While we expected Angie (late as usual, but this time not her fault), Robert’s parents led me to the snack bar. Without saying why, we all sat along one side of the big booth, each facing one mirror with a view of the plane I had just left. We needed to make sure he had been on it. None of us acknowledged watching, as we made rueful formal small talk.

When, finally, the crate (fuckin’ plywood!) came ratcheting down a rickety conveyor belt too narrow, we stopped midsentence. We sat here, all lined up, then somehow were holding hands as simply as kids will. We stayed hushed. On the runway, a hearse appeared from nowhere. One plump young man in a gray suit climbed out, carrying a clipboard. After he’d gathered the needed signatures, with help from airline staff, he eased the box into his deep black car. Then I saw him bound back around to the front of the plane. He stood facing the sun and, in exactly our direction, this mortician gave a single index finger salute.

“Ben. That Ben! Saw us.” Robert’s dad waved. I understood how small this town must be, how closely preachers must work with funeral directors, how suddenly visible we all were. Oh, when all this was done, how I would welcome village life again in North Carolina.

“We have gotten the most amazing flowers, from all over the world. One gigantic spray was made up by our local florist who tries hard but Val is not … New York. You see, we think it’s intended to represent a ship. From something called Lifeboat Number Thirteen.”

“Yes, he was in it. I mean, the group,” I explained, and added (do it now, Hartley) there was actually something of Robert’s that I wanted.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh?” She warmed the word.

I dared not look at Mrs. Gustafson, I studied instead the winter horizon, “Just one thing. But, I warn you, it’s big.”

“The bed? The bed. Good, because we have only nine-foot ceilings in the parsonage, it’d never fit. Imagine chainsawing the legs off that, below the pineapple line. Yours. Done. Never quite understood what our boy did in a bed that size … I mean besides sleep.” I told her he composed there.

“So, just to say a word about the service later, Hartley,” she went on. “I will be leading my choir in a vocal transcription I’ve made from ‘Barber’s Adagio for Strings.’ Bob has some remarks that he is enough of a pro to get through. In the bulletin we just put ‘Reading by Hartley Mims, friend.’ Hope that was all right. I copied the spelling from your magazine stories Robert always sent us. He was your biggest fan, as you know. And now we are.”

She asked which poem I’d chosen. (They had said they would not impose on me for a eulogy. God knows I was willing, and able, but I sensed that this was a father’s right. I understood. I had no official role here, past “friend.” Which surely counts for something.)