At every stop light, the creaking of the breaks both from beneath and surrounding us sounds like large, angry crickets. The girls who work for the over-sexed fellow get off at the VA Medical Center. Outside someone’s smoking at the stop but they don’t get on, probably waiting for the 182, which makes more local stops. The teenagers, how ever many of them there are, disembark at the subway station at the bottom of the hill. They must be students at the Burns School which is only a couple of stops down that line, if memory serves. I keep saying they because I hope from the intensity of the smell there’s more than one of them, it’s much too pungent for one person at the beginning of the day. If it is just one kid, he must have some sort of unfortunate glandular problem.
No one gets on or off for many stops after that. There are plenty of lights and traffic to keep the going slow. Molasses transit’s more like it. The robot voice announcing the stops and transfer points begins to sound a little desperate, calling them out with no one taking her up on Myrtle Street or Bainbridge Road or Fullerton Station or any of the other streets and subway stops that intersect with the bus route. Finally, when we cross the river with the steel of the bridge humming under our wheels, the woman across from me rings the bell, telling her little Chester they’ve almost made it.
At my stop, the last on that bus route, the driver asks if I’m sure I want to get off. I tell him I do and ask if Holt Street is close. He tells me to go straight for two blocks and I’ll hit it. I ask just to make sure that will lead me to the intersection of Grant and Holt Streets. He says it does and sounds surprised as people inevitably do on finding that the world isn’t as bewildering to me as they think it must be. He tells me to be careful, that it isn’t the best neighborhood and I can feel his concern watching my back as I start to shuffle my way down Grant.
Even in its best days, this part of town hoped to brag it was working class. Stumble on some tourists types here and you know they’re really lost. I hear sirens that sound far off in the distance at first but they quickly come closer. My cane scrapes over lots of broken glass like it must’ve been from a storefront window. Nearby, someone’s smoking marijuana as they watch what sounds to be a one of those talk shows where everyone gets physically confrontational with each other by the times the credits roll. From across the street, a couple argues in Spanish about their car.
“Entonces ¿por qué tenemos el coche,?” a woman asks. No use asking this gringo, muchacha. He wouldn’t know.
At what I hope is Holt, I turn left and count out 50 paces. My system’s been refined over the years but still there’s the odd moment of confusion when I think I’m on my way to say a coffee shop and walk into a nail salon instead. The door moans when I open it and a tiny bell rings like it’s not meant to be heard. Sawdust thick in the air, sweet and earthy, lets me know I’m probably in the right place.
Neither the bell nor Henry’s cane clacking against the concrete of the workroom rose above the sound of Cyril’s palm sander as he worked over the shop’s sign. The piece of premium cedar had been cut, carved and hung by his grandfather decades ago, back in the days when it was unnecessary for the word “Custom” to precede the title of “Cabinet Maker.” Cedar was a hardy all-season wood and the sign needed far less attention than the buffing up Cyril gave it a couple of times a year. He liked the smell of its sawdust almost as much as he did keeping busy.
Business had slowed to the point that he found himself looking more and more forward to Ricki’s daily visit. She was a young girl from the neighborhood that had just started showing up. It had begun one afternoon, when he was busy measuring the doors of a mahogany credenza that he’d been commissioned to build for some uptown lawyer.
He had heard the bell ring, thinking at first that his client has come to pay the agreed upon deposit just as Cyril had been pestering her to do. When he looked up, there was Ricki cradling scraps of wood in her arms. Her curly hair was done in two hasty pigtails and dirt smudged her cheeks and forehead.
“How can I help you, little lady,” he asked.
“I’ll sell you some wood for practice,” she said.
“Thanks but I’ve had enough practice,” he said and just at that moment of distraction lost his grip on side of the credenza. It fell to the floor with a sickening crack.
“See,” she said and dropped the wood at his feet. “Everyone needs practice. Five dollars, please.”
“Tell you what,” Cyril said, laughing in his exasperation, “I’ll give you ten.”
“Deal,” she said and they shook hands.
