by Maddy Wells
I climbed out of Captain Kirby’s sleeping bag. My neck was sore from the bottle of Clorox I grabbed from the shelf and stuck under my head in my sleep to use as a pillow, and I was massaging it to get the kinks out, when I froze at the sound of voices outside the closet. I peeked out. Mr. Kulick and his daughter, Krista, were dressing one of the cadavers.
Krista Kulick went to my school. She was in my class and I saw her all the time, although I never said anything to her except “Ewww, what are all those black things” when both of our lab partners didn’t show up in biology class and we had to dissect an extremely fertile female frog together. She was pretty enough and smart enough and she had a date to the prom (the prom!) with a regular boy who was going off to college in Iowa or somewhere even flatter and maybe she would follow him there in two years—who knew? who cared?—and I just figured she was one of those boring people who would reminisce about our frog experience as a highlight of her pathetic life at class reunions, which I would definitely not attend because I would be famous and reunions—except maybe rock band reunions—are not cool.
Krista had snapped on a pair of latex gloves and pulled some underwear up on the old guy Mrs. Kirby was working on when I came in. She was yammering away to her father and didn’t even look at the old guy’s junk, which I thought was kind of interesting, because I was craning my neck like crazy to see it although I probably would’ve puked if I did.
“See,” Krista said, “Why does she put this flesh colored polish on men? It doesn’t look natural. I told her a million times to use clear.”
Mr. Kulick mumbled something and Krista said, “Well, this isn’t Hollywood.”
Krista moved quickly, removing shirt and pants from the rolling rack, checking the tag on the suit of clothes to the tag on the man’s wrist, then ripping both of them off and finished dressing him. Mr. Kulick pulled a pair of what looked like cardboard shoes from a giant box and wiggled them onto his feet. Krista wheeled a casket next to the gurney and together they picked up the ends of the sheet he was on, Mr. Kulick said, “One, two, three,” and they heaved him into the casket, yanking the sheet out from under him when he landed. Krista pulled a Bible from a bag that was hanging on the rack, arranged the dead man’s hands around it as if he had just closed the book after reading a particularly inspirational passage—and she said, “See, this is why she has to go, Dad. That polish looks awful and she’s too stubborn, or something, to change. I think there’s something seriously wrong with her,” and then all of a sudden the lights dimmed and they were wheeling the casket out of the room through a pair of swinging doors.
I balled up Captain Kirby’s sleeping bag and shoved it into the corner then I nudged the door of the broom closet open. The smell of sulfur almost knocked me out. There were two more cadavers in waiting and the place looked definitely creepy with just the safety lights on. I told myself the two bodies were just sleeping, like in a hospital or something because if I heard a sound at that point, I would have fainted.
I pulled out my phone and saw it was four o’clock in the afternoon. If I left now, I might be able to make it to Sunny Vale by eight o’clock on my bike. I remembered what Captain Kirby said about a missing persons report and I wondered if Granny O’Reilly had filed one.
I washed my face and took a drink of water cupping my hands in the sink Mrs. Kirby used, trying not to think of what they washed in there, then I pulled on my backpack, strapped on my Fender and tried the door. It was locked. Of course.
I wanted to call Captain Kirby then remembered she didn’t have a phone and called Tim and even though I was holding the phone first up to the ceiling and then by the barred window, I couldn’t get any reception.
I hurried past the cadavers through the swinging doors where I saw Krista and Mr. Kulick move the casket. Beyond the doors was a tiny room with an elevator.
“Great!” I cried, then slapped my hand over my mouth and looked around as if someone could actually hear me. I pushed the elevator button and I listened for what seemed like forever while it made old elevator noises until the door finally opened. I stepped inside. It was huge of course because it had to hold caskets. There was only one button, only one floor it went to. I pressed it.
Chapter 33
The elevator opened into a little foyer. And the only exit was through a viewing that was already in full-swing. A stocky old lady dressed in black was sitting in the first of a row of chairs that lined the wall, sobbing into a handkerchief. A middle-aged woman was consoling her with one arm while her other arm was playing a card game with a ten-year old girl. The middle-aged woman looked up when I came into the room, then went back her card game when she didn’t recognize me. A man, his head in his hands, was kneeling in front of the coffin. A bunch of old ladies in black dresses and running shoes were lined up the side aisle waiting to pay their respects to the widow. When the first one reached her, sitting down next to her and patting her hand, they all burst into tears and started wailing, and truthfully, until that very moment I didn’t really think of the guy in the coffin like he was a person, you know? But when I saw how much everyone missed him, I started crying too, remembering that fresh pair of underpants and the chintzy suit that Krista had put on him, and the short sleeve shirt—the kind that Mr. Dow who was cool in every other way, wore—and the polyester tie and those cheap cardboard shoes that Mr. Kulick pushed on his feet, which were covered with a blanket as if he could get a chill. Next to the guest book was a basket of holy cards. I picked one up. It had a picture of St. Michael the Archangel on one side and Michael Croslis’ name on the other side like a dance card. I put it to my bosom, sat down in one of the mourner’s chairs and started to bawl. The place was filling up and since everyone else was crying, it was easy to let go and honestly, it felt very cathartic and I was crying my eyes out when someone jammed a pointy shoe into my ankle. I opened my eyes. It was Krista Kulick.
