Grave Undertaking

by Mark de Castrique

  He hung up, leaving me uncertain about what to do. Since my father’s illness, my uncle had made his own sacrifices, taking on more responsibility than a man his age should. We only had one part-time assistant and at times the funeral business can be overwhelming. Wayne had never complained. Now I wasn’t sure how to read his reaction. Did he want to keep working or was he just saying that so I wouldn’t feel forced to take a less than reasonable offer? I traced over the Atlanta number again, darkening it while the numbers were fresh in my mind. I would call first thing in the morning.

  For the next forty minutes, I watched television with Dad while Mom, beside me on the sofa, knitted yet another sweater for her church mission board. Somewhere in the Balkans, an entire village must be wearing Connie Clayton originals.

  An episode of “Rocky and Bullwinkle” had just begun when I heard the dialogue of moose and squirrel grow interlaced with my father’s snoring. “Looks like Dad’s good day is ready for a good night.”

  “We’d better get him to bed,” said Mom. She looped the excess yarn into a skein and tucked her needles in her knitting bag. “I think I’m going to turn in as well. Stay up if you like. The television won’t bother me.”

  I gently shook Dad’s shoulder and he woke up with the bewildered look a normal sleeper quickly loses. He remained disoriented until we got him into his bed. For a moment, he stared at the window, but the pulled shade masked the snow. If he remembered the magical scene outside, he showed no curiosity. Mom sat on her adjacent bed. Dad rolled over where he could see her. Then he closed his eyes.

  “What time do you need to be up?” asked Mom.

  “Seven-thirty or eight. Since there’s nothing going on, it’ll be a good morning for me to start year-end inventory.” I kissed her goodnight and returned to the den. I lost myself in the cartoons until I had to face the real world on the late news.

  At eleven, I grabbed the remote control and switched stations. Graphics swooped across the screen, building NEWSCHANNEL-8 ELEVEN O’CLOCK REPORT in brash gold letters against the panoramic helicopter footage showing the twinkling lights of Asheville nestled among the mountains under a starry night sky. I guess they didn’t have a snow special effect to add to the stock footage. The title scene froze as the theme music reached crescendo, and the scene dissolved to a solemn-faced anchorman with the graphic MATT MARKLE boldly displayed across his chest.

  “Good evening,” Matt said in a mellow, well-modulated voice. “A white Christmas has been delivered early. We’ll have complete weather details and traffic conditions in a moment, but first tonight’s lead story.”

  The camera zoomed out from Matt Markle, leaving room in the upper right corner for the word MURDER to appear in red over his shoulder.

  “As we reported at six, human skeletal remains were found this morning buried atop a vault in the Eagle Creek Methodist Church cemetery.”

  Videotape rolled of the snowy graveyard. I saw myself walking up the hill from the backhoe. I looked dazed, but the camera zoomed past me and focused on Sheriff Ewbanks and the crime lab team.

  Matt Markle continued his voice-over. “Sheriff Horace Ewbanks was called to the scene when preparations for the interment of the late State Senator Hugh Richards led to the grisly discovery. Interviewed in a NEWSCHANNEL-8 exclusive, Sheriff Ewbanks said—” a close-up of Ewbanks appeared with the cemetery out of focus behind him; he looked defiantly into the camera, his burning cigarette on his lip—“we’ll know what we’ve got here, when we know what we’ve got here, and when I have something to say, I’ll have something to say.”

  Some exclusive. The report cut back to Matt Markle at the anchor desk. The hallowed words NEWSCHANNEL-8 EXCLUSIVE had replaced MURDER on the screen.

  “Less than an hour ago, NEWSCHANNEL-8 learned the body is suspected to be that of Samuel Calhoun, a private investigator believed to have left the Asheville area in the spring of 1997, a time consistent with the condition of the remains.”

  The photo I had seen on Calhoun’s driver’s license appeared full-screen. Somebody was on top of things in the newsroom. I wondered if Susan had tipped off her aunt, the show’s producer.

  “Sheriff Ewbanks refused to confirm Calhoun is the victim, but sources close to the case state both Calhoun and the murder weapon have been identified. We take you live to Cliff Barringer, our investigative reporter on the scene at the Walker County Courthouse in Tyler City for an interview with District Attorney Darden Claiborne.”

