Waiting Out Winter (6 page)

Once the children had fallen asleep to their hundredth viewing of the Spongebob movie and were moved to their beds, the adults began talking quietly. They took turns reliving their children’s births and lives, telling stories about Sarah. Several of the tales were funny, but no one laughed. Sarah coughed sporadically and fell asleep twice, only to wake and find them still huddled around her, talking in whispers of days gone by. Sometime around one o’clock in the morning, Nick realized they were holding a wake for someone not yet dead.

“I’m sorry.” The whisper from the dark took Nick off guard as he exited the bathroom.

“Sarah? What’s wrong?”

“I need you to know two things.” Her voice cracked and he wished he could see her better, but she was nothing but a vaguely black outline against a darkened hallway, as his eyes hadn’t adjusted from being in the bathroom light.

“Okay…”

“First, I forgive you.” Nick smiled in the dark and hoped her eyes had adjusted enough for him to see it. “I forgave you long ago, I’m just stubborn and wanted to hurt you back. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.” A half chuckled escaped her between several mild coughs. “In retrospect I was acting as childish as the behavior that had angered me in the first place. Sorry.”

“Hon, don’t worry about it.” He couldn’t fathom discussing this when things were as bad as they were and just wanted to accept her admission and move on. “The second thing?”

“I’m pregnant.” She whispered so softly he thought he had heard her wrong, but her silence let him know she had actually uttered that and was waiting for his response.

“Sare…” He heard her words again, the sadness that was masked in the whisper and realized the gravity of her illness.

“You can’t tell Jerry. Don’t tell Jamie either. I only told you because I fear animals tearing me apart once I’m dead and everyone seeing it… Seeing something horrible that will haunt them forever.”

“But… How far? When did you find out?”

“I didn’t confirm. How could I? There are no doctors and I couldn’t ask you guys to pick up a home pregnancy test--we didn’t need this with everything going on and I didn’t want to stress anyone out. I missed my period right before you guys left, but I used to miss in the summer all the time, so I didn’t think anything of it. I missed when you returned and I figured it was stress. Then I missed another and little symptoms started popping up. My breasts are killing me, the flutters have begun. Yeah, I’m pregnant. I know what it feels like.”

“Ok… But why tell me? What do you want—“

“You need to burn me.”

“What?”

“When I die. You need to burn me. Don’t bury me or leave me anywhere. I don’t want animals digging me up or tearing me apart. You need to burn me, for my own sanity, for everyone else’s. No one can see anything that may upset them, that might let them know I was pregnant.”

“Hon, you being dead will be upsetting. You being…” He couldn’t bring himself to repeat the horrible possibilities she’d uttered. “…animals getting to you, would be upsetting. How could-- ?”

“Please. Just promise me. I don’t know how long I’ll make it in the garage. I’m cough blood, covered in sores and hurt in ways and places I didn’t know possible. Just promise… ok?”

“Okay…”

A few hours of sleep later, they woke to Nick’s watch alarm and prepared to move Sarah. Finding she’d died during the interim stunned them, but knowing the children would be awake soon offered them no time to mourn and barely enough time to register the fact. They needed to deal with the situation and simply tell the children what had happened, rather than have the kids wake up to a body. Reality was harsh at that age, but it didn’t need to be in their face.

After a very brief discussion on whether she should be buried or taken to another part of town--after all, death brings flies and they didn’t need to invite them with a meal—Nick convinced the others it was best to burn her body. There would be no visitation, funeral, or even an announcement in the paper, just a tarp and thick smoke. Nick had planned to do it in the backyard, keeping it as private as he could, but Jamie disagreed.

“It’s as close to a funeral as we’re going to have, and I’d like to be there, or at least see it from the window. I don’t know if Jerry will or not, if he’ll even be
able
to, but if he wants to, he can watch if you do it in the street.” Nick acquiesced with a nod and began to suit up for the trip outdoors.

