by Michael Dunn
Then they headed back to the car. Tony checked his watch. 3:00. Plenty of time to get to work.
“Hear that? It’s fine. No grinding. No nothing. Thank God. Now I can use that money for prom and while talking to Suzie at lunch today, she keeps going on and on about going to UNM, and now she is pushing me to go with her. She has to go to the memorial service tomorrow and she’s not looking forward to that.”
JP, who wasn’t listening, glanced over to where the other boys lay on the cement beaten and bloody as the car sped away. Jeff Morrison was coughing up blood and a couple of teeth. The rest of the boys needed medical attention, but would survive and eventually heal, and they would leave the Indian kids alone.
Chapter Thirteen: Memorial Service
April 13th, 1971
Nearly everyone who lived in Bestiavir had been affected by the fire at the VFW in one way or another. The twelve men who had perished in the fire the previous Saturday night had been husbands, fathers, uncles, brothers, and friends. The loss of so many of the more prominent members of the town ripped through the heart of the community.
Even though the Valencia County sheriff’s department (provided by eyewitnesses Deputy Sheriff Ty Anderson and Coroner Clyde Townsend) had proclaimed the fire an accident, the probable result of a dropped Zippo lighter and spread like wildfire. Rumor had it, the cliquish league of vets had been off on some foolish plan or another, got drunk, and unintentionally lit the VFW on fire.
The children hearing the story jumped immediately to blame the monster of their bedtime stories, the Beast of Bestiavir. Their parents, in disbelief themselves, did nothing to alter their firmly held beliefs.
You’d best behave or the Beast will get you. It eats bad kids like you for breakfast.
The lodge lay in cinders, and twelve of the most prominent men in town had been caught in the blaze. Suzie’s honorary uncles were all dead and the town was quiet that day.
Suzie and her mother were quiet as they got into the family car, a blue ’67 Mercury Comet. The sharp tension Jack brought with him murkied the air the moment he got in the car. Jack shifted the car into reverse and backed down the drive, Suzie glanced over to her mother from the backseat just long enough to notice the tears in her eyes. It was having the greatest impact on her, Suzie supposed, because of all her friends, Dee was the only one who still had her family intact.
The families of the departed had agreed to honor their loved ones together in a communal memorial service instead of separate funerals. Those men practically lived together, they died together, and they would be buried together. The service was to be held that day at one in the afternoon and go until dusk so anyone who wished to pay their respects after the work day was over would have ample time.
2
Jack was a popular man at the memorial service. He shook a lot hands, received many hugs, and accepted condolences from all the mourners. New widows, grieving mothers, and sobbing children embraced him. As the lone survivor of the VFW inferno, the accountant was given as much commiseration as requests for accounts of what happened. He told and retold the version that he, Ty, and Clyde had agreed to: the VFW was already in flames when he arrived.
Although usually not much of a crier, nor showing any emotion aside from frustration and anger, Jack could not fight the tears as he passed the caskets with a picture of each of the fallen on the top, thinking, I feel like I am literally late for my own funeral. He couldn’t help but shutter at such a cold thought and fought the urge to run out of the funeral home, his hands covering his fogging glasses.
The mourners understood how hard it must be for Jack finding the place blazing as he did, and only surviving because he was arguing with his wife and was late.
Outside, Jack lit up a badly needed cigarette, wiped the tears from his eyes, and the fog from his glasses with his handkerchief. When he put his glasses back on, he saw Albert Mullins standing there before him.
“Uncle Jack,” the large teen spoke softly and humbly.
Jack saw the boy’s eyes were red and glossy – eyes that were all cried out. Albert was not a good-looking kid. The boy was a head taller than Jack, pear-shaped, with a face pitted with pockmark scars. Jack thought Albert was the spitting image of the boy’s mother and got little in the way of DNA from Ralph, but Jack would not admit that to his dying day.
“What happened to them?” Albert asked. His eyes were almost pleading.
Jack sighed, took a final drag of his cigarette before stomping it out under his shoe, and planned to recite the story again.
