Chapter 27: In The Ground

By a/k/a Simon
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It was hot in Putnam the day they put Helen Kroeger in the ground. The morning started at a regular temperature for early September in New England, but a sudden spell of Indian Summer sent the thermostat to the near ninety by the mid-afternoon. The weatherman had said there would be no chance of rain, but by three o’clock everyone in town was welcoming any break from the unexpected heat.

In the bathroom on the second floor of the Kroeger house, Megan was putting the final touches on her eye shadow, a subdued flesh tone that she hoped would ease the contrast with her bloodshot eyes. As she rubbed the end of her upper eyelid, the three globe lights that projected out from the top of the medicine cabinet flickered, then went out.

“Now what?” she heard Shane barked from downstairs. “Did someone forget to pay the cable bill?”

Megan came down the stairs as Shane was struggling to his feet, Greta yelling from the dining room. “Maybe it’s just another brown out,” she suggested. “Are the neighbors lights still on?”

Shane peered out the front window to the houses across the street. “I can’t tell,” he grumbled. “It’s friggin’ daylight out.”

Greta came into the room, wiping her hands with a towel. “Well, then somebody should go down and check the fuse box in the basement.”

The basement was also Ryan’s room. Ryan had not been heard from all day. His SUV was in the driveway, but that was never a good indicator of whether he was home or not. He could be out with a friend, using their car instead of his. Everybody had slept late that day, and nobody remembered hearing him leave. But it was after three in the afternoon, and if he were going to be up, he would have shown his face by now. Still, Megan knew there were consequences to going down into Ryan’s room uninvited. She’d felt those consequences before.

“I can’t take those stairs,” Shane said, reminding everyone of his oh-so-debilitating leg injury. “I’ll fall on my ass.”

“I’ll go,” Eddie volunteered.

“No, I’ll go,” Megan demanded suddenly. She could see the argument forming on Eddie’s lips. “You don’t know your way around down there. In the dark you could trip over something and hurt yourself. Then we’ve got to find a way to get you out of there and it becomes even more of a mess. No, I want to go.”

Eddie mouthed the words ‘are you sure’. Megan nodded a quick, determined affirmative. She was a part of this family, whether certain members liked it or not. If Ryan could barge in on her while she was in the shower, she could go down into his precious sanctum to check the fuse box.

Shane stood at the top of the stairs by the hall light switch, ready to test for power. “Ryan?” he called at the door to the basement. “Hey, you down there?” No answer. Which still didn’t mean anything. Ryan was known for his ability to sleep through any ruckus. It often took more than a little shaking and yelling to get him out of bed when he wasn’t ready. Other times he just didn’t feel like answering.

Flashlight in hand, Megan slowly descended the stairs into the basement, careful not to make too much noise. Despite her attempt at courage, she still felt the best course of action was not to wake the sleeping lion if she could help it. With every creak and crack of wood she worried he would break from his slumber and she would be alone, in the dark, in the one room he knew best. If there was going to be a confrontation, her chances didn’t look promising at all.

By the time she reached the bottom, her anxiety had her almost convinced that he wasn’t home. She switched on the flashlight and did a pan across the room. The concrete walls had been covered with painted sheets of plywood, helping to make you forget it was a basement. But the dirt and cold of the floor was a constant reminder. As the temperature continued to creep up outside, it was still cool down there.

The room was shaped like an L, with Ryan’s bed in the far corner, out of sight from the stairs. Megan was glad for the cement floor because it didn’t make nearly as much noise as the wood steps. Reenacting her game at the Schenkman house earlier that day, she crept cautiously toward the bend to see if Ryan was still asleep. But this was no game, and she was acutely aware of that fact. As the bed came into view she moved the beam of light across it. He wasn’t there. She allowed herself to breathe again.

The fuse box was in another corner of the room, behind a hollow core door. Able to relax a little, but still hoping to keep her time down there to a minimum, she didn’t waste another moment with inspection and went right to the fuse box. “Found it!” she yelled up to Shane. None of the switches in the two vertical rows were labeled and it had been so long since the last time she’d checked them that she couldn’t possibly remember which did what. She flipped the first switch over. “Anything?” she called.

A pause, then Shane yelled back, “Nothing.”
She tried the next one in the row. “How about now?”
Another pause, then, “Nope.”
The third switch, “Now?”
A third pause, “Still no.”

They worked their way through every switch on the box and nothing worked. Greta’s suspicion was confirmed, it was another brown out. Once she’d assured Shane that she had tried everything there was to try he allowed her to abandon the mission. Megan went to close the door to the fuse box when the flashlight reflected on something and shot the beam back at her face. It dazed her for a split second, then she moved the light to see what it had hit. She couldn’t believe what she saw.

