Later, when birds were something to be afraid of, Fat Charlie would still remember that morning as something good and something fine, but also as the place where it all started. Before the madness; before the fear.
CHAPTER
TWO
WHICH IS MOSTLY
ABOUT THE
THINGS
THAT HAPPEN
AFTER
FUNERALS
FAT CHARLIE PUFFED HIS WAY THROUGH THE MEMORIAL GARDEN of Rest, squinting at the Florida sunshine. Sweat stains were spreading across his suit, beginning with the armpits and the chest. Sweat began to pour down his face as he ran.
The Memorial Garden of Rest did, in fact, look very much like a garden, but a very odd garden, in which all the flowers were artificial, and they grew from metal vases protruding from metal plaques set in the ground. Fat Charlie ran past a sign: “FREE Burial Space for all Honorably Discharged Veterans!” it said. He ran through Babyland, where multicolored windmills and sodden blue and pink teddy bears joined the artificial flowers on the Florida turf. A moldering Winnie the Pooh stared up wanly at the blue sky.
Fat Charlie could see the funeral party now, and he changed direction, finding a path that allowed him to run toward it. There were thirty people, perhaps more, standing around the grave. The women wore dark dresses, and big black hats trimmed with black lace, like fabulous flowers. The men wore suits without sweat stains. The children looked solemn. Fat Charlie slowed his pace to a respectful walk, still trying to hurry without moving fast enough for anyone to notice that he was in fact hurrying, and, having reached the group of mourners, he attempted to edge his way to the front ranks without attracting too much attention. Seeing that by now he was panting like a walrus who had just had to tackle a flight of stairs, was dripping with sweat and trod on several feet as he went by, this attempt proved a failure.
There were glares, which Fat Charlie tried to pretend he did not notice. Everyone was singing a song that Fat Charlie did not know. He moved his head in time with the song and tried to make it look as if he was sort of singing, moving his lips in a way that might have meant that he was actively singing along, sotto voce, and he might have been muttering a prayer under his breath, and might just have been random lip motion. He took the opportunity to look down at the casket. He was pleased to see that it was closed.
The casket was a glorious thing, made of what looked like heavy-duty reinforced steel, gunmetal gray. In the event of the glorious resurrection, thought Fat Charlie, when Gabriel blows his mighty horn and the dead escape their coffins, his father was going to be stuck in his grave, banging away futilely at the lid, wishing that he had been buried with a crowbar and possibly an oxyacetylene torch.
A final, deeply melodic hallelujah faded away. In the silence that followed, Fat Charlie could hear someone shouting at the other end of the memorial gardens, back near where he had come in.
The preacher said, “Now, does anyone have anything they want to say in memory of the dear departed?”
By the expressions on the faces of those nearest to the grave, it was obvious that several of them were planning to say things. But Fat Charlie knew it was a now-or-never moment. You need to make your peace with your dad, you know. Right.
He took a deep breath and a step forward, so he was right at the edge of the grave, and he said “Um. Excuse me. Right. I think I have something to say.”
The distant shouting was getting louder. Several of the mourners were casting glances back over their shoulders, to see where it was coming from. The rest of them were staring at Fat Charlie.
“I was never what you would call close to my father,” said Fat Charlie. “I suppose we didn’t really know how. I’ve not been part of his life for twenty years, and he hasn’t been part of mine. There’s a lot of things it’s hard to forgive, but then one day you turn around and you’ve got no family left.” He wiped a hand across his forehead. “I don’t think I’ve ever said ‘I love you, Dad’ in my whole life. All of you, you all probably knew him better than I did. Some of you may have loved him. You were part of his life, and I wasn’t. So I’m not ashamed that any of you should hear me say it. Say it for the first time in at least twenty years.” He looked down at the impregnable metal casket lid. “I love you,” he said. “And I’ll never forget you.”
The shouting got even louder, and now it was loud enough and clear enough, in the silence that followed Fat Charlie’s statement, for everyone to be able to make out the words being bellowed across the memorial gardens: “Fat Charlie! You stop botherin’ those people and get your ass over here this minute!”
Fat Charlie stared at the sea of unfamiliar faces, their expressions a seething stew of shock, puzzlement, anger and horror; ears burning, he realized the truth.
“Er. Sorry. Wrong funeral,” he said.
A small boy with big ears and an enormous smile said, proudly, “That was my gramma.”
Fat Charlie backed through the small crowd mumbling barely coherent apologies. He wanted the world to end now. He knew it was not his father’s fault, but also knew that his father would have found it hilarious.
Standing on the path, her hands on her hips, was a large woman with gray hair and thunder in her face. Fat Charlie walked toward her as he would have walked across a minefield, nine years old again, and in trouble.
“You don’t hear me yellin?” she asked. “You went right on past me. Makin’ a embarrassment of yourself!” The way she said embarrassment it began with the letter H. “Back this way,” she said. “You miss the service and everythin’. But there’s a shovelful of dirt waiting for you.”
Mrs. Higgler had barely changed in the last two decades: she was a little fatter, a little grayer. Her lips were pressed tightly together, and she led the way down one of the memorial garden’s many paths. Fat Charlie suspected that he had not made the best possible first impression. She led the way and, in disgrace, Fat Charlie followed.
A lizard zapped up one of the struts of the metal fence at the edge of the memorial garden, then poised itself at the top of a spike, tasting the thick Florida air. The sun had gone behind a cloud, but, if anything, the afternoon was getting hotter. The lizard puffed its neck out into a bright orange balloon.
Two long-legged cranes he had taken initially for lawn ornaments looked up at him as he passed. One of them darted its head down and rose up again with a large frog dangling from its beak. It began, in a series of gulping movements, to try to swallow the frog, which kicked and flailed in the air.
“Come on,” said Mrs. Higgler. “Don’t dawdle. Bad enough you missing your own father’s funeral.”
Fat Charlie suppressed the urge to say something about having come four thousand miles already that day, and having rented a car and driven down from Orlando, and how he had got off at the wrong exit, and whose idea was it anyway to tuck a garden of rest behind a Wal-Mart on the very edge of town? They kept walking, past a large concrete building that smelled of formaldehyde, until they reached an open grave at the very farthest reaches of the property. There was nothing beyond this but a high fence, and, beyond that, a wilderness of trees and palms and greenery. In the grave was a modest wooden coffin. It had several mounds of dirt on it already. Beside the grave was a pile of earth and a shovel.