Burial to Follow

by Nicholson, Scott

  After a minute of listening to the creek, Roby walked to his truck, started it, and headed for Clawson’s Funeral Home.

  VIII.

  The back room of Clawson’s was dim and still and clammy as a cellar. The room smelled like Barnaby, or maybe that was the other way around. Roby knew that death could get in you, worm its way through your pores, crawl down your throat and into your lungs, sneak into your eyes and inside your brain. Death could surround you and suffocate you. Death could stiffen you up. Death could swell you and then shrink you. Death could do it all, change your face, give you a tight grin, take you places, open doors.

  But first, you had to shake its hand.

  Jacob Ridgehorn looked good. One of Barnaby’s finest displays of talent. The cheeks were smooth and pink, the eyes closed peacefully, the lips full. Under the shop lights, his forehead shone with the faintest luster of wax. The sparse hair was combed into place, more neat than it had ever been in life.

  Roby looked at the clock above the workbench, carefully ignoring the sharp tools, surgical saws, thread and glue and buttons and rubber bladders. Five-gallon plastic containers of chemicals lined the floor beneath the bench. A long stainless steel table stood in the middle of the room.

  It was nearly midnight.

  Roby listened to the rodents in the storage room and waited.

  Jacob’s body spasmed when the clock’s thin hands both reached straight toward heaven.

  "I tried," Roby said.

  Jacob’s mouth had parted as the skin tightened in death. Barnaby hadn’t gotten around to running a stitch through the inside of the corpse’s mouth yet. Roby was relieved that the dentures were in place. It made Jacob seem less dead somehow.

  The thing that bothered him was he could never be sure if the dead person was really dead. Or if it was a ghost.

  He’d have to ask Barnaby about that one day. Or the old man at the broken-down garage at the end of the world.

  As if the old man would tell him anything.

  But maybe Jacob would, the way he had the night before.

  "I fed them the pie," Roby said. "You never tasted such a heavenly thing."

  Jacob twitched, maybe one corner of his mouth lifted in appreciation.

  "It was good."

  No answer except the soft settling of cloth.

  "You should have seen Alfred. He was a tricky one, all right. Had to get a little feisty with him."

  Jacob said something about how Alfred always was a bit stubborn, maybe he was too much like his Daddy that way. Or maybe what Roby heard was just the whisper of a car passing on the distant street outside.

  "And Sarah.Fine girl, that one. She and Buck will give you some great grandkids once they get around to it. I know, I know, a little too late, but at least you can be content that your blood line will be carried on."

  Jacob said he figured there were plenty of Ridgehorns in the world already.

  "Anna Beth is my favorite. No, don’t get mad, I don’t mean that way, I just think she’s got spunk and will do all right for herself."

  Jacob said that a father wasn’t supposed to say such things, but now that it didn’t matter what opinions he held, he could admit that Anna Beth had been his favorite, too.

  "Marlene," Roby said. "Now, Marlene is a horse of a different color."

  Jacob waited silently, hands folded across his waist, as patient as a saint.

  "But she . . . she didn’t have none of the pie."

  Another thirty seconds of silence passed, the tick of the clock filling the gap of missing heartbeats. Jacob looked sad, even with eyes glued shut.

  "I’m sorry. But I ain’t give up yet. I just have to talk to Johnny, is all. And Barnaby. We’ll sort it all out."

  And this after I told you all the family secrets, Jacob said.

  "I know, I know. Don’t make me feel worse than I already do. And it ain’t just because I let you down. It’s because I’m—"

  Roby looked at the clock on the wall, mad at himself for expecting sympathy from a corpse. The deceased deserved all the sympathy. That’s what this was about. Honoring the dear departed.

  Jacob said it was hard to feel honored when a man’s own flesh and blood turned against him.

  "I don’t think she did it out of spite," Roby said. "And maybe it ain’t my place to say, but your family got the worst grieving manners I ever did see."

  Jacob said that every family was different, that you couldn’t understand unless you were on the inside. Roby didn’t know whether he meant the inside of the family or the inside of the coffin.

