Into the Earth

Wang died in the small hours. The call reached Roots-Proper on a city construction site, where concrete was being poured onto the tenth floor's beams; his phone shook three times in his pocket. He saw the number and his hand trembled, the vibrator nearly skewing the formwork.

He asked the foreman for leave. The foreman said, we understand about your mother, but this floor's work is tight — best you are back in three days. Roots-Proper said, I know.

He bought the bus ticket before dawn. He stayed awake the whole way, remembering the last time he saw his mother, at New Year. She had stuffed a plastic bag of eggs into his hands, saying eggs are dear in the city, eat them. He found it heavy and gave half to Old Li, a fellow passenger. Now the bag is empty, and Old Li is gone too — last year the mine took him; the family got two hundred thousand in compensation and built him a gatehouse with stone lions, more splendid at the grave than any living soul's home.

At the village edge stood a van draped in black crepe, its side lettered: Funeral One-Stop, worry-free and decent. Before Roots-Proper reached his own gate a fat man in a black suit stopped him, offered a cigarette, and said, brother, mourn, we handle it all, from washing and dressing to burial and banquet, you need do nothing. Roots-Proper asked the price. The fat man held up four fingers, then folded one down: as you wish, thirty-eight thousand, the bare minimum. Roots-Proper said nothing. The fat man added, your mother lived long, a happy passing, you cannot be shabby, or the village will talk behind your back.

Only then did Roots-Proper remember: when his father died, at sixty-seven, the same crew carried the coffin. That cost twenty-two thousand, and his mother had grumbled for three years that the thin-ply coffin was worth less than her two jars of pickles. Now it was her turn, and the price had doubled, and so had the rites.

The yard was already full. Third Uncle sat in the place of honor in the main room, tapping his tobacco pipe on the table edge. Roots-Proper, he said, you have done well out in the world; your mother's last journey cannot be careless. By the old rules, you hire the Taoists, you buy the paper offerings, you choose a south-facing plot — none of that can be spared. Roots-Proper nodded. Third Uncle went on: your mother suffered in life; let her be splendid in death, she will rest easy below. Roots-Proper nodded again. He knew well enough that the happiest thing in his mother's life was sitting under the locust tree by the gate in summer, watching her grandson do his homework. But the boy boarded at school in the county, home twice a year; her tree-shade had long had no one to share it.

The one-stop men came in, lifted the mother onto the cooling board, and hauled in a red-lacquered coffin, calling it fine-wood craftsmanship, eight thousand. Roots-Proper knocked on it; it rang like fiberboard. He meant to refuse, but Third Uncle coughed beside him. Roots-Proper swallowed the words.

The Taoists came from the next county, two of them, one beating a gong and one chanting words Roots-Proper could not follow. After the better part of an hour they declared the rites complete and charged two thousand. The paper-offering man carried in a paper television, a paper fridge, a paper car, saying everyone does it now, so the old one can live in comfort over there — twelve hundred a set. Roots-Proper looked at the paper car and remembered his mother had ridden in a car perhaps a handful of times; to reach the township clinic she had always hitched a neighbor's three-wheeler.

The graves lay on the slope behind the village. The public cemetery had been laid out by the township three years before; a plot was eight thousand, two thousand more for a favored site. Roots-Proper chose the cheapest. Third Uncle frowned and said the spot faced north and his mother would mind the damp. Roots-Proper said, my mother does not mind.

On the banquet day twenty tables of flowing feast were set. The villagers came to eat — three hundred a table — and drank the filial-wine the one-stop recommended, eighty a bottle. Some played finger-games, some told Roots-Proper to drink less, for mourning's sake. When the feast broke up the ground was littered with cigarette ends and disposable bowls. The mother lay quiet in that north-facing plot on the slope, and no one mentioned her again.

Roots-Proper did the sums. One-stop thirty-eight thousand, coffin eight thousand, Taoists two thousand, paper offerings twelve hundred, plot eight thousand, feast six thousand, odds and ends another two thousand — more than sixty thousand all told. The twenty thousand his mother had saved came from raising chickens, collecting scrap, selling her own vegetables at market, over eleven years. It all went to the one-stop, and he still owed forty thousand — borrowed from Third Uncle, who said, family, no rush, pay it back slowly.

In the city Roots-Proper carried a mortgage. It was the two-story house he had borrowed a hundred thousand to build under his mother's eyes; she lived in it a single year before he left. The house stands empty, its lock rusted, last year's dust on the windowsill.

On the seventh day Roots-Proper was to return to the province. Before leaving he climbed the slope; his mother's grave was fresh-turned earth with no grass yet. He knelt and bowed three times; the earth was cool, his knees knew it. He remembered his mother's saying: when a life's lamp goes out, simple is best. But simple, in this village, is to be talked about.

At the county bus station he waited and saw a poster on the wall, red ground and white letters: your last journey, leave it to us, a decent send-off at a fair price. He stared at those words a long time, and suddenly remembered that the night his mother drew her last breath she had been alone in bed and called his childhood name twice. A neighbor heard, and only after the space of a meal did anyone come in. The last face his mother saw was not her son's, but the fat man's in the black suit.

The bus came. Roots-Proper got on and took a window seat. Beyond the glass lay July's fields, green to the point of panic. He slid his hand into his pocket and felt the forty-thousand note he had borrowed, its corner gone soft with rubbing. He did not look at it; he tucked the pocket shut.

The bus traveled far; he looked back, and the village shrank until the new grave was lost to sight. But he knew it was there, eight thousand a plot, facing north. His mother did not mind the damp, his mother did not mind the dark; his mother had only stopped, across a door, calling him home to eat.