Burial to follow Read online

  Roby wanted to step on the old woman’s toes. You’d think she would have learned some manners. After all, she’d probably been to many viewings in her day.

  "I only touched him once," the widow said. "Set me off to bawling. His skin was so cold."

  "I remember I found my Henry that way, hunched over on the toilet. I thought he was straining away, because he was mighty bound up with constipation there his last few years. But I laid a hand on him, and he was plumb cold. Fell over on the floor and laid there while I screamed."

  "Ma’am," Roby said. "Sorry to interrupt, but the line’s long and we don’t want to keep the family out too late."

  The old woman bobbed her head in agreement. "I know what you mean. They probably ain’t sleeping much."

  She juddered a few steps away and hugged Marlene, then the other girls. "Say, do you know what time the burial is?"

  Barnaby Clawson stood near the chapel doors, hands folded and clasped together over the lowest button of his suit jacket. "Ma’am, the information is posted on the sign outside."

  The old woman went to him, touched him on the forearm. "You did a fine job on him."

  "Thank you, ma’am."

  Roby waited until the old woman had exited, made sure the widow was occupied by some concerned neighbors, then went over to Barnaby.

  "Marlene didn’t eat none of the pie," Roby said.

  "I know," Barnaby said, his practiced expression of sorrow never slipping.

  "What am I going to do?"

  "Did you ask you-know-who?"

  "How come you’re afraid to say his name?"

  "Look, a man sees too much in my line of work. Some of it stays behind closed doors. To these folks-" Barnaby gave a small nod to indicate the line of those paying final respects "-the show is everything. We’re all in on the great big lie. Jacob’s gone on but we pay tribute to his flesh in all these little rituals that are supposed to make us feel better."

  "Well, you’d be out of a job if it wasn’t for the rituals."

  "No. I’m as deep in it as you and Bev Parsons and the old man. We’re maggots eating off the same corpse, when you get right down to it."

  "You shoulda known better. You had your face pushed into it all your life."

  "My boy," Barnaby said. "He had AIDS. I know he turned out funny, was punished by God and deserved it, but a man will do most anything for his sons, even when they despise him."

  "And he’s better now, no sign of it, huh?"

  "I don’t ask questions, I just open the suitcase and do what Johnny’s note tells me to do."

  "At least you did it out of love. From the goodness of your heart. I reckon that will count for something when you get to Judgment."

  "I don’t know," the undertaker said, sounding weary. "I guess we all got our own sins to answer for."

  A distant cousin came by, recognizable by the distinct Ridgehorn chin that resembled a burl on an apple tree. He was middle-aged, smelled of bottom-shelf whiskey, and his eyes were watery. "You sure done proud, Mr. Clawson. Jacob looks fresh as a daisy."

  Barnaby smiled a little without any of his wrinkles moving. "Thank you, sir. I hate to see him go, but I’m glad I can do my part to help ease his passing."

  The man sniffled and moved on, wobbling slightly.

  Barnaby dropped his voice again. "We’re all maggots. We all eat the sorrow and then go home, glad that it’s him and not us that had to give up the ghost."

  "What if you don’t give it up?" Roby asked, thinking of Johnny Divine’s stubborn belief that he was still alive.

  "I’d take the heat of hell over the cold indifference of the dirt. You and me, we know that souls go on, and we believe it more firmly than any church-goer you ever met. We’ve seen it with our own eyes, and that sets us apart."

  "I guess it’s kind of a like a holy duty, when you look at it that way." He looked at Marlene, at the exposed fringe of her bra, the soft white curving flesh above it. Harold had arrived and was greeting the widow, taking her frail hands in his large ones. Black grease filled the creases of his fingers and his hair was slicked back with what looked like thirty-weight.

  Barnaby put a hand on Roby’s shoulder. "It’s the least you could do for poor old Jacob."

  Roby nodded. "Yeah, I reckon." Then, after a pause, he said, "Has Glenn Isenhour come by?"

  "They wheeled him in this morning. Don’t worry. He’ll get his turn. He don’t deserve no less."

  "And the suitcase?"

  "You don’t need to know too much about my part. And I don’t want to know about yours."

  Roby felt Barnaby press something into his palm. He took it, glanced down, then slipped it in his pocket.