“You are such a freak,” she said.
“I was just…”
“No no no no no no,” she said. “You were in the basement, weren’t you? With that other freak, Janet Kirby. I saw you come out of the elevator. You know I can call the police on you, don’t you? You’re trespassing. I don’t think you want me to call the police, not after your mother….”
“Okay, okay. I’ll leaving,” I said, smarting from being called a freak.
“Are you two living down there or something? This is it for Mrs. Kirby. She knows the rules: no visitors while she’s working. Is she out of her mind? She’s already on probation. Are you having drug parties down there? What do you think it would do for business if people knew that there were drug parties going on around their loved ones?”
Krista was getting herself worked up thinking about everyone having drug parties without her or something.
“I don’t even drink,” I said.
“Don’t you? I heard about the parties at your house when The Griffin’s there.”
“It’s all a big mistake, Krista,” I said, “I used to walk Mr. Croslis’ dog. That’s why I came here in the first place, and then I got lost. I was looking for the bathroom. It’s not Mrs. Kirby’s fault. I don’t even know Mrs. Kirby. Like, who is that?”
“Well, you know Janet, don’t you?”
“Of course, I know Janet,” I said, “She’s the drummer in my band.”
“Yeah, I saw your poster,” Krista said. She looked wistful. “I wanted to try out. I play. But I don’t have any time for things that don’t support my goals.”
Mr. Kulick was beckoning to Krista from the back of the room.
“I have to get back to work,” Krista said.
Although, truthfully, it seemed like getting back to work was the last thing she wanted to do. “Are you going to do this after you graduate, Krista?” I asked her. “Is working in here like one of your goals?”
“Of course!” she said, scowling and scratching her arm. “It’s a recession-proof business. You never run out of customers. I already have a built-in clientele wh
o have had family members’ funerals with us. And, like, look at you. You came here because you walked Mr. Croslis’ dog and the next time you need funeral services, you’ll think of us. Right?”
Mr. Kulick was coming down the aisle.
Krista whispered to me. “Now get out of here, before I tell my father that you were trespassing.”
“You’re not going to fire Mrs. Kirby are you?” I asked.
“What do you care? I thought you didn’t know her,” Krista said.
“I don’t actually know her, but it would be a shame to blame her just because I was looking for a bathroom.”
“I don’t know. I think she’s off, you know what I mean?” Krista said, looking unsure of herself.
“Well I heard she used to do celebrities’ make-up in Hollywood. That’s just what I heard.”
“I just don’t like her,” Krista said.
Mr. Kulick came up to us, and Krista said, “Dad, this is Mercy O’Reilly. Her mother’s the teacher who had sex with the student.”
I felt like someone punched me in the stomach.
I picked up my Fender and backpack, not waiting for Mr. Kulick to kick me out.
“You can’t stay here,” Mr. Kulick said. “This is a private service.”
“I don’t want to stay here. I have a home,” I said. “It’s in Texas.”
“You can’t stay here,” Mr. Kulick said, calling after me.
As if I were dying to stay.
I pushed my way through Mr. Michael Croslis’s mourners. The Croslis family was big and dark haired and their voices were really loud. It was so obvious they were all related, probably like you could tell Jane and me and Granny O’Reilly were a family when we were together.
On the way out I signed the condolences book. Now that I saw how much people missed him, I really did feel sorry that Mr.Croslis was dead. He wasn’t just a body with a suit he probably only wore at Easter, he was somebody who made some people happy and more likely pissed a lot of people off with his loud mouth. The truth is, I got the feeling he would have annoyed me and I probably wouldn’t have liked him if I had known him when he was alive. Or maybe I would have. Maybe he could tell great stories about his boyhood in Greece. I’ve heard that some grandfathers were very good at that. So, liked him, not liked him. Maybe both. It’s like, I could have sworn that Krista Kulick thought I was cool. And she probably did when she thought of my band and The Griffin, because that stuff was undeniably cool and she even wanted to be in my band. But me hanging around dead people in her basement was definitely not cool. As Mr. Rajeet’s son said, two things can be possible at the same time.
Chapter 34
I definitely was sorry that Captain Kirby had sold the Fezzari because after a few miles on my three gear Sears Huffy—I think Granny O’Reilly owned it when she was a girl—I felt like a hamster on a treadmill that powered a carousel.