  A tall man in a dark blue suit stood on the snowy steps in front of a courthouse. Several print journalists gathered around him, jotting notes as if he were uttering the Sermon on the Mount. The camera panned left to reveal a middle-aged reporter with a neatly trimmed beard standing on the sidewalk a few yards away and clutching a hand mike close to his lips. The NEWSCHANNEL-8 logo appeared on his jacket and the mike.

  “Thank you, Matt,” he said. “District Attorney Claiborne has agreed to give NEWSCHANNEL-8 exclusive comments regarding his progress in determining who murdered the man discovered in Eagle Creek cemetery.” He called to the D.A. “District Attorney Claiborne, can you share with our NEWSCHANNEL-8 viewers the status of your investigation?”

  The D.A. held up his hand to the print journalists as if to say, “Sorry, boys, TV is calling.” He took the arm of an attractive woman standing beside him and descended the steps to Barringer.

  The reporter thrust the mike in the D.A.’s face like Zorro attacking the Spanish commandant. The camera zoomed in and a name appeared in the lower third of the screen: Darden Claiborne. District Attorney. Walker County.

  Claiborne, mid-forties with the perfect touch of gray in his temples, exuded confidence. He peered straight into the camera and spoke dramatically. “The citizens of Walker County can rest assured that my department will get to the bottom of this murder. Although I must be careful not to compromise the case we are building, I expect both the identity of the victim and a suspect in the killing to be named soon.”

  “Is the victim Samuel Calhoun?” asked Barringer.

  “The name is being withheld until attempts to reach next of kin have been exhausted.”

  “Has Sheriff Ewbanks taken anyone into custody?”

  “The sheriff and his team are pursuing promising avenues of inquiry that I expect will culminate in an arrest.” Darden Claiborne then actually took a step closer to the camera. “My fellow citizens, again let me stress that the safety of our community is my main priority. I have no reason to believe any of you are in danger, but I ask if you have any relevant information, please contact my office. We’ll be working round the clock to see that justice prevails. And now my wife, Carol, and I wish you a good night. Rest well.”

  The camera zoomed back to reveal his wife wearing a plastic smile. Her lips quivered at the corners from the cold. Claiborne then turned away and led his wife into the falling snow like two-bit actors in a late-night movie. The camera panned to the reporter, who said “Thank you, sir” to the shadows, and then stared into the lens. “There you have it. District Attorney Claiborne’s first official comments. We will stay with this rapidly developing story wherever it leads. For NEWSCHANNEL-8, I’m Cliff Barringer live at the Walker County Courthouse. Back to you, Matt.”

  I clicked off the set. Claiborne had been quite the grandstander. Why would he be outside in a snowstorm at eleven o’clock at night unless he wanted the face-time? And having the spousal accessory on hand for the photo-op. Vintage political campaigning. I remembered he was rumored to be considering a run at Attorney General. In North Carolina, that was a frequent launching pad to the governor’s mansion. Claiborne hadn’t denied the victim was Sammy Calhoun, and he seemed pretty confident a suspect would be named. I hoped that would happen without involving Susan.

  As I sat down on my bed, I glanced over at the magazine on the nightstand and saw the phone number for Ted Sandiford. Tomorrow promised to be a busy day. I turned out the light and lay down, but sleep didn’t come for hours.

  Chapt
er 6

  “Barry, wake up. Your father’s gone.”

  A bucket of ice water couldn’t have jarred me awake any faster. Mom retreated outside the door as I grabbed yesterday’s clothes from the closet.

  “I heard him get up and go into the bathroom,” she said. “Then I fell back asleep.” She was close to crying.

  “You’re sure he’s not in the house?”

  “I’ve looked everywhere.”

  “What time did you hear him?”

  “About forty-five minutes ago. His boots are gone and there’re footprints leading off the front porch.”

  I jammed my shirt tail in my pants and pulled on my socks.

  “He saw the snow and got excited. Can you tell if he wore a coat?”

  “He took his raincoat and boots, but I can’t find his pajamas. He must still be wearing them.”

  I hurried past Mom to retrieve my boots from the cabinet on the back porch. A quick glance at the thermometer outside the screen door showed twenty-five degrees. How long could Dad survive in sub-freezing temperatures wearing pajamas and a raincoat? Where was he headed? He had enough trouble finding his way without being adrift in a sea of white.

