The Undertaker

by William Brown

  “Sharon? Hey, it's Pete Talbott. Is the boss in?”

  “No, he's having another “out of body experience” with the venture capital guys in the conference room.”

  “Again? Jeez.”

  “Money. Ain't it the pits?”

  “Yeah, the root of all evil. Say, did he get the subroutines I e-mailed him?

  “Oh, yeah, I think you saved the corporate ass with that one.”

  “Good, tell him I'm taking today and tomorrow off.”

  “What's up, Petey? You finally get lucky?” she asked in a husky voice. “It's about time.”

  “No, Sharon, I didn't get lucky.”

  “Too bad, ‘cause God knows you could use some. Me? Unfortunately I'm married, but you blow in my ear sometime and…”

  “Sharon, I had to go to Ohio, for a funeral.”

  “A funeral? Oh, sorry. Me and my mouth. Whose is it?”

  “Mine.”

  “Okay, be that way. But when you get back, I want you to meet my friend, Doris.”

  “Your friend, Doris?”

  “I'm serious. With Doris, you don't even have to get real lucky, Petey, all you got to do is show up. And you really do need some R&R.”

  “Sharon, I gotta go,” I said as I hung up. R&R with her friend Doris? As if that was what I really needed. But it was the same way back in LA. No matter how far or how fast I ran, it couldn't be far enough or fast enough to get away from all the misguided, unwanted help from my friends’ wives and my wife's friends, all of whom thought that if I just had sex with another woman, I would get over the loss of Terri. What one had to do with the other I'd never understand. What I needed was Terri back. I didn't need to get laid.

  These days, one urban beltway looks about like another. The traffic might not be as thick as it had been back in LA, but if you've driven past one suburban office building and big interchange shopping center, you've driven by them all. I steered the Bronco around the long, looping beltway until I found the Cedarville Road exit and got off. This was a broad commercial street with strip malls and a gazillion fast-food restaurants, banks, and gas stations that took me north through the suburbs, ex-urbs, and no-urbs until the development turned into cornfields. That was where I found the small town of Peterborough, Ohio. Town? It was more like a wide spot between the cornfields, where a couple of two-lane country roads crossed up in Campbell County about eight miles north of the beltway. Still, this was a beautiful, early-summer afternoon, all hot and humid, and the cornfields were a radiant, green, the farmhouses looked refrigerator white, and you could almost imagine that kinder and gentler America the politicians get all teary-eyed about, when they aren't railing about “values” or the moral quagmire of California pop culture. Me? I was never into the County Fair scene with all those hot sweaty animals, hot sweaty people, ferris wheels, cotton candy, and corn dogs. I kinda liked the moral quagmire. Besides, driving around the beltway had shown me that “kinder and gentler” rural Ohio appeared to be having its problems too; they were paving over the corn with strip malls, big-lot subdivisions, and mini-marts just like the rest of the country.

  Fortunately, Peterborough hadn't been given the opportunity to sink that far, not yet any way. Gathered around the intersection at the corner of “walk and don't walk,” I found a couple of dozen turn-of-the-century clapboard Victorian houses with picket fences and window boxes full of geraniums, a Sunoco gas station, a drive-in branch bank, a State Farm insurance agent, two antique shops, a Pizza Hut, and four stop signs. The streets were lined with big oaks whose roots had buckled and tilted the concrete slabs of the sidewalks. By the look of them, it could have been back when FDR was President. Quaint, but other than the neighborhood skateboarders, I doubted anyone cared.

  I had no idea where the funeral home was, but the address in the obituary said East Larkin. At the four stop signs that marked the center of town, the cross street said Larkin, so I took a wild stab and turned right, figuring that had to be east. Sure enough, a quarter mile down the road I saw the sign for the Greene Funeral Home. It looked like I expected it to look: a big brick Georgian with white columns. The thought of entering another funeral home sent cold shivers down my back. I hated funerals, but I was angry enough to put up with almost anything for an hour or two, even if it was my own.

