Gregory J. Wolos<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Section 1.0: Cremation and Waste Ethics<\/i>
\n(1.1) In no way can human remains be treated as waste.
\n(1.2) Even so . . . the environmental impact of cremation must be minimized.
\n\u00a0— The<\/i> International Cremation Foundation Guide to Cremation Practice, <\/i>p. 3<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
Gil, my neighbors\u2019 German Shepherd, is a retired cadaver dog. The Nelsons got him through some connection with the state police. Gil is in his prime — he\u2019s got thick muscles rippling under his glossy black and tan coat. I\u2019m not privy to the career arc of cadaver dogs, so I don\u2019t know if he was entitled to an early retirement or if he screwed up and got fired. When Gil frolics with the Nelson children on their front lawn, his jaws gape with barking I don\u2019t hear — I\u2019ve been deaf since the explosion at the crematorium two years ago. I\u2019m sure you heard about it — the story hung in the national news for months. On mornings like this one when the two older Nelson children are at school, Gil lies on the family\u2019s gated front porch, and his amber eyes melt over me.<\/p>\n
Before the explosion that deafened and neutered me, I loaded deceased loved ones into a cremator and poured the ashes into urns. I also took care of the grounds. According to investigators, the ninety-three-year-old former physicist I\u2019d slid into the cremator had packed his intestinal tract with plastic explosives and detonating chemicals. 2100 degrees Fahrenheit set them off. The force of the explosion blew me twenty feet through a window onto the lawn I\u2019d mowed that morning. I woke from a month\u2019s coma to find myself seared as smooth as a Ken doll between my knees and waist. A permanent forest fire now roars in my ears. My survival was hailed \u201ca miracle.\u201d The crematorium\u2019s two other employees were trapped in the front office and burned to death.<\/p>\n
The cremator operator is not legally responsible for checking the guts of ninety-three year olds for incendiaries, so I\u2019m set for life, thanks to my settlement with the corporation that owns the crematorium. The corporation, in turn, lost their own suit against the hospital that released the physicist\u2019s body without an autopsy. The ruling determined that there\u2019s nothing suspicious about someone that old dropping dead. My ex-wife, Linda, was entitled to half of my award.<\/p>\n
While he stares at me, Gil rests his muzzle on his forepaws, the tip of his nose poking between the railings of the Nelsons\u2019 porch. Now and then his tail lifts and falls. Linda and I had been having trouble well before the explosion. Our three-year marriage had been a mistake from the start, she said. We\u2019d met at a party, and she thought she\u2019d overheard me say something witty, when really it had been somebody else. For years she\u2019d quoted the joke: \u201cDid you hear about the fire at the circus? The heat was intense!\u201d and I\u2019d taken credit for it. When she told me I\u2019d grown morose and didn\u2019t say funny things like I used to, I confessed that I\u2019d never told the circus fire joke in the first place. We argued about things like whether or not to have kids, which is something couples should get straight before they marry. I didn\u2019t see the point — if nothing else, the crematorium job I\u2019d held since dropping out of college had taught me that all stories end with the same flammable page. Kids are no different than everyone else: potential ashes. Just add fire. Linda told me I have a \u201cbotoxed soul,\u201d but refused to explain what she meant.<\/p>\n
Linda is a real estate agent and coordinated with federal and local authorities to find me a home in this neighborhood. These agencies don\u2019t know what to make of me. They don\u2019t really think the explosion was a terrorist attack, and they don\u2019t actually suspect that I had anything to do with the \u201cpercussive event,\u201d but since the physicist\u2019s motives have never been proven, I linger on their radar. The Nelsons\u2019 house and mine are the only two homes on this cul-de-sac. The family knows I\u2019m the guy from the crematorium explosion. They\u2019ve received detailed information about me, and I have a written report about them: husband Ed, wife Nina, and the kids, whose names I\u2019ve forgotten. I learned all about Gil from the report. The Nelsons have had him for a year. Everything has to be written down for me — I can\u2019t read lips, and I don\u2019t have the patience to learn signing.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not about to ask anyone, but I wonder if Gil, before his retirement, sniffed over the scorched rubble of my crematorium. Did he help collect the bits of the physicist? Would he have confused the bodies lined up for incineration with those of the freshly killed — Nick the manager and Becca his secretary? Would he have caught wind of their not-so-secret affair? Maybe Gil pawed at the ashes of my genitals and filed away my scent in his memory.