This was the first time I had ridden my bike anywhere except to school or Dunkin Donuts or had even been in the country by myself. Certainly Jane and I never thought to park and hike a trail when we found ourselves driving around after Sunday dinner at Ruby Tuesdays. “I don’t know why everyone gets so excited about the great outdoors,” Jane would say. “You can hardly ever get comfortable on the ground and there are ants and wasps and mosquitoes and bug spray makes you feel like you’re the bug and leaning against a tree like they do in the movies hurts your back—they’re just acting—and anyway,” she would say, delivering the death sentence to any desire I had to visit the woods, “anyone with a water bottle can be outdoorsy. It’s so unoriginal.”
When I got off of potholed Old Route 22 the road got gravelly and then turned into dirt. I knew I was in Amish farmland—we’d studied the Amish in American history class, although I’d never been this far out of Milltown—when a black horse drawn buggy passed me. The man with the whip had a beard and was wearing a black coat and a straw hat. Two girls riding on the seat behind him, his daughters I assumed, were dressed in sun bonnets and calico dresses. They looked like extras in a 1950s Technicolor musical about Oklahoma.
I was watching for a sign that said “Sunny Vale Mill”—Kirby told me you could go right by the entrance a dozen times without seeing it—but every farm sign had a name like Yoder or Zook, and I was starting to think I might have passed it.
Green shoots had broken through the ground all the way to the horizon, and when I squinted the fields looked like graceful lime green line drawings, and there were these long gray one-story buildings back off the road with fans in the walls that gave off a low hypnotic thrumming and I knew they were mushroom houses because they didn’t have windows. There was something soothing about all of this, and I might have enjoyed it if I didn’t have the feeling I was being followed. Every time I turned around, though, I saw nothing but an empty dirt road. I think I wanted someone to be following me because I felt so lonely, and, I have to admit, a little scared. I really missed Tim. Captain Kirby, too.
Plus it was getting dark, and the sinking sun was turning everything including me on my bike into long spooky shadows. My bike didn’t have lights and the road was narrow and curvy. I jumped off my bike to walk a little, keeping to the side of the road in case another buggy came by. I tied my sweater around my waist, I was hot and sweaty from pedaling, but, as soon as I did, a couple of flies landed on me. Then even more, and then they started biting.
“Hey, get off of me!” I started swatting myself. Hundreds of them with green heads like in a science fiction movie swarmed me. I thought maybe they could smell the funeral home on me.
I got back on the bike and started down the road, trying to lose the flies, but each time I slowed down, they would catch up and land on me. In about a quarter of a mile—and I smelled it before I saw it—I almost ran over a dead deer. Its belly was wide open and crawling with flies. Its legs were unnaturally spread and it looked like it was going to explode.
“Yuk,” I yelled, pedaling as fast as I could to get past it. The road followed a stream and I was thinking about jumping into it to get rid of the flies when I saw a faded wooden sign that said “The Mill at Sunny Vale.” I hopped off my bike and walked it into a dirt car track that went into the woods. Bringing a swarm of biting flies with me wouldn’t make a good first impression, and I dropped my bike and was hitting the back of my neck like a crazy person, my eyes scrunched shut, when suddenly somebody pinned my arms to my sides.
“Stop!” a voice said. “Stop moving.”
It was Tim. I tried to wrench away to keep swatting.
“Make them leave me alone,” I pleaded.
“The more frantic you get the more they like it. They love heat. Stay still for a minute and you’ll cool off.”
In the five minutes he held onto me, the sun set and the air got chilly and the flies flew home, wherever that was.
“Where did you come from?” I sounded annoyed, but I was never happier to see anyone in my life.
“I couldn’t let you just run off by yourself.”
“You don’t think I can take care of myself? I can take care of myself,” I said.
“I was worried you might run into something you didn’t know anything about, like a dead deer and biting flies.”
Tim knew a lot about being in the woods because his father and grandfather were always taking him on survivalist grocery expeditions—first a rousing game of paintball, then off to kill a deer, then going to a farm where they slaughtered hogs, bringing home enough bacon and meat to last them a year.
“Were you like behind me or what?”
“I was a mile ahead of you the whole way. I would stop and wait for you to catch up a little before I went on.”
“Why didn’t you just wait for me?”
“Because I wanted you to know you could do it yourself.”
I wasn’t sure it actually counted as doing it yourself when someone was watching out for you, and I was going to argue some bullet points about this when a pickup truck that looked like a beat-up old toaster came
up behind us. The driver hit his brights, cut the engine—it backfired twice—and hopped out. He had blond beard stubble and was wearing overalls, a flannel shirt, and a baseball cap that he took off to scratch a completely shaved head. He looked maybe Jane’s age.
“You guys okay?” he asked.
“There’s a dead deer back down the road,” Tim said.
“Did you hit it?”
“Of course we didn’t hit it. We’re on bicycles.”
“Right,” the man said. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Jonah Weil. But everybody calls me JW. It’s easier.”
We looked at him blankly for a few seconds . It was obvious that he expected us to know who he was and then I remembered he was the guy Captain Kirby was always talking about.