The kitchen was cleaner now than it had been during the sitting. The counter was almost bare, except for a few slices of store-bought bread in a plastic bag and some shriveled apples piled in glass bowl. The only thing in the sink was Jacob’s denture glass.
"So, are you going to sell the place?" Roby asked the widow.
She had tucked a pinch of cinnamon-brown snuff behind her lower lip and worked it into place before answering. "I reckon not. When you stick your loved ones in the ground, you owe them. We talked it over. The kids will probably sell it off after I’m gone, but that’s their worry. Me, I’m going to leave this world and join Jacob with a peaceful heart."
"Amen to that," Roby said.
Marlene came into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She stooped from the waist, rummaging on the bottom rack. Roby glanced at the curves of her rear. A door to sin, that’s what it was.
She closed the refrigerator and turned, holding a jar of bread-and-butter pickles. "Say, you know what would go good with this?"
"What?" Roby asked.
"Some of that meat you brought over the other night."
The widow squinted at him. "What meat? We done took that ham down to the bone."
"Oh, Roby knows what I’m talking about."
"You carry your bones with you," Roby said. "When you cross over. You carry your soured eggs and stale bread crumbs and molded cheese."
The widow took a step back, her eyes widening. "What in the world’s wrong with you?"
"Peggy Clemens knows. Whole hog. Waste no part of the animal."
"Alfred!" the widow yelled, her voice brittle off the kitchen enamel.
"And Beverly Parsons. She’s in on it. Barnaby, too."
Marlene held out the pickle jar as if it were a charm to ward off evil spirits. "You done gone crazy."
Alfred ran into the kitchen, with Buck and Harold right behind him.
Roby felt the sweat oozing out of the pores of his face like maggots from the holes of an electrified corpse. "Who’s going to make your pies?" he said. "When you die, who’s going to eat you?"
"Lord have mercy, better call the sheriff," Harold said. Alfred and Buck closed in on Roby from opposite sides of the counter.
This happened every single time. Roby was wracked by a wave of nausea and nearly collapsed. He grabbed for the edge of the counter and held himself up with effort. The room spun in the corners of his vision, the edges of the world dissolving like sugar in warm water. He felt hands gripping his arms, and he thought of Johnny Divine and the suitcase. Who would carry the suitcase after Roby was gone?
If Roby ever got to go, that was.
He pushed the hands away and straightened, trembling. "Sorry, folks. I just got a little carried away, is all. Been a mighty stressful time for all of us."
The widow studied him as if he were a bug on glass. "Anna Beth?"
The youngest daughter was standing behind her. "Yeah, Momma? Still want Sarah to call the law?"
The widow peered at Roby. "You been drinking?"
Roby fought off the small lightning bolts that streaked across the gray inside his skull. "Yeah. I apologize. First Jacob died, and then Glenn Isenhour. You know him, don’t you?"
"Distant cousin," the widow said.
"Well, he was my second cousin. All this dying going on at the same time, I guess I just let it get to me. But I’m fine now."
"You sure?" Buck said. "You look like you swallowed a live lizard."
"Yeah. I’ll just get a drink of water and I’ll be good as new."
He forced himself not to tremble as he walked to the sink. He filled the denture glass from the tap and took four big gulps.
"You better go lay down for a while," the widow said. "You’re a bit green around the edges."
"I can make it home," he said.
"Let me drive you," Alfred said.
"No. I done put you folks to enough trouble already."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. I feel a lot better now. Just needed to get something on my stomach."
"Well, you be careful driving home," the widow said. "That’s all we need, is to have to bury another one."
"I will. And I’m sorry for your loss."
"I guess we all lost something," Marlene said. "It’s like all this food everybody brought over. You eat and eat and eat, and you’re still empty inside."
Roby nodded, not sure what to say. He went outside and sat behind the wheel of his truck for several minutes before driving home.
XIII.
The back room of Clawson’s Funeral Home was as airless as a tomb. Roby didn’t turn on the lights. He knew his way well enough.
Glenn Claude Isenhour’s earthly remains were stretched out on a gurney, his belly as pale as a fish. A long, wet scar ran between his ribs. Barnaby had been at work. He had filled the suitcase. And, tonight, Roby would carry the suitcase to Johnny Divine, who would deliver it to Beverly Parsons.
Roby went outside to wait, leaning against the garage bay where Barnaby kept the hearse parked. He looked at the distant stars, the uncaring and dead moon that hung above him. At least Jacob was up there, rid of his burden, his worries over, his heart at peace. Thanks in part to Roby.
His hand went to his pocket, fidgeted for a moment, then brought out the tough and ragged hunk of meat. He put it in his mouth and chewed, swallowed without gagging, though the taste was bitter.
He was still hungry.
Same as always.
That long-ago night, when he’d made his deal with Johnny Divine, he never realized how empty a person could be.
Oh, he would do it all over again if he had the chance. He didn’t have any regrets. Because when his truck had run off the road, hit a tree and thrown him through the windshield, and he’d lain bleeding to death on the side of the road, Johnny Divine had stepped out of the black nowhere and made the offer.
If Roby had loved anybody besides himself, he might have gone ahead and died and taken his chances. But he’d been scared.
It was a fair deal, all the way around. He helped lost souls find their way to Judgment, and that was something to be proud of. Yet he was always so hollow inside.
Because he’d given Johnny Divine his heart in exchange for his life.
Roby had no relatives to eat his pie. Nobody could help him pass over, nobody could send him down the road to Judgment. Nobody had ever loved him. And he’d never loved anyone else.
All he could do was keep eating his heart himself, and hope someday that he would be full enough, or empty enough, or whatever was required.
But, as always, the leathery thing he’d eaten only left him starved for something deeper, a craving that reached beyond flesh.
He thought of Glen Claude Isenhour lying cold and lost inside the building. Shame burned Roby like an inner fire, and he put away his selfish wishes. The Isenhour family needed him. Maybe in service to others, he’d find what was lacking inside himself. Roby walked under a midnight sky that had never seemed so large, and he straightened his back against the weight of sacrifice, determined to be strong. His own judgment could wait.
Right now, he had a pie to serve and a burial to follow.
THE END
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About the author:
I have written 13 novels, including the bestsellers The RedChurch, Speed Dating with the Dead, Disintegration, As I Die Lying, and The Skull Ring. With J.R. Rain, I wrote the urban fantasy Cursed! and, as LC Glazebrook, the paranormal series October Girls, as well as the children's book If I Were Your Monster.
Other electronic works include Burial to Follow and the story collections Ashes, The First, Murdermouth, Curtains, Gateway Drug, and Flowers. I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where I write for a newspaper, play guitar, raise an organic garden, and work as a freelance fiction editor.
Come to the Haunted Computer, become a Spooky Microchip, and help me build my next book. You’ll also find writing tips, free fiction, and survival tips.
Talk to me at [email protected], "hauntedcomputer" on Twitter, or www.hauntedcomputer.com. If you enjoyed this book, please tell your friends and give another Nicholson title a try. If you hated it, why not try another one anyway? What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, and what does kill you is probably lurking in my next book. Read on for more.
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AS I DIE LYING
Burial to Follow Page 7