daughter, had seen them both sobbing, their arms flung around each other, and had come to realize a startling truth: that even the Mrs. Horatios of this world have people who love them.
In the coffin’s polished surface, he could see his own face, bland and composed.
Emotions hidden beneath an expressionless mask.
He had not been so composed at the last funeral he’d attended.
Two years ago, he and his mother had stood holding hands as they gazed at his father’s coffin. The lid had been left open, so people could gaze down at his gaunt face as they said their good-byes. When the time had come to leave, Noah had refused to go. His mother had tried to lead him away, but he had sobbed: You can’t leave Daddy in there! Go back, go back!
He blinked and touched his hand to Mrs. Horatio’s coffin. It was smooth and glossy. Like fine furniture.
Where does the kid part of us go?
He realized that the line ahead of him had vanished, that people behind him were waiting for him to move forward. He continued past the coffin, walked up the aisle, and fled out the mortuary doors.
Outside it was lightly snowing, the cold kiss of flakes soothing to his face. He was relieved none of the reporters had followed him out. All afternoon, they’d chased him around with their tape recorders, wanting just a sentence from the boy who’d courageously wrestled the gun away from the killer. The hero of Knox High School.
What a joke.
He stood across the Street from the mortuary, shivering in the gloom as he watched people walk out of the building. They each performed the identical into-the-cold ritual: the appraising glance at the sky, the shudder, the hugging close of one’s coat. Just about everyone in town had come to pay their last respects, but he scarcely recognized some of them, so transformed were they by their suits and ties and mourning dresses. No one wearing the usual flannels and jeans. Even Chief Kelly was wearing a suit and tie.
Noah watched as Amelia Reid stepped out the mortuary doors. She Was breathing quickly, deeply, and she sagged against the building as though she’d been pursued and was desperately trying to catch her breath.
A car drove by, its tires crunching across the crystalline snow as it passed between them.
Noah called out to her: “Amelia?”
She looked up, startled, and saw him. She hesitated, glancing up and down the street, as though to assure herself it was safe to proceed. He felt his heart beat faster as she crossed the street to join him.
“Pretty grim in there,” he said.
She nodded. “I couldn’t listen to it anymore. I didn’t want to start crying in front of everyone.”
Neither did I, he thought, but would never admit it.
They stood together in the gloom, not looking at each other, both of them moving their feet to stay warm. Both of them searching for some thread of conversation.
He took a deep breath and said, suddenly, “I hate funerals. They remind me of…
.“ He stopped.
“They remind me of my dad’s funeral, too,” she said softly. And she looked up as snowflakes spiraled down from the darkening sky.
Warren Emerson walked on the side of the road, his boots crunching the frost-stiffened grass. He wore a blaze-orange vest and an orange cap, yet he couldn’t help flinching every time another gun went off in the woods. Bullets, after all, were colorblind. It was cold this morning, far colder than yesterday, and his fingers ached in their thin woolen gloves. He shoved his hands into his pockets and kept trudging, not worried about the cold, knowing that in another mile he would cease to notice it.
He had walked this road over a thousand times, in every season of the year, and could trace his progress by the landmarks he passed. The toppled stone wall was four hundred paces from his front yard. The Murray's’ tumbledown barn was nine hundred fifty paces. At two thousand paces, the turnoff to Toddy Point Road, he reached the halfway mark. The landmarks became more frequent as he approached the outskirts of town. So did the traffic, every so often a car or truck rattling by, tires spitting up dirt.
Local drivers seldom stopped to offer Warren a ride into town. In the summertime he caught plenty of rides, from tourists who considered Warren Emerson, shuffling along in his boots and baggy trousers, an example of living, breathing local color. They’d pull over and invite him to climb in for a lift. During the drive they’d ply him with an endless stream of questions, always the same ones: “What do you folks do in the winter?” “You lived here all your life?” “You ever met Stephen King?” Warren’s answers never went beyond a simple yes or no, an economy of words which the tourists invariably found amusing. They’d pull into town, let him off at the general store, and wave so sincerely you’d think they were saying good-bye to their best friend. Wicked friendly people, those tourists; every autumn, he was sorry to see them go, because it meant another nine months of walking down this road, with not a single driver who’d stop for him.
The townspeople were all afraid.
Were he licensed to drive, he often thought, he would not be so unsympathetic to an old man. But Warren could not drive. He had a perfectly fine old Ford gathering dust in the barn-his father’s car, a 1945, scarcely driven-yet Warren could not use it. A danger to himself and to others. That’s what the doctors had said about his driving.
So the Ford stayed in the barn, over fifty years now, and it was as shiny as the day his father had parked it there. Time was kinder to chrome than it was to a man’s face. To a man’s heart. Jam a danger to myself and to others.
His hands at last were starting to feel warm.
He pulled them from his pockets and swung his arms as he walked, heart pumping faster, sweat gathering under his cap. Even on the most frigid of days, if he walked fast enough, far enough, the cold would cease to matter.
By the time he reached town, he’d unbuttoned his coat and removed the cap. When he walked into Cobb and Morong’s General Store, he found it almost unbearably hot inside.
As soon as the door swung shut behind him, the store seemed to fall silent. The clerk looked up, then looked away. Two women standing by the vegetable bin ceased their chatter. Though no one was staring, he could feel their attention focused on him as he picked up a shopping basket and walked up the aisle, toward the canned goods. He filled his basket with the same items he bought every week.
Cat food.
Chili with beef. Tina. Corn. He went down the next row for the dried beans and oatmeal, then to the vegetable bin for a sack of onions.
He carried the basket, now heavy; to the checkout counter.
The cashier avoided looking at him as she tallied up the items. He stood before the register, his blaze orange vest screaming out to the world, Look at me, look at me. Yet no one did. No one met his gaze.
In silence he paid the cashier, picked up the plastic grocery sacks, and turned to leave, steeling himself for the long walk home. At the door, he stopped.
On the newsstand was this week’s issue of the Tranquility Gazette. There was one copy left. He stared at the headline and suddenly the grocery sacks slipped out of his grasp and thudded to the floor. With shaking hands he reached for the newspaper.
HIGH SCHOOL SHOOTING LEAVES TEACHER DEAD, TWO STUDENTS WOUNDED:
14-YEAR-OLD BOY ARRESTED.
“Hey! You gonna pay for that paper?” the clerk called out.
Warren didn’t answer. He just stood by the door, his eyes fixed in horror on a second headline, almost lost in the bottom right corner:
YOUTH BEATS PUPPY TO DEATH: CITED FOR CRUELTY.
And he thought: It’s happening again.
