the bar stool.
"I'm fixin' to start lest you don't get out of my way," the minister drawled, bringing Frank back to reality. Frank smiled thinly and didn’t feel the inclination to engage in any small talk, let alone, acknowledge the comment. His only job now was to get the hell out of there.
Turning to the family seated in the folding chairs immediately adjacent to the gravesite, Frank mechanically expressed his sympathies. He moved to the end of the chairs and tried to imagine how he could make a graceful and unnoticeable exit. He looked down at his watch. It was already six minutes past eleven. A shortness of breath attended his profusion of sweat. He wanted to throw up and considered his choice of three eggs and a double portion of corned beef hash at the diner that morning was probably a poor choice for breakfast. He burped and tasted coffee. He forced a smile and motioned to the minster to proceed.
Frank turned around and began walking slowly away from the gravesite. Nervously, he glanced up and saw the vault company employees smoking cigarettes under a large, barren maple tree. He pretended not to notice them as they watched him, then he felt like he should act as if he left something in the hearse, only he was walking away from the hearse. That change in his course of action would only take him closer to the gravesite. Would they begin to think something was amiss? Would the blast catch them as well? They were at least fifty, maybe sixty yards away. They're safe, he convinced himself, but he was still too close.
Frank began to worry, his mind reeling with visions of a hundred different scenarios. There were too many variables. His knees quivered and felt unstable crossing the grass. Should he call out for the vault company employees to take cover? He should have known they would be present. They always hang around to close the grave. But it was too late. Too many innocent lives were at stake but the die was cast. He giggled at the irony of the word, “die.”
He glanced down at his watch again. His hands were shaking so hard he had to pull his arms to his chest to hold them steady. Thirteen minutes past eleven. Two minutes to go. Frank measured the distance to the road where he could take cover in the ditch to shield himself from the explosion.
He didn’t want to turn and face the crowd again. Too many people showed up, he growled to himself. Why did they have to tell everyone in town to come? Likely the first ten or twelve rows of people will die, he estimated, but there are so many others who will be maimed and wounded. They could be potential witnesses. Did they notice how uncomfortable I looked? Would they know I planted the bomb?
Frank’s feet felt heavy as if tied to concrete blocks. Visions of his father flooded his mind. Frank thought of his youth growing up in the mortuary business. He really wanted to go to dental school but it was assumed he would take over the family business. It had been a good life for him, though often it seemed like a prison sentence and he was a "lifer." He decided in that moment to let his son choose his own career, if he lived to see his son again.
The cold, dead grass crunched beneath his feet. He didn’t want to look at his watch but he braced himself for the impending blast. It was due any minute. The roadside ditch was still twenty yards away. Should he run for it to save his own life? How much time had past? He closed his eyes and continued to plod toward the road one step in front of the other. He tried to pray and thought he saw visions of visiting angels lifting him into cloudy landscapes obscured with an enveloping whiteness.
A muffled thump snapped Frank back to reality. He instinctively collapsed to the ground to avoid the shrapnel of flying body parts and soil. Then he heard another muffled thump, followed by the whiny cranking of an obstinate car engine.
Frank rolled over and looked up to see the family being escorted into their cars. A quick glance at his watch showed the time to be eighteen minutes past eleven. The bomb should go off any minute now. What was the delay? Frank wanted to stand, to shout, to warn everyone to get the hell away from the grave but the anticipated impending horror was too much to comprehend.
One of the city officials started walking toward Frank. Frank wanted to wave him off, warn him to hit the ground, but the old fellow kept walking toward Frank. Frank knew he was a goner once the bomb exploded.
Frank tried to get up. Was there a large headstone to hide behind? He quickly discarded that option for fear the blast would topple the headstone over on top of him. What was worse--dying from shrapnel or suffocating beneath the crushing weight of a headstone?
“You okay?” the official hollered at Frank. “What’d you do, trip over a grave marker?” The official was now within normal speaking volume of Frank and stopped about three feet away.
