“shoot him where he stood” would have been the right way to go, but it was too late now.
“Hi, Cade.”
I focused on the woman who had stepped in front of me and, for the second time in half an hour, almost fell backward with shock. It was Piper. Her hair was short now, tucked behind her ears in a way that gave her a slick, professional look. She was as skinny as ever, and it really showed in her face. Her eyes looked huge. She held her hand out to me, and I shook it. What I really felt like doing was throwing my arms around her and pulling her off her feet. I was that glad to see somebody who hadn’t pissed me off lately.
“Hey, you,” I said, and began to smile, but then I realized the greeting was way too familiar for a funeral, besides which that Michael guy—the one she’d been with back at Christmas—was standing right behind her shoulder. Her eyes glinted as if she were laughing at me. I straightened up and said, “Thanks for coming. It would mean a lot to Elias that you’re here.”
“I’m so sorry, Cade.”
I nodded. I had no idea what to do with pity, but the offering of it made me feel weak. Being weak made me angry. None of those were good feelings when it came to Piper.
She loosened her grip on my hand, and I knew she was about to move on. I asked, “Where are you going to school now?”
“At the University of Vermont. Graduating in May.”
“That’s cool.” The rest of the people in the line were beginning to look annoyed, so I knew I had to let her go. “Thanks again.”
Driving home, Jill was quiet. After a while she asked, “How are you doing?”
I shrugged. “I just want to get this crap over with. He’s gone. There’s no point in standing on ceremony.”
“It doesn’t give you any sense of closure?”
It was all I could do not to laugh outright. “Hell, no.”
“It was nice to see all the people who cared about him. I thought you’d have more extended family there. Seemed like it was just you guys.”
“Pretty much. I saw Randy there.” I stopped and signaled my turn. “That was a surprise.”
“Are you serious? Boy, he’d better hope Dodge didn’t see him. There would have been a brawl in the middle of the funeral. Or worse.”
“It’s possible Dodge saw him and just ignored him. He knows how torn-up Candy is, so this might be the one occasion when he knows he’s full of shit and so he lets it lie for his wife’s sake. That’d be good to see for once.” There was a tractor in front of me, and I let my hands rest on the bottom of the steering wheel as I followed it slowly. “She’s not going to take this well.”
“Candy?”
“Yeah. In her world, a person doesn’t do something like this. It offends Jesus. She’s either going to be really angry at Elias for what he did, or really angry at God. In her way of thinking, Elias is screwed. He’s damned.”
“Maybe it’ll soften up her approach to the God business.”
“No chance of that. Candy’s nature is to take a hard line. Which one she’ll take, I don’t know.”
“What about you?” she asked. “Are you worried about his soul?”
“No. Not like I could do anything about it anyway. What I should have been more worried about was his mind. But I didn’t take it seriously enough, and here we are.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Cade.”
I can’t tell you how many times she said that to me over the next few months. All I can tell you is how many of those times I believed her. None.
* * *
The day after the funeral I drove down to the tattoo parlor in town and got Elias’s unit insignia inked on my forearm. Jill was opposed to the idea, telling me I was letting grief make me impulsive, but I went anyway and took Scooter with me. The tattoo guy was a buddy of his, the same one who’d done the tribal design on his arm. The needle hurt more than I expected. The truth was, physical pain had not been a big part of my life. I’d never even broken a bone. The worst I’d ever suffered was some painful road rash falling off my bike, and this hurt way more than that. But Scooter looked unimpressed by the size of the design and the blood