[Jenna's] Gang of Deadheads_a World of Deadheads novel

by Paul Atreides

  Marvin shuddered thinking about the images he’d been shown, what his existence would’ve been like if he had succeeded in killing Jenna. Though Nancy would replace the old black man as The Keeper in their region and seemed a bit gentler, he didn’t want either one of them coming for him again. “No. But I’m just talking about — ”

  Tommy’s face lit up in a grin. “Besides, you two are going to be way too busy planning the wedding.”

  Davy rushed over, bumping through the crowd so fast he didn’t notice the buzzing sensation it caused. “Wedding? Did I hear wedding?”

  “Yeah! Isn’t it great?” Tommy beamed.

  “Who’s getting married? Why haven’t I heard about this?”

  Tommy pointed to Marvin, and then to Jenna, who had already moved to hover over JoAnne. Jenna reached out to place her hands on the distraught woman’s shoulders and leaned in to hug her. “Jo, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say to make you understand.”

  JoAnne brushed at the fly that buzzed past her ear, hugged herself, and bitched through her sniffles to no one in particular. “Jesus Christ, it’s the middle of fucking winter, and they have the air conditioning on? The chill runs right through to the bones.”

  Davy, sporting a big smile, started waving his hands in excitement. “Oh, my God. Oh my God. This is fabulous!” He latched onto Tommy’s arm. “When? Where? Who’s doing her dress? Oh my God, I can’t wait. No, stop right there. This is impossible.”

  “Why? Aren’t deadheads allowed to marry?” Mike piped in.

  Davy let go of Tommy to address Mike’s question. “No, no, no. That’s not what I mean. Of course, it’s never been done before — well, that I know of, and believe me I’d know if it had. No, I’m going to do this for them. It’ll be the biggest wedding the world has ever seen. It’ll put Di’s wedding to shame.” Davy turned to Tommy again with an air of professionalism, gazing past his shoulder. “Okay, when do we start? I’m seeing St. Patrick’s Cathedral.”

  “Uh, Davy, you do know they’re Jewish, right?” Mike asked.

  Davy waved him off. “Okay, so the ballroom at the Plaza. No, wait. That’ll be too small.”

  Mike interrupted his train of thought again. “Um…How do you propose to do a wedding in New York when we’re all here in Dayton?”

  “Oh my God, I have to go. I have to think about this. Tell her I’ll be in touch.” Davy threw a wave over his shoulder and left in such a rush he didn’t see or acknowledge Diane standing at the back of the room staring at Jenna in jealous awe.

  Chasing after him, Diane called, “Davy! Wait!”

  Unaware of the commotion among the dead over the impending nuptials of her oldest son, Madelyn sauntered to the display board where pictures had been placed into a collage. With a loud, braying moan that sounded like a wounded walrus, she brought all chatter to dead silence.

  David rushed to her side and admonished her in gruff but hushed tones, “Ma, stop. You’re making a spectacle.”

  Madelyn sobbed into her son’s chest, but still managed to be heard at the back of the visitation room. “Again? Again I’m shoved out? Again I get gornisht — nothing.”

  Marvin stomped over to stand behind his mother. “And when did you ever agree to be in a picture with Jen? Never, that’s when. Not even when we got engaged.”

  “You see how they treat me, David? The woman’s own mother-in-law?”

  “Ma, what are you talking about? She and Marvin weren’t married, you know that.”

  Madelyn raised her head and sniffed. “Well, they would’ve been — if she hadn’t killed him.” She issued another loud bray. “Oh, my poor baby.”

  “Jenna did not kill me. But, if you aren’t careful,” Marvin warned, and shook a fist at her, “I’m gonna help her kill you when she gets fed up with your nonsense.”

  David grabbed his mother by the elbow and, shaking his head, squired her toward her seat. “And you wonder why there are no pictures of you.”

  “Oh, Morton,” Madelyn addressed her husband in sorrowful a tone. “Does a mother’s pain never end?”

  “It could end pretty rapidly if you keep it up,” Marvin threatened from across the room.

  “Dude … Give it rest.” Tommy grabbed Marvin by the arm to lead him back to Jenna, who was well used to Marvin’s outbursts and had continued to think of ways to console JoAnne and ignored the entire ordeal.

