The Book of Joe

something undeniably real, and it works. I look at Jared and Brad sitting to my right and see that they’re both wiping away tears. On my other side, Carly’s eyes have welled up as well, so I feel a little better about my own constricted throat and the abundant wetness on my cheeks. I take Carly’s hand and pull her into me. “He would have liked this,” I whisper.
    “I know.” She squeezes my hands and sniffles, wiping her tears softly against my blazer.
    Father Mohan clears his throat to begin the service, but his voice breaks at the first syllable and he has to take a minute to collect himself. He has no sooner done this than he is interrupted by a loud wail as, in the front pew, something in Mrs. Hargrove that can bend no more finally snaps, and she collapses against her husband in a fit of hysterical weeping. I’m glad for Wayne and hope that wherever he is, he can see that his mother has finally broken through. I feel my own chest spasm involuntarily and Carly cries into my shoulder while Jared breaks down and leans into Brad’s embrace. Wayne’s voice, unbidden, suddenly speaks up in my head. Now this, he says enthusiastically, this is a funeral.

Thirty-Seven
    We exit the church into an epic thunderstorm, the rain descending in thick sheets, furiously battering the steps of the church and swallowing both light and sound, lending our surroundings the grainy, muted texture of a newspaper photo. In the movies, black umbrellas would sprout everywhere in a funereal manner, but here they come up red and yellow as well, bright, deliberate globs of color superimposed on the subdued gray hues of the day.
    The six of us who have been selected by Wayne as pallbearers descend to the foot of the stairs to wait at a discreet basement door, where we will meet the casket and wheel it over to the waiting hearse. The pallbearers are Brad, Jared, Victor Hargrove, a nondescript uncle, Coach Dugan, and me. I am somewhat taken aback by this posthumous show of respect for Dugan, and experience a twinge of indignant rage toward Wayne over his apparent forgiveness of the man, abandoning me to cling alone to my vestigial anger.
    There isn’t very far to bear the pall, but with both hands on the casket, there is no way to hold an umbrella, and in the minute or so it takes us to wheel Wayne from the basement door to the curb, we all get effectively soaked. The hearse stands idling at the curb, its driver and a second attendant standing by the open back door with a matching set of professionally sorrowful expressions. I picture them in some back room, trying out these expressions on each other, maybe even naming each variety, and then bursting out laughing. They step forward to help us guide the casket onto the steel tracks in the car, giving us hushed directions like stage cues, and I feel the lump in my throat shudder and dissolve into hot liquid as Wayne is transformed into cargo.
    We stand in the rain watching as the hearse drives away.
    There will be no procession, since its destination is the crematorium in Noank, two towns over. Carly and I will go there tomorrow to pick up Wayne’s ashes. Between now and then, we’ll try to figure out what to do with them. There is a tap on my shoulder and I turn, expecting Carly but instead find Dugan, stooped under a compact blue umbrella.
    “Goffman,” he says. “I’d like a word with you.”
    A reflexive shiver runs through me, but I face him and even manage some guarded eye contact. The skin around his eyes is cracked and chapped, the hardened folds of skin lining up to form deep crevices, but the eyes themselves, dark and intense, still command your attention. “Thanks for what you did in the gym the other night,” I say, not so much to thank him as to vent some of the nervous energy pouring into my chest cavity. “It meant a lot to Wayne.”
    He dismisses my remark with an impatient frown. “I had some long talks with your father when your book came out,”
    he says with no preamble, his eyes squinting forcefully, his face burnished with a wet sheen from the rain. “We talked a lot about Wayne, about the extent to which we might have mishandled the situation back then. Art was hurt by your book, but he thought you made some good points, and he was proud of you.”
    I nod and comb my soaking hair back with my fingers.
    “Thanks. I appreciate that.”
    “I thought the book was a load of horseshit,” Dugan continues without missing a beat. “The malicious work of