Vigil

by Robert Masello

  The last time he’d worn his dark blue suit, it had been to the faculty dinner at which he’d been officially awarded the Kingsley Chair. He’d been nervous enough on that occasion, but at least it hadn’t required him to do anything more than stand up at a dais, graciously accept a plaque, and thank the assorted professors and administrators for bestowing on him this great honor. Now he not only had to make a speech, he had to make sure it honored the memory of a guy who’d gotten himself killed—and at the same time gotten Carter’s best friend maimed beyond recognition—all because he couldn’t keep his hands off equipment he did not know how to operate.

  “I’m not sure I’m going to be able to carry this off,” he’d confessed to Beth.

  “You’ve got to stop thinking that way,” Beth had told him. “It’ll come out in your voice.”

  “So how do I keep it out?”

  “By remembering,” Beth had said, trying to calm him down, “that it was an accident. A terrible accident, and nobody paid a higher price for it than Bill Mitchell.”

  “Tell that to Joe.”

  Carter had jotted down a few notes about Mitchell’s enthusiasm for his work, his devotion to teaching the undergrads at NYU, his appreciation of rap music, and he hoped when he got up there (would he be standing in a pulpit? behind a lectern? where?) he’d be able to weave it all together into some sort of convincing whole.

  They left the apartment without much time to spare, and by the time they got to the O’Banion Brothers Funeral Home, a fair number of mourners were already assembled in the memorial chapel. Carter was introduced to Bill’s parents, to whom he’d already spoken on the phone; they were a stolid couple from the heart of Queens, looking understandably shell-shocked right now. Bill’s widow, Suzanne, introduced him to some other members of the family, too, then took him aside to thank him again for agreeing to give a eulogy.

  “I know that Bill really looked up to you,” she said. She was a pale blonde—paler, perhaps, today than usual—with almost invisible eyelashes. “He was always talking about the work you did in Sicily, and how you’d made such a great name for yourself.”

  Now Carter felt even worse.

  “And I know he was looking forward to the day when the two of you could work together on some project.” A tear formed in her eye and she dabbed at it with a wadded Kleenex. “I guess, in a way, that’s what made this mess. He couldn’t wait.” The tears started to fall. “That was just like Bill. He couldn’t wait for anything, ever.”

  A sob racked her, and Carter instinctively put his arm around her shoulders, which only seemed to make it worse. Before he knew it, he was drawing her off to one side and she was sobbing onto his jacket. Beth gave him a sympathetic glance and drifted away to talk to some of the other faculty members who had come to the service. A few minutes later, much to Carter’s relief, the funeral director asked everyone to take their seats.

  The coffin was placed on a bier draped with a red cloth at the front of the small chapel. But its lid was, of course, closed. From what Carter had heard, Mitchell’s body had been shattered by the explosion; parts of it, along with pieces of his clothing—his shoes, for instance—had never been found at all. They were presumed to have been incinerated in the fire that followed. As Suzanne spoke haltingly into the microphone attached to the lectern, Carter wondered exactly how much of her husband had been collected and how it had been arranged for burial. It was macabre, he realized, what he was doing, but maybe, given his vocation, not so surprising. Bones were his job, even his nickname, and maybe the only way to deal with something this bizarre was to treat it with the customary detachment.

  After Bill’s wife had finished, his father got up to say a few words. He read them slowly from a crumpled sheet of paper, and Carter had the impression that he had written them just as laboriously; he was not a guy used to talking about his feelings or his memories, and to have to do it now in front of all these strangers—and at the death of his son—was almost surely more than he could manage.

  Carter was the next one up, and his job, as he understood it, was to speak for the wider world, to assure everyone that Bill had also been respected and admired in the halls of academe, where he had hoped to make his mark. As Carter stepped up to the podium, he realized that he had Bill’s wife to thank for what would now be his overall theme; when she’d said that Bill could never wait, that he was always trying to hurry things along, she’d given him the theme he could use to tie everything up.