  "A little extra," Barnaby said. "I always save some for emergencies."

  Beverly Parsons made her way through the line, hugged the widow and the girls. She gave Alfred an extra special squeeze, and Roby would have sworn she had real tears on her cheeks. Leaving Cindy to comfort Alfred, Beverly went over to Roby and Barnaby.

  "Got that Isenhour pie in the oven?" Roby asked her.

  She looked at the undertaker, then back at Roby. "Things like that aren’t to be spoken of."

  "Jacob’s pie was about the best I’ve had in a while. You really outdid yourself."

  "I do what I do and you mind your own business."

  "Cindy’s looking mighty healthy. Gained her weight back."

  Barnaby excused himself, said that he had some matters to discuss with the widow.

  "I don’t want to talk no more," Beverly Parsons said.

  "I was just curious about something. If Cindy walked out of the funeral parlor and stepped out in the road and got smacked down by a dump truck, would you still be beholding to Johnny Divine? Or would it be even Steven?"

  "Quit that kind of talk. Somebody might hear you."

  "Oh, you mean Johnny? He already knows, ma’am. He sure enough knows."

  "Hush up." She clamped her hands over her ears. "Hear no evil, hear no evil, hear no evil."

  Roby leaned over her, put his mouth near her ear. "If Cindy died, would you have to bake her pie?"

  She ducked away from him and rejoined the Ridgehorn family. Roby, smiling, followed her.

  "Much obliged for the pie," Anna Beth said to Beverly. "Everybody’s been so nice to us. Daddy would be happy to know how much you all pitched in."

  "He was a good man," the pie-maker answered.

  "Real good," Roby said. "Delicious."

  Anna Beth gave him a confused look. Marlene, who’d been letting Harold show his admiration for how good she looked all dressed up, moved away from the rest of the family. Harold stuck close to her, like a dog following a bucket of chicken guts.

  "Are you okay, Roby?" Sarah asked. "You’re looking a little sickly."

  "Yeah." The sweat on his forehead was thick enough to collect in rivulets. "I reckon I better get some fresh air."

  "Want me to come with you?" Alfred asked.

  "No, I’ll be fine. Funerals just get to me, is all."

  "I know what you mean," Anna Beth said. "I liked to never got to sleep last night. Kept thinking I heard Daddy out in the barn. You know, Alfred, how he used to hum that little tune while he was milking the cows?"

  Alfred’s eyes flicked toward Marlene, so fast that nobody noticed but Roby. "Yeah. I guess memories come in different size boxes. Because I woke up in the middle of the night and thought I heard the tractor out in the cornfield."

  Buck turned from his conservation with Sarah at the mention of the word "tractor." "Didn’t nobody steal it, did they?"

  Sarah grabbed Buck by the arm and pulled him toward the widow. "Don’t even get started."

  Roby was hit by a wave of dizziness, as if the chapel had suddenly broken loose from the world and drifted into the clouds. The thick sweetness of the flowers made his stomach flutter. Roby grabbed Alfred to keep from falling.

  "Here," Alfred said. "I’ll help you outside."

  Alfred hadn’t said a word, hadn’t even sni
ckered, as he helped Roby take a seat on the concrete steps leading into the funeral home. The evening was autumn cool, and as Roby leaned against the wrought-iron railing, his sweat dried, leaving him clammy. Two men he didn’t recognize were smoking cigarettes in the parking lot, the orange glows of their cigarette tips growing fat with each draw. Clawson’s Funeral Home sat on a small hill, and downtown Barkersville huddled below it in a tangle of utility lines, a wash of street lamps, and a stack of worn bricks.

  "You got no right to nose into family business," Alfred said.

  "I promised," Roby said, wiping his eyes.

  "How did you find out?"

  "Your daddy told me."

  "Bullshit. Wasn’t nobody else there. Just me and Marlene and-"

  "You didn’t hear him coming, did you? I reckon not. You were probably breathing too hard. Or maybe whispering little words in her ear. Tell me, what did you call her? Did you say, ‘Oh, Marlene,’ or did she make you say ‘sister’?"

  "You bastard," Alfred said.

  "Don’t worry, I won’t tell nobody."

