Mark Dunn - American Decameron

“Mean well? How long have you been tied up in this basement?”

“You’re right. I know you’re right. I don’t know what to do!” Patrick began to claw at his thick mop of hair with restless fingers. “Yes, I do. You better leave me down here. Pretend like you and me — like we never ever saw each other. First bring me a Pop Tart or something. I’m really hungry.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“No. Not really. But until I get some telepathic advice from the King of the Cowboys, I should probably just stay put. He’s all the way down in Southern California, you know, so there’s bound to be a delay in the transmission.”

“Okay.”

“You know I’m kidding, right?”

“I’m not so sure about anything right now.” Natalia shook her head slowly in deep befuddlement, then climbed the stairs, opened the door, and went out into the kitchen. There was a woman standing at the table holding a couple of record albums. Natalia quickly shut the door behind her.

“There you are!” the woman chirped. “I found two that I didn’t have already: ‘My Chickashay Gal’ and ‘I’m Gonna Gallop Gallop to Gallup, New Mexico.’”

“I’m very happy for you,” Natalia said.

“I love Roy Rogers. I named my boy Roy and my girl Dale. We have a coon hound named Ghost, just like Roy’s champion coon hound.”

“Five dollars for each record. That’ll be ten all together.”

The woman paid and walked out of the kitchen singing “Happy Trails.”

A moment later Betsy entered with money from a quick sale she’d made in the den. Natalia couldn’t help herself. “Everything’s going to be all right,” she confided with a comforting smile.

Betsy gave Natalia a quizzical look. “You know , don’t you?”

Natalia nodded.

“It’s probably one of the oddest estate sales you’ve ever run, right?”

“A little twisted, you know, but I’m trying to adjust to it.”

“Twisted? How is that?”

“Well, I mean the fact that Patrick’s—”

“Not here? But don’t you think it’s better this way? And besides, Erin says he’s always wanted to go to Mount Rushmore. Last she heard, he was having a wonderful time.”

“Oh dear.”

“Are you all right, Ms. Richman? You don’t look too well.”

“I think I’ll have a Pop Tart. Let’s all have a Pop Tart. Things are about to get very interesting.”

Scratch, scratch, thump, thump.

“And please, call me Natalia.”

Melanie Minero lives in Minnesota. She hasn’t always lived in Minnesota. The earliest years of her life were spent in the company of four older siblings in Lincoln, Nebraska. Like her three brothers and one sister, Mellie left her hometown as a young adult, and after the death of her remaining parent — her mother — never had much reason to go back.

This story isn’t about Lincoln, Nebraska.

It isn’t about any one particular place, really. It’s about two sisters and two brothers who live in four different states, and about a third brother who’s just died in a different state.

A couple of days ago.

May 16.

These five siblings have never been all that close, although they have made a few begrudging attempts to keep themselves loosely inserted into each other’s lives. In terms of their feelings for one another, the five Ramseys (including the two female nee Ramseys) aren’t really all that different from any of the other millions of dissimilar brothers and sisters who make up the majority of modern extended American families: brothers and sisters who share a few of the same genes and a handful of mutual memories of a connected past — brothers and sisters who by convenience of circumstance grew up together in the same house and now live in other houses in other places.

It has been said that death will either bring a family together or pull a family apart. Because death has the tendency to play havoc with relationships and sensibilities as it reshuffles the deck of the card game of life, it rarely makes only a glancing impression upon a family member. However, with the death of Shelby Ramsey, his surviving siblings displayed every point upon the spectrum of familial response, including the one that rests squarely in the middle: marginal interest bordering upon indifference.

Let us begin our examination of these varied responses with Carla Guinter, wife of Captain Virgil Guinter of the United States Navy, and, within the timeframe of our story, a resident of the Mission Hills neighborhood of San Diego. Carla, first in the family birth order, has just received a phone call from her sister Mellie about the death of said brother Shelby (fourth oldest), who for the last twenty years has gone by the name of Sawyer. He chose Sawyer when he began to include in his juggling act three active-duty two-stroke-engine-powered chainsaws. Sawyer used to juggle rubber balls. Then he moved up to dessert plates. He finished his life juggling chainsaws. It was, in fact, one of the chainsaws that prematurely (and violently) brought the curtain down on Shelby/Sawyer’s neo-Vaudevillian life.

Mellie is calling from Burnsville, a suburb of Minneapolis. Mellie and her husband Artie are both high school teachers.

“How did he die?” asks Carla, who tries very hard to be attentive to news of her brother’s death — the brother she has not seen except on an occasional television variety show for the last dozen years.

“He was performing at Circus Circus Tunica, one of those new Mississippi River casinos, and he lost his concentration, and one of the chainsaws sliced the jugular vein in his neck.”

This statement of gruesome fact is followed on the other end of the telephone line by silence.

“I’m sorry, Carla. I didn’t know how else to say it. Hello? Carla?”

“I’m back. I dropped the phone. I didn’t hear what you just — There is a man on a rampage on channel ten. He’s stolen a tank and he’s flattening cars and trucks like he was Godzilla’s own feet.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“On the television. They’re showing it right now. He’s destroying a whole street in Clairemont. It’s hard to even watch. He just tried to knock over a house. Now he’s backing up. He’s running over a fire hy — Jesus God, Mellie. The man has just unleashed a geyser of water three stories high.”

“Our brother is dead. He was nearly decapitated.”

“Who did it?”

“What do you mean ‘who did it?’ He did it to himself. It isn’t just a severed finger from a misthrown Ginsu knife this time, Carla. It’s his neck.”

“That’s awful. Oh Jesus God, Mellie — the tank maniac just ran over some kind of recreational vehicle. Opened it right up like a loosely wrapped Christmas present.”

“Would you turn off the television?” There is the sound of undisguised impatience to Mellie’s voice.

“Just a minute. I’m turning the sound down. I’ll turn away for a moment, but I have to know what happens. I have friends who live in Clairemont. I fear for their safety.”

“Buck is handling the arrangements. He’s flying down to Memphis tonight. He wants to know if we’re okay with cremation.”

“I don’t have a problem with cre — oooooh!”

“You turned back around, didn’t you?”

“I can’t help it, Mellie. There’s all manner of mayhem being broadcast on my television right now.”

“You’re disrespecting our brother.”

“I hardly knew him”

“That was cold, Carla.”

“That didn’t come out the way I meant it. I just mean that Shelby and I had so very little to do with each other. He really was a stranger to me. Just as, no doubt, I’ve always been a stranger to him. I’m a navy wife. Whereas he juggled things for a living. Can you think of any other two people less alike?”