“People die, rivers go on. Mountains go on.”
He talked about Tom, told some of Tom’s life story, incidents he had observed himself, other people’s stories, Tom’s stories, all in a rapid patter, a rhythm of conviction, affection, pleasure. “See one thing he does, know the rest. Now some of you know it and some of you don’t, but this hilltop was nothing but prickly pear and dirt till Tom came up here. All these trees we stand under were planted by Tom when he was a boy, to give this hilltop some shade, to make it a good place to come up and look around, take a look for the ocean or the mountains or just down into town. And he kept coming up here for the rest of his life. So it’s fitting that we make this little grove his memorial. It was a place he liked, looking over a place he loved. We don’t have his body to bury, but that’s not the important part of him anyway. Doris has cast a plaque and I’ve cut a flat spot into this big sycamore here, and all of us who care to, can help nail it in. Take a light whack so everyone can get a shot at it, and try not to miss and hit Doris’s handiwork. It looks like the ceramic might break off.”
“Are you kidding?” Doris said. “This is a new secret bonding, the ceramic and the metal interpenetrate each other.”
“Like us and Tom’s spirit, then. Okay, swing away.”
And so they stood the plate against the largest sycamore in the grove, about head high, and passed out a few hammers from Hank’s collection, and they swirled around the tree in a loose informal knot, chatting as they waited their turn to tap one of the four nails into the tree.
Wandering around greeting people Kevin saw Ramona, who gave him a big smile. He smiled back briefly, feeling serious, calm, content.
Ah. There down the slope a ways stood Alfredo, looking dark. Kevin felt a quick surge of bitter triumph. He decided that it wasn’t a good time to talk to him. Best not to get into an argument at his grandfather’s funeral.
But Alfredo brought the argument to him. Kevin was standing away from the crowd, watching it and enjoying the casual feel of it, the sense of neighborhood party. Tom would have liked that. Then Alfredo came up to him and said angrily, “I should think you’d be ashamed of using your grandfather’s death like this.”
Kevin just looked at him.
“How do you think it would make Tom feel?”
Kevin considered. “He would love it.”
“This doesn’t change anything, you know. We can build around it.”
Kevin shook his head, looking past Alfredo, up at the grove. “This changes everything. And you know it.” All of the people there would now think of the hill as a shrine, inviolate, and as they all had friends and family down below… Little ghost of his hatred: “Don’t fuck with this hill any more, Alfredo. There’s no one will like you if you do.”
Then he saw who was standing before the memorial tree, about to take a swing with a hammer. He pointed. Alfredo turned around just in time to see Ramona smack a nail, then pass the hammer along.
That would make the difference. Alfredo would never dare cross Ramona on an issue this charged, not given everything else that had happened, the way it had all tangled together.
“Build it somewhere else,” Kevin said harshly. “Build it down in town, by Santiago Creek or somewhere else nice. Tell your partners you gave it a try up here, and it didn’t work. Whatever. But leave this hill alone.”
Alfredo turned and walked away.
Later Kevin went to the tree to put the final knocks on all four nails: one for Nadezhda, one for his parents, one for Jill, one for himself. He touched the broken bark of the tree. Warm in the sunlight. This living tree. He couldn’t think of a better memorial.
After the ceremony, Hank’s idea of a wake: a party in Irvine Park, lasting all that afternoon. A lot of beer and hamburgers and loud music, flying frisbees, ecstatic dogs, barbeque smoke, endless innings of sloppy softball, volleyball without lines or scoring.
In the long summer twilight people drifted away, coasting down Chapman, their bike lights like a string of fireflies flickering between the trees. Kevin biked home alone, feeling the cool sage air rush over him. A good life, he thought. The old man had a good life. We can’t ask for anything more.
So it came about that one morning Kevin Claiborne woke, under an orange tree in his house. Big day today: Ramona and Alfredo were getting married in the morning, and in the afternoon they were having the reception down in the park, next to the softball diamonds. Half the town would be there.
A late October day, dawning clear and cool. Hot in the afternoon. The best time of the year.
Kevin went down to their street project to work by himself for a while, leveling the new dirt. Filling in holes, thinking about the day and the summer. Thought like a long fast guitar solo, spinning away inside him. It was hard to focus on anything for more than a second or two.
Back home he dressed for the wedding, putting on his best shirt and the only dressy slacks he owned. Admittedly still casual, but not bad looking. Colorful, anyway: light green button-down shirt of the young exec style, and gray slacks, with creases and everything. No one could say he had underdressed for Ramona’s wedding. Hopefully he wasn’t overdressed.
He had given the matter of a wedding gift some thought. It was tough, because he wanted it to be nice without in any way suggesting that he was trying to intrude on their daily life, to remind them of him. Kitchen implements were therefore out, as well as a lot of other things. Nothing for the bedroom, thanks. He considered giving them something perishable, but that didn’t seem right either. Might look like a comment in its own way, and besides, he did kind of want them to have something around, something Ramona might see from time to time.
Ornamental, then. He decided on a flowerpot made from scraps of the oakwork in Oscar’s study. Octagonal, a neat bit of woodwork, but rough in a way that suggested outdoors. A porch pot. Bit sticky with the last coat of varnish, and he needed to get a plant for it. But it would do.
He biked to Santiago Creek Park with a trailer to carry everything. Okay, he told himself. No moping. No skeleton at the feast, for God’s sake. Just put a good face on it. Otherwise better to not go at all.
He did fine. He found himself numb, and was thankful for that. He sat with the Lobos and they joked about the possibilities of playing with a pregnant shortstop and so on, and he never felt a twinge. The Sanchezes swept in beaming and the Blairs too, and Ramona walked down the path to the sound of Jody’s guitar, by the stream in a long white Mexican wedding dress looking just like herself, only now it was obvious how beautiful she was. Kevin merely breathed deeply, felt his strength. He was numb. He understood now how actors could take on a role, play a part, as in Macbeth. They did it by erasing themselves, which allowed them to become what they played. He was learning that ability, he could do it.
Hank stood in the gazebo by the stream, in his minister’s shirt again. His voice lifted and again he took them away, just as always. Kevin recalled him dusty in the yard, saying, “Ain’t nothing written in stone, bro.” Now he led Ramona and Alfredo through their marriage vows, “for as long as you both shall live.” It’s not stone, Kevin thought, we write these things in something both more fragile and more durable. Hank made him see it. You could believe in both because both were true. These were vows, sure enough. But vows were only vows. Intentions—and no matter how serious, public, heartfelt, they were still only vows. Promises. The future still loomed before them, able to take them anywhere at all. That was their great and terrible freedom. The weird emptiness of the future! How we long to fill it in, now, in the present; and how completely we are denied.