Dog on the Cross by Aaron Gwyn Page B

cupped slightly around her eyes, as if shielding them from a glare. Although she’s gained weight in recent years, she’s still quite pretty—elegant eyebrows and skin, an oval face embedded with bright pupils. She’s nearly seventy and for thirty years has dyed her hair jet black. I study the crushed-velvet look of it and, after she’s meandered through various topics, turn the conversation toward the funeral, asking rather bluntly where she was. Not seeming to have understood my question, she gives me a puzzled look.
    â€œToday,” I explain. “Kenneth’s funeral.”
    She nods, and for a moment I’m not sure she’s going to respond. I’m about to begin a different approach when she tells me she’s not been feeling well.
    â€œWhat’s wrong? Is it your stomach?”
    â€œNo, no, Spencer. Just tired. Think I’m trying to get a cold.”
    She explains there’s a flu going around her church, a subject that leads to a series of fairly involved stories about people I’ve never met.
    The entire time she’s talking—and it’s often this way with us—I attempt subtle gestures to indicate I’d like to turn the discussion back to a previous topic: clear my throat, begin nodding, scoot to the edge of my chair. But this does nothing, and soon I’m forced to interrupt.
    â€œI really wish you’d been able to make it,” I tell her. “The service was nice.”
    She nods.
    â€œThey had more flowers than I’ve seen at a funeral, wreaths and stands of gardenias.”
    She says it does sound nice, asks if I’d like something to drink.
    â€œNo. Really, I’m—”
    â€œI just made a fresh pot of coffee and I have orange juice and prune. There are some beautiful apples I got on sale yesterday. Here,” she says, standing, “I want you to look at these.”
    I follow her into the kitchen, trying to figure a way of expressing my disappointment without causing an argument, watch her slice an apple neither of us will eat.
    She sets it on the table and we both pull back chairs, staring at the fruit, listening to the refrigerator hum. She begins to relate a conversation she had with a black man at the store, how she told him shedidn’t understand why they wanted to be called “African Americans.” I nod from time to time to indicate interest.
    After fifteen minutes have passed, I push back my chair and tell her I need to go, ask if she’d like me to take her to breakfast in the morning. She says she’s sorry, that she can’t, has to be up early to help with a yard sale at church.
    â€œYou know,” I warn her, “if you’re coming down with something, maybe you ought to take it easy for a few days. You don’t want to go and make it worse.”
    She looks up, creases her brow, and I can tell, for a moment, she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Then her forehead relaxes, and she reaches out to squeeze my arm.
    â€œI think I’ll be just fine,” she says.
    T WO WEEKS LATER —fast food and alimony, editorials that elicit calls from members of the city council—I’m standing in my driveway inspecting a metallic green truck. I’ve just learned that before he died, Uncle Kenneth visited his lawyer and had the vehicle assigned to me in his will. The truck is a 1970 Ford, an extended cab with dual exhaust and polished chrome mud flaps. It has a toolbox that runs the width of the bed, side mirrors the size of cutting boards. Paint is just beginning to flake around the gas cap, but for the most part the pickup is in excellent condition. Kenneth’s attorney called meabout it yesterday afternoon, and today—still dazed, full of skepticism and interest—I woke early and had a friend drive me out to get it. Sitting next to my Volkswagen, framed by lawn and pavement, it looks horribly out of place.
    I walk back inside, take a beer from