I saw a flame on the water a couple of miles out. The Coast Guard found John the next day, washed up on a small island. They pulled the plane and two more bodies from the bottom of a deep channel.
The burial service was in California. The hearse drove away toward the airport.
***
Jeff wrapped his car around a pole at a spot where the road curves slightly and can catch you if you’ve been watching the highway for too long, particularly if you’ve been taking pills.
He lived for a while in a helicopter on the way to the hospital.
***
I whistled but Rascal lay still. Blood pooled around his head.
The grass didn’t grow back for almost a year.
***
Vera smiled and laughed, tubes coming out of her arms, holding her stomach in pain.
She stopped breathing around dawn. My father held her hand before they took her away.
***
Two strange dogs in the barn. One had blood on its collar.
***
The mosquitoes bit through our clothes as we sat on the runway.
***
We filled the waiting room.
***
I never figured out which telephone pole he hit.
***
We took shots, leaning on the railing over the bay. The food was good and the music wasn’t bad and the moon was low and small.
***
We sat on the porch, talking about sackcloth panties. She rocked in the white chair with the peeling paint, looking out at the field.
***
He laughed and slurred his words.
***
We looked out the windows at the saltwater marsh below.
***
I spent all day digging a grave in the pasture, at the edge of the trees, where the sunlight falls early in the morning, so he would know when to come home.
I dug for a while and put him inside, but the hole wasn’t long enough and his neck bent against the dirt. I dragged him out by his front legs.
The wooden handle of the shovel snapped and I went to the barn to find a new one. The cows circled around him, their heads low. They ran away when I came back.
***
A woman screamed in the police station. I had to walk around the block to get it out of my head.
***
The Animal Control agent said she needed to see the wounds. I pulled back the sheet. His face was covered with ants and the veins in his neck stuck to the ground.
***
She told me that her father left the house whistling a sad song the day her grandmother died.
***
He juggled knives in the kitchen. His pregnant wife gave him disapproving looks from the couch, but I was on the linoleum floor, looking up, awed by the spinning blades.
***
We spent Christmas Eve at the strip club, sharing lap dances from two women with fake breasts.
***
I drank beer and played guitar and he lay next to me, our bodies flattening the waist-high grass.
***
She sang Cherokee songs. The train’s coming, she translated.
***
A picture of us lying in the yard, his paw around my arm.
***
A picture of us in the back of the plane.
***
A picture of us smoking cigarettes, cropped out for the slideshow.
***
A picture of us smiling, eyes closed.
***
A service in a small church next to a field of strawberries. A pastor staring at me during the prayer, asking people to come forward.
***
The ground packed in. The sun behind the trees.
***
Sweat stains on black suits, fresh dirt, dark, the day so humid.
***
His mother told me I could have some of his ashes. There would be seven pounds.
***
I read the passage and followed the ceremony but wasn’t sure where to stand. Outside, I hugged my uncle for the first time since I was a child.
***
His friends swore and cried at the podium and I didn’t stay for dinner because the church was too empty and the tables were too long and the dishes were too white.