In the intervening months, she never brought him anything more than splintered bits of rot-softened soft wood of the kind that were in abundance on either side of the street. Most of that neighborhood resembled a smile of broken teeth with storefronts boarded up and graffitied or left exposed; windows smashed into converging networks of spider cracks. Some lots were totally vacant, squares of naked, trash-strewn earth, awaiting the new thing that never came to that part of town, entrepreneurial dreams that went from inspiring to dispiriting in the time it took some loan officer to open his mouth. Only a couple of nail salons hanging on by their over-buffed cuticles and a sparsely stocked bodega kept the cabinet maker from standing alone.
So, when he finally sensed someone else in the shop, Cyril looked up from his bench, expecting to find his part-time employee standing there with an offering of splintered goods cradled in her arms. When he saw Henry standing inside the door, tapping his cane, Cyril put the shop’s sign to the side and wiped the dust from his work table into a cupped hand.
“Morning, sir,” Cyril said, “sorry, I was…busy with this. Are you…how can I help you?”
“Is this Delacroix’s Custom Cabinets?” Henry asked. “I apologize because the sign you have hanging above the shop is said to be exquisite but I wouldn’t have seen it. Blind as a fruit bat, I’m afraid.”
“Actually, I’m doing some work on it so you didn’t miss a thing. You are in the right place, sir. I’m Cyril Delacroix. How can I be of service?”
“Of service, of service, I like that. I am looking to have something special made. You do special work?”
“I like to think I only make special things. What was it exactly that you were looking for?”
“A coffin.”
“A coffin?” Cyril asked.
“For a dog, my dog, Jake. He’s dying you see.”
“A dog coffin?”
“Afraid so. He has a rather advanced case of diabetes, along with being what they refer to as a geriatric canine.”
“I’ve never made a coffin before, dog or otherwise. Can I ask why you chose Delacroix’s? Why us?”
“People are quite high on the work done here. I’ve heard of many marvelous things crafted from little more than crude sketch drawn on a hotdog napkin.”
“It’s nice to know word gets around. Good to hear people think enough of it to brag on the work.”
“Yes, and after, basically, a lifetime of having to take people’s word for a great many things, my instinct for what is genuine and what is idle chatter has been more than adequately sharpened.”
“A dog coffin,” Cyril repeated, speculatively to himself. He scratched at his head, the sawdust that swirled up glittered in the meager glow that had managed to penetrate the filthy skylight above his worktable. “How big is the dog?”
“About,” Henry said, extending one hand from the ground up to the middle of his thigh, then stretched his hands apart while swinging his legs wide. “Like this.”
“Sizeable animal. I’ve never been asked to make anything like that. But I don’t see why it can’t be done. I’ll need some more exact measurements, if that’s possible.”
“Of course,” Henry said, making his way towards Cyril, offering a piece of paper on which Doctor Pritchitt had written down Jake’s measurements.
Later that night, Henry could barely bring himself to pet Jake, who took the unusually desperate step of placing his muzzle under his master’s hand. Not even Britten’s War Requiem chased him away. When Henry went to change the record, Jake followed as always but now with a whimper of neglect. After putting on some Howling Wolf, Henry groped for the dusty bottle of scotch at his little used sidebar. He placed two fingers in his glass and poured from the ancient bottle until the liquid tickled his fingers, making the glass three-quarters full. Henry, not a regular drinker, then surprised himself by bolting the whole thing down in one go. He poured a second more modest glass and made his way back to the chair. His steps had been loosened a bit by the biblical belt of scotch and he swayed unsteadily. Jake, sensing danger that he really couldn’t see, put his head to Henry’s thigh before his master mistakenly tried to sit on the armchair’s wooden arm.
“Thanks old buddy,” Henry said and gave the dog a vigorous head scratching. “I guess I thought we’d go out together, that our bond was powerful enough to help you live to some ridiculous old age or that I wouldn’t get quite so old as I have. Don’t know why they call it middle age; by the time that part came along it felt like I’d done everything I could to in order to call it a life.
“You’re already real old for a dog, you know.” Henry turned his hand over and stroked Jake’s jaw line with his knuckles. “You got me, you did. God, I can’t remember feeling like this even when Linda left.” Henry gave a snort that shook his body.
