The Hearse You Came in On Read Free Page B

his pipes and wiped an authentic tear from his eye. Love is a needle in your neck sometimes, I swear. The priest scattered his final words over Mr. Weatherby and the deed was done. The widow stood a moment at the coffin, looking like she had just remembered the name of some restaurant that her husband had asked her about last week and that she would now have to simply hold on to forever. She placed a veined hand on the casket and muttered something that I missed altogether, then blended back in with the flock making their way across the graves to their cars. Tony, five foot two and as swarthy as a Sicilian boot, stood erect and stock-still as the mourners passed.
    I lagged behind. My job was done. I don’t usually attend the post-funeral bash. It’s my task—or Billie’s—to get the deceased safely to this point, hovering six feet above their final earthly stop. Then I sign off and pass things along to the cemetery folk. And so it was this time. Four guys you wouldn’t let near your front door emerged from behind the trees and continued an argument they had been having about Cal Ripken’s back pains as they played out the canvas straps holding the coffin aloft. Before the box sank below the surface one of the lugs snatched the flower arrangement off and tossed it aside. They take them home to the missus.
    “Hey, Kid, you gonna help?”
    This was the captain of the crew, a cigar-chomping bulldog with ears the size of Chincoteague oysters. He loved calling me “Kid.” I loved calling him “Pops.” So much love.
    “Not today, Pops. I’ve got a hangnail.”
    Pops thought that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. He shoved the lug next to him. “Did you hear what the kid said? He said he’s got a hangnail!” The guy curled his lip. You could see he thought it was a riot.
    I left them. At the road Tony was packing his bagpipes into the trunk of his car. I declined the offer of a ride. I wanted to walk. I had a few things I wanted to think about.
    I swung by my place—which is four doors down from the funeral home—and took my hound dog Alcatraz out for a walk and a pee. He was ever so grateful. He left his love letters all up and down the block, then I took him over to Aunt Billie’s for cocktails. Alcatraz had soup. He loves soup.
    “Who was that girl yesterday?” Billie asked me. “You know who I mean. The crasher.”
    I told her I didn’t know. “She said she wanted to arrange her own funeral.”
    Billie was at the lowboy, making old-fashioneds. A post-mortem favorite. She muddled the fruit with a little silver hammer.
    “Isn’t she a little young for that?”
    “I’d say so.”
    Billie brought me my drink and she took hers over to her favorite chair. She slipped off her shoes after she sat down, and Alcatraz immediately trotted over and dropped to the floor in front of her. Billie rested her feet gently on his soft wrinkles.
    “Did she leave a deposit?” Billie asked.
    “It didn’t get that far,” I said, raising my glass. “She changed her mind.”
    Billie smiled, bringing her glass to her lips. “Oh, she decided to live. That’s nice.”

CHAPTER 3
     
    I think I mentioned that on the day that Carolyn James walked into and out of my life, I was in a cranky mood. Saying “yes” when I really mean “no” does that to me. Gets me cranky. And damn my soul to the eternal hell it deserves, that is what I had just recently done, agreeing to slap on a gray mustache and a folksy sort of fedora to play the part of the Stage Manager for an upcoming Gypsy Players production of
Norman Rockwell’s Fever Dream,
more popularly known as
Our Town.
Gil Vance, the visionary behind this inspired choice, stressed my height and my solid good looks (that’s a quote) in his campaign to nudge me out of yet another of my amateur retirements from the nonprofessional stage. He also invoked the local notoriety of my late parents. Gil is also never too shameless to swaddle his cudgel with my parents’ former