OLD THINGS
I walked into the room where my only son lay in an open casket. It was the second hardest thing I would ever have to do.
Tammy couldn’t bring herself to see him like this and so I had come here on my own, which I actually preferred. I could be selfish with my pain. Wrap myself up in it without having to be strong for anyone else. It would be our moment as father and son.
I paused near the door because I knew this was the last time I would ever see him. I didn’t want that moment to end so I didn’t let it begin.
And then I did.
I had never hyperventilated before, but guessed that this was what it felt like. My chest heaved, my stomach swelled, and I couldn’t catch my breath. Swallowed screams cut my throat.
I walked toward him.
Ethan’s face was as bruised and battered as it had been at the hospital two nights earlier. I wanted to pray for him to heal, but there was no point in it anymore. He would never heal. There was nothing for me to do but say good-bye. I stood over him and I cried, letting my tears drip down on to his face and gently rubbing them into his cheeks with my thumb. A part of me buried inside of him.
And then the moment ended.
I kissed him one last time and rubbed his hair. I told him I loved him. And then I turned and walked out of that room where my only son lay in an open casket. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do.
I would never heal either, I realized. The old Tucker was every bit as dead as his son.
Who the hell am I now?, I wondered.
And I thought maybe I could find the answer to that question in Willow Grove.
It was a Saturday in early May and the weather was warm. The citizens of Willow Grove were outside planting flowers, painting shutters, riding bikes. As I drove through town I recognized faces, but did not wave. Tried to not even look, but couldn’t help myself. The Abbot’s house, once pea green was now sweet corn yellow. The Huber’s driveway was freshly blacktopped. A few other changes here and there, but mainly everything was the same as it ever was.
Running north-to-south are streets First through Sixth. Running east-to-west on the north side of town are the President streets: Washington, Adams, Madison, Monroe. South of the tracks are the streets with sturdy old Willow Grove family names: Orput, Kelsey, Sprague. Not a stoplight or even a stop sign for that matter – only a handful of rusty yield signs on the east-west paths.
The Willow Grove United Methodist Church sits on the corner of Third and Sprague and as I approached it I saw two black cats in the middle of that intersection – dead and dead. Good thing I didn’t believe in omens. Still, I took a right turn rather than pass over those cats because I also didn’t not believe in omens.
Old Man Keller came rolling down the middle of Fourth Street on his Cub Cadet like he owned the road and I suppose an argument could be made that he did. That old lawn tractor had probably logged more hours on these streets than any other vehicle in town history. He had been mowing lawns in this town since he was a kid, back when lawn mowing was a much quieter whirring and snippy activity and when the Old Man didn't have a lawn to mow, he rode around town on that old tractor. He stopped his Cub Cadet in its tracks and waved for me to slow down.
“How you doin’, Tuck?” he yelled over a sputtering engine.
“Oh, all right, I guess. How about you, Alvin?”
“Good, good, doin’ good. Well, I heard you might be coming back for a stay. It’ll be nice seeing you around.”
I spent too many years in Willow Grove to be surprised by Old Man Keller knowing about my visit. “Yep. I’ll see you around,” I said, pulling away.
Nice enough old guy, Keller, but I sure couldn’t imagine living his grass-mowing life. His wife was a nurse at the county hospital so cutting grass in the summer and plowing snow in the winter probably paid enough for the Old Man and the Old Woman. I often wondered what kind of thoughts the Old Man had riding atop that tractor. Plenty of time for thinking, that was for sure. At some point, you’ve got to figure he asked the good Lord what his life’s purpose was and the answer he got back was Cut the grass, Alvin.
Rather than cross them, I slowed to a stop on the railroad tracks that divide the town and I took long looks each way, wondering where those trains ever come from and where they ever go. The trains never stop in Willow Grove, they just roar through. It was along these tracks that Katie Cooper’s body had been found so many years ago.
As my eyes lingered on the empty landscape of rock and weed, a gruesome slideshow played in my head. Images of blood and flesh my mind fabricated long ago to fit with the stories I had heard. Katie’s half-naked body lying in the tall grass, a cluster of interested crows cawing from the telephone wires above. Her eyes open wide in a dead stare and her mouth agape, framed by blood-crusted lips. Those green eyes had looked into mine countless times. Those pretty lips had kissed my cheek just once.
Off in the distance, a single light flickered like a solitary star. Maybe it was Katie, or perhaps Ethan. Who could know? The light grew larger, moved toward me. Loud bells ding-ding-dinged and the crossing gates started to lower. I let my foot off the brake and rolled off the tracks, just under one of the gate’s falling arms.
Up ahead of me old Abigail Simpson stepped out of the post office with a package and a grimace. Sunnier than sunny and there’s the Widow Simpson walking around with an umbrella. She used it as a walking cane, of course, but you knew the dour old crank was hoping for rain. I wondered whether it was the same umbrella that she swung at me and Charlie when she caught us egging her house on Halloween way back when. The fact that the Widow was even still alive was a marvel in itself. She must be a hundred. We always called her the Widow Simpson even though she’d never been married. Never had kids or probably even a family, we figured. Probably just crawled out of the ground one day and started hating things. You see a woman like that and you wonder why God didn’t bundle up all the world’s evils and pains into an Abigail Simpson care package and drop it off on her doorstep. I never used to understand how someone could choose to be so hateful, but I had come to learn. There was a kind of strength that is most easily reached from inside of hate. Makes you feel like you can take on almost anything you might come across.