“It’s funny now that I think about it. She was always going on about my stubborn ways so I decided to show her. Before that, before you, I never much liked dogs. I didn’t have anything against them, I just, I don’t know, wasn’t used to them I suppose. And now, now I think your kind represents the finest of the Maker’s creations.”
Not long after finishing that second scotch, Henry passed out in his chair. He awoke to the sound of the needle skidding over the record label. Jake lay at his feet, panting. Half-dazed still from drink, Henry stumbled his way over to the record player and managed, after a couple of scratch inducing misses, to lift the needle and place it in its cradle. Then, he groped his way to the bedroom and collapsed onto the mattress, a string of drool shining from his chin. Jake followed, groggily banging into the wall. He climbed into bed next to Henry, squirming on the mattress until their backs were touching.
I wake with the feeling of fried wires smoldering in my brain and the retched taste of warmed over booze coating my tongue. At first, I fear I might’ve gotten sick in my sleep but sniffing around and feeling at myself and the bed and Jake, it doesn’t seem to be the case. I guess that’s just the taste of too much scotch. I don’t really drink often enough to know.
Jake’s breathing’s shallow. I put my ear to his chest. He whimpers then clicks his jaw before giving his snout a tired lick.
“Breakfast boy?” I ask and it gets him going a little. He rises and leaps down; not leaps exactly, poor boy hasn’t leapt in some time, but he does let himself fall down to the floor gracefully, one set of paws followed by the other. Getting myself off the bed proves more troublesome. My stomach aches and I have trouble catching my breath. For a moment, I think we were going out together, right then and there. Who would find us if we do? Probably that nosy Barry from work, he likes to drop by uninvited, see how I’m doing. He should get himself a woman or a man, whichever he’s into, and stop bothering the old, blind man whose cube just happens to be next to his.
In the shower, I get it together a bit. The hot water stinging my skin revives the blood. I feel life coming back within reach and the death for which my pounding head made me yearn recedes. When I take Jake out to relieve himself, I am struck again by how much he urinates nowadays, it’s a veritable tidal flood issuing forth. He has been drinking more. It’s all a part of the diabetes.
By the time we get back upstairs, I’m running late. Jake’s not waiting by the door to leave like he used to, now he’s just laying a heap at my feet while I get dressed. I wish I could look into his eyes to know how much he’s suffering.
I take all my calls at work but without my usual sense of purpose. It’s a good thing that I’ve been at it so long that I can help people troubleshoot while kind of on autopilot. When I first got this job, I went over the Braille version of our manuals until my finger was all calloused. Today, I’m so tired and sick feeling that I have the urge to tell customers that I’m blind and hung over, they should call back tomorrow.
Mercifully, the end of the day finally comes. I take off my headset and put it in the desk drawer. A group from the call center’s going out for drinks. Of course, Barry, with his lisp and cigarette breath, invites me to go. I politely decline. He presses me. I tell him I’m just too tired and he accepts this with the caveat of a promise for next time.
I shouldn’t be so harsh on him. He’s just the latest among my coworkers who feel compelled to draw me out of my shell, as they say. Hell, I like my shell, I need it. It’s like I used to tell Linda, I’ve spent years building it up, too much work’s gone into my shell for me to emerge from it every time any Tom, Dick or Barry give the outside of it a couple of friendly raps. I do say ‘yes’ to Barry just often enough that he doesn’t give up hope, so maybe I like people trying to crack it. Who knows? Another question for the headshrinker I’ll never see.
The first sign of worry is that Jake’s not at the door when I get home nor does he greet me when I open it. No sooner am I inside, then the stench of half-masticated dog food comes charging at me, nearly bringing me to my knees. I find Jake on his side in the kitchen, lying in a puddle of his own sick.
“Let’s get you cleaned up ol’buddy,” I say and Jake makes a noise somewhere between a pant and a moan.
I lift him up and carry him to the bathroom. There, I lay him down on the carpet and use a towel to wipe him off. Once that’s done, I give Doc Prichitt a call but get his machine. I try not to sound panicked but, sure as heaven, some must creep into my voice. Back in the kitchen, I find the edges of the mess which has by now spread out in an oval shape, some of it trickling into the living room, some slipping under the fridge. The wall separating the two rooms and the little island in the kitchen keep it narrow at least. I mark the edges with some paper towels and start pushing it all together, keeping my breathing shallow so as not to inhale too much of the stench. Once I think I’ve got it all up, I have to go over the area on my hands and knees. A random pool lays here or there and I, unfortunately, manage to grope my way into each one of them. When I’m just about totally done, there’s a knock at the door. I half hope its drunken Barry so I can give him a task that assures he’ll never offer me help again.
