My Uncle Albert had gone to bed, and I sat arguing with my mother in the kitchen.  My father was lying under the table between us.

     “You can’t do this to him,” I said.  “He deserves better.”

     She sighed.  “Peter, can’t we do this another time?”

     “No.  It’s shameful.  The man deserves better.”

     She looked up from her paperwork.  She’d taken up a waitressing job to pay the bills now that the man was dead and I was out of work.  She was sixty-three.

     “We’ve been over this,” she yawned, wincing as her jaw popped, “and I’m tired.”

     “You wouldn’t be so tired if you didn’t work so late.”  I was resting my hands on the table, leaning towards her.

     “This, too?”  She got up from the table, one hand clutching her bad back, straightening her papers.  “We can’t afford it if I don’t.”

     “Mom,” I walked to her, putting my hands to her shoulders, “I can handle that.  I can get another job, or two.  I can support us.”

     She gave me a gentle shake of the head and pushed my hands away.  “You’ve got better things to do than look out for your mother.”  She walked to the door.  “And you need to worry about yourself.  You need some sort of security in your own life before you go worrying about other people’s lives.”  She paused.  “For now, worry about yourself.  I’m going to bed.”

     “I’m not going to bury my own father in our backyard.  Did you know it was illegal?”

     “I don’t care.  He’s gotta go somewhere.”

     “This is bullshit.”

     She was across the room in two steps.  She slapped me hard across the face, snapping my head to the side.  “You watch your mouth.”

     “No.  What the fuck was that?”

     “I swear to God, boy –”

     “Stop it, okay?  I’m not seven.  How can you even consider –”

     “We’ve got no money for a funeral.”

     “Put your darling brother to work.  I’ve got my own interests to look out for, remember?”

     “Don’t do this to me right now, Pete, please.”  She sighed.  “I’m going.”  She walked through the door and left me in the kitchen.

     I followed her after a little while.  She was lying on her bed with her clothes on still under her bathrobe.  I walked to the side of the bed and sat, and she didn’t wake up.  Her snoring was soft, but it hung in the air like mold on a soft cheese.  I took off her shoes, and she grumbled at me and rolled over.  I covered her up and straightened up her papers, which were scattered over her nightstand, and I carried them back out to the table where my father was still lying.  I set the papers on the table and sat staring at my father.  He looked like wax.  I kicked him, and he didn’t wake up.  I got up and dragged him out back.

     And the next day, I was digging my father a grave in our cold, hard, New Jersey backyard.  The winter was so cold that year that our little fireplace couldn’t even properly warm the foot around it.  The gas payments hadn’t been made, and the house was like an icebox.  It was warmer to be out digging, no matter why.

     “Peter?”

     I jumped.  For a split second I thought it was my father, risen from the grave to charge me with avenging his murderer like some cheap Hamlet, and I was about to drop to my knees and beg his forgiveness when I realized that it was only my uncle.  He spent most of his time at the house in the room above mine, in what would normally be called the attic.

     “Shouldn’t you be out looking for work?” the old man said.

     “Yes,” I said, chipping away at the dirt.  I didn’t turn to face him.

     “Is your mother working?”

     “Yes.”  The shovel hammered into the hard ground, ripping little chunks out to fly up around my face.  I pushed the shovel.  The ground stayed passively, mockingly whole under me.

     “Easy, boy.”  Uncle Albert, coming up behind me, pried the shovel out of my hands and took it up on his own.  “You gotta take it easy, see?”  He hit the dirt squarely, taking a small layer off.  He bent and went crooked with his back to me and hammered the thing home again, taking a little more off.  The shovel looked like something to prop him up.  If I pushed him from behind, he would have crumbled over that thing.  I took a step towards him.  “Just a little at a time.”  He smiled at me over his shoulder.  “Has she been working all morning?”

     “Well, it looks like you’ve got things covered pretty well.”  I turned and walked towards the door.  “I’m going inside.”

     “Not gonna answer me, eh?”  The sound of the shovel had stopped, and I could feel Uncle Albert staring at my back.

     “Yes, she’s been at work all day.  I’m going inside.”  I let the door slam behind me, and after a couple of seconds I could hear the fall of the shovel from outside.  I washed my hands at the kitchen sink and walked into the living room.

     The fire looked small and ineffectual; the air was cold and bluish.  I rubbed my hands together and reached for the log-poker, stirring the fire until it spat at me and I dropped the poker and took a step back.  Outside it was starting to snow.  The leafless old dogwood tree was framed in white powder; the sky hung low over the bland, mindless houses that stretched like the branches of that dogwood, slow and meandering and all the same.

     I remembered sitting in that dogwood and watching my father go off to work day after day.  He’d always tip his hat to his perching son and grin and say, “Off to make my millions,” or something like that.  It was all I could really remember of my father.  Most days I would stay home with my mother, watching through the front window for when Dad would come home and eat dinner and go to bed just to do it all again the next day.  I remembered going to work with him once or twice and the way those people would look at him.

     “Good morning, Mr. Burrow.”

     “Nice to see you, Mr. Burrow.”

     “Getting to work early today, aren’t  you Jim?” and his boss would smile at him and wink at me and walk back to his office, kicking his legs into the air and setting them back on the ground like some great, bow-legged peacock.  My father had a certificate on the back of his cubicle that said Best Salesman in big fancy print, and he would rub his hand over that and kiss the picture of mom he had on his desk before he started his calls every morning.  “You provide for those you care about,” he told me.  “That’s the only reason to be alive.”

