Slow Funeral

by Rebecca Ore

  “How you know this isn’t Virginia?” a black boy said. “Looks like Richmond to me.”

  Maude found the block where she thought she might be living, but couldn’t recognize any of the houses. “How can I be dreaming about Richmond? I’ve only been there once.”

  “You could go home with me,” the black boy said. Maude wondered if he looked like the boy John killed. Perhaps he was the boy John killed. She tried to look at her hands again, to raise them in front of her eyes. What do I want to do?

  Maude wanted to find her home. She was lost. The boys seemed less like rapist wannabes and more like kids following someone strange to see what would happen. She pulled out a key from her purse and tried it in a door. It didn’t fit. She looked around her and saw another set of buildings that looked familiar and began walking toward them.

  Aunt Betty came up and said, “Enough of this. I’m going to take you home. And what were you doing out in the city wearing whore rig?”

  Maude remembered men putting folded-up money under a mirror in her apartment, the one she’d never find now. I was a whore, she thought, but she just crossed her arms over her breasts. She looked down at her hand, but couldn’t remember why seeing her hand was important.

  Betty draped a coat around her. The boys circled them. “You technically weren’t a whore, but you were as bad as one, selling your blood to go drinking and looking for men,” Betty said. “Your bar men fed you in good restaurants. So now you want to be super good. This is rather hypocritical. It’s like Partridge deciding not to be a witch now.”

  The black boy said, “I want to go home, too.” He was the soul John had trapped when he shot the cadaver. Maude wondered if John taught him burglary to begin with.

  I’ve got to get out of here. Maude woke up and stared at the windows, shrub shadows moving over the curtains. Am I really awake? She sat up. The covers fell away from her shoulders and she was cold. Awake, then, most likely.

  A car that sounded like Betty’s Essex came down the road. Maude decided to check on her grandmother and talk to Esther or Doug, whoever was staying awake now. She pulled on a robe and went to the back of the house.

  Partridge lay awake. Her eyes seemed luminous. Esther was slumped in the chair, the New Testament dropped to the floor, pages crumpled. Horrified, Maude touched Esther, expecting cold flesh.

  “She’s asleep,” Partridge said.

  “I dreamed I couldn’t find my apartment.” That didn’t explain the nightmare sense of the dream. Maude wondered if she should wake Esther. She picked up the New Testament and smoothed down the pages. The book was open to John. Maude knew the writer lied, claimed closer connections to the times and people than was possible. “And Betty said I was as bad as a whore.”

  “It hurts,” Partridge whispered. “Oh, please.”

  Maude felt stupid and mean. “Where?”

  “Stomach.”

  Maude shook Esther and said, “We’ve got to get her to a hospital. Even if it still is night.”

  Esther said, “I was dreaming about my father’s funeral. His corpse had a smile. That’s because he died sanctified.”

  “Okay, but I’m going to wake Doug.”

  Esther looked at Partridge, whose eyes gleamed in the dark. “I’ll get Doug.”

  Doug came out of his bed on his own then. “What is it?” Partridge groaned. Maude said, “We’ve got to get her to the hospital.”

  “Okay, I’ll get dressed.”

  “She won’t be able to lie down in your car if we all go. And I want Esther with me.”

  “We can call an ambulance,” Doug said.

  “I want to take her myself,” Maude said. “We cross a spur of Wart Mountain between the mortuary and the hospital.”

  Esther told her, “Drive my car. I had it blessed.”

  Doug said, “I don’t understand why she doesn’t want to call on magic, at least to kill the pain.”

  Partridge groaned, “Magic don’t… never… kill… pain. Ask Follette.”

  But Esther’s father died with a smile on his face, Maude thought. Probably a misinterpreted rictus or a dead face sagging.

  “Okay,” Doug said.

  “We need you to help get her to the car.”

  “I’ve got to get dressed.”

  Maude felt very anxious. While the women waited for Doug to get dressed, the Essex drove by the house again.

  “That one can smell loose souls,” Esther said.

