by Matthew Crow
I laughed and so did Eve. “You can stay here you know. I don’t take much space myself.”
“You mean that?” she said, sitting upright in the bed.
“Practicalities be damned,” I said, stubbing the cigarette out into a saucer on the floor.
“Oh Verity, you’re a lifesaver! You’ll think you’ve got a live in maid or something. It won’t matter that it’s so small. I’ll be so quiet and so careful you’ll just about have the whole place to yourself.” She lunged towards me and threw her arms around my neck. “Say, let me test my luck and go for one more ask,” she said, pouring tequila into two coffee cups I had stolen from the diner, on what once seemed the rare chance I’d ever be required to serve houseguests.
“What would that be?”
“Dance with me.”
I rolled my eyes and took the whole cupful of liquor in one mouthful.
“Miss Jemima takes real good care of us girls. And it’s got to be more interesting than flipping pancakes all the live long day.”
“I like flipping pancakes. Sometimes they even let me press waffles.”
“Dream big!” sneered Eve.
I poured two final drinks and, with a shrug of my shoulders, clinked my cup against hers.
“Verity... was that a yes?” she asked leaning in closer to me.
“To decadence... ” I rolled my eyes and swallowed the drink in one go. “To decadence!”
You asked me, Jonah, how I came to be where I am, and so there it is: I said yes. I suppose Eve hit upon something within me, highlighted, for want of a better word, the knowledge within us all that life could be so much bigger if only we said yes more often, if we dived feet first instead of eternally hesitating at the periphery whilst something grander plays forever out of frame. This has always been my trouble. I want everything but seem content to want. I want blonde hair. I want brown eyes and olive skin. I want to be able to wear strapless dresses without checking my tits every second like a leaking new mother lest I endure the horror of a rogue nipple in a public space. I want to be black. I want to be gay. I want to have known handprints on the thighs of my prepubescent skin from some drunken parent whose demise was the happiest day of my life. I want to experience the eternal whimsy that comes with a gilded upbringing. I want to be colour blind; to see the world but not hear it and hear it but not see it. I want to be confined to a wheelchair and irreversibly contorted into a spasm so acute that it makes fellow diners in any restaurant I m in feel nauseous and unable to finish their entrées. I want to experience spirituality so succinct I would kill, or perhaps die for it. I want bangs. I want to feel what the sweating virgin offering me bargain life insurance feels like each time I and every other sane human being slams the phone down on him with a fading obscenity. All these things I want but can never have. This is my problem Jonah – the enormity of life is so utterly breathtaking in its scope, I often think it such a shame that we only get to live it the once.
I was asked and I said yes.
I wonder just how many tragedies began with those very words.
With love,
Verity
Dear Verity,
I arrived early as to make a good impression. Sunday should, by rights, have been my day of rest. Though I figured that by this point in my life I’d had so long to rest that I was working in arrears, so didn’t much mind the android chirp of my alarm at six thirty and the drone of my muscles as I got up and into the shower. Leftover smoke still clung to my pillow like perfume of some departed lover, so I bundled the covers in a ball and threw them into the middle of the kitchen floor to be dealt with at a later date. At such ungodly hours the thought of food flipped my stomach so I took a sip of water straight from the faucet (a perk of solitary living) and stepped out the door into the surprisingly chilly early morning light.
God’s most devoted followers were already prepped and seated as the sun dissolved the web of dew blanketing the church’s kept lawns. Maxwell stood at a distance spouting his zeal having become disillusioned with what he felt to be the wan passion of our given preacher.
‘... so I implore you ladies and gentlemen, step out of the wilderness... step away from these lives of sin... you have to find something to believe in, and let it rule you. Only then will you be truly found... ’
His cries became diluted by the bells of Sunday’s first service, which began to thunder and chime as I made my way through the cornfields; discordant at first, just finding their feet, and then as if by magic the strands of a tune began to weave together until sweet music filled the air. I found myself powering forward to their faintly militant beat until I’d crossed the whole first field without realising it.
