Mourning
Before Gabe was buried, Sidney thoughtfully placed a handwritten poem into the breast pocket of his suit. Three days later, she decided she wanted it back. She had tried to rewrite it, but just couldn’t match the original. She even tried staring at a picture of Gabe and imagining his corpse, but still, the words would not come. This left no other choice but to dig up his grave and take the poem back—she just dreaded seeing it again. The words might be faded or smudged, leaving blanks that could never, ever be filled.
Standing alone in the entrance to Elm Woods Cemetery, Sidney shivered and checked her watch. 2 A.M. She pulled her bouncy red hair over her ears. There were so many graves on the hills. There were probably more people in the graveyard than there were in town. Elm Woods Cemetery could probably exist as a town in and of itself. In fact, it would be the ideal town, Sidney decided. Everybody was in coffins so they couldn’t look at each other and gossip. And even if they could, what would they say? “Oh, look at so-and-so. Her skin’s rotting and you can see her femur. What a slut.”
Sidney laughed and a cold wind pressed against her back. It wasn’t supposed to be this cold in March. It was supposed to be spring. All the signs were there. The snow was gone, the birds had returned, and, in Scranton High School, all the indoor sports like basketball and wrestling were being replaced by outdoor sports like golf and track. Yet it was freezing. What, was the weather in reruns? Sidney glared at the graves, jealous of their warmth.
She missed her boyfriend.
“Hey, Sid.”
She turned around. It was Mike, wearing dark brown overalls and a bright orange stocking cap. Mike Stoker was twenty-five years old and had been working at Elm Woods Cemetery ever since high school. He was tall and lanky, with a babyish face, a brown-blonde buzz cut and a chin that jutted out like Jay Leno’s. He lived in a trailer on the edge of town with Jason, the only other guy to stick around from his graduating class.
“You’re late,” accused Sidney.
“Yeah, well, you’re lucky I came at all.” Mike replied. “How you holdin’ up?”
“Fine. Why are you wearing your uniform?”
“Because I might get fired for this. If anybody stops by, I’ll just, you know, tell ’em it’s legit.”
“Let’s go then.”
“ …Sid, why didn’t you return my calls?”
“You called?”
“Yeah. Your dad said—”
“Let’s just go, Mike.”
“You don’t have to get angry.”
“I’m not angry.”
“I mean, if anyone should be angry, it’s me. You said you didn’t want to do this legally ’cause it’s too expensive. But then you ask me. So basically, you’re saying this poem isn’t worth $1,000, but it is worth me risking my job—”
“Mike, I’m not angry. I’m cold. Can we just do this?”
“Alright, fine.”
They walked over to the employee parking lot. It was empty, save for a yellow loader backhoe and a white dump truck. A dirt road led away, shouldered by sheds on the left and stacks of graveboxes and grave blankets on the right.
“What are those?” Sidney asked.
“Those?” Mike looked up, fiddling with his keys. “Grave blankets. Pine boughs attached to a wood frame. People put ’em over the grave.”
“Why?”
“To keep the snow off. Not that the snow does a whole lot of damage. It’s just, you know, an emotional thing. Some people think it keeps the grave warm—”
“Did you put one over Gabe’s?”
“No. In the spring they get all brown and nasty—here we go.” Mike handed Sidney a pair of keys. “This is for the dump truck—you can handle parking it by Gabe’s grave, right?”
“No. I’m completely retarded.”
“Well, I’m just sayin’, don’t run over anybody’s gravestones. It’s a real bitch to redo ’em.”
“There’s also the whole disrespectful thing.”
“I know, I know.”
Sidney drove down the road, following Mike. The stacks of graveboxes and grave blankets to her right felt like an eerie version of the overstock room at Dewey’s Foods & Deli. The only difference was, while she waited for people to buy food to clear extra room, Mike waited for people to die. She always felt annoyed when customers bought food because it meant more work for her; maybe Mike felt this annoyance too when people died. Or maybe he didn’t feel detached at all, and did everything with reverence. Either way she was impressed.
Gabe’s grave was located at the back of the cemetery, surrounded by trees. At the funeral, she had overheard Mike complaining about how people always want to be buried by a tree, but it’s hell to deal with the roots. He either has to dig around them or chop them off, killing the trees, making them into skeletons too. After parking by Gabe’s grave, Sidney got out and tried to guess which trees were killed, which trees were alive, and which ones were dying at this very moment.
Mike pulled up with the backhoe. The engine was making so much noise. Sidney felt like she was at a party, scared the cops might show up at any moment. Mike inched toward the head of the grave. The tombstone had not come in yet, but she could already see it in her mind, big and gray, reading ‘Gabriel Ross, 1987-2004’. It was a sign meant to trigger memories, but she had had more than enough of that over the past three days.
Mike lowered the outriggers, two short latches on the bottom of the backhoe that kept it steady. In the cockpit, he gripped two thin levers with an intense look on his face. It reminded Sidney of when he would play X-Box, when he was on the last level of Halo and no one could disturb him, not even to eat.
Mike waved for Sidney to back up and lowered the bucket. It took a bite of brown-black dirt and dropped it into the bed of the dump truck. The cycle repeated, over and over, with dirt raining down from the edge of the bed the whole time, like a cataract.
After about twenty minutes, Mike had carved a rectangular hole about three-and-a-half feet deep. Its walls were crumbling, but straight. He lowered the bucket next to the hole and Sidney looked inside. Nothing was visible yet; it was just a floor of dirt. She half-expected Gabe’s hand to burst through, like a bad horror movie. But if that happened, she wouldn’t run away like those heroines did. She’d jump right in and bite off every finger.
From inside the hole, Mike shoveled up the last layer of dirt, carefully emptying each load into the open bucket above him. Little by little, the cement gravebox was revealed.
“You got my thousand dollars?” Mike joked, climbing out.
“No,” Sidney replied, forcing a smile. She tried to think of something clever to add, but couldn’t. All she could think about was when Mike lowered Gabe into his grave at the funeral, and everyone from Scranton High School crowded around to say goodbye. There was nothing funny about that.
Using the backhoe, Mike emptied the bucketful of dirt into the dump truck. Then he lowered the bucket into the hole and climbed down with an armful of chains. As he attached them to the bucket, Sidney noticed that there were four, with hooks at the end that clinked like wind chimes.
