The Growth of Wings

A humorously dysfunctional family deals with death.

Dad died three days before Christmas, on Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year. The police received an anxious call from a woman regarding a truck that had rolled off the road partially into her front yard, its horn blaring. They found him slumped on top of the wheel of his rusted-out Ranger, which was stalled out halfway in the ditch along the road joining his house to Mr. Gee’s, the local liquor store in Monroe City. After pulling his body off the horn and being hit instantly with the stench of spilled whiskey, the authorities discovered an open unmarked pill bottle, with chalk-white tablets scattered about his seat and the floorboard. Strung across his lap were the remnants of a half-eaten Arby’s roast beef sandwich. Benny, a former high school classmate of mine who was now on the force, confided to me (while Mom bawled in the background and Uncle Moe stared ahead unfazed) at our door later that night:
“He had just the hint of a smile on his face, so I’d guess that he passed happily.”
The next night, after crying herself out and downing more than her own fair share of doctored egg nog, Mom said to me “Simon, he did it out of spite for a family he disdained and a holiday he despised.” As for me, I figured he was just too drunk to tell the difference between Rolaids and sleeping pills.
The funeral was held Christmas Eve afternoon at the Monroe City Lutheran church our family no longer attended. The three of us (Mom, Uncle Moe, and me, that is) decided to have an open-casket ceremony. Dad’s body, bloated and unnatural from embalming fluid with yellow skin jaundiced from years of alcohol killing off his liver, was stuffed inside a cheap suit and tie combination that looked better than anything I’d ever seen him wear before.
I was surprised to see missing from Dad’s suit pocket his own father’s gold-plated watch, which my grandfather used as a conductor on the Great Northern Railway during the forties and fifties. It was Dad’s most prized possession, and I had figured he would have literally taken it with him to the grave. One day as a child, I took the pocket watch to school to show off to my envious friends. Dad threatened to chop off both of my thumbs for it when I came home.
Some unknown pastor officiated, performing his routine flawlessly as far as I could tell. I sat in relative boredom, daydreaming on the front pew with Uncle Moe, whose scraggly, expressionless face I watched in his phased-out silence, apparently oblivious to everything regarding his brother’s funeral, or, for that matter, really anything that happened post-Vietnam. Moe, Dad’s older brother, had lived with Mom and Dad ever since he returned home from the war. His Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder made it so he couldn’t work or support himself. When my parents divorced (due to Dad’s increasing love of drinking at the family’s expense), Uncle Moe was so much one of us that he continued living with Mom and me. Dad never forgave Moe for abandoning him.
My mother, tow-headed Charlene Samuels, ex-wife of fifteen years to my deceased father, tax collector for Bruckner County, Minnesota for at least my full twenty-three years, diehard Democrat, avid wind chime collector, and normally a sentimental train-wreck, was uncommonly quiet and composed to my left. Behind me sat Jacqueline, my older sister who rarely held a job but regularly collected welfare checks, who whispered audible threats and curses at her three obnoxious children (one of whom decided to make a game out of throwing handfuls of dry Cheerios at the back of my head for most of the service) and huffed her high-heeled-and-tank-top-clad way in and out of the sanctuary when her newest baby erupted in multiple screaming fits. The rest of the half-filled pews were composed of some people whose faces I recognized as being relatives of some sort, or people I’d never before seen in my life.
I checked my watch. Counted my teeth with my tongue. Observed Jesus on his crucifix and mulled the fact that every Sunday morning they held his funeral, too. I felt different in knowing my father was dead, but not saddened. I made no attempt to visit or contact him, though he lived not more than a few miles from Mom’s, Uncle Moe’s, and my house. I knew the man too well to mourn him and entertained the fact that if he were able, he’d simply rise from his casket to insult anyone who was so weak as to cry there in public.
The pastor took a seat at his small pew while another man from the audience stumbled to the pulpit. He wiped his face from forehead to chin with the palm of his hand, ran the other through his grimy mess of hair, rubbed both on the lap of his dingy blue slacks, then braced himself securely grasping the top edge of the carved wooden pulpit and drew a long piercing stare across his audience.
