Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral

by Kris Radish

  The women decide to be polite but they are all thinking about this “funeral” that Lou, whoever she is, would take a day off of work for. Paul drives them out of the parking lot and through Duluth, which they find absolutely lovely. They cross over a bridge that they quickly name “the Golden Gate of the Northwoods” and roll down the windows in spite of what they think is chilly air and stare as two huge ore boats creep slowly from the mouth of a river and under a raised drawbridge on the other side of the bay that has traffic at a standstill. Rolling hills slope toward Lake Superior and they can see that Duluthians have been working hard to try and renovate the old mining city with its stunningly beautiful buildings. The streets were built wide enough years ago for a team of horses to turn around and now for snowplows to do figure eights without having to back up.

  Charming, they agree. A bit on the nippy side, but charming.

  Paul listens to them and looks into his mirror while they are talking as if they are speaking in a foreign language. He occasionally answers a question and then whips his eyes back to the front of the van where he concentrates on maneuvering past the city limits and out along the shore of the lake. “The Lake,” he calls it as if Lake Superior were the only real lake in the entire world and indeed it looks large enough to be a small ocean. He speaks of it as if he were talking about a disciple, a living saint, an admired sports star or the woman who just pulled him out of a burning building.

  “I suppose when Annie came here, she probably drove past every single thing that we are seeing right now,” Rebecca assesses. “If she did it when she was a teenager there’s a good chance she thought she was driving to the edge of the earth or hell or someplace just this side of either one of those places.”

  “Maybe she came in from the other side or something,” Balinda asks innocently.

  “There is no other side,” Paul says quickly and then puts his hand over his mouth because he’s been listening, which it is impossible not to do, but he is a young man filled with manners learned from his northwoods ancestors.

  “I never looked at a map,” Jill says, “but I’m guessing that’s Canada up there, and to the left would be a set of timbers way taller than half the largest cities in the world.”

  “Yes,” Paul answers.

  Katherine tears at her memory wishing she could uncover something that Annie once said about her Minnesota roots but her brain is a dark and dusty spot behind her eyes, she tells them, so they’ll have to wait and see what is around the next bend.

  The bend is a long one that gives them more than an hour to discuss how the parents of teenagers often forget that kids that age, who are really closer to adulthood than to childhood, develop their own social systems and “families” and have no desire to go up to the cabin or over the river and through the woods once they hit a certain age.

  “Remember?” Laura asks. “Remember how stinking awful it was to have to be dragged to some stupid-ass family event when you wanted to stay home and just be with your friends?”

  “Was that it?” Jill asks. “Do you think it was some kind of family issue or major mom or dad related event that happened up here?”

  Katherine stops them. She has a “feeling” something is about to play out, she tells them, laughing and blaming Laura, the traveling funeral psychic, for having caught her gift of perhaps knowing things before they happen.

  “It would make sense for this to be a family place because it’s close to Chicago,” Katherine says as they round a corner that is so close to the water it looks for a moment as if they are going to be swept out to sea, or in this case, a very large lake. “It feels like family up here, close, warm, friendly and those are the vibes I’m picking up.”

  Young Paul looks as if he’s suddenly seen the ghost of Annie. His eyebrows have gone up into his hairline and he’s slowed the van to a crawl. Katherine suspects he knows more than he’s saying but she goes on anyway.

  “So my guess is that something is about to happen, or we’ll make it happen and it will all fall into place.”

  “Maybe . . .” Rebecca starts and then trails off as if she’s gotten lost inside of her own head. “Maybe not knowing every detail about this trip and life is part of the lesson of this funeral. Maybe Annie wanted us to know that sometimes it’s okay to plunge feet-first and fast as hell into something without thinking the whole thing through. Really,” she goes on as if she’s trying to convince herself. “Think of all the fabulous things that have happened in the world because someone has just done it—you know, just jumped off the cliff and worried about the dangers when it’s all over.”

  Rebecca sighs and leans her head into her arm as if she is suddenly exhausted.

  “Well, that makes sense, if what I have learned of her is true,” Balinda says. “I think sometimes I think too damn much. I worry about this and that and everything else and then I wake up and four more years have slipped right out the back door.”

  Katherine starts laughing and then puts her hand on Balinda’s arm so she knows she is not laughing at her.

  “See,” she says. “This is exactly what I was talking about. Listen to us. Entire worlds are opening up and we are flinging around some very cool thoughts. It’s spontaneous, which is pretty much how this whole thing happened, for us anyway. Annie’s the one who had time to plan the whole thing out and here we are riding along in this terribly interesting stream.”

  They are still laughing twenty minutes later when Paul turns into a gravel road that is arched in branches from birch trees that must have been planted the year Paul Bunyan waltzed through this northern part of the world. A wooden sign painted with the words White Cap greets them and then Paul turns and advises them to “hang on.” The road twists first left and then right and he tells them that the original owners put the road in this way to save as many trees as possible. “Hasn’t changed a bit in all the years I’ve been alive or all the years before I was alive, from what they tell me,” he adds as they round another corner and come to a wide space where a house sits.