Pictures. Hanging on the inside of the door was a picture frame with nearly a dozen different pictures arranged in little windows, the overlying design a stylized house. She looked at each image individually. The first one was Ryan and Shane in their football uniforms, play wrestling on the front lawn. Another was Murphy, Shane, and Ryan with hats and fishing poles, holding up tiny fish like they’d had a big catch. Most of the others involved various combinations of the three Kroeger men in a variety of settings and activities. She wasn’t all that surprised to see those kind of photos in Ryan’s collection. But two of them she had to stare at for a long time to believe they actually existed. They had her in them.

In one of them she looked about eight years old. She was holding Ryan up, helping him to limp up the front walkway, blood running from his knee. Seeing the image, she immediately recognized it as the time they had been playing Demolition Derby with their Big Wheels and Ryan had been hurt. It was just a scrape on the knee, but he was so young at the time that he treated it like he was dying. She remembered he wouldn’t move from the spot in the street where he’d fallen and she had to pick him up and carry him home. Their mother saw the sorry scene coming up the drive and grabbed her camera to catch the shot. Ryan was so dramatic about the whole ordeal that he treated Megan like his hero for a week after, telling everyone how she saved him from bleeding to death in the street.

The second picture was simpler, and the memory wasn’t as clear to her. It was her and Ryan, a few years older than in the other picture, standing in the middle of the shallow end of the pool, water wings on their arms, hugging each other with big silly smiles on their faces. She didn’t remember when it was taken or the circumstances surrounding it. It could have been any one of a number of times back then. It was a harsh reminder of the way things used to be. And Ryan kept that reminder hanging in his room.


With no television to watch, everybody ready, and the food laid out on the table, Shane decided for the group that they might as well leave for the funeral home.

Limousines were arranged to take them from Trafalgar Brothers to Willow Lawn, so they opted to all pile into Shane’s Navigator rather than take up more space in the funeral home parking lot. Abe Trafalgar had told Shane that he could park in the back while the service was in progress, instead of in the front like the rest of the guests. When he turned his SUV around the side of the building, a truck that looked a lot like an ambulance without the usual markings blocked his path.

Abe Trafalgar came out of the back entrance and saw the Navigator waiting there. Shane stepped out to talk to the man.

“I’m so sorry,” Abe told him, apologetically. “You’re early. We didn’t expect you for another twenty minutes.”

“Yeah, well we lost power over at the house and figured a few minutes wouldn’t make a big difference.” A pair of men appeared with a gurney, a black body bag strapped on top of it, looking occupied. They loaded the gurney into the back of the truck. “What’s all this?” Shane asked, pointing to the activity.

“The brown out,” Abe informed him. “When we lost power we switched over to our backup generator. But then that shorted out on us. We’re completely without power. We had to call the morgue at Sheen Memorial to come over and take our new arrivals for temporary storage. I was really hoping they’d be finished before you arrived.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Shane said. “It would be a lot worse if we got halfway into the service and a funky odor started coming up from the basement.” Then he made a leap of logic. “Wait a minute. No power, that means your a/c is out?”

Abe confirmed his suspicions.

Shane looked at the sky, squinting his eyes at the sweltering sun. It was going to be hot in that funeral home by the time everyone was in there. Not the most comfortable way to say their final good-byes.

Shane sensed an opportunity for some deal making. After some overly dramatic negotiating, Abe Trafalgar ended up paying for the Kroeger family’s limousine service.


His suspicions were correct. By a half past four the majority of mourners had arrived and were in the process of choosing their seats. The temperature outside had not cooled off and the temperature inside was rising with each newcomer. People were using Kleenex to wipe their brows instead of their eyes, though there was a good deal of crying also taking place. The social atmosphere of the wake had passed; replaced by a heavier sense that this was the end, the last time anyone would see Helen Kroeger. Yesterday had been about celebrating her life. Today was about mourning her death.

Ryan arrived more like a guest than a member of the family. Alcohol seeped through his pores and he had a stumble that made Shane look graceful. At the very least, he was considerate enough not to invite his friend, his drug dealer, into the service when he was dropped off in front of the building. But his attitude didn’t suggest consideration, which led Megan to believe that his friend simply had more important business elsewhere.

As Ryan took a spot with his family, welcoming the last arrivals, Megan couldn’t help but look at him. In her mind she saw the pictures, scenes from a time whose passing she sadly regretted.

He sensed her eyes on him. “What?” he asked, petulantly.

