A-Sides

by Victor Allen

  **********

  I slipped into the bed next to Joyce, but didn’t really sleep for the next couple of hours. When Joyce woke up I pretended to be asleep as she got up and tended to the baby. I listened to her start puttering around in the kitchen, getting breakfast on. That’s what I had been waiting for.

  I got up and crept to her jewelry box, hoping to find a ring, or an old coin, even a St. Christopher’s medal. Anything silver, because silver was what I needed. The jewelry box, though not empty, was slightly less bare than Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.

  Not quite frantic, I wondered where she might keep anything resembling more jewelry. The desk where she kept all her envelope stuffing junk was awash with flotsam and jetsam. Piles of stuffed envelopes ready to be mailed were stacked on one side of her computer monitor. Drawers were filled to bursting with all manner of junk, and the little cubby holes above her computer monitor practically creaked with CD’s, DVD’s, old computer parts, papers and jewel cases. For all I knew, Malaysia Airlines flight MH 370 might be in there somewhere.

  I heard her humming softly in the kitchen as I tried to quietly ease the drawers out. Rubber bands atop a sheaf of disheveled papers and a jumble of pens and pencils stared up at me. I tried another drawer and discovered old eyeglasses, jars of multivitamins and supplements, mouse pads, and sheaves of old bills and bank statements, paper clipped and rubber banded. There was an unmarked little vial of some kind of finely ground powder next to the machine she used to gum the envelopes, maybe some kind of desiccant.

  It was beginning to look like a waterhaul as I raked my hand behind the computer monitor, hoping not to stick my finger in a loaded mousetrap back there. No mousetrap, but a single sheet of paper. Odd, everything else was a hoarder’s nest, but this one sheet of paper sat alone in solitary splendor.

  Curious, I pulled it out and looked at it. On it was a hand written list of three names and addresses, nothing more, and each name had an annotation by it.

  Mavis Parker…. Whore!

  Cheryl Coombs….Dealer!

  Ralph Sycamore. Next to his name was the word RAPIST in screaming capital letters and savagely underlined three times.

  My blood felt like liquid nitrogen in my veins. What was all this?

  “Albert, are you up,” Joyce called from the kitchen. I didn’t answer, only plodded robotically towards the kitchen, the sheet of paper limp in my hand.

  She looked at me as I stood in the doorway. Her face first showed surprise, then her eyes narrowed as she saw the sheet of paper in my hand. Standing there in her gaudy, China Whore robe, my mousy little wife had transformed before my very eyes. I wasn’t sure who she was at all. But then, who was I to throw stones?

  “Joyce,” I said in a small voice. “What is this?”

  She seemed to debate telling a lie, then thought better of it. Joey sat in his high chair, all grins and happiness with his baby food smeared around his mouth. Joyce’s voice was soft when she spoke, but steady as steel.

  “You don’t know what it’s like to live with it, Albert,” she said. “To be helpless against the woman that split your parents up. To know who put the needle in you brother’s arm. To know….” and here she squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed hard. “To know who raped and beat you and not be able to do anything about it. But I saw you changing, Albert, and I used that.”

  I slumped down into a chair at the kitchen table, wobbly-kneed, wondering if she had any idea of the risk she had put Joey in; that she had put herself in, or even if she cared.

  Joyce continued to cook breakfast, reaching up into the Voodoo Spice rack for some seasonings, as if we were talking about whom would pick up the dry cleaning today.

  “How did you do it, Joyce? What have you done to me?”

  She looked genuinely surprised, even a little hurt.

  “To you? Nothing. I just accepted what you were. You’re my husband. Wouldn’t you do anything for me?”

  “But how did you know I would go after... these people?”

  She smiled thinly and a knowing little glow re-ignited the sparkle in her eyes.

  “If you send out enough envelopes that say ‘free sample’ inside, eventually people will open them. And when they do...” She glanced up at the Voodoo Spice rack.

  “It’s an old world recipe,” she said matter-of-factly. “A pinch of this, a smidgen of that, a little of the other and voilà. That smell. That smell that marked them.”