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve read about my event on the internet. Blowing up a crematorium didn\u2019t make sense to anyone. The terrorism talk flared up, then burned itself out. The forensic experts concluded that the physicist had swallowed the explosives the day before his death and that his clogged system triggered his heart attack. Circumstantial evidence suggests that he\u2019d intended to self-detonate the following evening at a testimonial banquet given in his honor by the tech firm he\u2019d been retired from for twenty-five years. The physicist\u2019s seventy-year-old daughter said her father had been \u201clooking forward to the event for months.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reception was to have been attended by some of the nation\u2019s most pre-eminent thinkers,\u201d the director of the tech company said. \u201cThe loss would have been incalculable. And tragic.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m no scientist, but on sleepless nights I pretend that I\u2019d been invited to that testimonial. There\u2019d be a phone call canceling the event — the guest of honor just passed away — \u00a0heart attack<\/i> — perhaps the impact of such excitement on an old man\u2019s system should have been considered<\/i>. Then another phone call — an explosion!<\/i> — and sobering gossip among my fellow invitees regarding the physicist\u2019s probable intentions. I would understand what it felt like to have a target lifted from my back that I never knew existed. I\u2019d ponder the vicissitudes of fate and vow to take nothing in life for granted. When I get tired of pretending, I fondle the warm piss-bag strapped to my thigh and doze off to the purr of flames.<\/p>\n
At first I protested splitting my settlement fifty-fifty with Linda. She threatened, only half-seriously, I think, to turn me in to the FBI. \u201cI\u2019ll tell them you always had suicidal thoughts,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ll tell them about your obsession with the \u2018fire at the circus.\u2019\u201d She forgot the joke wasn\u2019t mine.<\/p>\n
The Nelsons know I\u2019m deaf, but the implanted catheter tube that drains into my piss-bag is information I keep to myself. Ed, Nina, and the two older children wave at me aggressively when they see me. They open their mouths so wide they must be shouting. My voice punches through my sternum when I answer \u201cHello.\u201d When the older boy and girl romp with the toddler, they mouth two syllables, so I think of him as \u201cEep-eep.\u201d Nina Nelson\u2019s bright red lips form the same syllables when she leaves the baby on the porch with Gil. Eep-eep spreads himself atop the lounging dog, his chin on Gil\u2019s head. While I rock in my chair and try to read the paper, their gazes tighten around me like boa constrictors.<\/p>\n
This spring morning the sky is a sharp blue. Nina Nelson exits her front door with Eep-eep on her hip. She\u2019s holding a clipboard. When Gil rises to greet her, she says something to him, and he sits, tongue lolling. She steps off her porch, secures the gate, and crosses the grass between our houses. She\u2019s studying her clipboard as if it\u2019s a hand mirror. I don\u2019t get many visitors: a weekly nurse to check my equipment; grocery deliveries; a lawn service.<\/p>\n
Smiling, Nina Nelson mounts my porch steps. She has the same china-dish complexion and blue eyes as the baby she jostles. She hands me the clipboard, and mother and child look down at me like moon astronauts watching earthrise. The message is printed in italics:<\/p>\n
HELLO NEIGHBOR! <\/i><\/p>\n
We hope you\u2019ve been getting on well. We speak often to Linda, and we\u2019ve tried to give you time and space to adjust to your new home. We\u2019d like to have you over for dinner soon. Maybe a backyard barbecue in the summer. <\/i><\/p>\n
But today the Nelson family would like to ask you for a big, big favor. We\u2019re supposed to leave in two days for Disney World — it\u2019s the children\u2019s April break, and they\u2019ve never been. But last night our kennel called and informed us that they\u2019re infested with fleas, and all pet-boarding reservations have been canceled.<\/i><\/p>\n
I glance over at Gil, who\u2019s panting at us from the Nelsons\u2019 porch. When he sees me look at him, he lifts his head. Nina Nelson, guessing how far I\u2019ve read, points at the dog, grins, and nods. I pick up where I left off:<\/p>\n
We\u2019re keeping our fingers crossed that you could care for Gil during our week at Disney. All the other kennels are full, and you\u2019re our last hope. Our other friends are on vacation, too, or are allergic to dogs.<\/i><\/p>\n
I peek up: Nina Nelson\u2019s eyes are moist.<\/p>\n
