CALIFORNIA BURNING

by Michael Blumlein

Michael Blumlein is the author of The Movement of Mountains; X,Y; and The Healer, as well as the award-winning story collection, The Brains of Rats. He is currently completing the first volume of a new trilogy. In addition to writing, the author practices and teaches medicine. You can visit him online at www.michaelblumlein.com. Michael’s first story for Asimov’s uncovers some of the poignant truths about parents that can only be stumbled upon once they are gone.

The guy at the crematorium said it would take about three hours. A little less if he was lean, a little more if he was fat, as fat burns slower. “Which is why it’s so hard to get rid of,” he added, patting his ample belly. He was a congenial man, of a different congeniality than the people at the mortuary, who were hushed, respectful, reserved, sedate, watchful, and preternaturally composed. The sort of people whose every mannerism and facial expression assured you it was perfectly all right to get emotional, to rend your clothes, pound your fists, sob till your throat was raw. They were all for showing your grief. And if you didn’t, you felt a little embarrassed, as if you hadn’t performed up to par. And if you did, you also felt embarrassed, for making such a fuss. The difference being that in the latter case you felt you’d done the right thing.

Greg, the crematorium guy, was not reserved at all. He was the opposite, chatty and matter of fact. Fat burned slower, he explained, because it had more calories than muscle. You could get it to burn faster by raising the temperature in the oven, but then you ran the risk of blackening the air with smoke and pollution, which were no-no’s these days. They had a camera trained on the rooftop chimney that was hooked to a monitor to check what was coming out, which at the moment was nothing. Or rather, nothing worse than the air itself, which was hazy from a nearby fire. It was summer, and where I lived, summer meant fires. “Good day to be inside,” he said.

There was a box in the room. The box, I should say. Six feet long, one foot high, it sat on a gurney, and without so much as a word of explanation or warning, Greg lifted the lid.

I was determined to be cool. But it didn’t turn out that way. My stomach lurched, and I choked back emotion.

The box was plain and anonymous, but the bag inside was body shaped. My father’s name was printed in large letters, once at the foot of the bag and once at the head. There was a tag with a number that Greg removed for me to check against the number on a form I had. I was shaken by the sight of the bag and so relieved that he hadn’t opened it and asked me to identify the body that I barely gave the number a glance. Dad’s name was on the bag, not once but twice, and that was good enough for me. And even if by some fluke it was someone else, who would ever know? Ashes were ashes. A little more, weight-wise, if you were big, a little less if you were small. But quality-wise the same: a kind of gritty mixture of the soft ash of fully combusted flesh and organs combined with the coarse ash of bone. This according to Greg, who was free with the info. Gold and silver fillings that might identify a person vaporized, and personal prosthetic devices like knees and hips and artificial heart valves were confiscated as potentially biohazardous and not included in the remains. There was a stainless steel tray where the bones that hadn’t crumbled completely in the heat were pulverized by hand, then fed, along with the rest, through a funnel-shaped sieve, rather like sifting flour to get a more homogeneous blend. Attached to the tray was a container half-filled with blackened metal prosthetic parts. Like jewelry, but scorched. Of everything I had seen so far, this was the most disturbing. Strange how the mind works.

I didn’t flinch, for example, when he raised the door of the brick-lined oven and, again without a word, pushed my father in. I didn’t flinch when the door snapped closed. And as the gas ignited with a soft hiss, I watched the temperature needle slowly rise without emotion. Perhaps it was this composure of mine that made Greg veer from normal procedure. Perhaps he admired me for it. Or maybe he thought that something was subtly wrong. At any rate, after the body was in the oven for a while, he opened the door. The cardboard coffin was on fire, somber red flames punctuated by bright curlicues of yellow. Centered almost exactly in the middle was the dark globe of my father’s skull. He’d been bald in life, and I recognized the shape. It was him, and not only that, he seemed at peace. By which I mean it comforted me to think that. The flames appeared to be cradling him. They licked at his head but had not yet set it on fire, as though to honor him—his life, his achievements, his spirit—by not consuming him too fast.

I left the crematorium at 8 am, called at one (allowing time for the ashes to cool) to pick up the remains. I was told to call back later. I called again at two, and then at three, and then four. Greg said it was taking longer than expected. I asked if there was a problem.

“Sometimes the ovens act up. Don’t heat like they’re supposed to.”

“Which means what? That he can’t be cremated?”

“Oh, he’ll be cremated all right. It just takes longer.”

“How much longer?”

“Why don’t you call back in a few hours.”

“Like when? Tonight?”

“No problem. We operate around the clock. Twenty-four/seven.”

“You don’t sleep?”

“Can’t afford to. They don’t.”

In my mind’s eye I saw a line of gray and expressionless men and women, waiting impassively to be slid in the oven and baked. It was a dreadful image. I wanted this to be over.

“Are you busy?” I asked.

“Most of the time we are. It’s steady.”

“I mean now.”

“Now? Not too busy.”

“Can you fix it?”

“Fix it?”

“The oven.”

There was a pause, as if this was not exactly the right question. “Sure. We fix them all the time.”

“So tonight then? I can pick them up tonight?”

“Right. Tonight. Call back. Everything’ll be fine.”

As it turned out, everything wasn’t fine, not by nine that night, when the swing shift guy suggested I call back in the morning. And not by the morning.

I got Greg again, a guy whom, in the short time I’d known him, I’d come to more or less trust. He was straight with me, and not unfeeling.

“It’s not the oven. Sorry, man.”

“What do you mean?”

“My boss wants to talk to you.”

“You talk to me. What do you mean, it’s not the oven?”

“He’ll explain.”

“Just tell me.”

There was silence.

“Please.”

He was a decent guy. He cared about his job, and in this case his job meant caring for me.

My father, it seemed, did not want to burn. His skin and nails and organs, yes. They were gone. But his bones, no. Somehow they had resisted twenty-four hours of thirteen hundred degree heat and flame. Greg had never seen anything like it.

His boss, however, had. He’d been in the business more than twenty years and had seen, in his words, “a little bit of everything.” We met in his office, which adjoined the crematorium. There was an old-fashioned oak desk piled with papers, a chair behind it and one in front of it, a dirty window, a concrete floor. By the look of things he wasn’t used to visitors.

At another time I might have been interested in what he meant by “a little bit of everything.” He was certainly interested in telling me, as though the existence of other unusual happenings and odd occurrences would be a comfort. Rather like expecting someone with a broken bone to be comforted by the news that other people were in pain.

I didn’t want to hear about it. “What’s the problem with my father’s bones?”

He was leaning against the front edge of his desk, his shirt collar open, his thick, calloused hands on his thighs. He looked like he could have been a fighter at one time. His face was carefully composed.

“They don’t want to burn,” he said.

“And why is that?”

“I wish I had an answer. We gave it all we got.”

“Greg mentioned something about the oven. Thought maybe it was acting up.”

“Nothing wrong with the oven. We just had it serviced. It’s working fine.”

“But this is what you do, right? You cremate bodies.”

“Twenty-nine years,” he said.

“But not mine.” I meant my father’s, of course.

