Cold Hands

Death

"Wake up. Zeff, wake up."

I blinked, adjusting to the light. My mom was standing over me, buttoning on her clerical collar with unsteady fingers, her forehead all scrunched up. Something was wrong.

I turned to look out my window, squinting to get the blur of sleep out of my eyes. It was still dark outside. "What's going on?"

"I got a phone call," my mom said, her voice shaking. "I've got to bless a body. I don't want to go by myself. Will you come with me?"

It took me a minute for her words to sink in. My mouth went to cotton as grim scenarios reeled through my head. My mom didn't get like this over some old person who had passed peacefully in their sleep. I nodded numbly, and pushed the covers off myself.

We didn't drive far. We had barely passed the gates when we came up on a clutter of cars on the side of the road, congregating like curious animals around a mangled Buick.

I could see why my mom needed me with her. The disfigured wreckage of a car, people buzzing around it like flies on a carcass. It was an all-too familiar scene to both of us.

But I wasn't quite sure what I was seeing. The car was flipped over on its side and slammed into a tree, the roof nearly bent in half with the impact. People swarmed around the wreck, some taking pictures, some wearing police uniforms, some in pajamas, some crying, but none of them seemed to be looking at the vehicle. They were staring and pointing up in the tree.

I followed their eyes and waving hands, up, up, up. High in the branches, I could see a man's body, silhouetted in the dim gray light of the sky. His back was arched unnaturally, like the spine was snapped in half backwards over a branch.

No, I realized, growing queasy. The branch went right through him. He was skewered, straight through the waist, hung like a sheet on a clothesline.

My mom parked, and grabbed my hand over the armrest. "Pray with me first, okay?" She was still shaking. "I need to be strong for them."

I nodded, and we bowed our heads. She whispered a quick plea in Jesus's name. I squeezed her hand tightly.

She let out a long, slow breath, and exited the car. I opened my door so I could watch and listen, but I didn't bother to get out.

An older woman in a nightgown approached my mother, her permed honey hair still crumpled on one side by her pillow, her feed clad only in slippers, her face streaked with tears.

I recognized her from the congregation at church. She was Jerry's wife.

"He wasn't home for dinner, and I was starting to worry..." she was gasping between sobs. "I started driving around to look for him about midnight, and I knew when he had left he was on his way to visit you...I made bread, he bought fruit, was bringing by a basket as a housewarming present...I found him just like this...I don't know what could have happened..."

My mom allowed the woman to cry on her shoulder, whispering in her ear and rubbing slow circles on her back.

I felt numb. I couldn't stand to look at the mutilated body impaled on the branch, but I couldn't look away either. I suddenly felt horrible for all my mocking nicknames about his yellow teeth.

Something was wrong. A car crash made sense. Cars crashed every day. Cars killed people. Hell, I knew that better than anybody. But how had he ended up fifty feet in the air, speared by a tree?

A scene I had tried hard to forget played through my mind, a scene I never wanted to remember and yet one I had revisited every night in my dreams for months. A pickup truck, swerving with drunken stupor, coming down the highway towards twelve-year-old me and my dad at full speed, my dad not able to jerk the wheel fast enough, his neck snapping as his head rammed against the dashboard, his body somersaulting through the windshield, shattered glass everywhere, a flash of excruciating pain, then silent blackness.

I found my eyes starting to sting. I hadn't cried in a long time. I gritted my teeth and dug my palms into my face, trying to shove the tears back in.

"Everyone who is not the family and friends of Jerry Summers, please back away from the scene," my mom called out, her voice ringing over the chatter of the crowd with more authority and strength than I had known she could muster. She took the hand of the disconsolate widow, and more joined, some in pajamas, some in uniform, some young, some old, holding hands in a ring around the wreck and the tree.

"Let us pray," my mom said. "Our Father, who art in heaven,"

"Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done," a few more voices in the circle joined in.

"On earth as it is in heaven." The entire gathering was participating now. They spoke every word of the Lord's Prayer together as one voice. When the prayer ended, my mother added her own words. She blessed Jerry. She prayed for him to be received into the arms of God. She prayed for the release of his soul from earthly bonds, and she prayed for peace on the souls of those who loved him. At Amen, the circle dispersed. Some of the people got into their cars and drove away.

Others stayed. My mother stayed, comforting Jerry's family and friends. Jerry's wife stayed, still crying. The police stayed, filling out paperwork and conversing in hushed tones.

I stayed, waiting in the car.

"Funny thing, death," said a deep voice, taking me by surprise.

There was a big man with his elbow propped casually on the hood of my mom's car. I don't know how I hadn't noticed him there before. He must have come over while I had been preoccupied with my mother's prayer.

He was easily over six feet, and thickly built, too, with wide shoulders and a chest like a barrel. His skin was ruddy brown, like dark cherry wood, and his hair was buzzed to the scalp. Everything he wore looked expensive; a white suit, a pink silk shirt, a jeweled watch, rings on his fingers, a cross on his neck. He hid his eyes behind metallic rose-tinted aviators. It struck me as odd that someone would wear sunglasses at night.

"Funny?" I said, a little offended by his flippancy.

"Yes, isn't it?" It was impossible to tell if he was looking at me or not behind those glasses. They were like bulbous insect eyes.

"I don't think so," I said, rather heatedly.

"Hmm. Did you know him?" he gestured to the corpse in the tree, but I couldn't look back at it anymore.

"A little," I said. "Not really."

"I believe we have gotten off on the wrong foot," the man said. "Peculiar, maybe, would be a better word. Not funny. I don't mean to imply I find any of this amusing." He removed his hand from the hood of the car to shake mine. "But it certainly is peculiar."

I was hesitant, but I shook the offered hand. It was immaculately groomed, soft, with clear trimmed and polished nails. "Yes," I agreed. "It is."

"Perhaps it would have been better altogether if I had started with an introduction instead." The man flashed teeth whiter than his suit. "I'm Miles Herbert. You may have heard of me."

I recognized the name, but I didn't like his entitled attitude about it. "Don't you own hotels or something? What are you doing here?"

"I make a policy of considering all the goings-on in town to be my business," he countered gracefully, unfazed by my rudeness. "Which is why I already know who you are. Zeff, isn't it? Your mother is the Episcopal Vicar? She gave a very moving prayer, I should say."

He spoke with a charming, friendly drawl, his voice warm and deep like it was coming straight up out of the earth, but I didn't like him very much at all.

"Yes, it's Zeff," was all I said.

"I'm sure it can't be pleasant staying in that dusty old house," Miles said. "But don't worry yourself about it. Just between you and me, you won't be in there for much longer."

Was there actually an edge of menace in his tone, or was I just assigning it? It made me uncomfortable how much he seemed to know about my life.

"And why not?" I asked.

He just smiled and put a finger to his lips.

"Why won't we be at Cole Manor for much longer?" I repeated, getting annoyed.

"In Colesville, a nosy attitude like that can wind you up in a lot of trouble," was all he said, and he started to walk away. "Don't go poking around too much in that house, if you know what's best for you."