My earliest memory is of death. Or more precisely, of the aftermath of death. I don’t know how old I was—perhaps the tender age of four. And I don’t know who it was who had died. But I do remember an old farm house, it was night, and a body was laid out in a back bedroom. Yes, I remember the body well. But what I remember most is, there were so many people on hand to take part in that old fashioned ritual of ‘sittin’ up with the dead’ the night before the funeral, there was not enough room left for all the children to sleep in the house. So I, along with one other child—who could have been my older brother or a cousin, I don’t remember—had to sleep in the family car.

For the longest time I wanted to incorporate that memory in a story. But I could not find the proper vehicle to do so until the night I attended a reading held by a local women's writing group. One of them read a poem in which she mentioned the Biblical character Lazarus, and a switch somewhere in my imagination was flipped. Graced with one of those rare moments of absolute inspiration, I suddenly knew exactly what the story would be, and I wrote it.

Now all these years later, having been visited yet again by death, family and friends gather to lay to rest my brother-in-law Carl Joyner. It hurts. But that’s how it must be. Knowing that does not make saying goodbye any easier. However, it is the way things are. To face this as if any alternative were possible would be…


Unnatural

The hour was late when they finally reached his grandparent’s farm, but that meant nothing to six-year-old Jason. Along with most other things, time ceased to be a concern the moment he learned Grandpa Bill was dead. Slouched in the backseat of the family’s ‘47 Chevy, through eyes drained of tears, Jason stared out the side window into the dark. In the diffused glow from the headlights, the trees lining the dirt road leading to the old farmhouse appeared more like the ghosts of trees--shades of things that once were, marching past as if in a funeral procession as his dad drove the last quarter-mile. Grandpa Bill was Jason’s dad’s dad.

Jason’s mom sat directly in front of him, in the passenger seat close beside his dad. It was she who’d given him the news. ‘He’s gone, Honey. Your grandpa’s gone.’ That’s how she first put it after receiving the phone call around midday, as if his grandfather had disappeared in a blinding flash of light, or had simply walked away from everyone and everything he’d ever known. At six, Jason was already beyond believing people could just disappear. And he was certain Grandpa Bill would not walk away from him.

Besides, growing up on a farm, Jason knew about death. Often while playing in the field behind his house, or down by the creek where he’d been told ‘Never! Ever!’ to go alone, something pale as cream winking in a patch of wind-stirred grass, or glistening within the brown scab of an exposed bit of earth, would catch his eye, and he’d discover the half-buried skull of a muskrat or possum--he could never be sure which--or the easiest to recognize: a cat. At those moments, he was aware of being in the presence of something that had once been alive but was no more.

Though Jason had seen the evidence of death’s passage through the world, he’d never actually seen anything die until that time three months back when he had stayed with his grandparents for a week. And to be honest, he wasn’t watching when that particular life ended. He only witnessed what led up to that most consequential of moments. Jason was glad he hadn’t seen his grandpa die, and he surely didn’t want to see the evidence that it had happened. But view that evidence was exactly what his parents had said he should do.

“Almost there, Honey,” his mom said, turning so she could fix on him the sort of smile she wore when coming at him with a teaspoon full of medicine they both knew he could barely manage to swallow and keep down. “Then you can say goodbye to your Grandpa.”

“He’s not there,” Jason said uncertainly. He pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the side window, and watched her out of the corner of his eye.

“Of course he is. He’ll be laid out in the bedroom, and the whole family is coming to say goodbye. He’d want you there. Grandpa Bill loved you so much,” she cooed.

“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m a baby,” Jason mumbled. “It’s unnatural.”

“Un—?” His mom stared at him for a moment then said, “We’ll be there soon.” She smiled sadly, turned back toward the front, and rested her head against her husband’s shoulder.

When the porch light showed ahead, Jason sighed. He was worn to exhaustion from the events of the day, and wanted only to curl up in his own bed and make everything go away. In the morning he’d awaken to the smells of bacon frying and coffee percolating, and Grandpa Bill would be alive.

