The Pallbearers

Chapter 5

The Catholic priest was Father Mike Leary. He was a surfing buddy of Walts, and he kept the service loose and unstructured to go with Pops hang-ten personality. He started with a benediction and a few prayers, then launched right into a free-form discussion.

Memories of Walter Dix. Old surf stories, starting with the one about Pop almost getting eaten by a tiger shark just outside the break at Rincon. After the tigers first pass, Pop had started stripping off his wet suit, throwing it in the water. The suit ballooned with air and the tiger shark hit it hard, taking it to the bottom.

"That bad boy musta been shitting rubber for a week," our priest joked.

That loosened up the atmosphere and got the ball rolling. One by one, members of the congregation came up and added to the memories.

Jack Straw told a story about stealing candy out of a market two weeks after he was put in Huntington House. Pop found him hiding in his room that night, chowing down. He made Jack go back to the store and stood there while he confessed to the manager, who was so impressed, he gave Jack a part-time job as a box boy.

"After that, I was stealing so much candy, I went into business selling it to the rest of you jerks in the rec center," he joked.

We laughed at the stories. I had no funny stories to add. Pop had saved me, but there was nothing humorous about it. He had done it by steadfastly looking past my anger and giving me support and counsel. So I kept quiet and listened. The service was a trip into the past. Happy memories-pure Walter Dix.

After the stories, Father Leary pulled down a screen and turned on a video projector. Shots of long-ago Christmas parties flickered on white acetate. Lots of little kids sitting around in the rec center while Pop, as Santa, handed out presents.

Then it was Easter-egg hunts on the old dirt athletic field, which I assumed was gone now because Pop had told me on my last visit years ago that it was being replaced with expensive rubberized turf. There were pictures of half a dozen Halloween parties over the years, with twenty or more kids dressed for trick-or-treating. Pop was leading the festivities, an unlikely surfing Elvis in a black wig, high-collared Hawaiian shirt, and board shorts. He was helping kids into the vans to be taken to the rich neighborhoods, where we always went because the candy was safer and more plentiful.

The video shots were cobbled together from years' and years' worth of these events. Some in the chapel were crying at the loss, some were leaning forward, trying to catch glimpses of themselves. In the video, Pop's hair and clothes changed with the years, but he never seemed to get any older. In all of them, he looked just as I remembered him-happy, full of energy, involved in making our lives more bearable. It was hard not to marvel at the energy he had put into us.

One thought kept bugging me. How could a man so devoted decide to go out into his backyard and blow his head off with a shotgun? How could Pop have done that?

Alexa must have sensed my mood because she took my hand and squeezed it. I looked over, trying to find myself in all this, trying to come out of it more or less the way I went in. But my betrayal, if that's what it was, kept weighing heavily on me, causing emptiness and reevaluation.

After the service, I got up from the pew and, along with my fellow pallbearers, grasped the chrome rails of the heavy mahogany coffin. We lifted it up off its stand and, while a young man with stringy blond surf hair played a mournful song on the harmonica, carried the flower-laden box slowly out of the crowded church, making our way down the stone path.

I was on the left front, across from the badly dressed Jack Straw in his frayed tank top. I was keeping my eyes up, trying to give Walt's last journey the respect that I'd foiled to provide during his life.

We stopped at the hearse, and under the instructions of the black-suited driver, Jack and I set the leading edge of the coffin into a chrome tray on rollers. We then stepped aside as the next two behind us pushed the box into the shiny, humpbacked black Cadillac. Seriana Cotton and Sabas Vargas pushed the back end of the coffin into the hearse and stood with the rest of us as the driver closed the door.

"That's it," Diamond said. "There's no graveside service, so we don't go to the cemetery." She handed each of us a slip of paper. A computer printed invitation that read:

Please join us in celebration of a magnificent) life.

"There's a reception following this back at Huntington House," she said. Then for some reason she turned to me and asked, "Do you need a map to find it?"

I didn't know if it was a cold shot or just a friendly question.

"I can find it," I said stiffly. "I lived there on and off for ten years."

I could see one or two others up by the steps also handing out invitations as the rest of the mourners left the church.

"See you there," Diamond said to all of us.

I said good-bye to my fellow pallbearers and headed with Alexa to our car.

We were just getting inside when I heard a woman call my name. I turned. Theresa Rodriguez was hurrying across the lot toward us.

"Its Terry," she said, as if anyone could ever forget that face.

"Hey, Terry. God, its so good to see you," I responded, trying to enjoy the reunion, although back then we'd not been close. Back then, I made no effort to know anyone. I leaned forward, and, for the first time in our lives, we hugged. She felt thin under her dark-green pantsuit. She'd always been skinny, and in thirty years, that hadn't changed.

"This is my wife, Alexa," I said, nodding to Alexa. "Terry and I were in Huntington House together."

"Old buddies, then," Alexa said, smiling, not reacting at all to Terry's melted face. In twenty-five years, because of her scars, Theresa Rodriguez hadn't changed or aged. She looked just as hideous today as she always had.

"You going to the reception?" I asked.

"Yeah." For the first time since I'd known her, I realized that under all that scar tissue her brown eyes were dark and richly beautiful. Why had I never noticed that before? Then she said, "You're a cop now, right?"

"Yes, Terry. I am."

"Somebody inside said you work in homicide."

"That's right."

"You believe this suicide nonsense?"

I looked at her, trying to come up with just the right answer. I felt myself hovering on the edge of something. I felt Hawaii slipping slowly away.

"Hard to say," I hedged.

"I think it's bogus," she stated flatly.

I thought about it, not giving her much more than my street-hard cop face.

"Pop wouldn't voluntarily take a sand ride," she said.

"We don't know that, Terry."

She stood right in front of me, her scarred face making her expression impossible to read.

"What are you doing now?" I asked to change the subject.

"I work for Child Protective Services. Never got out of the system. I'm trying to make it better for the ones that follow."

"That's very cool," I said. "Well, see you at the reception, I guess."

"Okay, see you there," she answered.

I got into the car next to Alexa, feeling the heat from the sun-cooked interior. I was still struggling to gather my feelings. To put them back in some kind of order.

"What's a sand ride?" Alexa asked, interrupting my thoughts.

"It's a shore break that slams you down on the beach. Surfers call it unassisted suicide."

"Oh," Alexa said. She waited as I sat there thinking about what Theresa had just said. Then I started the car and drove us out of there.