Gil will be easy to care for.<\/i> He\u2019s very obedient. We\u2019ve measured out food for his breakfast and dinner. He only needs walks around the block in the morning, afternoon, and evening. He could stay in our house or in yours — we promise, he hasn\u2019t had an accident since we\u2019ve owned him! Attached is a list of phone numbers: ours, the vet’s, and the Disney hotel\u2019s. Also a feeding schedule.<\/i><\/p>\n
So what do you think?<\/i><\/p>\n
I sneak another look at Gil, then hand the clipboard back to Nina Nelson. My thumb lifts from my fist and my head bobs: my body has agreed to the proposition before I\u2019ve had time to think it over. My neighbor\u2019s red lips stretch into a smile of relief.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need to enjoy vacations while you can,\u201d I feel myself say, wondering how much my injuries have changed my voice. Nina Nelson nods gravely and pokes the clipboard toward Gil: she\u2019s going to introduce us to one other. She starts to hand me Eep-eep before pulling him back and bounding with him from my porch back to her own to fetch the dog. The baby\u2019s eyes rise and fall with his mother\u2019s steps, but don\u2019t release me.<\/p>\n
Gil is staying at my house. It\u2019s half the size of the Nelsons\u2019. Both homes were built within the last decade. All of my interior surfaces — walls, floors, counters — are off-white. Everything seems laminated. Gil watches me connect a fresh piss-bag before I pull on my pajamas.<\/p>\n
\u201cEasier than a walk around the block,\u201d I tell him. Gil\u2019s also neutered, like all cadaver dogs. It helps them stay focused on dead bodies instead of females in heat. The first night of his visit, Gil abandoned his bed and jumped up on mine. When my mattress heaved, I kept my eyes closed as the big dog settled his bulk against the backs of my thighs. I hadn\u2019t thought of marriage\u2019s casual contact for a while.<\/p>\n
The exploding physicist didn\u2019t leave a suicide note. Nothing in his notebooks, nothing on his computer or in cyberspace. If a note had been in his pocket, the forensics experts who sifted the charred splatter of his entrails would have reassembled it. On the internet I find foggy pictures of the physicist as a young man. He holds a pipe and poses with famous scientists whose names are almost familiar. The same decade-old driver\u2019s license photo of me turns up again and again. There are Facebook selfies of my crematorium boss and his secretary. When I scroll through these pictures, I\u2019m reminded of photographs of my parents from their wedding album: slim and youthful, they blazed with promise. Both died gently, Mom in a hospice bed, Dad a year later, stretched out on his living room carpet where I found him, white and cold as marble.<\/p>\n
Tonight I dream of the Nelsons at Disney World. Though I\u2019ve never been there, it\u2019s as easy to imagine as heaven: the family poses for pictures with Goofy and Mickey and Donald; they spin in tea cups and gawk at Cinderella\u2019s castle; they float in jungle lagoons and point at mechanized elephants and crocodiles; they crow at the escapades of Caribbean pirates. In fact, Nina Nelson texts often. \u201cWe\u2019re having fun!\u201d she reports. \u201cThe weather is great! How\u2019s Gil?\u201d I\u2019ve replied, \u201cGreat. Nice. He\u2019s fine.\u201d My dream follows the Nelsons to \u201cIt\u2019s a Small World.\u201d The exhibit\u2019s theme song plays in an endless loop that out-roars the fire in my head and reminds me of Beethoven\u2019s last words: \u201cI shall hear in heaven.\u201d The Nelsons and their fellow vacationers ride past frozen-faced animatronic children outfitted in international costumes. There\u2019s an explosion: all heads, human and animated, jerk up. The sky falls in burning chunks. The hall fills with smoke. Fake children topple from their pedestals. A burst of flame illuminates the shrieking face of Nina Nelson. Limp Eep-eep dangles from her arms. Everything shudders as the walls of \u201cIt\u2019s a Small World\u201d implode. Then I\u2019m outside, in the dark, watching from above. A cloud of glowing smoke blooms from the carnage and takes the shape of a gigantic, eyeless mouse head.<\/p>\n
I wake to find Gil looming over me, his forepaws planted on my chest, compressing my diaphragm. \u201cGil — \u201d I grunt, and pat my piss-bag — it\u2019s unpunctured. The dog sticks his cold nose in my ear, and I smell his fishy breath. Maybe he scented the Nelsons in my dream and wants to dig them out from under the plastic corpses of foreign children. Unless he\u2019s after something deeper. My smartphone flashes on my night table, and I push Gil off — he\u2019s as heavy as a boulder. There\u2019s a fresh message from Nina Nelson: \u201cMickey-shaped pancakes for breakfast!\u201d Sunlight streams through my bedroom window. Nine o\u2019clock already? We\u2019re an hour late for Gil\u2019s walk.<\/p>\n
