by Egon Grimes
These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental.
Father of the Deceased by Egon Grimes
Copyright © 2019 Dumpster Cat Books
Copyright © 2019 Egon Grimes
FATHER OF THE DECEASED
EGON GRIMES
1
Fingers blackened by ink, Ivan Radmanovic flipped through the Indianapolis Star obituaries section. The next payday sat somewhere beneath three feet of freshly tossed soil. Quick glances at the recently deceased usually gave him all the information he needed. He wanted to work his way east, but to do so, he had to gather along the way, meaning he took what was available. The country was the supermarket for his morbid grocery list.
Indiana had that special item and he’d wait for as long as it took for that weird little girl to die. There would always be the common needs—a finger here, a heart there, a length of cancerous intestine—but difficultly rose with specialty goodies. So did the returns. Indiana and the sickly child. The score was simply the tongue; specifically, the tongue of a Siamese twin. A single piece of flesh harboring two shadows.
The real trick was getting these rare items without stirring the living. When everybody lives, things go smoothly.
In the beginning, work was nothing like this Indiana job. The big toe of a man who’d died of a heart problem. Strangely simple and common. He was only seventeen then and Lady Dalia—her self-given title, a phony witch of some sort—needed the digit to complete her list. It was a spell to ward off poor health. He never asked if these spells worked. Ivan Radmanovic wasn’t on earth to learn. His place was to do the work nobody else wanted and the easier the better.
That toe earned two hundred cash and a wealth of experience in facing fear. He’d never been as scared as he was that night, digging, cutting, pocketing the digit. Happy, Lady Dalia referred Ivan’s services to friends of the Black Cloth and his business began in earnest. Not as lucrative as dealing drugs, but nobody knew what he was up to, or cared. The cops weren’t patrolling for grave robbers. There were no squads devoted to his vocation. A man and his shovel, and the will to do the job. Payouts came with decent regularity, but just like anybody, he dreamed of golden eggs.
As his needs grew, Ivan went on the move. He networked with the freaks in shrouds. Some of them seemed as real as a round Earth, while most were charlatans. Not that he judged. Not his job.
Ivan heard about the request for a Siamese tongue years into the past and kept a mental note while he travelled. Facebook had the word out and he decided 2014 was going to be his year. He’d followed the case closely. She fit the list and he had his mark, just had to wait out her eventual demise.
Patience and planning were the keys to success in grave molesting. Everything he did followed a system and any change begged trouble. To fit in, he wore neutral tones. The goal, to look like autumn: browns, greys, dimmer shades of red and green. Although his face was pale and easily forgotten. Walk quickly, but not hastily. Look past eyes instead of into them.
Slightly faded blue jeans, a plain grey button up dress shirt, and medium height hiking boots; everything always clean and always utterly average. Average, he walked among the living and ravage the dead. Fit and nimble, strong, but not of the showy strength, this kept him unnoticed, but also kept him able when situations arose.
Before his coffee and before reading the obits, he stood on a purple yoga mat and breathed. He had twelve set poses he ran through to keep him limber and strong. Ivan was a man of method and routine. The girl clinging to life changed nothing about that.
2
Knowing the day would come sooner or later didn’t make it any easier when it finally came. Rosalind Lesley Genner, five-years-old, a singular being for only three of those years, died of heart defect. Although he still had a daughter and wife, Maurice felt the ruin of his family. Ripped apart. Lit aflame and blown to ash. Maurice wished he had his wife’s listlessness and ability to orbit outside reality.
Whether or not Rhoda Genner believed the junk the old woman, her mother, rambled on about didn’t matter. Something in the attention satiated a modicum of the pain in her, let her put the problems in the tomorrow pile until she had the strength to deal.
“She is with God now,” Edi Potvin said.
“Do you think so?” Rhoda had eyes wide and wet, almost stupidly hopeful.
“God makes a special place for children, especially those who’ve had problems during their short lives. God is good and He will get us through this. You may not realize it, but He’s with you now, carrying you through this trauma. Anything we can’t handle on our own, well,” Edi gave a big self-important grin, “He carries us along until we have the strength to stand.”
This conversation replayed in a few varieties for three days. Neither Maurice nor Rhoda had ever paid much attention to the worlds of Heaven or Hell, a God and or the counterpart in the devil. Maurice kept an open-mind, but there is a wide difference between open-mindedness and blind faith. God hadn’t come for coffee, hadn’t sat in his living for popcorn and a movie, and certainly hadn’t explained Rosalind’s demise.
The tensed and brittle limb on which civility rested reached a snapping point at the funeral. It wasn’t the little casket, or that stuffy chemical smell in the funeral home, or the organ music lulling low in the background, or the people offering their useless condolences, it was all of them, mixed together in a swirl like the spin of a flushed toilet. A collection that hindered the healing process, one that social convention demand he undertake, foregoing closure until the crowds achieved completion, collective release as if seeing grief stroked nether regions.
As he looked into the eyes of those rounding the half-moon of the grieving in front of the casket, he began a count. How many sets of eyes were full of it?
Easy.
All of them.