He rubbed his thighs, as if to clean his hands, or expel something. It reminded me of my father in his hospital bed, just a few days before he died. Picking at his gown over and over, at a thread or piece of lint or something that no one else could see, something that simply wasn’t there, then tossing it over the side of the bed. I took his hand and held it, but he pulled it away, so I sat beside him and watched, transfixed and disturbed by what he was doing. There was no purpose to it. He wasn’t himself. Or else he was (who else could he be?), and the purpose of this repetitive and disconcerting activity was hidden to me.

“I’m fully prepared to give you your money back,” the man said.

“And then what?”

“You can use it to bury him.”

“We don’t want to bury him.”

He didn’t reply.

“No offense, but maybe we should try someone else.”

“Sure. By all means. Do that.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“I told you what I’d do,” he said.

My father actually had suggested that when the time came, he be buried, but my mother was opposed. Her mind was set on cremation. She wanted to scatter his ashes and be done. She didn’t want a grave to have to visit. Her mother and father, whom she adored, were buried in graves, and she didn’t enjoy the feelings that visiting them stirred up in her. She didn’t like being tied to her loved ones in that particular way. Ever the gentleman, my father had agreed.

“You said you’d seen this before.”

He nodded. “One time. Six, seven years ago. We were using higher temperatures then. Didn’t matter. Same thing.”

“Man or woman?”

“Man.”

“What did he die of ?”

He didn’t even have to think. “Heart attack. What did your dad die of ?”

The strange thing was, no one knew. He went into the hospital complaining of shortness of breath and twelve days later he was dead. Having lost his mind completely—also for unknown reasons—in the process.

“Not his heart. His heart was fine. What did you do? The other time?”

“I called around. Talked to some guys in the business. Everyone had had a case or two. Or if they didn’t, they knew of one.”

“So this is not unheard of.”

“No. It’s not.”

“It happens a lot?”

He shrugged. “It happens.”

Knowing this, that we weren’t alone, did, in fact, help. But only a little.

“So with the other one. The other body. What did you end up doing?”

“Same thing I’m doing now. Talking to you. Letting you know this is not the outcome we planned. Not the one we wanted. Trying to help you along.”

“Did they have a burial? The other time?”

“Don’t know. They didn’t say what they were going to do. Like you, they were upset.”

If my dad were alive, he would have been embarrassed at having caused a problem, embarrassed at being the center of attention, embarrassed at the fuss. If you told him he wasn’t crematable, he wouldn’t have asked why. He’d have said fine, do what you have to. Or rather, he would have said, don’t upset your mother. Make it easy on her. Do whatever she wants.

“I’ll have to talk to my mother.”

“Of course.”

I stood.

He said, “Can I get you to sign some papers before you go?”

He produced them, I signed them, he punched a number into his phone. He lifted the receiver and spoke into it briefly, and a minute later, Greg came through the door. He was carrying a plain cardboard box about the size of a crate of oranges. It had a fitted top and cut-outs for handles at either end. He placed it on the desk.

It took me a moment to understand what it contained.

“I packed them real good. Nice and snug. There shouldn’t be any problem with shifting or rubbing or slippage.” He stared at his feet, hesitating. “The top I wrapped separate. And I put it in a bag. Just in case, you know, you don’t want to look at it.”

“The top?”

His hand drifted up to his head.

Suddenly, I didn’t feel so well. Weak in the knees, unsteady upstairs. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, I wanted to throw up. Or cry. Or both (can a person do that?).

“I made an inventory, just so you know. It’s on a piece of paper. In an envelope.”

I was afraid to ask what he meant by “inventory.”

His boss, however, felt obliged to explain. There were a lot of bones in the body. He didn’t know how many, but a lot. And they weren’t held together anymore, because whatever it was that held them was all burned up. The ashes—what there were of them, which wasn’t much—were in a small plastic bag. The bones, none of them touching, were packed separately, according to shape and size, not to how they fit together naturally. So I might not recognize which was which, and unless I happened to know anatomy, which I didn’t, I certainly wouldn’t be able to say that all the bones were there, that the body was complete.

“Which is why we made the list.”

I nodded, but I barely heard a word he said. I was thinking of my poor mother. I was thinking of my father’s skull. I was also trembling. I felt like a little boy, being asked to be brave. My father, I sensed, was watching, not unsympathetically. He more than anyone would have understood. Inventory? You’ve got to be kidding. There was no way I was opening that box.

But I did have to take it. At first I put it beside me in the passenger seat, but after a block or two I moved it to the back. That was still too close, and a few blocks later, I put it in the trunk.

When it comes to disposing of a person’s ashes, it seems that it’s hard to go wrong. You can toss them to the wind, spread them around and dig them into the ground, charter a boat and scatter them at sea. You can do it as soon as you get them from the crematorium. You can wait a month, or a year, keeping them in an urn or a box, in private or in plain view on a shelf. You can keep them forever and never dispose of them at all. By some common decree, ashes are immune to misuse. Just about anything you do is acceptable.

But, aside from burying them or bequeathing them to science, what are you supposed to do with bones?

I put them in the living room, on a side table. My cat Chester made an exhaustive study of the box, seeing and smelling things, no doubt, far beyond my pale human senses. To me it looked gray and smelled like cardboard. The more I studied it, the more I should have stopped. For where Chester excelled in senses that were grounded in reality, I excelled in ones that were not. I fantasized, for example, that my father was alive and trapped inside. I fantasized he was a ghost. I fantasized he was troubled, restless, and was going to haunt me … not necessarily because he wanted to but because that’s what people with unfinished business did.

This was not good. Not good at all. What was I going to tell my mother?

That was a Monday. The nearby fire, which was mostly brush, had been contained, but now there were other fires, and on Tuesday, the forest to the north of us went up in flame, filling the sky with billows of black smoke. It was the driest summer on record, and by Wednesday there were a hundred fires, and more igniting every hour. For mile after mile in every direction the air was thick and gray and nasty. People with respiratory conditions were advised to stay indoors, then that was amended to include everybody. I watched TV, transfixed by news of the fires, witness to something that seemed both terrifying and monumental, historic, apocalyptic, a turning point of some sort. Four hundred fires, eight hundred, a thousand, all up and down the state. “California Burning,” the headlines read. My father’s resistance to flame—his unburnability—seemed somehow part and parcel of this. Sphinx-like, inscrutable, the box sat on the side table as if daring me to understand. What was I to do?

The doorbell rang, and I nearly jumped. Two men were at the door. For an instant I feared that I was being evacuated. Like most people, I didn’t want to go.

One was tall, the other stocky and broad. The tall one looked to be in his sixties; the stocky one, in his late thirties or so, a good ten years older than me. They were dressed conservatively in suits and ties.

They introduced themselves and said how sorry they were to hear of my father’s death. I thanked them and asked how they knew him.

“We didn’t know him personally,” the older one, Michaels, said.

“Felt like we did,” said the other one, whose name was Neal. “It was nice what they said in the paper. Good man.”

“Exceptional,” said Michaels. “Outstanding. I wish I had known him. A fine man all around.”

The younger one, Neal, handed me a card. “We were wondering if we could have a minute of your time.”

I looked at it, then him. “Bereavement counselor?”