“Harry Amos is dead.” He went silent, leaned over the lectern to see the open casket below, as if to confirm the accuracy of his own statement, then turned his bloodshot eyes back to the half-filled pews. This led to an awkward restlessness in the audience, a shifting in seats, bouts of nervous coughing and clearing of throats. The man continued at a labored pace.
“Now, I’ve known Harry since grade school. We started working in construction in 1972. We had our own construction business. Amos & Johnston Construction, we called it. We worked together for years, but Harry was more than just a business partner. He was a damn good man, and a goddamn good friend.”
The balding pastor flinched with each curse, more so the second time, and gripped his Bible until his knuckles went white.
“Hell, it’s true that we were even drinking buddies through the years. Me and Harry was like this:” Johnston held up his hand with the first two fingers extended and pressed together.
“We was like ham and beans. Or rum and Coke. Then came the day ten years ago when we both got diagnosed for asbestos poisoning from the bastard insulation we spent twenty-five years working with. Well, even after we quit working and got the money settlement, we still went out drinking. Nothing could keep us apart.”
He swallowed hard. “Now, Harry had to go and do this to himself!” The man flung his arm out toward the casket. Murmuring swept the audience. The pastor pulled at his collar and scanned the pews, desperate for relief from his discomfort.
“I mean, just LOOK at him!” His voice wavered and broke. “Harry Amos is dead!”
I turned to my mother. She was fixed forward, her face totally drained of color.
“And whose fault is it? Well, he’s right here with us today, folks!”
I looked at several gaping faces in the audience in an effort to predict who the man would scapegoat.
“We’re in his house right now! That’s right everyone – GOD.” Johnston lifted an accusatory fist above his head and turned his vindictive gaze to the ceiling when he spoke the last statement.
The pastor was up and speeding toward him, along with other church deacons. But Johnston continued.
“He’s responsible! But if He’s so almighty, why didn’t God have the power to take me along with Harry?!”
The six or so men grabbed the demented speaker and attempted to wrestle him off the lectern. Johnston punched a suited man in the nose. The man’s face let loose a sickening crack and he howled as he thudded onto the floor. The people in the pews gasped in unison and many stood, me included, to better watch the fiasco unfold before us. The men pried him loose and quickly carried him down the center aisle, Johnston flailing and writhing unsuccessfully to escape.
“Noooo! Take your damn hands off me! I love you Harry, why couldn’t you take me with you?!” They threw him outside the sanctuary doors, still yelling, while the man Johnston had decked was now up and hunched over, hands covering the lower portion of his face while blood leaked out between his fingers. He withdrew quickly through a side exit.
My mother burst into silent tears. Uncle Moe’s eyebrows peaked as he stared at his brother’s casket. The pastor stood his place behind the lectern, opened his Bible and exhaled loudly. “Let us recite The Lord’s Prayer.”

The service concluded in the church cemetery, where the pallbearers (Uncle Moe and I were the only ones I knew – the other two were replacements for Johnston and the broken-nosed deacon) carried the casket. They had set up a green canopy over his headstone, which, along with the rectangular hole in the ground, all contrasted greatly with the slate-gray sky and the yellowed, mostly dead grass (which I immediately matched in my mind with the skin tone of Harry Amos’ corpse). Rows of collapsible metal chairs were arranged in rows near the green-roofed canopy. The pastor spoke again for an extended time, quoting scripture.
Noticeably absent from this part of the service were Jacqueline and company. I heard her whisper loudly to my mother before we left for the cemetery. “We’re leaving – it’s too damn cold for me to stand around outside in this.” She motioned toward her outfit. “Besides, the baby shit itself hours ago and I don’t have any diapers.”
I picked Cheerios out from under my suit collar and brushed my dark bangs out of my eyes while the pastor finished with his Bible quotes. Uncle Moe, the other two pallbearers, and I each took a pulley rope and lowered Harry Amos’ coffin into the wet soil. Moe dumped the honorary shovelful of dirt clods over the coffin lid.
“…ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
I turned to my uncle and whispered in his ear. “What do you think of all this, Moe?” He considered it beneath his spaced-out look and answered with his raspy, unused voice.
