Endlings

Issue 48 • Fall 2023 • Fiction

“They make you buy a separate ticket for that thing?” The old man nodded across the aisle at the tiny wooden casket in the seat next to Brother Philip. His voice creaked through the bus like footsteps in a dark hallway. The other passengers were asleep, lulled by the engine and smell of dew on the windows.

Brother Philip leaned forward, bald head pressed against the seatback in front of him, pretending not to hear the question. He wondered how his twin sister, Tessa, would answer the old man. She would say that, yes, they made her buy a ticket for the casket but that she only had to pay the special casket rate.

The old man persisted. “It’s so small.” Clicked his tongue lightly. “Still takes up a whole seat, though. Why don’t you just put it underneath with the luggage?”

Brother Philip grimaced at the thought of the casket in the hull below like any other box, sliding against suitcases full of underwear and cocaine. He felt the irony: soon enough it would hold a tiny body and be covered in dirt.

Turning his face across the aisle, he shrugged his shoulders. They made eye contact then and the old man understood.

* * * *

In a valley surrounded by pine trees, where the grass is burnt and brown for half the year, a small order of monks wakes before the sun. Kneeling in an empty chapel, they pick up the liturgy left hanging the night before; swirling chants plucked from the air like ancient dust. Hooded in black, they appear as shadows whispering at shadows, pleading with their maker, knowing that this hidden work suspends the universe. And they pray an unending prayer, interrupted only by sleep, where even in their dreams the world is only black or white.

Amidst the prayers the brothers build caskets. Modest boxes made of pine or oak, each inlaid with an ivory cross. Every spring a forester traipses through their woods, talking endlessly about compassionate harvesting; pointing out poison ivy and deer trails. He has a funny way of sniffing shed pine needles as they lay on the ground. He puts his nose right on them, right in the dirt, and closes his eyes. “This one’s not ready just yet,” he’ll say. Or, for the unlucky few ready to be felled, he shakes his head and marks them with an orange X.

With black robes traded for denim overalls, the monks slice their chainsaws through the orange Xs, unleashing a whirring dirge through the forest. They pray even as the hardy towers drop like hands on a clock; time speeding and speeding.

Then it stops with a thud at their feet.

And then chains and tractors drag the wooden skyscrapers through the jaws of a mill, which shaves them into planks—flat and unrecognizable. They are then stacked to dry and forgotten in a lonely corner of the monastery, water seeping so slowly from their pores that you’d swear it was magic. And after months of struggling to breathe they succumb and stiffen just in time for the monks to return and deliver the final cull. Their bark is removed; edges straightened; defects blotted so that their flesh is soft and white.

In the rough hands of the monks, the lumber is cut and bent into caskets, mostly for old bodies worn to the husk. Mostly for those who had a warning; who filled out the order form and selected the fabric that would line the casket lid and embrace them for eternity. These caskets were of normal size—big, hulking boxes with handles for the pallbearers.

But there were tiny caskets, too. The monastery provided them for free to anyone who asked. Cut from pine, the mini-caskets were the simplest, with tiny pillows for tiny heads; bald heads before their first haircuts; bald heads like the monks’ who wept and prayed for the families forced to use them.

And one weekend in July, sweat soaking through his black robes, Brother Philip carried one of them by hand across five states to his sister so she could pack it full of grief.

* * * *

The previous night on the bus had crawled through a series of small towns as the pine forests of the monastery gave way to the rolling plains he knew from childhood. It was early morning now, and he stood alone at the bus station in his hometown. A bare lightbulb buzzed overhead as he hugged the casket to his chest. It had been three years since he had been home. Jesus. Three years since he had entered the monastery.

The lights flickered on at a diner across the street. He looked at his watch—it would be an hour before his mother picked him up. No one greeted him as he navigated through an array of empty tables where he banged the bottom of the casket on a chair. It landed with a loud, hollow clunk and his face flushed as he scrambled to keep the lid from falling to the floor. He stumbled to a booth against a plate-glass window and gently rested the casket on the bench opposite him.