Thinking about coffee reminded him of how much he hated milk--a thing unheard of on a farm where it came fresh from the cow--and how for so long he had fought with his mother over her insistence that he drink it because it would ‘make you big-n-strong’. It made him sick. It was Grandpa Bill who’d thought to mix it half-and-half with coffee. After that, Jason couldn’t wait for his morning glassful. It still bothered his stomach a little. But it was worth it to have a taste of what his grandpa called ‘the dark elixir of the gods’. He was always saying things like that.

The yard in front of his grandparent’s house was a jumble of cars and trucks parked every which way. In concert with the dim yellow bug light by the front door, the curtained windows leaked a muted, pale glow onto the porch. A man sat on the steps smoking a pipe. A child sat at his side leaning into him. Before Jason could see if he knew them, his dad slipped the Chevy into a tight space between an old square-backed, long-hooded sedan and a flatbed farm truck with cattle racks, and parked.

“Home,” his dad said soft as a whisper. He shook his head as if waking from a dream and spoke up. “Guess we better go see how Mom’s doing.”

Approaching the porch, Jason saw that the man sitting on the steps was his dad’s brother, Uncle Howard. The boy asleep against him was his son, Jason’s younger cousin Orville.

“Matt,” Uncle Howard said. “Good to see you. Did ya run into trouble?” When he drew on his pipe, the inside of the bowl glowed like a campfire’s bed of coals, then slowly faded until the next pull. Proof of life.

“Got started late. Flat tire along the way.” Jason’s dad shrugged, his voice flat as roadkill. “Did they figure out what happened?”

“Stroke … while he was walking to the barn.” Uncle Howard’s voice was equally dead. “Doctor said Pop most likely dropped where he stood. Said he didn’t suffer.”

“That’s good to know. How’s Mom?”

“Numb.”

The word rode a plume of pipe smoke, disappearing with it into the night. Jason caught the scent: Borkum Riff-Apple, same as Grandpa Bill smoked. He had often run to fetch the small tin of shredded, aromatic leaves for his grandpa. The musky bouquet of Uncle Howard’s pipe nearly choked him with longing. With his mother standing behind him, her hands on his shoulders, he waited for something to happen.

Something should happen, shouldn’t it? On a day like this? Jason was just coming to understand what his mom meant when she told him his dad loved deep but showed shallow. Uncle Howard was younger than Jason’s dad by two years. If he was waiting for his big brother to take the lead, it might be a long wait.

“Well, I better go on in.” Jason’s dad patted Uncle Howard on the shoulder, and stepped to the front door.

With a nudge from his mom, Jason went up the steps. “See, Honey, Orville’s here,” she said as they passed the sleeping boy inclined against Uncle Howard. “You’ve got someone to play with. Maybe you can wake ‘im up after you see your grandpa … if it’s okay?” she added to Uncle Howard.

“Once he’s out, he’s usually out for good. But sure, you can try.” Uncle Howard’s eyes were red and puffy like Jason’s, but also like Jason’s, they were dry of tears. More evidence of things that once were.

“I’m so sorry, Howard,” Jason’s mom said with a catch in her voice.

“Thanks, Sarah. Y’all go on in. Mom’ll be glad to see this one.” He roughed Jason’s hair. “I’ll be along directly.”

Jason and his mom joined his dad, and they entered the house together.

The living room, with all its familiar furniture, lace doilies, and knickknacks, was packed with relatives. Jason recognized most everyone, if not by name at least by sight. The ones he didn’t know were probably neighbors. The few younger children present were asleep, surprising considering his dad had said the family was going to sit up all night and have a Wake for Grandpa. He figured it was called that because everyone stayed awake.

He ached to join the sleeping kids. If he could be allowed to go to bed, he wouldn’t have to see Grandpa Bill’s body. Receiving and acknowledging words of sympathy, his dad led the way through the crowd of mourners in a manner that said there’d be no putting off the inevitable.

When they started down the hall toward his grandparents bedroom, Jason tried to hang back knowing what awaited him there. But the mourners, who had separated to let them pass the way the Red Sea was said to have parted beneath the power of Moses’ upraised staff, remerged in a tidal flow that propelled him forward in his parent’s footsteps.

In the bedroom, an arc of chairs was arrayed facing the white-enameled iron bed. Jason refused to look at what lay there. The first person he saw, sitting in the center of the arc, was Grandma Rose.