  The family, Jacob said. Though laying stiff in a coffin was no way to spend an eternity, either. That was for them who were too unlucky or too despised to get their pies eaten. Nothing sadder than to cross over with a sack of soured deviled eggs and moldy cake and a whole pie. That was no way to meet Judgment.

  "You don’t have to paint me a picture," Roby said.

  You’ll have to go see him for yourself, Jacob said.

  Roby pressed his tongue against his teeth. He didn’t want to go out there, not tonight. He wasn’t sure he could find the place again. Or maybe he was scared that he would.

  Because he’d found it every time he looked. Or else it had found him.

  And every time, whether it was midnight or sunrise, the old man was sitting there, waiting, as if the last Greyhound had rolled through forty years ago but he was still determined to catch the next.

  Except Johnny Divine’s type of waiting had no end.

  I know you’re scared, Jacob said, but I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat. Ha ha, that’s supposed to be funny.

  Roby nodded.

  See you at the viewing, Jacob said.

  Roby nodded.

  And bring the family, Jacob added.

  "I won’t let you down," Roby said.

  No, Jacob said. That’s what old Barnaby’s for.

  Roby said nothing, looked at the clock and its slow countdown toward tomorrow.

  A joke, Jacob said. He’s the undertaker, get it?

  Roby’s sense of humor was not in the best of shape. "Sleep tight."

  Jacob said he’d try his best.

  Roby headed for the door, feet as heavy as gravestones.

  And, Roby . . .

  Roby turned, looked at the sallow corpse, the rigid mouth, the sunken cheeks.

  Don’t forget to lock up behind you, Jacob said. Wouldn’t want nothing getting stolen.

  IX.

  It had been dark the first time, three in the morning maybe, the hour when even the night creatures were bone lazy and dawn seemed like it was as far away as forever. Roby had taken a wrong turn down the back country, through the little community known as Mule Camp that had once been a whistle stop on the old Virginia Creeper railway. The town had died with the passing of the locomotive era, but a few people still kept up shops in the area. Roby hadn’t been through those parts in years, not since he gave up bow hunting for deer, but that night he’d been drinking and hell bent on speed.

  He passed an old gas station he never remembered seeing before. Something about it, the suddenness of it, made him fumble for the brakes, the way it gleamed skull-white in the moonlight, its windows nothing but blank holes and the cinder block walls weeping rust and cracks. He lost control and skidded off the road, smacked a tree and bumped his head. It was a miracle he wasn’t killed outright.

  He got out of the truck and that’s when he first saw the old man sitting in shadows.

  That was the night his life changed.

  Tonight, as he pulled beside the gas pump that was so old it had a hand-operated suction pump, the same figure sat in its usual place in a warped rocking chair. Roby had the feeling that, if he dropped by during the daytime, unexpectedly, the side of the road would be barren, or he’d find only a stand of stunted jack pines. He had an equal belief that the garage could be found in other places, on other dark stretches of roads that led to nowhere. The same garage, the same old man.

  "Be
en expecting you," Johnny Divine said. His eyes shone, the only features visible amid the dark face.

  "I got what you wanted," Roby said. He pulled the suitcase off the passenger seat, slid out of the truck, and walked across the crumbling old concrete tarmac.

  "It’s not what I want, Mr. Snow," the old man said. "It’s what you need."

  "I don’t need this. I never asked for this."

  Johnny Divine’s laughter crept from the shadows, around the chipped corners of the low structure, down from the moon and up from the cold ground. "You most certainly did, sir. The first night we met. Said you’d do anything."

  "I didn’t mean it like that."

  The scratchy voice was almost sad. "They never do. I guess they never really do, when you get right down to it."

  Roby held out the suitcase. "Here."

  Johnny Divine didn’t take it. After a moment, Roby set the suitcase down near Johnny’s moccasined feet and moved a couple of steps backward. He heard a tapping sound, then saw the head of Johnny’s cane poking at the suitcase.

  "Are you sure that’s the right one?" Johnny asked.

  "Barnaby sent it special," Roby said. "Fresh."