  "It didn’t happen. And don’t go messing with Marlene. You leave her alone."

  "I said I wouldn’t tell anybody. Wouldn’t want Cindy Parsons to know, would we?"

  "Daddy’s dead. He can’t tell nobody. And who would believe you, anyway? Everybody pretty much thinks you’re touched in the head."

  "I guess we both got our secrets, don’t we?"

  Alfred kept quiet while an elderly couple doddered down the steps and into their Ford. The two men had finished their cigarettes and exhaled the last of the gray smoke, buttoned their jackets, and went back inside. One of them said, "Sorry about your loss, Alfred."

  "Thank you, Mr. Adams."

  When the funeral parlor door had closed once again, Roby said, "There’s one way you can shut me up for good."

  "Hell, yeah. I can put a Jap bullet in your brain and bury you out by a back road."

  Roby almost told him to go ahead, to see how that worked out, to see whether secrets took to the grave actually stayed there. Instead, he fumbled in his pocket, touched something dry and ragged.

  No. Wrong pocket.

  He went inside his jacket and came out with the thing Barnaby had given him. "Here. This is for Marlene."

  Alfred held the object up to the light that leaked through the parlor’s windows. "What the hell’s this?"

  "Forgiveness."

  "You’re as crazy as everybody says."

  "I swear on God’s Holy Bible, you get her to take that, and I’ll never whisper a word to nobody."

  "Take it?"

  "Eat it. All of it."

  Alfred held the object close to his face, then sniffed it. "Shoo, smells like dried dog shit."

  "It’s pie."

  "Pie?"

  "A special recipe. Been in the family for generations."

  "You’re crazy, Roby Snow. Crazy as a frog-fucked hoot owl." After a long minute, Alfred said, "You promise, as God is your witness?"

  Roby smiled. "Cross my heart and hope to die."

  Alfred went inside, into the room where the others were paying tribute to the flesh that once housed Jacob Ridgehorn’s soul.

  XI

  The burial was almost an anticlimax.

  By Saturday, the entire Ridgehorn family was worn down by grief, missed sleep, and the burden of hosting all of those who paid their last respects over and over. Some of them Roby had seen at the sittings, dropping by to deliver a roast or casserole, then coming over a few hours later to help eat it. A few had joined the family after the viewing for a late meal.

  Roby had skipped that one, as much as he had looked forward to spending time with his temporary relatives. After all, he had the Isenhours to prepare for.

  Now, with the sun nearly straight up like God’s golden eye, the clan had gathered around the family cemetery. Only the immediate family had been invited to the graveside services. The rest of the mourners had been shucked back at the official chapel service in Barkersville. Barnaby Clawson was offering a few words of comfort, a garbled mix of Bible verse scraps and personal anecdotes.

  "Jacob Davis was not just a loving husband and father," Barnaby said. "He was also a friend, somebody you could count on in hard times. He held to his faith in everything he did, whether he was sitting in the third row of Barkersville Baptist or standing out in the cornfield killing crows."

  Alfred cleared his throat. The widow looked misty-eyed, but the shakes that had plagued her the last couple of days had gone. Her chin was tilted up, as if she were gazing into that better land she would someday share with the love of her life. Sarah and Buck sat on the far end of the row of metal chairs. Buck kept stealing jealous glances toward the backhoe that stood under the apple tree, its metal jaw ready to scoop soil over the coffin as soon as the formalities were done. The backhoe operator, dressed in a pair of blue coveralls, smoked and stared off over the meadows.

  An Astroturf rug had been placed over the dirt so everybody’s fine shoes would remain spotless. Roby looked across the brown field at the barn. He caught Marlene looking in the same direction. Their eyes met. Neither of them had any tears.

  "Jacob was a man of the earth," Barnaby continued. "But he was also a man of heaven. As we give him back to the dust from which he was formed, we also deliver him back to God. As we mourn his passing, we also rejoice in his new eternal life. Let us pray."

  Roby’s attention wandered as Barnaby reeled out one of his stock send-offs. The high hills were a splendor of red and yellow, and in the distance the wall of mountains rose like gray skyscrapers. The clouds were thin and far apart. The air smelled of harvest and earthworms. Jacob’s horse, Old Laddie, had come up from the cool banks of the creek and now stood at the fence, watching the proceedings with curiosity.

