Chapter 3

Three days later, the coroner released the bodies. Doober went to three funerals in three days, but he only spoke at the first one. The church was full again, quiet too, as he sat in the second row next to the center aisle. He wrote out what he wanted to say, but he could not make it through the entire page after he looked down from the podium at the coffin. Reverend Greyson finished it for him. Standing with the men of the church afterward, he grimly shoveled the dirt into the grave.

Daniel’s funeral was in the Presbyterian church across town, on the better side. Everyone left the cemetery with the grave open. As soon as the family left, the gravediggers started filling in the hole. Doober leaned against the car with his mother until they finished tamping down the fill with the back of their shovels.

“I wish I had a shovel in my hand,” he said to his mother. “It’s easier to shovel than to watch them fill the hole.”

“People grieve in different ways, Douglas,” his mother said. “Sometimes, the task is too painful. No one ever wants to bury their child.” She swung her arm behind him and grasped his far shoulder, giving him a squeeze.

The last funeral was a day later. Mucker’s service was at the funeral home with an ugly flakeboard box with a maroon velvet blanket thrown over it. His mother chose cremation. Doober overheard someone gossiping that Mucker’s mother did not have enough money to buy a plot, pulling an extra tear from his eyes. After the service, Doober rested his hand on the casket, feeling numb and anxious. Martin’s mother stepped over and gave him a long, crushing hug. “Thank you for being a good friend,” she said, before walking away.

He went out the back and cried in the empty parking lot. “Everyone already left,” he said in disbelief to his mother.

“Maybe they rushed over to the house to set up for company,” she said. “Don’t you fret about it. Martin died with the only thing that can accompany a man to the grave, a good name. The quality of a wooden box doesn’t matter. Even the preacher’s blessings don’t matter, Douglas. Your friends are with God, and they are safe in His loving embrace. The preacher is there for us, not for the departed; we’re the ones that are afraid.”

They drove home in silence.

In the evening after Mucker’s funeral, Doober sat across from his mother pushing the sausage and peppers around the plate when she declared that meal was a little lacking and it was time for a beer. She pulled a chilled bottle out of the bottom shelf of the fridge and snagged two high ball glasses from the cabinet. She split the beer between them and handed him a glass.

“To good friends,” she declared.

“To good friends, ma,” Doober repeated. He took a couple of sips and returned poking at the food on his plate. It took an entire glass, but he finished the food in front of him. “I gotta go back to work on Monday, ma.”

“It will be good for you to stick your head back in your business,” she said. “Sitting around the house and mopping ain’t helping anyone, especially you.”

“I’m so distracted I’m afraid I’ll cut off a finger or slice an arm because I’m not paying attention,” Doober said.

“Then that will be your first task on Monday, son,” she said. “You had a terrible shock; one of the worst a person can imagine. You don’t just step back into your old life as if it never happened. You’ve got to relearn all your personal skills that no one really pays attention to as they’re growing up. First up, you work really hard at paying attention to what you’re doing.”

“How did you become so smart?”

“Douglas, when your daddy drove his truck through a minivan and a pickup truck killing that mother and child along with himself, I thought my world was just done and gone. I didn’t do it, didn’t even ask the damn fool to go on driving past his hours, but I felt guilty because he did. Guilt on top of loss is a terrible burden, son. Some of the church people came and taught me through Jesus how to sort out what was mine to carry and what wasn’t mine. I already had Jesus though and you don’t.”

“I don’t,” Doober said, nodding his head. “I may believe in God, but I just don’t think of God as standing beside me or talking to me, ma.”

“I don’t judge you for what you believe, son. You’ve got a good heart and you usually mean well even if you’ve got a funny way of showing it sometimes. You don’t mock me, and I don’t mock you. Still, you’ve got to sort out what you’re supposed to mourn and what is not your burden.”

Doober nodded with understanding. “I close my eyes every night and there is this still picture in my head of when I first walked back into the cabin. Gary’s brains are spattered in a three-quarter circle behind him on the wall. They’re grey and drippy. It’s just a terrible scene.”

His mother put down her beer. “Walking in on their murders is a terrible scene, but do you think Gary would want you to remember him with that picture in your brain. His last moment was murder, but the rest of his life was being a teenager and a child. I’m sure he would want you to remember who he was, not what happened to him.”

“Really, how did you get so smart, ma?”

“Humpf,” she grunted as she pulled another draw from her glass. “Changing the subject on you, Douglas. I’ve got to fire another cashier at the Dollar General for doing drugs in the back. They all think I’m blind, deaf, and dumb, God as my witness. I will be short two slots until next week. Since you are still at loose ends and you are still in the system, I was thinking...”

“It’s fine, mom,” Doober said, waving away the excuses. “I’d rather be busy and hustling around the store than sitting in my room staring at the four walls. I’m already tired of my own voice in my head telling me about the same things over and over. The worst I can do is a slice with a box cutter, and I did that a few times before all this.”

“Good, that’s settled,” she said. “Be a good son and do the dishes. My feet are killing me tonight and I want to soak them in Epsom salts.”

Doober finished the dishes. As he wiped his hands on the damp dishtowel, he contemplated having another beer. Tossing the dishtowel into the laundry room without aiming, he went back and grabbed another longneck from the fruit drawer. He still loved the feel of the turtle shell shaped bottle opener with the magnet on the bottom that was always hanging on the side of the refrigerator. He used to play with the bottle opener as if was a toy when he was a young boy. His father would yell at the top of his lungs when he came home when the bottle opener was missing from its place. Doober flipped the bent bottle top into the sink with his thumb and finger.