He frowned. His buddy Michaels snatched the card out of my hand, read it, then narrowed his eyes.

“Wrong card,” he told Neal, who stammered something and blushed. “He’s only been doing this a little while,” he explained to me, returning the card to Neal, who pocketed it, fished out his wallet and withdrew another one. After a moment’s hesitation he offered it to me, but Michaels took it first. He examined it, gave a little nod, looked me in the eye in a friendly sort of way, and passed it on. This one read “Department of Public Health.”

“Which one are you?” I asked.

“We’re health officers,” said Michaels. “We received a notice of an irregularity. We’re following up.”

“Strictly routine,” said Neal. “Nothing to worry about.”

Michaels seemed to tense slightly. “Larry. Why would he worry?”

“He wouldn’t. Like I said…”

“We know it’s a difficult time,” said Michaels, cutting him off, “but we’d like to ask you a few questions. Do you have a minute? It won’t take long.”

“Is there a problem?”

“No problem.”

“None at all,” added Neal. “Routine visit. We’ll be gone before you know it.”

The two of them stood there for a while, not looming exactly, but not going away. At length Michaels said, “May we come in?”

There is something gravitational about authority, compelling in an almost physical way. Without thinking, you find yourself drawn to it. And you want to be, that’s the thing. You like the feeling. You want a piece of the action, whether or not you believe in it or plan to obey.

I opened the door wider. Then I remembered the box.

“Hold on a minute.” I hurried to the living room, picked it up and carried it to my bedroom. But the bedroom seemed too obvious, which was a strange thought to have, unless, like me, the only thing stronger than your trust in authority is your distrust of it. My apartment is small, and room-wise, all that was left was the kitchen. The box didn’t fit in the oven, and hastily, I stowed it under the sink.

“Something cooking?” Michaels asked when I returned.

“Cooking?”

He motioned toward the kitchen. I was caught off-guard.

“You guys want coffee?” I asked.

They didn’t, and I ushered them into the living room. We all sat down, and under Michaels’ watchful eye, Neal began.

“Again, our condolences.”

“Thank you.”

“We understand your father passed away unexpectedly. And rather fast.”

For some reason that irked me. “He was twelve days in the hospital and eighty-three years old. Is that fast?”

“And of unknown causes.”

“Like I said, he was eighty-three.”

“But not especially sick before he went into the hospital. Say a day or two before.”

“No. Not especially.”

He nodded in a knowing sort of way, then cleared his throat. “Forgive me for asking, but did you consider doing an autopsy?”

“No. I didn’t.”

“Any particular reason why not?”

In fact, the thought had crossed my mind, but only briefly. He was eighty-three, after all.

“I didn’t see how it would have helped.”

“How about your mother? Was she interested?”

I thought of her expression the day she came in and he didn’t recognize her, or anyone, the day he became delirious. How her face had crumpled, and her eyes had teared up, and she couldn’t speak, except in little sobs. And how after a minute she gathered herself and sat beside him, taking his hand in hers and speaking to him in a calm, reassuring, almost chatty, voice, reminding him who and where he was, affectionately chiding him for not knowing. The eleven days between his entering the hospital and his dying were for me a blur, but for my mother, I think, it was the opposite: time slowed to a crawl. She was not shocked or surprised when he died; she was relieved more than anything, both for his sake and hers. She had known him for more than forty years, and no autopsy would have enabled her to know him any better, or changed how she felt.

“No. She wasn’t. Not at all.”

“Interesting.”

“Why is that interesting?”

Michaels was quick to reply. “What Mr. Neal means is, you can understand our interest. From a public health standpoint. Rapid death. Unknown cause.”

“There is a cause. The cause was old age.”

He regarded me for a few seconds, then inclined his head. “It gets the best of us. Why don’t we leave it at that.”

“I do have another question,” said Neal.

I was beginning to grow impatient. Neal especially was getting on my nerves.

“What is it?”

“It has to do with his bones.”

“What about them?”

“We understand there was a problem.”

“Is that right?”

He nodded.

“Word gets around.”

Michaels, probably sensing the tension, intervened. “Again, it’s a regulatory matter. The crematorium is required to inform us of any unusual occurrence.”

I replied that it wasn’t that unusual. It had happened before.

“Has it?”

“That’s what the man said. Not often. But then my father didn’t always do things the conventional way.”

It was a light-hearted comment. I meant nothing by it, and Michaels let it slide. But Neal was the sort who saw meaning and motive everywhere.

“How so?”

“I was joking.”

He frowned, then gave a bogus laugh. “Oh. I see. Hah. You mean your father was conventional?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes not.”

“He was unpredictable?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“In the end. How would you describe him then?”

“He was delirious.”

“Yes. That’s what the hospital notes say.”

“He wasn’t himself.”

“Did he talk to you?”

“He was babbling.”

“About?”

“Nothing. It was nonsense.”

“Could you understand it?”

“Sometimes. Most of the time not.”

He wasn’t satisfied with this. “Could you be more specific? You couldn’t understand the words? Or the words were put together in a way you didn’t understand?”

“I don’t know. Both, I suppose.”

He exchanged a look with Michaels. “Can you remember any of them? The words.”

“Not really.”

“Did you recognize any? Had he said them before?”

“Some of them. Sure.”

“The ones you didn’t know.”

“What’s this have to do with his bones?”

“Bear with us for just a moment,” said Michaels. “We’re almost done. Did any of the words sound foreign?”

“I don’t remember. He mumbled a lot.”

“Had he ever acted that way before?”

“No. Never.”

“He never behaved unusually? Like, say, someone you didn’t know?”

“A stranger,” said Neal. “Did you ever think of your father like that?”

I’d had enough, especially of him. “Do you have a father?”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“It’s a question. If you don’t know the answer, maybe I can help.”

“Let’s get back to his bones,” said Michaels. “We’d like to have a look at them.”

“Would you? And why is that?”

“Because we’re public health officials.”

“And it’s the law,” said Neal, although the look he got from Michaels made me wonder if he’d made that up.

“Why are you so interested? Is there some danger to the public? Some sort of health risk?”

“We won’t know until we examine them.”

“But what’s the likelihood? Really.”

“I couldn’t say.”

I suspected he could. Moreover, I began to feel the need to defend my father, as though his honor and integrity were at stake. Which was ironic, because of all his qualities these were the ones that he, and I, and nearly everyone who knew him, valued most.

“They’ve cooked for a whole day at more than a thousand degrees. Is there anything you know of that survives that kind of heat for that long? Anything that could possibly harm anybody?”

There was a pause. Somehow the word “harm” changed the whole tenor of the conversation. Neal glanced at Michaels, who wore a grave expression, then at me.

“If you don’t mind, we’d like a look.”

“They’re not here.”

“Where are they?”

With nary a moment of hesitation I came up with a brilliant riposte. “Somewhere else.”

Neal started to reply, but Michaels stopped him.

“Can you arrange for us to see them?” he asked.

“When?”

“Tomorrow, say.”

I was out of snappy rejoinders. “Tomorrow it is.”

“Excellent. We’ll see you in the morning.”