  She set my plate of bacon and eggs in front of me.

  “Now eat up, Albert,” she said gently. “There’s one last name on the list.”

  Bankers

  By

  Victor Allen

  Copyright© 2014

  All Rights Reserved

  Although the protective wall had been removed in 1699- fifty years ago- the Wall Street brokerage houses and banks were still daunting and depressing to Joseph Albert. Even now, the rapid-fire voices of the slave auctioneers could be heard carrying from the center square, and frock-coated bankers and brokers fussed and huffed up and down the block, dodging and darting between clattering, horse-drawn carriages.

  Joseph approached the One Bank of New Amsterdam, feeling its rapacious shadow literally absorb him, much like an amoeba assimilates a helpless, non-motile speck to feed its hunger. His account was not yet seriously delinquent, but he needed to make an appearance with Bram Carruthers to plead for just a little more time to make his next payment.

  Carruthers' dark and windowless office sheltered like a reticent gargoyle in the interior of the building. Joseph briefly entertained the thought of crawling to the office and knocking his head on the rug, but there was no rug to be had. Though Carruthers himself -with his sun-deprived, lax and spotted skin, wiry horseshoe of gray hair, and cloudy, pince-nez glasses- looked like something you would buy on the sly from the back room of a necromancer's shop, his office was gilded with high-ticket furnishings and objets de art. Despite the opulence of the trappings, however, the office was poorly defined by dim, Camphene lamps instead of the much more expensive whale oil lamps.

  Barely raising his eyes from the ledger on his desk, Carruthers' first words to Joseph were: “You have a tranche, I believe, due today on your account?”

  “About that, sir...”

  Carruthers stopped writing in his account book and looked directly at Joseph.

  “Have you come to ask for an extension?” The word sounded like an exclamation and a question in his mouth at the same time. Carruther's fringe of white hair seemed to stick straight out in alarm.

  “Just a few days. My wife...”

  “Vex me not with your sob story, Mr. Albert. We had and have an official, written agreement, correct?”

  “We do, sir.”

  “Does that agreement state that we would lend you money, and you would pay us back at interest, and on time?”

  “Yes, sir, it does state that.”

  “And did we fulfill our part of the agreement?”

  “I can't deny it.”

  “And now you come here, attempting to breach your part of the contract?”

  “I'm only asking for a couple of days. Three at most.”

  Carruthers seemed to soften minutely.

  “You are apparently in the good graces of the Lord today, Mr. Albert. Fortune smiles. It so happens that we may be able to accommodate you. You dig graves as a vocation, do you not?”

  “I do, sir. Yes.”

  “We have had a particularly troublesome client,” Carruthers went on. “William Bates. Constantly remiss on his payments, uncontactable most of the time- dodging our officers, of course- a foppish dandy, and wholly unrepentant in his profligacy. He recently had the bad form to die while still owing us money. If you agree to perform a service for us, it will square your ledger for this month.” Carruthers seemed to consider that he might have been a tad unclear and continued in an explanatory haste. “Not the principle, of course,” he corrected. “just the interest for this month. Further interest will contin
ue to compound on the remaining principle from the first of next month forward. We're not an alms house. Perform this service for us, and we will come to a reckoning on how to deal with your arrears.”

  He smiled angelically, as if he had just bestowed upon Joseph the greatest good of which he was humanly capable.

  Fully aware of his own job qualifications, it was with mild uneasiness that Joseph anticipated what would be required of him.

  “How long, sir,” Joseph asked, “has he been in the ground?”

  “Considering it took several days to have the formal paperwork to take the debtor's domicile, furnishings and sundry chattel, and to evict his widow -made all the more difficult by a squalling infant- perhaps a week.” Carruthers peered warily over his glasses. “Does that have bearing?”

  “Well, sir,” Joseph said humbly, “the deceased will have begun to get a bit… mature.”

  The banker brushed off Joseph's anxiety. “That is no concern of mine. I should think as a sexton you should be inured to such things.”

