The Stranger at the Back of the Funeral
What Curtis Remembered
That evening, the house on Locust Street was full of the particular silence that settles after a funeral, when the casseroles are stacked in the refrigerator and the folding chairs have been returned and there is nothing left to organize. Dana had taken the boys home. Curtis stayed behind to help Renata start sorting, though neither of them had touched a single drawer in the hour since they’d arrived. They sat at the kitchen table under the same brass light fixture that had hung there since 1974, drinking decaf neither of them wanted.
Renata told him what Hollis had said.
Curtis listened with his arms folded, looking at the table. He was forty-eight, broad through the chest like their father, and he managed the farm supply store out on Route 60. He had never left Marlow Bend, and some part of Renata had always looked down on him for it, and some part of Curtis had always known. It sat between them most of the time like a third person at the table.
“You think Dad had some kid stashed at the bus barn,” he said finally.
“I don’t know what I think. Hollis said a boy. The guest book said Mr. P. Dad said the side door.”
Curtis was quiet for a long moment. Then he rubbed his face with both hands and let out a breath that sounded like it had been in there for decades.
“I rode out there with him once,” he said. “That winter. I was nine. I begged him to let me come, and Mom said go ahead, maybe it’ll get him home sooner. He made me wait in the truck. Told me to keep the doors locked and the radio low. He went in the side door with the lunch pail Mom packed. Full. He came out forty-five minutes later and it was empty. He hadn’t eaten a thing on the drive. I asked him who ate his supper.”
Renata leaned forward. “What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Some things a man does don’t need talking about, Curt.’” Curtis gave a short laugh with no humor in it. “That was the whole answer. And I never asked again, because you didn’t ask Dad twice.”
Renata sat back in her chair. Something had begun turning over in her mind, an old memory she had kept filed under a different label for thirty-eight years.
“Mom thought he was seeing someone,” she said quietly.
Curtis looked up.
“That winter,” Renata went on. “I heard her crying. I heard her say it to him once through their bedroom door. ‘I’m not stupid, Orrin.’ He didn’t say anything back. He didn’t deny it. He just let her think it.”
“I know,” Curtis said. “I heard it too.” He paused. “I always figured you left because of that winter.”
It was the closest they had come in thirty years to saying anything true to each other, and both of them sat inside it for a while, not sure what to do with it.
Finally Curtis pushed his chair back. “There’s something you should see. In the garage. He told me a few years back, after Mom passed, that there was a coffee can on the top shelf over the workbench, and I wasn’t ever to throw it out.” He hesitated. “He said if anything happened to him, I should give it to you. Not keep it. Give it to you. He said you’d know what to do with it.”
“What’s in it?”
“I never looked,” Curtis said. “I figured it was screws. Dad kept screws in everything.”
He stood and took the flashlight off the hook by the back door, the same hook where their father’s coat had hung every winter night of 1988, and Renata followed him out into the cold.
The Coffee Can in the Garage
The garage behind the house was a detached cinder-block building their father had poured the slab for himself in 1977. Inside, it smelled exactly the way Renata remembered: motor oil, sawdust, penetrating spray, and the dry, papery scent of old cardboard. A pegboard covered the entire back wall, every tool hanging inside a black outline their father had traced with a marker so that anything missing announced itself immediately. Nothing was missing. Even now, even after months of sickness, every wrench and screwdriver hung in its place.
Curtis swept the flashlight beam along the shelf above the workbench. Coffee cans, as promised. A dozen of them, labeled in masking tape and black marker. Wood screws. Drywall screws. Washers. Cotter pins. Fuses. And at the far end, set slightly apart from the others, a red coffee can with no label at all, its plastic lid sealed around the edge with three layers of electrical tape.
Curtis lifted it down and set it on the workbench under the hanging shop light. He looked at Renata. She nodded. He picked at the tape with his thumbnail until it came free, and pried off the lid.
There were no screws.
The can was packed tight with envelopes, standing on end like files in a drawer. Christmas card envelopes, mostly, in red and green and white, some faded nearly gray. Renata pulled out a handful and fanned them on the bench. They were all addressed to Orrin Pruett, 412 Locust Street, Marlow Bend, Ohio. None had a name in the return address corner. The postmarks were all from Indiana. Kokomo. Logansport. Kokomo again. The oldest was dated 1995. The newest was dated December 2025.
Wedged against the inside wall of the can was a photograph. Curtis worked it free with two fingers and held it under the light.
It was an instant photo, its colors gone warm and orange with age. A skinny boy of about twelve stood beside the front wheel of a yellow school bus, the number 14 visible on its side. He wore a sweatshirt two sizes too big and jeans worn white at the knees, and he was grinning so hard his eyes had nearly disappeared. In both hands he held a torque wrench almost as long as his arm, gripping it like a trophy. Behind him, out of focus, was the corrugated wall of the bus barn.
Renata turned it over. On the back, in their father’s blocky pencil handwriting, the same handwriting that had signed her report cards, were five words.
Lyle. Feb 1989. First brakes.
Curtis exhaled. “Lyle.”
“L,” Renata said.
At the bottom of the can, beneath the envelopes, something rattled. Renata tipped it, and a small object slid out into her palm. It was a brass key, the old-fashioned kind with a squared head, worn smooth on both sides. Someone had threaded it onto a loop of red string. Taped to the string was a tiny folded slip of paper. She unfolded it carefully.
Didn’t need it again. Thought you should have it back. Thank you for leaving it open.
There was no signature. There didn’t need to be.
Didn’t need it again. Thought you should have it back. Thank you for leaving it open.
Curtis picked up the most recent card, the one from last December, and turned the envelope over. Someone had pressed a business stamp onto the back flap, maybe out of habit, maybe on purpose. The ink was slightly smeared, but they could both read it.
Henshaw Fleet & Diesel. Kokomo, Indiana.
Renata looked at her brother. Her brother looked at her. Outside, the rain had started again, ticking on the roof of the garage the way it had ticked on the chapel windows that morning.
“He’s real,” Curtis said quietly. “Dad’s boy. He’s real.”
