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mind all the small, teeming creatures that thrived below the sod - beetles, worms, and quick-moving things for which he had no names.
     Joey turned away from the grave, pushed through the hundred or more mourners who had come from the church to the cemetery, and stumbled down the hill, through the ranks of tombstones. He took refuge in the rental car.
     Suddenly he was able to breathe in great gasps, and he found his voice at last. "Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God."
     He must be losing his mind. Twenty years of all-but-constant inebriation had screwed up his brain beyond repair. Too many cells of gray matter had died in the long bath of alcohol.
     He was so far gone that only another taste of the same sin would give him surcease. He took the flask from his coat pocket.
     Aware that a month's worth of gossip was in the making, the startled mourners at the grave site must have followed his stumbling flight with considerable interest. No doubt many, afraid of missing the next development, were still risking the disapproval of the priest by glancing downhill toward the rental car.
     Joey didn't care what anyone thought. He didn't care about anything any more. Except whiskey.
     But his dad still wasn't buried. He had promised himself that he would remain sober until the interment was complete. He had broken uncounted promises to himself over the years, but for reasons that he could not quite define, this one was more important than any of the others.
     He didn't open the flask.
     Uphill, under the half-bare limbs of the autumn-stripped trees, beneath a bruised sky, the casket slowly descended into the uncaring earth.
     Soon the mourners began to leave, glancing toward Joey's car with unconcealed interest.
     As the priest departed, several small whirlwinds full of dead leaves spun through the cemetery, exploding over headstones, as if angry spirits had awakened from an uneasy rest.
     Thunder rolled across the heavens. It was the first peal in hours, and the remaining mourners hurried to their cars.
     The undertaker and his assistant removed the motorized casket lift and the black plastic skirt from around the open grave.
     As the storm resumed, a cemetery worker in a yellow rain slicker stripped the tarp and flowers from the mound of excavated dirt.
     Another worker appeared behind the wheel of a compact little earthmoving machine called a Bobcat. It was painted the same shade of yellow as his raincoat.
     Before the open grave could be flooded by the storm, it was filled - and then tamped down by the tread of the Bobcat.
     "Goodbye," Joey said.
     He should have had a sense of completion, of having reached the end of an important phase of his life. But he only felt empty and incomplete. He had not put an end to anything - if that was what he had been hoping to do.

    5

BACK AT HIS FATHER'S HOUSE, HE WENT DOWN THE NARROW STEPS FROM the kitchen to the basement. Past the furnace. Past the small water heater.
     The door to P.J.'s old room was warped by humidity and age. It squealed against the jamb and scraped across the sill as Joey forced it open.
     Rain beat on the two narrow, horizontal casement windows that were set high in one basement wall, and the deep shadows were not dispersed by the meager storm light. He flicked the switch by the door, and a bare overhead bulb came on.
     The small room was empty. Many years ago, the single bed and the other furniture must have been sold to raise a few dollars. For the past two decades, when P.J. came home, he had slept in Joey's room on the second floor, because there had been no chance that Joey would pay a visit and need it himself.
     Dust. Cobwebs. Low on the .walls: a few dark patches of mildew like Rorschach blots.
     The only items of proof that remained of P.J.'s long-ago residence were a couple of movie posters