  “What do you mean by magic never kills the pain?” Maude asked Partridge, not sure her grandmother could answer her.

  Partridge opened her eyes even wider and opened her mouth. Maude heard clamoring voices, the dead inside her grandmother. Something inside her own head said, haven’t been amused. Maude thought of Follette, betrayed by his entity and his fighting birds. She thought back, our purpose isn’t to entertain you.

  Doug said, “I’m ready to help.”

  Esther asked, “Can you carry her out while we bring her things?”

  “I can help, but I’m not sure I should trust my foot.”

  “I… will… walk,” Partridge said. “Dress me.”

  “It’s all right, honey,” Esther said. “We can carry you out wrapped in a quilt.”

  “You finished it.”

  “Not that one. I left it with my church circle to quilt.”

  “Damn you.”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t think so,” Esther said.

  “I want to be dressed,” Partridge said. “I want shoes on.”

  Maude said, “You won’t be doing any walking after the hospital.” Shit, how cruel, she thought.

  Doug said, “I think you ought to let her get dressed.”

  “Well, then you’ll want to step out,” Maude said.

  “No,” Partridge said. “He needs to see. Esther, get what I told you.”

  Maude wondered if Partridge was trying to horrify Doug with an aged female body or if she wanted to display herself naked before a male one last time. Esther brought Partridge her underclothes—a pair of linen drawers washed almost transparent, icy cold to the touch, a matching camisole, a silk shift and hose.

  Partridge stripped and stood naked. Then, her body turned young again, a beautiful body with high breasts. Doug gasped. The body faded back to old as Esther helped Partridge into the linen drawers and the bodice. Maude felt pity and some resentment for Partridge’s trick, but she sympathized, too.

  Doug said, “You needed me to see that.”

  Esther shook her head, but Partridge said, “Yes.” She stood erect, head up, in her linen underclothes. Maude wondered if the aides who undressed her at the hospital would be surprised to see such linen.

  “You were a beautiful woman.”

  “Yes,” Partridge said. “Now, the dress.”

  Esther brought in a blue worsted dress that buttoned down the bodice. Maude realized her grandmother and the nurse had decided earlier what to wear for this final live dressing. She felt excluded.

  Partridge raised herself off the bed so Esther could drop it over her head. The old woman’s right arm slid through the sleeve, but Esther had to reach through the sleeve for the left one. Then Partridge put her right hand on Esther’s shoulder while Esther buttoned her in. Then, before Esther helped her put on her shoes, she sat down. She said, “Maude, bring my teeth. The dish is by the toilet.”

  Grandmother is giving quite a show, Maude thought. I hope her entities are amused.

  But it’s not for us, an inhuman thought inserted.

  Partridge collapsed as though what held her up had thrown her down. Maude pushed her grandmother’s nightgowns and false teeth into an overnight bag. Doug took the bag from her and went out to Esther’s car.

  “Get hold of her shoulder, Maude,” Esther said.

  “I want to walk out,” Partridge told them. Maude and Esther supported Partridge. She leaned most heavily on Esther. The three of them went sideways through the house doors. Esther sat Partridge down in a porch chair while Maude locked th
e house, then they continued out into the yard.

  Partridge said, “Turn me around to face it.”

  Maude and Esther, still holding Partridge up, turned so Partridge could look at her house for the last time. Her eyes moved from the chimneys to the windows to the front door. “Your granddad… had to have… an electric house,” she said to Maude. “It had a Delco battery plant and a gas generator to recharge. You understood… electric’ty… then.”

  Maude wished she’d talked more with Partridge about that past unconnected to the witches and the bewitched. “I bet you were proud of having an electric house.”

  “It half ate me,” Partridge said. “Lit up for any fool.”

  Doug came up. “Need any help?”

  Partridge looked back over her shoulder at him and then back at the house. Esther tugged very slightly at Partridge. The old woman stiffened, then moaned slightly and relaxed. Maude and Esther eased her back around and helped her the rest of the way to the car. The sun was beginning to come up, but the snow patches crackled underfoot.