The Hare and Sons Funeral Parlour, Caleb’s pride and joy, stood on a stretch of dead grass about a mile from the nearest residential street. Its faux gothic spires swirled up towards the heavens like birthday candle smoke. The lawn that surrounded it was yellow and fading and the front of the house was in urgent need of treatment. Caleb was removing dead heads from a hanging basket as I walked towards the house. He stood stout and unshaven in his stocking feet, wearing battered denim and a string wife-beater.
“Beautiful morning out,” I said, offering my hand.
“Well aren’t you the early bird. Bodes well for our imminent venture.”
“Potential,” I added, defiantly. “Still don’t know if I’m up to the challenge.”
“I trust my instincts,” he said, tossing the shrunken heads of the plants into a dirt pile beneath the porch. “Come on round back let me show you.”
We walked to the back of the house, past the stained windows of the service room, which glowed red and warm in the formative light.
“You want a coffee? I’ll get you a coffee,” said Caleb as we passed an open doorway to the back of the house. “Mary,” he yelled without altering his pace. “Mary, two cups of Joe when you’ve got a minute,” he shouted as we made our way towards the neverending stretch of the garden. At the back of the house an ugly new addition had been tacked shoddily to the building like some hurried afterthought. Beyond it the gentle hills rolled down towards a small ravine, around which shrubbery grew in brilliant greens and reds. To the furthest edge sat a barn around which chips of various woods piled high and flew upwards on the breeze. “That over there’s the workshop. That’ll be part two of the grand tour,” said Caleb, standing in the doorway, shivering slightly. “Come on in.”
I followed him into the extension at the back of the house. It was a large room, white and utilitarian, with a gentle top note of fresh wood permeating the muggy stench of death. I itched my nose and looked around. Along either side of the room two rows of oblong boxes were lined in reverent symmetry. There were four either side creating a makeshift runway all the way towards the door to the kitchen. I remained towards the back as Caleb walked down the centre of the arrangement. Holding his hands out widely he pulled back the pall of the first two boxes. The crisp sheets billowed up and made a flapping sound like a flock of doves alarmed by gunshot. As they fell gently to the floor Caleb turned to me and nodded down towards two pristine coffins – one thin, heartbreakingly practical pine box, the other a more elaborate yew; smoothed at the edges and polished into a rich liquor of speckled brown.
“What do you think?” he asked, surveying his craftwork. For Caleb death no longer the held the dark eroticism it might do to you or me; its shimmering eternity merely a formality in his lifelong devotion to careful craft, to customer service and repeat business; to profit. Each fatality in a town where everyone was related to someone who knew someone was, to the sole funeral director, nothing but business, and good business at that judging by the assortment of vehicles parked in the lot beside the house.
“They sure are beautiful. Any of them... occupied?”
He laughed as the back door swung open and a dour woman in a plaid dress made her way towards him carrying a tray with two steaming cups.
“No siree, these babies are, how do you want me to put
it, awaiting their deposit,” he chuckled. His wife did not. “This one here’s our economy line, funerals paid for by the state or town collections you understand,” he tapped the pine structure and it made a cheap, empty yelp of a sound. “This here’s our executive collection. You want to be chauffer driven to St Peter this is the woman for you.”
“Some coffee, dear,” said the woman warily. “Careful, it’s hot. There’s milk and sugar in the decanter. I’ll leave it on the edge here.” She placed the tray down on the one and only bench in the room and walked away. Caleb patted her on the rear as she passed, causing her to jump and carry on with her business, seemingly immune to both his sense of fun and his touch.
We took the coffees and sipped them slowly as we walked towards the furthest edge of the garden, led by the pained cries of wood on metal. As the noise dipped we were granted a gilded silence. Caleb turned to face me and as his mouth opened to talk the shriek began again - loud and coarse - making it seem like malevolent spirits were leaving his body. “ - od damn Rich!” he concluded as the sound stopped. “You want to look inside?”
