knew when to trust him.
“You should both of you go to college,” Isa said. “Like Patrick.”
Had he gone to college? I thought he’d gone to chef school.
“Right,” Devon said, “so we can be unemployed cooks and sell coffins.”
I expected Patrick to snap back, but he kept his cool.
It was I who lost perspective. In a moment of chocolate weakness, I thought about my new note-taker and pretended that was why I needed to join them. I imagined Patrick selling a handmade casket to Isa’s dying father, the old man ranting as Isa floated in the womb of the Gulf, Devon goading the others into something rash, and Ray pitter-pattering along the edge of the fray. If I couldn’t come up with some edgy articles about this family journey, I decided, then what writer was I?
THREE
The next morning I stood in the doorway in my new shorts and sandals, chilled by the dawn air and irritated at myself. Our bags were already packed in Betsy’s hold, and the casket was lying atop the old wagon at a tilt, gift-wrapped inside a big tarp with plenty of duct tape. Half an hour earlier, the boys and I had helped Patrick cover the bulky box as it lay on the driveway. I didn’t like the idea of transporting the thing, but I did my part, holding a corner of the tarp against the side of the box and feeling the contours of the relief carvings. Suddenly Patrick tugged the tarp out of my hands and pushed it aside, the stiff material crinkling—a sound I always found satisfying, like popping a sheet of bubble wrap underfoot. But the abrupt noise spooked me now.
He clicked open the lid and whispered to us not to tell Isa.
Devon laughed. “I forgot about the lights.”
I couldn’t help reaching inside, where my hands found the string of small pin lights, growing warm, tucked into the crease of soft fabric around the base of the casket. I pulled my hands away. Jesus, I thought. Lights in a casket! And the casket for an old man not yet gone.
I’m not one for empty decorum, but there are limits that shouldn’t be pushed.
“Never mind the lights,” Patrick said brusquely. He brought to my hand a large canvas sack. Within it, I realized as Patrick pulled it open and I reached inside, were several zip-lock plastic bags. He opened one, and we all passed around a small, prickly bone about the length of my fingers. He’s selling bones again, I thought, shaking my head. And this time from a coffin.
“Coon bone,” he said, though he wouldn’t tell Devon, when Devon asked, what a coon bone was, or what was in the other bags. I pretended I didn’t care, but Devon took the bait, asking him who would lay down for some janky bones.
“Gamblers,” Patrick said, his voice tinged with enthusiasm.
“Where we going to see gamblers?” Devon said.
“You’d be surprised.”
“What do they want them for?”
“Luck.”
Devon pressed him, but that was all Patrick would say.
Gamblers, I thought, trying to take it in stride. I’d never been to any of those Indian casinos.
We used half a roll of duct tape to make the tarp cling to the casket. Next we hoisted it onto Betsy’s roof, careful not to bump anything. There was only one crossbar in the roof rack, the back one, so the coffin tilted forward. Patrick lashed the casket to the crossbar and sent a second rope in through the front of the back doors and around the top. He rolled towels around the two ropes to protect the wood. He tried to show Devon how to tie a trucker’s hitch on the back rope and a carrick bend on the front, but Devon wasn’t interested. It made me think of Dad, who’d tried to teach my brother, Larry, how to tie knots but had never bothered with me.
“That’s a good tilt,” Patrick said proudly. “More aerodynamic.”
“Looks like shit,” Devon said. “We look like hillbillies.”
As we waited for Isa, I stood in the doorway, stewing about Patrick’s stupid plans: Lugging a casket cross-country. With impertinent lights inside. And bones—Jesus, the bones!
But I was also annoyed with myself for being ensnared by this trip. And for breaking my cell phone the day before; now I’d have to travel without it. Deep down I must have known why I was going, yet still I clung to my delusion about writing some articles. I even made a vow, as Isa rustled in the kitchen behind me and Patrick shuffled around Betsy before me: I resolved to keep my distance from them both. I would be a reporter, a witness. I’d have to comfort Isa and suffer Patrick from time to time. But I would not get pulled into their vortex.
It’s startling to me now, how good I was at self-deception.
Devon’s flip-flops slapped the driveway as he approached. “Lighten up,” he said, jiggling my arm. “Why you always playing the worried white boss?”
I shook my head and couldn’t help but smile. “You’re the one worried about how Betsy looks,” I said.
“That’s more like it,” he said, slapping his flip-flops down the driveway. “You got to let things go.”
Betsy’s motor rumbled, stopped. Caught and revved. “Get in!” Patrick yelled.
Nobody got in, so far as I could tell. The pitter-patter of feet came up the driveway, and Ray leaned against my side, sleepy, so I put my arm around him, trying to feel better about going. It was about the kids, I told myself. I’d hang out with the kids.
“What’s the racket!” Mr. Grenadier yelled from next door. “Turn off the damn motor!”
“Isa!” Patrick yelled. “You’re waking the neighbors!”
“Let’s go!” Isa declared, pushing Ray and me out of the front doorway. We hurried into the backseat as Isa locked the house and jumped into the front, filling the car with her woody perfume. Patrick gunned it, throwing my head back and spinning Betsy’s tires. Isa shrieked and laughed as her door slammed shut. The old station wagon bounced into and out of the gutter and swerved to the right into the street, pushing Devon on the backseat into me and me into Ray, who was pinned against the door, all of us laughing, even Patrick, with his rapid-fire chortles sounding like a machine gun. A horn blared on our left: Caution! Welcome! How dare you!
Betsy bounced, but the casket seemed to hold.
“We’re tipsy,” Patrick said.
“Seatbelts on!” Isa sang. She turned and reached between the front seats to slap our knees and scratch her fingernails like rain under the hems of our shorts and along the insides of our thighs, making us squirm. I felt my penis quiver.
Patrick accelerated up the ramp to the 5.
“Ray,” he said, “don’t hang on the rope.”
I reached forward and up toward the ceiling. The taut rope that came through the car and ran around the casket sagged with Ray’s movements, then twanged as he released. The kids leaned out, the wind whistling a long ssshhhh around heads or arms. The tarp fluttered above.
“Seatbelts on!” Isa bellowed this time. They dropped back into their seats, and we tugged at the belts, poking each other with elbows.
We had to be back in two weeks for the kids’ school and Isa’s job. Patrick and Isa had about fifteen hundred dollars, they’d told me, enough to visit Isa’s dad and see some sights on the return. But it wasn’t enough for motels—about a hundred dollars a day—and it’s not like we had a tent, not that you’d need more than boxers and a mosquito net along Interstate 10 in August. As part of our living arrangement, Isa was supposed to cover monthly room and board for me, but I told her I’d get my own food on the trip. After all, they’d bought my new clothes—or so I thought. I started with seven twenty-dollar bills in my wallet and ten fifty-dollar bills clipped in the zippered pocket inside my suitcase, money I’d saved from my job. I