His father studies him for a time, from behind the bright blinking lenses of his spectacles. Then he nods, perhaps with approval, and squeezes Jack’s knee again and rises. They do not hug, and Jack isn’t surprised. Jack is not a little boy anymore. He’s thirteen. Thirteen-year-olds fought in the Civil War against Yankee oppression. Thirteen-year-old soldiers carry machine guns in Syria to this very day. Plenty of thirteen-year-olds are ready to die or kill, whichever might be required.

Hank lets himself out of the bedroom. Beth stays behind. Jack doesn’t cry, but she does, holding him to her and shuddering with soft sobs.

When she’s all cried out, she gives Jack a peck on the temple. He takes her hand, kisses her creamy white palm, and tastes that spicy-sweet geranium soap. After she’s gone, the taste remains, as lovely as a trace of cake frosting on his lips.

3.

They bury his mother on a windy day in early March on their own land, out beyond the orchard. Jack is not sure this is legal. His father says who is going to stop us, and Jack supposes the answer is no one.

Bloom doesn’t have a coffin, and she hasn’t been embalmed. Hank says embalming people is a waste of time. “You don’t need to poison someone after they’re already dead. God knows she had enough poison in her when she was alive.”

She’s wound up in a dingy white sheet with a few old stains on it that look like coffee spills. Jack’s father has wrapped loops of silver duct tape around her ankles and throat, to draw the sheet tight to her body. He digs the hole with some of his friends, Separatists like him.

They have come from all over the state to honor Hank’s loss. They are a crowd of ten-gallon hats and cowboy mustaches and blank stares. Some of them stand at the graveside with their AR-15s over their shoulders, as if a twenty-one-gun salute might be called for. One man, fleshy, sunburnt, with goggling eyes and a shaved head, wears crossed bandoliers and chaps, like he is on his way to a weekend engagement at the Alamo.

When the hole is deep enough, Connor and some of the others hand the body down. Hank kneels in the grave with his wife’s shrouded head in his lap, gently stroking her brow. Perhaps he whispers to her. Once he glances up and meets Jack’s gaze. Behind his John Lennon spectacles, his father’s eyes are bright and brimming with tears, although they do not spill over.

Jack has the terrible idea his mother’s eyes are open, too, and she is staring at him through the taut white cotton. He can see how her lips are parted. The sheet has sunk a little into the pit of her gaping mouth. At any moment he expects her to groan—or shriek.