Club Icarus

Pall Bearers

7 Pall Bearers We all end up the same raw-eyed and silent six driving back in my truck from St. Mary’s Cemetery to a country club where the hall has been rented. We’re tired from the standing, the waiting, the carrying of a weight we never knew till then would be that heavy. Never knew the muscle and grip, the sweat it took, even in a cold drizzle, to lift it from the rollers and hump it to the grave. I’m not gonna make it, someone says as we drive. I gotta piss. We all do. We stop at the house where my mother is not home. Nobody wants to go inside the house to use the toilet, to stand all alone staring at the shamrock wallpaper. Instead we shuffle out, long coats in nice shoes, over the black driveway, kicking rain from the grass in the backyard, and line up against a wooden fence. 8 Finally, one of us starts. Then one of us cracks a joke. Then all of us are laughing at this terrible salute as steam rises from the puddles we make in beds of mulch. ...