“We were planning this hunting trip and I was late and the place was on fire and…”
“No, no, no… what really happened?”
Jack cocked an eyebrow. “I’m, uh, not sure I know what you mean.”
“My dad was planning on taking me and a friend camping, except he was supposed to go with you and the other guys first. He said you guys were going after that monster that supposedly lived in the woods by Paradise Trailer Park. Was that true?”
Jack wiped the sweat from his brow and stared at his shoes. “What else did he tell you?”
“He told me Uncle Bruce saw the beast and the beast might just be a werewolf.”
Jack spat on the ground and asked through gritted teeth. “He did, did he?”
Albert nodded.
Jack silently swore. “Who have you told this to?”
“No one… except my friend… the one who was supposed to go camping with us.”
“Who’s your friend?”
“Peter Jordan. He’s new.”
Jack lit another cigarette. He thought about offering the boy one, then thought better of it, and put his pack back in his shirt pocket. “Maybe you should keep that story to yourself from now on, because people might think you’re crazy and it will stain the memory of your father and his, I mean, our friends.
Albert nodded, confused, and asked, “What about you, Uncle Jack?”
“What about me?”
“Do you believe what Uncle Bruce told you?”
Jack thought for a moment, tapping his foot on the pavement. “I don’t know, son. I just don’t know.”
“Then why were you going?”
“Because… I had to see it for myself. The month after Bruce saw the alleged ‘monster,’ somebody was found mutilated, so maybe Bruce
(was not as drunk as we thought)
might’ve been right. Unfortunately, we never got there.” Jack sighed.
“So, what are you going to do now?”
Jack shook his head. “I don’t know. Rebuild, I guess.”
“I’d like to help you with that, Uncle Jack.”
Jack smiled and put his arm around the boy. “I’m glad to hear it. C’mon, let’s go find Suzie. Hey, do you know Tony Brandner?”
“Yeah, he’s on the basketball team at school. Nice guy, despite where he’s from. He’s got a pretty cool car too.”
Jack closed his eyes and shook his head as he led the boy back into the funeral home.
3
Black was not Suzie’s favorite color.
She stood in the church, dressed in her best black dress, with her family that afternoon paying respects for her so-called “uncles” who died in the VFW/Moose Lodge fire.
The funeral home was packed to capacity and not surprisingly since so many had perished in the fire. It was a regular who’s who of Bestiavir.
It was already hot in April, but today seemed hotter than usual, and Suzie, like many other mourners, was fanning herself with the program, not listening to the sermon about the dead men, most of whom she did not personally like. She saw them at barbecues, VFW events, and they would tell her how pretty and grown up she had become, leering at her when they said it and looked like they wanted to attack and eat her. It made Suzie’s skin crawl.
The dead were her dad’s friends, whom often got her dad out of the house, for which she was thankful. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her father. She used to be a daddy’s girl when she was yo
unger, but since junior high, she huddled close to her mother’s camp. Of late, she did not get along very well with her dad, especially over the past year or more, because Jack did not want Suzie dating Tony and a few days ago, he tried to tell her why.
Days before Jack burned the already destroyed VFW/Moose Lodge, he sat with Suzie in the living room after dinner and out of earshot of her mother, who was in the kitchen with the radio playing loudly. Suzie was on the couch, doing her homework in front of the TV as President Nixon had just finished delivering his nationally televised speech on the situation in Southeast Asia, and especially Vietnam. Usually, after dinner, Jack became the master of his domain and he controlled the TV viewing, which sent Suzie up to her room. However, this was an unusual incident. Neither Jack nor Suzie could recall the last time a father-daughter talk had occurred, so it was an awkward moment for both of them.
“Honey, there is something I have to tell you about Tony.” Jack started, almost stammering the words he had practiced repeatedly at the office that day.
Suzie looked up from her civics homework and looked at her father quizzically.
Jack sat at the edge of his recliner and talked quietly enough Suzie had to sit on the edge of the couch to listen.