Not a soul there understood his pain. The death of a daughter changed everything. His wife took the easy route, self-delusion, she might even start drinking someday soon—drown it all whenever it tried to surface. And she couldn’t, she had a job to do. They had another daughter…though she didn’t quite understand. This left the burden of reality for him.
“Pfft, God,” he muttered barely audibly every time one of those condescending old biddies, those who liked to see a dead baby, mentioned the so-called-Almighty. The line was out the door and around a city block. Gawkers all of them, coming to see something sad, something painful, something freaky.
Conjoined twins brought out the real freaks though. Anybody who wanted to see the dead child, gaze upon the living half, and shake the hands of the parents. Well, fuck them too.
Maurice hadn’t slept a wink for two days after his daughter died. The two preceding weeks he fought stress-induced near insomnia while his girl lay on a hospital bed, sleeping away her final days. The wake wore on him beyond experience or expectation. Right then, he daydreamed climbing into that little casket, holding his daughter, and getting some sleep.
The news caused the mess: “Tragic, tragic, tragic. Young Rosalind Genner is clinging to life tonight, since the day of her separation from Ruby Genner, her conjoined sister, her heart hasn’t operated properly,” Suzanna Rodriguez had said, lead anchor for channel six. The people really began to file in, stick it out, poke their heads where they did not belong. Outside the hospital, little candles flickering in the night, hundreds of them. Some people held signs, quoting and misquoting different religious texts, all with the underlying message, if you don’t agree with my religion you will burn and so will that little girl, hope her soul had insurance. Suzanna Rodriguez went on to ask that people mind his family’s privacy.
She had them blowing up.
Well-wishers felt above things like privacy. People wanted to, had to, mingle and mix, offer their peace. Feel good about yourselves somewhere else, the meaning here is null and we’re doing just fine swimming in our own tears, we don’t need yours.
Rosalind had finally let go and the burden, which should’ve eased, piled heavy onto Maurice’s shoulders. He had gone his entire adult life without dropping a tear; as sick and broken as he felt, his eyes remained dry. A man’s man, born and raised. Men don’t cry.
—
He sat up all night in his brown leather La-Z-Boy recliner, in the dark, remembering her face. Morning came and for the first time in ten years, he drove to the store and bought a pack of Marlboros. His lungs tightened and burned with that first puff, his head swam, and the smoke swirled around him like a familiar friend. The smell clung to his body. He didn’t mind, couldn’t care what Rhoda might say. He’d heard it all before.
Maurice walked into the kitchen, both Ruby and Rhoda were up. Pancakes. Pancakes like nothing happened, as if they hadn’t lost a piece of the family.
“Have you been smoking?” Rhoda looked surprised.
Maurice glared at the empty seat, no plate waiting for a fluffy cake, no glass of orange juice, and no Rosalind. “You won’t need that out,” he said, gesturing toward the blueberry jam. Only Rosalind ate the blueberry jam.
The tears spurted from Rhoda’s eyes.
“Why no blueberry, Mommy?” Ruby asked.
“Rosalind,” Rhoda said, unable to say anything else.
“Is she coming home from the hospital?” Ruby smacked her orange juice lips.
Rhoda broke out into wails, “She…is…with…God… now!”
“Yeah, but she can come back right? Can I go with God too? Grandma says that God is good and looks after children best,” Ruby said.
“She’s dead. She isn’t with anyone and she’ll never come back.” Fury rode those words. The pent stuff he’d harbored for weeks.
Ruby looked at him with a cocked head, like a confused animal. “But grandma says—”
“Your grandma is full of shit. If there was a God, your sister would still be alive, there wouldn’t have been a holocaust in Germany, there wouldn’t be Ku-Klux limp dicks, terrorists would die long before they ever blew up schools or hospitals.” Maurice’s words shook and quaked.
Rhoda continued weeping. “She is with God.”
“She can come back then?” Ruby asked.
“No! Your sister is dead and she will never come back, the sooner we all accept that we will never see her again, the sooner we will all be able to move on.”
“What is wrong with you? You horrible man!” Rhoda grabbed Ruby, cradled the small head to her chest.
“Right, I’m sorry. Better if she wanders around looking for her sister, thinking maybe God finally dropped her off, maybe God drives the school bus!”
Ruby started to cry. “Grandma says God is everywhere.”
“If God is here right now, let him show his face. I’ll recant everything I just said. Let him bring our daughter back to prove his glory and love. If God is here, where is Rosalind?”
“Get out!” Rhoda said.
“Why doesn’t God bring Rosalind back?” Ruby said.
“That’s not how it works, honey. She’s dead and not coming back.”
“So Daddy’s right?”
“Yep! Your sister isn’t coming back and in the next couple days we will have a funeral for her. You will see her body, it will look like she’s sleeping, but she is dead and won’t wake up.” Maurice’s anger abated and his volume smoothed as he spoke. “Your sister is gone now and forever.”
“Go away until you resemble the man I married,” Rhoda said.
Maurice sneered at his wife. “Ha! You didn’t even believe in God a month ago. You said your mother was a kook.”
“Go away. Now!”
