Scott Nicholson - Ashes

That's how I was feeling. How could my eyes feel cold and glassy and big like that when I was asleep? But all I know is that Sung Li wanted me to look through her eyes.

Sung Li saw the edge of the shelf, she felt the cold of the bronze shoes against her back. But the robe was soft and snug around her body, the sleeves as loose as pillowcases. She stretched out and then she was standing, raising up on those wiggly legs and walking to the glass door.

She tripped over an ivory elephant that came up to her knees. The elephant fell over and landed on some of Uncle Theodore's army medals. The noise was so loud, it would have woken me up if I hadn't been dreaming so heavily. Then Sung Li crawled over a toy metal train that was old and rusty. Curly flakes of paint stuck to her robe.

She pushed open the glass door to the showcase and jumped to the floor with something from the shelf, something that was dark. She landed on her little shoes, her head flopping up and down because it was so heavy. In my sleep, I heard a thumping and scratching down the hall, at my parents' door. Or maybe I was awake, because a dog was barking somewhere down the street.

Then I heard Daddy's breathing, sort of long and loud, not the short and fast way it gets on Mom's library nights. Sung Li felt the edge of the blanket that was hanging down to the floor. She pulled herself up, the volcano knife tucked under her arm, and the next thing I knew she was on Daddy's chest and rocking up and down like a boat on the ocean.

I don't know what happened after that, only I heard Mom screaming and I think I woke up and I was glad it was only a dream because I was scared. But Mom kept screaming and screaming, then I knew I was awake because my finger hurt where I had cut it.

I cut it on the crack in Sung Li's head, just like I told you. Not on the volcano knife. I never touched the volcano knife.

Anyway, Mom screamed and then my head was hurting again. I went down the hall and looked in their bedroom. Mom was sitting up in bed, her face all pink and she screamed some more. I guess somebody finally heard her and called the police.

The police I talked to before asked why I had blood all over my clothes. I told him it was because I tried to get Mom off the bed, away from what happened to Daddy. Maybe you don't believe me, either, and you'll make me keep telling Sung Li's story over and over, and about those library nights, and how my finger got cut.

But just go upstairs and look in the showcase. Then maybe you'll quit looking at me like I'm an afterthought. You'll see two things right off. I know, because I did, and I'm only a kid.

First, you'll see Sung Li right back in her old place in the center of the shelf, staring out with those cold glass eyes that aren't really glass at all, only that stuff they make plates out of. The ugly gnome is down on the bottom shelf, its face all chipped and scarred like the woodcarver got mad at the thing he was making.

And there's one other thing, something Sung Li couldn't cover up. I don't know how she got the blood off her clothes. And she somehow got the ivory elephant back in place and wiped off the knife that's made of volcano stuff. The knife's gone now. One of those other police took it away in a plastic bag.

But look on the shelf, and the second shelf, too. You'll see what gives her away. What she left behind on her way back to her old place in the showcase. Two little rows of dots in the dust, about the size of the ends of somebody's fingers.

Footprints. She couldn't fix that, and I know why.

I hid behind the door enough times to know that you just can't hurry dust.

Can we go see Sung Li now?

"How could you even think of selling it?" Gaines breathed on a brass rail and polished it with his jacket sleeve.

Mother should be proud, Gaines thought. But her pride was in a new luxury sedan, twice-yearly trips to the Mediterranean, face-lifts. All fleeting, mortal things. If only she had more of the Wadell blood in her. Then she would find joy in the only things that truly last: a proper memorial, a professional embalming job, a final show of respect.

"I put up with it long enough because of your father. And now that he's gone, there's no reason to hang around this-this mausoleum." Mother's hair was stiff from a forty-dollar frosting job at her hairdresser's. It didn't shift as she wrung her hands and rolled her eyes in another of her classic "spells."

"We've invested so much in the Home," Gaines said. "But this isn't about money. This is about tradition."

"Tradition, my foot. Your grandfather was a drunkard and a fool. He started the business because this was the only one that couldn't possibly fail. And your father was just like him. Only he had the sense to marry somebody with a good head for business."

"And business has never been better," Gaines said. "So why sell now?"

"Why? Because I've given enough of my life to the Wadell Funeral Home. I've had it up to here — " she put a hand to her surgically-tucked and shiny chin,"-with death and dying. And there you go, wasting a quarter grand on remodeling."

Gaines looked around the parlor. The brooding red pine paneling was gone, the walls now covered with clear-varnished oak. Strip spotlights hung in place of the fluorescent tubes that had once vomited their weak green light. Purple velvet drapes hung from the windows, in thick folds of the regal splendor that the guests of honor so richly deserved. On a raised platform at the rear of the room, soft light bathed the bier where the guests received their final tribute.

The sinking sun pried its way through the front glass, suffusing the bleached woodwork of the dais with a red-golden light. No dust gathered on the plush cushioning he had added to the straight-backed pews. The room smelled of wax and rosewater, incense and carnations. Not the slightest aroma of decaying flesh was allowed in the parlor area.

This had been a place of peace. But lately it was a place for the same argument again and again.

"Mother, please be reasonable," Gaines said. "I know Father left you the Home in his will, but he told both of us a hundred times that he wanted me to carry on the business. It’s the only thing he really felt passion for."

“ That’s the truth.” She shook her head slowly, and in the soft light, she looked about half of her sixty-eight years. "I’m not doing this just for me. Though, Lord knows, I'm ready for a change. It's mostly for you."

"Me?"

"You think I want my only son to spend his life up to his elbows in the guts of corpses? Do you want to go home every night and take two long showers, but no matter how hard you scrub, the smell stays with you? It's in the food you eat, the air you breathe, it's in the water you drink, it's in your blood. And I want to save you from that."

In your blood. That's what Mother didn't understand. The funeral parlor was more than a family business. It was a duty, a sacred trust. "You can't sell it," he said.

"Oh, I can't? You just watch." Mother stamped her two-inch heel onto the parquet floor and bustled from the room.

Gaines heard the side door slam as Mother left the parlor. Warmth crept up his face, a rush of emotion that no good interment man should allow to show. He couldn't lose his temper. Not with Stony Hampton's viewing a half-hour away.

He could be angry at Mother, but not at Stony's expense. Stony was a much-beloved member of the community and a top-notch mechanic. Sure, he'd had a fondness for moonshine and the cigarettes that had eventually stifled his lungs, and maybe he'd slapped his kids around a little, but all that was forgiven now, at least until the man was in the ground. For a few days, from the hour of death to service to burial, even the lowest scoundrel was a saint.