  The front entrance of the building faced the road and there was a drive-thru portico on the left side for loading the cars and hearses. The parking lot had only one entrance and it wrapped around the front and left side of the building. When I pulled in, the lot was nearly empty. In the far corner beyond the portico, sat two gleaming, black Cadillac limos, an even longer hearse, and five nondescript sedans that must belong to the hired help. I also saw a big, brown sheriff's cruiser parked in the shade of a big, overhanging oak. The Sheriff? The Talbott funerals must be a really big deal here in Peterborough. They brought the town cop in for crowd control.

  The only other car in the parking lot was a white Lincoln Town Car parked in the middle. I parked my Bronco in the front row, where I was sure it would be noticed. I got out, put on the blazer, and took the opportunity to slowly stretch my cramped muscles. At six feet two inches tall with a lean runner's build, my back and legs would tighten up like piano wires after a long drive. I looked around the parking lot again. Other than the Lincoln Town Car, the only people coming to the funeral looked to be the county sheriff and me. Well, if this was the price one had pay for being such a monumental smart-ass, I'd remember to take my nice pills from now on.

  The sheriff's cruiser was sitting in the deep shadows under the tree. I couldn't see clearly inside, but there was a guy in a brown uniform slouched in the front seat, his arm hanging out the window, a cigarette dangling from his fingertips. He wore a pair of those “FOP-approved,” silver-lensed, aviator sunglasses like Ponch wore on CHIPS when I was a kid, the kind no “real” cop would be caught dead without. He was watching me with that bored-curious look that only a cop with nothing better to do would know how to give. I smiled and blew him a kiss as I walked past. At least that got him to move. He flicked the cigarette aside and I could see his head following me.

  The Greene Funeral Home was one of those long, low, one-story brick colonial things that was supposed to give the bereaved a feeling of history and permanence. The shrubs were neatly trimmed and the grass was green enough to have been spray-painted. The outside walls were a thick, dignified, brown brick and there was a tall white cupola on the roof, complete with a wrought iron weather vane and a crowing rooster. The main entrance had three broad concrete stairs and a set of double glass doors. Yep, the place looked sturdy and prosperous. It looked permanent. It looked positively eternal. Bet Mr. Greene didn't offer too many cut-rate deals on coffins. Bet he didn't even try.

  When I started out from Boston the night before, I had a full head of angry steam inside, but as I closed in on the front door of the funeral home and saw those two black hearses under the portico, my knees grew weak. The heat rippled off the asphalt and my pace slowed to a crawl. It wasn't me. It was my feet. They said not to go any further, and feet are rarely wrong. All the pain and anguish I kept locked away these many months had grabbed me by my coattails and stopped me dead in my tracks. I closed my eyes. I couldn't breathe. It felt as if the funeral home itself was pushing me back, telling me to run back to the Bronco and get the hell out of town while I still could. Why did I come up to Columbus in the first place, it whispered? Why dredge up all those horrible memories? Why? The obituaries? They must have been a mistake, some crazy coincidence or somebody's idea of a cruel joke. Whatever, they weren't worth this price.

  I wanted very much to give in, to cut and run, but I couldn't let myself do that. I forced my eyes open and stared at the front door, focusing on it, on the glass and my reflection. I saw my face and forced myself to concentrate on Terri and to remember why I had come here to Ohio. They could fool with me, but not with Terri and not with my memories. With those thoughts, I took a deep breath, then another, and slowly,
slowly, I blew on the coals, again and again until the anger burst into flames and became a raging bonfire inside me again. I needed it and I used it, because my memories of Terri were the one weapon I had to keep my feet moving forward. The anger. It was my ally. It built and churned inside me and I knew it was the weapon I would use to defeat anything this funeral home could throw at me.

  I gritted my teeth and pushed on through those front doors, but the Greene Funeral Home wasn't done with me yet. Once inside, I felt the sticky-sweet smell of cut flowers and the soft drone of organ music wrap themselves around me like a hot, wet blanket. It brought back all the pain, the grief, and the plastic insincerity. It turned my stomach. I wobbled back and forth fighting the nausea, trying desperately to keep my grip on the anger, because without it, I could never force myself to go on.