  “I'm not officially a sexton, sir. A sexton is an officer of the church. I'm but a common gravedigger.”

  “Well, then, common gravedigger, I see but little difference in digging a grave that's empty, needing to be filled, and one that is filled, needing to be emptied. Both labors are simply digging. Why do you tax a busy man with trifles?”

  “My humblest apologies, sir.”

  “Regrettably,” the banker continued, getting back to the matter at hand, “Bates' foreclosed assets were insufficient to lift his account out of the red and into the black. It has come to our attention that he was buried in a pine box rather than a shroud, an extravagant waste of our money. He was inhumed in a fine suit and some jewelry, as well as a pair of good shoes.” The banker shook his bald head sadly. “What a tragedy. We would, in the interest of settling his account, like to secure those items.”

  “I understand,” Joseph said dubiously.

  “You seem to have misgivings, Mr. Albert,” the banker said. “Let me ease your mind. What I'm asking is all perfectly legal, of course. Still, for appearance' sake, you might want to carry out this undertaking in the dead of night. Have we an arrangement?”

  “We do, sir.”

  Carruthers produced a sheet of paper with a list on it. Rather than get up to give him the list, Joseph had to cross the room to take it from the banker's hand.

  “You will procure these items tonight and remit them to me in the morning.” Carruthers looked back down at his paperwork. “Our business today is concluded. Good day.” Carruthers didn't even look up again and Joseph finally melted away.

  Joseph set out that night with no lantern to light his path in the chancy night as the moon played musical chairs among the nomadic clouds. He knew the way well enough. He had, in fact, dug the grave himself (a juicy morsel he hadn't mentioned to the banker). He had yet to be paid by the city of New York, that dereliction being the thing that had occasioned his visit to the banker in the first place. It was a vicious circle, as if the money changers and the politicians were in some wryly humorous plot to keep the tradesmen, common laborers, and the great unwashed in spiraling debt slavery and indentured servitude. He shook his head. It was simply coincidence. Had to be.

  The grave had yet to really settle in after only a week (even though it was, in the odd way graves have, sunken) and Joseph dug his way, with a skillfulness that would make a mole burst into jealous tears, down to the coffin within an hour.

  True to forecast, the late Bates had been laid to his inglorious rest in a pine box. Joseph tried to clear his nose of the noxious smell of decay that he knew would become ten times worse once he removed the coffin lid. Even in the dodgy light, he fancied that the lid of the coffin had been thrust upwards by the corpse's gas-distended belly. What were they thinking? If the clothes weren't already ripped and ruined by the swelling and smell of putrefaction, who would want the things? At best, the bank might get a few cents for the clothes, hardly worth the effort and coin they had spent already on him, Joseph. Perhaps they had him do it just because they could.

  Joseph used the tip of the shovel to gently nudge the lid of the box open as he stood on the lip of the hole, carefully propping the lid against the wall of the grave. Little brown avalanches tumbled down on the sides of the dig and lay like cake crumbs on the now exposed corpse of William Bates.

  Joseph covered his face and eyes as the worst of the grave gases surged out from beneath the now open lid. After a minute or so the worst of the stink had drifted away, but Joseph knew the stench would linger and creep all during the time he was working until he became nose-blind, oozing its pernicious way into his hair and clothing.

  Joseph had been in this line of work for a long time, and he saw exactly what he knew he would see in the moonlight. The corpse at this stage was swollen nearly to bursting, looking like a plump sausage that has roasted nearly to perfection on a stick over a fire. The facial features were so bloated and black that his own wife wouldn't have recognized the unfortunate fashion plate, William Bates. His burial suit -a good one, the banker had been right about that- constricted his arms and legs like tourniquets. Even the thin skin of his feet had swelled into doughy, stockingless cankles that overflowed the pricey loafers he wore.

  Joseph carefully descended into the open grave, being certain to keep his feet on the edges of the exposed box. He made a closer inspection. The suit jacket might be saved, but the shirt and pants were a reeking dog's breakfast. In addition to the rips and tears from the swelling, adipocere had stained the material grayish-white where it had cut into the ballooning corpse.

