Dead and Buried
She'd bury him after thirty seven years of marriage. The arguments were small, rarely knotted together. Alice has been twenty for a week when she married Fen. Looking back it seemed unlikely that anything akin to experience had produced such a fine fit. The relationship had started simply, continued simply, and now... well, this part was less simple.
There was little she could do about putting him in the yard properly, with a stone - so she had dug a small ditch, quietly in the cool June night, just behind the weeping cherry tree that marked the edge of their property. She worked quietly, methodically, soil out - stones to the side, soil out, stones to the side. All was quiet until she unhitched the hasp on the plywood box she’d screwed together in the garage.
The dog began to bark.
"Pickles! Pickles!" Alice gave the schnauzer a shove with a soiled garden sneaker. "He's dead! He won't play now! No, stop it!" She wept.
Fen first found Alice standing next to a painting of an apple on a small canvas hanging in a tiny gallery on an empty street near the Hudson River in lower Manhattan. He had approached her after watching her study the image of the apple; first at a distance, then up close, then with a cockeyed sideways look, and finally nose to paint with her head tilted nearly around until Fen believed she might fall over.
“You’ll hurt yourself if you keep doing that,” whispered Fen as he slipped quietly beside Alice.
Without looking, Alice elbowed Fen in the ribs with one long and pointy elbow. Fen winced.
This young woman was tall and strong, wide shouldered, and long hipped. Her long, blond hair fell easily down past her graceful neck only to meet muscular shoulders that bore long, strong arms.
Fen tried to see past the cascade of hair that hid her face, all but the end of a button nose, and then Alice palmed one flat length of her hair and flipped it quickly as if opening a shutter.
She blinked at Fen and pointed to the apple in the painting. Her eyes were large and blue and clear with the kind of mischief that made them sparkle.
Alice remembered that blinking look Fen had returned after staring at her, stuck still, until he managed to bring his attention to her gesture one blink at a time: shoulder, elbow, forearm, finger - and how he got lost at the end of that finger before his gaze leapt to the apple in the painting.
“Oh, Pickles,” Alice sobbed gently. Pickles groaned and stood on his hind legs to lap the tears from her chin.
“Let’s get him in,” she said, while making sure her husbands body was aligned with narrow coffin. “I’m gonna roll him him, you watch for the neighbors.”
Alice sat on the soil with Fen’s body behind her. She got her feet firmly anchored against the pile of soil and flexed her strong legs to make sure her hips were up against him properly. She stretched out her arms and grabbed his shirt collar with one hand and the cuff of his pants with the other, checked her grip and laughed at the socks that she had slipped on when dressing him for his trip into the hereafter.
“What a dork, Fen! Penguins? For all of eternity?”
Pickles spun suddenly as the light of a neighbors house blinked on and the sound of a porch door creaked through the shadows in the night.
Alice held her breath and eyed Pickles. The dog sat, opened his mouth, and gently panted.
When the sound of the screen door closing gently faded into the soil, Alice whispered to Pickles, All I need is Mary Alexander to find us like this. She complains when I plant daisies – can you imagine?”
Fen had been the one that smoothed things out with the neighbors when required.
“Fen – what is that, Swedish? Say, did you notice that Alice put little sweaters on all the trees in our front yard?”
“I didn’t see that, Frank. I’ll ask her about it. Drinks with the gents Saturday eve?”
“Fen, the cats are missing again!”
“I’ll speak with her Thomas. Did you check our garage?”
“Fen, are you guys doing work on the roof?”
“No, Sam. Why do you ask?”
“It’s just, uh, well… she had a lot of folks up there, not sure what was happening…”
“Who’s gonna get me out of the tight spots, Fen?” Alice leaned back and Fen rolled into the coffin with a dull thud. Pickled leapt onto Fen and spun around, seeking motion.
“Don’t worry, baby – he’s not going anywhere, just everywhere, that’s all. Say goodbye and get off – we have to finish this before we both go to jail.”
Before Fen has fumbled his way next to her in the gallery that day, Alice had already known. She watched the tall thin man with long black hair fumble at the giant glass door that was hinged nearly mid-span and confounded every person who entered the pristine concrete space. Time spread out in front of her when he leaned back to to check the building after pushing and pulling the giant glass slab with no positive result – as if the door wasn’t the issue but maybe the building surrounding the door was somehow to blame. She watched and knew, and then she let the knowing drop away as easily as she turned her attention back to the painting of the apple that had grabbed her attention with its own startling presence.
