18
Will shouts at me. I hear his voice, but not his words.
Cousin Carol speaks.
But the wall between me and the funeral home is impregnable. The gears of my brain turn as I stare at Father’s body and imagine what happened after he died.
Someone found the night watchman dead.
The local coroner pronounced him dead at a glance and shipped him off to the closest relatives.
The Malacaster mortician surely noticed the broken neck. But nobody in town would care if that troublemaker William Salton busted anything, including his neck. Father had spent a whole bunch of summer nights on the sagging porch of our ramshackle home, drinking and smoking and shouting at anyone passing by. Father attracted enemies like our house attracted ants.
I hand-select my enemies. I curate who to piss off, and
