Cemetery Strike

by Christopher Orza

  We wheeled her all the way to an old section of the cemetery that wasn’t used anymore. The place felt calmer than any other part of the city. It felt cleaner. And it felt new, though the headstones crumbled like gray salt. This was a place the strike hadn’t ruined. It was a part of the city untouched by greed. Two long-handled shovels were already in the grass.

  Sonny parked the wheelbarrow, tilted it, let his wife roll out. He said, “Before we start, I need to thank you.” He smiled the same way the Chinese delivery guy smiled. “You know I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I thought in my heart it was immoral. I just can’t do it alone. Maybe twenty years ago. Or with the tractor, but Peters has the keys to all the equipment.”

  “It’s fine. Really.” I grabbed a shovel and dug a chunk out of the earth. One of the union’s slogans they made was, “Dig for truth, not for you.” That’s exactly what I felt like I was doing. Each shovelful was a shovelful of truth. Sonny worked at the other end. Silently, we dug. It went on like that for a long time, just digging little shovelfuls of earth.

  After a while, Sonny took a break. All his back and hip bones cracked as he knelt down next to his wife. In the quiet, with anarchy far in the background, I heard an electric zooming noise like a tremendous remote control car. It was the cart driving toward us.

  Sonny pushed himself off the ground. “Go hide,” he said.

  “I’m not hiding,” I said. “These people are crazy.” I pulled out my huffing cross, held it in front of me like a Ninja Turtle.

  We stood there, waiting, guarding our little spot. Sonny stepped in front of his wife, not to hide her, but to protect her from ghouls, just the same as if she were alive.

  The cart turned in our direction. The one I had wanted to drive since my first day at the job. It seems petty, I know, but I really looked forward to riding that thing, picking up garbage off the paths, just doing busy work.

  The cart zoomed on, the figure in it standing up while keeping his foot on the gas. He had his neck craned, searching both sides of the path. At first I thought he was looking for a dead body.

  The cart went by, but then it stopped. The Moe just kind of looked in our direction. He stared, like he wanted us to run from him. Then he looked in every other direction, backed up the cart, and turned into our little pocket of a cemetery.

  It was Mr. Slippery Dick himself, patrolling the cemetery, even after cops had quit patrolling the city streets. His tie folded onto itself back and forth along the length of the seat. Dry beads of blood dotted the top of his bald head. He wouldn’t even look at me, because if he acknowledged me then the night in the trailer, the miserable mobster night that he lost not only fifteen thousand dollars, but self-respect, power, and whatever game he and Mr. City were playing, didn’t exist. When he was close enough, Peters said, “What is this Sonny?”

  Simply, Sonny replied, “I’m burying my wife.”

  “Why’d you pick here?” Peters asked. Looking back, it was a weird question, and one of us should’ve noticed it then, but there were too many other strange things going on.

  So Sonny answered. I think he just wanted to appease Peters as much as possible so he’d leave. Sonny said, “It’s out of the way. None of the druggies come around here ‘cause none of the deceased have ever been stored here. I’d bury her out there, but it’s easy to dig a fresh hole, and I’m sure one of them will see it.”

  Mr. Slippery looked all around. Then he said, “Obviously you have to stop digging. As I made very clear, no one in this city is getting buried.”

  “I have to bury my wife,” Sonny said. “She’s been in the apartment for days. The smell. The flies. God. She needs to be buried. I can’t leave her here to get torn open by some vultures.”

  “You’re out of compliance,” Mr. Slippery Dick said, as if it made sense. “You keep digging and I’ll call the cops.”

  “No cops are coming out here,” I said. “You’ll be lucky to see one right outside the precinct.”

  “I’ll take care of this,” Sonny said.

  I said, “You’re just stretching your prick as far as it’ll go, in hopes that it’ll grow a little.”

  Mr. Dick finally looked at me, scratching his bald and bloody head all along. “You have a lot of misplaced confidence for such a degenerate.”

  I said, “Why are you even here?”

  Sonny said, “John, stop.”