  Bill Mitchell, Carter announced at the outset, was a young man in a hurry. “He’d already come a long way—he was one of the youngest members of the department, and undoubtedly its most inquisitive—but he was also on his way, at record speed, to even greater accomplishments.” As Carter spoke, he found himself warming to the task, growing to like the poor guy more and more as he spoke. He also found that the actual experience of eulogizing was suspiciously close to addressing his students in the lecture hall. Public speaking had become second nature to him now, so much so that even as he freely extemporized on the many virtues and achievements of Bill Mitchell, he was able to look around the chapel and register who was there, who he knew, and who he didn’t.

  There were a number of people from the department, including the chairman, Stanley Mackie, along with a lot of other faces he’d merely seen around the campus from time to time. Then there were Mitchell’s relatives and friends, whom he of course didn’t recognize, and one guy in particular, sitting alone and way in the back, who didn’t look like he belonged to any camp at all. He was dressed in a rumpled blue suit and a black turtleneck, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. He had such a solemn and reclusive air about him that Carter assumed, on reflection, that he must work for the funeral home. He had the look of a professional mourner.

  Carter concluded his remarks by saying that he’d always miss Bill’s company in the faculty lab, and “without Bill around to keep me clued in, I will never again know what’s topping the current musical charts.” He said it with a sad, wry smile—which was returned by several people in the pews—and then he folded up his notes and stepped down from the podium. As he did, he noticed that the guy in the back got up and quietly left the chapel. Maybe he had some other duty to perform, or another service to grace with his doleful presence. Carter took his seat again and Beth gave him a little nod, to indicate he’d done fine.

  When all the obsequies were done, everyone adjourned to an antechamber where coffee and cake had been set up. Carter found himself elbow to elbow with Stanley Mackie, who put his cup under the spigot of the silver coffee urn, and while it filled said, “Kind words, but cold comfort.”

  Carter didn’t know how to reply. He’d already had a private conference with the chairman, and he didn’t know how much more of a pasting he was supposed to take.

  Mackie lifted his cup and stared at Carter over its rim. “The president’s office has asked me to submit a written report on the accident. I’ll write the cover letter, but I want you to write the report, describing in detail what you thought you were doing in that makeshift lab of yours, and what went wrong.”

  He’d called it Carter’s “makeshift lab” in their earlier discussion, too, and Carter sensed that Mackie was distancing himself from the whole enterprise; suddenly, it was just something that Carter had cooked up entirely on his own, and that he, the chairman, had been barely aware of. Privately, Carter wondered how Mackie would explain the disbursement of department funds, for the lighting, the laser transfer, and so on, but incriminating documents were probably being buried, shredded, and erased already. And that cover letter Mackie was going to write would undoubtedly deny or obfuscate any remaining responsibility. Carter was going to be left holding the bag.

  “Have the report at my office by next Wednesday,” Mackie said, moving away, as if even here he didn’t want to be seen spending too much time in Carter’s company.

  Although what he really needed now was a stiff drink in a dark bar, Carter filled his coffee cup
from the urn.

  “That was a good speech you gave, Professor.”

  Carter knew it was Katie Coyne, his prize pupil, before turning around. He’d seen her in the chapel.

  “Thanks. I hope I never have to give another one like it.”

  She was wearing a denim skirt and a neatly pressed work shirt—probably the most sober outfit she could put together.

  “It’s awfully nice of you to show up for this,” he said.

  “Bill Mitchell was the TA for a seminar I took last semester.”

  Carter hadn’t known that.

  “So I guess I knew him fairly well. In fact, I went to his Halloween party, and talked to your friend Professor Russo there.” She looked down at her feet, then said, hesitantly, “So how is he? I heard he was hurt pretty badly in the fire and all.”

  “Yes, he was. He’s at St. Vincent’s, in the ICU.”

  “Is he going to . . . be okay?”

  “Yes, he’s going to pull through. But it’s going to be a long haul.”

