Barren Beneath

BARREN BENEATH
By Ryan Sherwood
         Caught on the tape recorder I always use as my daily reminder, his final words forever lingered in my blood like venom.  I had hoped his deep voice would be gentle and indelible in his final moments, and would leave me something worth recording so I could fondly remember him, but everything humane that I knew to be my father was eclipsed by vengeance. 
“You killed me and I will make damn sure everyone will know.  Even the earth you’ll bury me in will know,” my father had said with his dying breath.  His finals words brought nothing but silence to the hospital room he died in.  In that sterile blue and white room, he birthed a fissure where our family once was; one that cut deep into our hearts and echoed his pain over the few days before he was buried. 
         The air in the cemetery was pungent, pregnant with vapor, and my collar was imbrued dark with sweat.  Heat raised in waves from the gaping plot my father’s casket hung over, spreading around my relatives like a curse.  All the stale cries and woes of recent past kept the humidity aloft throughout the cemetery.  I wonder how many others have buried secrets here too.
         Mother’s brown hair shook and spilled across her pallid face as she struggled to cry.  Her fingers fidgeted with her tarnished, scratched and tired old wedding band as her black purse swung like a pendulum from her shoulder.  Everyone was nervous and pained, praying for a miracle to flutter down and rest on every lip so the day would progress without incident.
         I hated everyone there, even myself.  I hated being clueless about who to hate and exactly why the family was being torn apart.  I knew Father was supposed to go to jail but he always maintained his innocence, even after his stroke.  I didn’t know whom to believe and sometimes I still don’t.
         The sun was incinerating what few nerves I had left.  The relatives circling the burial plot cried and sweated.  Even our usually composed priest grew irritable from the heat.  The prayers of my kin grew lighter on their lips and throats began to open as Jay sauntered up the yellowed grass in his suit, comfortable and clear of sweat.  I was enraged by how nonchalant he looked.  How could he not sweat with the heat burning down from the air and my family?  He seemed almost innocent, his conscious looked clean like he had nothing to hide.  I hated him for that reason because that left only my mother or my father at fault.  Nestled up near my mother with his hands gently clasped together, Jay solemnly lowered his head in insincere reverence to avoid all the piercing hateful scowls.   
Finally, the last of the prayers were uttered and people lumbered towards their cars for the air conditioner, muttering their condolences and slurs along the way at either the casket or my mother and Jay.  Some believed my father had embezzled the money so they damned him as he descended towards eternity, hoping his crimes would strangle his soul.  The rest swore such a kind man wouldn’t even think about stealing, let alone do it, and believed that the evil done to him in life would evacuate him in death.  Strangely, both made sense to me. 
         My mother never even acknowledged Jay’s presence beside her.  I know she didn’t want him to come to the funeral but Jay did what he wanted.  I tottered down the hill as well and stared at them both, but stopped as my grandmother lingered behind. 
         “I know you did this!”  My grandmother’s voice boomed.  “How could you do this to my son?  He trusted you.  You were his wife,” she pointed sharply at my mother, “and you were his partner and friend,” she continued and raised a frail liver-spotted finger at Jay.
         I stopped in my tracks.  I didn’t even know my grandma had the ability to raise her voice, never once did her tone raise above gentle and soothing.  Hearing her blast hatred was the strongest sign of our family’s final degradation - it was like getting kicked in the balls by a nun.  It just wasn’t supposed to happen.  Jay and my mother stood still and swallowed all the blame that was slung at them until my uncles ushered my grandmother to the car.  My mother watched her mother-in-law stumble down the hill, sorrowfully hunched over as her baggy black dress hung over her weary body.  Then mother saw me as I imagined she saw me when she gave birth to me.  Her gentle fingertips trembled against her lips, light without the weight of any more prayers, as she could no longer fight her fears.  Tears streaked down her face and nearly evaporated before they reached the burning surface of her chin.  She humbly waved.  I turned and walked away.  The hot and heavy air had smothered me as I hastily, at least that was what I told myself, as I leaned into my car and away from my mother.  I drove away searching around my glove compartment for my tape recorder. 
         “Get flowers and go back tonight,” I said with the record button pressed.  “It’s too damned hot now.  Go tonight.”  I pressed stop then emptied the tape hatch and put in a tape from my pocket and pressed play.
         “You killed me and I will make damn sure everyone will know it.  Even the earth you’ll bury me in will know,” my father had said. 
I can still feel his breath.  That must have been why it was so hot out.
         Jay and mother walked away together.

         I had to sneak into the cemetery late that night.  I just had an insatiable urge that had to be met.  My car was sat awkwardly along the gravel road, leaning off the steep incline I parked on.  It took me a few moments to leave it fearing that my car would tip.  The air was still heavy but a cool breeze and the icy moon let me breathe much easier than earlier that day.  Mumbling into a bottle of bourbon and my recorder, I pretended I was the bridge over the chasm between my family and the way we should be.  If I just drank myself stupid, I would conjure up some scheme to put all back in its rightful place and be happy again.  So I labored up the hill and stood over my father’s grave to search for more inebriated inspiration.  So with blurred vision and slurred speech, I prayed into the dead of night for an irenic moment from the surrounding trees.  I waited for the wind to whisper some wisdom or the crickets to chirp out an answer but all they would do is what they always did, nothing.  I was exhausted and needed a break from my feet but I feared getting too close to the fresh dirt that covered my father.  And I all of a sudden feared him.     
I hadn’t the stomach for my fears or the alcohol.  I was quickly submerged in grief that wanted to push me six feet down.  I fell to my knees with open hands in reverence of life and fear of death and crashed onto the plump dirt belly that was before his tombstone.  I don’t know how long I sobbed but enough time had passed for me to grow hungry and sober.  Raising my head from the dirt was laborious even as my palm helped to push it up.  The night seemed exceedingly dark and I felt fortunate for that.     
         Pure white light then plummeted from the moon and wrapped around me like a spotlight.  It continued on and spread over his grave like an over-dramatic widow weeping for her loss.  It was soft but blinding and all it made me feel was alone.  Unnatural shivers vibrated my ribcage and spine, then quickly fanned out over my entire body, continuing to grow in intensity until they became painful spasms.  My ears perked with noises that rumbled from behind. 
Then many sounds creaked out from all around me.  Diabolical utterances arose and stirred me as they began to close in.  I ran.  I slid down the damp grass and out of sight until I was in my car speeding home.