  “Listen to your papa,” Mr. Peters told me. “If you continue to speak to me with that tone, and if you continue to bury that body, I’ll do whatever I must to make you stop.”

  I said, “How motherfucker?” And I threw up my hands.

  Sonny took a step toward the cart, but then a spasm shot into his back. All of a sudden, Sonny couldn’t move, electric shocks of pain coursing through him. His sciatica popped. He could barely move. He could barely stand still. All the stress had set off a nerve in his back, crippling him, showing his age, making this a lost battle.

  “You’re not burying that body,” Mr. Slippery Dick said. “You do, and your pension will disappear. And not just yours. All the workers. All your boys. If I find so much as your goldfish flushed down one of the Woods Edge toilets, besides from plunging it back up, I’ll delete so many files, whole careers will have never existed. You got that, Sonnyboy?”

  Through gritted pain, Sonny groaned, “Yeah. I got it. Won’t bury her.”

  Peters got out then and stormed right to the wheelbarrow. He grabbed it and wheeled it to the cart, lifted it into the back. We just watched the whole time. Then he drove off, satisfied with himself.

  I said, “He’s a penishole. We should bury him instead.” Looking back, I guess it was inconsiderate to say that.

  Against the spasms, Sonny struggled to get his car keys out of his pocket. Biting the pain, he said, “Get my car. Bring it up the path. As close as you can.” He held out the keys, and for some reason I took them.

  “You can’t bring her back home,” I said.

  “I can’t leave her where Peters will find her. You heard what he said. Get the car.”

  “Don’t let that guy win,” I said. “He’s the cause of this whole thing.”

  “Why are you fighting me on this? Do what I’m asking.”

  I wanted to. I really did. But couldn’t. I said, “I never learned to drive. I’ve started a car before. I never drove one, growing up in the city. My father wouldn’t let me in his car, if he even had one. And my mom, she took the bus. That’s why I wanted to drive that cart so bad. I thought I could practice on it. You know, like, steering and shit.” I would’ve offered to carry her myself, but she was just too big. If I tried, my back would’ve broke just like Sonny’s. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Sonny struggled to look up at me. “Do you think you can watch her? I’m gonna take a long time getting to the car, and even longer trying to maneuver myself into the seat. I need to know she’ll be safe.”

  “What about you?”

  “Don’t worry about me. Make sure to watch her. If those druggies come around, most of them are such punks they’ll go away if they know you’re guarding her.”

  “Whatever you want. I promise. I’ll protect her.”

  Sonny hobbled away, cringing at every step. He made slow progress, taking way too long just to get out of view.

  So there I was, all alone in the middle of the quietest part of the cemetery with dead lungs at my feet and my huffing cross already in hand. You could imagine the situation I was in. With as long as it took him to get out of sight, I knew Sonny wouldn’t be back for hours, unless his nerves somehow straightened themselves out. So it was just me, the body, my huffing cross, and time. No ballerina…yet.

  Think about it. Sonny had asked me to guard his wife against people like me. People I’d created. It was like giving a gun to the guy who invented suicide and then telling him not to shoot it.

  I held the cross in my hand for a long time, just wiping it smooth with my shirt. If I had mineral oil and a rag, I would’ve oiled the thing. But al
l I had was my shirt, so I wiped some goo off the sharp part. Then I knelt at the body, genuflecting to Death.

  I’d been around dead bodies without huffing them, but never alone. And never when I hadn’t had one in so long. Without Sonny there, without the picket line and TV cameras and the Bitch, without anyone with half a conscience, my brain had nothing to do but say what it wanted, over and over and over.

  I unfolded the flower print bed sheet. Such big lungs, she had.

  I cocked the cross, stopped. Sonny was like an adopted father to me. He’d given me a job. He tried to teach me things. He cared. Still, I needed it. And I needed it right then.

  But I didn’t want to turn into Aimo Wall, King of all Moes. I’d told Sonny that I’d watch his dead wife, as ridiculous as it was. I couldn’t say I’d be somewhere and then not be there. That would make me the man I hated most.

  Thinking about not becoming Aimo Wall made me remember he was buried in Woods Edge. I knew where he was buried. I just never had a reason to visit him. Until right then.

