Sam Kulla

Robert Kim put human ashes into glass orbs for a living. He wore big, bright knit hats on a head of thick, dirty blonde hair and rode a bicycle with tarnished chrome fenders and swept handlebars. He owned a truck that he would use for heavy chores but for all intensive purposes the bicycle was his main ride. In the cold of winter when the streets were slick and dangerous he put a hundred short woodscrews into some thick used tires so he would have the necessary traction to make the trip across town to his work.

Most days when he arrived, he would be greeted by Simon, who owned the studio. Some days, he would wait a few minutes for him outside beside his chained up bicycle. He had his own key, but he waited outside for Simon unless the wind was blowing hard. When Simon arrived, they would drink a cup of coffee and smoke a hand rolled cigarette on the wooden deck that served as a loading dock in the alley while the kiln heated up. They then would go back inside and start to fill orders.

Simon would call a name. Robert would gather liquid glass for the core of a piece on his punty and keep it hot in the glory hole while Simon prepared the ashes. They came in perfect orange pill bottles from mortuaries all over the nation, each labeled with the deceased’s name. On a freshly sterilized graphite bench, Simon used a credit card to cut a quarter teaspoon of ashes into two long, delicate lines, like an experienced cocaine user, a little bit of flair in his wrist while he worked. Beside them, he would lay two more lines of colorful powdered glass. Robert would move quickly from the glory hole to the workbench with his glowing cylinder and roll it gently in the lines, making spiral patterns from top to bottom. The air would take on a gently pungent smell for a moment. Next, he gathered more glass onto the outside of the piece and spent a few more minutes spinning it to a perfect sphere in the glory hole. Finally, Simon would wear Kevlar gloves and grip the piece firmly with both hands while Robert tapped the punty with a ball peen hammer to break it free. The piece would go into the kiln on a numbered square to cool, each number corresponding to the name of the remains. Simon would carefully put any remaining ashes back into their orange bottle, put the bottle back in its special spot in the cabinet, then clean the graphite workbench with alcohol for the next orb. In his bright knit hat, Robert dipped the punty in the furnace for more glass. Taking only short breaks, they did this all morning. Sometimes they would make as many as twenty or thirty orbs in a day.

In the afternoons Simon worked in the office, shipping orbs and leftover ashes, receiving fresh ashes, taking orders and corresponding with funeral directors about their latest design options while Robert stayed in the shop and ground the jagged bases of new orbs smooth on a diamond dusted wet wheel. The wheel faced a window that overlooked the neighbor’s yard.

One day through the window, he saw a fox. It was not uncommon to see foxes in the countryside, but in town it was certainly more of a rarity. The fox did not see him as it entered the yard and began to dig in the snow under the tree closest to the window. After a minute, it took something too small to recognize out of the hole in its mouth and left the yard the way it had come. Robert went back to grinding. After he finished each piece, he would etch the name of the deceased into the base. The name for this piece turned out to be, much to his surprise, A. Fox.

“Simon,” he said as he walked into the office, “Guess what just happened.”

“You finished all the orbs and we can leave a little early to go for a beer?” Simon loved owning his own business.

“Well, actually, yes. But also this: The last base I ground was for somebody named A. Fox and as I was sitting at the wheel, I saw a fox come into the neighbor’s yard! He dug something up from the snow and took it with him.”

Simon looked puzzled, “A real fox?”

“Yeah. I don’t know what A. Fox the person looks like, a real fox. You took the order, do you know what the initial A. stands for?”

“I remember that order. It was an order direct from the family, I think, not a funeral home. A lady called, very friendly and calm for sure, but she didn’t say anything about who the deceased was to her. Actually I thought that was strange, most people who order directly always want to talk about the person at least a little.”

“That is strange,” Robert agreed, “Do you think it would be okay if I wrote a note about the fox and tucked it in the box when we ship the orb? I mean, regardless of what we know, that could be neat for whoever knew A. Fox.”

“That’s a fine idea. Go ahead and do it quick though because I want to have it ready when the FedEx guy comes in a half hour.”

