Orfeo Read Free

Cage says: A “mistake” is beside the point. Once anything happens, it authentically is .
     
     
    He went out to the backyard with a flashlight, a shovel, and a lump wrapped in a quilt. He picked a spot by a line of boxwoods that Fidelio had loved to mark. Already, the little plot was covered over with a dense mat of weed species. Life traded in a profligate overkill that never failed to stun him. Els set the flashlight into the crook of a honeysuckle, took up the shovel, and dug.
    The thump of his sole on the rung and the snick of the shovel whiffing into stony earth set a calming two-step. When the hole was deep enough to hold the companion of his late years, he put down the shovel and picked up the body. Fidelio now felt light, like something had left her in the hour and a half since she’d died.
    He stood on the edge of the hole, considering the quilt. His ex-wife had made it from their spent clothes more than forty years ago, in the happiest stretch of their shared years. The quilt was large and luminous, in deep shades of cerulean, jade, emerald, and chartreuse. The pattern was called Night in the Forest, and Maddy had taken almost two years to complete it. Alongside the set of cloud chamber bowls, it was the finest thing Els owned. Sanity demanded that he salvage, clean, and leave it on a shelf for his daughter to find when he died. But Fidelio had died in this quilt, the most uncomprehending of deaths, comforted only by the familiar coverlet. If humans had a soul, surely this creature did. And if humans did not, then no gesture here was too fine or ridiculous. Els apologized to Maddy, whom he hadn’t seen in decades, and placed the bundle into the earth.
    The quilt-wrapped corpse nestled in the pit of loam. By the flashlight’s glow, Night in the Forest glistened in rich, cool tones. For a moment, those dark greens redeemed all the pain that he and Maddy had ever inflicted on each other.
    Humming to himself a slowly unfolding upward phrase, Els picked up the shovel again. Six times in the course of his seven decades, he’d been forced to remember how grief made you love the smallest, most mistaken thing. This was the seventh.
    A voice said, What are you doing? Els gasped and dropped the shovel.
    Startled by that startle, the voice called out, It’s me.
    Standing on a lawn chair, the neighbors’ eight-year-old peeked out over the slats of the wooden fence. Eight-year-old children, wandering around unsupervised in the middle of the night. Els couldn’t remember the boy’s name. Like all boys’ names in the age of social networking, it began with a J.
    What’s that? J asked in a silky whisper.
    I’m burying my dog.
    In that?
    It’s like a grave offering.
    J knew all about grave offerings from multiplayer online games.
    You can bury them in your yard?
    She liked it back here . Nobody has to know, right?
    Can I see it?
    No, Els said. She’s peaceful now.
    Els picked up the shovel and scooped dirt into the hole. J watched, rabid with interest. He’d seen several thousand deaths already in his young life. But a careful burial was the wildest novelty.
    The hole became a modest mound. Els stood over it, looking for the next step in this ad hoc service.
    She was a good dog, Fidelio. Very smart.
    Fidelio?
    Her name.
    That’s long for Fido or something?
    This dog could sing. This dog could tell pretty chords from harsh ones.
    Els didn’t mention that she preferred the harsh ones.
    J looked suspicious. What did she sing?
    Everything. She was very broad-minded. Els took the flashlight and waved it toward the fence. You think we should try to sing something for her?
    J shook his head. I don’t know any sad songs. Except for the funny ones.
I wanted to remember how life really worked and see if chemistry still wanted something from me.
     
     
    Eight-year-old Peter hides in the pantry of his mock-Tudor home, cowering in his Gene Autry pajamas, spying on his parents, flouting every law of God and man. He doesn’t