To Lay This Body Down

by Shelbi Goss

Abraham looked to the backlit Christ behind the pulpit. The evening before, just at twilight, he’d poured gasoline down a yellow jacket hole in the yard and lit it with the long lighter he used for the grill. The yellow jackets would burn up, or be smoked out. He wondered if they saw that brilliant flash of light and heat, and if it reflected in their eyes. If they thought it was morning for a moment. If they thought of God before they burned up.

Sweat creeped down Abraham’s spine, inching in time with the preacher’s cadence. When we’re in heaven, we won’t know our fathers from another soul.

Death sits low in a room with the dying. As Abraham stepped in the room, the viscous scent eddied around his shins like silt from a creekbed. The clammy styrofoam of the cup in his hand was suddenly grotesque to him. Isaac opened his eyes. The glow of the television reflected off them as pathetically as headlights on dark windows. Abraham feared.

We’re praying for him, Abe. Day and night. Abraham stood on his porch in his socks. His cotton slacks and button up were constricting in the heat, but he couldn’t think of anything else to wear these days. The woman was patting his arm with a cool, moled, bejeweled hand. She was old, like him, and had a ring of skin tags like a collar around her neck. She had brought him ambrosia salad. She used to make it for Sunday School, and knew Isaac loved it. There was no need for Abraham to say Isaac couldn’t eat solids any more. She stumbled as she stepped off the porch. Windchimes on the porch rang softly in the silky summer breeze. Her discount shoes shuffled the loose gravel. Her car dipped as she lowered herself into the driver’s seat, and she backed her car gently out of his yard. He tried to remember if Isaac’s grandmama had made anything for the funeral when her daughter killed herself a few years back.

The night shift nurses loved Isaac. They say he is smart, and sweet. As he deteriorates, they can still occasionally coax a smile out of him. His hair is neatly combed, his sheets always fresh. It is a long vigil. It is reverence. Isaac is anointed with IV fluid, he is bathed and wrapped in cheap white linens. The event of suffering is over, the rush of healing. There is only rest now in the cool dark of his room.

Isaac came to Abraham as a baby. Isaac’s mama signed him away. Isaac’s daddy was in the wind at the time. She came to see him once. She looked good, cleaned up. She told Isaac she was just a friend of Abraham’s. Abraham thought that was a shame, but lacked the convictions of a younger man. He was tired. She could be who she wanted to be.

Isaac is as small and pale as a minnow under the hospital sheets. Isaac’s daddy had always looked small in these beds. Untold suffering can fit into just 12 years. Sweat beaded on Abraham’s forehead. Fatherless, motherless, eaten from the inside. Where are you Isaac? Where are you going?

Isaac’s lips are cracked and dry. He hates the vaseline the nurses tried to give him. He had asked Abraham to bring him the good chapstick from the store, but he had forgotten. Isaac wasn’t upset about it. He was smart, but he didn’t have to be to see how tired Abraham was. Isaac wasn’t sure what to call him anymore. Abraham always made sure Isaac knew who his daddy was, and that Abraham was his granddaddy, not daddy. But Isaac was old enough now to resent his daddy for not being daddy, and scared enough to feel guilty for denying a dead man. He was selfish enough to want Abraham to forget his son, so Isaac could be his son and Abraham could be daddy and if he died at least it would be more like the movies. Isaac figured maybe they could talk about it in heaven once he got there. Although he remembered at church they said we won’t know each other in heaven, and we would all be as one. He whimpered softly. He hated these thoughts. The thought of all souls squirming together and indistinguishable, like writhing worms washed white as snow. The sounds of adulation, praise, and squelching, smacking worms. He hoped God would not take offense that he was afraid, and that he would not send him to burn. Isaac wondered, in thoughts he would never say out loud, and only whisper in his mind, if burning may be tolerable if you recognized your demons.

Abraham’s dog had a litter of puppies. Abraham sat in the cool corner of the barn on the soiled hay. His dog bathed her pups, and generously let him press his finger against their little foreheads. He felt their pulse through the silky fur and thin new skin. He felt something too big and good to put into words. He heard the sure steps of his father and his shadow came down upon them. Abraham met his dog’s eyes, and saw her acceptance. She wouldn’t fight. Abraham was disturbed by the human expression.

He followed his father to the creek. The bank was spongy from the rain, the waters swollen. His father threw the jerking sack into the depths. Abraham thought then that all creatures were pitiful. He wondered if, in the dark, the puppies could tell one from another.

Abraham burned knowing he brought Isaac’s daddy into the world. Knowing about cancer, methamphetamine, drunk drivers, war, despair. In all that has happened and all that will be, Abraham had a son.

Isaac closed his eyes.

Abraham wept.

Isaac is interred with his daddy. Grief now buried surely was heard, just as we bear witness to His suffering. And God who begot all Sons is now scattered to the wind.

 

Shelbi Goss grew up and currently resides in the North Georgia mountains. Her work is often inspired by culture in Georgia. When she is not writing, she is probably reading. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and poems.