What is it about health officials that leaves you feeling anxious, worried, vulnerable, agoraphobic, headachy, sick to your stomach, tight in the chest, sweaty, itchy, and insecure? Bacteria in the food supply, pesticides in the water supply, smoke in the air supply, obesity, cigarettes, heart disease, ADD, depression … it’s a dangerous world out there, hazards everywhere, and these functionaries seem to delight in reminding us of this, bludgeoning us with statistics and sharing, if not manufacturing, the most alarming trends. But how bad really is it? The people I see look like people I’ve seen all my life, only more of them, and, I have to say, on the whole they look better. Take my father, for example. He used to smoke, like nearly everyone his age, then he stopped. Then he got fat, like ex-smokers do, then he got rid of the fat. He looked good when he was seventy, he looked good when he was eighty, and he looked pretty darn good for an eighty-three-year-old, all the way up to the last two weeks of his life. A stranger? Yes, he was, in those final few days. And before? Who isn’t a stranger to some degree, even to his closest companions? I knew my father as a son, but what did I know of him as a husband, or a friend, or a son himself ? What secrets did he have? And what thoughts and experiences that weren’t secrets at all, merely too pedestrian and numerous to mention, or too far in the past, too dim, to remember? Of course he was a stranger. On some level, we’re all strangers to each other. But I feared those men meant something more.

After they left and I calmed down, I called my mother. Some friends were making a condolence call, so she couldn’t talk long. She asked how I was doing, which is how she starts every conversation, and I told her everything was fine.

“How about you? How are you?”

“Everyone’s being very nice,” she said.

“Are you sleeping?”

“Not too bad. I’m not eating much. I don’t have much of an appetite.” There was a pause. “Why is that?”

She sounded puzzled, as if she’d never known anyone who’d lost a loved one and heard them describe what it was like: the loss of appetite, the sleepless nights, the sudden and recurrent shock of being alone. In fact, she had paid countless condolence calls of her own and had many widowed friends.

“Because your husband just died. People lose their appetite. It’s pretty normal.”

“So I shouldn’t worry?”

“Are you eating anything at all?”

“Some soup. I had a piece of toast.”

“Then no. You shouldn’t. You’ll be fine.”

“But everybody’s bringing things. Chicken salad. Meatloaf. Lasagna. The food’s just piling up.”

“But you like those things.”

“I’m not hungry. But they keep bringing them anyway.”

“You’ll be hungry later. You can freeze them.”

“I’m not helpless. I can cook for myself.”

“You might not feel like cooking.”

I could see the look on her face. “It’s annoying. Just so you know. I didn’t die. Your father did.”

Grieving, for my mother, was a relatively new condition, but being aggrieved was not. The latter for her was sometimes an expression of discontent but more often of worry, which itself was an expression of fear. What she feared most was losing something: her independence, her self-control, someone she loved. In this case, she had lost all those things to one degree or another, and I did my best to reassure her. We made a date to see each other the next day, and I hung up, relieved, temporarily, to have avoided the subject of my father.

The fire situation worsened that afternoon. At one point there were a reported fourteen hundred blazes throughout the state. One would get contained, and a score of others would take its place. Forests were being consumed, homes destroyed, thousands upon thousands of firefighters mobilized, countless lives imperiled. The closest blaze to us was a scant twenty miles away, and the air outside my window had to be the epicenter of the smoke. I could barely see across the street. The sun was a blur, and the light was brown and eerie.

This is how the world will end, I thought. Maybe it’s ending now. Not with a bang but in a slow, deepening, sunless shadow.

I stayed inside and watched the news. I made some calls. I searched the Internet on the subject of bones: bone conditions, bone diseases, skeletons, burials, decomposition, cremation. I learned that in acromegaly the bones are unusually thick. And in something called osteogenesis imperfecta, unusually thin and fragile. I learned that the monks of a certain Catholic sect in Rome collected the bones of their brethren and made sculptures out of them. I learned many fascinating facts, but nothing that helped me in the matter of my father.

His bones were still under the kitchen sink, an ignoble hiding place, but the living room was too exposed, and, call me squeamish, I did not want them in the bedroom. So I left them where they were and said good night, paused, then said “I’m sorry about this, Dad,” paused again, then said “I miss you, Dad,” turned, turned back and said “I love you, Dad,” then went to bed.

In the morning there were ashes everywhere: on the trees, on the cars, in the street. There was barely a county in the state that wasn’t on fire. The governor had declared a state of emergency. The president, bless his heart, sent condolences.

I had decided, for the time being, to leave my father’s remains where they were. My mother, of course, had to be told, and I was thinking about that when the doorbell rang.

It was Neal and Michaels again. I was nonplussed. I had called and left a message to change our date the night before.

“Didn’t you get it?” I asked.

They frowned and looked at each other.

“Did you get a message?” Michaels asked Neal.

Neal shook his head. “Did you?”

Michaels shook his. “This is a bad time? It’s inconvenient?”

“Yes. It is.”

“I’m sorry.” And he looked it.

A moment passed.

“When did you leave it?” he asked.

“Leave it?”

“The message.”

“Last night.”

“What number?”

The air was burning my eyes. By the looks of things, theirs too. Common courtesy obliged me to invite them inside, which I did.

“I don’t know. The number you gave me. The one on the card.”

“That’s funny,” said Neal.

Michaels agreed. “Maybe you punched it in wrong.”

“I’ve done that,” said Neal. “Plenty of times.”

“It’s not as easy as it looks. Those little pads. Those tiny little phones.”

“It’s not easy at all. Anyone can make a mistake. Don’t worry about it.”

“Not for a second. Please. Do me that favor.”

“It’s not worth the trouble.”

“That’s what I’m saying. Stuff happens.” He glanced at Neal. “Am I right?”

Neal rolled his eyes. “You got to be kidding. All the time.”

“Like yesterday.”

Neal gave a nod. “Yesterday’s a case in point.”

“You probably thought we were stringing you along.”

“Lying to you.”

“Lying’s strong, Larry.”

“Misinforming you then. Not laying our cards on the table. Maybe you thought that.”

“You didn’t trust us.”

“You weren’t sure who we were or what to do. You suffered a tragedy. You’re trying to sort things out. You’ve got a lot on your mind. A lot of feelings. Some this way, some that.”

“You didn’t trust yourself,” said Michaels.

“You had the bones, but you didn’t want to tell us. You thought it was disrespectful to your dad.”

“You weren’t sure what to think. You wanted to help, but you didn’t want to do the wrong thing.”

“That’s exactly right.” Neal pointed a finger at Michaels, as if to single out his razor-sharp intellect. “You hit the nail on the head, Mike. He wanted to help, just like he wants to help now.” He turned the finger on me. “He wants to help, but he doesn’t want to make a mistake. Doesn’t want to blow it. Like before.”

“With the phone. The wrong number.”

“The phone, the information, the car, whatever.”

“What about the car?” I asked.

He gave me a look.

“The car,” I repeated. “What’s wrong with it?”

He transferred his look to Michaels.

“He’s asking about the car,” said Michaels.

“What about it?”

Michaels shrugged and turned to me. “What’s the deal? Is something wrong?”

“You said car.”

He frowned. “No, sir. I did not.”

“He did.” I pointed at Neal.

Michaels turned to him. “He said it was you.”