  Mom handed me a coat and gloves. “What can I do?”

  “Call the neighbors. And call the sheriff’s office. Someone might spot him. He can’t have gone far.”

  I pushed open the back porch door, scraping away at least eight inches of snow. I ran around the funeral home and found the tracks heading straight down the walk until they veered off toward one of the large spruce trees at the edge of our lawn. The snow had weighed down the branches and turned it into a thirty-foot igloo. As a kid, I had loved to crawl inside. My child-like father might not be any different.

  His trail circled around the tree at least two times and then led to the street. The footsteps disappeared into a packed tire rut that made walking easier. Another passing vehicle had obliterated his trail and I wasn’t sure whether he had turned right or left.

  Our funeral home was on the edge of town where the street name changed from Main to Green River Highway and the speed limit increased from twenty-five to thirty-five. I looked in both directions, but the road was deserted. Overhead, the morning sky promised a Carolina blue day, the kind of crystal brilliance that would hurt the eyes. Already the clear arctic air stung my face and I knew the snow clouds had been driven out by a high-pressure wintry blast that would send temperatures lower even as the sun rose higher.

  I jogged in the direction of town because that would be the way most familiar to Dad. No other footsteps split off, and I had gone a couple blocks when a Pepsi delivery truck, grinding gears as it struggled to accelerate, headed toward me. The driver kept the wheels in the ruts as closely as a train to the tracks. He gave a beep of the horn to warn me out of the road. I stepped into the deep snow between the grooves and waved my arms over my head.

  The transmission sounded like it would fall into the street. A double-clutched downshift slowed the rumbling vehicle without sending it into a skid. The cab rocked to a halt about six feet in front of me, close enough to see Pepsi—Born in the Carolinas written above the grill and anger written across the driver’s face. His shaggy brown hair and beard encircled his scowl like a ragged oval picture frame. I forced a smile and walked to his side window.

  He cranked down the glass and snarled, “I don’t sell off the truck.”

  The absurdity of his statement blew right by me. That I would be standing out in the snow, flagging him down for a cold soda would only seem possible to a man who believed in his product or was duped by its advertising.

  “My father wandered off this morning,” I said. “Did you pass an older man walking into town? Raincoat, maybe pajamas showing underneath.”

  The Pepsi driver shook his head. “He sick?”

  “He gets confused.”

  “Sorry. And sorry I barked at you. Just worried about getting down the mountain on time.”

  “People want their Pepsis.”

  “You got that right. My granny drinks one every morning instead of coffee. Claims it keeps her regular.”

  I thought that was Dr. Pepper’s claim to fame, but I knew better than to argue with a man risking his life to drive carbonated sugar water down snow-covered mountain roads. “I’m not sure what direction he took. Would you keep an eye out?”

  “Yep. Listen, I just turned onto Main back at Rockland. If your daddy went beyond there, I wouldn’t have seen him.”

  “Thanks.” That meant town was still my best bet and I started to walk away.

  “Hey,” he called, “if I find him, where do you want me to take him?”

  “Where’s your next stop?”

  “Hell, I’ll carry him back for you. I’m sure you’d do the same for my daddy.”

  In the rural south, daddy is the permanent term even if the child is seventy-five. “Clayton Funeral Home,” I told him.

  His eyes widened in boyish wonder and my estimate of his age dropped from forty to thirty. “You lost another relative?”

  “He’s Mr. Clayton. He lives there.”

  “Well, don’t you worry none. If he’s headed my way, I’ll fetch him or my name ain’t Joshua Crowder.” He pulled open his frayed leather jacket to reveal Joshua embroidered on his blue shirt in Pepsi-like script.

  “Thanks, Joshua. Drive carefully.”

  As I passed his rear axle, the three-ton truck lurched forward, spewing black-blue exhaust onto the pure snow like a smoker’s cough smudging a white handkerchief.

  In the next block, any hope I had of trailing Dad from the road was obliterated by the blade of a snowplow. I retreated to the safety of the sidewalk and watched as a three-foot wall rose between me and the street. I called to the plowman but he only raised his chin in acknowledgment and kept his attention on the curb.

