A Cellarful of Nose - Future Shoes

egan pulling out stomach, intestine, liver, and finally the lungs
and heart.
The parts made a flomping sound as they tumbled onto the
grass. The pile of guts in the headlamps seemed bigger than a
single deer could hold.
Everything inside had to come outside, I thought, as I
huddled with my brother and sister, so close we could feel the
warmth of one another's skin. I remember Kathy's hand on my
shoulder. But the cost of this adventure, judging from my mom’s
face, glowing red streaked with tears, seemed high. By the time
the grown-ups returned to the house, and the screen door thumped
behind them, we had all crept back to our beds.
It was one of those events that sum up childhood. We saw
death and blood hanging from a broken tree. We saw the knife go
in. We saw the heart tumble out. We watched questionlessly from
the wings.
When my mom and dad divorced two years later, after
Kathy's death at age 15, they would do so without telling us. My
mom would pack my surviving brothers and me in a car and drive
up to Niagara Falls for a few days of silent sight-seeing. We stood
by where the falls should be, obscured in the sunlit mist, and
wondered what was out there.
When we returned, our dad's things were gone from his
drawers, and his bed, which was separate from our mom's, a
single bed in a single room, was stripped bare.
Mom never let on that a deal had been struck. It was just
another mystery. Looking about the ransacked room, we thought
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