Free Favorite Sons by Robin Yocum Page A

right.”
    â€œDon’t get weak.”
    I shook my head. “I won’t.” But I wish he had not planted that seed of doubt.
    *    *    *
    The Williamson & Keller Funeral Home was just half a block up Ohio Avenue from my house, catty-corner from the post office, and clearly visible from our sunroom. Ralphie Ketchum opened the front door and greeted us as we stepped onto the porch.
    The viewing room was full of Sanchez kids and kin. Five of the tiny-faced older siblings were married and had kids of their own, several of whom ran around the visitation room, squealing and smearing snot across their faces with the backs of their hands. Uncles,aunts, and cousins also filled the room, creating a humming maze around the casket. The men and boys had clean white shirts and dirty dress shoes, their hair held into place with cream that smelled of antiseptic. They stooped at the shoulders and shoved their hands deep into their pants pockets, and greeted you with soft, limp handshakes. Some women wore stretch pants and white shirts that stretched at the bosom, while others wore sleeveless dresses that exposed thin, milky arms and dark moles. The women all hovered around Mrs. Sanchez, who sat with a framed school photograph of Petey on her lap and worked a soggy, balled up wad of tissue into the corners of her eyes. Mr. Sanchez stood in the back of the room, talking to his brother and clamping a paper coffee cup between his thumb and ring finger, which were the only digits remaining on that hand.
    When Mrs. Sanchez saw my mother, I could see her say, “Oh, there’s Mrs. Van Buren,” and she immediately stood, propped the photo of Petey on the chair, and came across the room. She began sobbing before she reached us and threw her arms around my mother’s neck. “It was so nice of you to come,” Mrs. Sanchez said, a tear running around the edge of her nose and into her mouth. She put her hand on the small of my mother’s back and, as if on cue, the sea of Sanchezes parted and opened a clear channel to the casket.
    Petey was laid out in a white shirt with an open collar and a brown sport coat that funeral director Bernard Williamson had donated from a collection of clothing he kept for indigents. The skin was stretched taut over his horrific overbite and the lips were so bent around the teeth that only a sliver of pink appeared. The hole in his forehead had been filled with putty and the skin stitched together and covered with makeup.
    â€œMr. Williamson did a nice job of covering up the hole in his forehead,” Lila said, speaking with the matter-of-fact casualness of someone explaining a repair to a dented fender. “You can hardly tell where it was.” She had to be kidding, I thought. It looked like it had been patched up by a second-grader. “I guess he put some kind of clay in there and then smoothed it out real nice and covered it with makeup.” As she spoke, Lila ran the back of her index finger gently down the length of the scar. “Mr. Williamson said if he’d been out in that heat much longer they wouldn’t have been able to show him.I’m glad they could, otherwise I’d never gotten to say goodbye to my boy.” She looked at me and smiled. “Don’t you think he did a good job on him?”
    I nodded my agreement and muttered, “Very nice.”
    â€œDo they have any idea what happened?” Mom asked.
    Lila shook her head. “Not yet. The coroner said he got hit right where he died. He said Petey didn’t last no time at all after he got hit, which I guess was a blessing.”
    As they continued to talk, I stood at attention before the casket and recalled that, including this visit, the last two times I had looked at Petey he had been lying on his back. As I tried to block the image of Petey lying in the high grass and weeds, my mind locked in on that moment after Petey had been struck, but before he