In our small city in upstate New York, Abbington, I knew of ten veterans. Three had served in Afghanistan, two served in Iraq, two served in a classified location they couldn’t name, and three were dead by suicide. There may have been others. If you extended your reach to neighboring towns like Syracuse and Utica, I was sure there were many more.

I had gone to Utica College to study business and had gotten my degree in business and health care professions. But I knew more and more local kids, even if they got through high school, who had no intention of going to college. They said they didn’t have the money, which was a lame excuse because most schools had financial aid, and if they stopped spending so much on drugs and put that money with the financial aid, they could go to college. Truthfully all they really wanted to do was take drugs, usually oxy, sometime fentanyl whether they knew it or not—some of them didn’t care. Or they wanted to go into the army. Going into the army cleaned up a few of them but for some it was just something to do before they came back and returned to taking drugs.

         I got a job. The funeral home was a stately old home, and one of the landmarks of what had once been a nice town but was now a shell of its former self. The bird bath and some old statues on the lawn in front of the home were decrepit. There was a stone hitching post on the plot of grass between the sidewalk and the street. I could imagine an important visitor riding up to the house, tying up his horse and going into the living room for coffee, or later in the day for a drink. Now the hitching post had fallen over, probably cracked apart in the freezing cold upstate New York winter nights. It lay there on the grass; its two mottled ends covered with clover and moss. The horses were gone too.

There remained a nice front porch and it became a meeting place for some of the seniors at the high school. It was called the senior parade ground because it used to be a prime location for the better citizens in town to collect and watch the many parades—for the anniversary of the town’s founding, for a visit by the governor, for a visit by a celebrity religious leader—that marched up and down Main Street. By some now remarkably inapt occurrence Abbington was still called “Abbington, America’s Parade City.” So these were the things I had to work with as I tried to create a return to a better past or a more promising future for my cohort in Abbington.

Cleaning the crematorium was a big part of my job. After each cremation—performed at 1650 degrees–and the removal of the ashes by the mortician, I went in with my brushes and disinfectant. We used Simple Green D Pro 5. When I did it I thought about the people who had died and what that might have been like. But then I snapped out of it or tried to snap out of it. I was enough of a professional to know that I had to make sure all the ashes, bacteria and any other remnants from the cremation were off the retort (the bed where the cremation occurred, even though to myself I called it the death bed) so there would be nothing left for the next cremation. We wanted no mixing up of ashes.

I hadn’t enlisted after high school. Brian Cassidy and Jimmy did. They both deployed to Afghanistan. I told myself I could assist the war effort from home. I wasn’t sure what that meant then, but I know now. My job at the funeral home gave me access to a lot of things other people didn’t know about. In particular, it gave me a very clear-eyed view of suffering and what you could do about things to get right. My solution was embodied in the funeral home’s three reception rooms. We often had more than one family going through the traumatic experience of dealing with grief (We were now the only funeral home left in Abbington.)  Most people had no experience of what to do and showed up at the funeral home filled with grief. It had become my job to meet them at the door and escort them into one of the living rooms–we now had created three–where I would sit down with them and talk, or even more importantly listen. At such times being a listening ear could be the first step in what would be a long process of things to get done.

The long list of things to get done was a good thing as it took people’s minds off their grief. Where was the body to be buried, did they want cremation, how would they be sure they received the right ashes, was there a will, would it go through probate, who were the closest relatives. At some point in this discussion I would become drawn into the emotional side of things. How had the person died, did they know his or her physician? Was it a “painful death?” Was it a peaceful death? I heard many times that the person harbored deep regrets, that they almost felt relieved to be dying. And then of course there were the suicides.   

         I became known as someone who would help out. First I sought out that role because I wanted to help these guys, old friends, classmates. Then it began to scare me because what did I really know about helping out? I certainly wasn’t a psychiatrist. But the only psychiatrist in Abbington was uniformly regarded as an idiot who drank a coke through a straw in most sessions and near the end of the session the straw started drawing in air and making a strange noise described by one guy as sounding like a rat burrowing in a sewer pipe. This was the main thing people brought home from these sessions.

