Eventide

by Landon Miller

Murray let out a long sigh as he finished off the last of his second cup of coffee. He was finding it particularly difficult to get moving this morning—only partially because of the heavy, wet snow that blanketed his long driveway. As he looked out the window, he made a mental list of what his morning would hold: firing up the garden tractor to plow the lane, feeding the shop cat, and stocking plenty of dry firewood for the week to come. While it was Sunday, he’d surely have customers arriving again Monday morning.

            Murray’s home was modest and unassuming. The wood-paneled bungalow and matching workshop sat nestled at the back of the wooded yard, laden with dense yet meticulously pruned elm trees. Under the thick snow covering was a well-trodden dirt laneway and the remnant of a sprawling garden in the front yard. If the man’s business had any competition, the yard would likely be forgotten entirely, disappearing into the landscape of similar farmyards speckling the county. This impending anonymity was alluring to Murray, who’d love to see the day his yard would cease being invaded by entitled sportsmen. As it stood, he assumed his role as the town’s only taxidermist and did his work with pride.

            Taxidermy wasn’t a craft many rushed to take up. Death made people uncomfortable and so they preferred to have someone else accomplish the messy tasks. They wanted the hunt, the venison dinner, and the impressive rack mounted on their wall, but preferred not to acknowledge that a life needed to end to enjoy these luxuries. Thus, Murray was afforded the favourable arrangement of being left alone to his work.

            As the aged man pulled on his boots, he grumbled to himself. Not about the chores in front of him, as he actually enjoyed the mundane tasks he accomplished in the morning. Plowing snow, mowing grass, and repairing fences allowed him to right his surroundings. He knew what to expect from them and took pride in the orderly yard when summer rolled around. All it was lacking were the colourful flowers that once lined the front yard. After years of them being absent, the yard still seemed incomplete without them.

No, the annoyance this morning came from his afternoon plans. In a few short hours, he would be driving into town to attend a funeral. While he didn’t know the young woman well, he struggled to imagine a less enjoyable way to spend a Sunday. All of Woodbrook’s many characters shoehorned into that country church for an afternoon of feigning sadness and offering banal platitudes. He would inevitably be met with the choice of nauseating small talk or awkwardly standing alone, and he’d likely try both before being able to escape back home. Alas, the young lady’s father was a recurring customer of his and had asked him to be there, so Murray would play his part in the town’s depressing performance.   

#

As Murray’s old pickup truck rounded into a parking spot at the back of the church’s parking lot, his shoulders slumped. The snow still fell slowly and collected on top of the cemetery’s gravestones like eroded cliff faces. He could see a shovelled path leading to a singular fresh grave equipped with a metal frame. While cemeteries gave the illusion that these graves had always been there, Murray knew well that each of these had also once been fresh.

            Inside St. Michael and All Angels’ Anglican Church sat seemingly every resident of Woodbrook and surrounding area—arranged from front to back by level of sorrow. Local farmers and townsfolk shared handshakes and head nods at the back of the sanctuary while a priest in long robes spoke a quiet word to a middle-aged couple in the front pew. The woman’s shoulders quivered with a quiet whimpering as her husband shook the priest’s hand in thanks.

            To the left of the couple, sat a young man in a well-tailored, black suit. He thumbed a gold ring and stared at his hands unblinkingly, only looking up occasionally to acknowledge a well-meaning neighbour or school teacher coming to offer condolences. In hushed conversations around the room, eyes flicked in his direction. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-two.

            “Welcome all, and thank you for braving the weather to be here today. I know it speaks volumes to the family to be surrounded by their community in a time like this.” Reverend White looked out over the congregation before motioning to the front pew. “Katherine leaves us her lovely parents, Valerie and Clarke, as well as her husband, Henry. She also leaves us with the memories which we all cherish. Memories of a smiling, giggling baby being baptized in this very church. Memories of an energetic, curly-haired girl collecting wildflowers or delivering Christmas cookies. Memories of a beautiful young woman in a white dress.” Henry pulled awkwardly at his shirt collar, head still down.

#

After a full day of moving boxes, Henry reclined on the back steps of the tiny white shack and surveyed what he would one day call home. Their new backyard was a mere few yards of grass before fading into a field of newly budding canola. The sun was lowering and the entirely uninterrupted horizon still made Henry feel a bit uneasy. When Katherine first described her childhood dream home to him, she described the view as magnificent, with a sky that never ends. Her perspective was helping it to grow on him.

            As Katherine sank in next to her husband and laid her head on his shoulder, Henry felt a weight lifted from him rather than added. Moving to this tiny, rural community had been a stretch for him. He missed the anonymity of city living, where there were simply too many people for any one of them to be considered an outsider. Here, he was still considered an “other” and while this would likely change, it weighed heavy in these first days. Still, he was hopeful. Being with Katherine had taught him that being seen could be a good thing.

            The sun had made contact with the horizon and sent ripples of orange and pink reflecting off of clouds and painting the evening sky. She was right; it really was beautiful.

            “Henry David Chamberlain, don’t you dare!” Katherine plucked his phone away just as the camera app opened. “You will sit here and enjoy this glorious view like a real human with your real human eyeballs”

            “I am! That’s why I want a picture, so I can continue to enjoy it later.”

