Ashes

by Haunted Computer Books

But Gaines was at ease with the dead. With the living, who wanted words and emotions and hugs and love, he was out of his element. He'd been born to the family work. Even with Mother's eyes, he still had a funeral face.

  He left her with her wine and pills and bitterness and went upstairs to bed, to think and dream.

  Gaines was alone in the back room.

  Stony Hampton's graveside service had been beautiful. The preacher hit all of Stony's high points while overlooking the man's many sins. The loved ones were practically glowing in their melancholy. Alice Hampton had even thrown herself on the coffin.

  If only she had known that Stony wasn't inside, she might have become a Wadell customer right there on the spot. The tractor lowered the coffin and pushed the red dirt over a four-thousand-dollar casket containing nothing but corrupted air. The granite marker that said "Here Lies" was itself a lie.

  Stony was the proper height and build. The features were a little off, but that would be no problem. With a little polishing, Gaines had a face that would work.

  He went into the walk-in refrigerator, what Father had called the "meat locker." Father was a part of the parlor, as vital to the business as the hearse and the gurneys and the casket catalog. Gaines wouldn't let his memory die. He would not allow the name "Wadell" to be removed from the big sign out front.

  He took a special package from the wire shelves that lined the rear of the cooler. He clutched it to his chest. Laura Mae Greene was the only witness, and her eyes were safely sewn shut. He carried the package to where Stony lay naked and waiting on the stainless steel table.

  Gaines worked into the evening, finishing just as the long fingers of night reached across the sky. The short trip home was difficult because only two of the four legs were walking.

  "What did the doctor say, Mother?"

  "They want to do the operation next month."

  "Wonderful. I'm sure you'll be glad to get it over with."

  "Yes. Then we can leave here."

  Gaines nodded from discomfort of the stiff chair. Mother’s living room was too severe, lacking in personality, just as the funeral parlor had been under her design. "How is your wine?"

  "Very good. Crisp."

  "I'm glad. Can I get you anything else?"

  "You're being pleasant. What brought that on?" Mother's eyes narrowed as she studied Gaines.

  "I've been thinking," he said. "Maybe you're right. If you sell the business, we can start in something else. You put up the money and I'll do the work."

  Mother smiled. "What sort of business?"

  "Anything. Insurance, financial services, you name it."

  "I'm so glad you agree.” She looked like she would have kissed him if rising weren’t such an effort. “It's for the best, really."

  "Yes. I want you to be proud."

  "It's what your father would have wanted."

  Gaines' face almost tightened then, at her pretending to know what Father wanted when the man loved the Home more than he had ever loved her. But Gaines knew not to let the rage show. He kept his features calm and somber, drawing on his years of practice.

  "Are you ready for dinner? I've set the table," he said. Try not to smile, try not to smile. Even though this is your best work ever, your highest art, your most polished memory.

  "Why, thank you, dear."

  He helped her from the chair. The dining room lights spilled from the doorway. Gaines' vision blurred for a moment. His eyes were moist with joy.

  As they turned the corner, they were met by the smell of meat. Not from the food piled on the plates. No. The smell came from their dinner guest.

  Mother gasped, not comprehending. Then, when she finally came to accept the impossible sight before her, she tried to reel away, screaming, but Gaines held her firmly. Perhaps her heart was already giving out just from the strain of having her dead husband grinning across the table. But Gaines was taking no chances.

  He pulled on the almost-invisible threads beside the doorjamb. As the threads tightened in the small eye-hooks screwed in the ceiling, Father raised his flaccid but well-preserved hand in greeting and his jellied eyes opened. And Mother's eyes closed for the final time.

  Due to her strict Southern Baptist beliefs, Alice Hampton would be terribly upset if she knew that Stony was going to be cremated. But someone’s body had to be in the box that Wadell Funeral Home shipped to the crematorium in Asheville. Besides, Alice had her memories, thanks to Gaines and his craftsmanship.

  And the men who rolled the body into the fires wouldn't stop to check the sex of the corpse. Why should they care whether the label said "Virginia Marie Wadell" or "James Rothrock Hampton"? To the corpse-burners, dead was dead and ashes were ashes. And a job was a job.