  "Unh-huh." Johnny leaned forward and Roby got a brief glimpse of his face, the blank eyes, the dark caverns of cheeks and eye sockets. A face that looked to have drawn its substance from the surrounding blackness, cobbled and knitted itself from the dirt, shaped itself in the cold forge of the night.

  Johnny pulled the suitcase into the shadows and flipped the brass latches. Roby didn’t want to see what was inside.

  On that first night, Johnny had sent him to Clawson’s Funeral Home with the empty suitcase. Barnaby hadn’t said a word, just looked him over as if they shared an unspoken secret, then took the suitcase. Roby had waited while Barnaby attended to some work in the back room. Barnaby then gave the suitcase back to Roby, several pounds heavier. And Roby had driven back out to Mule Camp and made the delivery to Johnny Divine.

  Then Johnny had instructed Roby to go to the home of the deceased’s family and help ease the grief.

  Roby hadn’t understood then, but now he knew plenty enough.

  Enough to hold out his hand when Johnny Divine passed him the wrinkled sheet of paper.

  "Would you please, sir?" Johnny Divine said. "My eyes aren’t so good anymore."

  Roby read the name that ran across the top of the document. Glenn Claude Isenhour.

  Roby didn’t know Isenhour, but he had a feeling he would soon be his second cousin. A member of the grieving family.

  "You wouldn’t mind reading it aloud, would you?" Johnny said.

  Roby cleared his throat and held the paper higher so that it caught more of the moonlight. He tried for a mixture of solemnity and energy with his voice, as if he were a news anchor.

  "Glenn Claude Isenhour, age 72 of

  1235 Pleasant Valley Road

  , Barkersville, died Thursday morning, September 18, at PickettCountyHospital following a long illness.

  "Mister Glenn Claude Isenhour was born on December 27, 1930, to the late Otis Cornell Isenhour and the late Beulah Florence Cook Isenhour. Mister Isenhour was a veteran of the Korean War.

  "Mister Isenhour was preceded in death by his wife, Sally Ruth Ridgehorn Isenhour. He is survived by a daughter, Mary Ruth Eggers, and a son, Glenn Claude Isenhour, Jr.; two grandchildren, Glenn Claude "Trey" Isenhour, III, and Emily Faye Isenhour; and a number of nieces and nephews.

  "Funeral services for Mister Glenn Claude Isenhour will be conducted Saturday afternoon at 2 o’clock at the Clawson’s Funeral Home Chapel, officiated by the Reverend Barnaby Clawson. Burial to follow in the ShadyValleyBaptistChurch cemetery."

  Roby paused, aware of his voice being the world’s only sound, as if the walls of the old garage, the surrounding forest, and the soft dark hills were all listening.

  "Go on," Johnny Divine said. "You’re getting to the good part."

  "The family will receive friends at the viewing Friday night before the service from 7 until 8 p.m. At other times, the family will be sitting at the home of Mary Ruth Eggers,

  4752 Old Cove Road

  . In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to V.F.W. Post 1393, Barkersville. Clawson’s Funeral Home is in charge of the arrangements."

  Johnny sat back in his rocker as if he had just finished a heavy meal. "Mister Glenn Claude Isenhour."

  "Do you know him?" Roby asked.

  "I’ve made his acquaintance recently."

  Roby looked longingly back at his truck.

  "Don’t be in such a hurry," Johnny said.

  How did he know? He couldn’t see.

  But there were other kinds of sight. Some that saw through to the bone even in pitch-blackness. Some that looked right into your heart.

  "I have a problem," Roby said.

  "So I heard. Jacob told me all about it."

  "What should I do?"

  "Well, you wouldn’t want Jacob to show up for Judgment with only four-fifths of his soul. So you’d best find a way for that last family member to get a piece of the pie."

  "What if I can’t?"

  The cane tapped at the ground, steadily, four beats, five beats, then stopped. "You’ll find a way. Or you might just end up on the wrong side of this suitcase yourself."

  "I’ve got the Ridgehorn viewing, then I’ll have to run over to the Isenhour sitting. I reckon the pie will be ready by tomorrow."

