Death Perception

by Lee Allen Howard

  As they headed home in the rattletrap Fury along wet, black roads, Kennet wondered what had really happened at the front of the church. He couldn’t remember all the preacher lady’s words, and those he could recall, he didn’t comprehend. But he’d felt the power and he wanted to know what it was. He was working up the courage to ask Ma, but it was too late. They were already home, a dismal shack in the woods at the far edge of Tenleytown.

  His mother hauled a plastic laundry basket full of clothes from the back seat of the car, the same basket she’d filled with clean clothes from their drawers earlier that evening.

  She whispered over her shoulder, “You know the routine.”

  The sky was clear now through the dripping trees that overshadowed the property, and moonlight winked in her anxious eyes. Although he was only eight, he knew the routine well. Kennet followed her up the cracked front walk. When they mounted the porch steps, the front door flew open.

  His mother gasped and dropped the basket. “Carl, you startled me.”

  Kennet’s father swayed in the yellow doorway, backlit by the fly-specked bulb in the hall ceiling, his hair disheveled like the flames of hell. He clenched a half-empty bottle of Four Roses whiskey in his right hand, the stock of a twelve-gauge in his left. Kennet’s heart sank.

  “Where the fuck you been?” Carl stuffed the bottle in his waistband, grabbed Ma by the hair and dragged her inside. Kennet knocked the laundry basket down the steps as he dashed in after them.

  Ma screeched and grabbed Carl’s fist with both hands as he swabbed the hardwood hall with her.

  Kennet scrambled after them. “S-Sir, Sir, Sir, we were just at the laundry. Suds Yer Duds, Sir. W-washing your clothes.”

  “Them clothes were clean. You took ’em right out of the drawer, didn’t you. You fucking liars. Where you been, huh? Where the hell you been, goddammit?”

  Ma said nothing, her face contorted in agony. Kennet knew better than to lie again.

  “Washing clothes, my ass. Only thing needs washed around here is my hands a you two idiots.” Sir’s face was a blood blister, his rotten teeth seething between his lips. Kennet had seen him angry before, but never this angry. The old man looked as if his head would explode. Something bad must have happened today—he’d lost another odd job or something—which always set him off.

  “You want us to go?” Kennet tried to make it sound like it was the best idea ever. “We’ll go, won’t we, Ma?”

  Carl snarled and wrenched Ma’s head. She squinched her eyes in pain. “You’re not going anywhere till I give you what you deserve.”

  Kennet crabbed farther into the hall, making placating gestures. “Sooner you let her go, Sir, the sooner we’ll be gone.” He had to get his father to release her so they could escape the gun. It usually stood in the hall closet, behind the coats and the boots and the front hall broom. He was forbidden to touch it, but like a snake that lived under the porch, he was always aware of its presence and dreaded what might happen if his dad ever used it.

  Carl flung Ma to the floor, where she collapsed in a heap. “You tellin’ me what to do?” He tilted his head like a praying mantis.

  Kennet’s face turned hot and his bladder let loose. He knew what was coming. “No, Sir, I w-wasn’t.”

  “Don’t you lie to me, you piss-pants pansy.” Sir grasped the shotgun in both hands now, knuckles white. The bare knobs of his feet stalked closer.

  Kennet feared his own legs would give out, yet he managed to back toward the front door. His crotch was warm and wet. He willed his mother to crawl away into the dark house, call the cops, flee through the back door. Go, Ma. Please go.

  “Carl.” Ma scrabbled for Sir’s feet, seeking to hold him back. Carl drove his heel into her mouth. She cried out and spat blood.

  “Ma!” Kennet lurched toward her, but he knew better than to defend her. Helping her would surely invite a beating, and he must remain able to get the gun away, if he could. Arms shuddering, she struggled to rise.

  His dad swaggered toward him. “I’ll have no more a your mouth, young man.”

  Kennet averted his gaze and flattened himself against the cold storm door, willing invisibility. Yet his tee-shirt twitched with his heartbeat.

  “I said, I’ll have no more a your mouth.”

  “Y-Yes, Sir.”