Fen had startled her there in front of the painting of the apple. She had only heard his voice – it could have been anyone. But Alice felt the space spread out around them when he spoke. That’s how she knew it was him. The poke in the ribs, that contact, that was forever.
Alice used her whole body to move the soft soil back into place over Fen’s coffin. She lay in the mound and pushed it with her hands and drew off her sneakers and pushed the soil with her feet and it felt cool and silky. She cried and undressed and pushed her body into the soil, arms and elbows and knees, moving the earth into the space over the coffin. She brought her hips and shoulders into the cool, black earth and slowly touched the tip of her chin to the mound. Her trembling shook the tears loose as the light of the moon glistened in bright white crescent from the small of her back.
Fen could see some simplistic mastery in the painting but all it could do was highlight the presence of the woman who stood before it like some strange wading bird, tall and elegant but at the same time somehow ungainly, verging on rude.
Alice sucked her tongue back and threw one strong leg out in front of her in a defiant stance. She crossed her arms and bobbed her head quickly as if agitated.
“Who does something like this?” She snarfed and shook a large palm with long wagging fingers toward the canvas.
Fen didn’t know what to say.
“This!” Alice sucked emptiness between her teeth and held her breath until her eyes bulged.
“It offends you?” Fen asked.
“Hmmmf!”
He thought about walking away. He was familiar with this sort of dance and the flags were going up in his mind and recalled what father had told him years back, after the first few romantic failures during his college days.
“Your attracted to crazy. Crazy doesn’t care about you and couldn’t if it wanted to. Crazy is fun, maybe, if you like that sort of thing. But look at you – your a mess. Find a nice sane woman.”
Fen smiled.
They walked up the empty block that day, arm in arm, he with the painting, packed and wrapped. Alice stopped in the middle of a deserted intersection, a yellow traffic light blinking above her. She pointed to the package and said, “I don’t know about this. I heard a story once about a man and a woman - an apple…”
After the sun set that same evening, Fen took Alice to his apartment and explained how rare it was for him to do something like that. Alice quietly looked around the place, stepping over piles of books that overflowed from the shelves that made the tiny four-room home even tighter than it needed to be. Then she sat down on the sofa in cramped living room and stared at Fen somewhat mystified.
“It’s a mess, sorry. My living room is the café across the street and my dining room is Zito’s down the block and…”
She blinked.
Fen looked at Alice the way he had looked at the building earlier that day when he couldn’t make his way through the door.
Alice hitched a thumb over her shoulder and said, “You use this bedroom?”
At the hospital Fen could barely find any words to explain Alice’s injuries to the nurse with the clipboard behind the desk in the emergency room. Alice got her chin up over the counter.
“I fell out of the bed – I’m clumsy – sex – look what I did.”
Fen stared at the nurse who stared at Alice who sat in a wheelchair and raised an eyebrow at the size of the swelling around her ankle.
It was awkward and painful and unusual and it was very likely that Fen was strongly attracted to a woman that wouldn’t fall on the balanced side of balanced. He smiled again and didn’t have much to say and the lack of words made him happy.
Alice bumped the wheelchair around the waiting room. “This body’s been in my way since I’ve had it and who knows where mind has been, if there ever was one. You know, I think this is our first date.”
The sun drew long, pink streaks of light through the purple shadows of dawn and the dew sparkled like a blanket of jewels over everything in the small yard. Alice scratched her nose with palmful of wet soil.
“Pickles?”
The dog growled gently from bottom of the the mound. Alice leaned over and rested her chin on the soil. Pickles tossed his small grey eyebrows over each other quickly, with dissatisfaction.
“Don’t worry, we’re not going to live out here in the yard. I just fell asleep.
Pickles hopped up and kicked at the mound.
“I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Maybe we get to keep him for a couple of days. I don’t think more than that.”
Pickles shook the dew from his coat and spun once in place. He put his stub of a tail down then lifted it up slowly.
“We’ll see. I’m not used to doing this alone. We were a team. I did what had to be done and Fen made it ok with everyone.”
Alice looked at the mound and wiped the tears into her cheeks.
“This - I think they won’t be happy with this. And I don’t think Fen is going to help explain it.”