“Do you want any help?” she asked.
“No. You just worry about getting your poem.”
Mike attached the hooks to the four corners of the gravebox. Sidney was getting nervous. The cops were always lurking around town, looking for drunk drivers—she knew because her dad was one of them—but did they ever roll by the cemetery? What would they think of her and Mike and the wide open grave? And what would her dad think if he saw that she had sneaked out? The thought of it made her feel colder than anything the weather could concoct.
Having returned to the backhoe, Mike raised the bucket, lifting the lid of the cement gravebox up in the air and off to the side. Sidney gazed down at the familiar coffin. The wind blew in her face and she felt like her contacts were trying to eat her eyes.
“Go ahead,” Mike called. “It’s not sealed shut.”
Sidney slid into the grave, her feet landing on the coffin with a thud. It was nice to be out of the wind, but not so nice to be standing on top of Gabe. She paused, looking at the crumbling walls and the dying, truncated roots. Then she gritted her teeth and opened the upper half of the coffin, looking once again into the face of Gabriel Ross. The smell of formaldehyde triggered memories of dissecting frogs in eighth grade science.
Gabe looked different. At the wake, Sidney was impressed at how the undertaker had rebuilt his face, making it seem like it had never smashed through a windshield after all. But now there were cracks on his cheeks and forehead. It was as if his face was becoming a sort of cracked windshield itself, destined to one day shatter.
“Sometimes they have the heater on in the hearse too high,” Mike said quietly, now standing on the ground above her. “And the wax starts to slouch…Sid, can you just grab it? I…I don’t like looking at stuff like this.”
Sidney reached into Gabe’s breast pocket and felt the folded—up poem. After she found out that Gabe had died, she stayed in her room for three days, staring at a blank computer screen. She wanted to write something, but didn’t know what. Nothing came to her until the wake, when she saw Gabe in his open casket and she rushed to the pews, scribbling in her notebook. The poem took up an entire page. The words kept coming, so she had to write smaller and smaller, fitting two lines in each ruling. She wasn’t so much inspired by Gabe as by what he would later become.
She turned the poem over in her fingers for a moment, and then unfolded it. The magenta ink from her gel pen had bled through the back of the paper but had not obscured any words.
“Sid?” Mike called, nervously twitching his chin left and right. “Is that it?”
2
Sidney Drexel had moved to Scranton from Arden, an equally small town from halfway across the state. She was ready to start her junior year of high school, but not so ready to start it where she didn’t know a single person. At Arden High School, she was quiet and mousy. She didn’t participate in anything; not volleyball, not basketball, not cheerleading; not Quiz Bowl, not speech, not One-Act Plays. All she did was run the till at the grocery store and smile politely at every customer, even the creepy old men who told her how pretty she was.
She thought they were being sarcastic; there was no way it could be true. Her bouncy red hair made her look like a housewife from the 50’s and she didn’t tan. She freckled. So why on earth were all those old guys in love with her? No guys her own age ever talked to her. Yet, sure enough, when she applied at Dewey’s Foods and Deli, in Scranton, Mr. Dewey combed over her modest hips and breasts with his eyes and gave her the job on the spot. She felt like spitting on his fat bald head.
After moving into her new room, Sidney downloaded AOL Instant Messenger so she could talk to her friends from Arden, only to realize with a stab that they weren’t really friends after all. All they talked about were superfluous things, like movies and gossip and clothes. It was not until she typed out her words that she realized how much she didn’t care about them.
She also realized that, back in Arden, so many other people’s lives were going on around her that she had grown to think they were part of her own. She wasn’t a participant in the melodrama or the parties; she was an observer. She was always an observer. The smart girl with red hair and blue eyes who’d ring up your groceries with a smile and nothing more.
Before her first day of high school in Scranton, Sidney considered calling in sick. Both of her parents had left for work. Her father left at 7:45—he was a cop and could make more money in Scranton than in Arden. Her mother left at 7:55— she worked in publishing and had found a job as co-editor for the Scranton Gazette. At 8:00, Sidney sat alone in the kitchen, sipping coffee, looking down at her dark denim skirt and wondering if she should change. She eyed the phone and rehearsed what to say, but who called in sick on their first day at a new school? Honestly, who?
Finally, she pulled herself together and pulled her embarrassing 1989 Plymouth Sundance into the gravel parking lot at Scranton High School. With her black duffel bag in tow, she felt everyone watching as she skulked to her locker, sky-blue eyes on the floor.
She opened her locker door and unpacked notebooks, pens, pencils, mechanical pencils, colored pencils, markers—why on earth did her parents think she needed so much? Was she going to high school for twenty years? Suddenly, she felt a tap on her shoulder, so she turned around. It was a guy with spiky blonde hair, bushy eyebrows and curiously bloodshot eyes. He extended a sunburned arm.
“I’m Dirk. You must be new here. Right?”
“Yes. I’m Sidney.”
She briefly shook his hand.
“Cool. Hey, are you Jewish?”
“ … No. No, I’m not Jewish.”
“Well, let me ask you anyway. So, Jesus wanted to be king of the Jews, right? But Jews, by definition, don’t believe in him. Why would He want to be the king of a people who don’t believe in Him?”
Sidney stared at Dirk.
“I mean, wouldn’t He want to be King of the Christians?”
Sidney stared at Dirk.
“Do you think I have a point?”
“I … don’t know.”
“No, you gotta say yes or no.”
“What?”
“Say yes or no”
“See, Dirk, I told you so,” shot a muscular guy in a football jersey. He had shaggy brown hair, a twice-broken nose, and eyes that seemed abnormally far apart. They weren’t far enough apart to make him look like a fish or a freak or anything, but they were just enough to make Sidney stop and wonder.
He continued, “Dirk took one philosophy class and thinks he’s a…friggin’…philosopher! I bet him that even you, who didn’t know him, would think he’s full of shit.”
“She didn’t say that!” exclaimed Dirk. “She said she didn’t know!”
“Uh-huh,” said the jock, winking at Sidney. “I’m Gabe.”
Gabe didn’t shake Sidney’s hand, but he looked at her like he wanted to do so much more.
“Dirk’s all sacrilegious now,” Gabe continued, “He says he’s an atheist, but there he is every Sunday morning, in Baptist Church, with his parents.”
“Hey, it’s research! It’s academic research! It’s like, how Jane Goodall lived with the monkeys, except…the monkeys are Christians.”