He knew this place. It used to be a music store where he and his sister would walk after school for piano lessons. He remembered Tessa’s toes tapping, tapping on the tile floors as she glided through Für Elise. The chilly keys on his fingertips. She always laughed at his playing but it didn’t bother him. They might as well have been in bed, under the sheets with a flashlight and she was crooking her finger making fun of Mom’s hammertoe while he giggled so hard that he got a stomachache.

A boy shuffled from the kitchen with a backpack hanging over his shoulder. The back of his hair pointed in all directions like peacock feathers. He sat down at a booth in the corner of the room, his short legs swinging. He flicked a small origami frog across the table and onto the floor. Picking it up, he noticed the monk. Head still, the boy’s eyes slid from the bald head, to the black robe, to the casket. A waitress placed a cup of juice at the boy’s table, took Brother Philip’s order, and disappeared again behind the swinging kitchen doors.

The boy was on the floor now, flicking the frog toward the monk. “Did you fold that yourself?” he asked the boy.

No answer as the frog jumped onto the table. The boy followed, perching himself on the booth near the casket. “Is that a coffin?”

“A casket, yes.”

The boy raised a confused eyebrow. “Is there someone in there?”

This poor kid thinks I’m dining with a corpse. “Oh no, no.” He nodded reassuringly, trying not to smile. The frog sat motionless on the table between them and he poked it toward the boy. “Is that your mother? The waitress?”

“Yeah. She’s got work every first and third Saturday. And sometimes there’s a fifth one.” He hesitated. “Did someone die?”

The question was innocent but landed like a punch. “Yes. My nephew. He was sick for a long time.”

The boy picked absentmindedly at the frayed seams of his jacket; his eyes glossed in thought. “Was he a baby?”

“Not quite a baby anymore, but he was younger than you.” Brother Philip had become exasperated with his mother when she called two months ago, insisting on a Catholic service and a casket from the monastery. His sister hadn’t been to church since John Paul II. Are you sure that’s what Tessa wants? he asked his mother. Yes, of course, Phil. But, Phil . . . he’s shrunk. What do you mean, shrunk, Mother? I mean I think he’ll fit in a baby casket now. He didn’t believe her so she snuck a tape measure into the hospital room that night and measured her grandson from head to toe. She was never right about anything, but she had been right about that.

“Are you a preacher?” the boy asked. “I’m sorry?”

“I saw a movie and there was a preacher who had a dress and hair like that.”

“I’m not exactly a preacher. I’m a monk. Basically my job is to pray every day with other monks.”

“You have to cut your hair like that for your job?” “We don’t have to. But I choose to do it for God.” “It’s kind of weird.”

He smiled. “I agree.”

“Did you pray for the baby to get better?” “I did. We all did.”

“Maybe God was mad or something.”

“I don’t know. I hope God isn’t so cruel.”

The boy thought for a moment, then slid off the bench and returned to his table. He rummaged through his backpack and pulled out a small pair of blunt scissors. Using the side of a napkin holder as a mirror, he clumsily cut a sprig of hair from the top of his head. He then placed the sprig into a napkin, folded it into a neat package, and returned to Brother Philip’s booth.

He thrust the package toward the monk and said, “So I don’t get sick, too.”

* * * *

He was waiting outside the diner when his mother pulled up in her station wagon. Her face startled him, like a clown’s with painted eyebrows and bright pink cheeks. As he slid the casket into the backseat, the stench of her perfume made him anxious. He climbed into the passenger seat next to her.

“Is that the casket?” she asked. No, Mother, it’s a ham on rye. “That’s it, Mom.”

“It’s beautiful, Phil,” she said, too solemnly. “It really is beautiful. Please tell the Father Abbott how thankful we are.” Eyes closed, she breathed in deep and crossed herself. “Here . . . come here.” With one hand she waived him toward her; with the other she pulled her eyeglasses down from atop her head. “Let me see you.”

She looked fully into his face and her hot breath made him turn away. “You told the funeral home I’m bringing it over this morning?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s the same place that did your grandfather’s hair so beautifully. I know you remember.”

He remembered. She had stroked that dead-man hair for an hour until Aunt Verna told her she was acting like a crazy person and then the potluck had to be called off because they were screaming so loudly.