Neal looked thoughtful. “Interesting.”

“Maybe he didn’t hear you right.”

“It’s possible. Mistakes happen.” He addressed me. “Can you hear me now?”

“I heard you before.”

“Say it. What you thought you heard. The word.”

I was annoyed. This was ridiculous. “Car.”

“Not this?” He made a sort of gurgling in his throat, very brief and, I have to say, weird. Like water running over rocks, where sometimes you think you can almost make out words.

“Larry, behave.”

“Familiar?” he asked.

I felt like it should have been, but I shook my head.

He looked disappointed.

Michaels intervened. “Maybe you said cart. Or Carl.”

“Who’s Carl?” asked Neal.

“Or card. Maybe card.”

He scratched his head. “Coulda been that. Come to think of it, I was thinking about a card.”

He reached in his pocket, pulled out his wallet and slid a card out. He handed it to Michaels, who glanced at it before giving it to me. “Now please, don’t take this the wrong way.”

Advice, naturally, that ensures you will.

I looked at it, and my heart froze.

Embossed on it, in large, no-nonsense, steel blue letters were the three initials no one ever wants to see. Who among us is not guilty of something?

The two of them watched me, waiting, it seemed, for some reaction.

“You look worried,” said Neal.

Michaels nodded. “He does. I think he’s taking it the wrong way.”

“You said not to.”

“I did. But obviously we’re not communicating well. Do you understand me?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t talk with an accent?”

Neal grinned. “Not to me.”

“And the words, they’re clear?”

“Like crystal.”

“But still there’s a fundamental problem. Like a dog talking to a cat. Like different languages.”

“But related.”

“Definitely related.”

Neal nodded. “It happens. Between people. Communication difficulties.”

“All the time,” said Michaels, taking the card from me and tearing it in half. “It’s just a card, for chrissake. Anyone can make a card. What you should be looking at is the deliverer. Look at me.”

I did, and what I saw was not what I expected. His eyes held a depth I hadn’t seen before. They were warm, and, dare I say it, friendly.

I was almost taken in. “You want me to trust you? Is that it?”

“Sure I do. Who doesn’t want that?”

“Good cop, bad cop.”

He looked chagrined. “Larry’s not bad.”

I gave Larry a glance. “He’s not exactly reassuring.”

“Vive la difference. And we’re not cops.”

“Excuse me. Federal agents.”

“You have a suspicious mind, my friend.”

“You make me suspicious. With all your questions and innuendoes. And your stupid cards.”

He considered this for a moment. “The cards, perhaps, were a mistake. I apologize.”

I nodded at the one he held in his hand, torn in half like a losing lottery ticket. “How do you expect a person to react to that?”

“It’s a problem, I admit.”

“Those letters…”

“We should change them,” said Neal.

Michaels agreed. “We should. They’re not what you think.”

Neal said something in a rapid, fluty voice, like birdsong.

“That’s how it sounds in the native tongue,” said Michaels. “Or how we think it did. It translates roughly into ‘Friends of our Deceased.’”

The “F” was right, but the “O’s” and the “D” were nowhere on the card. “You’re pulling my leg.”

He shook his head. “We’re not.”

“Friends of our Deceased.”

“F-O-O-D,” said Neal. “Maybe we should put that.”

And I thought, are you dumb or something?

Neal smiled at me. “Pretty dumb idea, huh?”

I stared at him. “What native tongue?”

Michaels said a word I hadn’t heard. “It’s more or less extinct.”

“What the hell is it? Friends of our Deceased?”

He rattled off some names, two or three I recognized as friends or acquaintances of my father.

“It’s a group?”

He thought for a second. “Sure. A group. You could call it that.”

“What do you do?”

“Why, this.” He gestured, as though it were obvious.

“What?”

“Visit people.”

“You visit people.”

“Sure. And talk to them. Help out.”

“That’s it?”

“We do other stuff too.”

“Like what?”

He looked apologetic. “We don’t usually talk about that with outsiders.”

“So it’s a secret group.”

“Not secret. Private.”

“And my dad was a member.”

He seemed to understand how this might be troubling to me. “I’m sure he was a member of other groups, too,” he said gently.

This was true. He was a member of a number of groups. And maybe some, like this one, I didn’t know about.

“So you’re here on behalf of this group. To help me.”

“That’s right.”

“Fair enough. So tell me this: how is it going to help me for you to see my father’s bones?”

He hesitated. “We can help you decide what to do with them,” he said at length.

“Do you have a way to cremate him?”

“No. We don’t.”

“Then I don’t think you can.”

He protested, as did Neal, and repeated their request to see the bones.

I had this to say: “The message I left. The one you didn’t get? To change our meeting today? Maybe it was a bad connection. You didn’t hear it right. The words were garbled. Maybe you didn’t understand.” I paused, expressing my regret. “I’m so sorry.”

“You’re not.”

“If you give me a number—maybe one that’s more reliable—I’ll call you if anything new comes up.”

More protests, but I was done. Neal didn’t take it well. He issued various veiled and not so veiled threats, but he had no power, as it turned out, legal or otherwise, to back them up. Michaels was more resigned, as though he half expected this. He handed me a new card, this one with his name on it. He lingered a moment, then suddenly and without warning reached out and gave me a hug. He said my father would be proud of me. He said to call if I changed my mind. Then he and Neal left.

I saw my mother later that day. She lived on the other side of town. Ash was in the air and on the ground, floating like snowflakes and stirring around my feet like dust. The heat and smoke were insane. Traffic was light, proving that people can, if they put their hearts and minds and souls to it, use common sense. I would have liked to use common sense too, but mom and I had some things to discuss, and the phone just wouldn’t cut it. This had to be face to face.

She had made iced tea, a drink best taken outside, but we stayed in the kitchen. She wore shorts and a blouse and no makeup. Her cheeks were naturally pink, her eyes naturally large and dark, her face unnaturally drawn. The first order of business, to show that the world had not come to a halt with her husband’s death and that she was okay, was to complain about her hair. This she did more by gesture than by word, grabbing it, scowling, looking annoyed and exasperated, shaking her head. She hadn’t been to the hairdresser since the week before he died. Initially, she hadn’t wanted to, and then it didn’t seem proper.

“It looks fine,” I told her, for which I received a look that said “Are you an imbecile? Who raised you because I know it couldn’t have been me.”

“I made an appointment for Saturday. Do you think that’s all right?”

“Sure.”

“Really?”

“Mom. You’re the widow. You get to do what you want.”

“I don’t want to offend anyone.”

She did have the power to offend, typically with her tongue, and usually without meaning to, or even knowing. But maybe now that dad was gone and she was alone, things would be different. The fact that she was concerned enough to mention it was a positive sign.

“Look how much you’ll offend people if you don’t get it done,” I pointed out.

“Really? It looks that bad?”

“It looks fine. You have beautiful hair.” And she did, salt and pepper and spry, at the grand old age of seventy. I felt a wave of affection for her and planted a kiss on her head.

“How are you?” she asked, relaxing a little.

I mentioned the fires, which she hadn’t been following. News and current events were not at the forefront of her mind.

“How awful,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“So far.” It was a thoughtless reply, and I regretted it instantly. “I’m fine.”