  Carl swung the gun barrel in a sharp arc, catching Kennet in the face. Pain exploded in Kennet’s cheekbone. He crumpled to the floor, watching sparkles like fireworks play over his father’s ankles, his mother’s face.

  Ma shrieked, “Don’t you hit him, Carl. Not with a gun!” She rose up like a wounded bear and clawed at Carl’s shoulder, spinning him toward her.

  Hot blood trickled down Kennet’s chin as black ghosts swarmed his vision. He wrestled himself off the floor and staggered toward his parents, who were locked in battle. He had to break this up.

  “Don’t you ever raise your hand t’me.” Carl knocked her against the wall with his foot.

  She grunted and flailed. The phone stand toppled, jangling the black dial model. She snarled and bounded off the wall, fingers curled, her blue eyes blazing like propane torches. She charged at him.

  “No, Ma, he’ll kill you!” Howling, Kennet lunged and clasped the waistband of his father’s pants where the man’s dingy undershirt hung out in back. The sour stink of him made the boy gag.

  Carl writhed, yanking Kennet off his feet. Kennet tipped the man off-balance, driving him into Ma. The bottle of Four Roses tucked in Carl’s waistband slipped down his pant leg and tripped him. Roaring, he stumbled to his knees as the end of the shotgun barrel gouged Ma’s left eye.

  The gun sight tore off Ma’s lower eyelid and raked a deep gash down the side of her nose. Pallid skin carrot-peeled, leaving a stripe of bright crimson. As Kennet watched, stunned, her ruptured eye oozed a gout of clear jelly that slid down her blood-wet cheek.

  She bawled, a deep groan that swung into a high, keening squeal. She clamped her red hands over the ruined eye as if to hold it in.

  Kennet let go of his father’s pants and tackled the man’s legs, trying to keep him from standing. “N-no, Sir, n-no, Sir. Please don’t do it.”

  Carl thrashed, cursing and spitting, feet and elbows jacking like pistons.

  “My eyeee!” Bright blood gushed over Ma’s hands and spattered the floor.

  Kennet ducked his head and held more tightly to his father’s leg. Please, Jesus, help me. The man wiped the floor with him, smearing Ma’s blood into a ruby mess. Sir kicked him loose and sent him sliding toward the front door. Liquor spilled over the hardwood.

  “My whiskey! I’m gonna kill you.” Carl regained his footing, pumped the action on the twelve-gauge, clackety-chack.

  “Carl, no!”

  Kennet gained a footing on the boot mat. He glimpsed his mother’s bloody face, her gory, deflated eyeball pouting like fish lips. His father levered the gun from his hip toward her head, his finger tensing on the trigger.

  Kennet loosed a raw cry and leaped. He caught his father behind the knees as Ma thrust her hands to ward off the firearm. Carl buckled. The gun swiveled up, the bloody O of the muzzle lodging under the man’s alcoholic nose.

  Ma fell forward. Carl fell backward. The gun fired. The blast was deafening.

  Sir’s skull cap blew out the storm door’s top pane. Glass shattered on the slab porch, down the steps, and onto the overturned clothes basket.

  When Kennet’s ears stopped ringing, all he could hear was his mother’s groaning and the splat of human tissue dropping from the wall and hitting the floor. When he smelled the gunpowder, cheap liquor, and blood, he had started to retch.

  Continuing now to the funeral home in the morning drizzle, Kennet shuddered at the memory, let the nausea wash over him and pass away.

  His father could have killed them both. That’s what Ma often told him, but how could he be sure? Torn between thinking he shouldn’t have intervened and punishing himself for not doing more to protect her, he wished she
were still here to persuade him one more time.

  He swallowed hard and steeled himself against crying. He was grateful for the biting wind to help him keep control. Losing a loved one was difficult for anybody, he supposed, but he had to take care of business. Ma deserves a respectable send-off. It was the least he could do to honor her. He wanted a nice service. Nothing fancy—he couldn’t afford fancy—but nice, with a modest casket and some flowers. Yellow roses were her favorite. As soon as he spoke to Mr. Grinold, Ma’s body could be washed and embalmed for burial.