  Partridge looked in the rear seat of the car and said, “Can’t lie down.”

  “I want to go with you,” Doug said.

  “Bring Esther in your car. I don’t want anyone else with me,” Maude said.

  Esther asked, “You sure you’ll be all right? It has child locks.” Doug opened the doors and set the locks so the doors couldn’t be unlocked from the inside.

  “She needs a quilt,” Maude said. She gave Esther the house key and said, “Bring the one off my bed.” Esther went and came back. Together, they put Partridge in the back seat and used the quilt to cushion and cover her.

  Maude said, “We’ve got a spur of Wart Mountain to cross.”

  “You drive your grannie. Doug and I will follow.”

  Maude wished she could have Esther with her, but she knew Doug couldn’t defend himself against the witches and the magic. She knew not to leave him alone in the house.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  As she looked out the back, Maude noticed Esther let Doug drive.

  As Maude pulled out into the road, Partridge said, “Bury me… at the old place.”

  Maude wondered if Partridge would walk as a ghost or dissolve. Her grandmother, on different occasions, said both. “I’ll bury you with your people.”

  “Confused… need to get out.”

  “Of the car?”

  Partridge didn’t answer. The Essex passed Esther’s car and pulled up on Maude’s bumper.

  Why am I taking this old lady to die? Maude wondered.

  “Ready to die now,” Partridge said. “Couldn’t collect my nerve and get ready again.”

  The Essex headlights brightened into a glare in the rearview mirror. Maude flipped the mirror to the night position. The windshield flared.

  Two old men started crossing the road. Maude had almost hit the breaks when she realized she could see through them. Betty’s slipping. She hit the accelerator.

  The sun began to show. Maude flipped down her visors and saw Betty’s face in the mirror inset in the right visor. Betty’s mirror face said, “You’re both being foolish.”

  Maude flipped the visor up, but the sun glared at her. I’ll ignore her, she thought. When she flipped the mirror back down, Betty’s face was gone.

  The radio came on. “You could become as I’ve become. Just pull the car over.”

  Partridge said, “No.”

  “She’s too confused to set herself up as a ghost,” Betty’s voice said.

  Maude wondered why it was so important to have her grandmother’s spirit dissolve. “I’m doing what she wants.”

  “That nigger’s rotted her with prayer.”

  Esther’s car shuddered. Maude wished Esther rode with her. “It’s what Partridge wants.”

  “If she’s going to throw herself away, then I’ve got the right to her.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You never understood family, Maude.”

  “I’m half-loser,” Maude said, pressing down harder on the accelerator when she felt air resistance. Spell or wind, the car jumped ahead.

  Maude tried to visualize the combustion process—air through the air filter to the carburetor to the pistons where the fuel mixed with it. A spark, contained explosion, and the piston blew down, turning the crankshaft. Then the other pistons firing raised the piston she’d been focusing on. It pressed out the burnt gases. Air and gas entered the cylinder again.

  The radio died. Maude wondered if heavy thinking about automotive reality damaged Betty’s old Essex. Surely, without magic, age would have damaged the cylinders. The rods and piston heads could be metal fatigued.

  Maude’s own car started to falter. What did I think wrong? Maude wondered. Could it be?

  “No,” Partridge said from the back seat.

  Maude visualized shards of metal flaking into the Essex valves. She saw the Essex swerve.

  “No,” Partridge said.

  Maude asked, “Why not?”

  “You witch.”

  Maude realized she’d been attacking the Essex with magic.

  The radio said, “Why shouldn’t she try to outwitch me? Mechanically, my Essex is in fine shape.”

  Maude wondered how the Essex could be.

  “We’ve cannibalized many a car for this one,” Betty said. The Essex came closer.

  Esther’s car seemed to be speeding up without Maude’s foot pressing harder on the accelerator. The sun was in Maude’s eyes. She realized the Essex rode in her car’s shadow. Esther’s blessed car.

  “Do you want to kill us?” Maude said to the radio.

