It scared me—huh—the way he breathed like that. HUH. So I just stood and listened to Nathan breathe his booming breaths—huh. I thought that everything I thought about death was wrong.
I shook my head and followed Stanley into the waiting room where we sat and waited for something to happen.
And then we went back and forth, back and forth. At the end of the hallway there was a crazy old woman who didn’t even know where she was at and she kept shouting, “Louise. Louise.”
The nurse came over and said, “There’s no Louise here, honey.”
Then the nurse said: “Why don’t you help fold these quilts for your babies.”
The old woman picked up these hospital towels and started folding them.
The nurse said: “Yeah, you’re doing a good job folding these quilts for your babies.”
I thought, This world is crazy.
We walked around for another three or four hours going back and forth to Nathan’s room every fifteen minutes or so.
And then the last time I went into his room before we left, Aunt Mary was leaning overtop him crying and telling him, “You just fight, Nathan. You just fight.”
She left.
I stood at the foot of the bed and told him inside my head, No, Nathan. You go ahead and die.
Nathan just kept breathing his booming breaths, HUH HUH.
Then Stanley said: “Well we might as well go.” So about 4:00 that morning we left the hospital and drove all the way back to Danese.
I drove behind my uncle’s truck and saw a dead deer on the side of the road. At the bottom of Sandstone Mountain I saw an old guy walking through the darkness with a backpack. He turned towards me and lowered his thumb and it looked like Nathan, traveling somewhere. I shook my head and drove all the way back home trying to stay awake. When we finally got home we hadn’t so much walked through the door and the phone rang.
My uncle picked it up and said, “He did. Okay. Thank you.”
Then he hung up and his voice was all choked up and full of tears. “That was the hospital. He died. I’ll have to tell mother.”
I went “Oh” and my Uncle Stanley walked outside.
So that morning I started planning for Nathan’s wake. I asked Ruby what she wanted him buried in. She told me she wanted him buried in sweatpants and a sweatshirt just like he always wore.
She said, “He never liked those suits and ties — awful things.”
So I went over to Wal-Mart and bought him a white sweatshirt and a pair of white sweatpants.
And then I took them up to the cashier who said, “Did you find everything?” thinking I was just a guy buying a sweatshirt and sweatpants.
She didn’t know I was a guy who was shopping for clothes to bury his uncle. That afternoon when I took the clothes down to Bob Wallace, I said, “I need to get him a t-shirt too so that he won’t get cold.” The funeral home guy just looked at me.
Then I laughed because he was just a dead body now and it didn’t matter if he was cold or not.
So all of the children and all of the grandchildren and all of the great grandchildren and all of the mothers and all of the uncles’ uncles and all the cousins and all of the cousins’ cousins — they all came in and we had a wake. That night we walked into the wake where the casket was.
And then I walked up to the coffin too and looked down at Nathan. I whispered, “What are you now?”
The coffin was so full of stuffed animals that my Uncle Stanley said: “Need to tell people to quit putting stuffed animals in there. It’s gonna be so full of stuffed animals they’re not gonna be able to see the body.”
I giggled and looked at Nathan. I looked at his plastic-looking skin, and I looked at his lipstick red lips, and I looked at his cheeks painted rouge red.
“They’ve turned you into a cross dresser, Nathan. They put lipstick on you.”
I thought, You’re the deadest-looking body I’ve ever seen.
So everybody passed the body and said goodbye. Ruby balanced herself on her wheelchair and stooped to kiss his face. There were people in the corner sharing recipes and there were people telling jokes. There were people crying in the corner. There were people saying that God has a plan for all of us. I said, “People are meant to have cancer or find out that their child is a serial killer? That’s a pretty shitty plan.”
People gave me dirty looks.
There was this little girl who was taking violin lessons. She stood up and was going to play us a song.
One of the old women said: “Oh look at that little girl. She’s so cute. And she’s gonna play us a pretty little song.”
So the little girl took out her bow and her violin and everybody listened as she drew back her bow across the strings—eek — squeak. Then she brought it back eeek — squeak. And she was playing the worst sound you’ve ever heard. It made your stomach hurt, it sounded so bad. It made you want to die.
Then just a few minutes before the wake was supposed to end, my Uncle Terry came in. He’d flown in all the way from San Francisco. His wife was pregnant and she was getting ready to have a baby. He was upset because he wanted Nathan to be able to hold his first child. So he came in at the end of the wake holding something in his hands. He walked up to the coffin and put something in Nathan’s hand. Then he patted the dead hand and walked away. It was an ultrasound picture of his baby who wouldn’t be born for another four months. But Nathan was holding his baby now. Nathan was buried with a baby in his hands.
The next day at the funeral they put Nathan into the ground. It was cold and rainy and the ambulance brought Ruby out on a stretcher. She was all covered in quilts and her head was wrapped in blankets so she wouldn’t get cold. She was back away from the coffin, propped up on the stretcher, and the preacher stood at the grave shouting loud so she could hear. I stood, watching and listening to it all. Before long I wasn’t listening to him anymore. I was looking out over the graves and watching my cousin Bonnie walking with her little boy Paul and showing him all the graves. This was his great grandmother. This was Paul’s great grandfather. This was the one thing we shared with everyone. This was the story of generations and they begat and begat and begat. Death.
And so the preacher prayed and preached and prayed some more. Then after the preaching was done Wallace and Wallace brought over this white box full of doves and the preacher said: “We’ll now release this white dove which is a symbol of the dearly departed’s soul.”
The preacher pulled off the top of the box and the white dove shot out and over all of us and then high up into the cold gray sky and then even over the old home place, where it circled twice before flying away.
Then Preacher Steve raised his arms and shouted: “He’s flying home to heaven, Ruby. His soul is flying home to heaven.”
Ruby said: “Oh lordie, yes. Little Nathan is flying home to heaven.”
Preacher Steve shouted: “Hallelujah, Ruby.”
Ruby raised her arms too and shouted “Hallelujah” as the white dove disappeared into the sky.
And then everybody started walking back towards the trucks to go home. I looked in front and saw the little girl from the night before with her evil violin. She was putting her violin beneath her chin and getting ready to play us one of her monster songs. So we rolled our eyes and shrugged our shoulders like, Oh god, not again.