  They had no respect. Unlike Gaines.

  He had handled Mother's funeral arrangements himself, insisting that the Wadells were a family and always took care of their own. Everyone understood. Why shouldn't a son give his mother a last loving farewell? Gaines performed his magic, and the funeral was beautiful. Over two hundred attended, and all of them wiped away tears.

  Except Gaines. He never cried at a service. He had kept his head bowed in perfect reverence. He solemnly shook the hands of the mourners. Though he was a firm believer in burial, he would follow mother's wishes and have her remains cremated. At least that's what he told the family friends.

  But now they were gone, the last condolences bestowed, and Gaines had the parlor all to himself again.

  He turned on the light in the back room. The work table gleamed with antiseptic purity, a chrome altar. His tools and blades and brushes were lined to one side, awaiting his masterful touch. A small shiver wended through his gut, a thrill of ownership, a rush of pride.

  He trembled as he opened the refrigerator. A fog of condensation surrounded him as he stepped into the cool air of the vault. He went to the shelf where he kept the flesh he had peeled from Father's face. Underneath the shelf was a three-gallon container nearly full of blood. He lifted it onto the gurney and rolled it out into the light.

  He lifted the sheet. Her eyes were gone, those eyes that had no Wadell in them. He had probably overlooked some tiny shred of her damaged heart when he had removed it. Perhaps some scrap of intestine had escaped his scalpel. He would open her up again to check, before he drained the embalming fluid and replaced it with Father's blood.

  He would make her proud. He would make her a Wadell. He would not rest until she was fit for rest herself. If not tonight, he had tomorrow and forever.

  And when she was finally perfect, then he would allow himself to weep.

  ###

  THE NIGHT IS AN ALLY

  It was July 12, 1942, and the sky over Jozefow had broken with high clouds under a sun the color of a blood blister.

  First Lieutenant Heinz Wolfram exited the train at Sternschanze station as the cattle doors wheeled open with a dozen rusty shrieks, allowing the reserve policemen to exit from the same stinking cars that had transported Jews to Berkinau and Belzec. The effort to make Lublin judenfrei had taken over a month and had sapped the energy of Reserve Police Battalion 101. His men of Third Company were haggard, tired, and their bellies probably grumbling like his. Officers might have slightly better rations, but barely two years into the war, shortages were a staple of every rank.

  “Herr Oberleutnant,” said a guard on the warped wooden platform, raising his arm with a brisk stamp of his boot heel.

  Wolfram nodded to acknowledge the salute. Rear guards hadn’t yet lost the crispness of their routines. “Cigarette?”

  The guard smiled and Wolfram shook one from the pouch in the breast pocket of his gray tunic. He lit the guard’s and then one for himself. The tobacco was Turkish, dark and sinister like the people who had cultivated it.

  “Shipping juden?” Wolfram asked.

  The guard smiled from his pale moon face. “Two thousand, maybe. Three. What’s the difference? The trains are slow.”

  “Two trains per week. Globocnik’s orders.”


  The guard looked around, comfortable in his post, the real war three hundred miles to the east. “Globocnik? I see no Globocnik.” He leaned close, conspiratorially, as if they were two friends in a beer hall. “I don’t even know if Globocnik is real, ja?”

  Globocnik, an SS police leader, was rumored to have had personal correspondence with the Fuhrerhimself. Globocnik, who had career ambitions and sought a place on Himmler’s staff, had stepped up relocation efforts after a German officer had been killed during a police action against the Jews. The officer in question had died in a drunken motorcycle accident, but the German leadership had never troubled itself over accuracy when a larger purpose was served. Martyrs were cheap, Wolfram well knew.

  “So it’s quiet here?” Wolfram asked.

  The guard shrugged. “I sleep. No one here has guns.”

  “Good.” Wolfram drew on his cigarette as the guard sauntered to the shade of the station’s long platform.