  I took a deep breath and slowly opened my eyes. I was standing in a spacious foyer. Muted lighting. Soft pastel colors. Carpet so thick you could sink into it up to your ankles. And the furniture? Ethan Allen, top of the line. The music? Probably a twelve-hour tape. The sweet flower smell? Some phony spray in the air conditioning ducts. That way, Greene could use artificial flowers and save a ton of money. Well, at least the place wouldn't play havoc with my allergies. As for my claustrophobia? No help there. Funeral homes closed in and squeeze the life out of me like a giant Anaconda every time I stepped inside one. Maybe that was why I hated them. That, and too many dead people.

  In the center of the foyer stood a large pedestal table with a monstrously large flower arrangement that looked like a bomb had gone off in a Hawaiian garden. A wide, carpeted hallway went off to the right and to the left with a chapel on each side. The doors on the closest two were open, but the two at the far end were closed. On each side of the corridor, I saw a black, framed plaque on the wall. The one on the left read “Schirmberger” in gold press-on letters. The one on the right read “Talbott.” Beneath the family name, in smaller type, I saw “Peter and Theresa.” I stood there and stared at the plaque. Terri hated that name “Theresa” and seeing it in bright gold letters pushed me right to the edge. My memories of Terri were intensely private and these clowns had no right to stomp around inside my head with their dirty work boots. It made me want to rip that black plaque off the wall and jam it and the Hawaiian flower arrangement down someone's throat.

  The doors to the “Talbott” chapel were wide open. At the door stood a small writing stand with a curved reading lamp, an open guest book, and a ballpoint pen. I walked over and looked down. The book was open. The page was blank. Not a single entry. Somehow, that didn't surprise me.

  Well, as the guest of honor, I didn't think it was polite to hold things up, so I stepped inside. The chapel had perhaps fifteen long, wooden pews on each side and could easily hold a couple of hundred people if it had to. Today it didn't. The crowd consisted of me and two cheap wooden coffins sitting on draped biers at the front of the room. They lay in a “V” with the far ends angled in so they almost touched. The coffins were matching, of course, and closed, with a large floral blanket lying across the center of each. Coffins. Funny how these two didn't bother me very much, probably because I knew I wasn't in the one and I knew Terri wasn't in the other. I strode down the center of the aisle for a closer look, but there was nothing to see. The coffins were shut tight, their covers screwed down, so I turned around, intending to take a seat in a pew halfway back and wait.

  That was when I discovered there was another man in the room. It was the grease-ball with the chrome-plated .45 who shared the front seat of my Bronco with me last night. He stood in the right rear corner of the chapel watching me through a pair of dark, wrap-around sunglasses with an expression of faint amusement. Today he was dressed in a nicely tailored summer-weight beige suit and a dark blue silk shirt, open at the collar, with a matching floppy handkerchief in the coat pocket. He had the same set of gaudy gold chains hanging around his neck and his black hair combed straight back into a ponytail. With the clothes, the chains, and the ponytail, he didn't fit here in Buckeye land any more than I did. He took the sunglasses off and began to slowly clean the lenses with his handkerchief, staring at me the entire time. And there was no evasion in those eyes. They were cold and analytical, like a butcher sizing up a fresh slab of beef in a frosty meat locker.

  I finally looked away and took a seat in a middle row, left. At precisely 2:00 PM, the organ music faded to silence and a tall, silver-haired man in a superbly tailored black suit materialized through a side curtain in one of the front alcoves. He wore an expensive blue silk tie with a matching handkerchief and his suit jacket remained buttoned. Very formal. Very proper. His crisp, white shirt had large, gold cuff links and he wore a sapphire ring on his pinkie finger. Tanned and fit, his mane of silver hair looked so stiff and lacquered, you could drop him on his head from a third floor window and he'd bounce. This couldn't be some junior assistant. This had to be Greene himself. With his head slightly bowed, he glided silently to the center of the room in front of the caskets. Ah, he seemed to be saying, life was indeed good, but if you play it right, death could be even better. The man paused there for a moment between the two coffins, his hands clasped in front of him, looking down, serious, contemplative, and very well practiced. When he finally looked up and saw me and the big gumba in the rear corner, I saw the slightest flicker of surprise in those soft-brown cow eyes, but Greene's expression never changed. Clearly, he didn't expect to see either one of us. Probably didn't expect to see anybody. Surprise? Annoyance? Yes, but oddly detached. And curious.

