"Here's a theory." I was standing next to Sam. It was cloudy out, but it wasn't raining. The grass was wet, and there were drops of watch beaded up on the shiny black leather shoes -- the ones I only wore for funerals and interviews and dancing. I was wearing a suit.

"Okay." Sam was wearing a black dress with a white collar and small white polka dots on it.

"Every one carries around little slivers of anger that get embedded in our skin whenever a childhood dream is broken." I stuck my hands in my pockets, but didn't look over at her. "Sounds kind of stupid when I say it out loud."

She didn't move, except I think she shifted her head a little, like she was thinking of looking at me or maybe taking my arm, but changed my mind. "I'm just not sure what you mean."

I thought about that for a little bit. The breathing hiss of cars going by on the wet highway kept things from getting too quiet -- muffled the conversations from the people down the hill, waiting for us.

"I remember when we were kids, during a sermon, the pastor at our church dropped a bomb -- told everyone that there was no Santa Claus -- he was trying to prove some kind of point, I guess, but it was kind of a dick move." I shifted my weight back into my heels. "I'd been arguing with my little sister about exactly that for a couple of months, and I remember just lighting up with the power of adult verification when he said that. I started to turn to her," I rotated my upper body toward Sam, demonstrating, "to give her a full-on I Told You So, and the look on her face was..." I turned forward again. "I didn't really get what I was seeing, but I understood enough to know not to tease her right then."

"She was pissed."

"Absolutely -- at the pastor, at me, probably even at my folks for faking us out for so long."

"And you think she's still mad."

"I think, if she thinks about it, she can feel that little sliver -- like that part that you never quite get out."

A breeze kicked up for a bit, making the cottonwoods sigh and rattle back and forth at each other.

"Probably."

I let that sit for awhile, trying to figure out where I was going with that, and thinking at the same time that that was kind of ironic. I watched a bead of water start to run down the curved face of the casket.

"So..." Sam jumped a little. I hadn't said anything in a while. "Sorry."

She moved her head back and forth. "S'okay."

"When I was a kid, compasses were like... magic. I would see them in television shows and movies or read about them in books, and they were always so cool. The guy would get to a sticking point in the story -- someplace where no one knew what to do next or where to go or they were just lost. They'd think about it a bit, then someone would remember that they had a compass, and they'd pull it out, and stare at the face for a few seconds, then they'd tuck it back in their pocket, stare out at the horizon, and they'd know the way to go. That was that." I turned halfway toward same. "No one ever explained exactly how it worked -- just that there was this needle; so in my head, it was like some kind of telepathic thing that knew what you needed to do without you saying anything, and would just point the way."

"Yeah." Sam nodded, dragging her eyes up to mine for as long as she could, which was all of four seconds. "I kinda think that I thought of sewing machines like that when I little."

"Right, so... my sophomore year in high school, our Social Studies teacher brought out a box of cheap compasses and had us do orientation problems out in the parking lot, and I found out how compasses really worked, and I hated it."

"You mean like your sliver thing."

"Yeah." I turned back toward the casket. "A few weeks later, I was trying to explain to my dad why I'd hated that day so much, but the best I could get out was that I'd always thought of compasses as being really cool things that showed you where you needed to go, but they didn't quite work that way. I didn't explain it right, and he didn't get it."

"I'm sure he tried."

"Yeah." I pulled a handful of silvery metal out of my pocket. "For graduation, he gave me this." I handed it to her.

"It's gorgeous."

"Yeah." She wasn't wrong. Silver and covered in designs and hanging on a chain like a pocket watch, it was probably the nicest... anything... that I owned. "Mostly, I was amazed that he remembered that compass talk and I guess I looked amazed, and that made him happy. Mom told me later that'd he'd found it in a junk shop two years before and bought it for me for graduation."

"Two years early?" She ran the chain through her fingers. "That's pretty amazing."

"It is." I took the compass when she handed it back to me, lowering the body of it into my hand, letting the chain pile in on top. "Mom said he used to smile when he thought about giving it to me. I'm glad he thought I liked it."

"But... you didn't like it?"

I started wrapping the chain around my index finger. "You know what a compass does?" I reached the base of the chain and started winding the other direction. "A compass tells you that you don't matter. The needle never points at what you want or where you need to go; it doesn't care. This one was made years before I was born, and it pointed the same way it's pointing today, and the same way it'll point after I'm dead and probably..." I waved my hands in a vague arc "buried around here somewhere." I walked around to the long side of the grave and set the compass on top of the casket among the leaves of the wreath. "All it does is tell you how far away from the right direction you're going. It’s been telling me that ever since.” I straightened back up, dropping my hands back into my pockets. “I’m done.”

I walked back to the front gate of the cemetery.

I didn’t hear Sam tell me I was wrong.

I didn't see her take the compass.

-- Doyce Testerman

• Silver
• Leaves Of The Wreath

The Stories