Robert neatly printed the story on a half sheet of white paper, tucked it in the padded box and finished taping it up while Simon cleaned up the workshop and turned off the lights. The furnace and the oven, however, never turned off. In the event of a blackout, a generator could be turned on to make sure the equipment and orbs were not lost.

It was near the winter solstice and getting dark fast as Robert and Simon walked down the alley to the nearby bar. Robert left his bicycle at the studio. Inside the bar, Simon paid for a pitcher of beer and asked, “So what did the fox dig up when you saw it, anyway?”

“I couldn’t tell,” Robert answered, “I looked but it was something small enough to carry with his mouth. Maybe a little stick or a nut I’m guessing? What do foxes usually dig out of the snow?”

“Mice, sometimes. Or water, if there’s a creek buried. Actually I have no idea I just made that up.”

“We could go in the neighbor’s yard and look.”

“Nah, whatever he dug up he took with him you said. Plus I don’t want to leave tracks in their snow coming from our side of the fence.”

“It’s kind of haunting though, don’t you think? I mean A. Fox is exactly the same as a fox, as if it was A. Fox’s ghost in animal spirit mode maybe.”

“That,” Simon said, “Or maybe the ashes were from a fox. We’ve done pets before.”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t call your pet fox ‘A. Fox’ would you? You’d call it ‘Red’ or ‘Needles’ or something, right?”

“Good point. So it was either a person named A. Fox, which I think is most likely, or it was a fox that was not a pet.”

“Huh.” Robert said.

“Huh. I know,” Simon shrugged, “Sometimes you just have to put it out of your mind.”

After the pitcher was gone, Simon walked home to have dinner with his wife and Robert went back through the alley to get his bicycle. In the cold, the padlock would not turn and he ended up breaking the key off. Frustrated, he kicked around in the snow for a second and considered his options. Walking home would take at least an hour and the wind was picking up. He could go back to the bar and call Simon for a ride. Or, he realized, he could just use his studio key and get some bolt cutters from inside to cut the chain. After all, he had a key.

He went around front through the office and stomped the snow off his feet in the dark. He took off his down jacket and gloves and set them on the sofa, then walked through the dust curtain into the workshop. It was warm and the glow from the glass furnace was enough to see by as he scanned the room for bolt cutters. From outside, the wind strengthened audibly.

As he took in his surroundings, something about the way the room was so warm in the physical sense but so cold in other ways struck him, the sharp angles of the machinery, the glass shards all over the floor, the danger and the subtle smell of twice burnt human ashes. He was not unaware of the curious morality of encasing people’s remains in glass. And while he knew there was nothing explicitly wrong about it, it bordered so closely the realm of what he considered magic that he had on several occasions dreamed of being trapped in glass for eternity. These thoughts were usually fleeting and quickly dismissed. Families wanted the orbs, sometimes an individual with a terminal disease would even choose their own colors before dying. Morticians regularly preserve people for burial with formaldehyde, how was using glass any different? Robert noticed that the cabinet where the ashes were stored, which was usually kept with a lock on it, had been left wide open.

And if that were not enough to spook him, he heard rustling coming from the office.

Even with the warmth of the furnace, and even with his bright knit hat, he felt a chill as he stood motionless. Through the dust curtain, the rustling reminded him of when he had been a child and heard a sound inside the wood stove in summer. He had opened the stove and seen nothing, just cold ashes from a fire that had burned months before. But from them had sprung a small, dark bird, which had apparently entered through the chimney. It had flown around the room only to knock itself out against a window, and Robert had set it outside in the sun where it eventually awoke and flew away. The sound of feathers beating ash in an iron box was unique enough that he had never forgotten it.

He turned around and pulled the curtain open. The room was exactly as it should be. No bird sprung forth. “Hello,” Robert said with a dry voice, but no answer came. Compared to the workshop, the office was cold and clean, dimly lit by LEDs from the computer, fax machine, copy machine and power strips. The wind howled. He must have been imagining things.

After he found the cutters, he set his bike free and locked the studio. Along the way he pushed hard when the wind was against him, leaned his body into it like a sail when it was at his side, and soared when it was at his back under the cold and patchy sky. His homemade studded tires went clack clack clack just loud enough to hide any small sound made by what followed him home through the snowy streets that night: A fox.