  He knew firsthand how barbaric embalming was, and that burial was more expensive. His mother never criticized his cremation work, yet she expected to be planted in the ground. “How can the dead in Christ rise at the last trumpet,” she reasoned, “if they’re not buried?” He dodged discussing such matters with her and simply accepted her desire to be interred. But he never planned on fulfilling her wishes so soon.

  The funeral home towered before him, an austere Victorian structure with decorative trim and a mansard tower in the center, like the home of Norman Bates in Psycho. Kennet avoided the old section because it gave him the creeps. It never felt empty, even when no one was there. He only ventured into that section when he needed to talk to Mr. Grinold or Mary Grace, his secretary. A florist’s van sat parked out front, delivering arrangements for an afternoon funeral.

  Kennet did his work in the annex, a squat rectangular add-on built of cinderblock that looked like a garage with its wide roll-up door to the delivery bay. Its one unique feature was the big round exhaust stack for the crematory oven.

  The roof stack was an unfinished sheet-metal pipe about five feet across. Inside the building, it was attached to the afterburner, where the exhaust from the crematory’s front chamber was re-burned at a higher temperature. Afterburning vaporized any steam, smoke, or ash before the exhaust escaped the stack. Because the funeral home was located in a residential area, Grinold wanted no flame or smoke issuing from the stack—nothing to fuel complaints from neighbors. No one wanted human ashes schmutzing up their clean laundry on the clothesline.

  Kennet blocked the thought of his mother’s body being burned, the heat of her consumption escaping the stack into the overcast Tenleytown sky like the prayer of the dying.

  Inside the annex, he headed for the door to the funeral home but stopped short. Grinold stood behind the lift in the embalming area, zipping a white body bag, the kind used to transport or store corpses when there would be no viewing.

  The funeral director offered his artificial smile. “Good morning, Kennet.”

  “Morning, Mr. Grinold.”

  Grinold studied him for a moment, as if weighing some important thoughts. “This one is ready to be cremated.” He stepped to the sink and began to scrub his hands.

  Kennet shuffled his feet, not sure what to say. The man knew his mother had died. Were there no condolences?

  Grinold shut off the water and peeled away a length of brown paper toweling from the dispenser. “Well, what are you waiting for? Get to work.”

  Work? “Mr. Grinold, with what’s happened and everything, I’d like to have a few days off. I only came to talk to you about my mom’s funeral arrangements.”

  Grinold tossed the wet toweling in the garbage can. He checked his gold watch and frowned. “I’m sorry, Kennet, but I must see clients this morning. I can’t sit down with you until sometime after eleven.”

  “Oh. I can come back.”

  “I understand what you’re going through at a time like this.” Grinold approached, his pink hands outspread. “But would you please stay and take care of this one cremation while you wait? Of course you will. It’ll help you pass the time. The crematory’s already preheated. I should be able to speak with you during cool-down.”

  Cremating someone was the last thing Kennet wanted to do right now. But if he had to wait to see Grinold, that meant going back to the care home where he would be accosted by sympathetic residents. Or sit in his room and think about his loss. No, he would rather be busy until he could discuss his sad but necessary business. Reluctantly, he nodded.

  “The paperwork’s still in my office, but there are no special precautions. Come see me when you’re finished.” Grinold retreated through the door to the funeral home.

  How can a man with a heart like the Grinch comfort the bereaved? Kennet suited up and then rolled the hydraulic lift with the bagged body across the concrete to the crematory.

  He opened the door and adjusted the lift to the proper height. He slid the bagged corpse, which rested on a cardboard tray, feet first into the front chamber. Chubbies had to go in head first so that all the fat had time to run down the grade and burn off before reaching the slot above the collection tray. This one was not obese, and since there were no special precautions such as joint pins or steel plates in the body, it would be a routine cremation. He closed the oven door and then returned the lift to its parking spot in the embalming area.

  On the side of the oven, beside the two air timers, Kennet penned the date and the time, 8:02 a.m., on the circular thermograph. He needed to write the cremation’s account number on the graph, but Grinold still had it in his office. At least Kennet had a reason to impose if the man tried to weasel out of seeing him.