“Matty!” she cried when she turned and spied Jason’s dad. “Thank God, you made it!” She tried to rise, but collapsed back onto the chair in tears. Grandma Rose was a big woman, tall and large-boned, always smiling … until now. It scared Jason to see her brought so low. His dad knelt and wrapped her in his arms.

“Momma,” he whispered like a child as big tears streamed down his cheeks, the first Jason had seen him cry all day. Jason began to cry at the sight of two people he loved consumed by such grief. His mom kissed him on top of the head.

“It should’ve been me,” Grandma moaned with her face against her son’s.

“Don’t say that, Momma.” Jason’s dad rocked her back and forth. “Pop always said you were the strong one.”

“How can anyone be strong enough for this? Matty, what am I gonna do without him?”

“Trust in the Lord,” said a baritone voice from a couple of chairs to Grandma’s left. “God will brace you up. He will provide.”

Tracing the voice to its source, Jason found the minister of his grandparent’s church: Reverend Stonebraker.

Jason knew his dad didn’t care much for Reverend Stonebraker because once, when his parent’s didn’t know he was around, he’d heard his dad call the man Reverend Nutcruncher.

‘Matt!’ His mom’s mouth had flown open wide while her eyes sparkled with silent laughter.

‘Well it fits,” his dad had said. ‘I simply cannot abide that man’s incessant, unfathomable denigration of the joys of sex. Momma listens to him too much. He’s gonna ruin Pop’s home life.’

‘Sshhh.” His mom had giggled. ‘Not so loud. If Jay hears you, that’s all we’d hear outta him for a month. And he wouldn’t even know what it meant.’

‘Okay,’ his dad had said with a grudging smile. ‘But I won’t call him reverend. To me, he’s just the Stonebraker.’

Jason didn’t know what the word ‘sex’ meant, but he did know a little something about the reverend. While visiting his grandparents, he’d had occasion to sit through the man’s sermons. The reverend would start out soft and low, reading from the scriptures and throwing in an ‘amen’ every now and then. But it was as if he was a windup toy, and there was something inside him cranking a spring tighter and tighter as the sermon went on. By the end, his voice would boom out over the congregation like cannon fire.

As Jason’s mom and dad comforted Grandma, Jason caught a “Yes Lord,” and a “Hear me, Jesus,” and a “Hallelujah!” from the reverend in response to some comment by one or another of the mourners seated near him, each word a little louder than the last. The Stonebraker was getting wound up.

Jason’s dad helped Grandma up, and they stepped to the bedside where they leaned against each other, looking down upon the bed, murmuring, Grandma’s shoulders shaking with her sobs. Jason stood back against his mother’s legs, sniffing back his tears, seeking comfort in her warmth. He refused to acknowledge what was on the bed. When his dad walked Grandma back to her chair, she motioned him over.

“Oh child,” she said and drew Jason to herself, nearly smothering him against her ample bosom. “I’m glad you’re here. You and Bill were so close. Sometimes I think he talked to you more than to me.”

Trying not to cry, Jason said the first thing that came to mind. “Grandpa Bill loved you.”

“I know he did. And he loved you too. Go on now, say your farewells.” Watching him through tear-filled eyes, Grandma Rose inclined her head toward the bed. Jason’s mom took him by the hand and led him forward.

And there was Grandpa Bill. Jason’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of the tall, thin old man lying stretched out on the bed in his Sunday suit, hands crossed over his waist, wispy white hair neatly combed, asleep, or so it seemed.

Grandpa? Jason thought as hope blossomed in wild profusion, flooding him with its call to believe his grandfather really was merely sleeping. But only for a second. Grandpa Bill was a farmer: sun browned, leathered, with a prickly white stubble on his chin that felt like the good scratch of a bad itch whenever he rubbed it against Jason’s cheek as they roughhoused. What lay on the bed had a face nearly as smooth as porcelain, was pale as one of Grandma’s china plates, a doll-thing in grandpa’s clothes.

“It’s okay to touch him,” his mom said.

Everything in Jason recoiled at the idea. He glanced about, desperate for some measure of reassurance. Every face he saw held only the sympathetic expectation that he do what was required. He bolted from the room.

