“ ‘You can’t leave here,’ I said. ‘You can’t not come to the funeral!’

“ ‘Watch me not come to it,’ she sneered.

“The screen door banged shut behind her. I ran after her.

“ ‘Patsy, you’ll regret this all your life,’ I said. I ran along beside her to her van. ‘Patsy, you’re not thinking. It hasn’t sunk in. You have to go through with this. Everybody will expect you to care enough to be there. Patsy, listen to me.’

“ ‘Like my life is going to be long, Quinn! My life? That old man. I told him I was HIV and he went crazy! You should have heard him cursing me and the crowd I run with; you wanna know what his final words were to me? “Damn the day you were born,” and then he went down, gasping and throwing up his guts. I wouldn’t come to his funeral if he was going to rise from the dead. If you see his ghost, you tell him I hate him. Now get away from me.’

“She and Seymour were off, screeching tires and all, and I just stood there, feeling the panic again, and within seconds the cold thought came over me that I didn’t care whether Patsy came or not. It would do nothing to lessen the pain in me. Probably, it didn’t matter to anyone.

“It would just be one of those things that people would talk about all over the parish.

“Only being near to my Jasmine or Big Ramona or Aunt Queen would help me.

“I made my way back inside. I could smell the pancakes Big Ramona was cooking up for me, and hunger seemed a reason to be alive, to put off for a little while telling Aunt Queen that Patsy would not be there for the funeral. In fact, maybe I’d never even mention it.

“The autopsy took only a day.

“Pops had suffered a massive heart attack.

“The funeral was enormous. It began with a long evening wake in Ruby River City to which all manner of people came, including shop owners, repairmen, carpenters, woodworkers—in summary, the many, many people in all walks of life whom Pops had known and who were devoted to him.

“I was staggered by the sheer number of young boys and young men who looked up to Pops and said he’d been like a father or uncle to them. It seemed that everyone respected Pops and he was much more well known than I had ever imagined.

“Ugly Henderson and his whole clan were there, and so were the Dirty Hodges, all cleaned up, which had never happened before, their only bathtub being full of greasy auto parts. Sheriff Jeanfreau was crying.