Max. “We need this settled here and now.”
“This isn’t the place to have this discussion,” said Laszlo. “Why the hell not? This looks like a perfect place to me. Let’s
bring out that Mrs. Byrne and all hash it out together. Why the hell shouldn’t his son have a right to sit in at his own father’s funeral? Who the hell are you and her to tell him that he can’t?”
“Can we talk about this later?”
“Hell no, we’ll talk about it now, you son of a bitch. And if need be, we’ll get our own damn lawyers.”
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”
“Why is it that when a lawyer says getting another lawyer involved isn’t necessary, it always turns out to be necessary as hell?”
While the two men argued, Kyle squatted in the sunlight and rubbed a stick along the parking lot, leaving trails of bark atop the asphalt. His cheek ached, as if the witch with the puffy red lips had thrown a fastball at his face. But even worse was the sight of all those important people giving their condolences to her. Why weren’t they giving their condolences to him? I’m so sorry for your loss. Your father was a fine, fine man. Please know we’re all thinking of you. He wanted condolences. Where were his condolences? He guessed they were lost, along with his tears.
Liam Byrne had never been a huge physical presence in Kyle’s life. Kyle couldn’t remember anymore the time when his father had lived with them, he only knew of it from his mother’s say-so. What Kyle remembered was his father’s “Hello, boyo,” when he would show up at the house every other month or so, to be served drinks and dinner by his mother, or maybe very occasionally at the field behind the police station to watch Kyle pitch. Kyle assumed his father called him “boyo” because he couldn’t remember his real name. His father had always been more a ghost in Kyle’s life than anything else, so it seemed almost natural that he had become the real thing. The only difference for Kyle was that from here on in, when he looked at the stands from the Little League mound, he wouldn’t be disappointed over and again.
Still, he knew in his heart there should be something more than this emptiness: no tears, no condolences, just a bruised cheek and a sordid argument in a hot parking lot. He thought of going back inside and telling everyone who he was, going pew to pew asking for condolences. He was my father, he’d say. And then they’d all start in. We’re so sorry. You must be such a brave boy. If there is anything we can do. Maybe he should just go in and touch the urn like he had tried to do before, maybe that would break the dam and let everything flow. Except the Secret Service man was still there to stop him.
Kyle stood up, tossed the stick away, went over to his mother. “How come they won’t let us back inside?” he said.
“It’s complicated.”
“His wife talks funny. Is she French?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why he wouldn’t leave her?”
Kyle’s mother let out a bark of a laugh.
“They didn’t let me touch it,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“The urn.”
“That’s too bad, Kyle.”
“Who gets it after this is over?”
“I suppose they’ll bury it.”
“Why don’t we get it?”
“Would you really want it?”
“No, not really,” he said, but it was a lie.
Kyle was not one of those kids who needed the latest of everything. He hadn’t begged his mom for a superpowered aluminum baseball bat or a Wilson 2000 baseball glove, hadn’t whined for the Nintendo Super NES when his Sega system became outdated. But suddenly, more than anything he had ever wanted in his entire life, he wanted that urn.
He started walking toward the chapel door as Uncle Max continued his argument.
“We just want to know how you’re going to step up and satisfy his obligations,” Uncle Max said, his face red, spittle flying. “Tell us that we’ll get what’s fair. Let’s hear it, come on.”
At the entrance Kyle stood for a moment rubbing his cheek. Then he opened one of the doors and slipped inside.
When the door closed behind him, Uncle Max’s bray disappeared, replaced instead by the soft and insistent voice of a priest, talking from the altar. Kyle didn’t look at the priest or the heads that swiveled to take in his presence, or even the Secret Service man, who noticed him enter and started walking toward him from the front of the chapel. All he saw was the urn, flowery and stout, like a jolly little man, waiting to be touched, held, waiting to be lovingly embraced.
And then time slowed down into discrete and perfectly understandable moments.
This was how it felt sometimes on the mound before a crucial pitch, or just before a play in football as he dropped into his stance in the backfield and the quarterback began to bark the signals. Things slowed down. And the action, when it came, seemed to happen unhurriedly and step by step, with the simple geometry of a pool game, even as it happened haphazardly and all at once in real time.
The Secret Service man in the dark suit came up the aisle, slowly, jerkily, like in an old movie. Kyle charged right at him, threw out a straight arm, bounced off toward the front of the chapel. He sprinted up the aisle, snatched the urn, popped a spin move before dashing to the side door. His left hip slammed into the latch bar.
In the chapel’s parking lot, when the alarm went off, Laszlo started searching around even as Uncle Max continued with his rant. “You look at me when I’m talking,” said Uncle Max, jabbing his finger right into Laszlo’s face. Kyle’s mom, still leaning against the car, turned her head to see what was happening. And then she started laughing, a light, sardonic laugh. She laughed as she spotted her son, Kyle Byrne, suit jacket flapping behind him, tearing off like a flushed fox into the depths of the cemetery, the flowered urn tucked into the crook of his arm like an oversize green football.
Years later, when questions about his father’s death rose like a cobra from its basket, when he found himself caught within a story of low violence and high aspirations, of family pathologies and political ambition and murder, in that time of mystery and blood, Kyle Byrne would think back on that sprint through the graveyard as the purest moment in his sad, misspent life.
He hadn’t gotten far, actually. After a few seconds of glorious freedom, alone with just his father by his side, his foot had caught the top of a gravestone he was trying to hurdle, sending him sprawling and the urn flying through the air. The urn landed with a thunk and a crack, loosing a fine cascade of ash and bleached bits of bone into the air. When the wiry gravedigger in overalls found him, Kyle was sitting on the ground, desperately trying to stuff what was left of his father back into the broken urn.