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.