David Wiltse - Prayer for the Dead

Unearthly cries rose from the group in black in Section Ten. The women were keening in shrill, high-pitched tones alien to a land accustomed to stifled sobs and low moans. There was something counterfeit about this grief, something entirely too public and overdone, like a Mediterranean funeral packed with hired mourners. Dyce knew the real sound of sorrow, and it was no banshee cry for general display. True grief was something to be borne, not vented. It froze the heart and stilled the soul, transforming everything within to a heavy, leaden state that never truly lifted. It weighed like pennies on the eyes and dragged the body to a torpor that matched the spirit’s. One did not have the energy to wail or pound fists so theatrically for the benefit of others. A real sufferer withdrew to a dark place like a wounded animal and conserved himself.

Dyce knew the sounds of grief, the slow measured tones of sorrow, the drained, pale, dolorous look of sadness. This black-clad band of shriekers were indulging themselves and seemed as foreign to the graveyard of New England as a desert dweller’s tent. He looked at them with contempt, willing them gone. One of them caught his eye: a little girl with dark hair and enormous eyes who had drifted from the group. She seemed as offended by this overly demonstrative expression of grief as Dyce was. One of the adults in the group, perhaps her father, turned once and summoned her to return with a quick motion of his hand, then turned back to the open grave, adjusting his hat.

Instead of obeying the paternal command, the girl moved toward Dyce like a mote in sunlight. Her progress slowed as her attention drifted first to a bouquet of flowers on a grave, then to twigs on the walkway, and finally to the cawing of a distant crow.

Dyce liked children because, although they questioned everything, they did so out of pure curiosity. What they discovered, they accepted without censure. They never questioned the fact of him. He fit neatly enough into the wide category, adults; children, unlike their elders, did not distinguish certain members of that category as “odd,” “different,” or “peculiar.”

Dyce knew she was still approaching even after he’d turned his back to her. He heard her stop a pace behind him where he squatted on the grass. He knew without looking that she was wondering what he had found to study so intently. Using a blade of grass, he gently touched one of the threads of the spider’s web that was strung between the headstone and the plastic flowers in the funerary urn. The spider raced forward, then stopped. Sensing trickery, it quickly withdrew to the edge of the web. Dyce knew he would not be able to fool it again.

“I got lucky,” Dyce said, as if he had been speaking to the girl all along. “Usually the spider will react only to the movement of its real prey. They make very specific movements when they’re caught, and if I happen to duplicate them, it’s just luck.”

The girl squatted beside him on the grass. Dyce did not look at her. Now using the blade of grass as a baton, he pointed to the web. “It’s like a tightrope act in the circus. There are some threads he has to walk on to keep from getting stuck himself The other threads are very sticky, and even he can’t go on them. But he never makes a mistake. Or at least I’ve never seen one caught in his own web.”

The girl reached forward and Dyce caught her hand at the wrist. He was careful not to squeeze or frighten her. “You’ll break it. It’s very strong on its own scale. The main threads are stronger than steel for their size. But it’s not meant for humans.” He released his grip but did not remove his hand, letting her do that, wanting her to feel she was still in control.

“You can blow on it,” he said. The girl hesitated. Dyce blew softly and the web swayed, the spider riding the bucking threads with unruffled ease.

The girl leaned forward and blew, softly at first, then harder. Dyce allowed himself to look at her. Her dress, a pale blue party frock with the ribbons removed in concession to the occasion, had been ripped in several places at the hem. Dyce felt a surge of anger at the ritual being imposed upon the child.

“Who died?” he asked.

“Sydney’s bubbe.”

Dyce looked at the group of mourners. They were chanting now, the shrieks of grief easily and conveniently converted into the sonorous, false comfort of religious rhythm. No one in the group seemed to miss the child’s presence.

“They made you look at her, didn’t they?”

“Yes.” The girl blew at the web again, trying to dislodge the patient spider with her wind.

“Did you want to?”

“I told them I didn’t want to,” she said.

Dyce nodded. “But they said you should, they said you had to.”

Dyce could picture the event, adults pushing the child toward the open coffin, telling her to show a love and respect she neither felt nor understood. He imagined the faces of the adults bent over her, serious but urgent with their own needs, leaning too close to her, breaths fragrant with smoke and garlic. One of them would have picked her up, held her over the deceased, prodded her to kiss the waxen skin, fuller and less wrinkled now than in life. She would have been lowered toward the mask of death, protesting, powerless, frightened, as voices murmured their notions of duty to her and the odor of preservative and heavy cosmetics filled her nostrils. Dyce quivered with a deep pang of sympathy.

“Did they make you kiss her?”

The girl made a face of distaste. “She was Sydney’s bubbe,” she said.

“Did you look closely?”

The girl stood, losing interest. Dyce resisted the urge to restrain her. “Did you look closely?” he repeated.

The girl took a hesitant step away from Dyce. She did not want to stay with the man and his spider but neither did she want to return to the moans and foreign chants.

“Wasn’t she beautiful?” he asked.

The others wandered past him in their informal procession, adrift and purposeless now that the ceremony was over. The little girl was in the middle of them, each hand held by an adult, like a prisoner shackled to warders. She looked toward Dyce through the shifting bodies. There was no particular meaning in her expression; he was just a momentary diversion to her, and he accepted that but nonetheless could not suppress a desire, a longing really, to have a child of his own.

Dyce reflected on the women he might marry, the kinds of mothers they would make, and the kinds of children he might have. There was Gisella in accounting, a shy, serious young woman who did not shave her legs. Dyce felt a certain warmth in her presence, but her intensity made him uneasy. He suspected her of strong convictions about things like macrobiotics and holistic medicine. There was a blonde who tended the cash register where Dyce shopped for groceries. She was plump and sweet and always acted as if Dyce’s arrival were the event she had been awaiting all day long. In the few minutes it took for her to price and pack his few supplies, the blonde always managed to have a conversation with him. Thinking about it, Dyce realized he actually knew quite a bit about her. Over the past few years she had volunteered information about her birthday-which Dyce had forgotten-her mother’s failing health, her own weight problems. She had a habit of commenting on his groceries, declaring whether or not she was allowed to eat each item-a minor smash with her car, which cost her more than she could afford, her feelings about the melodramatics of the royal family as reported in the tabloids by her counter. She had spoken to him of airline crashes, her new hairdo, a rash of racial incidents in Boston. Once, Dyce recalled, she had been uncharacteristically quiet and her eyes were red from weeping. Surprising himself, he had asked her if anything was wrong. When she told him she had had a fight with her boyfriend, Dyce had felt a surge of jealousy that puzzled him.