     When Uncle Albert had lost his wife and house and car in the fire, Dad had taken him in.  For most of the first month he lived with us, Albert would sit in his room upstairs, coming down only for dinner.  After a while, he started spending time with mom.  Eventually, they’d spend nearly every waking hour gossiping, until mom finally had to get a job so that we could stay afloat.  Even then, Uncle Albert didn’t raise a hand to help support us.

     Digging Dad’s grave was the first thing I could really remember Uncle Albert doing for the family.  I looked towards the back, where I could see his hunched form jerking back and forth with the motions of his shoveling.  The snow was settling on his back, and he didn’t even seem to mind.  I frowned.  Since when had he been so selfless?

     I walked back to my room, leaving Uncle Albert’s toiling back behind me.  In my room, I fell down onto my bed and caught up the picture on my bedside table.  It was of the three of us – Mom, Dad, and me – in New York when I was just a kid.  Dad had us both in a headlock, his eyes wild, his grey hair foaming around his head, his cheeks red with the cold.  He had just gotten a pay raise.  His eyes were always like that when he was doing well at work.

     He’d been nearing retirement.  Just a couple more years and he’d have been working at his firm long enough that his 401k would kick in.  I’d gotten a job in a paper company as a salesman myself, and was making enough money that Dad was finally settling down.  If I played my cards right, I’d been told, there might be a promotion in my future.  Dad’s face had glowed when I told him that.  He’d looked like he was the happiest man in the world and strong and put together, his eyes gleaming with pride.

     And then I was rushing to the hospital, running down the hall to his room, spinning around the corner and seeing his face nothing but a lump of dry putty, his eyes distant.  They said it was a massive heart failure, just standing there on the sales floor he’d dropped without a sound.  They didn’t even notice he was down until one of the secretarial staff had almost tripped over him, and they’d rushed him here, and there he was, looking for the first time in my memory like an old man.

     “What happened?” I whispered.

     “Life,” my mother said from behind me, and I turned and saw her sitting alone in the hospital waiting room, her hands in her lap, wearing her nightgown, her eyes just as distant as her husband’s.  In the two days that she was to stay in that waiting room, she didn’t once go in to look at the man.  I was the one that the hospital went to about decisions, and when he had finally died, I was the one to sign the papers.  Not once in the entire ordeal did Dear Uncle Albert step foot into the hospital.  When we got home, he was sitting at the kitchen table.

     “Well, hello,” he said.  “Where have you all been?”

     And my mother dissolved into tears and Uncle Albert stood there looking like an embarrassed child and I carried my mother upstairs.  She had a look in her eyes like we’d all let her down – my father had left her, and I’d lost our only remaining form of income.

     And when she took a second job, the waiting job, it had come like a slap to the face.  She had lost all faith in me.  I was let go from the paper company, and my father had taken the whole burden back on his shoulders, working himself to death, and now she was alone and working at an age when no woman should have to work, and it was all my fault.  It was the only time I’d come close to crying.

     “Peter,” Uncle Albert called from the back, his voice frantic.

     “What?” I yelled.

     “Peter, get out of the house,” he yelled.  “Peter, something’s wrong.”  I smelled something on the air, something thick and foggy and filled with carbon.  I started coughing.

     “Peter!”  Uncle Albert yelled.

     I got off my bed and followed the smoke back towards the front of the house.  As I got closer, I could here the wood groaning and popping.  I ran into the living room.  The floor was on fire.  Some coals must have fallen out of the fireplace when I was poking at it, or when I dropped the poker.

     “Peter!” Uncle Albert screamed.

     I ran around the flames and grabbed the floor mat just inside the front door.  The hardwood floor of the living room was burning, as were the two blue chairs and the curtains around the front window.  As I watched, the fire spread out and back, engulfing the old rocking chair, my great-grandmother’s grandfather clock, my mother’s paintings, the dining room table.  I started beating crazily at the flames with the rug, hitting anything that sizzled, until the rug, too, caught on fire and I was forced to drop it.  I ran outside, and my momentum carried me all the way around the house.  I tripped and fell, landing next to my father.  Albert was staring at me.  The fire flared out the kitchen door, and Albert raised his hand, warding off the flame.

     “Are you alright?” he said.  He stared down at me like an old monument, his face covered with ash.  He was out of breath, resting a hand on his knee, leaning on the old maple and panting like he’d been the one to run around the house.  He looked at me like he couldn’t see me, his eyes wide and flaring, the fire reflecting on his glasses.  He reached a hand down and touched me.  I just stared back at him, and he looked back towards the fire and said, “Come on.”  Together, we bent to pick up my father’s body.  It was like a massive chunk of ice, frozen in the New Jersey winter.  It slipped out of my hands, and then I had it and we started moving.  We walked it toward the open kitchen door.  Albert turned back to me and said, “Are you ready?”  His eyes were still glazed.

     “Thank you,” I said.  I could barely see him.  My eyes had fogged over.

     He nodded, and “One, Two, Three,” we threw my father’s body back into the flaming remains of his house.  The fire flared and the heat lashed out.  We fell back to the ground.  In the kitchen, my father burned beside the kitchen table, his body sending off sparks of blue and green that danced up into the inferno and were swallowed by the red.  Once more, the house spat outwards.  My uncle grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me out of the way.