He asked about Tessa. She said she wants the casket? The burial and everything? I just wouldn’t have guessed it, that’s all. No, you know we don’t talk much these days. Yes, because of the monastery. You know that. Yes, you do. You do, Mom.

* * * *

The funeral home was falling apart like the rest of town. Four rotten pillars guarded the front door. Somewhere hidden inside, a man forced air through a tube used for draining arteries until coagulated blood shot out the other end.

Brother Philip tapped a bell on the front desk. A young woman met him with a warm smile. He explained that he was dropping off his nephew’s casket and gestured toward the box on the ground.

“And you said the deceased’s name is Myles . . .” “Yes, Myles Carey.”

She clacked away on a computer. Her head tilted; she scratched her cheek. “Hmm. Let me go check on that.” A quick turn. No eye contact.

Ma’am, have you misplaced the deceased? He was glad his mother had waited in the car.

The morbid intrigue would have sustained her for months.

A prim, middle-aged man in a tweed suit emerged, carrying a cardboard box. The type of person who blinks uncontrollably when he’s nervous.

[blink] “Hello, sir. Is it Father Carey? [blink blink] I’m Methodist, you’ll have to forgive me.”

“Just Philip. Is something wrong?”

“Well, Philip, [blink] there does seem to be somewhat [blink] of a misunderstanding.” His mother would be drooling now. “What do you mean?”

“It’s just that we were instructed to, well, [blink blink blink] the deceased has been cremated. I talked to the boy’s mother personally about her wishes. She was quite clear about it.” In unison they looked at the cardboard box on the reception desk. A label on top read “M.

Carey, c/o Tessa Carey.”

Honestly, it was hilarious. Tessa would love this. John Cleese would play the mortician. The studio audience would laugh nervously as the camera panned from the monk’s confused face to a single bead of sweat on Cleese’s forehead and then back to the monk. They would completely lose it when the camera cut to the grandmother fanning herself wildly, boiling in the hot station wagon like Humpty Dumpty right before he crashed.

“Please, Father. [blink] Let me help you get this back to your car.” John Cleese placed the cremains on top of the casket and lifted up one side, waiting for Brother Philip to lift the other. The two men then waddled awkwardly down the front steps, two giants moving dollhouse furniture; a Methodist and a Catholic with a delusion between them.

“What in the hell, Mother? You knew about this?”

She shushed him with her eyes and smiled at John Cleese who blinked and waived and slinked back up the stairs.

“Of course you knew. I cannot believe you let me go in there with this thing.” He placed the cardboard box on the armrest between them.

“Is that him?” she asked, leaning violently away from the box.

On a bus. A thousand miles across the country. Every damn person gawking at the insane bald man in the black robe hugging a casket that would be for nobody.

“IS THAT MYLES?” she yelled, practically hanging out of the car window. Yelling that she told Tessa that she could not–COULD NOT–cremate that precious angel because how could a pile of ashes go to heaven, how could a pile of ashes be resurrected, where would he go now, they would never see him again, just a pile of ashes in a box forever.

* * * *

Tessa did, in fact, love it. They found her alone in the living room, lights off. She took a moment to adjust to the sunlight streaming in from the front door, to calculate the scene in the entryway: the casket, the box of ashes, the hysterical mother, the irritated brother.

“Oh, no . . . Oh, Phil . . . Mom, you didn’t?” Her face was wide open, grinning with delight. “Please tell me you took that casket to the funeral home.” When he answered by looking at his feet, she lost it like the studio audience and he couldn’t tell later if her eyes were damp and puffy from the laughing or the crying.

* * * *

He hid in his old bedroom like it was the monastery. His sister out there somewhere, holding the deceased’s ashes. Having to explain it to their mother again. Sobbing and left to wonder where her brother had gone. But he was in his closet on the carpet with the door closed, rummaging through yearbooks and old love letters and Mossimo t-shirts with blurry lettering.

The back door slammed. Through the window he watched Tessa descend toward the creek that ran jagged across the back of the property. The cardboard box under one arm. Her silhouette was so familiar to him. It used to be his silhouette; to catch her in his peripheral was to catch his own shadow. Motherhood had changed it, of course. Made it softer on the edges. But some substance had fallen all over her; something that didn’t wash off with a shower and drove down until her shadow became hers only.