The bell rang and they went to their classes. Sidney hated how boring the first day of school was. Why didn’t they do anything except read from the syllabus? Didn’t the teachers think they could do it on their own? While her chemistry teacher droned on about safety measures, Sidney thought about sparking herself with the Bunsen burner. Then she’d run underneath the emergency showerhead, stand right next to the big red button marked ‘Push’ and ask, “How do you turn on the water? How do you turn on the water? Huh? What? Button? Who?”
Sidney also hated how some teachers made her stand up and say who she was, where she was from, and one interesting thing about herself. She didn’t think there was anything interesting about herself. She hadn’t traveled the country, overcome a deadly disease, or had an unorthodox but adorable pet. All she could say was that when she was little, she crashed her parent’s minivan into the garage. And she didn’t even remember it. The most interesting thing about herself, and she didn’t even remember it.
Lunch was particularly annoying because she was the center of attention. Everybody grilled her about who she was and whether or not she had liked Arden. They sure didn’t. They said, “Fuck Arden,” and called it a “piece of shit town” even though Scranton was exactly the same. And, predictably, they freaked out when they found out her dad was a cop. Everybody took turns delivering long rants about how so-and-so busted so-and-so. Sidney sighed and sipped her skim milk, wishing she could fade into the background: The smart girl with red hair and blue eyes who rang up groceries—and oh, wait, her dad’s a cop and thinks he can pull over people just for drinking and driving. What an asshole.
The first three weeks of school passed like clockwork. Literally. Classes began and ended right on time, guys asked out girls right on time, and everybody ganged up on the losers right on time. It was as predictable as the deadening small talk at Dewey’s Foods and Deli, when the senile customers would sneak up to her and chuckle, “So, ya working hard? …Or are ya hardly working?” Oh, they were so clever. Sidney could hardly wait until she was called up to run the till again—which, of course, happened. Like clockwork. It was all like clockwork, all prewritten, etched in some big stone book in the sky. The sad thing was she knew what it said without even having to read it.
There was a Homecoming Dance on Friday night of the third week of school. Sidney didn’t go. She sat in her room, reading the Scranton Gazette, amazed at how pointless it was. The front page story was about a pet goat that left someone’s farm, but it wasn’t just any goat, it was a special goat because—why on earth was her mother working there?! She threw the newspaper away.
Bored, she traced her car keys along the veins on her arm, back and forth, back and forth. There had to be something to do. She decided to talk to her friends online. She wanted to ask them, “Is life in Arden really as pointless as I think it was? Are we really friends or acquaintances? Are people really happy all the time, or do they just act like it?” But all she could type was, “yeah i saw that seinfeld too lol.”
The next day, Sidney scanned groceries for a lady so old she visibly shook and wondered what life would be like if she were still in Arden. It would probably be the same, but having going back to having everything the same in Arden would be comforting. Her old friends were designed by geography— their parents encouraged them to play together when they were little because they were neighbors and walking all over town was dangerous. Sidney didn’t know if any classmates lived near her in Scranton, but if they did, she couldn’t exactly call and ask, “Can so-and-so come out and play?” She’d have to have a reason first, and no matter how much she stared at the telephone, she couldn’t come up with a single one.
“Hey, Sid.”
Sidney looked up. It was Gabe. And Dirk. Together, buying a Styrofoam cooler and a bag of ice at 7 P.M. They hadn’t said much to Sidney since the first day of school, but she didn’t expect them to. Gabe fit in with the jocks, Dirk fit in with the stoners and together, they fit in with the partiers. They were always bragging about their weekends. Oh, it was so crazy. People were drinking beer and acting like they were drinking beer. Can you imagine? Sidney scanned their groceries.
“Say,” said Gabe, handing her a ten dollar bill. “There’s a party tonight at Ricky’s.”
“A bonfire,” added Dirk. “We don’t need no water, let that motherfucker burn! Burn, motherfucker, burn! Burn—”
Dick noticed a middle—aged woman staring at him and stopped.
“Do you want to come?” asked Gabe.
“I don’t know. I have homework.”
“Homework. Yeah, I’ve been trying to get started on that for three weeks.”
Dirk laughed at Gabe’s joke, a raspy “he-he-he” that sounded he was having respiratory problems.
“We have a biology test on Monday— ”
“One night’s not going to hurt,” insisted Gabe. “We’re going to be at the Quickstop at 10 if you want to come. Alright?”
“Alright.”
Sidney thought about it when she got home. It was in the back of her mind as she tried to read her biology notes. She didn’t mind the subject, but the class ticked her off. Mr. Connor didn’t even teach them anything; all he did was drink Coke and make them copy notes from the board. What exactly was he getting paid for? Adjusting the projector? Maybe one day she’d slip Pop Rocks into his Coke and his head would explode and they’d finally have something to dissect.
Sidney shut her notebook.
“Oh, what the hell.”
She tossed her keys in her purse and ran out the door.
At the Quickstop, Gabe and Dirk stood in the middle of a bunch of people. Some of them Sidney recognized as football players; others as cheerleaders; others, she didn’t think did anything at all. When they saw Sidney, they all grinned and asked where her dad was patrolling. She didn’t know. They were disappointed. Then they all broke into carpools and Sidney rode in the back of Gabe’s Blazer. Dirk rode shotgun because he had called it, screaming the word, along with specks of saliva, into her ear.
They didn’t go to the party right away. Instead, they cruised around the back roads, blasting Tupac and Tom Petty, making frequent stops to piss and get fresh Bud Lights from the trunk. Sidney would have thought they forgot about her, if not for their staunch dedication to handing her fresh beers even though she hadn’t opened a single one. Since Gabe was drinking and driving, she figured he’d crash into a tree or something, but he didn’t. He was careful, more careful than she could have possibly imagined.
Finally, they turned onto a snaky dirt road that led to the party. Junky cars littered a vast backyard and everybody stood at the bottom of a gravel pit, on one side of a fire, in groups like chain links. Some of them jumped over the fire. A lanky redheaded guy tried it last, but tripped as he went over. The flames stuck to his jeans and he rolled around spastically. Everybody pointed at him and laughed. And after the flames were snuffed out, the redheaded guy got up and laughed as well.