  Morton grabbed Madelyn’s sleeve and pulled her down next to him. “Madelyn, if you don’t stop, I’m leaving. You can walk back to Westchester.”

  “Yeah, Marv, don’t start with that stuff again. It makes the rest of us nervous as hell,” Mike interjected with a wave of his hand at the crowd of deadheads who had moved to give Marvin a wide berth.

  “Okay, okay.” Marvin sighed.

  Everyone settled down and returned to hushed tones until it was time to leave for the cemetery. The morose background music faded, overhead lighting in the room intensified dimming the effects of the twin candelabras on either end of the casket. The brightened lights caused a beam to reflect off the coffin and shine directly in JoAnne’s direction. She shielded her eyes and cursed under her breath. “Dammit! Jenna, you knew how I hate this shit, why did you have to dump it on me?”

  Mr. Davis signaled to David and Morton who moved toward the casket and stood waiting for the other pall bearers to join them. JoAnne had asked the managing partner of the law firm and Larry to do the honors. The partner made his way from the back of the room. Larry, however, was nowhere in sight.

  “Hold on a minute.” JoAnne stood. The heels of her shoes pounded against the tile floor and echoed through the room, making her anger evident. When she didn’t spot him in the small lobby, she opened the front door expecting to find him doing what he often did at the office when he should’ve been working; outside on the sidewalk, smoking. Popping back in, she called out, her voice echoing through the tiled space, “Larry! Larry! Where the hell are you?”

  He emerged from the men’s room, a cloud of cigarette smoke trailing after. “Sorry, I didn’t think I had to ask permission to take a leak.”

  “Don’t get smart with me, you asshole.”

  Once Larry had ambled past her, he mumbled. “Screw you.”

  JoAnne lunged after him, grabbing his jacket sleeve. “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s what I thought. Now get your ass in there and do your job.”

  Larry whirled on her, his face red with rising anger. “Don’t pull this crap on me. Not here.”

  “Yeah? Or what?”

  “You know, you may think —” He nipped the remark and strode away, remembering the argument they’d had several days earlier when she’d ordered him to be a pall bearer.

  JoAnne had strutted to where he had been perched on a landscape planter and poked a finger into his bicep when he’d insisted she couldn’t boss him around. “You think not? Might I remind you again who actually runs the firm? I know everything that goes on in this place and the partners keep me here for a reason. And that’s to keep slackers like you in line. Now, you’ll be at Jenna’s funeral, you’ll carry her body with dignity, not because she was a co-worker, you asshole, but because you can at least show her the respect you didn’t give her when she was alive and you were trying to get in her pants.”

  “I never —”

  She pointed a finger at him. “Don’t even go there. I know everything. Including the fact you never even bothered to call and ask how she was after the incident at the golf course last spring.”

  Larry got off the landscape planter that stood at the edge of the employee parking lot, where he’d been sitting and puffed out his chest. “And if I refuse?”

  “Then, watch out motherfucker. Because I’ll make sure you draw every piece-of-shit case that walks in the door. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be a single-shingle in a run-down, grimy office somewhere, handling quickie divorces.”

  “I’m better than that!”

  A grim smile had
spread on JoAnne’s lips. “Yes, you are. But only because I make it happen.”

  Her heels again echoing against the tile of the funeral home lobby, JoAnne followed Larry back into the visitation room, where he took his place at the foot end of Jenna’s coffin. On Mr. Davis’ signal the four men lifted it and carried it out to the waiting hearse for the trip across town.

  -5-

  The drive to the cemetery, where Mr. Davis had managed to secure the burial plot for Jenna right next to Marvin’s, was uneventful; for the breathing mourners, anyway. Though JoAnne liked Marvin’s father and brother, she’d had about all she could stand of Madelyn. She made Mr. Davis provide a second car for them with “damn the expense!” and sat alone in the back of the lead limousine. Or so she thought.

  Marvin, Jenna, and Mike occupied the seat opposite her. Tommy, as usual, sat up front next to the driver and, laughing, played with every power button he could find on the dashboard. Heat blasted through the vent system and switched without notice to ice cold a/c; the radio changed stations up and down the dial; the passenger seat rose and fell, moved forward and back, reclined and returned upright. It all made the driver wonder how he would explain to his boss that a brand new, seventy-thousand dollar vehicle had some major electrical problems. The poor man just hoped he’d get through the job without needing a tow truck.

