Keeping Up With the Wind: A 'Burban Tale by Suleyma Moon

22.

The twins' parents came home early from their trip and Whisper and her mother drove up for Ace's funeral. We were all glad to see Whisper and Mrs. Santiago, but the joy of our reunion was cut short by their reason for coming back so soon.

The fact that Ace would have been the happiest of all to see them only made matters worse.

            Spider sat with his mother and father at the front of the church. They would later go on to take Ace back to New Mexico and bury him with the rest of their family. I knew that Ace would have liked that. He was always talking about how beautiful New Mexico was. The only thing that ever stopped Ace from loving the place as much as he could have was his father. This time, though, even that mean old bastard couldn't steal Ace's joy.

As I sat there, with Whisper on one side of me and Li'l Jay on the other, a strange thing happened. A chill went through me, as if someone had just opened the back door. Then the preacher's voice began to fade further and further into the background as the sound of a beating drum took its place in the foreground.

I could have sworn I heard Ace's voice singing the same song that he had sung when my own mother died, not so many years before. As off key as he had been, the old Navajo chant was so beautiful that it had brought Whisper to tears. I always thought how odd it was that the woman who died wasn't even Whisper's mother, yet she had cried harder than anyone else, and she kept on crying long after everyone else had stopped. Whisper always was the emotional type.

I looked over at Whisper now. She sat very still, staring with unblinking eyes at the Virgin Mary. The statue seemed to be looking down at Ace with open arms. The drums grew louder. I looked over at Li'l Jay and asked, "Do you hear that?"

Concentrating totally on the coffin, as if willing it to do something, anything, he didn't answer. Maybe he was trying to bring Ace back. The mere idea of this shook me to the core and I wanted to make Li'l Jay turn his head away.

As much as I wanted my friend back, I knew even then that some things should never be reversed. For the rest of the service, I couldn't look at the coffin, afraid that Ace might sit up and wink at me. As a matter of fact, I couldn't bring myself to look anywhere near the front of the church until they had closed the casket for good.

Looking past Li'l Jay, I saw Blaze. He had his head tilted to the side, as if he were listening to something in the distance. Maybe I wasn't going crazy and he had heard the drum, too. His eyes slowly scanned the room and finally settled on the coffin, then he slowly looked upwards. I saw Spider do the same. Afterwards, Spider turned to Blaze and nodded, confirming whatever they had both apparently seen. The singing faded away after that, and so did the drums. I also looked up, but saw nothing but a ceiling. In all honesty, I'm not sure that I really wanted to see anything but those old wooden rafters up there.

Everyone's parents came to the funeral. Well, everyone's but mine. Mrs. Santiago cried the entire time. Whisper remained dry-eyed all the way up until the preacher's speech about "from dust we were created and to dust we shall return." After that, I was afraid that she wouldn't stop bawling. When her crying finally ceased, she looked at her sobbing mother and burst into tears all over again. I didn't blame Whisper, though. Right then, I wished that I had a mother to cry on, too.

Spider's father sat stiffly throughout the service, never once looking at the coffin. Their mother rocked back and forth, holding something that I couldn't see. I was sure that whatever it was, it had belonged to Ace. Maybe it's a deck of cards, I thought to myself and tried not to snicker.

After a while, their mother jumped up like something had bitten her and she ran over to the coffin. She knelt there for a long time, pleading quietly with either her deceased son or God. I couldn't tell which. When she reached up to touch Ace's face, I quickly looked away. A cry rang out through the chapel, and I looked over at her once again. Her head was rested on the side of her son's coffin, and she was weeping softly. That's when Spider finally broke down. He leaned forwards, face in his hands and his shoulders began to shake under the force of his uncontrollable sobs. Even his father had to wipe his own eyes before going over to his wife.