The rest of the flesh, however, was impossible to keep, although I tried. It would have done no good to refreeze it, and too much deterioration had set in to attempt drying it, if I had even known anything about drying meat at that time. So I wrapped it in foil once more and deposited it in the very bottom of the garbage, praying as I did so.
A month went by before I felt the first pangs of that spiritual hunger that had been so satisfyingly fed by the tiniest bit of flesh. I felt as though God and Christ and the Holy Spirit were somehow drifting away from me, as though their presence, and the totally fulfilling love that is the greatest part of that presence, had been withdrawn. My sermons seemed flat, my prayers lifeless. My service to my congregation, my attempts to knit together deteriorating families, to comfort the sick and bereaved, continued as strongly as ever, but I did not feel the gratification I had before, and it very slowly began to dawn on me that once you have gazed upon Heaven, it is difficult to accept life on Earth. I knew then that my communion of a month before had to be repeated, in the same way that regular attendance at worship is necessary to nourish a Christian and sustain his joy in his faith.
A simple disposition was to take place at the crematory that week. A sixty-four-year-old member of the congregation had died of a stroke. His memorial service was scheduled for Wednesday, and the cremation was to follow, with none of the family in attendance at the crematory. It would be the perfect opportunity. But this time, I confirmed, I would have planned in advance precisely how I would keep whatever flesh I was able to take, so as to avoid the spoilage that had occurred with that of my mother.
I went into the county seat and withdrew from the library a book on the preserving of meat. It dealt with several different methods such as canning, freezing, and smoking, but since I would be working with rather small portions, I found the section on dry curing to be of the most interest. Basically, all that curing does is to extract the water from meat by applying salt to it, thus enabling one to keep it without refrigeration for a long period of time. Chilling (but not freezing) the meat beforehand to slow the growth of bacteria is advised, but I could not very easily store pieces of human skin in the refrigerator, which was Mrs. Bunn’s domain, so decided that I would have to brave the risk of bacteria, hoping that ingesting such small portions over a long period of time would cause no more than a slight stomach upset.
I took the long way home, visiting a farm supply shop in the southern end of the county and there buying with cash the smallest curing box in stock, along with a bag of coarse salt. The clerk told me that I should buy some maple syrup so that the salt taste would not be so strong, but I told him I had some at home. That much was true, but I had no intention of adding it to the meat. I could bear the salt taste, for that would eventually vanish, leaving only the naturally sweet taste of what it had preserved.
When I arrived home, I discovered that Mrs. Bunn was out, so I was able to take the box and the salt down into the cellar and store them behind some unused furniture, where Mrs. Bunn would never look. She made no secret of disliking the cellar, for it was poorly lit, rather damp, and claustrophobic, what with its only six-and-a-half-foot-high ceiling. She went down there only when she needed to fetch something from the freezer.
On Wednesday, following the memorial service, I accompanied Jim Meinhart to the crematory, and asked (partly out of curiosity, for this was the first cremation I had observed except for my mother’s, and partly from the desire to get further on the man’s good side) if he might show me the operation of the machinery when the time came. He smiled as broadly as was possible for him, and said of course, he would be happy to.
The body was carried in, the assistant dismissed, and I turned to Jim. “Jim,” I said, for we were on a first name basis, having shared a dozen funerals since my tenure began, “when my mother passed on, it meant a great deal to me to be alone here with her before her body was cremated. I think I pray more deeply when I’m by myself.” Then I chuckled. “Terrible thing for a pastor to say, isn’t it?”
Jim shook his massive head. “Not at all, Brandon. I know what you mean— I say things when I’m praying by myself that I’d never think of when I’m in church. Say no more. Let me know when you’re ready.” And he walked out, leaving me alone.
I could scarcely believe my good fortune. I had not even had to finish the little speech I had so carefully prepared. He had not even questioned my desire to be alone with the quiet dead. And why should he after all? I was— and am—a minister of God, a man in whom my congregation can put their trust. And that is the truth, despite what follows, and because of what will come.