  Even though the sun blared down on the group of mourners, it was a calm, cold day. Not a wisp of wind added to the chill factor. But David still made short but sweet work of a eulogy. When Mr. Davis held out the ceremonial shovel, David took it, and walked to JoAnne. “Here, we’ll do this together.”

  Jenna stepped to the mound of dirt that would fill in her grave. She grabbed a handful and tossed it in before a startled “NO” burst from the crowd of deadheads who had gathered.

  A gasp rose from the living. Some gaped around in fright and backed away. Madelyn let loose with a piercing shriek, clutched her husband’s arm with both hands in a death grip. “Holy Mother of Mary! Morton, what the hell was that?”

  “Ow!” Morton yanked his arm free. “It had to be a gust of wind.”

  “What? What did I do?” Jenna asked, though now she understood where Marvin had gotten his favorite turn of phrase when something took him by surprise.

  “You just scared the crap out of everyone. You have to time it, Jen,” Marv admonished, and laughed along with the rest of the dead, who now found his mother’s reaction quite humorous. “You wait for them to toss a shovelful and throw yours at the same time.”

  Mike waved him off. “Oh, Brody, give her break. She’s still new around here. She’ll catch on.”

  “Yeah, besides, Marvin,” Tommy offered, “maybe it woke some people up.”

  “Are you saying my brother delivered a boring eulogy? Is that what you’re saying, hippie?” Marvin laughed and scruffed his knuckles through the hair on the top of Tommy’s head.

  “Dude, the coif!” Tommy pulled away in mock horror, as he always did whenever Marvin messed the long mane of hair that looked as if it hadn’t seen a comb since 1969.

  The bulk of the deadheads in attendance drifted off, still laughing, leaving the core friends to the finality of a life. The small group of living lined up to honor their friend by tossing a small shovel of dirt over the lowered coffin, murmured a final goodbye, and headed back to their lives. All except Madelyn, who stood stock still in the spot she’d run to, twenty feet away, after Morton had yanked himself free.

  David called out to her. “Ma? Come on, Ma. You’re the last one.”

  Madelyn shook her head.

  “Ma! Come on. What are you afraid of?”

  “Gust of wind, my tuches,” Madelyn replied, looking around the cemetery, her eyes darting from plot to plot, as if she’d spy a ghoulish-looking Jenna rising out of the ground like Fruma Sarah from Fiddler on the Roof, with hands like claws ready to attack. “That was no gust of wind. It was her.”

  Morton rolled his eyes skyward. “Don’t be a shmendrik. You want these people, her friends, her co-workers, to think you’re a dummy?”

  “She hates me. I can feel it.”

  “She didn’t hate you, Ma.”

  Jenna turned her head away from Marvin, in the hope that he wouldn’t hear her. “I’m sure the feeling was mutual.”

  Marvin poked her arm. “I heard that.”

  Still, Madelyn wouldn’t budge. “She never liked me. David, you know this. Help your mother. You … You do it for me.”

  “She thought you didn’t like her, that’s why she stayed so distant.” David crossed the expanse of grass and tugged on his mother’s arm. “Now, come on.”

  “No, David. No, I’m afraid. What if she reaches up to take me with her? I’d die of a heart attack right there.”

  “You’re not making sense, Ma.” David thought for a minute. “You know, maybe if you show her this last respect, maybe she’ll decide to like you.”

  She looked up at her son. “You think, maybe?”

  “Jesus Christ, Madelyn. What the fuck.” JoAnne, tired of the woman’s shenanigans, tromped over, grabbed a handful of dirt and stalked over to her. “It’s freezing cold. Now here,” she grabbed Madelyn’s hand and shoved the dirt into it. “I don’t care if you throw it from here, just do it.”

  Madelyn, refusing to let anyone think they’d intimidated her, looked down at the dirt in her hand, straightened her shoulders, and walked to the edge of the open grave with purposeful strides. With David standing behind her, she looked down and slowly released the dirt. “I’m sorry, honey. I really am.”

  “Was that so hard?” JoAnne asked. “Now, can we get the hell out of here?”