Sarah’s death occurred at what would normally have been the week of Thanksgiving. But normal had come and gone months before, leaving them with no turkey and football to garnish the meal with family and friends. Instead, Nick bundled up against the cold of Wisconsin’s brutal winter and dragged his sister’s corpse to the curb with a duty-bound numbness that equated to taking out the garbage. He left her there, unattended, to get two pallets from the garage, peripherally aware of the gaps in the plastic of the houses around him. He and Jerry had seen that before, the little movements in window coverings, and while they usually waved with a silliness meant to alleviate the stress of being outdoors, Nick did nothing more than glance at the curious as he prepared the funeral pyre.

A few squirts of highly flammable brake fluid and the pallets lit with ease. The goggles worn to protect him from rogue flies kept the smoke out of his eyes, but the scarf wrapped around his face did nothing to protect him from the smell as the flame touched flesh. He watched the flame on the wood, rather than the melting plastic of the old blue tarp. He thought of his summers spent at their grandparents’ house harassing his sister until she told Grandma and got him grounded, and his first semester at college, when he’d drunk dialed Sarah on a regular basis under the pretense of alcohol and fraternity pranks but knowing full well he missed the one person who knew all his dirty secrets and loved him anyway. He tried not to cry and fill the goggles with tears as he said good-bye to the girl who had only given up her slingshot because it didn’t fit in her pocket next to the bulk of her baby’s bottle. He thought of their last whispered conversation and the knowledge only he knew, and hoped the flame would hide any evidence of the truth. Hoped that fulfilling his promise would protect those she’d wanted protected.

His eyes roamed without seeing across the melting tarp and exposed, blackened flesh of the body he’d depersonalized for his own sanity. The white gleam of bone shone through flames on occasion, quickly darkening as soot and scorch charred it, but it was just bone, not his sister. The gore that spilled and bubbled once the skin and muscle were breached was nothing of the person he remembered, but something surreal his mind equated to tragedy on the evening news. Removed. Someone else. Somewhere else.

So content in his thick quagmire of memories, fooling himself into believing he was breathing brisk winter air, rather than death choked oxygen, Nick didn’t see the person leave the house across the street. And he wouldn’t have noticed another mourner, had the man not kicked up the sparks and shifted the balance of the charring pallets with a tarp-wrapped body of his own.

Nick jumped at the disturbance and looked up at the intruder. Wearing a full snowsuit and a snorkeling mask, the interloper was the epitome of a “made for Sci-Fi” cast member. But the duct tape covered joints between snowsuit and boot, and snowsuit and leather gloves, combined with the neoprene neck cover, let Nick know instantly this man had also been out of the house to forage. This was his battle suit.

Because he had not seen which house the man had come from, Nick wasn’t sure which neighbor was sharing his bonfire, combining their tragedies in early morning silence. He studied the man across the fire. The flickering flames reflected off the plastic of the mask, but Nick looked past to find the man’s eyes. It took several moments for Nick to recognize the forty-something neighbor from the corner. The mask had prevented him--Thompson or Johnson, one of those “son” names--from wearing his glasses and made it more difficult for Nick to figure out who it was.

Nick was surprised he had deduced it out from the man’s eyes alone. The man was a stranger to Nick, barely more than the guy you saw at the grocery store from time to time and then recognized elsewhere but couldn’t place him.

The man and his wife had moved into the house on the opposite corner almost three years ago, yet for whatever reason, Nick and Jamie had never walked across to welcome them to the neighborhood. The couple had no children, so there was no reason for his boys to play over there and force an introduction. They had no animals that wandered off the property and had to be called for, searched for, or brought back to the house you knew they belonged to. There had been no inclination to get to know the couple.

Nick thought about this, almost ashamed he had never bothered to say hello.