“Your father would have left.”

“They’re not advising us to. Not yet.”

“There was a big fire here … god, it must have been nearly thirty years ago. You were a baby. They weren’t telling us to leave then either, but he packed us all up and took us to a motel.”

Playing it safe … this sounded like Dad.

“Once we were settled in and he was sure we were okay, he drove back and helped fight it.”

“You’re kidding?”

“I’m not.”

“Dad did that?”

She nodded, and her eyes shone. “Your father was full of surprises.”

“What else?”

“I don’t know. Whatever they do. Hosed things down. Dug things out. He came back and got us in a couple of days.”

“I mean other surprises. What other ones?”

“Oh, that.” She thought for a moment. “A surprise birthday party for me. A surprise vacation. He loved planning surprises. And keeping them to himself. He prided himself on that, and with good reason. I can’t remember a time he gave a secret away.”

She paused, smiling at something.

“What?” I asked.

“Oh, I was thinking about you. You were another surprise your father gave me. Completely unexpected. I was forty-two. Who would have thought? But what a gift. Really. What a miracle. The best ever.”

The memory of it lingered on her face. Tenderly, she asked if she could fix me something to eat. I wasn’t hungry, but she opened the refrigerator anyway. Within seconds, she was scowling.

“Why do they keep bringing me things? It’s such a waste. All this food. I wish they’d stop.”

“Mom. Come sit. I have something to tell you.”

Her face became utterly still. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?

I coaxed her beside me, then told her about the remains. She was puzzled at first, as if she didn’t understand what I was saying. I had to tell her again, then test her further with the small detail that no one had an explanation. She wasn’t happy with the news—who could be happy—but, leave it to her, she wasn’t derailed.

“Call someone else,” she said.

“I did. They won’t take him. Not the way he is.”

“What does that mean?”

It meant that word had gotten around. That no one thought they could do any better. No one had offered to try.

“It means I want to talk to you about alternatives.”

She folded her arms and pressed her lips together, girding herself.

“I want you to consider burying him.”

In the past two weeks she had lost weight. There were hollows at her temples and in her cheeks, making her eyes, which were large to begin with, more striking than ever. And those eyes regarded me, and it was a wonder I didn’t turn to stone.

“Just consider it. Not necessarily do it. But think about it.”

“No, thank you.”

“Why not?”

“We discussed it already. I don’t want your father somewhere in the ground. I don’t like it. I’ve never liked it. Okay?”

“Things have changed. We have to change too.”

“Not in this.”

“Mom. Please. Be reasonable.”

She looked at me, and slowly her face softened, and I felt the change that every child feels, or longs to feel, and maybe sometimes fears to feel, as her attention shifted from herself to me and her motherliness took center stage.

“You’re upset. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I wish there were something I could do.”

“You’re not upset?”

“It’s your father,” she said, as if this explained everything.

“Is it?”

“He can be difficult. You know that. And stubborn. Lord, I never met a man so stubborn.”

And I thought, was that what this was? A character trait?

“I learned long ago not to argue with him. It only makes things worse.”

“So what do you suggest we do?”

“Explain to me again why they can’t … why he won’t…” She couldn’t quite finish the sentence.

“No one could tell me. No one knew.”

“Well, maybe we should find someone who does. A bone specialist.”

“A doctor?”

“Why not?”

Coming from her, this was a remarkable—really, an extraordinary—suggestion. The woman had a lifelong distrust of the medical profession, rivaled only by her deification of it. And sure enough, a moment later she reconsidered.

“Well, some kind of expert.” She paused to think. “Maybe Adolph.”

“Adolph?”

“You know Adolph.”

“Adolph Krantz?”

“Why not? He went to college. He studied chemistry. He’s a smart man. And he was very fond of your father.”

I hadn’t seen Adolph since I was a boy. He was one of my father’s oldest friends. I didn’t see how he could help, but if my mother thought he might, it was worth a try.

“If I talk to him, will you listen to what he has to say? Will you take his advice, even if it’s different from what you think? From what your mind is set on?”

“He wrote a very sweet note.”

“Will you?”

“He’ll get a kick out of seeing you.”

“Mom.”

“You’re pestering me.”

“Will you listen to him?”

She didn’t say no, I’ll give her that. “Talk to him. Let’s see what he says.”

There was one more item, which was apt to upset her, though with mom you never knew. The smallest thing could cause the biggest reaction, and the biggest, she could take in stride. As it turned out, she didn’t know either of the men, nor the group that they claimed to be members of. But she wasn’t particularly alarmed or surprised that they knew my dad. He and she shared many of the same beliefs and memberships, but not all. And in the interest of marital peace and harmony, some things were strictly off limits.

I asked if my dad ever seemed strange to her.

She laughed. “Your father? Very odd. But you get used to it. Look, we were married forty-three years.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“Was he odd.”

“You knew your father. He had his way of doing things. It wasn’t my way. Which, as you know, is perfect.”

“Did he ever seem different from other people?”

She gave me a look. “You ask the weirdest questions. Of course he was different. Everybody’s different.”

“I mean different from normal. Different in some other way.”

The look narrowed. “What are you driving at?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Then let me tell you something. Your father was an exceptional man. He had his quirks … who doesn’t? But when it counted, he was always there. For both of us. If you have any doubts about that, my advice to you is, don’t.”

I didn’t have doubts, not about that, and for her the conversation was over. I had some food, which always made her happy, agreed to take some home, which made her even happier, kissed her goodbye and left.

The men visited me once more, this time in a dream. They were dressed the same, but they looked different. Their faces were rubbery and their arms and legs were long and loose. They moved like seaweed underwater, like eels, like smoke. I couldn’t take my eyes off them … I think maybe they were hypnotizing me. I wanted to be with them, but they were underwater and I couldn’t breathe. I tried to go after them, but I could hardly move. And my chest was starting to hurt. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t get any air. I tried and tried, but something was blocking my windpipe. The men were watching, and I was suffocating. My chest was ready to burst. Which is how it must have felt to my father the night he was hospitalized. He couldn’t breathe either. It’s a terrifying feeling. Thank god, I awoke.

The person who invents the twistless, tangleless, knotless sheet will be enshrined in the Sleepless Hall of Fame. Along with the one who invents the sweatless, soakless, self-cleaning pajamas. What did this dream mean? Aside from the fact that I was afraid to go back to sleep. That these men were not what they seemed? No surprise there. That I felt threatened by them? I did feel threatened. My heart was racing. But why?

Eventually, I did get back to sleep, a very light and fitful one, as I tried to strike that hopeless balance between vigilance and repose. I woke tired and grumpy, with the sense that something had to be done and the desire that someone would do it for me. After a strong cup of coffee, I was ready to take action myself.

I hadn’t seen Adolph Krantz since I was a child, and I’d never been to his home. He lived outside a small town a couple of hours north of me in an old ranch house in a quiet neighborhood of parched fields and beautiful, stately oaks. The air was dry and caustic with smoke when I arrived. A cinder, or even the thought of a cinder, and the house, and everything near it, would be toast.

I parked at the curb, passed through a chain link gate and up a cracked concrete path to the front door. I rang the bell. After a minute I rang it again, and at length the door opened.