“Let’s do it.”
Inside the workhouse lengths of wood lay unorganised on worktops. Three circular saws took pride of place in the centre of the room where an older man stood, blowing dust from a six foot plank of mahogany.
“This is Richard, our only craftsman since Jacob went from employee to customer.”
“WHAT?” yelled Richard through thick safety goggles, removing his ear protectors and placing them around their neck.
“This is Jonah. Given the word he’s going to be helping out around here.”
“Oh,” said Richard, moving towards me. He wiped his dusty hands on his overalls, if anything more filthy than his palms themselves, and extended it to me. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Morning, sir.”
“Can’t say I won’t welcome the help. Summer’s a busy time. The heat gives the old ’uns that extra kick. Last year we were stacking them in the ground like pancakes.”
Caleb rolled his eyes at me.
“Ask me it’s irresponsible. Sooner they all get to grips with burning the better,” Richard said, walking back across the workroom towards his current project, which he began sanding by hand with a square of paper.
“So,” said Caleb, as we made our way towards the front of the house. “You think you’d be up for it?”
“Depends what my hours would be,” I said. “Want to keep a certain standard at my new job, this’d be more of a hobby, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“Don’t mind one bit son, anything I value your honesty.” He took my coffee cup and placed it on the step of the porch along with his. “Harlow says you don’t get out much... on an evening... weekends.”
“I try to keep myself to myself.”
“It’s no bad thing. How about you start coming over on a Saturday morning. Maybe some evenings. So long as there’s no service you can keep your own hours. We’re deaf to the noise by now – forty years in any industry you stop noticing the evidence.”
“That’d be fine.”
“You can operate the saw?”
“Yes sir, was trained in... well, let’s just say I had experience.”
“Good. So you come by a Saturday morning, and any evenings you can make it. And we’ll go from there. I’ll give you the plans, the dimensions and such, the material will be sitting waiting, and we’ll see how you get on.”
“And payment?”
“Oh yeah, that too!” he laughed. “We like to look after our boys, you won’t be disappointed. We’ll start on a work to order scheme and see how we get on.”
“Then it’s agreed.”
“So let’s shake on it.”
He held out his hand and we sealed our gentleman’s agreement, Caleb enthusiastically, me slightly less so - suddenly confronted with the tiredness which had until that point been hiding itself in the camouflage of excitement.
“So long as you can stand Richard’s jabbering I don’t see why this won’t be a fine time for all involved.”
“’Cept the customers.”
“’Cept the customers,” Caleb laughed. “I like that... I like that a lot.”
Mrs Pemberton twitched her curtains and shook her head at me as I mounted my own lawn, eager for a second shower and a light nap. I waved instinctively and she turned the blinds as far as possible, so that whilst she became invisible to me, I could still be viewed from an angle. Her slant was not out of character so I let it fade from my mind as I opened the lock and stepped inside.
Some things you can tell on instinct, Verity. From a doctor’s stance a loved one’s fate can be determined, no need to see his face - he has been trained in this kindly deceit - but the way he holds himself will give away everything you’ll ever need to know. A clear sky in winter means nine times out of ten you’ll be scraping the car with red, furious hands early next morning. And as cows take to their slumber it is fair to assume that a storm is brewing, silent and huge.
That I was not alone in my house became a similar instinct; as certain and vital to me all of a sudden as sight or sound. Perhaps one or two minor pieces of physical evidence penetrated my thoughts without me having realised it – the shunt of the back window, bent so suddenly that the hinges had re-set, or the laundry pile on my kitchen floor now a fair few steps from where it had been left. Yet whilst these were invariably true they were not what made me so certain of an intrusion. I just had a feeling that I don’t ever want to know again; a cross between fear and violation with a distant back taste of guilt and the oddest, most pressing adrenaline I have ever known.
