Ethan Rutherford - The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories

They hadn’t done much to John’s room since he’d left for college, and Joan now stood leaning against the doorframe, looking in, as if there were an invisible line in the carpet that separated where he’d slept from the rest of the house. The posters he’d put on the walls with rubber cement still hung slightly off center; the news articles he’d carefully clipped and pinned to his bulletin board, though yellowed now with age and brittle, were undisturbed. He’d wanted it kept that way. This was the room where they talked to him during the night. Or, rather, where Thomas talked to him. After long nights, bad nights, she’d find Thomas diagonal on John’s bed, phone resting on his chest, an expression that looked like anger, or, sometimes, sadness, caulked onto his sleeping face.

It was almost one o’clock. Joan crossed the threshold and finished her tour of what she and Thomas had begun calling the amber museum, straightening pillows, making the bed—it was a single, almost child-size, she had no idea how both John and his new girlfriend were going to share it, but that was their intention—and then she surveyed the room. John’s posters and clippings—of overdosed and dead musicians and obscure Japanese movies; reports of unsolved crimes and natural disasters, sunken ships raised to the surface—these things told her nothing she wanted, needed, to know. Surely, these chosen artifacts were important, these records of her son; surely they were clues a careful and loving parent could assemble to glimpse the whole. But she couldn’t piece them together. She had no clarity, overwhelmed, as she was, by the desire for him to be all right. All right. Whatever that meant.

He was smart. He always had been. He’d gone to a good and expensive college, where he’d won awards for his art projects. But he’d never been happy. He’d never stayed in one place very long, but until recently they’d understood his restlessness to be a symptom of what he called his high standard of living: he simply wasn’t content following the crowd, doing what everyone else was doing. But now, some sort of switch had flipped. He called when he got a job; he called when he quit, or lost it. He complained about the pressure everyone put on him. He called when his friends paired off, and stopped talking to him. He called when he was out of money. They gave it to him, and endured his resentment. Thomas had reassured her that this was just a phase; that he would grow out of it, that he would straighten his course on his own. But here he was, thirty years old. And here they were, trying to convince themselves nothing was wrong.

She went to the window. The snow had begun to stick. The room was in good shape. It was whisper quiet. It was, she thought with some satisfaction and some sadness, just the way he liked it. John’s favorite song, when he’d been small, had been “What Do We Do with a Drunken Sailor?” Now the melody came back to her, and, standing at the window, she hummed some fragments. She’d never liked the violence of the song, but what stuck with her this time was the question that began the refrain—what do we do? What do we do. The alpacas, who had not moved, and who would not move unless prodded, were turning white with the weather. They did not appear to mourn the missing.

What had happened in September, the last time John was home, was this: they’d invited Sarah for dinner. They hadn’t thought much about it at the time—how John would react, showing up late as usual, the drive always taking him longer than anyone expected, upon seeing the three of them sitting around the table, already halfway through the meal. But they had waited to eat until it was too rude to Sarah not to. Thomas brought the phone to the table, said eat, eat, why not. As it was, the food was cold by the time they sat down. They’d finish the meal, and then, after Sarah had gone, reheat it for John when he arrived.

But he’d shown up middinner. Walked in the door with his bags, looked at the scene in front of him—everyone around the table, Sarah in his seat—and said, So this is the famous doctor? I’ve heard some things about you . She’d asked him what kind of things, and he’d shrugged, and said, You know what doctors do? They make healthy people feel better about themselves .

You’re late, John, Joan had said. We just sat down. It’s no one’s fault. Don’t be rude.

Roads were bad, he’d said, still looking at Sarah. I’m just talking. I’m not being rude.

Sarah had tried her best to recover—everyone had, Thomas getting up from the table to get a plate, Joan saying how good it was to see him, Sarah explaining she wasn’t a doctor yet, but could pass on some terrible doctor stories if he was interested. John had remained in the doorway, slack-faced and thinner than Joan remembered until Thomas came to take his bags. Apparently satisfied by the effect of his arrival, John shoved his hands deep in his pockets and went quiet, radiating a strange, barely coiled aggression that was unrecognizable to both Joan and Thomas. He walked over to where Sarah and Joan were still seated, politely pulled out a chair at the table, and began complimenting the food he hadn’t yet eaten. Thomas wasn’t sure if he smelled alcohol on his son or not. By the time the meal was over, a pall had descended over the four of them, and the discussion, when there was any, was stilted and vague. They knew why they’d invited Sarah, and they realized their mistake, suddenly plain to everyone. They’d invited her because they hadn’t wanted to be alone with their son.

The following morning, Sarah called early, upset, to say that the door to the henhouse near the garage was unlatched and open. She thought the worst, but had been afraid to look herself. There were coyotes in the area, they’d lost chickens before; but this time the coop had been locked. Thomas was sure of that. He left the house knowing what he was going to find, hoping he was wrong. The door to the coop stood wide open. Half the chickens were missing. Feathers covered the ground like snow. It hadn’t been coyotes. In the center of the coop lay a single dead chicken, its neck twisted and broken. There wasn’t much blood. John’s car was gone. He’d left before anyone was awake.

Thomas found a hen outside the coop, near the garage, and picked her up. She made no move to get away, offered no resistance in his arms, but she was not calmed by his whispering. He saw Joan watching him through the kitchen window. He thought about calling the police, and knew as he thought it that he would not. He would tell Sarah it had been coyotes; that he had forgotten to latch the gate. He would tell Joan the truth, but he wouldn’t let her see it. Later that night, John called, sobbing, and Thomas said, It’s okay, it’s okay. John said he hadn’t meant to frighten anyone, and Thomas comforted him, said okay.

The pit was twenty miles to the southeast. The roads were empty, and as they drove Sarah twisted the radio dial, looking for a station that wasn’t wrapped up in storm tracking. She settled on a country station, and turned it down. As they’d pulled out of the driveway, Sarah had asked him how the law practice was going, but that conversation wrapped itself up quickly. Now they were on a road that continued to Montana, driving in what Thomas called the Farm Truck—a rusted old Tacoma he’d bought years ago, had repainted, and drove whenever they were transporting animals, doing dump runs, or otherwise trying to fit in around town. Sometimes, when John called, Thomas would leave the house just to sit in this truck while he listened to his son. The clutch, when engaged, hummed and clunked. The cab smelled like old boots. He liked that smell. He liked the way it blended, now, with whatever perfume Sarah was wearing.