She shook her head. In a blink she allowed any embers of hope to die. “Nothing,” she said, turning away to greet another guest.


A light breeze tossed the thin, white curtains away from the windows, letting in a hint of fresh air to the suffocating room. Rows of glistening faces, moist with perspiration sat waiting as patiently as possible for the service to begin. Ultimately, Shane, Abe, and Reverend O’Leary decided to start ten minutes early, sensing the heat might soon become too much to bear.

The minister approached the podium, wiping the nape of his neck with a handkerchief, for a brief moment looking like some Southern evangelist who’d been worked up into a sweaty froth of religious fervor. “We’re here today to mourn the passing of Helen Kroeger,” he began. “Helen Kroeger was many things to many people, wife, mother, sister, friend. As with everything she did, she played each role the best she knew how. Knowing this, having allowed her to touch our lives the way that only she could, is why we mourn. But in our sorrow we must not forget to celebrate the time we had with her, because that’s what she would have wanted.

“I remember meeting Helen when she volunteered to help teach Sunday school at the Congregational church. I was a young minister then, having just moved to Putnam at the time and welcomed any help I could get. Helen sensed this and was always available to me. I was supposed to be the spiritual leader, but believe me when I tell you, it was Helen who helped to raise my spirits in those early days. She put the word out that this new guy was to be trusted and the congregation flourished.

“I’ll admit to being sad when she told me years later that she had to hand her duties over to someone else. But when she told me it was because she was about to have her first child, I knew she’d been called to a higher purpose. I knew if she did half the job she did with the children in her class, that Putnam was going to be blessed with another fine generation of Kroegers.

“Helen dedicated her life to making things better for others. Her day job was as a receptionist at the Putnam County Nuclear Power Plant, but we all know the real reason she was there was to be close to her husband, Murphy. Since I’ve known her, the two of them have been inseparable. Met with adversity, Helen stayed by her husband’s side, lending him all her strength, ignoring her own condition.

“Some might question why this happened. Why would God do this to someone who gave so much to others? I wish I could give you an answer. I wish I knew what God’s plan was. All I can say is this. Some people say that angels live among us. To anyone who doubts that, I say look at the life of Helen Kroeger. Helen Kroeger was an angel, and now God has called her to her next duty. Wherever she is, I guarantee you she is helping make someone’s life better. We can only hope to live our lives by her example.”

The family divided into two limos and headed for the cemetery, Megan, Greta, and Eddie in one, the rest of the Kroegers in the other. Inside, they rode in silence, Eddie and Megan each looking out a window, Greta facing them, wondering what had happened to drive them apart. As they past the Town Hall, Eddie noticed the flag flying at half-mast, a hero’s tribute to Helen Kroeger.

After a short ride the procession entered the Willow Lawn cemetery. Rounding the bend, Megan saw the Richardson Willow for the first time. It was massive and swaying on the soft breeze, branches rustling against each other. A hole had been dug less than a hundred feet away from its tremendous trunk, flowers spread around the perimeter. She watched as Reverend O’Leary exited his car and headed to the grave, saying a silent prayer to no one in particular.

When the limousines stopped, Shane came to get Eddie, who followed him over to the hearse. Six other men, Ryan included, helped unload the casket from the back of the vehicle and carry it across the grass to the gravesite. They moved fast and Eddie, in the rear position, had trouble keeping up with them. Ryan looked reluctant, hesitant to be holding the box that contained his dead mother. He didn’t like being so close to mortality.

Cars unleashed a swarm of mourners, who gathered around the coffin. Reverend O’Leary began his final speech. “And so we commit the body of Helen Kroeger to the earth,” he began.

After he finished, the crowd took its time dispersing. People who would not be at the house later offered yet more condolences to the members of the immediate family. Megan thanked them all with handshakes and hugs.

Ryan had separated himself from the rest of the family. He stood next to the grave, looking down at the casket. Megan wondered what he was thinking.

To her surprise, Eddie walked up to Ryan and stood next to him. She couldn’t hear what was being said, but she saw Eddie offer Ryan his hand. Ryan looked him in the eyes, turned and walked away. Eddie’s shoulders slumped and he just stood there for a minute looking out across the field at the willow trees.


Once the last of the guests departed, the family headed back to the pair of limousines. Eddie was lifting Murphy out of his wheelchair when he started to lose control of the man’s awkward bulk. Murphy was about to slump to the ground when Ryan grabbed him under a shoulder. Together, Eddie and Ryan helped Murphy into the limo. When they were done, Ryan looked to his left, then his right, then extended his hand. Eddie didn’t say anything. He just shook his hand.

Megan felt like she’d just witnessed a miracle.

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