By Claire Hopple
They are burying him in a red nose and overlarge shoes and a rainbow wig, all of which they found inside the chest up in his attic. His mistress is the first to scream at the big reveal. Then some kids who look like they’ve been playing in the mud even though they’re wearing their dressy clothes reserved for special occasions. I consider joining them. Screaming has a certain allure to it, and nobody knows what to make of this configuration in front of us. A good release is in order.
He would’ve hated this final act. They did it because they all wholeheartedly agreed he deserved it. These are his children, mind you. Grown children. They felt Jackson deserved this treatment because he was not a very nice person. Joe, the firstborn, said it was okay. Joe gave them the all-clear, and that was all they needed. They thought he’d never looked more appropriate, more himself, in this getup. They had to tuck in the wig at the sides before they closed his cardboard coffin for good.
Now here we are, incurably witnessing them hoist the coffin up, over, and down into a freshly dug hole for a somewhat un-fresh body.
We don’t really concentrate on Mikey, the youngest son, drinking one of his kid’s unnaturally hued beverages from a plastic container in the shape of a barrel, strips of foil lingering around the top’s circumference.
Their dad found himself at a safe distance from safety one too many times. Jackson was struck by lightning while opening the garage door of his mistress’s house, we’re told. Everybody tried not to read into it. You could say the man had a death wish long before that, but that’s the one that did the trick.
I stare Mikey and his plastic barrel down a little too hard and he gives me this look like: What? It’s not as if I went looking for this drink. I don’t know about you, but it’s easy for me to picture Mikey rummaging through his father’s valuables. We met in front of the dunk tank at our town’s carnival. His wife had left years earlier. Our relationship is not of great importance to you, and I’d like to keep it that way.
These exploits might sound rather morbid––maybe even cruel and unusual, to use the government’s phrasing––but I am accustomed to morbid.
A teacher of mine once recited a famous quote that went something like: Every time an old person dies, it’s like a small library is burning down. And that quote really stuck with me. So I moved to an apartment beside a crematorium in case their ashes of wisdom would float over and stick with me too. Plus I’ve been waiting my whole life to become an old woman. Imagine living long enough that everything becomes nostalgia. Nostalgia is magic because we know we make it through what’s already happened. We’re safe. The phrase “your whole life is ahead of you” means you should be overwhelmed if not frightened, whereas “your whole life is behind you” means you’ve worked hard and you can rest now. You can be your best and worst self––sometimes simultaneously––without having to make excuses anymore. Every day, I’m one step closer. We all have our rituals. We’ve entangled ourselves with violent affection. And these rituals will lead to our downfall.
We live in a town that’s famous for its number of Arby’s restaurants per capita, if that tells you anything.
Mikey says we’ll get an inheritance sometime in the near future. The overdue bills tell me it’s already the near future. Arguing with paper gets you nowhere. There is ample evidence.
Tim, the middle brother, decides right then and there to interrupt the minister––who’s actually a friend of theirs that got some kind of religious certificate from the internet and won’t let anyone forget about it––to speak his peace.
“Our subject was loaded. And we were, we are, his blood relatives. That has to mean something,” Tim says.
“A shopping spree,” Mikey says.
“Something else,” I say.
Joe approaches the grave and throws his phone into the hole beside his father’s body. “There will be little to no consequences for these actions,” he says, inching back to his place in the crowd.
“I never put much stock in communication,” Mikey agrees.
“I’m sorry, I have to leave early. My cat is sick,” says a distant relative.
“But you don’t have a cat,” says another relative.
“It wouldn’t hurt you to at least pretend,” says the first relative.
Jackson’s wife clears her throat. Here comes.
“He was a wonderful husband. I don’t care what anyone says,” she slurs.
We’re unsure whether she said too little or too much. Some of us were expecting a showdown, albeit a one-directional showdown.
A reporter peeks his head above the crowd for a few seconds, scribbling notes.
“Get a good look,” she says. Then she whispers to the coffin, “I know you’re in there.”
You will notice we’re all here for different reasons, and these reasons have shackled themselves to each of us. We’re losing patience with these very reasons as we speak.
“And that’s how you host a burial. Piece of cake,” says the fake minister.
Jackson’s wife, Joe’s and Tim’s and Mikey’s mother––she was a person before any of them came along, and her name is Cassie––will disappear after this. What they’ll find is a used box of hair dye, some rusty scissors, and a pile of old clothes in the single-seater bathroom at one of the (almost) innumerable Arby’s locations.
You can call this guy, Terry, and he’ll make you a new life just like that. Or so Mikey will say to me after his mom’s gone missing. It will be too soon to tell whether she will ever come back. It will always be too soon to tell, just like it will always be the near future.
In the meantime, Mikey will keep a copy of his father’s will and testament under his pillow right next to his high school soccer trophy. He will say sleeping atop these objects doesn’t hurt one bit.
Claire Hopple is the author of six books and the fiction editor at XRAY. Her stories have appeared in Wigleaf, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Forever Mag, and others. She grew up in the woods of Pennsylvania and currently lives in Asheville, NC. More at clairehopple.com.