"I'll see you guys later."
He shuffled forward, weaving his way through the adults. They offered condolences as he passed by them, along with condescending pats on the head, as if he were six years old rather than twelve. Timmy did his best to be polite to them, but inside, he barely acknowledged their presence. His attention was fixed on the figure in the coffin, the thing that was supposed to be his grandfather.
Barry and Doug watched him go. Barry tugged at his tie. His collar felt like it was choking him, and even with the air conditioning turned on, the church was still hot inside. Doug leaned over and whispered in Barry's ear.
"This sucks. I feel bad for him, but I don't know what to say."
"Me neither. I've helped my old man with dozens of these. It's always weird, and you feel bad for the people, but there's not really anything to say. 'Sorry' just doesn 't seem to cover it. Especially this time."
"Why now more than the others?"
"Because Timmy's our friend. And because his grandpa was pretty cool."
"Yeah," Doug agreed. "He was. I liked him."
"Sometimes," Barry said, "I think he was the only cool grownup I knew." When they looked up again, the crowd of adults had swallowed Timmy whole. Timmy had walked the redcarpeted church aisle hundreds of times. He' d walked it for communion and on Youth Sunday when it was his turn to take the offering and when the youth group put on the annual Christmas pageant. Last year, he ' d been Joseph and Katie had played the part of Mary and all of the adults had remarked how cute they looked together. Timmy had thought he might die of embarrassment, and die all over again when Katie squeezed his hand while they took their bow as the parishioners applauded. He knew the aisle like he knew the cemetery outside, but the aisle had never seemed longer or more crowded than it did at that moment. The heat was cloying, made worse by the crowd, and his suit felt like it was stuck to his skin. The air was a mixture of cologne and perfume and candle smoke. He pushed his way through and emerged at the front. He stood in front of the coffin, looked down at his grandfather's corpse, and did his best not to cry. It was even worse up close.
Timmy closed his eyes, trying in vain to get rid of the image. The thing in the casket even smelled different. His grandfather had always smelled like Old Spice aftershave. This still figure had no smell. He opened his eyes again and glanced at the corpse 's hands, folded neatly across its chest. His grandfather' s skin had always felt rough and warm his hands deeply callused from years of hard labor. He wondered how they ' d feel now. Shuddering, Timmy took a deep breath and held it. His ears rang, a highpitched, constant tone, and his mouth felt dry. His heart thudded in his chest. He let the air out of his lungs with a sigh.
His mother put her arm around him and kissed his head. She smelled of lilac soap and hairspray.
"You okay, sweetie?"
He nodded.
"They did a real good job. It looks like Grandpa's just sleeping, doesn't it?" Timmy wanted to scream at her. No, it did not look like Grandpa was sleeping. It looked nothing like that at all. In fact, it didn't even look like Grandpa. At twelve, Timmy was well aware of the fallacies adults sometimes used. "Do as I say, not as I do" was a big one. Many times, he' d overheard Mr. Smeltzer promising Barry that he ' d tan his hide should he ever catch Barry and his friends drinking or smoking cigarettes, yet Clark Smeltzer started and ended each day drunk as a skunk and smoked two and a half packs before nightfall.
"It's for your own good" was another. When he was younger, Timmy used to believe that he had an invisible accomplice named U' rown Goode who only his parents could see. Timmy had once shot a dove with his BB gun, and his father had grounded him and confiscated the weapon as a result (shooting doves without a license was illegal in the state of Pennsylvania).
Two days later, his father had left to go deer hunting in Potter County. He'd returned home bragging about how he' d shot three deer, one over the legal limit, and had given the third to a friend.
Why was Timmy grounded for shooting the dove without a license while his father had basically done the same thing? It was for U 'rown Goode. Had his invisible friend actually fired the fatal shot?
Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny were adult fallacies, as well. Grownups encouraged their kids to believe in them, only to yank the wool from their eyes and chuckle over the joke when they got older, killing whatever belief in magic the child still clung to. Killing their innocence. Sometimes, Timmy wondered if maybe God was just another fallacy, too. After all, his parents insisted that He was real, just like Santa Claus. Both of them lived at the top of the world and kept track of everybody, judging the populace on whether or not they ' d been good or bad. The only Santa Timmy had ever seen was at the North Hanover Mall, and that guy was a phony. The only God he 'd ever seen was the one that hung from the cross at the front of the church. He' d never seen God, but was expected to believe in Him just the same. As he got older, would they tell him that God didn 't really exist either, and that it really didn' t matter if he wrote scary stories during church service? Part of him expected just this. Of course, he never said it out loud, not even to Doug or Barry, because if God was real, then thinking something like that was a sure way to get on His bad side. Timmy was more afraid of God than anything else in life, with the possible exception of snakes and Catcher. You could shoot a snake or a neighborhood bully or a mean dog with a BB gun.
But not God…
And now, there was a new fallacy. "It looks like Grandpa's just sleeping." The biggest fallacy of them all, because Grampa wasn' t sleeping, he was dead. He was never going to wake up again. There would be no more walks or games or Saturday morning cartoons or long talks about things that mattered to Timmy, things his grandfather seemed interested in, too, because they were important to his grandson. His grandfather was dead, so why couldn ' t his mother just say it out loud? Why did she treat Timmy like he was a little kid?
Next, would she tell him, "Guess what, it turns out Santa Claus is real after all"?
Of course she wouldn ' t, because it wasn 't true. Santa Claus wasn't real, U'rown Goode was actually Timmy's own good, and…
Grandpa wasn't coming back again.
Timmy opened his eyes. Tears rolled down his face. He balled his fists at his sides and wept, and his mother and father held him between them, crying as well. He cast one last glance at his grandfather's body, and then looked no more. He didn't have to. The image was burned into his retinas.
Grandpa wasn't sleeping.
After the viewing, there was a short break before the funeral service. Timmy' s parents and some of the distant family members stayed at the casket, saying their final goodbyes before the lid was closed. Timmy elected not to join them, and slipped away through the crowd. The other adults went outside to smoke, or mingled between the pews, talking softly. Timmy, Doug, and Barry wandered aimlessly around the church, ending up downstairs in one of the Sunday school rooms. Barry sat on top of the table, his legs hanging over the side.
Timmy stood in the corner. Doug had found a Hot Wheels car, left behind by a younger child, and was running it aimlessly back and forth over the tabletop.
"You guys want to do something after this… is over?" Timmy asked. "I really need to get my mind off things."
"Sorry, man, but I can't," Doug apologized. "My mom drove, and my bike's at home."
"So? You could walk back to your house. It's not that far." Doug shuddered. "And go by Catcher's driveway? No thanks, man. It's bad enough when he chases me on my bike. No way I'm letting him go after me when I' m on foot. He 'd kill me. Besides, it's raining outside. I'd get wet and catch a cold. Nothing worse than a summer cold."