  "Oh, sure. Beverly Parsons knows better than to let us down. Her daughter’s leukemia didn’t go into remission of its own accord. Unless you happen to believe in miracles."

  Roby was sick of miracles. He’d seen too many, the bad kind, nothing holy or inspiring about them. He looked around at the trees, at the kudzu that draped them and smothered them. He wondered if anything could be worse than this endless cycle of sittings, his constant posing as a relative of the deceased, his strange and endless mission. He’d been privy to too many family secrets for families that weren’t his.

  Roby peered into Johnny Divine’s pale, sightless eyes. "How many more, Johnny? How many times before I’ve paid what I owe?"

  "I didn’t set up this game of living and dying. I got caught in the middle myself. You think I like sitting out here by this spooky damned garage in the dead of night, miles from nowhere?"

  Roby had never considered the strange man’s motives. Barnaby Clawson made an earthly profit, Roby and Beverly Parsons benefited in their own selfish ways. The dead counted on these strange transactions to aid their journey to a mysterious Judgment in a plane beyond this one. But Johnny Divine seemed tied to both worlds, the one of battered suitcases and broken-down garages as well as the one of shadows and spirits.

  Though Roby had been raised a Baptist, he’d learned new rules of the road since meeting Johnny Divine. God and the devil had no place here. Unless Johnny Divine was one or the other. Or both.

  In a moment of angry bravery, Roby stepped forward until he was a few feet from the old man. "Tell me, Johnny. When you died, who ate your pie?"

  The old man’s breath came like the stale stench of a grease pit. "Who says I’m dead?"

  Roby could only nod. He looked down at the suitcase. He could have looked inside it any time over the past few hours. He could have looked inside the suitcase during any of his dozens of other courier runs. If he wanted answers, he could have found them. Not all, but some.

  Even one answer would be too many.

  "I’ll give Jacob your regards," Roby said.

  "Tell him to come on out and see me sometime," Johnny said.

  Roby headed for the truck. He believed that, if he turned, he would find that Johnny Divine had drifted off with the night mist. The garage would be gone. The suitcase and its contents would have never existed.

  He started the truck and pulled onto the dirt road. He didn’t glance even once into the rear view mirror.

  XI.

  Jacob Davis Ridgehorn may have been a simple man, a farmer and construction worker, but
you would never have guessed it from the attendance at the viewing.

  The chapel at Clawson’s Funeral Home was crowded and smelled of cologne, flowers, and Baptists. A line was out the door as neighbors, distant relatives, and local public figures took their turns viewing Jacob in the casket. As they filed past, each person would mutter a few words, say a prayer, or give a somber bow. Then the line led to the members of the immediate family, who shook hands or hugged those who came to pay their last respects.

  Or next-to-last, in the case of those who would be attending the funeral itself.

  Roby stood with the widow, offering support, keeping her supplied with tissues. Normally the oldest son or daughter ought to handle the chore, but Roby had eased his way into the family cluster and by the widow’s side. Buck and Alfred wore their suits as if they were strait jackets, looking stiff, the flesh of their necks straining over their white shirt collars.

  The widow was in a dark blue dress. It was bad luck to wear new clothes to a funeral, and she didn’t own anything in black. Marlene was in a skirt and a blouse that was unbuttoned too far down for such an occasion. She’d been avoiding Roby, staying quieter than usual, keeping to herself. Sarah wore the same print dress as she’d worn for the sitting. Anna Beth wore a yellow sweater and a brown, knee-length dress and shoes that had thick, sloping heels.

  They all looked out of place, uncomfortable. But the guest of honor, Jacob, looked as if he had been born for this very moment. His lips and eyes were relaxed, his forehead unwrinkled. Every strand of his gray, thinning hair was in place, curving gently over the peachy sheen of his skull. Barnaby had even plucked the little hairs from his ears. Jacob was radiant under the soft, recessed lights, his casket polished, his body at rest amid the plush interior. He could have been dreaming of a gentle walk toward a distant and brightly-lit gate.