  “Could you tell him I said hi? I mean, if he even remembers who I am. And when he’s up to it, maybe, if you think he’d like it, I could come by and pay him a visit?”

  “That would be great, and I know he’d like it.” While he’d always known Katie was his smartest student, he now suspected she was also his nicest.

  Beth signaled to him from across the room, where she was talking to one of Carter’s faculty friends. She mouthed the words Should we go? and Carter nodded. He took another swallow of the coffee and put the cup down on the table. “See you tomorrow,” Carter said to Katie. She’d be at his morning lecture.

  But halfway down the steps outside, Carter was waylaid by Bill’s wife—widow, he thought, now—who said, “I hate to ask this, but would you have time to come to the burial service?”

  Carter wasn’t sure what she was talking about—hadn’t he just done that?

  “The actual interment,” she said. “It’s in about a half hour and it won’t take more than fifteen minutes.”

  Beth murmured to Carter, “I’ve got to get back to the gallery, or Raleigh will kill me.”

  “I understand,” Suzanne said to her sincerely, “and thank you for coming.” Then, turning back to Carter, she said, “But Bill’s folks were so touched by your remarks that I know it would mean a lot to them if you were there. You can ride to the cemetery with us.”

  She gestured at a rented limo idling at the curb.

  Carter felt trapped—how did you deny such a request?

  Beth seemed to settle the question for him. “I’ll meet you at home,” she said. “I’ll be back around seven-thirty.”

  As Beth crossed the street to hail a cab uptown, Carter found himself ushered with Bill’s parents and Suzanne into the waiting limo. It didn’t even occur to him until he’d been packed into the crowded backseat and they’d started on their way to wonder where the cemetery was. But his heart sank when Bill’s dad said something about how when Bill was growing up in Forest Hills, he’d learned to drive by piloting the family car around the quiet lanes of the local cemetery. When the limo driver headed for the Midtown Tunnel, Carter resigned himself to a trip all the way out to Queens.

  The ride didn’t take that long, but to Carter it felt like an eternity. And when they finally passed through the gates of Greenlawn Cemetery and drove to an open gravesite wedged between several other already occupied spots, Carter couldn’t wait to unfold himself from the backseat and get outside again to breathe fresh air—even if it was in a graveyard.

  A few cars were pulling up behind theirs, and people from the funeral home were clambering out. Carter didn’t know how much more of this condoling he could take, and he walked away to clear his head and lungs. The ground was hard-packed, and what grass was left was brown and scrubby. The headstones, on casual inspection, all seemed to bear Irish or Italian surnames, some with death dates from the early 1900s. He stopped at the top of a small knoll and looked around; the place went on for acres and acres in all directions, dotted here and there by black trees, their bare branches hanging forlornly over marble mausoleums. Not far off, he saw an elderly woman laying a wreath on a tombstone. In the distance, a tall figure in a red coat stood out against the late-afternoon skyline, then passed behind a massive headstone, topped by a trumpeting angel. The wind sighed, picking up the dead leaves and brushing them past Carter’s legs.

  He’d better get back, he thought. He wouldn’t want anyone to think he wasn’t eager to attend the actual interment.

  Down at the gravesite, the casket had been placed on some sort of mechanical contraption for lowering it into the ground, and the clergyman, in a black car coat and galoshes now, was standing at one end of the open grave. He had a white silk stole draped around his neck and held the Book of Common Prayer in his hand. Suzanne, Bill’s parents, and about a dozen other people were gathered around, occasionally stamping their feet to keep warm. The hard, barren ground seemed to radiate the cold up.

  The minister thanked them all for being there, and then, as if he too was feeling the effects of the weather, quickly opened the book and began to read. As he spoke, Carter kept his head down, but he couldn’t keep from looking up now and then. Most of the others had their heads, or at least their eyes, downcast, but some were just staring off into the middle distance. Bill’s mom was reciting, quietly but fervently, the same words that were being spoken aloud. Faith, Carter thought, and not for the first time, must be a wonderful thing. It must be an incredible help at times like this. But it was something he’d never had in his life, and knew that he never would. Was it Cardinal Newman who’d said if the church got you before the age of six, they had you for life? If that was true, then Carter was well out of danger. No church of any stripe had ever so much as laid a glove on him.

