On Account of the Wind | Edie Meade
Josh’s uncle Bud met us in the parking lot of his mother’s apartment complex. He had identified Mary’s body so Josh wouldn’t have to. Bud was a millionaire now, he told us matter-of-factly. I waited for a wink, but he was evidently serious. Business idea took off, now he has a houseboat and a horse farm south of Lexington. Bud’s eyes bulged but he didn’t elaborate on his million-dollar business idea. We didn’t have to worry about a thing. He was taking care of the cremation expenses for his big sister. Mary wanted her ashes spread in the Daniel Boone. Josh and his brother could scatter them off the biggest arch in the park. She always liked sitting up there on the big stone bridge, looking out over the hills. “Shit, man,” Bud chuckled. “I’m sorry.” We stubbed gravel around on the pavement, not thinking anymore about bridges. We talked about boats and horses, bluegrass country rich guy things.
The coroner arrived with paperwork and condolences and we entered Mary’s apartment together. She was clearly having some kind of crisis on her last day. Along the edges of her coffee table, she had arranged dull little steak knives at right angles. Josh picked one up and meditated over the rivets dotting the age-grayed wooden handle. “I remember these,” he Murmured.
“Feel free to take anything out of her with you today,” the coroner said. “The landlord wants it cleared out by the end of the month.”
Josh slipped the steak knives into his shirt pocket beside his inkpen and groaned. Bud ran his forefinger along the brim of an invisible hat. “I got a guy with a trailer,” he said around a cigarette. “Don’t worry about it.”
Mary’s apartment was little more than one room with a kitchen nook and a bathroom. She did her eating, sleeping, most everything on the couch. Candles, illegibly scrawled envelopes, mementos of some confused Catholic prayer cluttered the center of the table around an empty potpie tin.
Josh and I balanced on the front edge of the couch where his mother had last slept. Behind me, a flat cushion recorded the groove left by her head, where a few wavy silver hairs still shone like tinsel.
The coroner, a large man in gentle church pastels, leaned off the arm of an easy chair to offer his assessment: She was probably hallucinating. She didn’t know where she was when she asked to be let out at the bridge. It was windy, and she was only ninety pounds. Perhaps a sudden gust of wind made her fall from the barrier wall onto the railroad tracks.
She suffered a blunt force injury to her internal organs and ribs, he told us. Josh pressed his hands into his eye sockets.
The coroner pulled out the paperwork. Her body was in good condition. Two brothers, Mexican day laborers who walked the railroad tracks to work, found her lying on the weedy embankment and called the police. She passed just as if she’d gone to sleep. Bud leaned against the doorjamb of the apartment, smoking. “She did look peaceful,” he grunted, and launched his cigarette into the parking lot.
The coroner touched a votive candle on the table. Because she was Catholic, and her family wished for a service in the church, he would rule the death accidental. On account of the Wind.
Edie Meade is a writer, artist, and mother of four in Huntington, West Virginia. She is passionate about literacy and collects books like they’re going out of style. Say hi on Twitter @ediemeade or https://ediemeade.com/.