“All things pass in time.”

Mom held the family Christmas gathering at our home the evening of the twenty-fifth. It was the same as every year with her over-decoration (maybe even more of it to subconsciously make up for the loss we’d had) – too much of that tacky silver garland she hung at the top of every wall she could possibly reach, faux wreaths adorned the door to each bedroom, bathroom, closet, and so on (you knew when you were near one due to the nauseating scent of fake eucalyptus), a cheap wooden mass-produced miniature nativity scene placed at the center of the coffee table.
The Christmas tree’s limbs bowed down from the weight of gaudy ornaments and candy canes that nobody ate. Underneath it were too many presents she couldn’t afford for grandchildren whose interests and names she couldn’t remember. That tree would be up for at least until mid-February, when Mom finally got around to boxing up the ornaments. Then she’d force Uncle Moe to remove the fire hazard from the house, though the smell of pine would linger for another month due to the shed pine needles stuck in the carpet that I’d end up picking out of the soles of my bare feet.
Mom fussed over dinner, attempting to keep the food both fresh and warm while we waited for Jacqueline and the kids to show up, now hours after they were expected. She shooed Uncle Moe and me out of the kitchen to prevent us from stealing dinner rolls and slices of roasted ham, so we sat in recliners in the red, green, and silver-spackled living room, playing Bridge on the coffee table and slowly being suffocated by the overpowering odor of lit potpourri-scented candles.
The front door burst open eventually, and in ran the older two of Jacqueline’s kids, who, when a moment later they saw the stacks of presents, dove under the Christmas tree and began ripping at any wrapped gift within reach. Before mom could stop them, my sister with newly-dyed red hair sauntered inside, wearing a maroon V-necked shirt that plunged down much too low, looking like something far more appropriate for the bedroom than a family gathering.
“Ronnie, Ruth! DON’T YOU EVEN!” She reached down and dug her long fingernails into her son’s arm, who squealed and dropped the half-opened package.
“Go sit in the kitchen with Charlene!” she said as she pushed both kids swiftly on their backs. The children took seats at the table and crossed their arms, pouting.
“Hi, Jacqueline,” said my mother. My sister rolled her eyes.
The screen door squeaked open, and in came a dark-haired, olive-skinned, mustachioed man wearing mechanic’s overalls and a grin that stretched so far across his face that it must have been painful. He stood next to Jacqueline, who was taller than him by a few inches, and put his arm around her waist.
“Everyone, this is Jimenez, my new boyfriend. Jimenez, this is everyone.” Jimenez made no indication of understanding, as he remained motionless, smiling, and staring at the three of us.
“Oh, I didn’t know we were going to have extra company,” my mom said, attempting to play off her irritation as surprise.
“It’s alright, he doesn’t eat much.”
“Doesn’t say much either from the look of it,” I whispered to Uncle Moe, sitting in his recliner. Jacqueline glared at me.
“Well, shall we get started on dinner?” Mom asked rhetorically. I took the seat next to her; Moe sat on my other side as a buffer between me and my Cheerio-throwing niece. Jacqueline took the seat at the side opposite me and Jimenez sat next to her.
“Oh, I left the baby in the car.” Jacqueline turned to her boyfriend. “Go get the baby out of the car.” He stared blankly at her. “GO GET THE BAAABYYY –” she did an exaggerated rocking motion with her arms “– OUT OF THE CAAARRR,” she moved her hands up and down on an imaginary steering wheel, then pointed at the front door.
Jimenez’s eyes lit up with understanding. “Ah, yes!” He jumped up from his chair and hurried to the door.

* * *

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Jacqueline spoke while spooning green bean casserole into her mouth. “Nobody liked him, anyway. Well, except for that drunk-ass Johnson or whatever.”
The eight of us sat eating my mother’s Christmas meal at the dinner table. Mom and my sister were engaged in their usual banter, while the baby slept on Jacqueline’s lap. Jimenez assaulted his third serving of everything. Uncle Moe ate civilly and slowly while the girl next to him picked her nose and rubbed her finger on his shirt sleeve, causing her brother to laugh hysterically at intervals. I knifed apart my ham and watched the proceedings.