         When I awoke, twelve hours had passed and I was in my bed.  I vaguely remembered groggily popping some aspirin in a half-awake stupor earlier and going to bed.  Entangled in my covers, I fought free and shuffled to the breakfast table.  With eyes barely cracked open, I scanned the table for my recorder so I could play my reminders for the day.  For whatever day it was.  But a void sat in it’s normal spot.  Pushing past random papers and bills, I hastily flipped on all the lights and tore apart my living room.  Fumbling about my apartment without a bit progress, I wondered if it was in my car.  My search turned up nothing but mini tapes. 
         “Where is it?”  And as soon as I asked, I figured it’s likely location.
         Neatly parked over the erratic tire marks I created earlier, I traveled along the gravel path unsuccessfully scanning the ground for anywhere I could have been, until I was below the serene shade covering my father’s grave.  I realized I had visited him more in the last day than in the last month.  He deserved more than this.  Even if he embezzled the money, he was my father and was owed the love I had for him and should have been showing him.  I began to wish his ears could have heard about my feeling but what wasn’t finished in life only takes double the work in death.  And that was definitely worth the effort. 
         Leaned over on my haunches, I ran my hand along the smooth rock of his gravestone and knew that his rest was eternal.  I almost thought I felt him and there was no intolerable heat.  Only calm.
         “You’re a good man Dad.”
         I stood, ran my hands through my greasy hair and sighed.  I looked down at the soil’s pregnant belly and ran my hand through the loose dirt as some kind of goodbye and a plastic edge appeared.  The black cap to the bourbon I had finished the previous night emerged, leaving me wondering where the bottle had gone.  Running my palm across to dust away the cap, I butted against another object fighting to get to open air.  A gray wedge with tiny black holes set in it surfaced from the soil.  Pushing aside the dirt, I pulled on the corner of my recorder until it was free.
         “There you are.”
         Dusting it off, hoping it wasn’t ruined, I ran my finger heavily along the controls.  I popped the recorder open and saw the tape was at its end so I rewound it, stopping it only when the desire struck me.  The mundane wasn’t as important and consuming any longer.
         After long minutes under another hot sun, I pushed play and listened to my own suggestions and comments just to hear the sound of my voice.  It seemed so stressed and unsure.  But it wouldn’t any longer.  Carefree and burdenless, I strolled around the fence lining the grounds and watched everything else.  Heading towards my car with my tape recorder quietly played static since I had neglected it, and I was content until Jay’s voice squealed forth.  My knuckles turned white and my mind went blank as I clutched the recorder and listened. 
         “Don’t stomp on his grave dammit!  God, this is too much Ellen, I can’t take this.  Look, just look at his grave, all the dirt and rotting, we put him there.”
         “He put himself there Jay, stop whimpering.  You wanted to take his business over.”
         “Not like this.”
         “It doesn’t matter how.  You wanted to be king; be a man and live with it.”
         “How can you be so heartless?”
         “Heartless?  Heartless!  Things used to be perfect.  I had a family and money.  But every day I worried my life apart.  I don’t know why but it stayed in my head for years, and every time I looked into the mirror a new wrinkle would tell me I had been wrong somehow.  All my misery would hover in each innocent smile my son or husband created, constantly reminding me I’m all alone.”
         “Yeah Ellen, I wanted to be king but not anymore.  I look in the mirror too and I see wrinkles from laughing at the memories of younger years, but I also see the long hallway behind me.  My wealth isn’t reflected in that image.  My pockets aren’t growing heavier, only my head and heart.  My memory of this, of you, hollows me.  You did this to my friend, your husband, and now I will have to live with the guilt of not stopping you.”
         While the tape recorder was spilling it’s secret, I walked back to his grave in a stupor as the tinny voices enraged me.  The plastic recorder winced under the pressure of my locked fist.  An electronic sigh from my mother puffed into open air.   
         “Like you could even stop me from stealing the money blaming him.  We got away with it, learn to live with you decisions will you.”
         Then the recorder went silent from a lack of tape.  Dead silence lingered for a moment until the stop button popped up.  My heart solidified and dropped into my stomach and my toes dug into the soles of my shoes.  I was dumbstruck.  The body doesn’t come equipped with a predetermined response to such betrayal. 
Looking over his grave and the barren dirt, all that I could utter was a laugh that curled awkwardly off my tongue.  I couldn’t have explained it, no matter how long I lived, why I laughed so hard over the grave but I continued long enough for my sides to hurt.  A few strange looks were flung my way because who laughs that hard, or laughs at all, in a cemetery. 
         Putting the evidence tape into my pocket, I retrieved another tape and put it in the recorder.  I sat next to my father again and ran my hand over it one last time.  Whether I glanced over it before or it had just sprouted, a clover sprung into view from the earth I wiped away.  It wiggled into the sunlight and breathed free.  A smile came to my face as I stood and walked away, playing a familiar tape and hearing it again for the first time.
“You killed me and I will make damn sure everyone will know.  Even the earth you’ll bury me in will know.”