I knew I had little time, so I removed from my inner coat pocket a small matte knife whose razor sharp blade slid out and locked with a flick of my thumb. In another instant I had the wooden box open and the body of Mr. Collins rolled over on its side. I pulled up the gown to the top of the old man’s back, cut a square roughly eight inches long on each side, and peeled back the piece of flesh. The edges were purple where, I suppose, some blood had settled, but there was no puddling of liquid after I made my incisions. I pressed the inner surface of the piece of skin against the gown to blot up any exudations of fat or other moisture, then rolled the section of flesh into a cylinder scarcely an inch thick, worked it into a plastic bag I had brought for the purpose, and placed it into my inner pocket, along with the matte knife whose blade I had wiped clean on the gown. Then I pulled down the gown, rolled the body onto its back, quietly lowered the lid, and said a deeply felt prayer for Mr. Collin’s soul, while at the same time adding my own thanks to God for His gifts and His grace. Then, making sure that I had no telltale stains upon my hands or clothing, I opened the door and invited Jim Meinhart back in, the roll of flesh hot against my chest.
He opened the door to the control room, and I followed him inside. There was barely enough room for both of us to stand. I prayed that the flesh would give off no odor that Jim would notice, and tried to concentrate on the panel with several buttons and switches mounted on one of the narrow walls.
“Procedure’s fairly simple,” he said. “This switch turns on the mechanism that opens the doors, and this button slides the casket into the combustion chamber. That light goes on when it’s inside. Then you close the doors behind it.” He then proceeded to push the proper buttons and throw the proper switches. I heard the sound of gears like the rushing of deep and secret waters, then the closing of the door of the furnace. “The equipment’s pretty old,” Jim said. “That door closing is one reason why we try to discourage relatives from staying.”
I remarked that the sound did have a certain degree of finality to it, and Jim nodded. “There’s only one switch that turns on the furnace,” he said. “This one here. On and off.” He flicked the switch and I heard a dull whoosh. “Once it begins, it can be stopped any time, but it takes an hour and a half for the remains to be completely reduced to…” He paused.
“To ash?” I said.
“Well, we don’t like to call it ash, although that’s what it is. Cremains is the proper word, though I’ve never used it. I generally just say the remains and let it go at that.”
“There’s really very little remains left,” I said, remembering the pile of fine gray powder that I had peered at in my mother’s urn, before it was placed in the columbarium at Peace Haven, where my father was buried in an earth grave.
Jim nodded. “It’s oxidation. The water in the body evaporates, and whatever has carbon in it, like the soft tissues…say, I hope I’m not getting too graphic for you, Brandon.”
“No no,” I said quickly. ‘The body is simply the shell of the soul, that’s all, something to be discarded.” I smiled gently. “With all due respect to your profession, of course.”
“Well, the soft tissues are incinerated, and all that’s left is the inorganic ash of the bone structure. The pulverizer reduces that to powder.”
“Pulverizer?” I said.
He gestured out the door. I left the tiny room and h
e followed, closing the door behind him. We sat together on one of the narrow pews. “Not many crematories have them in the U.S., but most of them do in England—you can thank Pastor Fletcher for ours. From all accounts he was a strong believer in strewing the remains. But they’re a bit hard to strew when you have bone fragments in them. That’s what the pulverizer’s for.”
I invited Jim to the parsonage then for a cup of coffee, but he declined, as I had hoped he would. “I’ve got to stay here until it’s finished. Legalities. But you go ahead. It can get pretty oppressive here.” He left it unfinished, but I could hear his thoughts—”knowing what’s happening a few feet away.”
I told him I would be back just before the cremation was complete, and went to the parsonage. Mrs. Bunn was away, and I went directly to the kitchen, took the piece of Mr. Collins’s flesh from my pocket, and set it on the sink top. Then I ran downstairs, got the curing box and the bag of salt, and began the operation that I had read of.