         Jimmy, Brian Cassidy, who died in Afghanistan, and me were the best of friends and did everything together.  They called us the three musketeers. We all lived in a subdivision that popped up about five miles outside Abbington. In 6^th grade when we got home from school, we would go down to the creek that meandered through our subdivision and ended up in the Susquehanna River. One time we found a fossil that looked like a prehistoric snake etched in a rock. and on other days we couldn’t. The imprint had ridges in it, like the bones in a snake’s back. Sometimes when we went back to the creek, we could find the fossil, and talked, occasionally throwing a rock in the creek. On some days we just sat by the creek Then we’d go over to Brian Cassidy’s basement and play pool and listen to Nirvana’s second album, or played tackle football in Jimmy’s backyard that was roughly rectangular. “Let’s meet at the creek,” we always said as we stepped off the school bus, went home for a minute to say hello and have something to eat, and then back out to the creek.

         We all had our dreams. Jimmy wanted to be an archeologist and hunt for fossils in Africa. He loved the idea of finding bones in the sand and brush. We agreed that it seemed like the perfect thing for him. He had seen a show about it on TV. Then we began looking for fossils everywhere. Jimmy was a “best friend” in elementary school, if anyone asked me, but we drifted apart after that when he got more interested in taking drugs and, supposedly, playing music. He’d begin learning one instrument, then switch to another one before he learned the first, then switch to a third, and so on. All as a way to have more time to take drugs, in my opinion. But Jimmy was our leader when it came to being cool, knowing a lot about girls and being the first to have a girlfriend and knowing about music. He actually got somewhere on the drums and the harmonica. Like everything else he dropped it.

Brian Cassidy was the athlete of us three. Even in elementary school he excelled so much we began to call him lefty—he was left-handed. He could pitch hardball, catch passes, ski, but his greatest skill was tennis. Being left-handed seemed to help because his opponents weren’t used to it. He became our leader when it came to sports. We always called him Brian Cassidy because he was like a man, like Mr. Cassidy. He and his father bought their clothes at the one men’s shop in town. It was like he could grow up to be something important like take over his father’s insurance agency, Abbington Protection.

I guess I was a go between that kept our team together. I remember many late afternoons when I walked between Brian Cassidy and Jimmy trying to hold things intact.

         Upstate New York, the part we lived in was a paradise for one thing though, lakes. Which made it a paradise for another thing in winter, ice skating. In the early morning we would put on our old ski jackets, hats, and gloves, grab our bent-up shovels, and head outside the main roads and into what were fields in summer. And in winter they looked like fields of snow. But if you knew where to look, they were unplowed skating rinks. I lived about two-thirds up a large rolling hill, and at the top of the hill there was a large pristine lake. This made this part of the hill completely flat, almost eerie.

         There was a farmer who lived on the other side of the hill. But we had gone to him once with maps we had made—in beautiful colors—of the whole area,  showing the pond and a long grassy area where we wanted to put in our own grass golf driving range, and maybe later build some golf holes. But he had said no, smiling, pleasant enough, but he had cited “insurance issues.” To me this was a terrible excuse but one I’d heard before.

Jimmy had come back to Abbington from Afghanistan in the fall.  He was detached, alone. I said okay, he needs time to come back. That winter I had gone up to the lake above the hill from my house alone. I was spending a lot of time alone, missing my friends Jimmy and Brian Cassidy. Someone had shoveled off the pond area. Done a beautiful job, positively eerie. Then I saw him, not the farmer, but Jimmy. He was a good skater and I guess he had gone out early to skate. He was in the middle of the pond and it looked like he had fallen through a hole in the ice. His feet and his legs had disappeared. He had put his hands on the ice to try and pull himself out, but it made matters worse. It reminded me of pictures I’d seen of quicksand. If you flayed your arms around it only had the effect of pulling you down more. I needed a rope or a long ladder or something. He was too much in the middle of the lake for me to get to him.

         I called to him. “Jimmy, Jimmy!” he looked up and I could see he was crying. This was very unlike him. He was the kind of person who always stood near the side of a room when any trouble was brewing and then came into the fray to get things straightened out. He looked at me through the tears that seemed to be frozen over his eyes and on his cheeks.

         “Bobby,” he said just above softly. “I’ve been here for a while, you have to do something.”  

