The Secret Burial of Hazel’s Father

The Secret Burial of Hazel’s Father is a clandestine funeral and handoff: Hazel and her companions carry Hazel’s Father (Herbert)’s body in a cooler to a sheltered place among trees, but Liver undertakes the burial while Hazel returns to the car. The farewell is shaped by what Hazel cannot know, what Liver agrees to do, and the dolls who remain with him. Its final image is not the grave itself but Liver disappearing into the brush with one of the dolls held tenderly in his arms.

Setting and Preparation

Liver chooses a spot with abundant trees and shrub cover, asking Hazel whether it will work. The site offers concealment for the burial they are arranging. They set down the cooler, whose contents make it both the practical container for the body and an object Hazel struggles to regard plainly. Exhausted, still somewhat drugged, and thirsty, she sits on it without thinking; when she remembers what is inside, she stands again. Her mind keeps insisting the cooler should contain drinks, even imagining rows of frosted beer bottles in place of her father’s body. The impossible wish briefly exposes the gap between ordinary expectation and the fact she has brought into the woods.

Liver asks Jasper to return to the car with him to collect Diane and Roxy, leaving Hazel alone near the cooler as dusk approaches. The dolls arrive by an incongruous route: Jasper carries Roxy piggyback to manage the load, while Liver brings Diane along the path. Hazel had not thought to change their clothes before leaving the house. Diane wears a sequined tube top and orange miniskirt; Roxy has a bikini top and spandex underwear marked with a celebratory slogan. They set one doll on either side of the cooler and gather in front of it. The improvised arrangement gives the scene the shape of a funeral while retaining the absurd, conspicuously dressed figures that belong to this company.

A Funeral Under Uncertainty

Jasper proposes giving the dolls voices, perhaps making them perform a conversation about being in love. In explaining the idea, he speaks of having recently fallen in love for the first time and of losing the woman he loved, describing the feeling as being buried alive and pinned down. He begins to cry. Hazel considers the tears welcome, although they are not technically for her father: at a funeral, she thinks, any tears count. His grief does not replace hers; it enters the gathering by another route and makes the small, makeshift ceremony less emotionally solitary.

Liver offers Hazel a private moment with her father. She declines. If the brain chip is still working, she reasons, being alone with him is not possible. The uncertainty about deactivation therefore reaches into the funeral itself: even here, beside the body, she cannot confidently claim privacy. Instead, she asks what will happen to the body. Her question shifts the scene from mourning toward the concrete problem of disposition, one that Liver is prepared to take on.

Liver’s Promise and Hazel’s Farewell

Liver asks Jasper to wait in the car, saying Hazel will come down soon; Jasper agrees eagerly and says he will have the engine running. Hazel grips Liver’s hand, unsure whether he welcomes the touch or merely tolerates it. He is not usually inclined to return physical affection, but he does not pull away. That uncertain contact sits alongside Hazel’s growing urge to weep and her shame that her tears are not wholly for her father. She remembers having nearly gotten Liver killed and believes she ought to keep him away from her. Yet seeing him again after thinking he was dead has been an unexpectedly good turn in her life. Time with him had felt like making new memories, unlike the rest of her life, which seemed dominated by past mistakes.

Liver says he should not come with her because he stands out in certain situations, and offers to handle the burial himself. He plans to nestle explosives in the cooler so that anyone who disturbs the grave will face a blast, and says he will sit with the grave for a while. The plan joins concealment to protection: he will remove the body from the group and remain behind as its guard. He leaves open the possibility that Hazel might see him again if her brain is fixed. Then he kisses her. Hazel’s tears deepen as she reflects on having given up an ordinary life for the promised special life with Byron, only to find that it was not special. She had once hoped most for love, but it did not develop with Byron or with Liver; affection for Liver remains, which makes parting painful rather than easy.

The Dolls and the Departure

Hazel asks whether Liver will bury the dolls with her father, then questions whether her father would want them underground at all. Watching Roxy’s hair move in the wind, she sees the dolls as full of vitality even while motionless, more spirited than the three living people before the cooler. She imagines them suited instead to a dance floor or the front row of a roller coaster, and suggests they stay with Liver. He agrees to try to show them a good time and says he hopes to see Hazel again, adding that he rarely says so. His farewell gives the dolls a future beyond the funeral and makes their separation from the body a choice rather than an afterthought.

Liver wheels the cooler off the path. Hazel walks the other way, toward the sun, feeling as though it burns the tears from her face. At the end of the trail she turns back for one last look: Liver is lifting one of the dolls into his arms with the care of someone carrying an injured person. Then he disappears into the brush. The passage leaves the burial itself in Liver’s keeping, while its visible conclusion binds secrecy and tenderness together: the cooler and the body vanish from Hazel’s sight, but the final gesture is a careful embrace of the dolls.