I took the salt (foreswearing sugar, maple syrup, or spices, all of which were suggested by my book) and rubbed it thoroughly on both sides of the skin. Then I poured more salt over the bottom of the box, covering it. On that layer I put one of the two wooden racks that had come with the box, poured more salt over that, then put in the flesh (skin-side down, as directed). More salt went over it then, all the way to the top, and I closed the lid. I carried it downstairs and put it behind the freezer on top of the second rack, being careful not to block any of the drainage holes in the bottom of the box. I did not truly expect the salt to draw much fluid out of the flesh, but neither did I want to take my chances, so I put newspaper under the rack as well.
There was nothing to do with the flesh now but wait, so I went back upstairs, washed my hands, and went out to the crematory, for I had found the process of cremation to be quite interesting, and had had no chance to learn anything about it during the only other one I had attended, that of my mother. It would also be prudent, since the crematory was to be my source of communion material, to learn as much as possible about its workings.
So Jim and I resumed our conversation, and he told me a bit about the history of cremation, and the initial efforts of the funeral industry in this country to thwart it. “I’ve never had a problem with it myself,” he said, “except for the fact that it doesn’t give me much of a chance to do what I’ve been trained for. Still, it seems a respectful way to…dispose of the dead.”
Finally Jim looked at his watch. “Long enough,” he said, and we went back into the small room, where he threw the switch to stop the flames.
“Why isn’t there any smoke?” I asked. “I noticed…when my mother was…” I trailed off.
“The heat’s so intense that it doesn’t create much smoke to start with, and it’s got a special draft control. The way the gasses recirculate you hardly get any smoke at all.” Jim pushed a small black button on the panel I had not noticed before. “The pulverizer. Just a minute or two.” I listened, and heard only the slightest grinding of machinery. Jim finally pushed the button a second time, and threw the switch that opened the door to the furnace. We looked inside and saw what appeared to be several pounds of white ash, punctuated here and there by what I took to be the metal that had held the wooden casket together.
“I’ll have that coffee now,” Jim said. “By the time we’re finished, it should be cool enough to remove the remains.”
Inside the parsonage, we chatted for another hour over coffee and tea cakes, then went to the crematory once again, where I watched while Jim withdrew the casket nails and fittings with a magnet, then carefully collected together the white ash, pouring it into what appeared to be a clay urn, which he sealed. “That’s about it,” he said. “I’ll vacuum out the residue and take the urn over to Mrs. Collins tomorrow. Her son is going to strew the ashes in the river.”
I said goodbye then, and left Jim to finish up.
Four days later, alone in the parsonage, I opened the box and dug away the salt until I reached the piece of flesh. It had shrunk considerably in its curing, and the surface of the skin was no longer smooth, but shriveled, though still the pale yellow color it had been before. Not knowing whether I needed to or not, I “overhauled” it, which consisted of examining the meat for bare spots (there were none), rubbing it well with the salt again, and repacking it as before. This time I left it only overnight, and when I removed the salt the next day, it was (according to the book) fully cured. Although I looked it over carefully, I could detect no moisture at all, and was amazed that only five days could serve to produce the dry and parchment-like prize that I now held in my trembling hands. It was far smaller than it had been originally, but it would last for weeks, months, if everything I read was true, and if I had done all properly (and I had no reason to believe I had not).
I decided to cut the flesh into smaller segments and wrap each individually. When I had finished, I had twenty pieces each the size of a quarter, a size which, I learned later, was too large, providing a veritable surfeit of richness that nearly made me ill. After that first attempt I cut each of the remaining pieces in half, which left me thirty-eight. They lasted four months before they began to deteriorate. But instead of throwing them away, I burned them. It seemed suitable.