  Kennet started the combustion blower and then the afterburner. He peered through the porthole. Furious blue flames shot from a pipe in the back chamber like a rocket blasting off, with the roar to match. When the oven reached 1800 degrees, Kennet set the timer and started the main burner to begin the cremation.

  For the first hour, he usually scrutinized the closed-circuit TV monitor on the wall to make sure nothing visible escaped the stack outside. Since most flares happened on the third cremation of the day when the oven was hottest, Kennet felt safe to ignore it and sank into the aluminum lawn chair next to the closed bay door.

  He didn’t care to watch the white bag burn, the skin melt, and the body burst into flames of yellow and orange. Not today. Probably not for a while. It would only make him think about his mother. He would simply keep his eye on the temperature readout and wait until the remains looked less human.

  • • •

  “Come in.”

  Kennet stepped into the funeral director’s office. Dressed in a black suit and a red tie, Grinold sat behind his broad mahogany desk, fountain pen in hand, peering through his reading glasses at some paperwork.

  “Is now a good time to talk?”

  “Sit down, Kennet. I’ll just be a moment.” Grinold resumed writing. The pen made a scratching sound, almost drowning out the faint classical music that permeated the room. For a moment, Kennet couldn’t tell where the tune was coming from. Then he spotted the grille of a small speaker nestled in a bookshelf, next to the polished black bust of a jackal. Grinold once told him it was Anubis, Egyptian god of the dead.

  Kennet no longer went to church, but he believed in God. Just not one who looked like a dog. And he no longer believed like his mother did. Had. Correcting himself brought a lump to his throat.

  He sat down on one of the burgundy leather chairs before the desk. The room was large and tastefully furnished. A perfectly tailored bonsai tree rested on the center of the credenza. Trimming the little tree was a pastime of Grinold’s, and from the look of the specimen here, he was good at it.

  Three documents in matching gilded frames hung on the wall above the credenza: a diploma from Duquesne University, another from the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science, and a membership certificate from the National Funeral Directors Association. Impressive. One thing seemed out of place: in the corner hung a flowered plaque with the saying in comic letters, “Put on your BIG GIRL PANTIES and deal with it!”

  Grinold finished writing and capped his pen. “We’ll have to keep this short, Kennet. I’m very busy.”

  Kennet scooted forward on the leather seat. “Did Jack Dodds bring my mother here?”

  “Yes, he did.” That meant her body was in the cooler.

 
“Good.” Kennet told his boss what he had in mind for his mother’s funeral service: an affordable casket, the yellow roses, and some of her favorite hymns.

  Grinold sat back and sucked air through his capped teeth as he studied Kennet, somewhat nervously. Ten seconds passed before he spoke. “Are you aware of the preparations your mother made before her passing?”

  Kennet thought for a moment. “She had an insurance policy.”

  “When I spoke with Flavia Costa last night, she informed me your mother’s coverage was rather meager.”

  “I wasn’t expecting anything fancy, if that’s what you’re saying.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean, not quite.” Grinold leaned forward and smoothed his graying sideburns before looking at Kennet. “You won’t be able to have an actual funeral service. There’s simply not enough money.”

  Kennet felt himself withering on the inside. He was about to give in like he always did, but he determined to press further. “This is my mother we’re talking about. I’d like to speak to Ms. Costa.”

  Grinold sighed. “I haven’t the time for that. After cool-down, you’ll need to process the cremains.”

  “It won’t take long. And it won’t cost anything—it’s a local call.” And I’m not processing anybody’s cremains until I do.

  Grinold gave him a sour look. He positioned the black Toshiba phone on Kennet’s side of the desk. Kennet stood and dialed the home. The receiver reeked of Grinold’s syrupy cologne. Ms. Costa answered, and Kennet explained where he was and what Grinold had told him.

  “I know Ma didn’t have any savings,” he said, “but she told me she had enough insurance to cover her funeral with some left over.”

  “Mmm, no,” Flavia said. “You’re correct she had no savings. And all my residents are required to have disposal insurance. But two thousand dollars covers only the most basic services.”

  Only two thousand dollars? That didn’t sound right. “Didn’t she have another policy, when we first came to the home?”