“It’s not necessarily who he was, in this case, but what he was. He deserves some amount of respect for being your father, Jacqueline.”
“The hell with that. I’ve got better things to do than sitting around moping all the time.”
I opened my mouth before I could think twice. “Like what, Jacqueline, sitting on your ass watching soaps all day, grocery shopping with food stamps, and spending your boyfriend’s money on high-heeled shoes and French manicures?” For an instant, I caught a grin on my mother’s face. We all looked at Jimenez, who continued stuffing his mouth in ignorant bliss.
“If we were ten years younger, I’d beat the shit out of you for saying something like that,” she spat.
“If we were ten years younger, you’d just be getting knocked up with your first, I’m pretty sure.”
I hit a nerve and she became flustered. All she could come back with was “Fuck you, Simon.”
“Stop it, you two. You’re ruining Christmas dinner for everyone else,” said mom, reverting back to her role from years past.
“Mommy, what does ‘knocked up’ mean?” questioned Jacqueline’s son.
She ignored him, turning back to me. “So, Simon. How’s that job at the wire cable factory going? They laid you off yet?” She sneered.
“No, they haven’t. And at least I have one.”
“Jimenez,” my mom urged. He looked up from his plate as though he were an animal caught in headlights. “Do you like the food?” His face registered no comprehension.
“FOOOOD –” my mom scooped with an imaginary spoon and nodded forcefully “– GOOOOD?”
Jimenez grinned toothily and nodded back. “Yes!”
“And are you still involved with Denise?” Jacqueline continued her interrogation of me.
“We hang out sometimes.”
“I see. She’s still pretty loose, yeah?”
“No, she’s nothing like you.”
“Jimenez.” My mom simply would not stop trying to converse with him. “What do you do for a living?”
He looked to Jacqueline for help. Mom sighed and raised her hands to do more rudimentary sign language when my sister spoke for him.
“He does roofing.”
“Oh, well that’s nice. It pays well?”
“Well enough. Him and his brothers started up their own business here in Monroe. It’s called Catastrophic Roofing Service.”
I immediately snorted while shoveling mashed potatoes in my mouth and tried my best to act as if I’d sneezed. Jimenez, recognizing the name of his company, grinned and swelled with pride. There were bits of food lodged in his mustache.

The two kids dove back under the Christmas tree, but upon instruction from Jacqueline, they passed the gifts out to the correct recipients, then tore into their own, to find random articles of clothing that they tossed over their heads, Bratz dolls, Superman Returns figurines, and other toys. Moe and I sat in our living room recliners with the few gifts we were unwrapping. Jimenez sat on the sofa next to my mother, the baby on his lap, asleep. The man looked envious of all the gifts he could not have, until my mom passed him a handful of candy canes she gathered from the tree. Jimenez was content once again as he unwrapped and devoured one after another. Jacqueline was on the floor next to the tree, ripping into her own boxes. She pulled out sweater after sweater.
“Are you trying to tell me something, Charlene?”
My mom frowned and shook her head in disgust.
Moe fished out flannel shirts and jeans, and I got much of the same. My very last one, however, was much smaller than the rest and quite flimsy. I slid the paper off. It was a book: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I wrinkled my nose at it. I caught mom’s stare and she mouthed “open it.” There inside the front cover rested a hundred-dollar bill and a handwritten note:
I know you didn’t ask for this book and are probably wondering what I was thinking by giving it to you. But I do know that the death of those close to you affects a person, though you believe now that this one won’t. Read this book, Simon. It reminds us that in life, our best hopes and ambitions are often derailed. Do not take the impending lay-off from your job as an end, but an opportunity to get things right for yourself. Think of the money as a Christmas bonus, from me to you. Do with it whatever makes you happiest.
- Mom
I looked up, cracking a grin at Mom. She did the same.
“Merry Christmas, everyone,” she said, still looking at me.

“Did you ever read Of Mice and Men?” I asked.
“You know I don’t read.”
