Bill Pronzini - With an Extreme Burning

He walked uphill into the Catholic half, to where tombstones and monuments jutted among shadows cast by the old trees. There the sites were larger, laid out in big squarish plots with raised cement borders, some family and some communal. Narrow roadways and paths, all unpaved, made an irregular grid pattern over the grounds. It had been so long since he'd seen his family's plot that he couldn't remember precisely where it was; it took him ten minutes to locate the stone border with the word Mallory etched into it.

All of his immediate family was here, except for Claudia. And Katy. Since it was his intention to be cremated, she'd seen no reason to be interred with his family. He had respected her wishes to be put into the ground with her family, the Duncans.

The black granite headstone that bore his father's name had a slight backward tilt. Otherwise the plot was in good order and mostly weed-free. Another paradox that Katy found amusing: He hated the concept of ground burial, he never visited his family's plot, and yet every year he plunked down a hundred dollars to the City Burial Commission for its care and maintenance. He supposed it was because the plot had meant something to his father. He was maintaining a tradition, then, and tradition was something he did believe in. It wouldn't have mattered to him, otherwise, if the plot nurtured a teeming jungle of weeds and grass. That was what he'd told Katy, anyway. Yet in an odd way it did matter. If he had come here today and found a jungle, it would have made him angry. And not because of the hundred-dollar annual fee.

He stood for a time looking down at the markers. He could barely remember his grandparents; they were vague recollections of dry, chapped hands and lilac perfume. His mother had died of cancer, a slow, eight-month deterioration that had left him with indelible visual, aural, and olfactory memories of hospital rooms, nurses, cries of pain, and half-heard whispers, the smells of medicine and body fluids and get-well flowers too-sweet and withering. But at least he had had time to prepare for her death, to say good-bye to her. His father had died of a heart attack, suddenly, two weeks after his doctor pronounced him the fittest sixty-four-year-old ex-construction worker and ex-tobacco abuser he'd ever examined. Out fishing for salmon one morning with a friend who owned a Bodega Bay charter boat, hooked onto a big King, laughed about it as he strained to pull the fish in—and in the next second he was gone. Dix had been at the university when notification came. It had been the same kind of numbing shock as the news of Katy's death. And the same long period of adjustment afterward. And the same lingering regret that he had not been able to say good-bye.

He turned away—not as easy a leavetaking as it should have been—and walked farther uphill. Cool under the trees; the intense heat of the past week had begun to ease, and there was a light breeze today. Quiet too. Nobody else in sight, just him alone among the acres of bones.

Stranger in a strange land, he thought. But not a stranger to myself, not anymore.

Most people never found out the truth about themselves. Didn't want to, took pains to keep it hidden. They were the lucky ones. He'd held his own self-knowledge at bay with Katy, his work, his daily routine, his friends and social activities, his half-formed and half-assed plans for the future. But Katy's death had shattered the thin wall of his defenses, and he had found himself standing naked among the rubble. You can't hide from yourself at a time like that. And never again afterward.

Last night he'd gone into his study to finish reading through Lawrence Hampton's History 453 syllabus. And after a while, distracted, he had noticed his shelf copy of A Darkness at Antietam and taken it down, the first he'd looked at it in a long time. In his hands it had felt strangely like a secondhand book, the pages no longer crisp, the binding just a little loose, the dust jacket curled at the edges, and its colors the slightest bit faded. And when he'd opened it and read passages and scenes at random, it had been painfully obvious to him why the novel had sold less than four thousand copies, why so many critics had given it unenthusiastic notices. He had set out to tell an intensely personal story of the bloodiest battle in the Civil War, the single most calamitous day of fighting in American history—September 17, 1862, on which the combined casualties of McClellan's Army of the Potomac and Lee's Army of Northern Virginia numbered 22,719 killed or wounded during twelve hours of what one Union soldier described as “a savage continual thunder.” His research had been extensive, detailed; he had chosen and developed his primary characters—four Yankee and four Reb officers and enlisted men—with care and precision; he had taken pains to create those dozen hours faithfully in all their terrible drama. Four years he had spent on the novel, more than two in the actual writing. And when he was done he'd known, of course, that his book didn't approach the genius of The Red Badge of Courage or the epic caliber of Andersonville or The Killer Angels —he simply wasn't in a class with Kantor or Shaara, much less Crane—but he had nonetheless been convinced that he had written a major novel of the Civil War. He continued to believe that even after it failed both critically and commercially, or at least he'd pretended to himself that he believed it. Last night he had admitted the truth: What he'd actually written was a minor historical adventure, technically competent but without any real depth or insight or literary merit, publishable but forgettable.

He'd known then, too, that A Darkness at Antietam was an accurate measure of its author. Once he had considered himself an above-average teacher who remained on the faculty of a small, obscure state university because he could accomplish more in a relaxed and less competitive atmosphere. Once he had considered himself ambitious, a seedbank that would eventually produce more and better historical novels. Once he had considered himself a good husband and lover, who had given Katy the best of himself in all respects. Once he had considered Dixon Mallory a successful man, a happy and secure man. But the truth was—

Mediocre writer. Mediocre teacher at a mediocre school. Mediocre husband, mediocre lover. Mediocre accomplishments in a mediocre life.

Mediocre man.

Abruptly he stopped walking. He hadn't intended to seek out the Duncan family plot, but there it was at his feet. In fact he was standing in the same place he'd stood less than one month ago; he could almost hear the droning intonations of the priest, the sounds of weeping. He stared down at Katy's grave. You could still tell that it was a new grave, but now the clods of earth were dry and cracked from the heat, and the flowers that had been placed there were decaying corpses themselves.

I'm alone, he thought.

Goddamm it, I'm all alone.

Friends, sure, more than most men had. Claudia just an hour away in Healdsburg, the two of them closer than most siblings, talk to her any time about whatever was bothering him. People at the university, Elliot … there for him, too, if he needed them.

But you can't go to your friends, your sister, your colleagues, and say to them, “Listen, I've just realized some pretty basic things about myself. I'm mediocre, I've always been mediocre, and I can't stand the thought of being mediocre for the rest of my life. Can you help me out here? Can you tell me what to do?”

Alone.

Maybe that was why he'd been drawn here today. A need to touch the part of his past that represented stability and strength: his mother, his father, Katy. Find his courage through them. Pretty pathetic, if that was it. The answers weren't in the past or with the past. And sure as hell not among the bones of his dear departed. If he found them at all, it would be inside himself—and all by himself.