Remains
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I want to tell you about Randy McPherson. I’m afraid, though—afraid that you won’t care. Afraid that I’ll get through this whole thing and you’ll let him disappear, anyway. I want to make sure he never dies.
The first thing you need to know is that, when he disappeared, he was just a boy. That’s all anyone would say after it happened. Everyone walked around for weeks with that look on their faces, the look you get when you put something on the counter, walk away, come back, and can’t find it.
I remember him, too. No matter what I do, he’s always right there, just behind my eyes. That was the problem. I couldn’t help but remember him. I’d taught him how to swim. I remember how light he was in my hands. I used to have to hold him up out of the water when he got scared, and I remember how light he was. I remember his tiny little shoulders. When they put the casket in the ground without him in it, I couldn’t help but think ‘it’s too wide’. And it was. It was too wide for how small his shoulders were. He was always tall, but not that wide. People would come in, look at the casket, then search the crowd for Mr. Barker’s face. I guess they wanted to ask him the same thing we were all thinking. We all knew that casket was empty when they put it in the ground.