My skin became alive as though each of my senses was being filtered through its porous stretch; volatile and receptive to every rush of air that blew across me like sand across a desert. I moved carefully, low and slowly, like it was I who was breaking and entering. I heard a creak of wood, and a scuff. I pushed open the living room door and no-one seemed to be inside. I walked down the small corridor towards the kitchen. The bedroom appeared empty. Suddenly I felt the need to leave. My thoughts became unusually overlapping, clouded and unfamiliar like I was slipping away from myself, and all I could focus on was escape. The kitchen had been undisturbed save the window that still hung ominously opened towards my yard. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen counter and opened the back door as wide as I could.
The garden was peaceful. In the distance a sprinkler system hissed and a gaggle of girls whooped and splashed their way through its stream. No footprints were evident in the grass, though given it was as hard and dry as elephant hide it would have bounced a meteorite back to the heavens without so much as a dent. Around the open window a black fur had caught and suddenly I felt my whole body drop back into itself. It must, I decided, have been an animal. Raccoons were a problem in the neighbourhood, had been ever since I moved in. Surprisingly dextrous too, so I was told. In fact when each minor household transgression remained unsolved - a broken vase, dirty smudges in the hallway, a fresh pastry nibbled at the corner - they seemed to be the go-to guy for families hoping to put these small scale traumas behind them with limited fuss.
I laughed at myself, at my stupidity and vulnerability, at the sight of a grown man clutching a butter knife (only the handle had registered when I selected my weapon) for protection. I walked back inside and locked the door.
“Well I’ll be,” came the voice from behind me. “It is you.”
I froze on the spot.
“Aren’t you at least going to say hi?”
I turned slowly, hoping to God that he would have disappeared by the time I reached the source of his sound like a nightmare blinked from memory. This was not the case.
His face was less grotesque than when I had last seen him over a decade ago and when both of us were little more than children. The way I remembered him was weeping and oozing into a stranger’s carpet, his skin hanging loose; blood pouring from his eyes like a holy statue. Michael had grown into his wounds
, mercifully, though still they dominated his features and became all you could focus on. Now a man, the freckles of scars still dotted his cheek from where shards of glass and lead had showered his face. A small bald patch to the side of his head was an ugly silvery white. Most awful of all though was his eye – stretched and pinched to the side, it roved from within an angry slit that cut a deep ridge all the way behind his hear. He looked like he was fading, like a cartoon being erased by its frustrated artists. Had it not been for vanity and pride on my part I would have wept on the spot at the sight of him; wept at his image, at his unwelcome return, at the fact that only bad things could conclude from his appearance, and partly at my guilt over the destroyed face of a boy I had once cared for. I’ve never hated anyone the way I hated him at that moment.
“Well this is a nice house Jonah. A nice house,” he said, sitting on my sofa. They had followed me into the living room where I sat, slumped and frightened in the armchair whilst they remained standing. “You must have stockpiled a secret stash without letting us boys know about it,” he chuckled. His companion remained silent.
“Sit down,” I heard myself say.
“Thank you kind sir,” Michael said with a jocular bow. The sleeve of his jacket had been ripped, his white shirt visible like muscle tissue in a black and white war movie. “Hope you don’t mind the, shall we say... elaborate intrusion. You remember I always did have a penchant for the limelight.”
I nodded.
“So, Jonah. How’s life?”
“You’ve been following me.”
“Say, is this house rented? I could get me a nice little house like this,” he said, standing back up. He took the axe head from the table and began picking nicks of skin from his hand with the dullest of the two edges. “Nice little house in a nice little town. Maybe a nice little wife to go in it. I always did say I wanted a wife, isn’t that right Jonah?” He turned to me. “I’m sorry, where are my manners? This is my associate Ed. Say hello, Edward.”
The man, still seated, nodded towards me. He held none of Michael’s maniacal energy. He was solid and slick; his hair greased back and his manner immaculate, like a praying mantis. The only indication of any wrongdoings was the tail end of a self-administered tattoo edging from the cuff of his sleeve.