  Betty’s face materialized in the visor mirror, in the rearview mirror, in the side mirror. The three faces looked around the car. “I’ll get what I want if you don’t die instantly.”

  Maude didn’t believe in Esther’s God, but she knew that people with strong beliefs could defend against witches even though they could never defeat them. But anyone from those communities who doubted was instant witch food.

  Magic, witches, wasn’t this all crazy? Maude began to wonder. She tried to remember seeing magic witnessed by others. Doug? But then she’d thought Doug was a madman when they met. He wanted magic to exist.

  The sex was incredible. The fairystone waved its arms at them. They saw the tiny research institute in the back of Follette’s pickup. The gun shot Doug’s foot.

  What can I believe in? Maude passed the pool hall. Daylight wrecked the building, showed the falling siding and broken windows. What showed yesterday, last night? Were charms cheaper than rebuilding, or was the difference only between night imaginings and what real light showed? I want a universe with constant laws, even laws that tell us nothing can be completely predicted. She hadn’t gotten to the Wart Mountain spur yet, but she realized she’d have to stop at the highway. The hospital, she realized, was at the top of the spur.

  Suddenly, Maude imagined telling her social worker in Berkeley about this and giggled. Oh, no, please, don’t make me laugh. She stopped at the stop sign and wondered if she was truly paranoid, hallucinating old ladies in the car mirrors, voices in the radio.

  The Essex didn’t do anything, just pulled in behind her. The mirrors reflected only the world parallel to them. A tractor began pulling out up the highway. Maude decided to pull out just before it got there, blocking the Essex. No, that’s craziness, she thought, pulling out well before the tractor arrived.

  The Essex came behind her. Now the tractor was between the two front cars and Doug’s car. Maude wondered if behind her terrible fear of the Essex was a benign reality, an Aunt Betty who was concerned about her kinswomen and happened to be passing through when they took Partridge out to the car. Betty, in this non-witch reality, would have realized they were taking Partridge to the hospital and would have wanted to follow. Maude’s insanity twisted the reality into…

  “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “Not… crazy.”

  Maude wondere
d what Partridge knew. She remembered her dream and felt lost again. “I can’t rely on anyone, not even myself,” she said. Could drugs numb witchery?

  “If you’re… crazy…” Partridge didn’t finish what she was saying. “Hurry.”

  “I don’t know.” She slowed the car down to thirty miles per hour, hoping Betty would pass her.

  “Hurry,” Partridge said.

  If I’m insane, Maude realized, an entire county is, too. I can afford to doubt. For the duration, witches and entities were real. She pushed down on the accelerator and felt her sanity rip away.

  “No, I don’t think so,” she said out loud to whatever caused the delusion.

  The road vanished. She felt the car tires on the road and decided she just couldn’t see the road. Perhaps Betty wanted to crash them and come upon their bodies. If so, Maude floored the accelerator to make sure the bodies would die instantly. She wondered if the accelerator was real.

  “Yes,” her grandmother said as the car went faster.

  The road reappeared, but not in Bracken County. The Essex was still behind them, but around them was a high country of the gods—neglected ones—or a posthuman future.

  Glaciers converged at bulldozer pace on a ruined shopping mall on an altiplano in air thinner than that at twelve thousand feet. Along the road itself, rocks shattered from seasons that cycled from heat to subzero in sixty seconds. The land swayed. Continental granite floated like boats on an ocean.

  Maude tried to remember the road that led to the hospital. She drove through the shattering rocks, but the pavement was still under the car tires.

  The car stopped. No, Maude still heard the pavement under the tires. Various minor gods surrounded the car, pissed at being neglected.

  “Go away,” Maude said to them.

  Then, in front of her, larger than four billboards, completely blocking the road and the rest of the landscape, Maude saw the Minotauromachy. If she broke through, a whole self was gone, the cultivated witch with gloves, tea sets, art, and a thousand minor humans sacrificed to her. Betty wanted to like her. Betty had so much to offer.

  Aunt Betty reappeared in the mirrors. “Why are you committing yourself to death?” Betty asked. “I don’t want to hurt you.”