“Henry,” Doc Prichitt calls through the door. “It’s me. It’s Dr. Prichitt.”
I make sure and rinse off my hands before opening the door. There still some of Jake’s mess lingering in the air but not so a vet should be bothered.
“Doc,” I say, “I didn’t mean for you to come all the way out here tonight.”
“I take special interest in animals like Jake.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
“A bit of a workaholic, I am. Didn’t know that about me did you, Henry?”
“No, I guess I didn’t.”
“Count yourself lucky,” he says and I can almost see the smile on his face, “workaholic vets love making house calls. Where’s the patient?”
I lead him to the bathroom, then linger in the doorway as he checks Jake over. After couple of Jake’s moans, I can’t take it anymore and retreat to my chair in the living room. I know the news won’t be good. Doc isn’t likely to emerge from back there to tell me everything’s going to be all right, of that I’m fairly certain. Time melts by slowly, the present seems to just bleed into the past as the hiss of traffic from the open window grows more and more intermittent, until the passing cars sound lonely. The smell of Jake’s sick grows fainter, melting too into what has happened, what can’t be changed. The wind plays the blinds like a xylophone and flaps them against the window frames. Putting on a record doesn’t seem right, I can just about bring myself to think about it before a sharp pain jabs at my heart.
“He’s really suffering,” Doc finally says in a tone so solemn, I can only accept the full and terrible truth lurking behind his words.
“Is it…” is all I dare say. I’m so close to whimpering. I tighten my grip on the wooden armrests and gird myself for the inevitable.
“It’s time,” Doc says.
Cyril had to play the message a third then a fourth time. Finally, he realized who it was. Henry’s attempts to choke back sobs had been less than entirely successful. Cyril wasn’t used to that, no one cried over kitchen cabinets or bathroom vanities.
He wiped some dust from the top of the casket and opened the lid. Then, after working the hinges for a bit, Cyril adjusted the brackets and tightened the screws, making sure it shut tight. Stepping back, he appraised the box from a distance. It was almost finished.
“Henry,” he said into the phone minutes later, “it’s Cyril, Cyril Delacroix.
“Mr. Delacroix, thank you for calling me back.”
“No problem. The box is just about ready. I just want to apply one more coat of stain to the outside, really protect it from the elements. Should be dry within the next few hours.”
“That’s fine,” there was a long pause as Henry seemed to struggle to draw in a deep enough breath. “Jake is being put down today. I have to bring the coffin by the vet’s this evening. The doctor and I will lay him to rest.”
“Would you like me to bring it over there?”
“Oh…thank you but I couldn’t trouble you Mr. Delacroix.”
“It’s no trouble. It’s kind of bulky anyway. You’d have a heck of a time getting it home.”
“No. No. I’ll…”
“Just give me the address, Henry. I can’t risk having my first canine casket scuffed up. What would happen to my reputation?”
“Not by an old, blind man,” Henry said, laughing like he just that moment remembered how.
“Just give me the address. I like to deliver specialty jobs myself, anyway.”
“It’s um…” Henry hesitated, his halting breath cracking with the intimations of sobs. “It’s on Calvert between the Square and Science Place.”
“Sure, I know that area, no problem.”
“248 Calvert,” Henry said.
“Two, four, eight, got it.”
“I will of course pay extra for your troubles.”
“No charge, Henry.”
“Mr. Delacroix?”
“Yes?”
“I wonder if I might ask for an additional service that is rather out of your line,” Henry said, his voice clearing as though what ever feeling had been tugging at it had passed.
“I can always work. No matter the line,” Cyril said.
The second coat of stain dried to a deep, earthy brown. With its perfect trapezoidal symmetry and slightly humped lid, the casket looked just like what Cyril had in mind when he first studied the dog’s measurements. Now, he wished he’d laid some satin on the inside to complete the vision but there wasn’t time.