  At a few minutes after eight, most businesses in Gainesboro would have been closed even on a normal day. The town would be slower to stir this morning. Old man Larson’s drugstore used to open at seven-thirty to sell coffee and prepackaged Little Debbie cakes, but his arthritis and an abundance of breakfast franchises on the interstate had caused him to start opening at nine.

  Beside Larson’s Discount Drugs, there was movement behind the plate glass of Fats McCauley’s furniture store. Although the McCauley name had been scraped from the window, its ghostly image stained a milky memorial to the family that had been a Main Street fixture for over fifty years. A young couple from Atlanta had bought the store without having to share the town’s grisly memories of Fats’ murder. They planned to turn it into an Appalachian artisans gallery. Through the window, I saw a lanky young man wearing a wide tool belt stretch a measuring tape across a countertop—ambition personified on a wintry morning.

  I started to rap on the pane when I heard someone shout my name. Up the street, standing atop the plow’s snow bank like Sir Edmund Hillary on Mount Everest, P.J. Peterson waved frantically. “Barry, he’s here, he’s here!” His white barber apron flapped around his sides, turning him into a snowman with wings.

  Dad sat in the first chair, eyeing himself in the wall-length mirror. When he saw my reflection, he smiled and said, “Haircut.”

  “I called your mom,” said P.J. “She said you were looking for him. I kept stepping outside hoping to catch sight of you. I didn’t dare leave him.”

  “Glad you were open.”

  “Haircut,” repeated Dad. He looked at P.J. expectantly.

  “I wasn’t.” P.J. reached for a clean barber’s cloth to snap around Dad’s neck.

  If my father hadn’t been sitting in his pajamas, the scene could have been from a Norman Rockwell painting. P’s Barbershop hadn’t changed since P.J.’s father opened it nearly seventy years ago. With Fats McCauley’s death, P.J. and Larson became the last remnants of the simpler, innocent small-town era of the 1950s.

  “I was upstairs debating with myself whether to open,” continued P.J. “I heard pounding on the door. Guess he came here bec
ause your mom just brought him in for a haircut yesterday.”

  “Maybe,” I said, but I suspected it wasn’t yesterday’s visit. Dad had been a lifelong customer. It was more likely a boyhood memory guided him there and into the first chair, the one that hadn’t been used since P.J.’s dad died nearly twenty-five years ago.

  “I’ll give him a quick trim on the house,” said P.J. “Man hikes through all this snow it’s the least I can do.”

  “Want me to move him to another chair?”

  “No, that’s okay. Kinda nice cutting the hair of someone my dad barbered all those years. His customer in his chair.”

  “Just a little off the top, Pete,” said my father.

  In the mirror I saw Pete Peterson Junior blink back tears at hearing his dad’s name. “Yes, sir, Mr. Clayton.” He hesitated, looking at his time-traveling customer through the mirror in a way that pulled him back into his own images of the past. Then he ran a comb straight through my father’s hair and began snipping air.

  “There’s some Pepsis in the back, Barry. Help yourself. Ain’t had a chance to put on coffee.”

  “No, thanks. Better save them in case the snow causes a Pepsi shortage for the regulars.”

  P.J. nodded without understanding my private joke.

  “How’d he get out?” asked the barber.

  “Just walked out. He woke up and saw the snow.”

  “Reckon y’all have to do something. How about them invisible fences?”

  I stared at P.J.’s reflection, expecting a wink. The man wasn’t kidding. “Wear a dog’s shock collar?” I asked.

  “Ssshh,” he said. “I don’t mean to upset him.” P.J. stepped around to the front of the chair where we could talk eye-to-eye. “Maybe something that would ring a bell or sound an alarm. They got all sorts of high-tech stuff these days, you know, for keeping criminals prisoner in their own homes.”

  I realized P.J. meant well. Although he considered my dad to be his father’s customer, Pete Peterson Junior and my dad were both in their sixties. Like so many others in Gainesboro, P.J. found it painful to see a lifelong friend disintegrating before his eyes. Was keeping Dad a prisoner in his home being suggested for my father’s security or for P.J.’s? An undertaker bears the extra burden of reminding a community of its mortality. An undertaker with Alzheimer’s shows that death may approach in insidious increments that can keep a body above ground long after the person has ceased to exist—a fate far more fearful.