  David placed a hand on his mother’s shoulder. “See, she didn’t reach out from the grave to hurt you.”

  Madelyn sighed and a wistful smile came to her lips. “She was a good person, wasn’t she, David? A nice woman.”

  David let out a sad sigh. “Yes, Ma, she was.”

  Madelyn looked up at her youngest son. “So, see? You should’ve listened to your mother.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Madelyn linked her arm around David’s and the two started walking back to the waiting limousine. “You should’ve married. I told you to marry her, didn’t I? Maybe if you’d listened to your mother, maybe the poor thing would still be here with us, instead of lying in the cold ground.”

  Marvin broke into a hearty, full belly-laugh. “That woman will never change.”

  -6-

  The laugh cut short when Marvin saw Nancy leaning against one of the sleek black limousines. He greeted her with a nervous smile. “I was wondering if you would show up here, since I didn’t see you at the funeral home. How’ve you been?”

  “I’m good, Marvin, I’m good.” Nancy turned her attention to Jenna. “Are you going to introduce us, or are you going to stand there staring out into space?”

  Marvin didn’t quite catch her response. His attention had been drawn to a large maple tree in the distance, its leaves had long since exposed dead-looking branches like a tangle of twisted limbs. A man stood watching and, Marvin knew, listening and hearing every word. Even from far away a brightness, intelligence, and intensity burned in the man’s eyes that had always been hard for Marvin to miss.

  After a half-hearted wave in greeting to Jason, Marvin shook his head. “Where are my manners? Colleen would be scowling at me right now. This is my fiancée, Jenna. Jenna, Nancy. Remember I told you about meeting her on my birthday cruise?”

  “I don’t believe you did, Marvin.” Jenna accepted Nancy’s extended hand though she gave the woman a thorough inspection, and checked Marvin’s body language. Satisfied nothing had gone on between them, she added, “In any case, it’s a pleasure.”

  “Likewise.” Nancy smiled and nodded her toward Jenna’s gravesite. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  A brief questioning expression crossed Jenna’s face. “Sure, I guess.”

  Marvin went pale, if that was possible, and shot a
quick, nervous glance toward Jason. “Uh, is there something wrong?”

  Nancy ignored his question and led Jenna across the dormant grass, allowing Jason to deal with Marvin.

  Jason’s lips never moved, yet Marvin got his answer, loud and clear. “Don’t you worry ‘bout it none, Marvin. I think everythin’ gon’ be all right. Leastwise, I hope.”

  “Hey,” Marvin called out to Nancy when he heard engines turned over. “We’re going to miss our ride.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the two limos that began rolling away.

  “No problem, dude.” Tommy jumped onto the hood of the lead car and pushed his hand through the metal.

  The car stalled and an aggravated JoAnne began banging on the window that separated her from the frustrated driver, squirming in his seat. The thought of broaching the electrical issues with his boss would be a headache he didn’t need.

  “Not a good idea, Tommy,” Mike told him. “Let them go, we can catch a bus.”

  “Okay.” Tommy shrugged, twisted his arm around a bit. The engine fired up on a second attempt, the cars drove off along the narrow road, and Tommy and Mike went to stand with Marvin.

  “What do you figure this is about?” Mike asked.

  Marvin jutted his chin at the women. “She tried to help someone this morning but, from what I could gather, it looked more like she was trying to shoot some guy.”

  “Dude … not good.”

  Once they were out of Marvin’s hearing range, Nancy stopped and turned Jenna to face her. “There was an incident … Between you and the living.”

  Jenna’s expression turned dark at the memory of the beating. Recalling the awful visage who called out her name, fright stabbed her in the stomach. Stammering, she backed away from Nancy.

  “I understand what you were trying to do. But, it’s best if you know right now, there are rules here. We are not allowed to mess with the living world.” Nancy stopped her narrative for a moment and changed tactics in an effort to ease Jenna’s fright. “Don’t get me wrong, all of us pull pranks from time to time; harmless stuff. It’s fun to watch people’s confusion when we’ve hidden something from them and put it back, or see them shudder if they’ve walked through one of us. Now, I apologize if this comes across as some kind of lecture, but …” Nancy directed Jenna’s gaze to Jason, who waited.