Sidney opened her beer so as not to feel out of place and followed Gabe and Dirk to the pit. When everybody saw her, they screamed “Sidney Drexel!” and surrounded her like she was a celebrity. Some of them even snapped her picture and joked they’d send it to her dad. She forced a smile and looked at the fire, wishing it would engulf them all.
She sat down on a log and waited for something to happen. Nothing did. Just talking, talking, talking—the same as they did during lunch, except slurred. Gabe and Dirk drifted from group to group before finally taking a break to stand on their own. Dirk nudged Gabe’s side.
“Hey Gabe! Check it out! I’m Socrates!”
Dirk pointed to everybody’s shadows cast behind the fire.
“And that’s philosophy! He-he-he!”
Dirk hugged his sides and laughed hysterically. Gabe stared at him.
“That’s philosophy!” repeated Dirk. “That’s phi… that’s… Philistine.”
Dirk marched up the hill to piss. Gabe shook his head and caught Sidney’s eye.
“You’re not having a good time, are you?” he accused.
“No…I am.”
“Ooohhh, you’re sad! You’re so, so, sad! Awww!”
“I am not!”
“You know, you don’t have to drink if you don’t want to.”
“No, I do…”
“Gabe! Gabe!” Dirk shouted, running up to them, his pants half—zipped. “Sam just called! The cops pulled over somebody a mile from here—they might’ve heard about the party!”
Gabe looked at Dirk like he had just foretold the apocalypse.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here! The cops are coming! The cops are coming!” Gabe threw his car keys at Sidney’s feet. “Here!”
“You’re too drunk to drive?”
“No! But I don’t want to get a DUI! Let’s go!”
“You could have just handed them to me.”
“There’s no time! There’s no time!”
They all ran up the hill.
Gabe directed Sidney to Mike and Jason’s trailer, where he promised the party would continue anew. He was petrified the police were following them, so he made her take a million detours. When they finally arrived at the trailer park, there weren’t many cars around, but Gabe assured her they could stop by anyway. They all walked to the front door. Gabe knocked like his hands were drumsticks and then walked right in.
Mike and Jason were watching The Matrix and listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon to see if synched up with it like it did with The Wizard of Oz. It didn’t, but they had been smoking pot for too long to care. Jason, who reminded Sidney of one of the hobbits from Lord of the Rings, kept shouting “Oh, man!” as Neo and Trinity blew away faceless thugs in slow motion. He didn’t even notice them walk in, but Mike did, craning his head away from the TV and eyeing Sidney curiously.
Sidney pulled Gabe’s shirtsleeve. “Is this it?”
“Looks like it— Hey!” Gabe called to Mike, slamming the cooler on the counter. “The party was gonna get broken up. Is it cool if we stay here?”
“…I guess,” Mike said. “But we’re going to bed pretty soon. Gotta work early.”
“Who the fuck is that?” asked Jason, turning his stubby head around. “Hey, you bitches give me a beer.”
“Buy your own beer,” retorted Gabe.
“Fine. Then you get your own buyer, from now on.”
Gabe threw Jason a beer.
“Mike’s digs graves,” Dirk whispered to Sidney, as if he were confessing a deep secret. “He sorts out life from death…some might call him…the Ubermensch.”
“Hey,” Jason shouted to Sidney, “don’t you work at Dewey’s?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve seen you around. I chop up meat. Big sausages.”
Sidney nodded.
“Dewey’s a prick, isn’t he?” Jason continued. “I heard he beats his wife. Wa—pssh! Right in the face!”
Sidney nodded.
There was an awkward silence, and then they all sat down to watch the end of The Matrix. When it was over, Mike and Jason went to bed, Dirk passed out in the recliner and Gabe sat next to Sidney on the couch, drinking a beer, staring at the blank television screen as if it were an abstract painting.
Sidney was getting nervous. This was it? This was all there was? She could watch movies and listen to CD’s at home—this was what everybody bragged about? Standing around just like they did at lunch, except with fire and beer? Sidney groped the sharp car key in her purse. There had to be more. There had to be.
“Fucken A,” said Gabe, scratching his neck. “Fu—cken A…you have a good time?”
“I guess.”
“You guess? Wow…you think we’re idiots, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. You think you’re soooo much better than us.”
“Gabe, I don’t—”
“You know, we don’t like freezing our asses off in the middle of the woods, either. But what the hell else are we supposed to do? There’s no movie theater, no bowling alley, and the nearest city’s like 50 miles away. Like, in other countries—in every other country but this one—people our age can go hang out in bars. We can’t do that here, so what are we supposed to do?”
“I…don’t know.”
“And how are we supposed to get to parties without drinking and driving? We have to, Sid. And we’re careful. We don’t drive on roads with lots of other cars— you didn’t see any other cars on those roads, did you? No. The only risk is to us, so what’s the big deal? I mean, how are we supposed to avoid it?”
“You could stay overnight at the party.”
“Well…I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
Gabe threw his empty beer on the floor and sighed.
“…It’s all so pointless.”
“What is?”
“Everything. This whole town, Sid. Look at Mike and Jason. They’re fucking…anchored for life in jobs that go nowhere. And look at Dirk. He thinks he’s so smart, but he’s probably going to end up bagging groceries. And look at me. I’m good at football, you know, I’m pretty fucken good, but that’s not going to take me anywhere. I’ll probably end up in construction.”
“…You don’t want to?”
“No, its fine, it just…pisses me off sometimes. ’Cause that’s what’s going to happen, no matter what. It’s like…everything’s a charade.”
Sidney stared at Gabe. His face had changed. His hair had seemed to flatten, his nose had seemed to straighten, and his eyes had seemed to press closer together than ever before. He didn’t look like a drunk; he looked like a Sherpa.
“So what’s the point?” asked Sidney, straightening up.
“The point?”
“What are we supposed to do?”
“I dunno. Make the most of it.”
“Why’d you ask me to come with you tonight?”
“I don’t know.” Gabe paused. “I think maybe you need to make the most of it too.”
“I do?”
“Yeah. I think you do.” Gabe yawned. “Let’s go ho—”
Suddenly, Sidney pounced on him, slamming her mouth on his like she was trying to swallow it up—every tooth, every breath, every word. Gabe stared at her with flickering eyes, and then pulled her down on top of him. They rolled around on the remote controls until Dark Side of the Moon played on track 4, and The Matrix played on chapter 29, and Neo and Trinity opened fire on a room full of thugs at the same time the bass hit, and their bodies rose and fell at the same time the woman’s wailing did, until the shapes conducted the music and the music conducted the shapes and everything swirled and spun into one big ball, then shattered.
