“Nope. Mom will be glad to hear I’ve taken care of it. She’s not much for ceremonies these days.”
“Well,” I say.
“Let’s go.” He steps down off the porch, and I go with him. Walking onto the grass is like stepping off into space proper. I move with a light-headed, space-walk feeling.
“Jon,” I say. “Jonny, maybe we should wait to do this. I mean, don’t you think you’ll be sorry you didn’t plan something?”
“If you don’t want to, I’ll do it myself,” he says. He walks several paces toward the road, which is a dull silver stain on the darkness. Tree frogs put out their clicks and groans. The Seven Sisters pulse overhead in a small clustered storm of stars. I follow him. As we cross the road I am reminded of myself in childhood, following my brother into the cemetery to celebrate our heroic future together. Jonathan moves with a determination that is both ritualistic and slightly crazed. He is wearing only those polka-dot boxers as galaxies explode overhead.
An empty alfalfa field stretches beyond the road. Alfalfa brushes and sighs against our bare legs. Although I know from daylight that this field ends in brush and an abandoned shed, all I can see at this moment is an ocean of alfalfa. As we walk Jonathan says, “I just realized how ludicrous it is to hold on to my father’s ashes until I find some sort of perfect home for them. I’ve decided this is a perfect place. This field right here. I don’t even know who owns it, do you?”
“No.”
“Oh, Bobby. I wanted to be part of something that wasn’t dying.”
“You are.”
“No I’m not. I thought I was, but really, I’m not.”
“Jon,” I say. “Jonny.”
He waits, but I can’t tell him. I can’t tell him what I know—we both have devotions outside the world of the living. It’s what separates us from Clare, and from other people. It’s what’s held us together as the ordinary run of circumstance has said we should grow up and part.
After a while he says, “So I think it’s time to get rid of these. Right now. Here. This seems like a good enough spot.”
We are so far into the field that the darkness has closed behind us, blotting out the road and house. All we can see is alfalfa. Crickets make their racket and mosquitoes swarm around our heads, unable to believe their luck. We stand there in a starry, buzzing darkness complete as the end of the world.
“The lid’s a little tricky,” he says. “Just a minute. There.”
He sets the box on the ground. “This is hard to believe,” he says. “My father used to carry me on his shoulders. He once tickled me until I peed in my pants. I still remember how bad he felt. And embarrassed. And a little indignant.”
“Do you want to, like, say a few words?” I ask.
“Oh, I guess I’ve already said them. Listen, will you reach in at the same time I do?”
“Okay. If you want me to.”
We both bend over. “I’m going to count to three,” he says. “One, two, three.”
We reach in. There’s a plastic bag inside the box, and we work our hands through the plastic. Ned’s ashes have a velvet, suety feel. They are studded with chips of bone. When we touch them, Jonathan draws in a breath.
“Oh,” he says. “Okay. I think that was the worst part. Have you got some?”
“Uh-huh.”
We stand with handfuls of ash and bone. “She was right,” he says. “It really isn’t much more of him than a pair of his old shoes. Okay. Here goes.”
In silence, we sift the ashes into the field. We walk small circles, distributing. It’s too dark to see them fall. They disappear from our hands. If they make any sound it’s drowned out by the insects and the rustle of alfalfa.
We go back to the box again and again. We don’t speak until the ashes are gone.
“All right,” Jonathan says. “Dad, I got this far. This was the best I could do.”
He picks up the box and we head into the area of darkness where we think the house must lie. We’ve lost our bearings scattering the ashes, and we miss the house by some distance. We must walk along the road for nearly a quarter mile. We give a passing Volvo something to wonder about—two men walking a country road in their underwear, holding an empty box.
“Bobby?” Jonathan says.
“Yeah?”
“You know why I decided to do this all of a sudden?”
“No.”
“After Clare and Rebecca left I started thinking about how I didn’t want them to come back to Erich doing so badly upstairs and my father’s ashes sitting on a shelf in the living room. It suddenly seemed like too much death in the house. That’s when I decided to put the ashes out to pasture. I mean, what was I saving them for?”
“Well, nothing, I guess.”
“I want to paint Rebecca’s room,” he says. “It’s too dingy in there. What if we picked up some paint tomorrow, after work? Something gaudy that she’ll be nuts about, like bright pink. Nobody told me a baby would have such bad taste.”
I can hear his breathing. What there is of starlight shines gray and faltering on his bare skin. We walk for several minutes in silence.
“Listen,” he says.
“Uh-huh.”
“If something happens to me, this will be an all right place to put my ashes, too. If and when the time comes, I want you to tell my mother that. Tell her I had a last request, and this was it. God, if my father and I both end up strewn around here, where will my mother go when she dies?”
“She could come here, too.”
“Well, she’s always getting dragged someplace she doesn’t want to go. Why should things be any different after she’s dead, right?”
“Right. I mean, I guess so. This is where we all belong now.”
“What if that were true?” he says. “Wouldn’t it be something?”
We don’t talk anymore. There is too much to say. We travel the last short distance, invisibly watched by night animals. It is like a dream, one of those childhood dreams of public embarrassment, to be walking on a public road in my frayed underwear. But, in this particular dream, I feel no embarrassment. I’m just here, undressed on a country road, with a dark wind blowing around me. Ned’s ashes are mingling with the ground in a miniature world of ants and armored, lumbering beetles. Erich sleeps his skimming sleep, intricately lit by dreams. There is a beauty in the world, though it’s harsher than we ever expect it to be. It’s as unlike the autumn farm on my family’s dining- room wall as a bone is unlike a man or a woman. Somewhere on this continent Clare and Rebecca are sleeping, in a motel or a friend’s living room. As the blue silhouette of the house appears ahead of us I remember that home is also a place to escape. This is ours; we have it to run from and we have it to return to.
It’s black enough right now to see the future—the cold mornings and the long nights, the daily music. Jonathan and I are here to maintain a present, so people can return to it when their futures thin out on them. We’ve been on our way here for a long time. We start up the drive and I see something riffle the curtain in the bedroom window. For a moment I think Clare has come back. I grab Jonathan’s shoulder.
“What?” he says. “What is it?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing. Never mind.”
Between the impulse and the touch, I’ve come to my senses. Clare isn’t back. What I saw was just the wind blowing. It was either the wind or the spirit of the house itself, briefly unsettled by our nocturnal absence but too old to be surprised by the errands born from the gap between what we can imagine and what we in fact create.
JONATHAN