His mom caught up to him before he reached the front door, and held him not roughly but securely. Everyone in the living room watched from aside as if trying to bestow privacy where none was possible. “It’s okay if you don’t want to touch him,” she said. “Grandpa would understand. But you do need to say goodbye.”

“That’s not him,” Jason said picturing the smooth, waxy flesh of the figure on the bed. “Saying goodbye to that would be unnatural.”

“Unnatural?” She frowned. “Why do you keep saying that?”

He could neither hold her gaze nor answer. It was a secret. “I’m tired, Mom,” he pleaded instead. “Can I go to bed?”

“Oh Honey, I’m sorry.” She hugged him. “It’s been a hard day, hasn’t it? Yes, of course you can go to bed. You can say goodbye to your grandpa tomorrow at the funeral. Now…” She looked around until she located Uncle Howard’s wife, June. “Where are the kids sleeping?” she called over.

“Most are already in the barn, bedded down under quilts and blankets in the hayloft.” Aunt June nodded at the children passed out in the living room. “Here’s the overflow.”

“Oh my.” Jason’s mom furrowed her brow, then took his hand and said, “Come on,” and headed out the door.

Still sitting on the steps, Uncle Howard turned at the sound of their approach. Orville was curled up asleep with his head in his father’s lap. Jason envied him.

“Howard,” Jason’s mom said. “Where will Orville be sleeping tonight?”

“Haven’t figured that out yet. Maybe in the living room.” He nodded toward the nearby barn. “It seems there’s no room at the inn.”

“There are probably blacksnakes in that barn, anyway.” She stared out into the yard, then turned to Uncle Howard. “I’ve got an idea. Pick Orville up and follow me.” Holding Jason by the hand, she led the way to their car. “They should be all right in here, don’t you think?”

“I expect so,” Uncle Howard said. “And probably a lot happier than in the house. It’d be like an adventure.”

Jason liked the idea. Sleeping out there away from the adults would be an adventure. Orville was stirring. Before he could awaken and make any claims, Jason called, “I got the front seat!”

“You snooze, you lose,” Uncle Howard said, giving Orville a tired, sad grin. He opened the back door, and deposited his son on the seat.

“Go on, get in,” Jason’s mom said to him. “I’ll be right back with some covers.” She walked away with Uncle Howard, and soon returned with blankets and pillows. After tucking in Orville--who murmured but didn’t awaken the whole time she was shifting him about--she told Jason, “If you need anything, we’ll be right inside. Now get some sleep. You’ll want to be rested for the funeral tomorrow. Your grandma’s gonna need you to be strong for her. Goodnight, Honey. Grandpa Bill would be so proud of you.”

“Night, Mom.”

As his mom’s footsteps receded, the summer night came alive with crisp, dry insect songs set against the rhythm of his sleeping cousin’s steady, deep breaths. Jason stretched out on the front seat, and stared up through the windshield opening at a sky filled to bursting with twinkling pinpoints of light. Smeared across the windshield at an angle, the Milky Way seemed so close it was as if by reaching out and touching the glass, he could touch the stars. Tired as he was, Jason’s troubled mind warded off sleep with a pathological determination.

‘He’s gone,’ his mom had said, as if there was not a trace of Grandpa Bill left in the world. But what lay in his grandparent’s bedroom was a trace, wasn’t it? Something to prove his grandpa had in fact existed? Should he have touched it?

“Hey! Orville!” he called into the dark in a harsh whisper.

When no response came, Jason threw one of his shoes over the seat back, and heard a satisfying thunk! followed by a mumbled, “Wha…”

“Orville, did you go in to see Grandpa?”

“Um … Grandpa?”

“Wake up long enough to answer me, will ya? Did you see Grandpa Bill?”

“Uh huh,” Orville mumbled.

“Did you touch him?”

“Yesss…” came the muffled response.

Figuring Orville was burrowing back down into his covers, afraid he was about to lose his cousin to sleep for the rest of the night, Jason asked one last question.

“How did it feel?”

“Hard…” Orville whispered. “Cold…”

“That wasn’t him,” Jason said, more to convince himself than to refute Orville.

Unsatisfied, uneasy, he rolled onto his side and let exhaustion drag him to sleep’s realm. That’s where Grandpa Bill found him.

