It has been said that death will either bring a family together or pull a family apart. Because death has the tendency to play havoc with relationships and sensibilities as it reshuffles the deck of the card game of life, it rarely makes only a glancing impression upon a family member. However, with the death of Shelby Ramsey, his surviving siblings displayed every point upon the spectrum of familial response, including the one that rests squarely in the middle: marginal interest bordering upon indifference.
Let us begin our examination of these varied responses with Carla Guinter, wife of Captain Virgil Guinter of the United States Navy, and, within the timeframe of our story, a resident of the Mission Hills neighborhood of San Diego. Carla, first in the family birth order, has just received a phone call from her sister Mellie about the death of said brother Shelby (fourth oldest), who for the last twenty years has gone by the name of Sawyer. He chose Sawyer when he began to include in his juggling act three active-duty two-stroke-engine-powered chainsaws. Sawyer used to juggle rubber balls. Then he moved up to dessert plates. He finished his life juggling chainsaws. It was, in fact, one of the chainsaws that prematurely (and violently) brought the curtain down on Shelby/Sawyer’s neo-Vaudevillian life.
Mellie is calling from Burnsville, a suburb of Minneapolis. Mellie and her husband Artie are both high school teachers.
“How did he die?” asks Carla, who tries very hard to be attentive to news of her brother’s death — the brother she has not seen except on an occasional television variety show for the last dozen years.
“He was performing at Circus Circus Tunica, one of those new Mississippi River casinos, and he lost his concentration, and one of the chainsaws sliced the jugular vein in his neck.”
This statement of gruesome fact is followed on the other end of the telephone line by silence.
“I’m sorry, Carla. I didn’t know how else to say it. Hello? Carla?”
“I’m back. I dropped the phone. I didn’t hear what you just — There is a man on a rampage on channel ten. He’s stolen a tank and he’s flattening cars and trucks like he was Godzilla’s own feet.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“On the television. They’re showing it right now. He’s destroying a whole street in Clairemont. It’s hard to even watch. He just tried to knock over a house. Now he’s backing up. He’s running over a fire hy — Jesus God, Mellie. The man has just unleashed a geyser of water three stories high.”
“Our brother is dead. He was nearly decapitated.”
“Who did it?”
“What do you mean ‘who did it?’ He did it to himself. It isn’t just a severed finger from a misthrown Ginsu knife this time, Carla. It’s his neck.”
“That’s awful. Oh Jesus God, Mellie — the tank maniac just ran over some kind of recreational vehicle. Opened it right up like a loosely wrapped Christmas present.”
“Would you turn off the television?” There is the sound of undisguised impatience to Mellie’s voice.
“Just a minute. I’m turning the sound down. I’ll turn away for a moment, but I have to know what happens. I have friends who live in Clairemont. I fear for their safety.”
“Buck is handling the arrangements. He’s flying down to Memphis tonight. He wants to know if we’re okay with cremation.”
“I don’t have a problem with cre — oooooh!”
“You turned back around, didn’t you?”
“I can’t help it, Mellie. There’s all manner of mayhem being broadcast on my television right now.”
“You’re disrespecting our brother.”
“I hardly knew him”
“That was cold, Carla.”
“That didn’t come out the way I meant it. I just mean that Shelby and I had so very little to do with each other. He really was a stranger to me. Just as, no doubt, I’ve always been a stranger to him. I’m a navy wife. Whereas he juggled things for a living. Can you think of any other two people less alike?”
“So you’re fine with Buck having him cremated?”
“Yes, of course. Is there going to be a funeral?”
“His friends — his juggling friends — they want to do something special for him at the casino.”
“Something like what?”
“They want to put his ashes in little hollow balls and juggle them in tribute.”
“Well, that certainly sounds in keeping with the crazy kind of life our brother led. Who am I to object?”
“That’s what I needed to know. Buck doesn’t like the idea. He thinks it’s kitschy. I’ll talk to him. What is the tank doing?”
“I can look now?”
“Have they been able to stop it?”
“How do you stop a tank?”
“With an anti-ballistic missile?”
The two women hang up.
Mellie gets her youngest brother Troy on the phone. Troy lives in Oklahoma City.
“Hello, Troy. Has Buck called you?”
“Yeah. Did you know there’s a tank on the rampage in San Diego? Is Carla okay?”
“It isn’t in her neighborhood.”
“I think the whole world has gone batty. We have a little girl who lives next to us. She won’t come out of her closet.”
“Is it because of the bombing?”
“That’s what her mother says. The girl is friends with another little girl whose baby sister was in the Murrah Building when it blew up last month. You can’t keep the kids from watching all the coverage on TV. You can’t protect your kids from all the shit that’s out there these days. Nowhere is safe. Not even the heartland of America. I’m glad Taffy’s grown. I still worry about her, though. She’s in New York. There could be a sarin gas attack in the subway. She could be downtown when they try to blow up the World Trade Center again. Who’s driving that tank? Is it O.J. Simpson?”
“I don’t think they know who it is. Maybe it’s the Unabomber. That would make sense. Buck wants to have Shelby cremated. He doesn’t want all those jugglers juggling Shelby’s ashes around, though.”
“Yeah, he told me.”
“Do you have an opinion one way or another?”
“I think it would be disrespectful to juggle his ashes. Even though this is how he made his living. Mom would have disapproved. But Mom is dead. I don’t think Shelby would have minded, but Buck’s the one doing all the heavy lifting here. So I vote to let Buck have the final say. And that’s what I told him.”
“How is it there in Oklahoma City?”
“There’s still a pall over the city. You see it in all the faces. And such anger. Before they found out that it was a homegrown lunatic who did it, this East Indian who runs the convenience store in my neighborhood — somebody shot at him with a BB gun. They thought he was Muslim, like the guys who tried to pull down the Twin Towers. He isn’t Muslim. He’s a Sikh. They wear turbans too. I hate this country. Full of idiots and crazies.”
“I should call Buck.”
“Sorry.”
“About what?”
“Going off on my rant. And Clinton’s no improvement on Bush.”
“I’ll talk to you later.”
“Love you, Sis.”
“Love you too.”
Mellie phones her oldest brother Buck. Buck owns a ranch on the eastern slopes of the Pryor Mountains, south of Billings, Montana. He breeds champion Friesian stallions.