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Funeral

Daniel stood on the second floor landing in bare feet. Hidden by the shadows, his head rested on the newel post. Light from below revealed his arms and hands. They hung at his sides. Maybe his eyes were open.

Daniel's father looked at him from the bottom of the stairs. He thought the boy's legs were skinny. "I am listening," he said.

Back and forth and pressing it down, Daniel rolled his head on the spiraled wood. "They said 'Idiot.' It was quiet, but I heard them laugh and say it."

"At the grave?"

"I already told you that."

An itch developed behind his father's ear, and Daniel saw him reach up and scratch it. He also saw the pack of cigarettes in the pocket of his shirt. Now the finger that had scratched behind his ear moved along the bannister, following his hand, and the fingernail caught on a paint chip. Daniel noticed that a flake of white paint fell to the floor.

"It was good that you went."

"They made us."

The TV was on in the living room. Neither Daniel nor his father could make out what was on -- whether it was a program or a commercial. The moment dragged on without either speaking. Daniel's arms and hands seemed gone; soon it would be his kneecaps. He didn't move as the light changed.

"Why didn't they let us see him in the casket?"

Blue light from the living room grew bright and danced on the carpet by the first step. It would be even brighter soon.

"Why didn't they let us seem him?" Daniel said, and he lifted his head so that he was standing straight now.

But his father's fingernail had old paint under it. It had pierced the skin, and he used a nail from his other hand to sweep it out. He wiped his finger on his pants. A car's horn outside and a sudden change on the TV coincided. The weight of the cigarettes, he felt it then. He coughed and glanced up at Dan's ankles as he stepped away from the stairs toward the front door.

An early large moon rose and glowed -- the mirror image of the end of his first cigarette. A neighbor raked leaves a few houses down, but when the moon had backed away to its normal size, an ornament hanging on bare sycamore branches, the street was quiet. He turned when Daniel's shape blotted out the flashing images of men and women smiling at a table of hand-held vacuums: It was the profile of his son's body -- his shoulder to the TV, his face turned toward the wall and then shifting to the window. He dragged again at what he held in his hand. The tip of it touched the blank space thrown out from the living room.

Later he came in and paused at the stairs. The vacuums had been replaced with pairs of forearms wearing jewelry that sparkled as the arms rotated back and forth. In the bedroom, he laid himself down without a sound on top of the blanket. He put the palms of his hands on each thigh and it was at that moment he remembered the way Daniel's slacks made his legs look. The way the creases at the front of each ankle reached out like the center points of tents, leaving too much area behind -- a gaping hole behind. And in his mind he saw the creases grow out, expand, yawn toward him, and this image: Daniel lying with his back to infomercials, the dress clothes on, dreams forming, catching, releasing -- a closed casket, a snigger, a minute burning moon framed in the window...

He rolled away from the bedroom door. Maybe his eyes were open.

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