Freddy Gibbons, a friend of mine since high school, and I lay on our backs outside in the fresh snow on the night of New Year’s Eve. Between the two of us, running vertically, was a section of the Great Northern Railway that ran through Monroe City and connected St. Paul with Seattle. We were miles from the city lights and the sky was entirely cloudless, allowing a perfect view of the universe as seen from Earth’s perspective. We were a bit buzzed from all the cheap champaign we’d drank already in celebration of the New Year, and we brought flashlights along in case we got disoriented in the dark. Far behind us in the distance came the rhythmic chugging of a train engine.
“It’s a story about two migrant workers in California during the Great Depression. George is the intelligent one; Lennie is the big, strong, mentally retarded one. They work together, hoping to scrounge up enough to buy their own little place to live and work, instead of hopping from farm to farm looking for odd jobs. Well, Lennie ends up killing the foreman Curly’s wife by accidentally breaking her neck after petting her hair too hard, because he thinks it feels like rabbit’s fur. Big stupid Lennie runs back to the river where, in the beginning, George told him to go if he ever got into any trouble. George finds him there, and in order to keep Lennie from probably being tortured and lynched by the foreman Curly, George kills Lennie by shooting him in the back of the head.”
“Huh. Sounds terrible.”
“It is. But he had to do it the humane way instead of letting Lennie be hanged. Lennie was just dumb and couldn’t help it. It’s all about how easily our dreams are shattered and what we can do to pick up those broken pieces.”
“No, I meant the book.”
Freddy worked at the school in Monroe as a janitor and bus driver, cleaning up children’s vomit, fixing clogged restroom toilets, and yelling at kids to shut the hell up while he drove them to and from school. He considered it temporary work until he got better things lined up. He’d been there five years already.
“Speaking of death, I heard about your old man. What do you think about it?”
“I don’t think he killed himself on purpose, Freddy. There was so much more drinking he could have done in this life. Other than that, it hasn’t really affected me. I think we should all just forget him now.”
Freddy lit a cigarette. “You hang around Denise anymore?”
“It’s been at least a month since we’ve seen each other. We got to a point where neither of us knew where to take the relationship. She wanted commitment, wanted to see me everyday, wanted more than I could offer her. And I…I have no idea what I want. I never do.”
“You should have invited her to come out here with us. We could have had a ménage a trois on New Year’s Eve.” Freddy giggled and rolled a bit in the snow. The cigarette fell out of his mouth and he cursed as he flicked it off his chest.
“Shooting star,” Freddy said, pointing to the sky.
“Huh, close to Cassiopeia.”
“The hell did you say?”
“Cassiopeia? It’s the constellation right there. It looks like a sideways ‘3.’” I traced the pattern with my index finger.
“See, now how in God’s name do you know things like that?” Freddy asked, exasperated.
“I don’t know, I always liked Astronomy, science fiction, those sorts of things.”
“You were smart enough to go to college, Simon. Why didn’t you? Could have made something of yourself.”
“I only liked science. All the other stuff was useless and never made any sense.”
“Well, since you don’t have a college degree to fall back on, what are you going to do when that place you work for closes shop and moves to fucking Mexico?”
“I try not to think about it that much.”
The chugging engine was now up over the hill ahead, its lights piercing the darkness around us. Freddy and I stood. I grabbed and pulled him over to my side of the tracks. Its whistle sounded as the train sped toward us.
“Stand right here with me, Freddy!”
“Are you insane?!”
“Trust me! Close your eyes if you want an even bigger rush!”
The train blew its whistle longer and its rumbling mass vibrated the ground under our feet. I resisted the instinct to run when the light appeared to be only seconds from crushing me and I held Freddy in place beside me. He shrieked. The train sped right by us, mere inches from our faces. Freddy laughed uncontrollably and held his hands over his ears. I grinned wide as the continuous blast of air blew back my hair and clothes. All I could hear was the deafening roar as the blur of infinite train cars rocketed past, but inside my head everything was silent and still in that moment of pure being.

Freddy dropped me off at home after three that morning. The house felt empty and quiet, as Mom and Uncle Moe were asleep in their respective rooms. I collapsed in my drunkenness on the living room sofa.