  The shoes were another matter. Joseph would probably be able to wriggle them off Bates' feet and a good washing and airing out might make them fit to wear again, provided the unlucky buyer never learned of their source.

  Joseph reached above him and brought the shovel down into the grave with him. This was going to be the hardest part of the job.

  He tried first breaking the corpse's fingers, hoping against hope that the digits would be decayed or brittle enough to pull loose. But it was not yet to be, and the stubborn digits -holding the costly rings Carruthers wished to procure- showed no signs of coming free from the hand. The metal rings cinched against the bloated knuckles like tightened steel bands and Joseph knew he would never be able to pull them off. With a fateful sigh, he set the corpse's hand carefully on the edge of the pine box.

  Bracing himself, he stood up, balancing one foot on each wall of the box, and brought the sharp point of the shovel down on the corpse's fingers.

  Wood splintered and cracked, strangely muted by the still-soft flesh of the corpse's fingers and the not quite obdurate bone. Joseph shuddered, but made himself look.

  He had managed to mangle the fingers, but not sever them completely. The index and ring fingers hung at a disturbed angle against the remaining digits. They had been about three quarters severed and, to Joseph's great joy, he was able to use the small knife he had brought with him to slice through the last bits of soft, remaining flesh, and the rings were his.

  Hurrying now, knowing the end was near, Joseph pocketed the rings and wriggled the shoes off the corpse's feet. After a losing tug of war with the suit jacket, Joseph gave it up as a bad bargain. He would just tell Carruthers that the jacket was past rescue. What was he going to do? Come back and look?

  He tossed the shoes and the shovel up onto the solid earth above him and quickly pulled himself from the hole. He sat on the grave's edge, panting and sweating, his feet dangling down in the abyss, easy pickings had the corpse wanted to choose that second to reanimate and reach up with its newly-maimed hands to pull Joseph down.

  The moon picked that moment to uncover its face and echo its reflected radiance into the pit. Joseph saw a glint. Frowning, he retrieved the folded list from his pocket and read it over again while he still had some light. He sighed heavily. With the sober reluctance of an old man's lumbago facing a winter's icy morn, he readied h
imself to return to the grave.

  He went back for the last thing, the thing he should have gone for first. He saw them there, affixed with wax, glossy discs in the half moonlight. He sighed. That was just like bankers.

  They wanted the pennies off a dead man's eyes.

  Heebie

  By

  Victor Allen

  Copyright © 2014

  All Rights Reserved

  Mary Smith-Costanza

  1914-1982

  Weep Not for her Death

  But Rejoice in New Life

  Heebie stood in front of the gravestone. His smallish head was bowed, impaled like a shrunken apple atop his carrot neck. Most thought him to be in his late forties or early fifties, a short man, not much bigger than a teen aged boy, who survived by doing odd jobs around town. He walked with a hyperbolized, apelike swagger, his shoulders dipping from side to side. Many thought it was simply to exaggerate his small frame and make him feel less threatened. His large hands, unlike those of a teenager, were buried past his knobby wrists in the pockets of his green work pants. The thirty years out of date Members Only jacket he wore in the spring and summer would soon be replaced by his fall and winter, G1 bomber jacket with the fur-lined collar. A baseball cap stippled with white, dried salt flats sat low on his forehead, concealing the sparse thicket of greasy black hair struggling to eke out a living on his reddened and flaking scalp.

  What was known about him was mostly rumor. It was known that, as a boy, he had been taken care of by Theodora Wilson, a spinster aunt and Baptist Church deacon who had enigmatically vanished from town for six months in her youth, on the face of it to take care of a sick relative. She was known as Ted to the Town’s folk, and Mama Ted to Heebie. Present at her deathbed was Aaron Kravitz of Temple Beth Immanuel and, most assumed, Theodora’s consort of the past forty years and, most also believed, Heebie’s father, a fact in plain sight that was comfortably unseen by both the Temple and the Baptist church. As Mama Ted returned for the second time from the white light corridor in response to Aaron’s tearful pleas, she told Heebie to run him out.