An old man peered out. Day old whiskers, hawk-shaped nose, boxy black-rimmed glasses that magnified his eyes two or three-fold, a flurry of white hair.

I gave him my name.

A moment passed, and then he offered his hand. “I’m Krantz. Call me Adolph. I was sorry to hear about your dad. Come in.”

He led me inside, moving slowly but steadily, down a hall and into a small, paneled room full of books and odds and ends. There were two leather armchairs facing each other across a chess board. Only a few pieces remained in play.

He took one of the chairs. “Do you play?”

“I know how the pieces move. That’s about it.”

He studied the board for a moment, then leaned forward and advanced one of the pawns. “Your father never liked the game. Though he’d play if I asked him to, back in the day. He hated this part. Endgame. Too slow for him. Not enough action.”

He pointed to a pawn on my side of the table and asked me to move it. He studied the board a minute or two more, and, satisfied, sat back and studied me.

“You look like your father. You have his eyes. People used to say I looked like him too. To me that was a great compliment. I admired him enormously. There’re not a lot of us left.”

“Us?”

“That’s right. Hardly any.”

“What do you mean ‘us’?”

“The gang. The tribe.” He paused. “What did we call ourselves?” He couldn’t remember.

“FOOD?” I ventured.

“What about it?”

“Was that the name?”

He gave me a look. “Food?”

I nodded.

“What kind of name is that?”

I told him what it stood for, at which point, I believe, he ceased to take me seriously.

“You’re needling me.”

“I’m not.”

“Your dad used to needle.”

“I’m only telling you what they said.”

“Such a needler. The King of Needling. The Needlemeister. What an education, watching him work. A thing of beauty, your father. He had the softest touch.” He fell silent, and I could see him remembering. The years seemed to melt away. A smile lit his old, craggy face.

“We did pretty well for ourselves, didn’t we, Mickey? Considering what we had to work with. Where we came from. What we had to do. Pretty damned well.”

Mickey was my father’s nickname, from the old days. Only a handful of people used it. Evidently, Adolph was talking to him.

“We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. You a high school dropout. Me a college bum.”

“Adolph?”

He glanced at me.

“Mickey’s not here.”

He looked lost, but only for a moment. “Why would he be? But you. Listen. Be proud of your father. He was a good man. A wonderful person. You know how we met? The story. You know the story?”

Some of it I did, but only bits and pieces, mostly from my mom. Dad didn’t talk much about the past.

“I came over when I was just a kid. Your father was a year or two older and already here. My family took a room in a house in the neighborhood. Five of us in a single room. I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t speak the language. I didn’t know my way from a hole in the ground. Scared? You bet I was scared. Excited too. Scared and excited at the same time. Everything was so different, so strange and wrong, and one day I walked out the door, and there was your father. He was sitting on a fire hydrant, playing with a piece of string. He smiled when he saw me. ‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ he said.”

“He spoke your language? He spoke German?”

“Your father? German? Never. Not a word.”

“So how’d you understand him?”

“How do you think I understood him? He made himself understood. He took me under his wing. Became a big brother to me. That’s how they worked it. The buddy system. Everything in pairs.”

“Who worked it?”

“The ones who sent us. The program. For me, mandatory. Your dad, if I’m not mistaken, was a volunteer.”

“For what? A volunteer for what?”

He thought for a moment, and a smile spread across his face. “The rest of his life. And then some. That’s for what. Don’t ask me how long, because I can’t tell you. As you see, I’m still here.”

Apparently, he found this amusing. To me it was annoyingly obtuse.

“You said you were sent. By whom?”

“The senders.”

“Who are the senders?”

“I was five. What does a kid know when he’s five?” He gave me a look. “Your father never talked to you about this?”

“No.”

“Never?”

I shook my head.

“Then I assume he didn’t want you to know.”

“Know what?”

“Some do, some don’t. Tell people. It’s an individual decision. It’s not up to me to decide otherwise. Out of respect for your father, may he rest in peace. Out of respect for your mother. And for you.”

This wasn’t good enough, not by a long shot. I asked him again what it was I didn’t know, but he refused to say another word. I wasn’t about to get down on my knees. Not literally. I did, however, let a certain plaintive, importuning tone enter my voice. But he wouldn’t budge.

So I tried a different tactic. “The men who visited me. Are they part of this thing? Do they know?”

He didn’t recognize either of their names, but my description of Michaels seemed to ring a bell.

“They came to pay their respects?”

“They wanted a look at him. At his bones. Who are they, Adolph?”

“I’d imagine another unit. Another pair. Did you let them see?”

“No. I didn’t trust them.”

“They were secretive?”

“Extremely.”

“And you found that annoying. Distasteful. Unpleasant.”

“Yes.”

He nodded, then fell silent. Nearly a minute passed before he spoke. “I understand. I do. But imagine for a moment if they weren’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Imagine if they were completely open and honest. Imagine if everyone was. Now take that one step further and imagine if everyone shared everything. If there were no secrets, no hidden thoughts, no privacy. If everyone knew everything about everybody. No separation between people. No boundaries. No mystery. Imagine a world like that. Every channel open all the time. Everything revealed. How does that sound to you?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. “We’ve tried it. It fried our little brains. Almost fried our future too. Better a little privacy. A little ignorance. Trust me, it’s no crime to know a little less.”

Then I’m in good shape, I thought. I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Why won’t his bones burn, Adolph?”

“Ah, yes. That question. Do you have them?”

As a matter of fact, I did. “They’re in the car.”

He nodded, as if he’d expected no less. “The answer to your question is I don’t know why. I only know what you know, that they won’t.”

He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He did resemble my father, and the look he gave me—searching and warm—resembled him too.

“Have you thought of burying him?” he asked.

“My mother won’t allow it.”

“It’s a common custom, you know.”

“I do know. But it ‘s not up to me.”

“Throughout the world. Among a great many groups, as different and diverse as they can be. To hazard a guess, I’d say the custom is quite universal. And I use that term in the broadest possible way.”

He replaced his glasses and leveled his eyes at me. “Did it ever occur to you that the men were there for that?”

“What? To bury my father?”

“Yes. To bury him. Simply that.”

“They didn’t mention it. And it didn’t occur to me. Not once.”

“A failure of communication perhaps. But it doesn’t matter, does it? Your mother won’t permit it.”

“She has that right.”

“Certainly she does. The right of the survivor. We should do our best to honor her wishes. Perhaps it’s time you brought him in.”

Him was not exactly how I thought of what I had, but I did agree that it was time, and I left the room and went to the car. By now it was late afternoon, and the sun through all the smoke and haze was a blurry ball of red. A woman pushing a stroller passed me on the sidewalk. She smiled, and I smiled back. A brief but warm and very human connection. But then I asked myself, what did her smile signify, what did it mean? And what did mine mean, and were our meanings the same? What did it mean to share something? To understand someone? To be inside another’s skin or their head? And then I thought, us. What did that mean? And what about them?

