Free Blood Men by Paul Cleave Page B

full of dirty banknotes and she’d hug me and tell me everything was going to be okay. Eventually it wasn’t okay for her—she hated what she was doing, and the only way she could live with herself was to dull the pain, and that’s when the drugs took hold of her. She moved out of our grandparents’ house when she was sixteen but she came back every few days to see me. She always brought me something. Either a candy bar or a comic. She’d help me with my homework. She was always clean when she came visiting—or always looked clean—but sometimes she had the shakes, like she hadn’t had a fix in a few days. My grandparents were in the wrong generation to notice what was happening, and I was too young to know what caused it.
    Then one week she didn’t come to visit. Then another week went by. Eventually the cops came. It was like that Wednesday morning all over again. They pulled into the street and knocked on the door and my life changed the same way it had every other time I saw them.
    Sam is given a thousand hugs, almost all of them ending with the other person crying. Sam becomes numb to the tears. She’s adorable in her little black dress and makes me want to cry every time I see her. She knows what’s going on, but at the same time she doesn’t know. She’s been told Mummy has gone to Heaven, but a few times she’s asked if Mummy will be coming home overChristmas to visit. I wish I could cancel Christmas. I hate that the rest of the city gets something to enjoy.
    Jodie’s coffin is covered in flowers. Most of the church is. The accountant in me is wondering how much all of this is costing, and thinking how death must be the most profitable business in the world since we all get around to doing it sooner or later. The father inside of me holds Sam’s hand tightly the entire time, drawing strength from her. The man inside me hurts, he’s screaming inside, he’s dying inside, he’s confused, and he doesn’t know what his future holds. The service lasts an hour. People come out of it saying it was “nice,” but it’s not the word I’d use. I don’t know what it is. Certainly not nice. “Devastating,” might be better. “Confusing” would work too. “Nice” seems to trivialize it.
    Six people carry Jodie’s coffin outside. Her dad, her two brothers, and three friends. Their faces are strained but I don’t think it’s from the coffin being heavy. Her brothers had to fly in from different parts of the country and tomorrow will fly back out. I keep a firm grip on Sam’s hand as we walk behind them. Sam keeps a tight grip on her teddy bear with the other hand. The coffin is shiny and new and sure won’t be that way in a few hours from now. I wonder how heavy it is, what kind of percentage of the weight is from my wife.
    We reach the hearse. It’s shiny and black, while death is dull and black. The rear door is open, waiting for her, waiting for the men to slide my wife inside as if they were furniture movers. The door closes, then we all seem to stand around for a minute or two, not really sure what to do next until we all kind of figure it out, and the hearse leaves and we follow it. We all drive in a row, our headlights on, Jodie leading the way. It’s about a kilometer of winding road between the church and Jodie’s new home so the drive is short and I’m not sure why no one walked. We find the missing occupants of the media vans about thirty meters from the grave, some with cameras set up on tripods, others on shoulder mounts. These people don’t have any respect for Jodie, or for Sam or for myself, and none at all for the situation. They don’t care about our loss, they care only about ratings, and the thing I know for certain in this world is that one day these people will become victims to their ownstories. One day somebody, maybe some other son of a serial killer, will pick these vultures off one by one. But that day is in the future, and today Sam is the granddaughter of a serial