“It’s not going to be easy for you to hear this and no matter how absurd it sounds, I think it is the truth and you have to believe me.”
Suzie nodded. “Okay, what is it?”
“I think, just maybe, it’s possible, your boyfriend, Tony, is, or could be…um…Tony might possibly be a werewolf… or at least knows of one.”
She stared at him not with anger, but incredulity, like how could my dad be so stupid? Then she burst out laughing.
“What? Dad, if this is this some kind of ploy to get me to breakup with him, because if it is, you could have come up with something much better than that. You could have said he was cheating on me, or he, he killed someone or…”
“I’m not lying!” Jack stood and shouted. Then he sat back down, and continued in a calmer voice. “It’s true, pumpkin. The reason the guys and I were meeting last night was because we are planning to go to that trailer park and hunt the Beast of Bestiavir that lives there in a couple of days.”
Suzie was silent for a moment or two then asked matter-of-factly, “Is this some kind of joke?”
“No, I swear.” He told her the story Bruce Rivetts had told him.
“But… you never saw any werewolves, did you?”
“Well…no, but…”
“Do you know for certain they are werewolves?”
“That’s what Bruce told me and…”
“Have you ever seen my boyfriend change into some kind of snarling beast?”
“Well, no, but that’s not…”
“You could have at least tried saying Tony was… was on drugs, or, or you saw him kissing another girl instead of this wild story about mythical beast hunting! Too bad you weren’t hunting unicorns. I always wanted a pony.”
“Okay, smart-ass, have you ever seen him during the full moon?”
“Yes, I have actually! Trust me, dad, Tony is a lot closer to Greg Brady than Oliver Reed!”
“And while we’re on the subject, why can’t you find a decent boy?” He asked and suggested many of his friends’ sons who ‘would make good husbands.’ “What about Albert Mullins?”
“Albert Mullins? Dad, I don’t even like him!”
“He’s a nice boy and…”
“MOM!”
Dee ran out from the kitchen. “Jesus Christ, Jack, leave her alone!”
Suzie grabbed her homework from the couch and fled upstairs to her bedroom.
“Dee, stay out of this.”
“No, Jack, I won’t stop until you stop sounding like a scratched record.”
“Dee, you don’t understand. You…”
“No, Jack, you don’t understand! Let Suzie make her own choices. I mean, Albert Mullins? C’mon, Jack, the kid’s face looks like the surface of the moon and he’s about as sharp as a golf ball.”
Jack sighed, shook his head, and thought as he retreated back to the garage, She is so much like her mother.
From that day, Suzie stopped arguing, looked at her dad, and believed that he and his friends had collectively gone insane.
“Amen,” the congregation said and Suzie snapped back to the present.
“Amen,” Suzie said, quickly and sat down with the rest of them.
Suzie looked around the funeral home and saw her father crying behind a red handkerchief. Albert Mullins was across the aisle and several chairs forward. He was weeping, and Suzie couldn’t help but to feel for him, and she knew she would be weeping too if it had been her father who had died in the fire. Maybe now that the VFW/Moose Lodge was gone, there wouldn’t be any more talk of werewolves.
She wanted the funeral to end quickly, because she was uncomfortable being there, but she had to be there, the whole family had to show their support for the families of those who died, and that was what made them a community was their support for one another.
The congregation stood up and so did Suzie, a second behind everyone else.
“What’s going on now?” Suzie whispered to her mother.
“It’s time to go pay our respects to the families.”
Suzie followed her mother to the meeting room of the funeral home, staying quiet, keeping close to her mother. The sense of loss was overpowering, and it was only then Suzie started to cry. If her father had died in the fire, she didn’t know how she would’ve handled it. Then her thoughts drifted to what would happen if she lost Tony and her tears flowed more freely. Her pale skin turned almost as red as her hair, and she could not wait to get out of there.