—
Maurice lit another cigarette. The slow burn took his mind off his daughter for a heartbeat. He should know better, he’d helped people deal with grief for years. Often he’d drawn that short straw and had to notify loved ones. It was years gone since he’d been on the traffic beat, a thankless job, but the faces still hung around him, lingering ghosts of the living, mourning lost lives. Wives, mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers had all cried on his shoulder, pounded on his back, as if he was the messenger that could be swayed to turn the clock and un-happen the accident.
He finally knew how they felt, but pain is unique. The holes people leave are of different sizes and heal on their own time. If ever.
Seven years earlier, several steps down the department ladder, he had the toughest assignment of his life. Trouble was easier when you could blame someone else, when there was a clear victim, but in this case, the victim was also the assailant. Texting while driving wasn’t against the law for learners, yet. It was stupid, no matter the law. Maurice groomed a new partner then, they’d been together a week at that point. The man seemed good. Gil Bark. He was able, smart, and smooth.
The driver was a just a girl and her family, all just doing as they did. Mother, son, and daughter had phones out. It was the daughter who, still with her learners, drove and typed. The insanity of the brunt of a family texting at once… Gil drove the cruiser, he and Maurice were on their way out of a quiet little spot to hide out and catch speeders. The pearl white Lincoln Navigator veered into the oncoming lane next to the cruiser.
Maurice turned to his new partner to start what would’ve been a regular, everyday kind of conversation.
The conversation never happened.
The SUV’s wheel drove over the hood of the cruiser after the initial impact sent the nose downward, ramping the SUV sky bound. Four dead. The boy in the backseat died of complications during surgery an hour after the collision, but the rest, the mother, the daughter, and Gil Bark died instantly. Maurice didn’t have so much as a broken bone, not even a concussion.
He had to inform two families that day. The father and husband of the family in the Navigator fell apart immediately, his legs melted into a pool of anguish beneath his sobbing body. The man had lost his entire family in one clear cut, no warning, poof, no family. As if flicking a switch, the man fell into a rage, he blamed Gil, he blamed the police department, he blamed Maurice. It couldn’t have been his daughter’s fault, his precious daughter.
A half-hour later, the sound that came out of Gil’s pregnant wife’s mouth was incredible. Beyond human. Her body sank into his and he held her as she wept.
Up until the moment his daughter died, Maurice didn’t understand that kind of grief.
3
Lou Hill had tried to reach his partner for days. If there was something he could do, he would, but Maurice refused his calls. Not even so much as a text came back. Knowing what was smart, Lou gave him his space.
Moe’s girls came and were a complicated birth. There was a good chance that the kids wouldn’t make it and it was as good a chance that a split might kill them. Two years and about a million tests later, a doctor separated the girls and Maurice settled a little, but it was a long road getting there.
Two nights after the birth, Lou and Maurice went to Jean’s for a drink. A dark little place, booths dotting the walls, a huge ancient bar, stools lining that bar, and an off-duty police officer taking up almost every seat. A cop bar. Like the ones on television.
That night, Maurice was fall down drunk. “Lou, I made a freak, a weird little freak. I know it’s my fault too. I have a retarded cousin. Bad genes. Bad genes, retard genes.”
“Moe, don’t be like that. It’s nobody’s fault.”
“No, it is. I have bad genes, I was supposed to have twins, instead I have a gruesome beast, some kind of monster baby from my cousin’s retard genes. I should’ve got the snip years ago. Could’ve saved myself all kinds of trouble.”
“That isn’t fair. Besides, you said the doctors are pretty sure they
can separate the girls, just have to wait a bit.”
That bit turned into those long two years after some problems and differences in opinion as to which girl would most likely survive if the choice arose. In the end, they became two wholes. Maurice loved both all the more for his doubts, Lou saw that and knew now more than ever that Maurice needed a friend. Like it or not.
—
Surprise surfaced on every face when Maurice walked into the squad room. He sat at his desk, looking haggard: multiple days’ growth of beard, his hair a mess, and the flesh beneath his eyes purple and saggy.
“What are you doing here?” Lou asked, too worried to whisper.
“This is where I work, isn’t it?”
“Come on, Moe, you shouldn’t be here. Not yet. You should be with your family.”
“The Almighty God squad.”
Lou exhaled, tightening his lips and puffing out his cheeks. “Come on man, you can’t turn your back on your family. Remember Ruby? She’s still with you and she needs her dad and Rhoda needs her husband.”
“Ruby’s got Rhoda and Rhoda’s got mythical creatures to pray to. I’ve got work,” Maurice said, his hands busy flipping through old file folders on his desk. “Where in the sweet hell is that Benzo file?”
“Safe Streets took it over. All of your open cases have been handed off. Go home, Moe.” Lou rested a hand on Maurice’s shoulder.
Maurice jumped up, knocking much of what was on his desk to the floor. A room full of officers stared in silence. He had to leave, but nobody wanted to be the one to make him.
“What are you doing here?” the captain asked, poking his way out of his dark office. Captain Markus D’Souza was a massive man, a full head of hair and fat moustache. Over the years, his midsection softened, but it somehow leant to his aura rather than detracting from it.
“Why’d you give away my cases?” Maurice asked. “The world doesn’t stop just because my kid’s heart did.”