  “He’s just being selfish. This is the second time he’s called me back while I was talking to God, and I don’t want to come back again.”

  A discomposed and sobbing Aaron was dispatched to the sitting room with the other death watchers, complaining only that “the goy boy” had thrown him out. Heebie’s name, however, had not derived from his suspected Semitic heritage, but because the residents of the black neighborhood known as Tucker Town would always preface anything referring to Heebie with “He be crazy.” It was only a short leap from “He be” to “Heebie”, and everyone called him that now.

  When Mama Ted passed, it was assumed, without any real facts at hand, that Heebie would be taken care of by the county, but nobody was really sure. Whether he was or not really never seemed that important to investigate and he simply drifted through his own life and the life of the town as the local character.

  The early morning, late summer sun wrote soothing shadows from the tombstones, not stark etchings that clawed at the ground like talons. Birds twittered and chirped in pleasing discord.

  Heebie would now and then nod his head or reveal his coffee-stained teeth in a smile, as if agreeing with something.

  “That’s right, Mrs. Smith-Costanza,” he said. “That’s just right. Kids today don’t have no respect. Mama Ted always told me to respec’ my elders. I know she’s got a special place in Baptist Heaven for lookin’ after me. When you’re done with your fish fry there on the Catholic side of heaven, you’ll say hey for me?”

  He shuffled his feet nervously as if he had somewhere else to be, but he stayed a few moments longer, a man unable to break away from a conversation. He looked impatiently at his wristwatch, the non-digital kind with actual minute and hour hands.

  “My sundial says it’s time for me to be gettin’ on. Got other folks to tend to.”

  Heebie had been the cemetery caretaker for only a short time, an unglamorous job, but one that kept him out of trouble. He suffered from a not dismissable amount of mental retardation and was therefore under the care of the county. The talk around town was that his real name was Caleb Hawe, but nobody knew that for sure, either. Among the many pastimes he enjoyed was an affinity for police work.

  Heebie had been quite useful in times past. It had not been unusual for him to stroll out into the middle of highway 330, his toy badge (he had gotten it from one of those little toy packs that featured a squirt gun along with a fake badge and handcuffs) glittering with dull, plastic ostentation on his chest, and stop traffic in both directions in order to allow the mill workers on the seven to three shift access from their side road onto the main highway. He had hung around the local cops long enough to know all their communication codes and could even passably imitate police procedure. Monroe was a small town, (properly pronounced as Mon in Montana and Row as in row, row, row your boat, and Galax, the county seat -which features shortly in this story- as Gay-Lax) the local travelers on the roads knew who Heebie was, and they allowed him this indulgence. Providentially, he had never caused an accident.

  Other citizens recalled the poor, out-of-town businessman who’d had the extreme misfortune to have a flat tire directly in front of the town hall. This poor fellow in his five hundred dollar suit had pulled over to the curb and jacked his car up to change his tire when Heebie sauntered up, tapped him on the shoulder, and informed him that he was in a no parking zone.

  As legend would have it, and as it was recounted by the police officers with whom Heebie had become friendly, the fellow had taken one look at the badge on Heebie’s chest and assumed he was a bona fide policeman. With red face and wild hand gesticulations, the fellow had tried to explain to Heebie that he was simply changing a flat tire. Heebie would have none of it and the fellow was forced to let his car down off the jack, climb into the driver’s seat with a sigh, and pull a bit further along the curb before stopping again.

  For reasons known only to Heebie, this state of affairs was unendurable and he politely told the man he was still in a no parking zone. Having finally had enough of this bounder, the stranger fired off a litany of phrases so purple they made Richard Pryor sound like Garrison Keillor. This was the stranger’s undoing as the brain-numbed smile faded from Heebie’s face and he produced a sap (what he called his ‘nightstick’) from his back pocket and informed the stranger less than graciously to move it down the road.

  The stranger correctly reasoned that having to replace a ruined tire was preferable to having his head smashed in like a melon and he meekly prodded his crippled car down the road on its rim, the shredded tire thump thumping as Heebie walked alongside, tapping the fender with his sap and admonishing the stranger to respect the law.