  “Rest for now,” Wolfram shouted at the policemen who had debarked the trains, busily wiping their brows and sipping from steel canteens. They were mostly older men, those not fit for combat but who had been pressed into some sort of duty for the Reich. Though unfit for combat, Wolfram’s platoon was organized, obedient, and well-trained.

  Some, like Scherr there, the fat one, were all joviality and bluster, full of the nonsense that came from believing happy lies. Kleinschmidt, a sausage maker, complained bitterly about his boots and the poor quality of the field kitchen’s pork. Wassen had been a journalist and spent his evenings writing letters to his family. Few of the men in Wolfram’s First Company platoon thought beyond the immediate soldier’s concerns of a soft bunk and dry socks.

  At age 32, Wolfram had no career ambitions himself; he thought only of his wife, Frieda, in the Hamburg apartment with their four-year-old son Karl. Wolfram had headed a small family lumber business and benefited from the initial lead-up to war. When certain high-level officers began hinting that a man like Wolfram was needed by the Fatherland, he enlisted in the Reserve Police.

  During 1941, Reserve Police Battalion 101 had been largely concerned with stamping out partisan uprisings and rounding up communist Russians in Czechoslovakia. Later in the year, Jews were targeted as well. Wolfram had heard reports of entire Jewish sections of cities being burned to the ground, and truckloads of Jews occasionally disappeared. But such reports were like the wind, and Wolfram had filed enough of them to know that only a fool or a zealot dared speak the truth.

  Scherr, his First Sergeant, approached Wolfram as the train engine let out a long sigh of steam. The smell of coal smoke briefly obliterated the cloying animal stench that came from the cattle cars.

  “Shall I issue the orders?” Scherr said all too eagerly.

  “Gather the men,” Wolfram said.

  Scherr obeyed, no doubt promising the men a night in the barracks and the eventual arrival of rations. As the forty reservists gathered around, Wolfram looked into their faces. He was younger than most, and a good deal healthier. Less than a third were Nazi Party members, and most were from the lower orders of society: laborers, clerks, and street merchants. Some were as old as Wolfram’s father, and one, Drukker, reminded Wolfram of his own youth as he looked into the hard blue eyes.

  “We have been selected for an unpleasant task,” Wolfram began, attempting to mimic the words of Captain Herrmansbiel, his immediate superior. “The Jews here have been involved with the partisans. Further, their discontent has led to the Amerikannerboycott of Germany’s goods and services. There’s even talk”—Wolfram wasn’t sure how to add the next part without risking damage to morale—“that the Americans will join England and Russia as allies.”

  “Mein gott,” came a voice from the rear ranks. “Fick der juden.”

  “The Jews are confined to the ghetto, and per standing orders, any attempting to escape will be shot. We are to round up all the Jews and gather them in the marketplace for processing. Healthy males of working age are to be loaded onto trucks and transported to Lublin. Those who resist or are too frail to march will be summarily executed.”

  Scherr licked his lips. He’d already shown an appetite for killing Jews and was always quick to volunteer when there was the possibility of an organized firing squad. Wolfram found him distasteful, but such men made the entire operation easier to manage, and also required less of Wolfram’s presence during the most brutal actions.

  “This duty is necessary, and we must be strong,” Wolfram said. “I don’t want to see any cowards. However, any man who doesn’t feel up to the task may step forward now and be reassigned.”

  Some of the men exchanged glances while others stared at the ground. Someone coughed. The train engine clanged. After a moment, Drukker stepped forward, shoulders sagging.

  “Anyone else?” Wolfram asked. Only Drukker met his gaze.

  “Very well,” Wolfram said. “Drukker, you will help guard the train. The rest of you men, proceed to the marketplace in the center of town. Scherr, give them their orders there.”

  Scherr grinned, saluted, called the men to attention and led the platoon away. Wolfram lit another cigarette. “Drukker, you will be happy later on. You might be the only one. Before this Jewish business is over, the German nation will be shamed in the eyes of God.”

  “Yes, sir,” Drukker said, subordinate despite being nearly twenty years older than his lieutenant.