C’mon, Jaybird. You had your taste of the dark elixir this morning, so you got no excuse. Get a move on.

Jason opened his eyes to a bright, blue-sky day with a familiar field spread out all around him, and carpeting the gentle hillside directly ahead. He knew the place well. It was the pasture behind his grandpa’s barn. A few paces away stood Grandpa Bill in his overalls and plaid work shirt, face shaded by his sweat-stained, wide-brimmed straw hat. Grandpa grinned, turned, and strode up the slope.

‘Wait!’ Jason called. Grandpa Bill’s long, easy strides ate the distance so that he had to run to catch up. When he did, his grandfather slowed and put a hand on his shoulder.

Remember this? Grandpa Bill said.

Jason stopped and looked about, taking in the barn behind, the fence line to the right, and the tree line to the left. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It’s your pasture.’

Hah! Grandpa Bill laughed, then squatted, took off his hat, and leveled his lively blue eyes on Jason. Well yes, you are right about that. But I didn’t mean, do you know where this is. I meant, do you know when this is? At Jason’s confused expression, he added, You will. Just wait a bit.

Grandpa sat facing downhill toward the barn with his legs drawn up and his arms resting across his knees. Jason sat beside him, glanced sideways to check, and made a couple of adjustments to exactly match his grandfather’s pose. On some level he knew he was dreaming, but something seemed odd even for a dream. After a moment, he realized what that was.

At first he’d been looking out through his own eyes, seeing the world as one would expect. Somewhere along the way his perspective changed, he had slipped outside, and was now watching himself and his grandfather from a little distance away. He could see himself, and he accepted that in the calm way dreamers so often accept the most absurd things. It simply was the way it was.

But when the Jason sitting beside Grandpa suddenly sat up straighter, looking down the slope, the Jason watching felt gooseflesh ripple over his body. He knew what had snared the other’s attention, he had seen it all before.

There, downhill and to the left, the brown tips of its ears twitched above the top of a clump of grass. In a moment it would hop into the open--two hops, no more--then sit back on its haunches to look around. All this the rabbit did as if on cue. The watching Jason knew it would happen just that way because that’s the way it had happened that day three months back when he’d spent a week with his grandparents. Now it was time for the next player to appear.

Hear that? Grandpa Bill said to the other Jason as a shrill cry split the silence. All three looked up.

It came out of the sun, a streak of gray/brown and white, nose down, wings tucked, talons pulled in. At the last instant, it flared out its wings over the just-beginning-to-react rabbit, and the clawed feet came down. The rabbit gave one horrific, high-pitched shriek before the hawk’s wings covered it like a shroud.

As if connected by a psychic umbilicus, the watching Jason experienced the fright, the panic, the absolute terror for the rabbit that the other Jason felt--felt them because they had assaulted him when these exact events had occurred three months ago. Or were they happening now? Or still happening in some closed loop, some eternal cycle where the life and death struggle was forever being played out? At the moment, none of that mattered. The blind, raging fear for the rabbit’s life--for life itself--was all that existed.

‘Grandpa!’ the other Jason cried.

Grandpa Bill grabbed up a pebble off the ground, stood, and threw it at the hawk, shouting, Get outta here!

The bird extended its neck and glared.

Hey! Get! Grandpa yelled, moving down the slope toward it. Startled, the raptor tried to take flight with its prey clutched in its talons, but the rabbit was a big one. The lumbering bird dropped its catch, gave two powerful pumps with its curved wings, and flew off with one last piercing cry.

The other Jason ran at his grandfather’s heels to where the rabbit had fallen. Knowing what was to come, the watching Jason followed more slowly.

The rabbit was not dead. Lying in a blood-soaked, brownish heap, sides heaving, it made no effort to rise and run away. It could only stare with bulging eyes as Grandpa Bill and the other Jason knelt in the grass beside it.

‘Grandpa?’ the other Jason whispered. ‘Can you fix it?’

After the briefest of pauses, Grandpa Bill answered, No, Jaybird. This one’s done for. It’s suffering. Best we can do is make that stop.

‘How?’ The other Jason reached to pet the stricken animal.