Alice gathered her clothes and scooped up pickles. She blew a kiss to Fen and walked quietly back into the house.
There was little she could do about putting him in the yard properly, with a stone - so she had dug a small ditch, quietly in the cool June night, just behind the weeping cherry tree that marked the edge of their property. She worked quietly, methodically, soil out - stones to the side, soil out, stones to the side. All was quiet until she unhitched the hasp on the plywood box she’d screwed together in the garage.
The dog began to bark.
"Pickles! Pickles!" Alice gave the schnauzer a shove with a soiled garden sneaker. "He's dead! He won't play now! No, stop it!" She wept.
Fen first found Alice standing next to a painting of an apple on a small canvas hanging in a tiny gallery on an empty street near the Hudson River in lower Manhattan. He had approached her after watching her study the image of the apple; first at a distance, then up close, then with a cockeyed sideways look, and finally nose to paint with her head tilted nearly around until Fen believed she might fall over.
“You’ll hurt yourself if you keep doing that,” whispered Fen as he slipped quietly beside Alice.
Without looking, Alice elbowed Fen in the ribs with one long and pointy elbow. Fen winced.
This young woman was tall and strong, wide shouldered, and long hipped. Her long, blond hair fell easily down past her graceful neck only to meet muscular shoulders that bore long, strong arms.
Fen tried to see past the cascade of hair that hid her face, all but the end of a button nose, and then Alice palmed one flat length of her hair and flipped it quickly as if opening a shutter.
She blinked at Fen and pointed to the apple in the painting. Her eyes were large and blue and clear with the kind of mischief that made them sparkle.
Alice remembered that blinking look Fen had returned after staring at her, stuck still, until he managed to bring his attention to her gesture one blink at a time: shoulder, elbow, forearm, finger - and how he got lost at the end of that finger before his gaze leapt to the apple in the painting.
“Oh, Pickles,” Alice sobbed gently. Pickles groaned and stood on his hind legs to lap the tears from her chin.
“Let’s get him in,” she said, while making sure her husbands body was aligned with narrow coffin. “I’m gonna roll him him, you watch for the neighbors.”
Alice sat on the soil with Fen’s body behind her. She got her feet firmly anchored against the pile of soil and flexed her strong legs to make sure her hips were up against him properly. She stretched out her arms and grabbed his shirt collar with one hand and the cuff of his pants with the other, checked her grip and laughed at the socks that she had slipped on when dressing him for his trip into the hereafter.
“What a dork, Fen! Penguins? For all of eternity?”
Pickles spun suddenly as the light of a neighbors house blinked on and the sound of a porch door creaked through the shadows in the night.
Alice held her breath and eyed Pickles. The dog sat, opened his mouth, and gently panted.
When the sound of the screen door closing gently faded into the soil, Alice whispered to Pickles, All I need is Mary Alexander to find us like this. She complains when I plant daisies – can you imagine?”
Fen had been the one that smoothed things out with the neighbors when required.
“Fen – what is that, Swedish? Say, did you notice that Alice put little sweaters on all the trees in our front yard?”
“I didn’t see that, Frank. I’ll ask her about it. Drinks with the gents Saturday eve?”
“Fen, the cats are missing again!”
“I’ll speak with her Thomas. Did you check our garage?”
“Fen, are you guys doing work on the roof?”
“No, Sam. Why do you ask?”
“It’s just, uh, well… she had a lot of folks up there, not sure what was happening…”
“Who’s gonna get me out of the tight spots, Fen?” Alice leaned back and Fen rolled into the coffin with a dull thud. Pickled leapt onto Fen and spun around, seeking motion.
“Don’t worry, baby – he’s not going anywhere, just everywhere, that’s all. Say goodbye and get off – we have to finish this before we both go to jail.”
Before Fen has fumbled his way next to her in the gallery that day, Alice had already known. She watched the tall thin man with long black hair fumble at the giant glass door that was hinged nearly mid-span and confounded every person who entered the pristine concrete space. Time spread out in front of her when he leaned back to to check the building after pushing and pulling the giant glass slab with no positive result – as if the door wasn’t the issue but maybe the building surrounding the door was somehow to blame. She watched and knew, and then she let the knowing drop away as easily as she turned her attention back to the painting of the apple that had grabbed her attention with its own startling presence.
