When Samuel awoke, he was lying in his own bed, his mother’s face close to his own, his father a few feet away, leaning against the wall, his hands in his pockets. It was daytime, and there was sun streaming in through Samuel’s bedroom window. Samuel tried to sit up, but his mother’s hand gently held him down.

“Not yet dear. You’ve been through a great ordeal.”

“That man.”

“You did a good job, son,” Tom Meller said.

That wasn’t an answer at all to Samuel’s implied question. Samuel had remembered the man. He didn’t say anything about himself.

“Is he okay? The man is he okay?”

His mother would not meet his eye. His father took a deep breath before speaking again.

“He’s gone, Samuel. I helped bury him this morning.”

“I should have helped.”

“You did enough, Samuel.”

“I didn’t do anything! I was supposed to make sure no one got hurt and that’s exactly what happened.”

“You couldn’t have prevented what happened. There was nothing you could have done. That’s the way things are.”

“You need more rest,” Mrs. Meller said.

“All I’ve done is rest.”

“Your mother’s right.”

When his parents left his room, he did not go back to sleep, nor did he stay in bed. He went to his window and looked out. If he strained his neck and looked out the right side of his window, he could see the old barn and the four trees holding it in place. It didn’t look quite the same. The men were mostly visible, which was unusual. Some of them milled about, a few threw a baseball, but most of them were lounging wherever they could find a spot between the puddles that dominated the landscape. Samuel could see the treeline reflected back at him hundreds of times from puddles all over. Walking among the men, stopping here and there to talk, was Eddard Morley. It was his face that Samuel had last seen before blacking out, and here he was, carrying on as ever. No one seemed particularly pleased to talk to him, but still he went from man to man, occasionally stopping to tamp down his pipe or to light it once more. Samuel would soon know what it was that Eddard Morley was doing.

It was his father who told him about the funeral service. First, his mother came by and made him put on his Sunday clothes, but she wouldn’t say why, only that “your father will explain it.”

“I helped dig the plot myself. Some of the men think it’s a good idea to say a few words. You ought to be there.”

“Is mother coming?”

“She...no.”

The body was buried further into the south wood than seemed strictly necessary. Samuel could not help but imagine how difficult it must have been to carry the body such a distance. Maybe his father had wanted it to be difficult, had wanted it to take some time. The spot they had chosen was in a small clearing devoid of any unseemly detritus. The earth was still fresh, and a simple cross stood at the head of the grave. The men who chose to attend stood in a circle around the plot, and Eddard Morley stepped forward to speak. He had slicked his hair back and his piped was tucked neatly into his shirt pocket. He cleared his throat and rubbed the side of his nose before speaking.

“His name was Thomas Howell. He was thirty years old and came from Maryland. There’s a wife and a small boy. Thomas had a dollar and seven cents to his name. Mr. Meller has graciously offered to pay the postage so that Mr. Howell’s wife and child receive that money. Thomas Howell was known to be a fair hand at cards. Unfortunately, that was all I was able to find out about the man. He was a son of God, as all of us are. I pray that he may rest in peace.”

Samuel wanted to scream. That was it? The man’s life was summed up just like that? Who cared if he was good at cards? What did that have to do with anything? It was all so pathetic and haphazard. For the first time, Samuel was angry at Eddard Morley. The man failed at his duties. He was supposed to honor this man, but he hadn’t done that. He’d only said a few things about him and then he’d been done.

“Come on, Samuel,” Tom Meller said, holding him by the shoulders and leading him towards the house. “Let’s go.”

“No.”

“Let’s go.”

“No,” Samuel cried and broke free of his father’s grip. He ran by the men, bumping against Eddard Morley’s shoulder as he ran by. He sprinted further into the woods, running through the trees as best he could. He only stopped to catch his breath after several hundred yards. He looked back to see the men were only just visible. The speck that he imagined was his father was being comforted by another man. A hand rested on Tom Meller’s shoulder. Samuel turned away and started walking.

The woods were alive with bird calls and noises without specific origin that seem to abound when the sunlight first hits the trees after a prolonged rain. The nine year old boy walked alone. It was true that Samuel had known death before. His grandparents had passed, but they had been old, and their passing had felt meaningful in the scope of time. Thomas Howell’s death felt trite and useless. It was the first time that Samuel had truly felt the weight of death fall squarely on his shoulders...and he only wished it felt heavier. It was pitifully light, and that haunted him. The man had simply been snuffed out. Here, and then gone. The meaninglessness of it, and his father and Eddard Morley’s pitiful attempts to give meaning to a death that had none was what angered the boy so much. He imagined any number of deaths befalling himself as he walked through the trees. There were bobcats in the woods, bears maybe, plenty of holes he could fall into and get stuck. He could leave the world at any moment and it wouldn’t make a lick of difference. He had been right about that night: he would remember it forever. It had been a night of excitement and importance, but not for Thomas Howell. Death is only important to the living. They struggle and grasp at straws to make sure it means something, anything, so that when it's their turn, someone might do the same.