Don’t! Grandpa said sternly. You might get rabbit fever from the blood. He gave the other Jason a sad, sympathetic look and continued in a softer tone. Best not watch this. Go on, look away off there in the trees. That’s where that hawk went. See if you can spot him.

The other Jason did as instructed. This time the watching Jason watched as Grandpa Bill tenderly picked up the rabbit, cradled it for a moment, then gave its neck a quick twist. Both Jasons flinched at the soft crunch that seemed to ring through the warm air around them like a rifle shot. When the other Jason looked back, Grandpa was laying the rabbit’s still, supple body back on the ground.

There, he said, wiping the blood from his hands onto the grass. It’s not suffering anymore.

The watching Jason remembered his Uncle Howard’s report that the doctor said Grandpa Bill had ‘probably dropped where he stood’, that he ‘didn’t suffer’. He gazed at his grandpa kneeling beside that other him, and he smiled. That was good. Knowing what was coming next, his smile melted into a frown of concentration. He knew, but he needed to hear it again to try to work out exactly what it might mean.

‘Why’d that have to happen, Grandpa?’ the other Jason asked with un-cried tears in his eyes. ‘Why couldn’t the hawk just leave that rabbit alone?’

Cause that would have been unnatural.

‘Unnatural?’

That’s right. Grandpa Bill regarded him solemnly. It means when a thing’s not the way it’s supposed to be. Like that hawk. It’s alive and wants to stay so, so one thing it has to do is eat. And hawks eat rabbits. If the hawk had seen that rabbit and just let it go on its way, it wouldn’t have been acting the way God made it to act. To do that would have been unnatural. You understand?

‘Uh huh,’ the other Jason said, but the watching Jason knew it wasn’t so, not completely. ‘But why this rabbit? Why right now?’

Because this rabbit and that hawk were right here right now. I’ve read where some folks think time turns like a great big wheel with everything coming around when it’s supposed to. Choices are made hours ago, days ago, huh, maybe lifetimes ago--I don’t rightly understand it all yet--but anyway, things are set in motion. When it’s time for something to happen, it happens. For it to happen any other way would be unnatural.
I just discovered the significance of that word lately while reading what Mr. Charles Darwin had to say that got so many people stirred up. He wrote a lot about what he called Natural Selection, and that got me to thinking about what would make a thing unnatural. Grandpa Bill gazed down the hill, out over the barn to the house.
And your grandma’s none too happy about that. In fact, she doesn’t like to hear that word at all. You see, your grandma figures everything is natural, we just don’t understand it all yet. And maybe she’s right. Maybe the only unnatural thing in the world is not accepting how things are just ‘cause we don’t like them. He gave a wry smile that confused the other Jason, but broke the watching Jason’s heart. Anyway, I try not to say that word too much around her. So let’s you and me keep it between us, okay? It’ll be part of our secret language for when we talk about important things. He stood and arched his back, stretching out the kinks.

Still kneeling beside the rabbit’s body, the other Jason said, ‘Are we gonna bury it?’

No. I shouldn’t have thrown that rock in the first place. By doing that, I’ve already disturbed the cycle enough. We’ll leave it here in case that hawk’s still around watching. Anything else would be unnatural. Grandpa Bill turned, and for the first time looked directly at the watching Jason. Remember this, he said. Now, let’s get back to the house.

Jason’s eyelids fluttered open on a dark world. He was curled up on the front seat of the family car, Grandpa Bill wasn’t around anymore, and something else was wrong. He lay still, yet half in the land of dreams, listening to something out of place amid the usual night noises.

“What is that?” he whispered to himself as he strained to make sense of the nearly-rhythmic sound pulsing through the car’s body panels and window glass. Barefoot, sleep banished and curiosity itching, he left the car. As he stepped onto the night-cooled boards of the front porch, the noise began to coalesce into something like speech. When he entered the living room, it became a recognizable voice.

“…a brother, a good man…”

The Stonebraker was holding forth in the bedroom where Grandpa Bill was laid out. Some in the living room, adult as well as child, managed to sleep. Most sat silent, staring, listening as the booming voice rang down the short hallway and vibrated around them the way that soft crunch had echoed across the pasture when Grandpa Bill broke the rabbit’s neck to end its suffering. Was the Stonebraker trying to end the family’s suffering by praising Grandpa? Then why did he say ‘brother’ when Grandpa Bill was an only child? Why didn’t he mention ‘husband’ or ‘father’ in his accolades? Why did he leave off ‘Grandpa’?