3
When her parents asked where she was that night, Sidney said she was driving around. When they asked where she went the next day, she said she was driving around. When she came home late from school, late from the football game, late from what should have been a quick trip to the bank, she was driving around, driving around, driving around. One day her dad joked that she was putting more mileage on her car than he was on his own. She laughed and bit her lip, wondering what the hell else she could use as an excuse.
She liked how her days at school changed. While the teachers droned on about things she already knew, she drew cruel caricatures of them and passed them to her classmates. In study hall, she and Gabe signed out to the computer lab, and then sneaked to an abandoned office above the band room where everybody smoked cigarettes. And during lunch, she cruised around the back roads with Gabe and his friends, smoking pot so they could appreciate biology—really, really appreciate it. And she did; as she copied the endless parade of notes, nothing picked her up more than feeling like she was floating far, far away.
She found a favorite class in English, where she juggled Mrs. Campbell’s praise and excoriation. Mrs. Campbell loved the darkness of her poetry, putting checkmarks by her most morbid lines. She also loved the ambition of her short fiction, writing a big “Wow!” at the end as if she couldn’t believe one girl would write so much. However, she hated Sidney’s snarky essays. One paper required coming up with a goal and listing three reasons why it was important. Sidney’s goal was “to finish this paper as quickly as possible” because “she had better things to do, essays are boring, and we’ve already done an assignment like this a million times.” Ms. Campbell gave Sidney an “F,” but Sidney didn’t care. The look on her classmates’ faces when they read it was worth more than every letter of the alphabet combined.
Sidney loved how, for the first time, her classmates were in the background, not her. She felt everybody watching as she held Gabe’s hand in the hallway, chatted with the star players at football games, and did everything she could to liven up parties and road trips: She laid supine on the roof of Gabe’s Blazer as he rocketed down dirt roads; she climbed trees and threatened to pour beer on people pissing; and no matter how many logs they put on the fire, she jumped over it, even if it was so big she had to start from the top of somebody’s trunk.
Drinking was also fun. Her new friends always swore they’d never do it again when they puked, but she thought that was stupid. She liked puking because it emptied her stomach so she could drink even more. The only problem was that she couldn’t buy alcohol on her own, so she had to get somebody to do it for her. Jason was easy to find because he worked at Dewey’s, but he charged an exponentially increasing ’buyers fee.’ So she went to Mike. She knew that Mike hated Gabe and Dirk because they used him—both for beer and a last-resort place to hang out—so she always made conversation.
“What are you doing tonight?” she asked in Mike’s trailer one Friday night.
“I don’t know.” Mike said, washing dishes. “Probably staying in.”
“There’s a party at Ricky’s.”
“Holy shit!” Mike exclaimed. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, man, we gotta go!”
Sidney paused. “You’re not going, are you?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you ever go to parties?”
“I’m too old.”
“Jason goes.”
“Well, Jason’s a loser.”
“Then why do you live with him?”
“He has a big-screen TV.”
“What would you do if I told him you said he’s a loser?”
“Call your dad and tell him how you spend your weekends.”
“You wouldn’t do that!”
“You’re right. I wouldn’t.” Mike wiped his hands on a towel. “So, what, you want me to run to the store?”
“If you can.”
“What do you want?”
“Two cases of Bud Light.”
“Two?! Is one of them for Gabe?”
“…Maybe.”
“Oh, Sidney, Sidney, Sidney.”
“Mike, Mike, Mike.”
“I don’t know why you insist on dating that guy.”
“Why? What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s a juvenile delinquent.”
“I’m a juvenile delinquent.”
“No, you’re not. You’re a poser.”
“I am not a poser!”
“Whatever you say.” Mike walked to the door and put on his shoes. “But Gabe’s not going anywhere. You’re probably going to get into some great college. And what’s he going to do? Work construction?”
“Maybe he’ll get into the lucrative profession of grave digging.”
“Hey. I make more than you do scanning groceries.”
“I don’t just ‘scan groceries.’ I stock shelves, rearrange the back room and help the customers. And what do you do? Dig holes?”
“There’s a little more to it than that.”
“Uh-huh.”
They walked out the door. Sidney kicked a clump of dirt from the ground.
“Look!” she exclaimed. “I just did your job!”
Mike rolled his eyes. “Sidney, you’re so misinformed about the world, I don’t know where to start.”
Sidney liked Gabe because he brought fun into her life. He knew the address of every party and sometimes he even read entries from her English journal, remarking that it was ‘a million times better than the shit the teachers force us to read.’
She didn’t mind that he was inconsiderate: For her birthday in mid-October, he bought her a French Maid’s uniform to wear for Halloween; for Christmas, he bought her Peppermint Schnapps’ for New Year’s; and for Valentine’s Day, he forgot to make the reservation at the nice restaurant 50 miles away so they had to get chicken strips at Dairy Queen. But Sidney didn’t care about gifts; for her, relationships were much more important than their avatars.
Her parents probably suspected what she did on weekends, but without proof, the most they could say were cryptic ‘Be careful’s.’ For a while, she worried her father would follow her, but then she realized that he was so happy she had friends, he would be deliberately oblivious. He loved Gabe too, and always asked him how football was going, how basketball was going—were they going to state this year? Oh, he sure hoped they did. They were tepid conversations, but Sidney endured them, knowing as long as her father liked Gabe, she was free to do whatever she pleased.
On a cold Saturday night in late February, Sidney drove around Scranton in a panic. She had had to go shopping with her parents at the town 50 miles away, and then visit their aunt who lived there, because if they didn’t, she might go crazy and hunt them down with a rifle or something. They didn’t get home until 11 PM and nobody was around. Sidney drove everywhere, past the Quickstop, Dewey’s, the three Christian churches, everywhere, but nobody was around. Nobody.
Finally, she pulled over and called Mike on a payphone.
“Hello?”
“Mike?”
“Oh. Hey baby, you’re getting me so hot.”
“Fuck off, Jason. Put Mike on.”
“Oh! Ohhhh! Ohhhhhhhhhh!”
“Jason!”
“Alright, fine. …Your loss.”