This morning, Gil is uninterested in our usual route and strains at his leash toward every side street. He looks back at me with eager eyes, and I imagine his voice:<\/p>\n
\u201cBurr-nee — \u201d he begs. Bernie is the nickname my ex-wife gave me because of my job. I\u2019m Ethan to the nurse who checks me for infections. She met Gil yesterday. \u201cNice doggy,\u201d she wrote on the dry erase board I use for messages. She showed the note to Gil and bared her teeth in a laugh. The woman looks to be about as old as my mother was when I was in grade school — about the age I am now. She\u2019s my second nurse. The first had long legs and wore a short skirt. She knew I was some kind of celebrity. She wrote me a note after checking my catheter: \u201cYour wound is like what some of the boys back from Iraq have. But more exotic.\u201d Her printing was childish and barely legible. \u201cExotic\u201d might have been \u201cerotic.\u201d I emailed her supervisor and requested a different nurse \u201cfor personal reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n
My father was shot through the hand in Korea. He couldn\u2019t make a fist after, but his clawed fingers were perfect for throwing a knuckleball. One flew over my glove once and smashed my nose. Is it south that Gil wants to go? All the way to Florida in search of the Nelsons?<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re fine,\u201d I tell the dog. \u201cI got a text message.\u201d But he\u2019s so insistent that I give in and follow his lead.<\/p>\n
My next message from Nina Nelson is \u201cThunderstorms,\u201d followed by a sad face made of a colon and parenthesis. Here, the sky is a spring blue so crisp it hurts to look at. Since I stopped resisting, Gil has settled into an easy trot.<\/p>\n
\u201cFlorida is a long way off,\u201d I say, and he flicks me a glance. We\u2019re on a quiet suburban road. Only a few cars pass, but we encounter other pedestrians, some also with dogs. A round woman with an enthusiastic poodle makes a face both apologetic and accusatory and hoists her pet to her chest. At the next corner we meet an old man, coincidentally led by a German Shepherd. The old man\u2019s dog is heavier and less handsome then Gil. We let our dogs touch noses. The guy twitches fingers at me as if he knows I\u2019m deaf, and his hand reminds me of my father\u2019s. The night Dad died alone in his house, he called me at two AM.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m all backed up,\u201d Dad whispered, as if he was sharing a secret. \u201cI need Ex-lax.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wanted me to go out and buy him a laxative. No, he hadn\u2019t called a doctor. Unless the woman next to me in bed was pretending to sleep, Dad\u2019s call didn\u2019t wake her — this was a few years before Linda.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything\u2019s closed,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to blow up,\u201d Dad whined.<\/p>\n
I told him I\u2019d be there by noon the next day.<\/p>\n
Gil and I have walked a long way. Front lawns are greening. Yellow forsythia brighten some yards, and there are beds of daffodils in others. A few houses are decorated for Easter: cutouts of colored eggs are taped in windows and plastic ones hang from trees; an adult-sized, inflatable Easter Bunny lurks under the flaming blossoms of a crabapple tree. Soon I\u2019ll need to replace my piss-bag. I always carry a spare. The road we\u2019ve been on comes to an end at a park, and Gil pulls me onto the gravel path leading into it. Around us are monuments. A cemetery? It\u2019s drawn my cadaver dog like a magnet. But I don\u2019t see any headstones, and the monuments are actually plywood silhouettes of dogs about the size and shape of Gil. Maybe this is a pet cemetery. Gil pauses at a nearby cut-out dog, lifts his leg, and pisses on it. It looks like he\u2019s marking his own shadow. As we move on, I remember what these dog silhouettes are for: they\u2019re spread around the park to keep flocks of geese from shitting all over the green space. The crematorium manager found \u201cDecoy Dogs\u201d like these in a catalogue once and asked if we needed them for our grounds, but I told him geese were the least of our problems.<\/p>\n
The park\u2019s grassy fields end at a forested hill. Steel towers carry high-tension wires up and over its crest between pines and budding oaks. The path Gil and I follow connects to a grassy swath beneath the rising progression of towers. The trees would provide enough cover for me to switch in a new piss-bag. It occurs to me that Gil has honed in on the scent of something dead. Maybe behind the next tree, the next bench, the next dog silhouette, we\u2019ll run into something horrible. Maybe a crow dropped whatever was left of my prick way out here. \u201cPlease, Gil,\u201d I pray as we hurry forward, \u201cdon\u2019t find a baby.\u201d<\/p>\n
