'That was all,' Jenny concluded, abandoning for a few seconds the distant manner she'd managed until then to impart to her tale. 'The rest you can imagine. Death improves the dead, so it turns out everyone loved Rodney very much. Even the journalists came to see me. . Just crap.'
For a moment I thought Jenny was going to start to cry, but she didn't cry: she stubbed out her second cigarette on the porch step, and just as she'd done with her first, kept it in her hand; after a long silence she turned towards me and looked me in the eye.
'Didn't I tell you?' she said, almost smiling. 'The problem isn't getting Dan to sleep. The problem is waking him up.'
Dan did indeed wake up in a foul mood, but it gradually eased as he had a bowl of cereal and his mother and I kept him company with a coffee. When we finished Jenny suggested we go for a walk before it got dark.
'Dan and I are going to take you someplace,' she said.
'What place?'
Jenny crouched down beside him and, making a screen with her hand, whispered in his ear.
'OK?' she asked, standing up again.
Dan just shrugged his shoulders.
When we left the house we turned left, crossed the railway tracks and walked along Ohio, a well-paved street, with hardly any houses or businesses, which headed towards the outskirts of the city. Five hundred metres on, across from a dense birch wood, stood a building with white walls, a sort of enormous granary surrounded by grass on the front of which was painted in large red letters: VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS POST 6750; beside it there was another smaller sign, similar to the one outside Bud's Bar, except that it was decorated with an American flag; the sign read: SUPPORT OUR TROOPS. The building looked empty, but it must not have been, because there were several cars parked in front of the door; as we passed Jenny commented:
'The war veterans' club. They're all over the place. They hold parties, reunions, things like that. I've only been inside once, but I know that before we met Rodney used to go there quite a lot, or that's what he told me. Do you want to go in?'
I said there was no need and we walked away from the club along a dirt path that ran beside the highway, chatting, Dan in the middle and Jenny and I on either side, Jenny holding his left hand and I his right. After a while we left the highway, taking a path that went gently up to the left, between fields of young corn, and when we got to the top of a small hill we left the path, going into an irregular quadrilateral strewn with a handful of scattered graves, where there stood a couple of ash trees feeding on the earth of the dead and a rusty iron flagpole without a flag. Dan let go of our hands and ran across the cemetery lawn until he stopped in front of an unpolished tombstone.
'Here he is,' said Dan when we reached his side, pointing to the grave with one finger.
I looked at the tombstone, on the front face of which was carved a boy sitting under a tree reading and an inscription: RODNEY FALK. APR. 6 1948 — JAN. 4 2004; beside the inscription there was a fresh bouquet of flowers. 'A clean, well-lighted place,' I thought. The three of us stood in front of the grave in silence.
'Well, actually he's not here,' said Dan finally. After pondering for a moment he asked: 'Where are you when you're dead?'
The question wasn't directed at anyone in particular, but I waited for Jenny to answer it; she didn't answer. After a few seconds had gone by I felt obliged to say: