“Uncle Mike?” My six-year-old nephew looked up at me from his racing car drawing. He lay belly-down on our thick white living room carpet.

“Yeah, Troy?” I set the book I was reading on my lap.

“Where do people go when they die?” he asked, his mouth shrinking and his eyebrows furrowing into an arch.

“Disneyland.”

“Really?” His eyes grew round.

“Yup.” I took a long drink of the root beer I had set on the nearby coffee table.

“What do they do there?” Troy got up from his sprawled-out position and sat cross-legged. His attention was fixed.

“Well, what do you do at Disneyland?”

He paused to consider. “I ride all the rides. Mr. Toad is my favorite.”

Troy was beaming. I could tell from his smile that he was thinking about Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at that very moment. I took another long sip of root beer, picked up the book from my lap, and returned to my reading. A few long minutes crawled by.

“Uncle Mike?”

I lowered my book but did not set it down. “Yes?”

“Is that what they do?”

“Huh?”

“Is that what the people do too, after they die?” Troy asked. “Ride the rides?” He twirled the pointy portion of his pencil somewhere within the mass of brown ringlets covering his head.

“Nope.”

“Why not?” He stopped twirling.

“They can’t.” I raised my book back up.

“Why?” Troy set down his pencil, put both hands on the carpet, and leaned his whole upper body in towards me. His eyes were wide with anticipation and his mouth agape. He was tilting so far forward that it looked as though he might fall over.

Each tick of the nearby grandfather clock became pronounced in the absence of competing sound.

I flipped to the next page of my novel.

“Because they’re dead.”