  “Come on in,” Paul says and when he sees them reaching for their luggage he adds, “Leave the bags, please. I’ll be taking you to where you are staying in about an hour. There are some drinks inside and Lou is waiting to take care of you. Marie should be in there too.”

  “We aren’t staying here?” Katherine asks, surprised.

  “No, ma’am, but it’s not far to your place.”

  “See?” Katherine says as they file into the house that has clearly been converted into a small lodge. “I told you something funky would happen right away.”

  They enter a small lobby that reeks of a gentle, warm, “up-northness.” There are wool jackets hanging on wooden pegs, throw rugs placed up and down the hallway, and old photos hanging haphazardly on the wall as if someone had been dancing up and down when they placed them there. Before they can get close enough to examine the photos they hear a voice.

  “Yo-ho,” a woman calls from somewhere inside the house. “Keep walking, gals. You’ll run right into us.”

  Which is exactly what happens as they move forward and enter a living room that looks as if it could be the inside of a small cathedral. The room is a cavern of greatness that stretches out to the edge of Lake Superior, so close to the shoreline it looks as if there are wave marks on the windowpanes. The view, a kaleidoscope of trees, water-washed rocks pushed flat by years of crashing waves so that the beach looks as if it is layered in colored pancakes, and windows that float into the clouds, takes everyone’s breath away.

  “Oh,” they say in a succession of gasps that obliterate every other thought from their minds, including the not-so-soft voice of Lou that bounced through the house just a moment ago.

  When Lou, all 232 pounds of her, comes around the corner and sees the women standing in a row like the wild ducks she loves to watch each morning as they seem to be discussing the weather on the beach, she starts laughing.

  No one can say anything. Lou is a vision. She bounces when she breathes
and her well-stocked frame is poured into a pair of jeans that would be tight on the Jolly Green Giant. Her gray hair, braided into two long strands, swirls down like snakes. This Lou woman has her hands on her ample hips and a smile that could knock the lights out in a football stadium, and to Rebecca, Jill, Katherine, Laura and Balinda she looks stunningly beautiful and confident.

  “Come here, girls,” she commands, opening her arms and the women walk into her as if they have just been hypnotized and begin a kissing and hugging frenzy that they will later remember as terribly wonderful.

  Then they stand back and they ask her who she is and why they are there and what in the living hell is going on.

  “Oh,” Lou snorts, laughing again. “Annie told me you’d all be like this. I bet you are about going crazy wanting to know why this part of your journey has landed you in Minnesota.”

  Then she holds up her hands as a woman who can only be Marie comes around the corner and says a simple “Hello.” The women move to meet her and then stand back to size her up as if to say, “Let’s see if she fits in.” Marie does the same thing. It laughingly looks like a face-off for a few moments, with Marie and Lou on one side of the room with their hands on their hips, and the rest of the funeral brigade on the other in the same position and then they embrace, moving together to form a mass of genuine warmth.

  Marie looks nothing like any of the women, except those who know her, have imagined. She is the opposite twin of Lou—a tall, very thin willow of a woman who has let her hair grow gray and lets it twirl however it cares to around the tops of her breasts like dancing strands of corn silk. Her dark eyes are alive and bright and the laugh lines that move in circles from the edges of her eyes in every direction come from a place, so it seems, that is much deeper than the skin that holds it in place.

  The line closes, they all embrace again and because Marie has been talking to them constantly since the funeral began, she hops into the traveling funeral, into the day, into this phase, as if she has physically been there all along.

  “So?” they all ask Lou. “Tell us.”

  She will tell them, she promises.

  But first they must wash up. Then they must sit around a table that looks as if it has been dragged in for the largest family that has ever existed. The table seats sixteen and is tucked into a dining room that was designed for a table that seats eight. Then they must drink coffee and tea and eat huge quantities of home-baked sweet rolls, sweet breads and some northwoods pastries that do not need to be chewed because the moment they sit on a tongue they disintegrate and make anyone who inhales one sigh with joy. They must wait. They must wait while Lou asks them about their trip and who they have met. She claps her hands as they spill out the history of the traveling funeral. “We met the father of Annie’s children.” “We were seconds away from meeting her husband.” “We met this young woman in New Mexico who is about to move in with Jill,” or “Balinda flew into our lives at the last moment because she put her mother in a facility that has a Polish-speaking attendant for only three more days,” or “I finally just said to myself that if I didn’t go now, if I didn’t just leave, the entire funeral would be over and I’d still be sitting at the nursing home filled with regrets.”

  All of that and then Lou leans into the table, which only means about half an inch of leaning, and says, “I’m Annie’s grandma’s sister, which means I was sort of Annie’s grandma as well. I watched that little thing grow up.”

  The women gape at Lou as if she has just told them she pulled the winning lottery ticket out of her right sock twenty minutes ago. Why this news is astounding is unknown but it’s not what they expect. They pelt her with a verbal collage of who’s, what’s, why’s and when’s that immediately bring Lou right back to her originating point of laughter.

  “You are all something,” she exclaims, slapping her hands on the table. “Let’s clean up this mess and go sit by the big window and I will tell you what you are in for. Did you bring the ashes?”