  If I stayed with her, I would’ve huffed Sonny’s wife right then, so to protect her from myself I had to leave her alone. After all, Sonny did tell me to protect her from huffers, right?

  So I ran, the huffing cross in one hand, a shovel in the other. I wouldn’t take from Sonny, but I would from Aimo Wall. That fucker owed me anyway.

  I don’t know how long it took me to dig. Hours. The whole night. I don’t know. All along, though, huffers ran around me, some brave enough to investigate. But I just kept digging, swatting off huffers like gnats.

  By that time I knew some science about fresh cadavers (the bloating, the oozing, the smell…), but I didn’t know anything about bodies that’d been rotting for a year. I didn’t even know if Aimo Wall would still have skin around his chest, preserving that precious gas in his dead lungs. I definitely didn’t know if huffing him after being planted in the ground would work. But at least digging Aimo’s grave was better than huffing Sonny’s wife.

  I thought of all this as my shovel hit solid wood. With the casket exposed, I suddenly didn’t want to open it and see a skeleton of my father. So I took my huffing cross and twisted it into the wood, sort of drilling a hole through it. I even used the shovel as a hammer to really get it in there. Once I got through I bent down enough to get my mouth around it. I sucked in, held my breath, blew out. The hit opened my eyes so wide that my eyelids rolled all the way up my forehead and to the back of my neck, making my head two large eyeballs that could see everything in the universe.

  My father was never worth anything alive. Maybe a woman fell for his charm once or twice. Maybe he made a couple people laugh with his dirty jokes. When he died, though, even before huffing existed, I knew he was worth more to me dead than alive. I just never thought he’d be worth so much.

  Huffing my father was the ultimate high. Every pore in my body vibrated with satisfied calmness, all while the ballerina danced with a violin floating above her, matching her steps.

  “I can say you a secret,” the ballerina said, “if you listen.” And she moved in close enough to whisper, breathing lightly onto my cheek, lightly touching my chest, palming my balls. She said, “You’re the one who can start this. You’re the one who can end this.” Then she pecked me on the lips.

  She backed up enough to dance for me. The ground rose and fell with each breath. The air thumped with each slow heartbeat. Clouds came out to bring midnight and to rain ideas.

  I understood life completely. But then I heard a cat’s roar come out of a human and the ballerina slipped into my father’s grave, hiding, cowering.

  That’s when my own arms––apart from my body––grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “I huffed her,” my arms said, pointing erratically with their fingers to where my thoughts guarded Sonny’s wife. “That dead bitch covered in cotton flowers. She didn’t work, man. Just like the pastor. You’re shivering. Here. Take my cape.” The arms wrapped a white shadow around me.

  Then a small boat hovered up to us and my detached arms booked it, pumping fists through invisible air. A skeleton with thin gray chains around his body opened the boat and rested his hard bones on my shoulder. “My wife,” the skeleton said. It had electricity flowing through the gray chains. It said, “Stay out of Armando’s cemetery!” And the skeleton pointed to the gate. In a blink, it was back in the floating boat driving away.

  That’s when the ballerina crawled out of the grave and took my hand to lead me to safety. On the street, an alcohol girl with death on her breath came in on the other side of me. The ballerina handed me to the girl and said, “This silly one needs a bath. Just be careful of all the blood. It mixes with water.”

  The next day I woke up naked in Crystal’s bed, Sonny’s wife’s floral bed sheet wrapped all around me, bugs tickling my dick.

  That night was the biggest fuckup of my life, other than starting a death addicted apocalypse. That night was the Aimo Wall moment of my life. I said I’d be somewhere and I wasn’t there, no matter how I tried to put it otherwise. And all just to jizz in my pants and trip out. I’d let Sonny down. Even though I chose not to huff his wife, I let her be huffed. It may as well have been me. And it was me, in too many ways.

  I heard the doorknob jiggle.

  “Do you wanna play something?” It was the kid.

  “Hold on.”