            Katherine cocked her head at him. “You and I both know that a picture won’t capture what is in front of you. It’s temporary; that’s what makes it special.”

#

Murray saw more dead bodies in an average month than most people would see in their whole lives. Most were foxes, elk or the occasional rainbow trout, but they had a lot in common with people. As Murray watched the other guests walk up to peer into the casket and say their final goodbyes, he knew he wasn’t missing much. Partly because he hardly knew this girl, and partly because so much of her was missing from that big wooden box. A person was more than their body. This was not a new revelation; everyone knows this, but still, viewings have a way of tricking people. They treasured these moments as if some semblance of the person they loved was still there. Maybe seeing them like that provided some kind of closure, maybe it was just a motion to go through.

            As the line of people took turns stopping quietly above the open box, they also passed Henry. The young man sat planted in the same pew he had since arriving. He had no desire to join this line. He had seen a whole life behind those eyes and doubted that seeing them closed today could add to what he already knew. It was the most beautiful experience, but it was over now.

#

As the funeral moved towards the graveside, the attending party seemed to shrink in size. It seemed as though the frigid temperatures and persistent snowfall convinced many that their social obligation was fulfilled and they could go about with their normal lives. Murray debated following suit, but decided to stay. He hadn’t been to the cemetery yet this week, and so he took his regular scenic route amongst the gravestones.

            When Murray rejoined the funeral procession, the last few family members were starting to walk away, except for one. Henry stood looking into the grave—a six-foot-deep hole that managed to fit his entire world. To Murray’s knowledge, the young man had not spoken more than a few words all day. More yet, he had not shed a tear. The townsfolk who came to the funeral had whispered about how strange this was. Not knowing how to react, most of them continued to treat the man as normal, by keeping him at a distance. To Murray, this response made perfect sense. Disbelief, confusion, anger, and sorrow had likely racked this man for a week now; to ask him to put on a face today would be ridiculous and cruel. Besides, his sole connection to this place and people lay in that wooden box. He owed them nothing.

            Murray was not entirely sure why he approached, but he needed to say something. He was no sage, and hardly knew Henry, but still, he felt compelled to speak. It was the simple magnetism of shared experience, to know that you are not unique in your strife. As he approached the young man and peered into the hole alongside him, Henry spoke first.

            “I guess you’re probably pretty comfortable with all this. Death and whatnot.”

            “Familiar, I suppose.”

            “Well, then you must have some earned wisdom to share. Go ahead.”

            Murray wished he did, honestly. He thought something would come to him on the walk over but he had nothing. What did he actually believe about this experience? What did he want this young man to know? As he thought, his eyes drifted to the end of the cemetery he had just returned from. Something deep in the pit of his stomach ached. It had been years and that feeling had yet to fade.

            “My wife really liked flowers,” Murray said, eyes still fixed on the hole. “Potted, cut, dried. Didn’t matter, she loved ‘em all. She’d even plant this massive sunflower garden in the front yard.”

            Henry shifted his weight from foot to foot, his hands stayed planted firmly in the pockets of his wool dress coat.

            “I couldn’t stand it,” Murray said. “She had me hauling water from the well nearly every day for these damn sunflowers to grow. After a summer of watering, the sunflowers would finally bloom in late August.”

            “Why did you hate it?” Henry asked, looking up from the hole for the first time. “A yard full of sunflowers sounds lovely.” Distracted by the story, his mood seemed to lift.

            “Oh it was; she reminded me of that every day.” Murray chuckled, “I hated it because three weeks later, those sunflowers would start to look down and their colour would fade. By the end of September, they were all dead. All the prepping, planting, and watering we had done since spring was for nothin.’”

            It was January, and as such, the late afternoon sun was beginning to set. Shades of magenta emanated from behind the trees lining the cemetery.

            “Still she loved the process of raising those flowers. Every year she waited desperately for the day those big golden heads would open up. They would look up and do their best imitation of the sun, and while I would complain, they were every bit as beautiful as she said they would be.” Murray sighed, he wasn’t sure he’d told this story out loud before. “Every morning we would sit on the porch and enjoy that view. They were special because we knew they weren’t always gonna be there.”

#

Murray wiped his brow as he let go of the warn, metal pump handle. The water tank in the back of his truck took several minutes of pumping to fill but the sloshing line at the top of the large plastic tank told him this task was complete. The sun shone through Murray’s carefully manicured trees and the recently cropped lawn was loving it. He drove around to the front of his house and stopped the truck in front of the porch. Out of the door walked a young man, pulling on a set of leather gloves.

            “You know, I expected there to be more antlers and stuffed animals in your house. Maybe a bear rug or something,” Henry said, climbing into the passenger seat.

            Murray scoffed, “Too cliche. You think a surgeon wants to come home to an operating room?”

            As the two men planted seeds and watered the garden, they faded from working silently to chatting to laughing and back again. They shared stories about the women who brought them together. They worked all day to ensure that this year, those sunflowers towered in Murray’s front yard. At the end of their work, the men rested on the front porch. As they did, they could see orange and yellow taking over the sky as the sun began to set.