  Wolfram knew, as an officer, he shouldn’t speak on equal terms with the men, especially on matters of philosophy. After all, the truth could be construed as treason. “Resettlement is a question of military efficiency, Drukker.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wolfram tossed his cigarette off the platform and checked his watch. He glanced at the forest that covered the rise of land above the village. “We will be efficient.”

  He walked into Jozefow. The village was quiet, many of the Poles still sleeping under the thatched straw roofs. Curling pillars of sleepy smoke rose from a few chimneys. The men of Second Company had already fanned out to surround the village, as per Hermmansbiels’s orders.

  Already the shouts and cries could be heard inside the narrow white houses of the Jewish section. Scherr had posted four guards in the market square,where the Jews were to be collected. The other men conducted door-to-door searches, and from a small stone house came a woman carrying an infant. Hermmansbiel specifically stipulated that the infants were to be shot along with the elderly. Gunfire erupted along the next block, sending more cries into the morning sky.

  Worker Jews were driven at bayonet point, most with beards and thin faces, wearing long, filthy robes. They had already suffered plenty of hardship, but nothing like what they would see today, Wolfram thought. He saw Scherr lead a small squadron of men into a long, low building that could have been a hospital or an old people’s home. Automatic gunfire erupted like popcorn kernels over a fire. Minutes later, Scherr and the other reservists exited the smoky portal that led into the building. No Jews accompanied them.

  Nearby, Wassen stood leaning against a stone wall. At his feet was a woman, a blossom of blood on the back of her dress. Wassen dropped his rifle and knelt, vomiting. Wolfram looked around to see if anyone noticed them. An old Jew, who might have been a rabbi, gave a grim nod. Wolfram turned away and stood over Wassen.

  “We have orders,” Wolfram said gently.

  “I can no longer shoot,” Wassen said, wiping his nose on his uniform and leaving a long, greasy smear.

  “Are you out of ammunition?”

  “I can no longer shoot.”

  Wolfram looked at the rabbi and the other Jews huddled around him on the rough, pebbled street. “Join Drukker on guard duty at the station.”

  “Thank you, Herr Oberleutnant.”

  “Efficiency,” Wolfram said. “A man who can’t shoot is more useful somewhere else.”

  More shots rang out. The men had been given extra ammunition before the train rolled into the station. They must have known this acti
on was to be unusual. They must all have suspected what was coming.

  Scherr jogged up, breathless, his cheeks flushed despite the heat. He appeared rejuvenated, years younger. Blood dotted his boots. “We have about three hundred workers to transfer,” he said. “And the others are ready.”

  “March the workers to the station,” Wolfram said. “Are Second and Third platoons in place?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Continue the action. Captain Hermmansbiel said this should take less than a day.”

  It was a job, a mission. Hermmansbiel had delivered the order, probably doing the same thing Wolfram was doing, the same as Scherr. Passing a command down the ranks. No single man was responsible.

  The worker Jews rose on command, flanked by guards, and moved down the street. How accepting they are, Wolfram thought. How dignified.

  Then their sheepishness made him angry. He had known a German Jew in Hamburg, an engineer who built parts for milling machines. A fine craftsman who had shared some of his people’s strange beliefs. Wolfram, a Lutheran, wondered if the engineer had been relocated out of Germany with all the others. He might even be among this crowd, being shuttled once again. If he were still able to walk.

  More women, children, and the ambulatory older men were gathered in the square. Wolfram guessed there were maybe a thousand. A dozen reservists from the Third platoon each selected a single person from the assemblage. They urged the Jews toward the forest, one of the policemen sticking a bayonet tip into the back of his charge.

  Lieutenant Von Offhen, leader of the Third platoon, flagged down Wolfram. “This is going too slowly.”

  “How far into the woods are they taking them?”

  “A half kilometer.”

  A fusillade of shots sounded in the distance. Wails arose from a few of the women, causing the infants to renew their cries. The Jews’ composure of the early morning was fading as the July heat settled in and realization unvelveted its claws.

  “You have a guard for each Jew,” Wolfram said. “But none are attempting to flee.”