Frank managed to collect himself enough to stammer, “I-I-I d-don’t know.” Comically he thought to himself, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up…and you’re about to be blown to smithereens.
Momentarily, Frank wondered what, or where, was “smithereens.”
“Well, look,” the official said in an overly officious tone. “Your hearse is blocking the family from leaving. You have to move it right now.”
Frank felt and heard his mouth say, “Sure.” But his mind and body rebelled in sixteen different directions and he fought to run away. The city official bent down and helped Frank to his feet. He was pretty strong for an older man. Putting his arm around Frank, he provided the necessary inertia to move Frank toward the hearse.
“You’re shaking terribly,” the official noticed. “You have a heart condition or something?”
Frank was well aware of his trembling. “Yes, I mean, no, I, I, uh, I hurt my knee.” Frank feared that any excuse sounded so lame and empty, the official must suspect something was wrong.
"Well, why don't you just get yourself to a doctor?" the old man asked. The old man said something about a knee replacement fourteen years ago but Frank didn't comprehend nor did he offer any response.
Frank approached the hearse and held his breath, praying he didn’t leave the headlights on which would have killed the battery requiring a jump and further delays. Several groups of people milled around in front of the hearse, essentially blocking his escape. They visited joyfully without the slightest awareness of their impending death. Frank wondered, that if the bomb exploded as he sat in the hearse, what flying glass would do to his skin. He’d seen thousands of accident victims who had been flung through the windshield of their cars. Bleeding to death was a slow and painful way to die. It left a nightmare for an embalmer to fix. And just who would embalm me?
Finally, the people returned to their cars and Frank started up the hearse and pulled away from the gravesite. He fought the urge to stomp on the accelerator and get the hell out of there but he kept a steady foot on the gas so as not to draw attention to himself. The further he moved away from the gravesite, the more relaxed he felt. He gasped a deep and long breath.
Frank pulled out of the cemetery onto the main city street and drove to the corner intersection. He brought the car to a stop along the boulevard and glanced in the rear-view mirror to the tented gravesite. The last of the mourners were leaving. He breathed a sigh of relief which surprised him. But then he caught sight of the vault company employees as they ambled over to the tent from underneath the barren maple tree. Shovels in hand, they would roll up the fake grass carpet and fill in the small hole.
Frank’s watch read eleven twenty-nine. Something must have gone wrong. Was the bomb smoldering, about to blow up at any minute? Would it maim these innocent workers, just doing their jobs as the intended targets were on their way home, satisfied in doing their civic duty?
Frank recalled the days of his youth sticking firecrackers into the openings of ant hills. Sometimes the firecracker didn’t go off and his friends would play a game of “chicken” to see who would to check out their handy work and see if the fuse was still lit. Sometimes the fuse was damp and the explosion delayed. Sometimes the smallest of embers on that fuse waited for the right little puff of the breeze to ignite the fuse in
to a flame. It was a test of bravado to see who was willing to believe the spark was completely extinguished and in need of relighting. And some firecrackers were duds. You just never knew.
Frank wanted to shout to the vault employees to get away, but he didn’t want to attract attention from the last of the mourners. Any aspect divulging his knowledge of the present danger would implicate him in its origin. Fear paralyzed his intentions and he despised his gutless cowardice.
Rather than wait any longer, Frank pulled the hearse away from the cemetery and headed back to the carriage house. He couldn’t risk his own safety by going back near the grave. What was done was done. He tried to tell himself he wasn’t responsible for those innocent lives, but he only half believed it.
Carefully backing the hearse into the carriage house, Frank turned off the motor. Everything was still. In his mind he retraced the steps taken to pack the cylinder. He had watched his uncle manufacture similar homemade bombs on countless occasions. It wasn’t that difficult. He did it exactly as he’d seen it done, or at least how he remembered it done. Nothing changed over the years regarding diesel fuel and fertilizer. He couldn’t believe it didn’t explode, but he was, at the same time,
Big Al's Last Blast Page 4