         As I got closer, he looked worse. The ice had cracked and then broken into a jagged edge and the jagged edge had stabbed him. It looked like he might have been trying to get out and was snagged by the sheet of ice. There was blood. As he tried to pull up, the ice pulled him down and dug further into him. I thought again if I had a ladder or a long rope it might not be a problem. “Jimmy,” I shouted, “Can you hold out for a few minutes? I need to get help.” I waited for a minute for him to answer but then I realized I couldn’t wait any longer regardless of what he said, and I turned and raced for the farmhouse that I knew was on the other side of the hill. It was no easy job running through the pasture covered with a few feet of fresh snow and a hard icy cover that must have formed that morning when the sun came out and melted the top layer of snow and then it iced over. I finally got to the top of the hill and looked down at the farmhouse there. It was easier going downhill than up. I raced down, my feet sometimes smashing through the icy crust and sometimes staying on the surface and my boots slid okay.

         When I got to the front door of the house I pulled open the rickety screen door and pounded on the front door. It was a solid door and it made a booming sound when I pounded it. I waited just a few seconds and then pounded for a second time. A woman opened the door, wearing a blue house coat. I was surprised and looked at her and said, “Where’s your husband?”

         “He’s dead,” she said. “He died I long time ago.” I looked at her with a feeling of dismay. Well maybe she’ll be easier to work with, I said to myself, without really believing it.

         “There’s someone that’s fallen through the ice. I can’t get him out without a long ladder or rope or something to drag him out with. I need to borrow it from you.”

         “No,” she said, “I know what my husband said to you. He said to stay off our property for insurance purposes. So get off our land. I don’t want some kids dying in the pond.”

         I screamed, “There’s someone stuck in the pond. The ice broke. I can’t just leave him there.”

         “That pond has nothing to do with me. That pond is not on our property.” I looked at her and then looked around to see what I could just take but didn’t see anything. I ran out to their detached garage but it was locked.

         “You bitch,” I shouted. She slammed the door. I knew it was about a mile back to the pond, and since I had already run up from it, I knew the path was passable. As I ran back I looked for the longest branch I could find. I hoped Jimmy had not gone into shock. It was beginning to get colder as the afternoon shadows lengthened. Some of the snow on the ground was turning into ice. I reached the pond in what seemed like ten minutes, completely out of breath. I had lost a mitten somewhere coming back. I hadn’t found a branch.

Jimmy was halfway out of the pond but it looked like if he went any further onto the ice the whole ice shelf would crack off and leave him in a worse place. “Jimmy,” I shouted.  “Look behind you. There’s a crack opening in the shelf, you can swim through that using your hands on the ice to push yourself along.”   

 Meanwhile I laid down on the ice and crawled over to Jimmy and grabbed his hand to lead him along. I was amazed that Jimmy had stayed as aware as he was being stuck in the freezing water for so long. After what seemed like an hour but was maybe only ten minutes we reached the shore and rolled off the ice.   

         Jimmy looked at me with frost all over his face and frozen tears in his eyes. “You saved me bro,” he said. “I just can’t get out.” He was bleeding from where the sharp point of the ice had cut through his jacket and into his crotch. I knew I had to get him somewhere warm quickly. I picked him up and slung him over my shoulder. The funeral home was at least a mile away. The hospital was probably five miles away. The snow was packed hard and it wasn’t as hard to walk as I thought it would be. It almost seemed to give my feet a little push back up as I plowed down toward the funeral home. I remembered all the days we had played football in the late fall. I was more worried about Jimmy getting frostbite than the wound. The bleeding seemed to be lessening. Maybe the cold air had cauterized the wound or something. I picked up my pace into a run, feeling pain in my legs and my shoulder but not stopping. I went to the back door of the home which, thank God, was unlocked.

I went in. Then down the creaky stairs to the crematorium and threw open the old steel doors and switched the flames on. They shot out with a whoosh. I laid Jimmy down on the death bed as I secretly called it as close to the flames as I dared. It was hot there, very hot. The ice around his mouth and the frozen blood started to melt.

         I felt furious at the women back near the pond, I felt furious at Jimmy for something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and I felt furious at myself. I didn’t know if I’d handled things right and how close I’d come to losing Jimmy. I sat there and he lay there, with his matted hair, my left hand where I had lost the mitten feeling like it was inside an iceberg. The ice on our clothes and in our hair and around my hand started to melt and the heat on my face and Jimmy’s caused us to sweat like we were in a sauna, the sweat and the melting ice making us feel clammy and drenched.