  The minister was still reading, with a good if somewhat hurried cadence, and Carter noticed now that a black Lincoln was parked on the other side of the slope; the driver, a heavyset, older man, was in the front seat, turning the page of a newspaper. Carter hadn’t seen this guy, or that car, at the funeral.

  “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes . . .” the minister was saying, and these were words even Carter had heard many times.

  Bill’s mom was saying them too, her husband’s arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders.

  “Dust to dust; in sure and certain hope—”

  Whistling in the graveyard, Carter thought. But if it provided comfort . . .

  “—of the Resurrection unto eternal life.” The minister closed the book and said, “Amen.”

  The others said it too. Bill’s mom let out a muffled wail and her husband gathered her against him. Someone gave the signal and the casket began to gradually descend into the earth. Carter, despite himself, was reminded of the dig in Sicily—the Well of the Bones. The earth there had looked a lot like this, the color of wet coffee grounds, and at the bottom, again like this, there were only bones.

  A minute or two later, it was over. The mourners said their farewells to each other and dispersed to their cars. Suzanne came over to Carter and said, “We can have the limo take you back to the city, but first we have to go to Bill’s parents’ house to drop them off.”

  It had never occurred to Carter that everyone wouldn’t be going straight back to Manhattan, and his first thought now was Where can I get a cab? Inside the cemetery it would of course be impossible, and outside its gates he had no idea where he’d be.

  “Oh, sure,” he mumbled, still wondering what other recourse he might have. “But I really don’t want to intrude on the family’s time alone,” he said. Already his eyes were scanning the remaining cars, to see if any of them might be able to give him a lift back to town. A gray Toyota was just pulling away, and about the only car left was the black Lincoln. A young man was standing beside it now—the guy from the funeral parlor, the one who looked like a professional mourner—and he was even looking in Carter’s direction.

  “Excuse me, will you?” he said t
o Suzanne, thinking this might be his last chance. “I’ll be right back.”

  As Carter walked over toward the Lincoln, the mourner’s eyes grew wide. Maybe the mortuary had sent him as a kind of supervisor, Carter thought, just in case anything went awry at the service.

  “Are you with O’Banion Brothers, by any chance?” Carter said.

  The guy looked quite flustered. “No. I’m not.”

  “Oh, because I needed a ride back into Manhattan, and I wondered if you were going that way.”

  The guy’s eyes lit up, as if he’d just been presented with a totally unexpected gift. “Yes! Absolutely. I can drop you off wherever you like.”

  “Thanks.” It was more than Carter had hoped for. “Let me just tell Bill’s family I’ve got a ride.”

  Carter went back, much relieved, and told Suzanne, who looked a little relieved herself. Maybe the family would have been on the hook for the cost of the extra limo ride.

  Returning to the Lincoln, he noticed two laborers with shovels hovering a discreet distance away. The gravediggers, here to finish the job.

  “I’m Carter Cox,” he said, extending his hand to the guy giving him the ride.

  “Ezra Metzger,” the man replied. He waved toward the car. “Please.”

  Carter got in on one side, and Ezra went around to the other, all but rubbing his hands together with glee. Maybe, Ezra thought, his luck was changing after all. Only the day before, he’d been bailed out of jail for the fracas in the UN park and released on Sam and Kimberly’s recognizance. And today he was getting an exclusive audience with the one man in New York he was most interested in talking to.

  “This is my Uncle Maury,” Ezra said, as the driver turned around in the front seat.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Maury said. “So where are we headed?”

  “Anywhere in Manhattan would be fine,” Carter replied. “But the closer to St. Vincent’s Hospital, the better.” He hadn’t checked up on Joe yet that day.