Between Seasons

Husbands shouldn't bury their wives. Women live longer, can survive alone, are stronger when they're old than their men are. At least he knew four years ago that that day would come. He had time to prepare for the sudden painful shock.

Fathers, though, should never have to bury their daughters. It's unnatural. But so is what happened through so much of the country, leaving it dead and worse than dead, polluting the land and the blood. No one yet understands how it happened: some evolution in the cells, a virus, God's judgment? They may never know. He doesn't care. Doesn't matter what the seed is, only the crop it produces. So when travel reopened east of the Mississippi, he was the first to buy a ticket, and now he waits at LaGuardia for his escort.

And there's a sign with his name. The woman looks like autumn walking, skin drawn tight over her cheekbones, lines around hollowed eyes, gray like frost touching her temples. He guesses her at about forty or so. She introduces herself politely, her voice hoarse. "We're all so sorry for your loss," she says. "She was a good woman. I wish I could have known her better."

He waits until she's behind the wheel of a beat-up black pickup before he asks, "How did she…"

She doesn't answer for a while. "We were ambushed," she finally admits. "It was dark. Things were chaotic. We couldn't save her." There are words she's not saying. There's time she's not discussing. He wonders how long his stubborn daughter held on to life. She would. She valued it too much.

But the terse words tell him not to push the question. They drive in silence across Queens, through Brooklyn, towards Manhattan, past empty hulks and churned earth. Bodies are still scattered in and along the road, waiting their turn to be buried or burned. Once, his guide rolls down the window, pulls a gun, fires a single shot at an oncoming zombie, and closes the window in a smooth series of motions. He looks over his shoulder at the body. It was someone's child once, wasn't it? Had to be. Everyone's someone's child.

He was right to come here. This is not and never was the proper place for his daughter. The only things that grow up tall and strong here are the soulless skyscrapers of metal and glass that reveal nothing about themselves and too much about all around them. Plant anything here, it would come up weak and frail, blocked from the sun, blocked from the earth. He couldn't have left her here, left her in this thin silt over cold bedrock coated by concrete, in this city that lives such unnatural lives.

The woman doesn't use a lot of words when she describes the last few months. He's not surprised by most of the retelling. She knew his daughter a mere few months; he knew her for almost twenty-three years. So he knows that she would be fearless in the face of danger, that she would put herself in harm's way to protect her companions, that she worked hard and only complained if she could make light of something while doing it, that she knew exactly what to say to make things seem better than they were, that her trust wasn't gained easily but was total when it was finally earned, that she was far less imposing as a person than her size would ever indicate. The only thing that surprises him is the last thing she says, spoken as they cross the tired old bridge into Manhattan. "She still loved. All the way up to the end, she believed in love."

They end up at the south end of what has to be Central Park, across from a windowless building like a giant grave marker. They're not the only ones there when they get out of the car. There's a palely grim couple, and a haunted woman dark as good topsoil, and a big pine box that they're putting in the truck bed. His escort eyes him apologetically before approaching the couple and offering a few brief, emotional, heartfelt words of condolence. The dark woman, busy with her work, still acknowledges him with a nod. Her timeless face is impassive, but he imagines that she grieves.

There's another big pine box. His daughter. The autumn woman sighs when she steps back over to him. "If things had been different… better… maybe all our paths would have crossed for happier reasons," she murmurs.

She's strong for her slender frame, and together they put what remains of his daughter in the truckbed. A wooden plaque lies on the ground where the coffin was, maybe ash or maybe just plywood, and the autumn woman retrieves it to give to him. "We couldn't not acknowledge her, or any of them," she explains quietly. "At least we could bury them."

He turns it over in his hands, studying the streaks of dirt and the pebbles that have glued themselves to the underside, these little pieces of New York that will travel back with him and her. It's hard to write elegantly with a carving knife, but the letters are straight and neat, deeply engraved. Her name is on it, of course, and dates of birth and death that are far too close together. Below those, in smaller, even more careful print, is a line that sounds like poetry: though only within these green boundaries do we live and remain uncertain of love. The strikethrough seems like a recent addition, cut through as an afterthought. The revised sentiment seems more appropriate, though.

His escort looks at him with her eyes that have seen pain and horror and says softly, "If you're going to do anything, make sure it's closed casket. For everyone's sake. If you see her like this, it'll haunt you the rest of your life." She glances away and he's sure that he's not actually supposed to hear her say, "It does me, and I never will forget."

But he knows that he'll have to face it one of these days, when he and his little girl (they're always little girls, no matter how big they get) head home to the farm. Big pine boxes are fine for memorials, and for going on the road, but they keep out the rest of the world, and that isn't, can't be, won't be, the way things work in his family. From dust they all come, to dust they will all return. That's the way the world works. He can't just leave her in a box, isolated from the land that gave her life. No matter what happened to change her, no matter what destroyed her and ended her life, she could never cause harm to her home ground.

So when he takes his daughter home, he'll have to open the coffin and face whatever horrible injuries she suffered before she died. He'll see the gruesome decay and whatever's left of the face she took from him. He'll see it and accept it, because this is one of the natural processes of life. All things return to the earth, and why should she be any different? When he buries her, she'll go back to the earth, dissolve and be gone, except that no one is ever really gone so long as they are remembered.

He's got a same-day round trip ticket back home, or as close as he can get to one. It's not safe to stay the night in New York, although he suspects he could survive it with help from this muted autumn woman who's already back behind the wheel. Survive it, but why should he? The city is foul. It stinks of death, but more, it reeks of sulphur, old exhaust, old smoke and smog that cling to the empty walls, all the things he and his have always sought to avoid. It's too artificial to stand.

There was a time when he thought she would be his heir, that she would remain by his side and create her own family on their land, but she drifted away and grew up tall and strong somewhere else, never forgetting her roots but stretching to distant skies. There are others of his name and blood who'll tend to the land when he's passed on, strong sons and another daughter, but this loss still stings. Whatever might have been, she's coming home now to become one with the land that nurtured her, that will nurture her nieces and nephews to grow as tall and as strong as their potential can take them.