I woke up choking on my own saliva, and found myself on the floor beside the sofa, a sheet draped over my lower half. I tilted my head back to see, upside down, Uncle Moe in his recliner, forking off great chunks of the giant slice of fruitcake from the saucer resting in his lap. He gave me a two-fingered salute and continued eating. I felt groggy and my head ached, but I was able to stand up and place myself back on the sofa with relative ease. The champaign had all but completely worn off.
“How long was I down on the floor, Moe?” I said, wiping the sticky saliva off my cheek with my shirtsleeve.
“At least four hours.”
“You’ve been up the whole time?” He nodded.
“Thanks for the blanket.”
I picked up the phone from the coffee table and set it beside me. Ever since Freddy had mentioned Denise earlier by the train tracks, I couldn’t get her out of my head. Today was the start of the New Year. Mom had written in the note on the cover of the book that I had the opportunity to get things right.
This was a bad idea, I tried convincing myself. I held the phone. You don’t even remember her number, I told myself. I dialed it with no trouble and sat there for several seconds berating myself as I pressed the phone to my ear. I slapped myself on the forehead when I realized it was seven thirty in the morning. She picked up on the fourth ring.
“What.” It was a statement that implied “explain yourself,” and it came from a tired, gruff, male voice. This wasn’t Denise.
“Is Denise there?” Terrible idea, Simon. She has another guy over.
“My God, Simon? Is that you?” The voice instantly transformed and I knew.
“Freddy. What the hell are you doing there?”
“Listen, man. I know what you’re thinking.”
“This is bullshit, Freddy. How could you do something like this to me? We’ve been friends for years. You knew she was mine.”
“‘Was’ is the key word, Simon. You couldn’t give her what she wanted. I can.”
“You sunnuva bitch, I trusted you.”
“You know what? I don’t care anymore, Simon. Go waste your life doing whatever it is you do. I just don’t want you trying to contact Denise anymore. She’s over you. I’ve got to go.” Freddy hung up and I sat with the phone pressed to my ear as the disconnected tone buzzed and my stomach twisted around itself like a serpent.
“I was Lennie all along. And he just shot me,” I eventually said aloud. I tossed the phone back on the coffee table and turned to Uncle Moe.
“Of Mice and Men,” he said. The cake in the saucer on his lap had been reduced to crumbs.
I stood and walked into the kitchen, where my copy of the book lay on the table. I removed the hundred-dollar bill I’d been using as a bookmark, placing the bill in my wallet and sliding the book in my coat pocket.
“I have to leave, Uncle Moe. I’ve been here for too long.” I crossed the living room and was at the door when Moe stood from his recliner.
“Simon,” he said. I hesitated, my hand on the doorknob. He came up close to me. I could smell the sweetness of the fruitcake in his breath. He dug inside his pants pocket.
“Your father stopped by and gave this to me the day before he died. He told me to give it to you when you were more mature.” Moe took my open hand and slid a warm, round hunk of metal into it. It was heavy, shone golden in the light, and had etched painstakingly on its cover the image of an old train engine. My father’s pocket watch. I gripped it in utter shock and delight. Then I considered what Moe had just said.
“But that means…what happened to him…was no accident.”
Uncle Moe nodded solemnly. I felt a lump beginning to form in my windpipe.
“Thanks.” I opened the front door and stepped outside into the early morning light. “I guess I’ll see you around, Uncle Moe. Tell Mom I love her.”
Moe reached out and touched my shoulder. “Simon, never clip growing wings. True flight only comes when all feathers are present.”
I nodded at his wisdom and cracked a smile. He patted my shoulder, took one last look at me, then shut the front door.
I turned around and stepped off the front porch into the snow-covered sidewalk, the chilly wind ruffling my hair. I gently rubbed the golden watch in my hand and looked again at the engraved train on the lid. Mom had written in the note that I had the opportunity to get things right. As I trudged forward, boots crunching in the virgin snow, I lifted my gaze in the direction of the railroad tracks, miles beyond the barren trees in the distance under the orange light of winter dawn.