The cemetery was at the top of a hill, on the outside of town where ponderosa pines coalesced along gravel roads and fields squared-in the acre where Brandon would be buried. There was an area for Protestants on one side of the highway and plots reserved for Catholics and Ponca Indians on the other. Brenda’s parents had given one of their own plots for Brandon. When they died, they would share one, buried one on top of the other.
Charlie left the engine running during the interment so I could stay in the car. My nose ached. It had been running thin mucus all day, but was dry then. My nostrils felt wide open and my sinuses burned. My parents and Todd sat with their arms wrapped around each other under the funeral home tent, near Brandon’s casket, Brenda and Monte next to them. A wispy snow fell. Small pellets were pressed to ice on the ground in the shape of footprints. I curled up in the backseat, too tired to watch.
I imagined what it would have been like to be there when Brandon died, plotting out the manual. Brandon dancing around the living room, lifting his knees above his waist, arms churning, a big goofy grin. He stops. Coughs out half-chewed bits of popcorn, hands at his throat, fingers probing his mouth. He looks at Brenda, eyes watering, then walks to her. She asks him what’s the matter, pats his back then moves behind him for the Heimlich. This makes the boy vomit. They panic, recognizing an asthmatic fit, but he’s still choking. It would happen too quickly to really know what was what.
Of course, I was grateful I wasn’t there. I appreciated that I was allowed to use my imagination instead of having to remember actual details. Still, for many years, I had to watch it in parts, what I could imagine, with eyes closed at high school football games and in conversation at pancake feeds.
It wasn’t until the families were at the burial that Brenda broke down, sitting there in the tent next to Charlie. After Pastor Harold blessed the body, as they prepared to lay Brandon at peace, Brenda leaned over and cried on Charlie’s shoulder, softly, in the language of grief. She pulled his arm and mouthed the word bastard. Charlie said nothing in return. She stood to scream at him, spitting, tried to curse him to the ground. Monte held her from behind, pulled her back. She kept screaming.
Sitting up in the backseat to see the commotion, my vision blurry from tears, I heard Brenda’s voice. I peeked over the door on my knees, my hands pressed to the glass. She stared at Charlie, standing above him, her face red and wet, her mouth open. She gasped for air with screams. Then her men surrounded her. Her father helped Monte pull her away.
Charlie hurried to the car. Mom’s high heels slipped on the ice but Charlie caught her before she fell. He held the door and helped her into the passenger’s side.
“It’s okay,” my mom told Charlie. “No one thinks it’s your fault.”
“The woman’s crazy. She has every right to be crazy and she is.”
“It isn’t your fault,” my mom insisted. “You’re a great dad.”
Charlie said he knew that. He put the car in drive then rode the brakes as he wove down the narrow brick roads of the cemetery hill, slowly, slowly, not an ounce of panic.
I asked my mom if we were going back to the church for the reception.
“Of course,” she said. “People will get excited. But we have every right to be there.”
Brandon had been rushed to the emergency room because of asthma attacks before. There were trips for bronchitis and heat-seeking infections that had no reasonable cause.
Todd and I once joined our father to deliver a prescription to Bancroft that Brandon needed. It was late and the small-town pharmacies were closed, so we drove in from Lincoln, stopping in Omaha at the all-night Walgreen’s before heading north on a two-lane highway. Charlie had made the trip a few times before that I’m able to recall.
It seemed like someone was playing a practical joke on us when we left that night. Charlie was so reserved. He drove below the speed limit. He stood with his hands in his pockets at the pharmacy counter as he hummed along with a song playing in his head. He paid with a credit card, which was an involved process in those days.
Brenda had a white two-story house with green trim across from the Methodist church in Bancroft. I recognized Monte’s car slumped in the carport, his red Monte Carlo. Even then it was an unfunny joke that he drove that car. Branches from oak trees littered the damp, early spring grass. We climbed those trees with our mom when we came to visit Brandon because Mom didn’t like being in Brenda’s house. Mom was short and had strong legs that were perfect for climbing. She would swing herself onto a low branch and dart up to the middle of the tree, daring us to follow. She’d leverage and tilt herself up the tree until the limbs began to bend under her, cradled in a bough we were too chicken to reach.
We looked back at the street from the porch that night and watched a car turn the corner. Its headlights were off. Two men were in the car, but I couldn’t see them distinctly. It was an older vehicle, something big, a Caprice. The men looked like gangsters to me, staring right at us as they were, but they were probably just farmers. Some guys drinking beers in their car that saw us drive by. People were protective of their own here. They noticed outsiders in expensive cars, like whatever year M5 Charlie drove then. He always drove a black BMW.
Charlie put his palm on Todd’s shoulder, he grabbed my hand and pulled to the door. We went in without knocking.
Monte slipped around the corner to greet us when he heard the door and accepted the white paper bag with the prescription in it. He stood with Charlie and talked baseball, moaning over roster moves the Cubs had made, before taking the medication to Brandon. Monte was really fond of Charlie, even as a boy I recognized this. He looked up to my father and tried to appear interesting when he was around him, asking Charlie’s opinion on sports and politics. Monte was a farmhand and did odd jobs around town in winter. He didn’t have a trade, but he was usually good at helping.
In the other room I saw Brandon sit up on the couch, gagging on his breath with a pillow hugged between his knees. Brenda rubbed his back and attempted a smile for us.
“How are you boys?” she asked, her voice smoky. Curly red hair fell over her face.
Monte told us that there were video games in Brandon’s room. Charlie nodded that it was okay, so we ran upstairs, treading the risers with both hands and feet like our greyhound climbed the stairs at home. The carpet was sticky and smelled like cigarettes.
In Brandon’s room, a small television sat on the floor next to leather-bound volumes of adventure fiction. We left the lights off and turned the volume down. Grabbed Nintendo controllers and sat on Brandon’s bed. We played Tecmo Bowl for a while, without passion, in the mechanical way kids pass time when their parents are busy. It was only the third quarter when Charlie yelled up the stairs that we needed to leave, and it didn’t bother us that the game wasn’t finished.
Brenda and Brandon were still on the parlor couch when we came down. He looked better then, sucking vapor from an inhaler. I thought his inhaler was bug repellent the first time I saw it, the blue plastic cartridge and white spray. We were at the park in Bancroft, whipping each other off the merry-go-round. Sitting in the gravel, I misted some on my legs. “Don’t do that,” Brandon said, pulling it away from me. “It’s expensive.”
There was a great deal of talk about medications at the reception. Brenda had to be knocked out because she’d tumbled into a state of hysteria. There was speculation about what prescriptions would be forthcoming.
I didn’t understand why a mother would have to be put under after her child died.
“It’s common,” my mom explained. We were on a walk in the park near the church. “There’s a special bond between a mother and her child. Emotionally. Spiritually. It comes from being in the womb. A physical connection. A child should never die before their parent. It’s too much to bear.”