  This woman knows everything, they think. She even knows we have Annie in the shoebox. She’s a wizard. A large, gracious, and absolutely lovely wizard.

  First they brief Marie, who knows just about everything anyway from all of their phone conversations, and then Lou tells them what she knows of Annie. The steam from their coffee cups forms a ribbon of warmth around their faces as they gather around Lou as if they were watching a campfire or the last movement of a symphony or the chorus line of a Broadway musical. This they absolutely have to hear and Lou tells it all as if she is on stage, moving her hands in ever wider circles as she tells them a series of stories from front to back.

  Annie called her every day the last week before she died.

  Annie let her know about her funeral plans and talked to her about every single one of them—in great and glorious detail.

  Annie wrote and stayed in touch with her, especially after her grandma died.

  Annie spent two weeks, almost every summer, at the family cabin.

  Annie once nearly drowned off Gopher’s Point when she swam out too far because she wouldn’t listen to anyone.

  Annie once had such a horrific crush on a neighbor boy she almost quit school and moved north to this fine wilderness.

  Annie used to sneak outside, under the roof of the back shed, to smoke cigarettes and drink beer that she stole from the grocery bin behind the kitchen table.

  Annie loved watching the water here, started writing poetry when she was ten, and had a special place where they would often find her asleep or just sitting but mostly always reading.

  Annie’s grandpa died tragically, when his truck went off an icy cliff. Two years after he died, a photo of Annie, the one that was clipped to the visor of his pickup truck, was picked up on a beach by a stranger who spent two solid days trying to find Annie and he did.

  That’s when they finally stop her.

  “You have got to be kidding!” Laura shouts, unable to be silent any longer. “Are you making this up?”

  “Honey, the last time I lied is when I told a man I loved him. This is the real deal.”

  Marie, who is far from quiet, is mentally jotting down the synergy of her fellow funeral women. She is smart enough to realize that her absence up to this point has given her a bit of an edge. She knows she can ask spicy questions. She knows she is a new set of eyes and ears and she also knows she won’t hold back for a second. Marie can barely breathe from the excitement.

  Katherine scoots in closer to Lou because she thinks that she is acting so much like Annie that maybe this is her real grandmother. The way she is so sure of herself, her extraordinary sense of humor, her graciousness. Everything but the hips.

  “Are you sure you are not her real grandma?”

  “Oh, honey, no, like I said, I was her grandma’s sister, but we are a close bunch up here. It was, up until a few years ago, kind of like a big old commune what with everyone coming and going and kids here and there and everything all commingled,” Lou explains. “But as you know, things change. People die. Everything changes.”

  There is a moment then when everyone recalls why they have come to this house by the big lake. They remember that what is left of Annie, their tie to this corner of the world, is resting on the table right behind them and that their red shoes and tattered funeral book and this very conversation is leading them to another moment when they will have to tear open whatever emotional package Annie has left here for them.

  Lou turns from her chair as if she is judging a beauty contest and she looks at Katherine, Marie, Laura, Balinda, Rebecca and Jill with such seriousness that they are expecting a great announcement.

  “How are you girls doing? I know you all loved Annie so much and played a very special role in her life. This isn’t all easy. Are you okay?”

  They tell her. One by one they tell Lou about each ceremony and about the secrets of Annie’s life that came with each location and about their own personal revelations. They tell her and Lou listens as if she has kn
own each one of them her entire life and she looks like she wants to grab each one and put her in her lap where they will talk about the hard parts and rest their heads against her chest. She wants to do that and they want to let her. The women, Annie’s pallbearers, feel as if they have fallen into the womb of something warm and wonderful and they never want to leave.

  “It ain’t easy,” Lou says, slapping her knees and standing, when they have finished. “I’ve had a world of loss dropped into my hands, including our Annie, but we’re women and we deal with it and we do it in a way that somehow becomes a gift. Isn’t that something? Isn’t it something how we can take something that is so painful it makes you drop to the floor and turn it into a life lesson that makes you actually glad it happened? That’s what women do. We get on with it. It sure is something.”

  The women know it’s something. It’s been something since the moment they met Annie. It’s been something since she became ill and then really something since the box of ashes arrived at Katherine’s home and then something even wilder after that when they were assigned the duties of the official pallbearers. And now this.

  “What about the photo and the guy who found it?” Marie begs Lou. “What happened?”

  Lou smiles. She’s got them eating out of her hand and she loves every second of it.

  “Here’s the deal. I’ll tell you but I’ll tell you this evening because I have to get back to work and you have to get over to the cabin and get settled and figure out what to do with those ashes in those red tennis shoes, which are hilarious by the way. Annie loved those damned things, didn’t she?”

  Lou tells them that Paul is about to take them over to the Freeman family home, a cabin more isolated than the lodge, further into the heart of the North Shore. The kitchen is fully stocked, she tells them, there’s wine on the counter, she explains, winking, and she’ll be over to share dinner with them—they have to cook—as soon as she’s done preparing for the group of lodge guests who are due within the next few hours.