Just as he was preparing to leave, Ricki arrived. Her hair sat lopsidedly atop her head as though it hadn’t been brushed. Little finger shaped smudges of dirt and soot darkened her cheeks and chin. She cradled some broken bits of wood to her chest.
“Fifteen dollars please,” she said and spilled the wood onto the floor.
“Fifteen? What do you got for me there? Genuine walnut?”
Ricki did not stay with her haul to offer her usual recommendations as to which bits would be best for practice. She skipped past Cyril towards the coffin on the work bench. Rising up on her tiptoes, she ran her hand along its side. Then climbing up to stand on the lowest of the workbench’s undershelves, she managed to reach up and open the lid. For a few moments, she perched there, gazing inside the empty box. Once satisfied, she lowered the lid down carefully, almost pinching her own fingers in it.
“Empty,” she said and turned to face Cyril, her mouth slack with bewilderment.
“For now,” he said as he gathered up the wood she’d brought.
“What’s it?” she asked, her mouth latching on to the meat of her hand.
“It’s a coffin. You know what that is?”
She nodded while gently sucking on the side of her hand.
“Nana was in one. I saw her sleeping there.”
“Your grandma?”
She nodded again, this time quickly almost trembling, as though she might cry and began sucking harder on her hand. Cyril felt the helpless pit forming in his stomach that opened whenever she got upset. It didn’t seem to take much to get Ricki to cry, though Cyril suspected she did so no more than was normal for a little girl. She’d cried just a couple of days earlier when he’d told her some of the wood she’d brought was so rotten he couldn’t keep it in the shop. This time, she managed to stay calm though, extracting her hand from her mouth. Exhaling, she blinked and it seemed the danger had passed.
“She was sleeping in there,” she said.
“Sleeping?”
“Yeah, Momma said she’d be sleeping for a long time.”
“That’s right. That’s what they’re for.”
“Is someone going to be sleeping there soon?”
“It’s for a doggie.”
“A doggie will sleep in there?”
“For a long time?”
“Can I see the doggie?”
“No. It’s not going to happen here.”
“Where?”
“At the doggie’s house.”
“Can I go to the doggie’s house?”
“I don’t think so, Ricki. It’s about time for you to go home.”
“Nobody is there.”
“Again?” Cyril asked, his mouth compressing, wrinkles framing a tight-lipped grimace.
“Momma works late lots now.”
“What about your brother?”
“Not home. Sometimes he’s not home never.”
“What time will your mom be done with work?”
“Sometimes, it’s real late. I stay up but then I fall to sleep.”
Hoisting the casket up on his shoulder, he tucked it against his head and threw his arm over the top. Wordlessly, he offered his free hand to her. She wrapped two of his fingers in either hand and squeezed.
“Don’t tell no one,” Cyril said.
It’s not until Mr. Delacroix’s sounds like he’s almost finished digging the hole that I regret asking him to do it. The job was sadly ill-suited for a blind man, I might not’ve stopped until I’d gone too deep. I couldn’t have Doc Prichitt soil his delicate, healing hands. I suppose I could’ve asked Barry, he seemed so genuinely touched to even be invited that he probably would’ve leapt at the chance to inter the guest of honor.
Not sure who the little girl is to Mr. Delacroix. She smells of baths postponed and places only a child would explore. She’s sucking on something, her thumb I guess, except this sound seems louder somehow, louder than she should be able to make with her thumb. She didn’t want to see the coffin opened once Jake was inside which seemed to confuse Cyril.
I hate to say so but it does my heart good to hear her cry. It’s like I don’t have to now. Her big, open-hearted sobs fill the air enough for all the mourners gathered here. There’s bravery in child’s crying, they do not care who notices and often, at moments just like this, it’s a sound that reminds adults of how much of life they deny themselves.
I keep wanting to open the lid and run my hand through Jake’s fur one last time, feel his cold muzzle against the back of my hand but I don’t think that would do anyone any good, least of all these relative strangers who’ve gathered here. Enough has been asked of them already. I’m sure pity plays a part in each one of them coming and for once I don’t mind. There are just some things no man can do on his own, for most of the truly important things in life, no man should.