Chapter 12

Castro finally released us, making sure he had our satellite phone numbers and directions to the camp, when the crime scene team reported that they were stuck behind a traffic accident west of Ludlow and didn't know when they'd be able to reach us. That at least told me they weren't coming from Needles. It didn't tell me what they were going to do when they arrived, and by the time we got back to camp I really didn't care. I was just glad to get away. If I'd wanted to run into dead bodies on vacation I'd have visited the morgue.

It was still early evening, or perhaps late afternoon, since it was still bright, when we got back. I tossed my backpack on the picnic table and sat down beside it, my boots resting on the bench. Cecelia went into the shed to check supper supplies, and Darlia sat down next to me. "Daddy," she said, "what happens to people when they die?"

"It depends, 'Lia. Some go to heaven, and some don't."

"But what happens to the bodies?" For some reason the emphasis she put on that last word reminded me of a scene in the movie Interview With the Vampire. I shook that thought off and concentrated on my daughter.

"Ah." We'd talked about death before, but not that aspect of it. "Well, usually people die in cities, and they embalm the body, and bury it. I wonder," I said, the thought coming to me suddenly, "what the embalming chemicals do to the environment."

"And what happens," Darlia asked, "if they don't embalm the body?"

"The short version is that it rots."

"Just like meat if you leave it out?"

"Exactly like that."

"People who die – their bodies I mean – are just like meat."

I grinned, a bit sourly, but it was a grin. "When the spirit leaves a body – which is what happens when someone dies – the body is meat. Bacteria and animals eat on it, and it's just like they were eating on a rabbit or a deer."

"But we respect dead people."

I knew that here I was going to have to be careful, for my views aren't exactly those of the rest of the country. Shoot, they're not even those of my wife. "The person who died, 'Lia, isn't there anymore. That body back there is just a body – it's just meat. The person is gone. There's no ghost. He's not resting in peace, he's not resting uneasily. Wherever he is, he doesn't know what's happening to his body and he doesn't care. So really, respecting the body isn't all that important."

I looked over at Darlia, and saw that she was concentrating on what I was saying. That was good, for I wanted her to understand me, at least to the extent a 10-year-old can understand such things. "What I respect is the living. I don't know that man back there, but he probably had brothers and sisters, parents, maybe he had a wife and children. Maybe there are cousins, aunts and uncles. And to them it matters very much how we handle his body. They don't know, yet, what's happening. They don't know where he is. But when they find out, if we've treated his body like, oh, let's say like just a piece of meat, it will hurt them. It won't hurt the man who died, but it will hurt his family. And that I won't do. There's enough hurt in knowing he's dead, and I'm not going to make it worse by treating him lightly."

Darlia nodded. "I think a lot of this is maybe over my head, Daddy," she said, in that dignified mature way she has. "But I won't forget what you said. And when I'm more grownup prob'ly I'll understand it."

"I'm sure you will, 'Lia."

She thought for a while, her fingers playing with the hem of her jeans. "Daddy," she finally said, "what will you do if Mommy dies?"

While we'd been talking Cecelia had come quietly back, so gently that I'd hardly been aware of her opening packages and starting to cook. Now I looked down at her, and saw her black eyes looking brightly up at me. Still looking at the face that fills my heart, I said slowly, "If Mommy dies, Darlia, it will break my heart."

"Will you cry?"

Now I turned to my daughter. I took her hand and held it in both of mine, noting how my darkly tanned skin was subtly different from the golden tint of her own. "I would cry until I couldn't cry anymore, and then ... then, Darlia, I think maybe I'd die."

"Would you ever get married again?"

I suppose it was natural that she'd ask all these questions. It was, after all, the first time she'd ever seen a body that wasn't embalmed and in a coffin, and at that she'd only been to two funerals. "I can't imagine that I ever would. If Mommy died right now – and I pray to God that she lives forever – but if she died right now I can't see how I could ever get married again even if I lived forever. But the truth is, Darlia, that I might."

"So I would have two mommies?"

I was careful with this answer too. "You would have two mommies if you wanted to. A stepmother isn't the same as a mother. Now Abraham Lincoln loved his stepmother just like she was really his mother. Other people hate their stepmothers. Probably most are in between. You'd have to find your own heart on that. If I ever got married again, I hope you would love my new wife – as a friend, if not as a mother. And Darlia," I said, looking into her eyes, "I would never get married again to someone you couldn't stand. I would never do that to you. And I would never tell you that a new wife was your mother and you had to accept her that way."