America's Boy by Wade Rouse

Author:Wade Rouse
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2015-11-12T13:00:00+00:00

Dust to Dust

I DON’T cry during my brother’s funeral. While those around me weep and wail, inconsolable in their grief, I feel numb but removed, like I am watching a movie. Everything moves in slow motion, and I stare at my family—the contorted faces of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins—watching mascara run, and men in short-sleeved dress shirts and polyester ties, so unused to wearing anything remotely formal, tug selfconsciously at their too-tight collars, the slick, fat knots of the ties working their way loose, over and over again.

It is 101 degrees the day we bury my brother. At the graveside ceremony, as we sit under a tent in front of the hole that has been dug for his casket, the hot July wind whips the freshly removed dirt into mini-funnels that sweep over the cemetery before falling apart as they fly head-on into a tombstone. I sit between my mom and Grandma Shipman, my hands clutched in theirs. I am not listening to a word that is said, just transfixed, for some reason, on everyone around me.

I watch my uncle Jim, my aunt Peggy’s husband, nervously wipe the sweat from his brow. He is wearing a short-sleeved white dress shirt and a tie his company has given him as a Christmas gift, which has its name emblazoned all over it. The tie reads FAG, the acronym for the ball-bearing manufacturer he works for. He has rolled up in his right sleeve a packet of Winstons, and he nervously feels for them every few seconds, the muscles on his sweaty forearms contracting, making the tattooed hula girl dance on his left and the blood-dripping knife twitch menacingly on his right. He catches me staring, but I do not turn away; I simply continue to stare.

I hear—in the distance—the minister say things like “dust to dust,” and I think, How appropriate, as I watch the dirt swirl around us. My mom and grandma have my hands gripped so tightly that I have lost circulation in my arms long ago.

I watch Aunt Peggy weep, her tears clearing paths through her carefully constructed makeup, the wind picking up individual pieces of her frosted shag, which is the color of a car bumper. I adore my aunt Peggy, my mother’s sister, and she adores my brother and me. She is really just a grown-up child herself, pure fun and enduring innocence. She loves Elvis and dances with me around her steamy little house, teaching me how to do all the dances from the ’50s. She and Jim are great bowlers, and they take me to all their league games on Fridays during the winter; I excitedly listen to the pins crash, the jukebox crank out country songs, and men and women curse and complain about their jobs. She takes us all to the drive-in movies in Neosho, where we watch B horror movies like The Abominable Dr. Phibes and The Frogs, garbage bags filled with homemade popcorn, lawn chairs set up in the back of their pickup.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.