  Alfred and Cindy sat together, holding hands. Harold was at the far end, away from Marlene, his hands clean today. Anna Beth stood near the head of the closed casket, wiping her nose with a shredded wad of tissue. The casket gleamed in the sunshine, suspended by canvas straps over the deep rectangular hole in the ground, a pile of flowers perched on the casket’s slick belly.

  Roby read the names on the other tombstones that dotted the stretch of grass. Diane Kelly Ridgehorn, Julia Anne Ridgehorn, Thomas Ridgehorn, Wilbur Derek Ridgehorn, Maude Davis Ridgehorn, others with letters too worn to make out. A dozen dead folks, at least three generations.

  Roby wondered who’d baked their pies.

  He had no doubt that Johnny Divine had been around for all of them, and that the garage at the end of the world worked just as well by being a train station or a stagecoach stop or a ferry pier. Crossing places, that’s what they were. The mode of transportation didn’t matter, only the route.

  And what about the conductors who guided the dead along the way? The people like Roby and Beverly Parsons and Barnaby Clawson? What happened to them? Did they get to take that same road to Judgment that they’d help others find?

  Or did they walk a different path?

  Roby shook the dread from his thoughts and focused on Barnaby’s prayer. Barnaby had said "Amen," and the family echoed the hollow word, each in a different rhythm and tone.

  "Amen," Roby said.

  "Bye, Jacob," the widow said. She tensed, and for a moment Roby thought she was going to throw herself onto the casket, the way they did in movies. Then she smiled, rubbed her lips, and turned away. The hearse, oversize and out of place with its polished chrome and tinted windows, blocked her way to the other vehicles. She stumbled over a stone and nearly fell.

  Alfred moved over to the widow and put his arm around her, leading her to Marlene’s sedan. Marlene got behind the wheel, and Sarah and Cindy Parsons got in the back seat. Buck and Harold climbed into Buck’s pick-up. Alfred walked back to the grave site as the two vehicles drove off. Barnaby had loaded the flowers into the hearse and was shutting the rear door.

  "I’ll put the flowers back when the dirt’s smoothed and the headstone’s placed," Ba
rnaby told Alfred.

  "Funny, ain’t it? Daddy always said he’d rather die than plant flowers where vegetables ought to grow."

  "Your daddy had a way with words."

  "Yeah," Roby said. "Like those words he said in the barn on your birthday."

  Alfred’s fists clenched. "You promised."

  "What about you? Did you keep your end of the promise?"

  "Excuse me, gents, I got to get back to the home," Barnaby said.

  "Hey, why don’t you come on back to the house for a bite first?" Roby said. "There’s plenty enough for everybody."

  Barnaby waved to the backhoe operator, then got in the hearse without a word. He drove away, the vehicle bouncing over the rutted dirt road that led away from the cemetery. The backhoe’s engine roared to life with a giant cough of black smoke and the long metal arm grabbed at the air.

  Roby raised his voice over the noise. "Did she eat it?"

  Alfred looked down into the hole that would soon be swallowing his daddy. "Yeah."

  "Did you have to trick her?"

  "No, I just told her straight up. About you keeping your mouth shut if she did what you wanted."

  "Tell me, and this is important… she didn’t get sick or throw up or anything, did she?"

  "No. Said it tasted like stale boot leather, though."

  Roby nodded, and they both moved away from the grave as the backhoe approached.

  "Come on," Roby said. "You don’t want to watch."

  "No, I reckon not. Damn, I sure could use a drink."

  "Got a bottle under the truck seat. Keep it on hand for emergencies. Want a ride back to the house?"

  Alfred glanced at the casket, then at the distant barn, then in the direction of the Ridgehorn house. "Let’s get the hell out of here."

  As they climbed into Roby’s Ford, Alfred said, "So, are you going to tell me what it was I made Marlene eat?"

  Roby shifted the Ford into first. "Can’t. It’s a family secret."

  XII

  The kitchen was cleaner now than it had been during the sitting. The counter was almost bare, except for a few slices of store-bought bread in a plastic bag and some shriveled apples piled in glass bowl. The only thing in the sink was Jacob’s denture glass.