Fen had startled her there in front of the painting of the apple. She had only heard his voice – it could have been anyone. But Alice felt the space spread out around them when he spoke. That’s how she knew it was him. The poke in the ribs, that contact, that was forever.
Alice used her whole body to move the soft soil back into place over Fen’s coffin. She lay in the mound and pushed it with her hands and drew off her sneakers and pushed the soil with her feet and it felt cool and silky. She cried and undressed and pushed her body into the soil, arms and elbows and knees, moving the earth into the space over the coffin. She brought her hips and shoulders into the cool, black earth and slowly touched the tip of her chin to the mound. Her trembling shook the tears loose as the light of the moon glistened in bright white crescent from the small of her back.
Fen could see some simplistic mastery in the painting but all it could do was highlight the presence of the woman who stood before it like some strange wading bird, tall and elegant but at the same time somehow ungainly, verging on rude.
Alice sucked her tongue back and threw one strong leg out in front of her in a defiant stance. She crossed her arms and bobbed her head quickly as if agitated.
“Who does something like this?” She snarfed and shook a large palm with long wagging fingers toward the canvas.
Fen didn’t know what to say.
“This!” Alice sucked emptiness between her teeth and held her breath until her eyes bulged.
“It offends you?” Fen asked.
“Hmmmf!”
He thought about walking away. He was familiar with this sort of dance and the flags were going up in his mind and recalled what father had told him years back, after the first few romantic failures during his college days.
“Your attracted to crazy. Crazy doesn’t care about you and couldn’t if it wanted to. Crazy is fun, maybe, if you like that sort of thing. But look at you – your a mess. Find a nice sane woman.”
Fen smiled.
They walked up the empty block that day, arm in arm, he with the painting, packed and wrapped. Alice stopped in the middle of a deserted intersection, a yellow traffic light blinking above her. She pointed to the package and said, “I don’t know about this. I heard a story once about a man and a woman - an apple…”
After the sun set that same evening, Fen took Alice to his apartment and explained how rare it was for him to do something like that. Alice quietly looked around the place, stepping over piles of books that overflowed from the shelves that made the tiny four-room home even tighter than it needed to be. Then she sat down on the sofa in cramped living room and stared at Fen somewhat mystified.
“It’s a mess, sorry. My living room is the café across the street and my dining room is Zito’s down the block and…”
She blinked.
Fen looked at Alice the way he had looked at the building earlier that day when he couldn’t make his way through the door.
Alice hitched a thumb over her shoulder and said, “You use this bedroom?”
At the hospital Fen could barely find any words to explain Alice’s injuries to the nurse with the clipboard behind the desk in the emergency room. Alice got her chin up over the counter.
“I fell out of the bed – I’m clumsy – sex – look what I did.”
Fen stared at the nurse who stared at Alice who sat in a wheelchair and raised an eyebrow at the size of the swelling around her ankle.
It was awkward and painful and unusual and it was very likely that Fen was strongly attracted to a woman that wouldn’t fall on the balanced side of balanced. He smiled again and didn’t have much to say and the lack of words made him happy.
Alice bumped the wheelchair around the waiting room. “This body’s been in my way since I’ve had it and who knows where mind has been, if there ever was one. You know, I think this is our first date.”
The sun drew long, pink streaks of light through the purple shadows of dawn and the dew sparkled like a blanket of jewels over everything in the small yard. Alice scratched her nose with palmful of wet soil.
“Pickles?”
The dog growled gently from bottom of the the mound. Alice leaned over and rested her chin on the soil. Pickles tossed his small grey eyebrows over each other quickly, with dissatisfaction.
“Don’t worry, we’re not going to live out here in the yard. I just fell asleep.
Pickles hopped up and kicked at the mound.
“I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Maybe we get to keep him for a couple of days. I don’t think more than that.”
Pickles shook the dew from his coat and spun once in place. He put his stub of a tail down then lifted it up slowly.
“We’ll see. I’m not used to doing this alone. We were a team. I did what had to be done and Fen made it ok with everyone.”
Alice looked at the mound and wiped the tears into her cheeks.
“This - I think they won’t be happy with this. And I don’t think Fen is going to help explain it.”
Alice gathered her clothes and scooped up pickles. She blew a kiss to Fen and walked quietly back into the house.
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