Glad for the thought distracting his attention from the body lying in front of him, Nick let his mind wander on the tangent of society’s solitary lifestyle. Gone were the days of his childhood when his mother would welcome new neighbors with fresh baked goods and a friendly smile. This was a new century and a new mindset. If he didn’t know them or have reason to know them, he didn’t go out of his way. Likewise, he didn’t get involved if they needed help, and no foraging committees had been created in the neighborhood.

In the face of disease and tragedy, the neighborhood had boarded itself up. Individual strongholds were formed, with loved ones and friends, instead of a communal gathering at a church or school. Sure the town had tried, but without trust you have nothing and without communication with the outside world, there was no telling if they were any better or worse than other areas--mentally or physically. But standing in the middle of the street, watching the remains of his sister and a stranger’s loved one, burn in silence, Nick had an urge to go check on other people. He had a craving to know his town, not just his family, was safely tucked inside--whether it be in small groups or larger gatherings.

Instead, he stoically remained where he was, reflecting on the fact that society had, in only a few generations, moved from a community where people knew each other to small intimate collectives, which blocked out the rest of the world. It wasn’t just him, no one mingled on the corners or visited across the fences anymore. They emailed and talked on the Internet, in chatrooms and message boards where they knew before entering there would be a shared interest. There was no need for small talk to find out what he had in common with his neighbor. There was no wandering across the street to help someone work on their car or chat while the other barbequed.

Nick realized the larger a community became, the more tribal and closed its inhabitants were. If society was going to survive, it was going to have to open itself back up. People needed to embrace the fact they were not alone behind their boarded windows and snorkel masks. And in the glow of his sister’s death, he informally met his neighbor with nothing more than a nod of acceptance.

The flames died down as the fuel--both wood and woman--burned away. Neither man ever said a word, but as anxiety shifted their weight from foot to foot they had managed to gradually move from standing across each from each other to standing next to each other. Nick wondered if it was the man’s wife or a friend burning next to his sister. However, since he couldn’t bring himself to offer sympathetic condolences, he decided not to query about the body wrapped in the tarp. As the flames became embers they nodded to each other and returned to their prospective homes--a newfound wealth of understanding and camaraderie in Nick’s heart and mind.

When Jerry snapped out of his trance-like state several days later, he was a changed person. There were no more hunting stories or inappropriate jokes to lighten the mood. He was no longer the reluctant clown responsible for keeping spirits up and carried everyone along by pretending nothing was wrong. He was now the vigilant survivor who checked the windows and doors and vents several times a day--nearly beginning his rounds over again just as soon as he’d finished the last sweep. He never let Emily out of his sight, watching her as he worked or carrying her with him to inspect other rooms. He didn’t sleep more than three hours at a time, and even that was always during the day when others were awake. Within a month he was as removed from his former self as a cancer patient is in their last few weeks. It would have annoyed Nick, as Sarah had been his sister much longer than she’d been Jerry’s wife, had Jerry’s vigilant behavior not proven to be useful when the wild animals wandering town started to become a threat.

They’d first noticed the infected coyote and other wildlife wandering the streets right before Christmas, when Jamie had sent them out to the local toy store under the charade of forced normalcy and presents for the children. Looking mangy, if not manic, the animals knocked over long rotted garbage cans and nosed through the remains that lay in piles of snow-covered ash in the streets. It seemed to be only larger mammals, and they decided the squirrels and other small creatures they’d initially seen in the streets had most likely succumbed to the disease quicker because of their size, or become food for the other animals. Jamie mentioned she hadn’t seen a bird since the first snowfall, quickly pointing out that not every single bird was known to migrate, so they assumed those that stayed behind had all died. The family pets had left the neighborhoods long ago, and ironically seemed to trade places with the animals that normally lived in the surrounding woods. The coyotes seemed to be the most commonly spotted, whether Nick and Jerry were off foraging through town or peaking out their own windows. When the coyotes seemed to disappear overnight, they should have known there was a reason other than just disease. There was no way it had killed the entire pack in one day.