  With a soft cough, he began to speak in a thick, baritone voice. “My friends, it was the wish of Peter and Theresa, as conveyed to me through their executor, that no memorial service be held at this time.” Great ad-libbing, I had to concede. “They knew how sad their untimely passing would be to their many friends,” Greene continued on autopilot without a hint of doubt or shame. “And Peter and Theresa very much wanted to spare them any further grief. Naturally, we will respect their wishes today. So, let us now bow our heads for a moment of silent prayer in their memory.”

  After a brief pause, I heard another soft cough and had to stifle a laugh. If a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, I guess a mortician in Ohio measures a silent prayer as the shortest time between two coughs.

  “On behalf of the family of Peter and Theresa, we truly appreciate your coming,” he continued as he looked up and studied me for a moment. “A private internment will follow, but at the request of the deceased, it is limited to the immediate family. Thank you and have a safe drive home.” Appropriate, I thought, as I stared at him and he stared back at me. No, not at me, more through me than anything else. Then the eyes swung away. They looked past me toward the back of the room where the guy in the blue shirt and gold chains was sitting. Greene's eyes paused again, as if he saw something there that bothered him a whole lot more than I did. Finally, he turned away and glided back into his alcove as silently as he had come.

  It only took a minute or two for the empty, oppressiveness of the room to wrap itself around me again and start to squeeze. If I sat there much longer, it would crush the life out of me. Besides, there was nothing more to be gained here and I wanted to talk to the grease-ball in the beige suit before he disappeared on me again. I stood and turned, but he must have slipped out the aisle into the corridor and he was already gone.

  My knees were weak and trembling, but I hurried after him through the lobby and out the front doors into the parking lot, but he was too fast. He jumped into the white Lincoln Town Car, started it up, floored it, and roared past me, kicking up a billowing cloud of dust as he bounced his way out onto Larkin Road. Tires screaming, the Lincoln turned east and disappeared down the road, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the hot, sun-drenched parking lot. Well, not completely alone. The deputy sheriff continued to sit there in the shade in his big brown police car, watching and waiting. For what, I wondered? Obviously not for reckless drivers in Lincolns. Great.
Other than a silent prayer and some quality time with two caskets in an air conditioned chapel, my foray into the world of Buckeye mortuary science had accomplished absolutely nothing. I had scratched all the new itches that had bothered me since I read the obituaries the night before and got that out of my system, but in the end, all I found were the same old sores festering underneath.

  I turned and walked back to the Bronco, tossed my blazer across the passenger seat, and got inside. The mid-day sun had turned the interior into a sauna, so I rolled down the windows and turned the air conditioning up to Max, waiting for the big SUV to cool down. That morning I found a good rock station in Columbus, QFM-96, and this afternoon they were featuring some back-to-back-to-back Mariah Carey. She was one of Terri's favorites, so I leaned against the headrest and closed my eyes as her music filled the car. There are some things you can never get too much of, and chocolate, a good Napa cabernet, and Mariah are near the top the list. With the car finally cooled down, I dropped it in gear and took a slow loop around the parking lot, past the deputy sitting in his cruiser. I smiled at him as I drove out of the lot and turned west on Larkin. The deputy didn't smile back. I didn't expect him to.

  There was a Sunoco gas station a few doors down at the corner. I pulled in and drove around to the rear of the building where I found some shade under a big poplar. The area was mostly open cornfield. From my vantage point, I could see the Greene Funeral Home, its side portico, and the two black hearses parked at the back of the lot. That's where I decided to wait.

  Twenty minutes later, two men in dark suits emerged from the side entrance, strode back to the hearses, and drove them under the portico and parked them side-by-side. They got out, walked back to the side doors and held them open as two more dark-suited men came out pushing two gurneys that were carrying the coffins. They opened the rear door of the hearses, pushed the coffins inside, and I heard the doors slam shut. The drivers and their helpers got inside and the two long, black cars drove out to the street with the brown sheriff's car finally stirring and taking up the rear of their short convoy. They exited the lot and turned west. After they passed the Sunoco station, I waited a decent interval, put the Bronco in gear, and followed from a safe distance, keeping a couple of hills or a line of trees between us, not that they were hard to follow.