To his immediate right, Calvin was as immobile as a block of granite. He was heavyset, just an inch or two shorter than Cooper, but his shaved head accentuated the difference. It was a perfect, rounded shape and he fondly referred to it “as the black pearl” when he wanted a cheap laugh. Calvin Little was a gregarious man, well known throughout the neighborhood, and enjoyed gaining the attention of those around him. He stared blankly forward, green eyes unique to a black man.
Mark Moretti was next to Calvin; he managed a local appliance store. He was shifting his weight back and forth on the balls of his feet. He was square-faced, with a prominent Roman nose, and was biting the lower part of his lip. His thin, brown hair was in full retreat and what remained he had gathered meticulously and parted to the left.
To Cooper’s immediate left was Lisa, the nurse. Her open, round face was full of compassion and her eyes reached out to him in sympathy. She wore a solid black cotton dress and had already deployed a black handkerchief to her glistening, dark eyes. Next to Lisa was Dranko, dressed in an awkward fitting brown suit. Probably the only one he owns and likely fitted over a decade ago.
Cooper gave a look skyward and noticed the crow on the wire, a black spot framed starkly against the gray sky. It gazed down at them. Silent.
He cleared his throat, “I want to thank you all for being here.”
All eyes turned towards him. “With what’s going on, it means a lot that you’re here. I know Elena appreciates it, too.” He glanced upwards again and nodded.
“Today we put the remains of Elena, my wife, Jake’s mother, to rest. She was a good woman. A kind woman. I loved her from the moment I saw her. She had a spirit that was alive with life. Sometimes that spirit would get angry and then, well then you wanted to be across the county line.” At that, everyone laughed together.
His voice turned serious again, “But mostly, that spirit filled my life up, and then made it overflow. She always used to say,” he choked up and paused, “that she was the pepper to my sauce. She always laughed when she said that. I think it meant more in either Romanian or Spanish, I never asked her. I would just laugh, too.” Those around him joined him in soft laughter and smiles. He paused to refocus.
“She was also a good mother. Jake is a fine boy.” He turned his head downward to Jake, who looked back up at him, his eyes wet and his nose running. “Elena made that happen. She loved you so much, son.” Tears ran down Cooper’s face. Jake buried his face into Cooper’s side, sobbing.
Cooper turned back toward his friends, “So, in her memory, I make two promises. One, I will do everything I can to protect my son so that she can live onward in him. I will raise him the best I can without her. Two, our home will become a living testament to her spirit, filled with her spirit and her generosity.” He took a step back.
After a moment’s silence, others stepped forward to say a few words about Elena. They were all kind words, the kind most people reserved until someone was no longer able to hear them. But, Cooper’s mind had drifted off. When he looked up at the sky again, the crow was gone. He hadn’t cawed once during the funeral. Cooper nodded once to the empty space in appreciation.
When everyone had finished, Cooper dumped a shovel of dirt on his wife’s covered body. The soil, as dark as midnight, looked incongruous lying on the floral-patterned blanket that covered her. He was about to hand the shovel to Dranko, when Jake’s hand shot out and stopped him, his grip surprisingly strong. His face was set firmly, tight-lipped and dry-eyed. He took the shovel from him, scooped up the cold, dark earth, and threw it across his mother’s body. He then gave it to Dranko and turned to go back inside their house. Cooper walked with him, following in astonishment.
Cooper and Jake sat in contemplative silence at their kitchen table, Cooper drinking coffee and Jake a glass of water. When Dranko came in almost an hour later, he found them in the same state of torpor.
The sound of him closing the door was a catalyst. Cooper shook his head back and forth, rousting the cobwebs from it.
“OK, it is time to get organized. This thing might go on awhile and we’ve already seen far too much chaos for my taste.”
Jake nodded in agreement. Cooper continued, “First, let’s get changed. Then, you can help me inventory all of our useful supplies—food, water, tools, sources of light, ways to cook if the electricity dies, weapons, heck, I’ll just make a list while you’re changing. After that, we can see what we might need to try and go find.”
Jake left to go to his room and change. Cooper rose to do the same, but Dranko put his hand on his shoulder to stop him.
“It is all getting worse. Much worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve seen it with your own eyes, brother. But, what I’ve heard will chill you to the bone. Some estimates are that half of our population has, or will come down with this thing. Most of those will die. I’ve heard about the full weight of our medical resources being deployed to try and research a cure. But, I know it’s moving too fast for that to matter much.
Cooper interrupted out of frustration, “So, yes. This is all depressing, what’s your point?”
Dranko resumed, “My point is, it’s not just the plague we have to worry about. We probably are immune or we’d have it by now. It’s the violence all over the place that matters. Think about it, you’ve been involved in two shootings the last two times you’ve left your home. You almost had another on your front lawn. It’s breaking down. You saw the funeral home too. You’ve not seen the police or other emergency services, have you? It’s coming apart at the seams.”
Cooper met him with a steely gaze, “Where are you going with this?”
“We need to leave the city.” Seeing Cooper’s quick reaction, he added, “At least for a little while. We can come back when things settle down.”
“How dare you!” he hissed. “Her body is barely in the ground and you want me to leave her? Leave my home? No way.”
“But, brother, it’s quickly becoming unsafe here.”
“You always assume the worst is going to happen. Hell, we can organize burial crews to help bury anyone who isn’t. We can get organized and take care of what needs to be taken care of. We don’t need to run.”
Dranko threw up his hands, “I’m not talking about running. I’m talking about relocating, just temporarily.”
“No, I won’t do it. Jake’s been through enough already. I don’t want to take him from the only home he’s ever known. With your plan, we could come back and find this place burned down or ransacked. Besides, I can’t leave Elena behind.”
Dranko caught him squarely in the eye and gripped his shoulders, “Elena’s dead, brother. Dead.”
Cooper shoved him so hard that Dranko banged into the wall with a loud thud, and a picture frame crashed to the ground breaking. “You think I don’t know that? You think I’m denying reality? Damn you. It’s not that at all. I meant what I said out there. Her spirit resides here. I can see her all around me. There is a memory in every corner of this home.” He turned to the bookshelf behind him and grabbed the nearest object.
“Here, you see this?” He held up an old-fashioned pepper grinder made of wood and adorned with a coat of arms made of metal, “We bought this at an antique store. I told her it was silly. Of course we never used the damn thing. Not once! But, she wanted it. Since that day, I’ve made a hundred jokes about her stupid pepper grinder she just had to have.” He turned to grab something else off the shelf, setting the grinder back on the shelf.
Dranko stopped him, “I get it. I get it.”
“No, you don’t. You can’t. It’s the same for my son. Her body might be dead, but we can stay connected to her by staying here. I won’t take him away from that. Life ain’t just about sucking air, this is what makes it all worth living for,” he waved his hands indicating the house about them.