Sidney rolled her eyes.
“Hello?”
“Hey Mike, it’s me.”
“What’s up?”
“Nothing. Hey, is there anything going on tonight?”
“Hold on… …Jason says there’s a party at Ted’s cabin.”
“Where’s that?”
“Red Lake. The cabin number’s 1010.”
“Red Lake. 1010. Okay, thanks, Mike.”
“No problem. Be careful.”
“Okay, Dad.”
Mike laughed and hung up.
It was hard to find Ted’s cabin at Red Lake, not because Sidney had drunk six beers on the way, but because all the numbers were obscured in the dark. She had to drive incredibly slowly, and even then she could only see a couple. Why were there numbers on the houses if you couldn’t see them? What was the point? Finally, after driving in circles for an hour, she found it and parked next to Gabe’s Blazer.
As she took her cooler out of the backseat, she caught a glimpse of everybody out on the dock. Dirk’s voice rang out clear as day.
“If somebody leaves a beer in the woods, does it cease to be their beer? What exactly de—fines property? Is it just…you know…a struggle?”
Everybody laughed.
“It’s Rousseau, man! He thinks everybody should wear togas and live in the woods! I ain’t wearin’ no muthafucken toga!”
Everybody laughed again. They were so distracted by Dirk that they hadn’t heard her pull up. She decided she’d surprise them. Ted was always lighting off firecrackers, scaring the hell out of everybody, so she thought she’d sneak inside, find them, and shoot one off right in the middle of the group. That would give Dirk something to analyze.
The cabin was empty and expensive-looking. Ted’s dad, who was some sort of doctor, owned it and kept it in very good care. Sidney looked in all of the cupboards and cabinets, but didn’t find any firecrackers, just books and silverware. Outside, she heard screaming. Shoot. Now she was missing everything. She headed toward the back door, only to hear a vigorous knock at the front.
It sounded sort of like Gabe’s knock, the way he rapped on the doors like drums. She had tried to mimic it once, but just ended up hurting her hands. He must have iron knuckles. But why would Gabe knock if he was here already? Maybe he was trying to trick her. Or maybe it was Dirk, pretending to be Gabe. He always did stupid things like that. The knock repeated.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Sidney looked through the keyhole.
It was a cop.
“Shit.”
She dropped her beer and ran out to the porch. No one was there. Everybody was running across the icy lake, chased by dozens of cops with dogs. She could only see their silhouettes; tall black figures chasing small black figures. Half of them were caught already. Sidney turned around, only to run into the same officer who had knocked on the door. He had a big yellow mustache that curled like a smile.
“What’s your name?”
“…Si—Sidney. Sidney Drexel.”
“Have you been drinking tonight?”
“…No.”
“Uh-huh.”
The officer wrote something down on a form.
“What’s going on?”
“We got a report of a suspicious car.”
“A suspicious car?”
“Yes. Driving around slowly.”
“Did…did you find it?”
“No. But we found a different car with a bunch of drunk kids heading to a party. Took ’em a while to admit where it was.”
The officer held up a breathalyzer gun.
“Now open your mouth and blow.”
Nobody talked to Sidney at school on Monday. They just glared at her with fiery eyes. Nothing this big had ever happened before: Twenty students were charged with minors and resisting arrest, and Dirk was even charged with possession of marijuana. The starting lineup for the basketball team was included in the bust, and was suspended from play for the remainder of the season, meaning they wouldn’t be eligible for playoffs. And everybody, everybody in the whole school, knew exactly who was driving the ‘suspicious car.’
In class, Sidney sat in a daze, unable to draw, unable to write, unable to do anything but bite her nails until they developed mountainous ridges. At home, her parents had grounded her and taken away her car keys. Even her father glared at her, remaining just as angry as he was when he had to pick her up from the police station. He was still on duty, so she had to ride home in another police car. That ride home was even worse than the first one.
She had called Gabe on Sunday, the day after the bust, to apologize.
“Sidney, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I’m sorry. I…was just trying to find the cabin.”
“Is it that hard to fucking find? Did you not see my Blazer in the driveway? Do you, like, not remember what things look like?”
“Gabe, I don’t know what to say.”
“Yeah, neither do I. You know, you might get good grades, Sidney, but you are so stupid sometimes.”
“…Can we just forget about this?”
“No. We can’t. The team really has a good chance of going to state now. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
“Gabe.”
“Man, I don’t know why I wasted my time with you.”
“Wasted your time?”
“Yeah, we’re done, Sidney. Finished.”
“…you’re… just going to throw away five months over this?”
“Throw away five months?” Gabe laughed. “Jesus, you act like I’ve only been dating you.”
“What?”
“Do I have to spell it out for you? I’ve. Fucked. Oth. Er. Girls. Do-you-un-der-stand-me?”
“…you’re lying.”
“Am I, Sidney? Am I?”
“…”
“Alright, I gotta go. Good luck finding someone else, though. You’re gonna need it.”
“Asshole.”
“Maybe you can, like, fax your shitty journal to the whole class and see who can actually read it without— ”
Sidney hung up.
After that long and burning Monday back at school, Sidney skipped going to work and walked to Elm Woods Cemetery. She waited by Mike’s Pacer, looking up at the big gray wall that barricaded the living from the dead, as if there were some sort of fear the dead might escape. Or maybe they were trying to hide the fact it was a cemetery, as if a cemetery was nothing but a sign until you had to go in for yourself.
Mike emerged from the entrance with a couple older guys, laughing about something. He said goodbye to them and approached Sidney with a smile.
“Hey….” Mike stopped. “What’s wrong?”
Sidney buried her face in his chest and told him everything. Mike awkwardly put his arm around her and walked her into Elm Woods, down a path that weaved between graves.
“Is anybody looking at us?” Sidney asked, wiping her eyes.
“No. And even if anybody is, we’re in, like, the perfect spot. They’ll just think you’re mourning.”
“I am. I’m in mourning for my life.”
“Sid.”
“What? It’s true.”
“It is not. Look, people are going to forget about this. They are. It’s just going to take some time.”
“Do you think Gabe really cheated on me?”
“Well…yeah, I think he cheats on everybody. At least a little.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“…you looked so happy. I couldn’t just come up and say he’s an asshole.”
“Well…he’s not an asshole.”
“He’s not?”
“No. Not totally.”