  Where the highway formed a bridge running over the N and S railroad tracks a half mile further along, Heebie allowed the stranger to stop and change his tire, but not before ticketing the man for obstructing traffic, writing out the citation on a bank deposit slip.

  Most of the town’s people tolerated these escapades, or even smiled about them. However, less than a month later, Heebie’s attack on Timmy Loflin effectively ended his law enforcement aspirations.

  Timmy had been hitching rides on the freight trains that clattered and clanged through town on their way to Charlotte or Raleigh and was openly enjoying himself as any eleven year old desperado should.

  Heebie had been observing this for some time, peering through a stack of weathered, wooden pallets set out behind the town’s shops and, as befitted his duty as a law enforcement officer, decided he should put a stop to it before this young dandy got himself hurt and sued the railroad.

  “Here!” he yelled. “What are you doin’? You better stop that right now or I’ll have to haul you to jail, put you in the Monroe P.D. taxi service. It's got only one stop: the jailhouse. You hear me?”

  Timmy, like everyone else, knew Heebie had some loose wiring and wasn’t particularly distress
ed. He suffered Heebie, but didn’t think him actively dangerous, so he went right on hopping the freights, but not before flipping Heebie the bird and telling him to “screw off”.

  The muscles on Heebie’s neck bunched and stood out in ogre-like cords while his face flushed to furious crimson. He was not a big man, but he was thought to have the fabled strength of the demented and was normally left alone. His lips drew back into a tight, straight line until just a hint of gritted teeth showed through them.

  “You better come offa there right now before that train turns you into dog meat!” he bawled. “I’ll take you over to Galax and put you in jail. I’ll take you right to the courthouse. You come offa there right now!”

  “Come on, Heebie,” Timmy yelled cheerily. “Come on. I’ll betcha can’t catch me. Come on, loony! Come on and get me!”

  Timmy was sixty feet away and hanging onto a freight car’s ladder. Heebie lurched into a sudden sprint, producing his sap and brandishing it at The train was a slow mover and Heebie had covered half the distance before Timmy let go of the ladder and hit the ground running.

  Sand spurted from beneath Timmy’s bare heels as he tried to put distance between himself and this raving caveman. He looked back over his shoulder just in time to see the sap come down. Timmy heard the whistling whoosh of the sap slicing air before it smacked home with a sandbag thud between his shoulder blades.

  The blow knocked Timmy to the ground and Heebie fell on him with a grunt. Timmy screamed and kicked and squirmed like a bisected snake as Heebie tried time and time again to get a good solid whack on the writhing kid. His sap fell ineffectually on the ground around Timmy’s head, sometimes managing to glance off a shoulder.

  Timmy got one leg unpinned and shoved his knee into Heebie’s stomach with all his strength. Heebie’s dirt-streaked face twisted in agony and a “hunh” sound shot from his grimacing lips. The sap flew as Heebie clutched his stomach with his right hand, continuing to hold down Timmy with his left.

  Bosco Wallace and Sanders Shiver, the butcher and the baker, had run outside, attracted by the commotion. Even at a distance they saw Heebie’s huge mitts hammering down.

  “Jesus,” yelled a wide-eyed Sanders. “What the hell is this?”

  “Come on,” Bosco yelled urgently, grabbing Sanders’ arm. “We gotta get him off.”

  Sanders’ butcher’s apron billowed between his knees like a sail as he brought his pear shaped mass up to sprinting speed. Bosco was yelling as they approached the cloud of dust that marked the scuffle.

  “Call me a loony, you little asshole! I’m gonna take you to jail, boy! Take you to Jail! You hear me! I’m gonna tell your mama, boy!”

  One of Heebie’s eyes was squeezed shut in righteous rage and foaming spittle flew from his lips. Timmy was still howling, his nose bloodied before Bosco and Sanders arrived and dragged Heebie away.

  Timmy, apparently only marginally injured, quickly scrambled to his feet and ran like a rabbit through the briar patch, screaming and hollering.

