Page 41 of Snake

~oOo~

––––––––

They stopped by Petals, Leaves, and Bows—a cutesy fucking name, but he supposed cutesy worked for florists—and he left his mother in his truck while he picked up the arrangements he’d ordered. Claire Svenhard, the owner, gave him the kind of pitying smile he despised as she took his payment.

“How’s your mom doin’ today?” Claire asked.

Claire had lived in Signal Bend all of about five years. She didn’t know his family, as it was now or as it had been. She only knew she made graveside arrangements for them on a set schedule.

Cox hated the cloying, fake sympathy, so he neither answered her nor acknowledged her with eye contact. He took his damn flowers and left.

––––––––

~oOo~

––––––––

The town cemetery was attached to the Lutheran church, near the heart of town. Cox parked at the back of the lot and went around to help his mother out of his truck. Then he gathered the two wrapped arrangements. He stuck his elbow out, and his mother hooked her arm around it. Together, they walked through the carefully kept lawn traced with granite markers.

The stone mementoes nearest the church were two hundred years old and pitted, mottled, and mossy with age, each passing storm smoothing the letters away a little more. As the dotted lines of markers progressed, the stones smoothed out and began to gleam.

Cox and his mother walked past the middle of the cemetery and stopped on a low hill, near the shade of an old sycamore. Two markers, identical in style but ten years apart in age, sat side by side. A grassy space the size of two graves made a gap between these markers and the next: a place for Cox and his mother to spend eternity.

Cox unwrapped the smaller of the red-white-and-blue floral arrangements and placed it on the ground before the older marker. He stood holding the larger arrangement and watched as his mother dropped to her knees and put her hand over the name on the older marker: William Daniel Cox, Sr.

In addition to his dates of birth and death, the rest of his father’s marker read: MSGT, US Army Reserves. Killed in Action. Brave Warrior, Beloved Husband, Devoted Father. Dearly Missed.

Cox stared at his mother’s bowed back. He’d been only eight when his father had been killed in an Iraqi ambush, but he vividly remembered the life he’d had before that day. His life was divided into three phases, and in the first, the sunny phase, his family had been complete and happy—a loving father, a doting mother, two sons charging through a brightly blissful country life.

Then his father’s reserve unit had been activated and deployed. The second phase of Cox’s life, colorless as a stormy afternoon, had started when two Army officers, one of them a chaplain, showed up on their front porch. After that, life had quieted and slowed, had dimmed, but had eventually continued on in something like a ‘new normal.’ Billy and Danny’s mom had held it together, tried to fill the hole and be everything for them, and she’d done an okay job. There had been good times in the grey years.

He shifted his attention to the marker beside his father’s: William Daniel Cox, Jr. Cpl, US Army. Killed in Action. Brave Warrior, Beloved Son, Revered Brother. Desperately Missed.

The full dark of a winter midnight had descended on Cox and his mother when Billy came home in a flag-draped box.

Though Billy had been killed in Afghanistan, ten years after their dad had been killed in Iraq, Cox didn’t make a distinction, and neither did his mother. The same fucking war had taken them both. Billy had enlisted because their father had been killed in action. He’d wanted to honor him and ‘finish his job.’

He’d been twenty goddamn years old when a missile had vaporized the transport truck he’d been riding in. Not even old enough for a legal drink.

The second time a pair of uniformed officers showed up on the porch, Cox’s mother fell to the floor, and she’d never really stood up again. Every day since, for a solid twenty years, Cox had been doing what he could to keep her going, and waiting for the day his efforts would no longer be enough.

The five horrible days of every year, the days they came here to the cemetery: the birth and death days of his father and his brother, and the date of his parents’ anniversary. For his mother, those five days meant ten weeks or more of utter misery. This year, those weeks had spread out to encompass most of the calendar. Cox could feel her slipping away from him. Maybe thirty years of grief was all she could endure.

He wished he knew how to love her enough, need her enough, be enough for her to want to live. But he’d only been able to manage keeping her alive. Often he wondered if he was cruel to fight so hard to keep her here, but he couldn’t imagine letting her go.

He unwrapped the larger floral arrangement and set its basket on the ground before Billy’s marker. Today was the twentieth anniversary of his brother’s death.

When he crouched before the marker, his mom shifted position, scooting over to kneel at his side. She picked up his hand in both of hers and held it to her chest.

Stunned, Cox looked over. She was crying, but she was also trying to smile, one of those sweet, maternal smiles, full of weary but potent love, that he remembered from the years right after his dad was gone.

“I’m so sorry, Danny. I love you so much. I’m sorry I haven’t been strong for you the way you’ve been strong for me.”

He clamped his fingers around her hands. “You have been, Momma. I see how hard you fight. Thank you. I love you.”

She leaned toward him, and he caught her and drew her close, tucking her in his arm and under his chin. When her arms came around his waist and squeezed, Cox almost cried himself. She had not reached out for him like this in well more than a year; such touch had been rare since the day they’d walked away from Billy’s fresh grave.

At his first chance, he was calling Mel and telling him to find somebody else today. Abigail Freeman’s house could be engulfed in flames—no, the whole damn town could be burning to the ground, and Cox would not leave his mother today to help.

---