The box was in the trunk. I hadn’t opened it, and I didn’t intend to, but I had a feeling that Adolph did. I was willing to let him, as long as I didn’t have to watch. It was my dad, after all, not some random bag of bones. And frankly, in my mind he was still living. Though not, I admit, living very well: the image I had of him was an elderly man who in his last days was not at all the man he was. That’s the trouble, if you can call it that, of someone living to a ripe old age: you tend to remember them as old. If they happened to be sick, especially if the sickness was prolonged, you remember them that way. I’m sure it gets better with time, easier, that is, to recall earlier days and younger selves, but at the moment what was freshest in my mind was dad in the hospital, restless and agitated, not recognizing me or my mother, awake but clearly somewhere, if not someone, else. The word “possession” comes to mind, but it was more the absence of possession, as if something structured and maybe even made up, like a facade, were gone. Stripped away, to reveal a deeper—and frankly, deeply disturbing—inner self. Had I seen this person before? The one with barely a thread of connection to the real world, the world, that is, that most of us lived in and knew? Maybe I had. Once when he got so mad while driving he had a near fatal accident. Once when he got so drunk he started singing in someone else’s voice. Another time, or several times, when he and my mother fought. Mostly he was not this way, and I loved him, but he did have a temper, which, when it came, made me think of him as monstrous: those bulging eyes, usually so mild, that strained and frightening voice, that blood red face.

So yes, I do have memories. But pretty thin evidence for his being other than what he was. Because that’s what we’re talking about. The A word. No one’s using it … too scared, too diplomatic, too worried about what the family might say or do or think, too protective of us and our feelings. Whatever. But that’s what they mean.

So maybe last night’s dream was a message. Maybe it was the voice of truth. Those weird, inhuman bodies. Those shifting, watery faces.

Not that I believe in such things.

Not that I necessarily don’t.

It does raise some questions, though. Like, where did you come from, Dad? How many of you are there? Any special powers? Weaknesses? Does Mom know?

At a certain age—I’m not sure what, but I think pre-teen—if you’d told me my dad was an alien, I’d have said cool. Go Dad. Part of it bravado, part of it pride, part a confirmation of how I was feeling anyway about him and the world. Face it, when you’re a kid, everything’s alien to some degree. But at an older age, like now, it’s different. I want to know what it means, and what it meant then, and why he didn’t tell me. I want to know who the hell I was living with, and listening to, and trying to impress. Who was I modeling myself after (and doing a pretty good job, judging by the result), and what does that make me?

The fact is, my dad did have powers. He was good at business. He was super good at cards. He was super modest. When it came to sports, he was super slow.

And vulnerabilities? His kryptonite? He didn’t always believe in himself. He had a weakness for food and drink. He got angry over and over at the same things. He was stubborn to a fault.

The bones were a perfect example of his stubbornness: their resistance to being burned really shouldn’t have surprised me at all. When dad didn’t want to do something, he wouldn’t do it. The more you tried to get him to, the harder he’d dig in. If he does have a spirit, it’s a good bet that it resides in this: the hard-headed, infuriating, refusal-to-budge persistence of his damn bones.

They weren’t much heavier than the box they were packed in, but when I removed them from the trunk, I felt a weight much like what I felt when he and I would square off. The weight of expectation, but more than anything, the weight, the sheer mass, of that stubbornness of his, and not knowing how to respond to it: give in, and let him have his way? Be stubborn back and show my mettle? Should I open the box and force myself to look at him? Would that prove something? If he were watching, what would he think? If he were in my place, what would he do?

Adolph was waiting when I returned. He’d cleared the table of the chess board, and I placed the box there. He looked at it for a long time before speaking.

“You’ve not opened it?”

“No.”

“But you want to.”

I shook my head.

He looked at me and at the same time laid his palm on the box, pressing it there as though to steady himself, or else to steady and maybe comfort who or what was inside. He didn’t reply, and at length I said, “I do and I don’t.”

He nodded. “You have an urge.”

“A small one.”

“A sense of obligation.”

I shrugged.

“Have you ever seen a man’s bones?” he asked.

“In books. And museums.”

“Up close?”

“Not so very close.”

“Ever held a skull?”

“No.”

“It’s an interesting business, skulls and bones. But not so interesting that a man should have to look at his own father. I advise against it. Unless you’re used to such things, the sight can do a good deal of harm.”

I thanked him. I did feel an obligation, and his words helped relieve it.

“So what do we do? What’s the plan?”

“You’re asking my advice?”

“Yes. Please.”

He folded his hands. “Very well. Leave the box with me.”

“Leave it?”

“Come back tomorrow and I’ll give you his ashes.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Not by fire,” he said.

“How?”

He didn’t reply, and I recalled that he had been a chemist. Possibly he was going to use some chemical method. Possibly that method was illegal, and he didn’t want to implicate me.

“I’d like you to trust me,” he said.

“I’d like to.”

“Good.” A moment passed. He gave a knowing smile. “The question is, will you?”

“If you tell me how you’re going to do it.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t,” he said.

“Then I’d want to know why.”

The smile deepened. “Of course. And I’d say that why is unimportant. Or rather, secondary. Inessential at this time. Now our job is to honor your father and take care of your mother. And of you. That’s the business at hand. We can continue our conversation later, though I’m not sure you’ll end up knowing more than you do now. The older you get, the more you learn to be satisfied with less. At any rate, now we should do what we have to.”

“Who is he, Adolph?”

“You know who he is.”

“I don’t.”

“Forgive me, but you do.”

This was my father’s oldest friend. My mother trusted him, and I wanted to trust him, too. I longed to trust him. But I couldn’t, not in this.

I thanked him for everything and left the house, the box in my arms. He watched from the doorway as I slid it in the trunk, doing nothing to interfere. I pulled away and drove a few blocks, then stopped and moved the box to the back seat. A few blocks more, and I moved it to the front.

The sun had set, and the moon was low in the sky, shrouded gray. It looked like a hole through which all the smoke and soot might pour and disappear, leaving the world, my world, clean and whole again. In the distance along the edge of a hill was a smudge of red where another fire raged. My heart was heavy. I stopped the car.

Adolph was right. I did know who he was. And that person wasn’t in the box, or behind some secret door, or in what people thought or hinted about him. Who he was was inside me. And knowing this was knowing a lot, and it made the decision of what to do next easy.

The fires continued to ravage the state, until it seemed we had entered an era of flame. If you didn’t see one, then you saw smoke, and breathed it in and tasted it. But then one day, miraculously, the sun rose in a sky that was nearly blue. And the air was nearly fresh. And that was the day we scattered his ashes.

Some, at mom’s insistence, we sprinkled on a pathetic little planting strip beside Oak Mall, which was all that remained of a park where she and dad had courted. The rest we scattered on a hilltop overlooking town. Adolph had sealed them in a heavy-duty plastic bag, which he had thoughtfully placed in a stainless steel urn. My mother, who normally notices such things, made no comment, but to me the urn looked suspiciously like a large martini shaker.

Were they my father’s remains? My mom certainly thought they were. And I was inclined to think so too. If they weren’t, they were doing what they had to. They were fulfilling their purpose.

It’s a terrible thing to live in a constant state of doubt. It’s hard, sometimes excruciatingly hard, to always be unsure. Whoever my father was and wherever he came from, the earth had him now. But we had him before, and without question he had us.

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