“Lazarus was all those things, yes,” the Stonebraker extolled. “But more important than any of that, he was the beloved friend of Jesus Christ almighty, Himself!”

Jason knew the story of Lazarus, of how Jesus had come late, after the burial, and in front of all Lazarus’ weeping family and friends had called the dead man from the tomb. That story always scared him a little; the idea of the dead walking. It just wasn’t right.

The folks sitting in the living room all looked so tired, so unawake for a Wake. Jason had no idea what time it was. For that matter, after his dream, he was very confused about anything having to do with time. But that was okay. He steered a path through the mourners compelled by the half-formed intuition that a great wheel was inexorably turning, and the natural thing to do was move with it.

In the bedroom, Grandma Rose still sat in the center of the arc of chairs with Jason’s dad to her right and Uncle Howard on her left. The Stonebraker was beside him. Various other relatives crowded the room. Jason walked up beside his mom who stood just behind his dad. When she noticed him, she squatted and said, “What are you doin’ up, Honey? Is it Orville?”

“Orville’s okay,” he said. “I heard the Sto-- I heard the preacher, and came to listen.”

“The men gnashed their teeth and ripped their garments asunder!” the Stonebraker roared. “And the women wailed and yanked out hands-full of their hair by the roots!”

“He does go on, doesn’t he?” Jason’s mom whispered, but Jason was only half listening, too busy checking her head to see if she’d torn out any hair.

“Martha, Lazarus’ sister, actually dared to criticize Jesus. Said He’d come too late! Jesus wept at their sorrow, but He was untroubled by her accusation.” The Stonebraker paused. “And do you know why?”

“Yes,” Jason whispered, unaware he’d done so and too low for anyone to hear.

“Because he wasn’t late!” the Stonebraker thundered. “Christ knew that all things happen in their time, and it was Lazarus’ time to die!”

Jason felt the wheel turning, and the tears streamed down his cheeks to grease its path. He looked long and hard at Grandpa Bill’s body on the bed, and knew his grandpa wasn’t really there. Grandpa Bill was riding the wheel in his allotted place, and had rolled on. He was gone, and though it hurt Jason beyond what words could convey, that’s how it was supposed to be.

“But Christ had a plan,” the Stonebraker continued. “He would use this tragedy for His glory, and show the mourners a thing of wonder: a miracle! ‘Open the tomb!’ Christ ordered the men standing there. ‘But he’s been buried for three days,’ they said. ‘His body’s already corrupted.’ Christ knew the body was corrupted. The body is always corrupt.”

“Not that…” Jason’s dad whispered. Grandma Rose shushed him.

“But though the body be the source of so many of our temptations, the storehouse of all our carnal desires, all our human failings, a body is what carried the soul of Lazarus out of that tomb obedient to Christ’s command!” He leveled his fiery gaze on Grandpa Bill’s body. “Wouldn’t it be something if our brother Bill could come back to us like that? Just the way the dead did when Jesus stood before the tomb.” The Stonebraker stood and spread his arms wide, casting a shadow like a dark angel across the body on the bed. “And he cried, ‘Lazarus! Come forth!’”

To a scattered chorus of ‘amens’, the Stonebraker remained upright a moment longer, trembling, then sagged back onto his chair withdrawing his shadow from the bed. “Wouldn’t that be something?” he whispered. Breathless. Spent. Unwound.

And it seemed to Jason that whatever it was that wound the Stonebraker so tight leaped from that man straight into him, and gave one god-almighty crank on his spring.

“No!” he said loud and clear. “Grandpa Bill shouldn’t come outta the tomb! He wouldn’t want to!” Undeterred by the shocked expressions fixed on him, he added, “That would be unnatural.”

“Jason!” His mom put a hand to her breast and looked an apology around the room. “What’s gotten into you? Where on Earth do you get such ideas?”

Jason turned away from her and found himself staring through his tears straight into Grandma Rose’s shimmering eyes. She was too near not to have heard him, and she was smiling.