4
Dee was not afraid to let the tears flow, and although this tragedy was devastating to the families there and to the community at large, it was also devastating to her as well. These men, and more specifically, their wives, were part of her past too. She had seen them at weddings, births of their children, bridge games, picnics, and other outings. Even before she married Jack, she knew who those men were and she probably served them a time or two when she worked as a waitress at Picardo’s diner as a teenager. It wasn’t just these men who were being buried that day, but Dee’s youth as well, as she imagined she felt the clammy hand of death approach her too. Although she was not yet forty, this was the first time Dee felt old. She hugged and cried with her friends who had lost their husbands.
She passed those coffins and the flood of memories hit her hard, like her life was playing on a movie screen, but stopped when the next reel was expected to play. Dee imagined, and hoped, the next reel would have Suzie’s children in it.
At the end of the row of coffins was an empty space where another coffin could’ve fit, and she realized that was where Jack’s coffin would have been if they hadn’t been arguing that night. There would be Jack’s picture on top of that coffin with his burnt remains inside ready to be cremated. Then she would be alone.
Dee put a hand to her mouth and wanted to scream, but held it in, and doing so made her want to faint. If Suzie hadn’t been next to her, she might’ve, but she had to be strong for her daughter, even if her crying became sobs.
“Mom, are you, you okay?” Suzie asked.
Dee nodded, but she wasn’t.
“Maybe we should sit back down.”
Dee nodded and Suzie took her mother by the arm and led her back to the chairs. Suzie held her mother as Dee cried it all out. Jack, who should have been there instead of Suzie, was outside smoking and talking to Albert Mullins.
After a few minutes, when the tears were all gone for this turn (she would cry several more times over the next few days), Dee stood up.
“Mom, are you sure you’re okay?”
Dee nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine now. I need to go… talk to the girls.”
Suzie knew that by “the girls,” her mother meant the newly widowed women at the table in the back.
Dee wiped her eyes and n
ose with a tissue as she approached. Her face, much like the faces of the women at the table, was a bright red, even under heavy makeup.
“Hi,” Dee said to the women she had known for decades, and some of them she considered her sisters.
There was a fierce pack mentality at that table and they glared at Dee as she approached, because these women were now an exclusive sorority. The narrowed eyed stares Dee received, glaring, menacing eyes that wanted to tear her apart, made her realize she was not a member of this club. The women scooted their chairs closer, tightening the circle around the table allowing no room for any new members. The initiation rite was a rough one – you had to lose a husband in a recent fire to join.
“Oh, hello, Dee,” Judy Rivetts said under a dark veil. “How’s your husband?” The word ‘husband’ came out so viciously and resentful it might as well have been a curse.
“He’s not doing very well. He’s outside crying and comforting Albert.”
“Maybe I should have been fighting with Terry too,” said Patricia Bolin. “Then maybe I would have something more than his ashes to take home with me tonight.”
“You have a living husband you can take home tonight, to hold tonight,” Judy Rivetts practically growled at Dee. Any other time, Dee would’ve found this funny since Judy hated Bruce and had been having a decade long affair with Tank and everybody knew it – everybody except Patricia Bolin.
“Maybe you should go to him.”
And those words felt like the claws that killed the men in the caskets, and Dee didn’t know which hurt worse – the loss of the men, the near loss of her own husband, or the loss of her friends.
Dee slowly backed away from the group, turned around, and started crying again. She couldn’t wait to get home, because she really needed a drink.
Chapter Fourteen: Date Night
April 13th, 1971
After the memorial service, Suzie had to get away from her parents, their friends, and her ‘Uncles’ and be among the living. Once inside the front door, Suzie kicked off her black pumps, carried them, and practically ran up the carpeted stairs. The bedroom door slammed behind her as she plopped on her bed with a sigh before glancing at the wall. Her Elvis wall clock read 3:05, which meant Tony should be home from school. She hoped he was home, because she needed to see him. With the receiver in the crook of her neck, she stuck her finger in the hole of her rotary princess phone and turned the dial for every number in her pink, rented AT&T phone. She was thankful there was not a busy signal as the call went through. The red head undressed as she waited. The black clothes hit the floor.