  Timmy’s parents made their expected appearance at the police chief’s office within an hour, but were persuaded not to press charges when the chief told them that Heebie was being dealt with. What a shame, he said, to drag this whole sordid mess out into the open. No one had gotten hurt. Not really. A bloody nose. Timmy could have gotten worse playing baseball with his friends. What would be a bigger shame would be to have the railroad investigators get into this thing and tag Timmy with a ticket to reform school. Those railroad dicks didn’t fuck around. The Loflins grudgingly saw the light and the chief ushered them out with an indulgent smile and the suggestion that they “have a nice day.”

  That same day, Heebie was told that the cemetery was in crying need of a ground’s keeper and the chief mentioned that Heebie should maybe think about giving up his plastic badge, citation book and nightstick and sort of semi retire. After all, police work was for young men and nobody really wanted to see him get hurt. There was a nice little cottage right there at the cemetery where he could live in comfort and not bother anybody, and they wouldn’t bother him. Once a week, one of the deputies would take him to get his groceries, and once a month, when his EBT benefits came in, they would help him pay his piddling little bills.

  Heebie may have been slightly retarded, but he understood well enough what the chief was saying behind his sympathetic smile: You really screwed up today, boy. Either become a ground’s keeper at the boneyard or spend the rest of your days in the big house with the rubber rooms. We don’t need a psychotic nut that beats up little boys running around in our own little Mayberry. The people won’t stand for it, and I won’t stand for it. And just to make sure you stay put, we’re gonna put a little bracelet around your ankle to make sure you don’t stray from the fold. Take it or leave it.

  Such was the way this difficult situation was resolved in a small southern town, and Heebie had accustomed himself to the cemetery, waking up bright and early each morning, gathering his wheelbarrow full of gardening tools, putting on his work clothes and sweat-stained baseball cap, and going about pruning, clipping, mowing, and raking.

  He strolled away from Mrs. Smith-Costanza’s monument and stopped a short distance away.

  “Mornin’, Mr. Fuller,” Heebie said. “Sleep well?” Heebie smiled craftily. “Course you did. You’re dead.”

  Randy Fuller’s tombstone stood straight and mute, dew droplets running slowly down its polished, marble face.

  Heebie smiled and nodded. He tilted his head as if listening, then he let out a resigned sigh. Mr. Fuller was telling a dirty joke. It was Heebie’s own fault for unthinkingly admitting to Mr. Fuller that he had once come home and spied Mama Ted in a compromising position with Mr. Aaron. “I didn’t know,” Heebie had told him, “that a fat woman could get her legs up that high.”

  Now he patiently indulged the dirty jokes, the current candidate from a bottomless well of Farmer’s daughters gags.

  Heebie laughed politely. “That’s a good one, alright, Mr. Fuller. When I get back home, I’m gonna grab my writin’ stick and put it right down. Anything else I can do for you? Trim around your plot? Rearrange your flowers? Anything? No? Alright, then. Just let me know if you need anything. I’m always here for my friends.”

  He stopped at Ira Ramsey’s grave. Ira was an ornery old poop, but Heebie rather enjoyed him. He insisted on calling the orange-suited work crews that sometimes worked by the cemetery road convicts. Heebie had gently corrected him.

  “They inmates, Mr. Ramsey. Callin’ em convicts lowers their self-exteem.” To which Ira had replied that he wished he were still alive so he could throw trash out if his car window.

  “Now why would you want to do that?”

  Ira had answered, convicts got to have somethin’ to do, too.

  Heebie strolled around the cemetery, stopping and addressing headstones at irregular intervals, sometimes smiling, sometimes listening. Sometime later, he took out his hedge clippers, ready to give the various cemetery shrubs a haircut.

  He liked this job even better than being a policeman. Here, nobody judged him. Heebie had known his whole life that he wasn’t quite right, but had never considered himself crazy. Even talking to the folks in the graveyard, he didn’t think that was entirely crazy. The thing that finally made him wonder if he really was crazy, was when they started talking back.