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This is one thing I want to remember from the week my wife died: I want to remember the pile of dirt that we all stood behind. I want to remember that I had stood near that pile of dirt with the spade in my hand. I want to remember that I had shoveled the dirt without cease upon her tomb until she was completely buried. I want to remember the weight of the earth in my hands as I threw it down upon my beloved wife’s grave. I want to remember the feeling of labor, the feeling of using my arms and legs to lift the earth and hurl it upon the box of her coffin. I bought her the most expensive coffin money could buy, and that day, tossing dirt against her coffin, I realized it was utterly the wrong decision to make. I should have buried her in a plain pine box. I should have sent her to earth the humblest way imaginable, and yet the coffin gleamed back at me as I hurled dirt upon it, to remind me how much I paid for it. I remember lifting the dirt and praying in my heart of hearts to be humble. I don’t know who I prayed to, but I believe I was talking to the truest purest aspect of me. Be humble, I exhorted myself as I flung dirt upon her grave. Be humble, thou who hurlest the dirt upon thine wife. Be humbler than the dirt.
The undertaker and a couple of Adeleine’s uncles tried to slow me down. They tried to politely remove the shovel from my hands, but I wasn’t going to let them. I pushed them away. Step aside. This was between me and my wife. Be humble, ye who buriest thine wife, and do what labor she will ask of you. Do it without complaint. And so it was. I threw the dirt as if I were fulfilling a sacred obligation. I threw all the dirt, not just a spadeful. The sweat fell down my brow and into the dirt and my massive chest heaved and when I was done I set the spade in the earth and removed a handkerchief and as I looked up at the great oak tree under which she was buried I saw a gathering of crows and I knew that what I had done was the most righteous thing I have ever accomplished.
Then I looked over at my daughter Meg. She had a stunned look on her face. She looked at me as if she couldn’t believe what had just happened. She watched her dad bury her mother with a fury that suggested he had been waiting for this moment for years. She watched her dad dispatch her own mother, and when I walked over to her to explain, she turned away from me.
What the hell were you doing, Dad?
I was trying to do right by your mom.
You looked like you couldn’t get her in the earth fast enough.
That’s not it at all.
Well how do you explain it? You were like a madman over there.
My mother-in-law came up to me. I reached over to give her a comforting hug and she slapped me, then walked away. Adeleine’s father walked up behind her and told me confidentially that my behavior was the most appalling thing he had seen in his life, and he had seen some appalling behavior in his day.
Meg shunned me the rest of the day.
At the meal after the funeral, my daughter played hostess. But people had been turned off by my digging. Meg was so angry with me she shunned me when I went over to her to try to explain yet again. Our relationship has never quite recovered.
It was at this time the food was brought out: ribs, pork chops, fried chicken, piles of the stuff. The place smelled like a barbecue pit. I grabbed a bib and found a table in the corner. Friends and family members came to offer their condolences. I flagged them away and ate more food than I had ever eaten in my life: three slabs of ribs, eight or nine pieces of chicken, countless hot links, slaw, cornbread, and the haunches of a spit-rotated hog. I ate until I passed out. The next day I shit forever and cried.
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I stand at Albert Volares’ grave while family members shovel dirt onto his casket. I was raised Catholic, and have retained some vestigial sense of intimate prayer, though I no longer pray. Instead, I just close my eyes.
We live to die.
Now you’re just feeling sorry for yourself.
I suppose I am.
I suppose you are.
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Daddy, find out who did this.
I don’t know if I can.
Please.
It’s too much for me. I’m suffocating, if you know what I mean.
It’s me. I’m the one who’s suffocating over here. You must.
Honey.
You must.
Please.
I won’t forgive you if you don’t. And another thing, I hate you so much for taking Mom away from me I promise I will never talk to you again, ever!
The truth is, I didn’t have the heart to track down my wife’s murderer. I didn’t want to find out. In truth, I was afraid to find out. I expected that the person who killed Adeleine had been activated by one of my jobs. I couldn’t bring myself to verify this had been the case. If I discovered that the man who had killed Adeleine was activated by one of my jobs, it would be more than I could deal with. Worse, it would destroy Meg.
¤
Before all this, years before, I had lost a job in telecom. I was searching for ways to regain a foothold in the economy when I came up with the idea to open my own shop as a detective.
I told Adeleine about my idea and waited to see what she said.
Why do you want to be a private eye? she asked.
Why not, Adeleine?
Because there are so many other wonderful things to do with your life.
She was right, but I wasn’t going to let her be right on this point, especially since it was me who had been washed out of the economy and who was searching for relevance. So I told her: I like this detective life.
You like the ‘idea’ of this life, but what do you know about it? Is your heart really set on becoming a private eye?
What does that mean?
It means, do you really want to be a private eye, or do you want to do it because of books you’ve read on the subject?
I’ve never really read any books on the subject.
Then where did you get the idea?
I don’t know. Though I did like James Garner in The Rockford Files.
But that was a TV show. It’s not what the job is really like.
I don’t know what the job is really like, but I imagine it’s like any other job.
How so?
It is what you make of it.
It’s long boring hours doing lots of boring things for little to no pay.
Honey, I objected. It’s what I want to do. We don’t need to analyze it, do we?
Well I want you to think it over, make sure you’re happy.
I am happy, I said. I have you.
That’s not going to be enough to sustain you.
It’ll be enough to sustain me.
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Later, when I started obsessively shooting at the range with Cal, she raised the issue again.
Is the reason why you want to be a private detective because you like guns?
And to be honest, she had a point. I had to acknowledge that.
I suppose that could be part of it.
But don’t you see? Shooting guns at a shooting range with your buddy is a lot different from actually shooting someone. If you get a license to carry that thing, don’t you realize you may have to use it?
Yeah, of course.
You’re not bothered by this?
Why should I be bothered by this?