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Authors: John Sandford
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for anyone who saw anything, but we haven’t found anyone so far.’’
‘‘Did you talk to the fishermen out there? There are always a few . . .’’
‘‘Yeah, yeah, and we’ll talk to more of them tonight. But listen—I didn’t call to update you. We found O’Brien’s next of kin, an aunt and uncle out in Peru, Indiana. I don’t think they’re too well off, but, uh . . . They’d like to talk to you.’’
‘‘Me? What for?’’
‘‘I think they’d like you to make the arrangements for a funeral and so on . . .’’
She rubbed the back of her neck: ‘‘Aw, jeez . . .’’
‘‘Well, you’re the only friend we can find,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘There was nothing of value in his apartment—some electronic gear and an old bike, clothes. Anyway, I didn’t want to give them your unlisted phone number, but told them I’d ask you to call back.’’
‘‘All right, give me the number.’’ Nancy Odum answered the phone in Peru and passed it off to her husband, Martin. Martin Odum said, ‘‘We don’t fly, and it’s a long way to come to get a stereo set. If you could handle the arrangements, we’d be happy to pay you somethin’ for your time.’’
‘‘No, that’s okay,’’ Anna said, thinking, No it’s not . She’d never arranged a funeral, and hoped she’d never have to.
Martin Odum continued in the same glum tone: ‘‘His mother and father are buried here in Peru, we thought maybe . . . cremation? We could sprinkle the ashes on their graves. If that’d be okay with you.’’
‘‘I’ll take care of it,’’ Anna said. ‘‘He had a few hundred dollars coming from my company, I’ll use that for the cremation and to ship the remains. Uh, his stuff, do you want me to sell it? I don’t know how much I’d get, but I could send you whatever it is.’’
‘‘That’d be nice of you, ma’am.’’
They worked out the rest of the melancholy details, the phones making funny satellite sounds; and the Odums sounded as morose as Anna felt. When they were done, she hung up, mixed another drink, thought about making it a double and did. Back outside, sitting in the canvas chair, she let her mind drift: and it drifted, under the influence of the alcohol, to the last funeral she’d been to, so long ago . . .
Anna had grown up on a farm in south-central Wisconsin, a 480-acre corn operation that lay in the crook of the Whitewater River, not far from Madison.
Her mother was a piano teacher, and she’d died in an automobile accident when Anna was six. She could still remember the melancholy, almost gothic circumstances of the funeral at the small Baptist church, and the slow procession to the tiny graveyard down the dusty gravel road: how bright and warm the day had been, the red-winged blackbirds just beginning to flock, one particular bird perched on a cattail, looking her in the eye as the procession passed . . .
Death and music . . .
Anna was the best pianist at the University of Wisconsin– Milwaukee, the year she graduated. She moved to UCLA, and the year she took her MFA, she was one of the best two or three in the graduate school. Not good enough. To make it as a concert pianist, she would have had to have been the best in the world, in her year and a year or two before and after. As it was—one of the best at UCLA—she got session gigs; movie music.
She still played the hard stuff, out of habit, and, really, out of a kind of trained-in love. But in her one last semiregular gig, Sunday nights at the Kingsborough Hotel, she played a dusty, romantic, out-of-date jazz.
Her mother’s music: they’d played a piece of it at her funeral, and all those Wisconsin farm folks had thought it was a wonderful thing. Too early, half-drunk, Anna went to bed.
Alcohol never brought sleep.
Instead, it released unhappy images from some mental cage, and they prowled through her dreams, kicking old memories back to life. From time to time, half-awake, she’d imagine that she’d
‘‘Did you talk to the fishermen out there? There are always a few . . .’’
‘‘Yeah, yeah, and we’ll talk to more of them tonight. But listen—I didn’t call to update you. We found O’Brien’s next of kin, an aunt and uncle out in Peru, Indiana. I don’t think they’re too well off, but, uh . . . They’d like to talk to you.’’
‘‘Me? What for?’’
‘‘I think they’d like you to make the arrangements for a funeral and so on . . .’’
She rubbed the back of her neck: ‘‘Aw, jeez . . .’’
‘‘Well, you’re the only friend we can find,’’ Wyatt said. ‘‘There was nothing of value in his apartment—some electronic gear and an old bike, clothes. Anyway, I didn’t want to give them your unlisted phone number, but told them I’d ask you to call back.’’
‘‘All right, give me the number.’’ Nancy Odum answered the phone in Peru and passed it off to her husband, Martin. Martin Odum said, ‘‘We don’t fly, and it’s a long way to come to get a stereo set. If you could handle the arrangements, we’d be happy to pay you somethin’ for your time.’’
‘‘No, that’s okay,’’ Anna said, thinking, No it’s not . She’d never arranged a funeral, and hoped she’d never have to.
Martin Odum continued in the same glum tone: ‘‘His mother and father are buried here in Peru, we thought maybe . . . cremation? We could sprinkle the ashes on their graves. If that’d be okay with you.’’
‘‘I’ll take care of it,’’ Anna said. ‘‘He had a few hundred dollars coming from my company, I’ll use that for the cremation and to ship the remains. Uh, his stuff, do you want me to sell it? I don’t know how much I’d get, but I could send you whatever it is.’’
‘‘That’d be nice of you, ma’am.’’
They worked out the rest of the melancholy details, the phones making funny satellite sounds; and the Odums sounded as morose as Anna felt. When they were done, she hung up, mixed another drink, thought about making it a double and did. Back outside, sitting in the canvas chair, she let her mind drift: and it drifted, under the influence of the alcohol, to the last funeral she’d been to, so long ago . . .
Anna had grown up on a farm in south-central Wisconsin, a 480-acre corn operation that lay in the crook of the Whitewater River, not far from Madison.
Her mother was a piano teacher, and she’d died in an automobile accident when Anna was six. She could still remember the melancholy, almost gothic circumstances of the funeral at the small Baptist church, and the slow procession to the tiny graveyard down the dusty gravel road: how bright and warm the day had been, the red-winged blackbirds just beginning to flock, one particular bird perched on a cattail, looking her in the eye as the procession passed . . .
Death and music . . .
Anna was the best pianist at the University of Wisconsin– Milwaukee, the year she graduated. She moved to UCLA, and the year she took her MFA, she was one of the best two or three in the graduate school. Not good enough. To make it as a concert pianist, she would have had to have been the best in the world, in her year and a year or two before and after. As it was—one of the best at UCLA—she got session gigs; movie music.
She still played the hard stuff, out of habit, and, really, out of a kind of trained-in love. But in her one last semiregular gig, Sunday nights at the Kingsborough Hotel, she played a dusty, romantic, out-of-date jazz.
Her mother’s music: they’d played a piece of it at her funeral, and all those Wisconsin farm folks had thought it was a wonderful thing. Too early, half-drunk, Anna went to bed.
Alcohol never brought sleep.
Instead, it released unhappy images from some mental cage, and they prowled through her dreams, kicking old memories back to life. From time to time, half-awake, she’d imagine that she’d
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