Within a few weeks there was another cremation, and I took the flesh of yet another parishioner. It was easier that time, and became easier as the years went by and my communions continued. They are more recent now, occurring once every two weeks, corresponding to Mrs. Bunn’s absences. In the intervening years, she only once noticed the box. When she asked about it, I told her that it was rock salt for the pavement. Even if she would ever want to use it, the odds of it being on one of the perhaps ten days a year that the flesh is actually cured in the box is minimal. Besides, the flesh is always near the bottom.
Still I feared, perhaps irrationally, that Keith Holt, in some nocturnal invasion, would somehow find the box, deduce its purpose, and search for and find what it had held. He seemed to me to have some darker wisdom than the dear, gentle, trusting Mrs. Bunn, who would never think of poking into the storage area in the cellar where my suitcases were kept. I could not help but feel that Keith would know exactly where to go, would take the third suitcase from the bottom of the pile, the one with the perforations to let whatever was inside breathe, would break open the feeble locks, and would find the carefully wrapped and stored away pieces of flesh.
Flesh. I am growing tired of calling it that. Perhaps the Host would be a better term, for flesh sounds so fleshy. And it is indeed the Host, the Host of the Eucharist, the guide that takes me by the hand (or the tongue) and so leads me into God’s glory. But it would not have been the Host to Keith Holt, nor to anyone else who would stumble across it in that way. It would be nothing but the trove of a butcher.
I saw Keith Holt in church that first Sunday after the sanctuary was violated. He sat there with his parents and his little sister Kimberly, his eyes fixed on mine throughout the service. Every time I looked at him he was looking at me. Of course everyone looks at the pastor during the service. But this was different. This Sunday everyone seemed ill at ease, knowing what had happened in their place of worship, and few eyes met mine. Most of the people were looking down at their laps, stealing a furtive glance now and again at the altar, then looking away quickly, as if they could see what had been there. The details had not been published in the papers, but what the imagination creates can be far worse than reality.
As in my own case, to prove the point. If you were told that there is a rural minister who is a cannibal and a ghoul, and nothing more than that, your mind, instead of seeing the tall, thin, ascetic-looking, mild mannered fortyish man I am, would summon up images of some slavering, white-haired madman in an ecclesiastical gown (no doubt splashed with gore). His basement (or bedroom, depending on the psychosexual motivations you might come up with) would be filled with moldering corpses hanging from beams or tall trees, large chunks of meat cut from them and perhaps simme
ring in this maniac’s kitchen. History and the popular press is full of human monsters who really perpetrated such horrors, and such easy labelling would be sure to befall me were my acts discovered. Far better to tell the truth, such as I have done here, than to let imagination run wild.
I have digressed again. But I did not digress from my sermon that morning. I could not. I was locked to the outline, my mind unable to wander, my concentration fixed as it was upon that smirking boy, who would look at me and, having caught my eye, would glance quickly to the place on the altar where the paten with the cat’s head had sat. I would look at him again, and his knowing eyes would dart now to the new Bible that had replaced the old, befouled one. A third time I would look at him, and he would lead his gaze and our mutual memory to the cross, now wiped clean, but for both of us eternally stained. As my anger grew I clung to my outline like an anchor, and forged ahead with all due haste, anxious to be finished, and so quit of the presence of this demon child.
It was the shortest sermon I have preached, and when I said Amen and turned toward my pew, the congregation seemed too amazed to be delighted, although I received several favorable comments on the message as the people filed out. My practical side made a mental note to reduce the length of my sermons from then on.
That evening after dinner I walked over to the church and went to the activities room, where Youth Fellowship had just begun. Keith Holt was there, that knowing look etched firmly on his young, smooth face. I observed for a few minutes, noticing that he did not sing the songs with the others, did not even move his lips. When Randy Kornhauser began to break the young people up into groups, I went over to Keith and smiled at him.
“I’d like to speak with you, Keith. Just for a minute “
He looked at me for the longest time, as if sizing up an opponent, then nodded. “Fine,” he said. “Where?”
“My office,” I said, turning. “Just upstairs.”
The Night Listener and Others Page 12