Free Apparition & Late Fictions: A Novella and Stories by Thomas Lynch

return. Only when her death seemed certain had they agreed to marry so that Harold could be her next of kin. Her family in Lansing was long estranged. None came during her sickness or after she died, though Harold made the requisitephone calls. Whatever happened between her and her family happened years ago, the detachment having achieved a point, apparently, of no return.
    Joan’s cancer took a year and a half from first diagnosis, to the surgery to remove a lung, through the radiation and chemo and eventual reoccurrence—the “irregularity,” they called it when it showed back up—to the morning last winter when, after an awful seizure, because it had grown into her brain, she died with Harold sitting helplessly by.
    After the burial he’d ordered a stone with her name and dates on it— Joan Winters Keehn —but he’d never seen it, though he passed the cemetery often enough: he never thought of her as there. But some nights over the past months, he’d go out in the motor home and sit at the table where they’d play gin rummy nights on the road; or he’d crawl into the bed where they had slept in their summer travels, pressed to one another, his right hand cupping her small left breast in their genial embrace. Some nights alone out there in the RV in the driveway, he’d wonder if it was time to take up drink again. So far he hadn’t on the advice that Joan herself had always given out, that there was no sadness that couldn’t be made more miserable by the addition of a Class A depressant. Still, the brand names of whiskeys were beginning to make their way onto the lists of names he kept—Jameson’s, Bushmills, Powers, and Paddy—with the names of birds and the names of caskets, the names of moons and towns and tribes and names of his lost wives.
    Harold Keehn could imagine Adam in the garden, that first index finger working overtime, assigning to every new thing he saw, fresh, orderly syllables—aardvark, apple, elephant, waterfall—as if to name it was to know it or own it or anyway to have, if not dominion over it, some consortium with it. Hewondered how it must have been when that first man first whispered “Eve” and the woman turned to look into his eyes.
    When Harold found himself at the south edge of Topinabee, the hum of the highway coming through the woods on his left and the moon on the water on his right, he knew he’d walked too far. How had he lost track of it all? And turning back to go the way he’d come, he wondered if there would be enough light left in the day for the way home. Even at his best pace it would take him nearly an hour. Suddenly he was aware of his body and its pains and aches. His knee was grinding, his feet aflame, the small of his back full of crippling twinges. He was fatigued. The air was getting colder now and the wind off the lake increasing. He resolved to keep, in spite of everything, a steady pace.
    He’d quit the casket trade at the right time, Harold thought. It was no longer the permanence and protection of the metal ones, or the warmth and natural attractions of the woods. Now it was all gimmicks and knickknacks. Interchangeable corner hardware—tackle boxes for fishermen, plastic mum plants for gardeners, little faux carrots and kitchen utensils for women who cooked, all molded in plastic—How silly, he thought. And “memory drawers”—the little box-within-the-box to put farewell notes and mementos in—smarmy malarkey thought up by “focus groups” and test markets. Back in his day it was the salesman on his rounds that came back with the best ideas. What the public wanted in a casket, Harold had told the honchos at home office, was a way to “get a handle” on it all—a death in the family—the once-in-a-lifetime aspect of it all. Trouble was it was the ultimate one-to-a-customer deal. And hard enough to get folks enthused about even the one.
    Now he was aware of the angling lights that lit the way before him. The golden rays of evening