Sidney sighed and laid her head on Mike’s shoulder, staring at a group of pillar shaped monuments in the distance.
“Mike, how do you stand working around death all the time?”
“Well, Sid, I don’t really think of them as people. I think of them as boxes.”
“As boxes?”
“Yeah, see, we gravediggers…have to be a little callous to keep our sanity, kind of like doctors do with their patients. We see a lot of funerals, a lot of crying, a lot of tragic stuff. And you can’t get too attached to it. You can’t. If you do, you won’t last a week— shoot, we always get somebody who can’t take it and quits.”
“And how do you take it? It never gets hard?”
“Sometimes, you know, if there’s a baby or something, with that tiny little coffin, and we can’t use the backhoe, so we have to get the shovels and…yeah, sometimes it gets a little hard. It’s always hard. But we live with it. We have to.”
Sidney stared at Mike. His face had changed. His skin seemed like it had suddenly become old and wrinkled and his chin looked like it had receded inward until it wasn’t so noticeable at all.
“You ready to go?” Mike asked.
“In a minute,” Sidney said, laying her head back on his shoulder. “One more minute.”
Sidney started spending a lot of time with Mike. She called him every night and he even visited her at Dewey’s, buying little things like gum and Tic-Tacs. When her parents finally gave her car keys back, she drove to his trailer every day. Sometimes they hung out and watched movies, trying to ignore Jason; and when that got to be too much they ate out at the nice restaurant 50 miles away. Mike wouldn’t let her drink or smoke. At times, she felt irritated because she couldn’t forget about Gabe. She missed him—well, not so much him as all the things they did and all the things they could’ve done if not for Ted’s cabin.
At school, everybody teased her about Ted’s cabin, and when they found out she was dating a twenty-five year old gravedigger, they teased her even more. Gabe and Dirk were the worst, waiting by her locker every morning.
“So,” Gabe would say loudly to Dirk. “I’m thinking about stopping by the elementary school today.”
“Really?” asked Dirk.
“Yeah, see, girls are all into older guys now. I’m going to pick up some hot third graders.”
“Sweet.”
Sidney slammed her locker door and walked away. Gabe and Dirk followed.
“See, Dirk, I have lots of free time now that I don’t have basketball practice anymore.”
“Lucky dog. I don’t have a lot of that, because for some reason I have to go to these rehabilitation classes.”
“Crazy.”
“Would you just leave me alone?” Sidney snapped, turning around.
“Whoa, relax, Sidney,” said Gabe, smiling. “Hey, want to go to a party this weekend?”
“Yeah,” chimed in Dirk. “We don’t even have to give you the address. You can just drive around in circles until you find it.”
“You know, I don’t know why you keep blaming me. If you weren’t out there drinking in the first place, you wouldn’t have had anything to worry about.”
“Oh, Sidney, we don’t blame you,” said Gabe. “We feel sorry for you. You’re a little slow…no pun intended.”
“Yeah,” said Dirk. “And we don’t blame you for being stupid. It’s not all your fault. Some of it’s genetic. That’s why you’re the Second Sex.”
“The Second Sex?”
“Yeah,” quipped Dirk. “And if animals counted, you’d be third.”
Sidney hated being taunted and wished she could just fade into the background, like in Arden. But everything she went through at school was nothing compared to when her father found out about Mike.
“Sidney,” her father called, as soon as she walked in the door from work one night. He was sitting at the counter, doing nothing—no newspaper, no bills, no food, nothing, just sitting there, waiting.
“Yes?”
“Roger tells me you’ve been going over to the trailer park every day.”
“Who’s Roger?”
“He patrols that area. Now who do you know in the trailer park?”
“…”
“Alright, fine, Sidney. He saw your car at Mike Stoker’s place. How do you know Mike Stoker?”
“We’re friends.”
“Yes, going over there every day, every weekend. You certainly must be good friends. Tell me, how do you get to be such good friends with a twenty-five year old?”
“…”
“When he was 17, you were 9. Don’t you think he’s a little old for you?”
“Dad, that makes no sense. Grandma and Grandpa are like fifteen years apart. You can’t just…go back in time and pick arbitrary ages to—”
“I don’t want you to see him anymore, Sidney.”
“He’s better than Gabe, and you let me see him.”
“That’s different. Now, if I find out you’re over there again, I’m taking your car keys away.”
“Dad, I’m seventeen. You can’t—”
“Yes, I can.”
Sidney stormed to her room. What the hell was his problem, spying on her? And why did everybody have to criticize her? She didn’t do it to anyone else. She didn’t tell her mother that the Scranton Gazette was trash; she didn’t willingly rat out anybody that drank or did drugs. She paced back and forth, wondering what she would do without Mike. Talk to her old friends about nothing online? They probably didn’t even remember her. She sat down on her bed and gritted her teeth, running her car keys along the veins of her arm, back and forth, back and forth.
Sidney was relieved on Friday. Maybe this weekend she and Mike would go to a movie, or out to dinner, or somewhere, anywhere but Scranton. She hated it, hated it so much that she wished she could put douse the whole town in gasoline, leave a trail down the highway and drop the burning butt of a cigarette onto it in slow motion like they did in the movies. But when it exploded, she wouldn’t walk away smugly like those heroes did; she’d stay and watch it burn, ready to shoot anyone who stumbled out alive.
She planned to completely ignore what her father said. If he was going to take her car keys away, it was going to be over her dead body. But still, she worried about it on her way to school, smoking so many cigarettes she lost track of time. She checked her watch. 8:35. Great. Now she was going to be late.
Sidney ran down the empty hallway and hurriedly opened her locker. She grabbed her English notebook, realizing with a jolt that she had forgotten to do her journal entry. No big deal; she’d just scribble something while Mrs. Campbell was droning about The Metamorphosis—shoot, she’d forgotten to read The Metamorphosis too. Maybe before the end-of-class quiz, she’d sign out to the bathroom, duck to the computer lab and look it up on Sparknotes.com.
But there was nobody in the classroom. The light was on, and The Metamorphosis was lying on Mrs. Campbell’s desk with a jillion bookmarks—what, were they going to analyze every page? Was it possibly that good? But the room was empty. Sidney walked down the hallway. All the classrooms were empty. There was nobody around, as if there had been a mass evacuation. Why? Today was a school day; everybody’s cars were outside. She was just about to give up when Mr. Connor stepped out of the biology classroom, can of Coke in hand.