Three years ago she had gone to the creek with Myles, when worries about his health turned from unease to panic. His legs quivering like toothpicks trying to raise a house. His head bobbing like a metronome. She took her ragdoll to the creek and dipped its toes into the water like they were at Bethesda–not believing it but hoping it–and the ragdoll felt the coolness and it smiled and wrapped its arms around her and took on her fear.

She sat there next to the box now, talking to it, her toes digging into the sludge below the stream.

* * * *

Have you heard the one about the monk, the mother, and the twin sister at the wake? No punchline, just a procession of condensed-soup casseroles and funeral cousins who exist only when someone dies. Diversions from the great enemy of the grieving: empty time. That petri dish where sadness blooms in the dark.

The space was too intimate. Their mother’s living room, where he used to watch Scooby-Doo in his underwear. Where Myles had died five days ago. Standing in the corner, he watched his sister intently. She had always been the magnet that spun the room. The energy but not the axis, and it had been exhilarating to be, not just in her orbit, but elementally the same stuff as her. He was never jealous and she had never asked him to be.

The magnet was on the move.

She eased in next to him, a crumpled tissue in her hand. She was obviously miserable, but the thoroughness of it consumed him. Their twin-sense was still intact even after sitting on mothballs for three years. She touched his hand and indicated subtly toward their mother. The

old bat had sunk her fangs into an actual priest, an aging vicar newly assigned to the parish. A blob of ranch dip sat absurdly on her left shoulder.

“How in the hell?” she whispered. “It looks like a bird shat on her.”

He squeezed the blood from his arm to keep from cackling. “I dare you to go dip a Frito in there and eat it. Play it totally straight.”

It felt good to make her laugh.

* * * *

They buried the ashes in their Father’s grave, literally on top of him. The cemetery let them do it for free, but Tessa loved the thought of the two of them there together. Stacked like two bricks left over from an old ruin; weathering it alone for god knows how long. Later, with the funeral cousins gone and the casseroles rotting at the dump, she laid in bed, her hair wet from tears, her wet hair smeared on her neck, and listened to the rain and imagined her child weeping slowly down through the mud and joining their father there and it comforted her.

Just a little hole in the earth. Drop him in. That was that.

The twins sat in the grass by the grave. Tessa sighed and told him that he looked like that William Blake poem. How’d it go? I saw the tombstones where flowers were supposed to be. And the priests in black gowns, making their rounds. Something, something with briars binding our joys and our desires? You’ve never understood it, Tess, he said. Besides, I’m not even a priest. People keep saying that. Oh, no? she said. You leave me here alone with her, in that house with Myles like that, and you don’t even become a priest? He said, that’s not fair. It’s fair, she said. I think it’s very fair. I’m so sorry, Tess. I’m so sorry but he was so sick and I didn’t know what to do. I was trying to do something. And she whispered that it was nothing, that all his praying was just screaming underwater and nobody could hear it except you and it was only for you.

* * * *

She threw all of her ragdoll’s books and toys and clothes into a pile in the backyard. She put the Pooh-bear; the little blanket with the red and blue stripes from the hospital; the painfully-small Nikes that had never been worn. She laid face down in them and smelled them. She put the bile-stained sheets on the pile and the welfare paperwork and the medications with meaningless expiration dates. She looked at the pile and sobbed. She shifted her weight. She took a breath. She kneeled down and cupped her hand around the lighter. She lit the sleeve of its favorite shirt.

And the flame painted a clumsy sunset across the pile.

“Wait,” he said. The backdoor slammed. He had the casket. Chunked it on the fire. The tiny lid and tiny pillow tumbled down. The sunset was growing and building. Something in his pocket scratched against his hand. He pulled the folded napkin out. I hope God’s not so cruel, he had said.

On top of the pile, the napkin burned quickly. Smoke carried the boy’s hair up and up toward the sky and then he lost sight of it.

Issue 48 • Fall 2023

Fiction

Poetry

Fiction

Poetry