This was part of Will’s job now — holding his mother while she sobbed in a department store — whether he wanted it or not. But he hadn’t seen her cry again since. He knew that was due to her new medicine — the little yellow pills that rattled around in her purse and sat on her nightstand. Those pills did their job too. They kept her from crying but they also seemed to keep her from feeling much of anything else. That was okay, though. Will felt enough for both of them. He wanted to cry along with her, but he knew the rules. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He was the man of the house now, and men tough it out. Men keep it together. Above all, men don’t cry.
Men get angry. But who was he angry at?
God, maybe.
The helplessness made him want to scream. He wanted to scream until his vocal cords strained and burst. He wanted to scream so loud it would crack the world in half, so that everything that had happened over the past few days would fall through the middle — get swallowed up by the void and be over. Even now, sitting on the porch steps, lost in his memories, he could feel that scream building up behind his tongue and teeth, swelling in his throat like a living thing. Maybe if he let it out he could stop being so angry. Maybe screaming would make him not want to take a swing at everyone in the house.
Before he’d stepped out to get some air, he’d watched as people floated around in their Sunday best, chatting about their jobs or football or the economy — whatever the hell that was. Some of them were even talking about what they had planned for later in the evening. That made Will’s skin burn. Later this evening didn’t exist for him or his mom, not in any kind of way they could have wanted. They were stuck here in this reality for a long time coming, while all these friends of the family shook hands and ate casseroles off little paper plates.
He hadn’t expected to feel this way today. Angry with no one to lash out at, lonely with no one to hold on to, scared and hollow with nowhere to hide. Out of the blue, he felt the urge to punch the man sitting next to him square in his fat face. He wouldn’t do it, but sitting still like this was excruciating. It was just as bad as having to listen to people he barely knew tell him over and over how “time heals all wounds.” He wanted to cheat his emotions like his mother was doing with the pills. Maybe he’d sneak one from her purse later. She’d never notice. No. Will shook his head again. He wouldn’t do that either. Dad wouldn’t want him to. He just needed to suck it up and take it. He needed to follow the rules and stop being so selfish. These people in his house were only trying to help, and the truth was they probably were helping his mom just by being here. He scratched at the back of his neck and loosened the tie his mother had also bought him that day at the department store — another act of endurance he’d had to bear for her sake.
Inside the house, Will’s mother had spent nearly twenty minutes spreading the creases out of a red and white checkered tablecloth before she set out all the covered dishes. A few people — Will included — had tried to help her, but she became indignant about it. She was still able-bodied, she reminded everyone. “I lost my husband,” she said, “not my goddamn hands.” She never cussed or took the Lord’s name in vain like that, but she was angry too.
His Uncle Jack’s being there didn’t make it any easier.
Will didn’t know much about him. He’d never even seen him before today — outside of a few family photo albums — but it was obvious that his presence at the funeral and now here at the house was upsetting his mom even more than she already was. She’d barely spoken to him at the funeral home. She’d introduced the two of them, but then she’d immediately pulled Will away to talk to one of the neighbors. Will had been so taken aback by his uncle’s resemblance to his dad that he’d been dumbstruck, anyway.
The fat man sitting next to him truly had no idea that Will hadn’t heard a word he’d said. It was baffling. He continued yapping until Will felt a hand touch his shoulder and a new droning sound started. Then the fat man brushed the nothing from his pants as he stood up, made a hasty sign of the cross in the air, and mumbled a few words that might as well have been a recipe for rhubarb pie. He cast a weary glance at his replacement. “Good luck,” he said.
Will felt the urge to smack him again but sat still as the fat man headed inside to get in on some free potluck. The new man sat down on the steps.
Uncle Jack.
“Hey there, Will,” he said. And then, after a few moments: “I hate that you had to sit out here and listen to that guy for so long. I would have come out to save you a while ago, but your mama said she wanted you to have some time with a holy man.”
“A holy man?”
“That’s what she said, kiddo. A preacher from one town over. I wasn’t about to argue.”
“Yeah, she’s been a little touchy lately.”
“Don’t be too hard on her. She’s going through a pretty rough time. If she wants to act a little touchy, then I reckon she’s entitled to.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Will was amazed at how quiet it got without the “holy man’s” hot buzz in his ear. He turned and took in the sight of his uncle, his dad’s younger brother. This close up, the resemblance was startling. Uncle Jack was so much like Will’s father it made him hard to look at, so Will didn’t look for very long. There were differences, of course, but those seemed — at a glance, anyway — to be matters of style. Will’s father had been uptight about his appearance and manner. He always sat up straight in his chair, always kept his hair short and trim, and his shirt stayed tucked in. Will supposed his dad’s twenty-five-year tenure in the Fire Service had made him that way. He always carried himself as if he were in service of someone else and ready for a business meeting. That sort of thing had been important to him, but clearly none of that mattered to Will’s Uncle Jack. He was thinner, looser. His graying brown hair fell long and messy. Not long enough for a ponytail or anything, but long enough for him to have to reach up and tuck it back behind his ear every two or three minutes throughout the entire funeral, Will had noticed. He wore black Levi’s and a pair of beat-up black cowboy boots that seemed to be challenging Will’s own sissy shoes to a duel on the steps below them. His black button-up shirt looked expensive, but not new. Will got the feeling Jack dressed like that all the time. He hadn’t just made a stop at J. C. Penney to pick up some dress-up clothes to make himself “look respectable” on the way here. He didn’t wear a tie, either, but he wore a lot of silver rings and they made both of his hands sparkle in the sun. Will could see bright-colored tattoos creeping out from under his sleeves whenever he moved his wrists just the right way. Although Will thought that was cool, he knew every pair of eyes in the house behind him had washed this man down with buckets of judgment — good Christian judgment.
Uncle Jack didn’t live here in McFalls County. He’d moved to Atlanta several years before Will was born and had stayed there, far away from where he’d grown up, far away from his family. From what Will could tell, that had always been fine with his parents. There was no contact that he knew of, and no one had spoken to Uncle Jack at the funeral today except for his mom — and that was only because Uncle Jack had approached her. He didn’t get up to say anything during the service, either, which Will thought was weird. The man had lost his brother, after all. Family resemblance or not, he seemed to be a stranger.
The two of them sat in silence for a long time.
Then Uncle Jack said, “I miss him too, kid.”
Those five words opened the floodgates. Will could hear this man that everyone treated as some kind of pariah start to openly cry, and Will couldn’t help himself. The tears they both had been doing their best to hold back all day ran down their faces. Jack reached out and pulled his brother’s son in for a hug. Damn the rules.