If a cadaver dog had led forensic experts to the few ashes I left at the site of the explosion, might my little pile have been mistaken for more of the physicist\u2019s remains? Maybe the experts would have found bits of a shopping list I\u2019d had in my pocket and guessed it was the old man\u2019s suicide note: \u201cBread . . . butter . . . bacon . . . beer.\u201d Maybe they\u2019re struggling even now to break the code.<\/p>\n
Abruptly, Gil stops and sits, his nose in the air: he\u2019s looking up at something. Hovering far overhead is an orange hot air balloon with a small black gondola. The balloon drifts through the cloudless sky toward the forested slope, and Gil lifts his rump and follows. The balloon seems to be descending, but perspective is difficult. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s a full-sized balloon. The gondola looks empty.<\/p>\n
After my nose stopped bleeding from Dad\u2019s knuckleball, he washed me up and drove us to the Dairy Queen. We licked vanilla cones in the front seat of our station wagon and listened to a baseball game on the radio. I couldn\u2019t taste the cone and resisted an urge to plunge my throbbing nose into it. We could see the car dealership next to the DQ through the windshield. Tethered to a new pickup truck was a miniature hot-air balloon, orange, with \u201cBEST DEALS\u201d printed across it. The balloon floated maybe a hundred feet over the dealership. It shifted in the breeze and looked like a fishing-line bobber on the surface of a lake. I\u2019d never been fishing with Dad. He said there were no good places nearby. Through teary eyes I watched my father watching the balloon: he had tears in his eyes, too. God, he loved me.<\/p>\n
My phone hums in my pocket — a message from Nina Nelson, no doubt. Maybe the storms have moved through Orlando, and the family has joined the others strolling down Disney World\u2019s Main Street. I envision the crowd as a battalion of black cut-outs of moms and dads and children — \u00a0human versions of the dogs Gil and I have passed through. But to my surprise the marching shadow families cast colorful reflections in the puddles I see them stepping over.<\/p>\n
The phone stops buzzing. Gil sits again, and I almost stumble over him because I\u2019m watching the orange balloon angle toward the wires and towers — it will miss them, at least on our side of the hill.<\/p>\n
Sing along with the bouncing ball!<\/i> That\u2019s what jumps into my head when I see the balloon so close to the wires — from musical cartoons older than my parents I watched on Saturday mornings at sunrise. A ball hopped along the words to a song played by goofy animals, and I remember joining in, though I\u2019m not sure I was old enough to read. The music led me. But now I wouldn\u2019t hear the melody. It\u2019s tough to imagine karaoke for the deaf.<\/p>\n
The balloon is gone. I look down at Gil, and he\u2019s squeezed his eyes shut. His ears lie back, and his jaws sip at the empty sky. Burr-nee, <\/i>he howls — the sound buzzes through his leash into my palm like audio-Braille: Burr-nee!<\/i><\/p>\n
If the balloon had fallen into the towers and wires on the other side of the hill, wouldn\u2019t there have been a flash of light? At least some smoke rising over the crest? Gil spins me around with a lunge, and I almost lose my grip on his leash. He\u2019s taking me home. We race over the gravel path and through the pack of shadow dogs. No chance to change my full piss-bag or answer my phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cGil — \u201d I pant. Burr-nee<\/i>, hums in my hand, then up through my wrist and arm to my shoulder. Whatever amount the Nelsons demand for this dog, I\u2019ll pay. If my crematorium money can\u2019t buy him for me, what good is it?<\/p>\n
GREGORY WOLOS<\/b>‘s short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in A-Minor Magazine<\/i>, JMWW<\/i>, Yemassee<\/i>, Post Road<\/i>, The Los Angeles Review<\/i>, PANK<\/i>, The Baltimore Review<\/i>, Mad Hatters\u2019 Review<\/i>, A cappella Zoo<\/i>, Superstition Review<\/i>, Jersey Devil Press<\/i> (“What’s Yours Is Yours” a few years ago), and many other journals and anthologies, both online and print. His stories have earned two Pushcart Prize nominations and have won both the 2011 New South Writing Contest and the 2011 Gulf Stream Award for fiction. Two recent collections were named as finalists for the 2010 and 2012 Flannery O\u2019Connor Short Fiction Award. He lives and writes on the northern bank of the Mohawk River in upstate New York. For more information regarding publications and commendations visit: gregorywolos.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gregory J. Wolos Section 1.0: Cremation and Waste Ethics (1.1) In no way can human remains be treated as waste. (1.2) Even so . . . the environmental impact of cremation must be minimized. \u00a0— The International Cremation Foundation Guide … Continue reading