“Sidney? What are you doing?”
“I was going to go to class, but…what’s going on? Where is everybody?”
Mr. Connor paused. “In the gymnasium.”
“Why?”
“….Let’s just go to the gymnasium, Sidney.”
Confused, Sidney followed Mr. Connor into the gymnasium and leaned against the corner of the doorway. Everybody in the whole school was there, sitting in the bleachers, completely silent. What was this, a presentation? On the basketball court stood the principal, the basketball coach and three Christian priests. One of the priests took the microphone.
“Hello. I’m Father Charles and…as some of you know, there…was an accident last night.”
He paused. Some people in the crowd cried and hugged each other.
“Gabe Ross and Dirk Ruskin were driving down the highway and…well, they went a little out of control and hit a tree. Dirk’s going to be okay… but Gabe. He didn’t make it.”
Sidney dropped her notebook. It clattered so loudly that the priest stopped talking and looked at her, along with all the students in the stands. She could feel all of her eyes on her, but this time none of them were burning. With a red face, she picked up her notebook and rushed out the door, curling away from Mr. Connor’s snaky arm that had reached out to stop her.
4
The Maggot-Ridden Corpse and the Cute Little Baby
By Sidney Drexel
In the graveyard, there was a succession of tombstones,
standing like thumbnails bitten.And deep inside one of these mothy flags
was a particularly maggot—ridden corpse.
The bags under his eyes were a bed for maggots,
who slithered his insides like writhing lace;
his skin was yellow and crumbly
like the pages of an overused Bible;
and with pothole eyes he looked dumbly
while tattered skin revealed new nakedness.Meanwhile, far, far away a cute little baby was born,
sizzling cigars and circus lights.The baby was fat, bald, and pink. Tears fell,
announcing his presence, the stature of a King
whose screams like whips elicit service.
He kicked his legs and arms in sweet protest;
as a sapling ripped from the ground,
his trembling roots reached feebly,
but shared blood no more. Hot liquid skipped,
surging confined, shiv’ring in atmosphere lonely.I thought about how one became the other
and how the other became one,
and then I realized—the end and the beginning
don’t match on purpose. There is no remedy
for poisonous time, silly grey wrinkles
or even for footprints gone skidding.
It wasn’t as good as Sidney had remembered. It was too long, the rhythm was off, and some of the descriptions were clichéd—but still, she liked it. She didn’t know why but she did.
“Is that it?” Mike asked, looking down at her.
“Yes.”
“Sid…why’d you want to get this poem, anyway?”
“Because it’s not for Gabe,” Sidney replied. “It’s for me.”
She folded the poem back up and placed it in her pocket. Taking a final look at Gabe’s cracked face, she closed the coffin. Mike helped her out of the grave, lingering for a moment with her hand in his, and then dropping it.
“Stand back,” he warned, jogging to the backhoe.
As Sidney watched Mike fill the grave, she wondered if she would have been in the accident too if she were still dating Gabe, and if she would have been killed, or just wounded, like Dirk. Dirk. At the funeral, she had overheard that he was doing just fine in the hospital, and had actually taken to reading the Bible to pass the time. Reading the Bible. Sidney shook her head and remembered a road trip when Dirk had turned to her with bloodshot eyes and claimed that all religions could be broken down into five basic parts—“totems, rituals, churches, and uh….God and Jesus.”
“Hey!” Mike shouted from the backhoe. “I’ve gotta go get the air compressor. Can you do me a favor?”
“What?”
“I need you to tap the dirt, make sure it’s compact. With your foot. Stomp on it.”
“You want me to stomp on Gabe’s grave?”
“Yeah. Can you do that?”
“…Yes. Yes, I can.”
Mike drove away and Sidney walked over to the center of the grave. She closed her eyes and thought about how Gabe called her stupid and turned her to drinking and blamed her for everything that happened at Ted’s cabin. Then she thought about how lonely she was, how much she missed Mike, and how wrong her dad was to try to keep them apart. Then, gritting her teeth, and balling up her fists, she stomped up and down the grave, furiously, blindly, until her feet hurt.
“You know,” Sidney muttered. “If you had gotten ’busted’ before you crashed, you might not be in there right now.”
“Who are you talking to?”
Mike was standing behind her, a sack of seed slung over his shoulder and his other hand on the ring-shaped handle of a two-wheeler. Bound to it with a green strap was the air compressor.
“…Nobody.”
“Uh-huh.”
Mike carried the air compressor over to the grave, brought the engine to life, and wrestled it into a steady pattern, up and down, up and down, as if he were vacuuming. Sidney fingered the poem in her pocket. One piece of paper had entailed all this. No wonder Mike had hesitated earlier, when she had visited Elm Woods Cemetery to ask him. But he had said yes. Eventually he had said yes. All for one piece of paper. And he didn’t even ask to read it—it could have said anything about anyone in the whole wide world, and he didn’t read over her shoulder or snatch it away or anything. It was like simply taking it out of Gabe’s pocket, that one solitary act, justified everything. Sidney rubbed her eyes, feeling like her contacts were on fire.
Mike finished tapping the dirt, which was straight and smooth, like a made bed. After re-strapping the air compressor to the two-wheeler, he picked up the sack of seed and threw handfuls onto the grave.
“What are you doing?”
“Planting grass.”
“…Doesn’t it have to be in a pattern or something?”
“No. As long as the dirt’s completely covered, it’s perfect.”
“…Oh.”
Mike threw one last handful and walked back to the two—wheeler. He slung the sack of seed over his shoulder and grabbed the ring-shaped handle, ready to leave. But Sidney had returned to Gabe’s grave, standing right in the center.
“…You okay?” Mike asked, his chin twitching ever so slightly.
“…yeah.”
Mike paused for a moment, and then he dropped everything and walked up to Sidney, slipping his hand in hers.
“…Hey, cheer up. We got away with it.”
“…We did?”
“Yeah, if anybody stopped by right now, they wouldn’t be able to prove a thing. It’s like before. They’d just think we’re mourning.”
Sidney laughed and looked up at Mike. “Oh, really?”
“Oh, come on, Sid, you know what I mean. …What, what are you looking at? Do I have dirt on my face or something?”
“No. None at all.” Sidney smiled. “None at all. Now let’s go.”
Otium