  I ripped off the bed sheet, jumped out of bed. I scrambled to find some clothes. Mine were all gone, except for the suit that Mr. Peters had given me, all hung up nice in the closet. I had no choice but to wear it, even though by doing so it felt like I was endorsing him.

  “I have a board game with me. I got it with that money you gave me.”

  “I’m just. Let me get dressed. I have to…”

  I was hopping around the room, putting on dress pants with no underwear, wiping maggots off my skin. With the kid talking to me, I felt like even more of a shitbag.

  Even with the suit on, I felt exposed. Like I’d been found out, and not just by others, but by myself. I had become Aimo Wall. Or, no…I was him all along.

  Another knock at the door. “Hey Johnny.” It was Crystal this time. She probably shoved her kid aside to talk to me. Through the door she said, “Last night was like fate, us finding each other out there. You’re goddamn amazing.”

  It was the worst thing she could’ve said. It drove home just how much of a piece of shit I really was.

  Then she said, still through the door, “We should have a baby.”

  And I guess that was the worst thing she could’ve said.

  That night and morning was like the acid trip that ends all future trip outs, or the alcohol-poisoned night that makes you stop drinking, or the pot-induced panic attack that’ll even make you quit smoking cigarettes. Something changed in me that morning. I saw myself for who I really was: a fuckup that needed something…more. And a Moe like all the rest of them.

  Still through the door, Crystal said, “What about at least moving back in? There’s no reason to have your clothes and books––”

  “They’re not my books,” I said. I couldn’t get the shirt tucked in, and I had to tuck it in because it was too fucking short.

  “Whatever,” Crystal said. “If you’re going to spend your nights here, there’s no reason to not move back in.”

  Hearing that, I felt like I needed to be punished, hurt. I guess that’s why I went straight to my PO’s office. He’s the only guy who could twist my balls and corner me like the rat that I am.

  I didn’t end up playing board games with the kid or kissing Crystal on the forehead on the way out. I just finished getting dressed and left to see my PO, speed-walking out of the apartment so no one could ask me anything.

  ––––––

  Walking into my PO’s office I immediately noticed the shotgun pointed at the door, pointed at me.

  He saw I just stared at the gun. “It’s a coward new world, John,” my PO said. “Can’t be too careful with this new crowd running the st
reets.”

  I said, “I’m surprised you’re still working. Real cops aren’t even out there.” I was trying to piss him off so that he’d do something.

  “This is what I do, John. I work. I help people. It’s nice getting away from the old woman, too. So? What can I do ya for?”

  “I’m moving back in with Crystal,” I said. “I just felt like I should tell you.”

  He breathed in really deep and let the air out slow. Then he said, “Let me ask you a question. You involved with any of this body huffing business?”

  “Yeah,” I told him.

  He stopped leaning back on the swivel chair, put his hands on the table so they were closer to the trigger. “You kill people?”

  “No. I just like to get high.”

  “You like sex, too, from what your councilor says.”

  I just glared at him from under my eyebrows. People are always trying to mix sex with everything else. But I answered him. “Yeah. So?”

  My PO said, “You’re queer, aren’t you, John?”

  A hot tingle went through my skin, all the way from behind my neck to my fingers and then up to my cheeks.

  “I can spot a queer from underwater at a thousand feet,” he said. “I’m like a shark, John. I can smell it the way other men smell pussy. Tell me the truth. You queer?” He put his hand on the butt of the shotgun.

  I said, “I’m not attracted to your fat fucking face, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “It’s not what I’m asking.”

  I guess this was exactly what I went to him for: to be tormented, to be torn down to nothing so I could start over. But I froze. I just have so many blocks and so much baggage and boxes and everything else in my past that I couldn’t just say what I needed to say.

  “You don’t have to answer me, John. Just make sure you answer to yourself.” My PO fingered the guard around the trigger, staring at me through the barrel. He said, “I’m sure you have a dozen issues like this to deal with. Hell, I have my own.” And he fucking winked at me.

  Walking out of his office, I thought he was gonna shoot me in the back and then jump on my dead body. He didn’t, though. I think he just wanted me to have to live with myself. Or maybe he really was trying to rehabilitate me all along.