         “Bob,” Jimmy said. “I wanted to die out there.” I looked at him not surprised. “I wanted to die at the pond and I wanted to die in Afghanistan.” I wasn’t surprised and I suddenly realized that was why I was furious at Jimmy. I knew he was much too smart and savvy enough about Upstate New York to go out on that ice alone. He had set himself up, and in the process set me up.

         “What the fuck are you talking about Jimmy,” I shouted. “We both could have died out there.”  Jimmy looked up at the ceiling.

“God knows,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you. I’ve already hurt enough people.” I was worried about frostbite. It must have been less than 10 degrees out there, next to the pond. But I thought if I wanted to find out what was happening to Jimmy I had to ask him now, I had to make him talk. I shook him.

“What are you talking about Jimmy?”

         He looked away from me and said in a low, quiet voice, “I killed Brian Cassidy in Afghanistan.” I almost couldn’t hear him well but I was sure about what he said.

         “What the hell are you talking about?”

         “We were in the same Guard unit, up north in the mountains. There weren’t even supposed to be any Americans up there. It was too remote, but we were sent up there because there were some rumors intelligence had gotten about who might be hiding up there.” My eyes widened.

         “Osama Bin Laden?”
         “He wasn’t there, as far as I know. But there were a hell of a lot of other people there and it did seem they were guarding something. It was many more than we were prepared for. And then it started snowing. The snow was so thick it seemed like fog. You couldn’t see a thing. There was a lot of shooting. Brian Cassidy was above me on the hill and was trying to get higher. Shots were coming down on me from above from an automatic rifle. I shot up the hill and the second I shot, for a second the snow cleared. It was like a light had come on. I raised my head enough to see Brian Cassidy. I had shot him in the shoulder. He was bleeding terribly. I stood up to run up to him but before I could move an inch he fell over and down into a deep ravine, 100 yards down or more.”

It made me think of the creek. “Let’s go down to the creek,” I whispered.

“He disappeared into the mist. At the bottom of the gorge. His body just disappeared.” He stopped. He said nothing more.

         “How do you know it was him?”

         “Our eyes met. It was him.”

         “How do you know it was your shot that hit him?”

         “It was my shot that hit him,” he said.

         “Did you look at the bullet. Did it prove it?”

         “We couldn’t even look at the body much less the bullet. He fell off the ledge into a gorge. You couldn’t even see the bottom much less get there. If you wanted to get to the bottom the only way would have been to jump in.”

         “And is that what you wanted to do?”

         “It is what I wish I had done.” Jimmy was shivering even more now. And bleeding from his crotch area.

         He looked up at me with a wistful look. “Where are we,” he said, with tears in his eyes. I looked back at him with some tears hidden in my eyes. I didn’t think crying was the message I wanted to send him.

         “Is this really what you want?” I asked. “I can push you in and that will be the end of it.” Jimmy looked at me. His eyes looked relaxed now and he seemed to be looking beyond me, at the ceiling that was an old-time mosaic of blue and white they used to use then for ceiling tiles. I looked into the retort, the actual chamber where the cremation occurred. The walls were pitted from small explosions that occurred when a pacemaker was mistakenly left in a body. The whole retort was not as clean as it should have been though we did clean it after each job. The body is not really set on fire, but the very high heat eviscerates everything but the bones and bigger pieces of cartilage. All the skin and other body tissues are gone. It’s the bones and cartilage that come out of the retort and are ground up into a powder and put into an urn.

         Jimmy just kept looking at the ceiling and I looked up too. Between the stress I was under, the water in my eyes, and the stinging all over my cold face, the blue and white tile seemed to merge into a sort of fog. I didn’t know what to do. I don’t think Jimmy knew what to do either. His eyes left the ceiling and looked at me for some kind of clue. I knew a lot of things but I didn’t know this.

Gil Kaplan

Gil Kaplan lives in Washington, D.C. and is a graduate of Harvard College, where he majored in the History and Literature of England. He grew up in upstate New York (Endicott) and his two kids live in Brooklyn and Astoria, Queens.

His writing has appeared in the Huffington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post, and the Detroit Free Press, among other publications. He won an award for the best short story by a new contributor from the Pendulum literary magazine, and Glimmer Train recognized one of his stories as among the 25 best of over a thousand submitted.

He is an expert on how to revive U.S. manufacturing.