Steven interceded in a soft tone. “Look, Adam. A service couldn’t hurt, could it? Maybe later you’ll wish you did something more traditional. You certainly won’t regret it, right?”
Adam wanted to scream. Sure he could regret it, he wanted to say. He seemed to have a great capacity for regret. But he knew Danny and Steven meant well. “Be amiable,” his grandfather had often told him. “Don’t make things harder than they need to be.”
Adam looked in Danny’s eyes. Soon, this would be just one more horrible memory. “This is important to you, Danny?”
“Not just to me, Adam. It’s important.”
Adam nodded. “OK, Danny. Do it. Let’s go. But no long sermons, okay? No big productions.”
Danny took yarmulkes out of his pocket. He put one on and passed the others to Adam and Steven. Adam gave his back. He was wearing an old, worn Mets cap that he had bought to watch the Mets on television with his grandfather the last time they were in the World Series. He wasn’t taking it off.
“Adam,” Danny asked, “are you going to tear some part of your clothes?”
Adam was surprised that the custom felt right to him. He would want to carry a part of this day with him for a while. But he didn’t want to have to wear his t-shirt or jeans for the rest of the week. “My cap,” he said. “Do you have a scissors?”
Danny shook his head. “I forgot them.” He took the Mets cap and pulled hard with both beefy hands, slowly ripping the fabric about three inches up the side. He handed the cap back to Adam.
“Baruch Dayan Emet,” Danny intoned. “Blessed is the Righteous Judge.” He waited for Adam’s response. Steven looked at his feet.
“Amen,” Adam said. The whole cemetery seemed still except for a few birdcalls in the distance. Blessed is the Reaper, Adam thought. He looked again at the headstones. Blessed is the Destroyer. There was no one left. Adam was the last of the Draschers, now.
Danny said the prayer supplicating God’s mercy for the dead in his expressionless Sunday School Hebrew. Adam translated the phrases in his head as Danny read the words: “the Master of mercy will protect him forever . . . will tie his soul with the rope of life. The Everlasting is his heritage . . .”
Automatically, Adam responded “Amen” at the prayer’s close.
“I don’t think we should say Kaddish, Adam,” Danny said. We don’t have a minyan and the burial isn’t over, so you aren’t a mourner yet.”
“No. Not technically,” Adam said, keeping his voice even. Steven caught his eye and Adam made an effort to unclench his jaw. They were trying to help him, he reminded himself. But he imagined himself reciting the traditional mourner’s prayer, the Aramaic formula tumbling from his mouth like a nursery rhyme when his mouth tasted like ashes. There are limits to amiability, he thought. Out loud, louder than he meant to speak, he said, “let’s skip it.”
Danny fumbled with his prayer book. “Does anyone want to say something now?” He asked.
Adam shook his head. Steven didn’t respond.
Danny bowed his head as if he were addressing the coffin along with Adam and Steven. He said, “Hank was . . .” Adam looked up as Danny’s voice broke. He waited in awkward silence as Danny wiped his forehead and collected himself.
“Hank meant a lot to me,” Danny began again. “I was getting in trouble in school, and my parents were ashamed of me. They always told me I was lazy and ungrateful. They made it pretty clear they didn’t have much use for me. The school sent a letter home one day after I got into a fight, but I got to it before they did. I ran away the next morning.” Adam and Steven were silent, but Danny shrugged as if in answer to a question. “I had maybe thirty dollars on me,” he said. “I don’t know how far I would have gotten if Hank hadn’t found me when he was on his way back home from the newsstand. I knew him a little from the neighborhood and I knew that he knew my mom. I figured Hank would bring me home and I would catch hell, but he didn’t bring me home.” Danny choked back a sob. “He looked me in the eye like I mattered,” he said. “He put his hand on my shoulder and said he would walk me to school. He told me if I ever needed to get away for a while, I could visit. I could just hang out and watch TV, he said, until I felt ready to go home.” Danny turned to look at Adam. “I don’t know what he saw in me, but no one else ever saw it. I know you wondered what the hell I was doing there all the time, Adam, but I couldn’t stay away. Hank was my lifeline. He made me feel like I had a place where I was wanted.”
Danny paused for a moment. He cleared his throat and looked first at the coffin and then down at his feet. “I think of you all the time, Hank, when I try to raise my son. I want him to feel what you made me and Adam feel—that he’s worth something, that he always has a place. I will miss you terribly, Hank.” Danny stepped back from the grave.
Adam felt like he should say something, anything. But the words wouldn’t come.
When Danny looked at him, Adam just bit his lip. Steven hunched his shoulders and offered Adam a wan smile. No one spoke for a while. Finally, Adam picked up his shovel and managed to croak out, “Let’s get to work.”
Danny took off his jacket, folded it and put it on the ground several steps from the grave. He laid his prayer book on top of his jacket while Steven went to put his jacket and dress shirt in his car. By the time Steven returned, Adam and Danny had already picked up their shovels and had begun moving the dirt from the pile to the grave. The dull thud as the dirt struck the coffin was much louder than Adam had expected.
Danny worked like an animal, his muscles straining in the hot sun. He used his shoulders, his knees, his back. Within a few minutes, the sweat was dripping from his forehead and staining the armpits of his shirt. It wasn’t long before his undershirt was drenched. You could see its outline through the shirt above. Adam was determined to match Danny’s labor, but Danny was relentless and Adam couldn’t keep pace. He looked over at Steven, but Steven went at his own speed, pausing every once in a while to make a comment or a small joke.
The three men worked steadily for a couple of hours, stopping only for a few short water breaks until the hole was filled at last. Danny had overestimated the time it would take them, but not the effort. Adam was exhausted. He wiped the sweat from his face and the back of his neck and planted his shovel deeply into the small pile of dirt that remained next to the grave.
The others stopped as well. Danny wiped his forehead. Steven bent forward, hands on his knees to catch his breath. Adam surveyed the gravesite. He hadn’t been to the cemetery in a long time. The three older graves holding his parents and grandmother lay flat under their headstones, the grass growing over all of them so that you couldn’t tell where one grave ended and the next began. Adam realized for the first time that there wasn’t any space for him there in what his grandmother used to call “the family estate.”
Soon, Adam thought, Danny’s crew would flatten the loose mound on top of his grandfather’s grave and before long, they would plant grass there. In a year, they would put up a headstone and the Drascher family plot would be complete; a tidy little story with a beginning, middle, and end. He wondered if it ever occurred to his grandparents that they had left him floating, rootless.
“We should eat,” Adam said. “Are you hungry?” I’ve got sandwiches in the car. Egg salad with pickles.”
Danny smiled. Adam’s grandfather had served that to them countless times. Adam went to his car and brought back a small cooler filled with the sandwiches and more water. Steven had a blanket in his car, and they spread it out on the grass next to the graves of Adam’s parents and sat down to eat.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Adam said. “Both of you.” He looked