But once the jokes and trivia were out of the way, Mr. Delaney was all business.
“Death is the final chapter of our lives,” he told me that first day, as he guided me through the showroom past all the pink, black, antique white, platinum, and natural-wood display caskets. “The loss of a loved one is devastating. Our guests need to be treated with dignity and respect.” With that Lurch-like voice of his, he went on to explain how at the time of a loved one’s death, that’s when family members are faced with overwhelming financial decisions that must be made quickly. Said it’s our job to help those families, in whatever way possible, honor the lives of those they loved so dearly. Once he’d relayed his Rainbow ethic, Mr. Delaney’s thin lips eased into a smile, but only a slight one. He offered me a pat on the back. “Think you can do it?”
I gathered my hands behind my back, just like I’d seen him do when I first walked through the door. “I’ll do my best, sir.”
And I did. I stayed well read and up-to-date on current casket information. To improve my customer-relation skills, I read Solid Gold Customer Relations. To better understand death and dying, I read On Death and Dying. Employing a calm and measured voice, like I’d witnessed Mom do while selling Mary Kay, I could readily explain to my customers how copper caskets were resistant to corrosion and stronger than stainless steel. How excellent strength and stability made poplar a better choice than elm. How mahogany was one of our finest buys due to its hardwood durability and resistance to termites and rot. How fiberglass caskets were extremely light and most commonly used for infant burials. In my free time I’d polish the display caskets to perfection, fluff the pillows, make sure the inner crepes were frilly and stain free. I did whatever I could to provide my customers with the perfect eternal resting place for their dearly beloved.
Other times, whenever death got me down, I’d visit Mad Man. One time after handing me a beer, he offered wise words by Gandhi: “‘Each night, when I go to sleep, I die,’” he said between Miller swigs. “‘And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.’” Another time, just after I’d given Mad Man some of my old socks, no charge, he served up some Victor Hugo: “‘It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.’” Still another time, while taking a break from using those socks I’d given him to create another masterpiece, he reminded me of something Jimi Hendrix once said: “‘I’m the one that’s got to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.’” Or that Ambrose Bierce line: “‘Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.’”
Mad Man’s pep talks; Mr. Delaney’s jokes, trivia, and experience; along with all the information I’d accumulated on my own; everything helped me through my entire stint at Rainbow. There was, however, that one day where it seemed nothing could save me.
Was a Monday, mid-October, a good few months into the job. Mr. Delaney had gone home early with a headache. That meant me alone for an hour until closing. I drifted through the showroom, polishing and re-polishing the caskets: the Amber Mist, the Queen’s Lair, the Starlight Slumber. Back in those days, the way I’d constantly fret over those caskets, it was as if I was hoping to wipe away the big deaths and only consider the little ones—where each day we lose hairs, slough skin, or get the beginnings of a wrinkle around the eye. With only ten minutes left until closing, believing I was customer free, I heard the ding of the front-door bell.
It was a middle-aged black couple. Black families had always been scarce in Blackwater. Broke my heart to see one of them in Rainbow—especially this one. The man, Mr. Dixon, I immediately recognized as one of Blackwater High’s janitors. Unlike the other custodians, he never grumbled. Always managed to whistle a cool tune—like Bessie Smith’s “Me and My Gin”—while vacuuming entryway carpets, wet mopping hallways, replacing light fixtures, and disinfecting toilets and urinals. Constantly had good jokes to share. After Grandmother’s death, he’d even helped me figure out how to solve a particularly troublesome math word problem, which scored me a B- on a quiz, by far one of my highest grades ever in that subject.
His eyes, like his wife’s eyes, were overflowing creeks. Their furrowed brows: the eroded shores of those creeks. My chin trembled. I discretely positioned myself by a vase of Stargazers. Breathed in that despicable scent to ward off tears.
Mr. Dixon loosened the top button of his sweated tan shirt to speak, but couldn’t bring himself to do so. I grabbed one of the many boxes of Softique Kleenex placed throughout the showroom, swiped out a number of tissues, handed them over to the couple. I trembled the words take your time. None of us needed to speak anyway. We all knew what was up. Not only was that fall of ’88 already going on record as racking up the most number of new photos on Satan’s Tree, it was also the fall that had acquired the first photo of a black person—nineteen-year-old Dawn Dixon.
About Dawn Dixon.
She and I were the same age, had known each other since ninth grade, when her father first started working at Blackwater High. Since Dawn and I shared many of the same classes through the years, we’d often discussed one of our mutual loves: music. We agreed Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions kicked ass. Thought the DKs sounded much better with D.H. Peligro. The first record we ever listened to was Barry White’s Can’t Get Enough, owned by our mothers. There was only one area where we differed. On occasion we’d joked about what song we’d want played at our funeral. I’d said, “Spirit in the Sky.” Dawn: “Amazing Grace.”
Other things about Dawn.
She wasn’t into partying. Would always say ma’am and sir. Had a piccolo voice and eyes smokier than bonfires. Possessed a wit sharper than a Chinese throwing star, and a smile that could make the Jersey Devil weak-kneed. Like her father, Dawn had sometimes assisted me with math. My parents had also invited her over for a few of my birthday parties, even after they’d witnessed certain neighbors shaking their heads, and turning their backs while watering their late June lawns. My parents never gave a shit about their ignorant behavior. Neither did I. Whenever a Piney thug cracked wise about Dawn in my presence I was always quick to speak up. Told them to keep their bullshit remarks to themselves, or to save them for when they were hanging with their buddies, knitting rebel flags. Sure those remarks got me into a few scrapes over the years. But dealing with Terry had prepared me for those.
Standing in the Rainbow showroom with Dawn’s broken-hearted parents, all those facts came flooding back to me: How Dawn had been so smart and funny, so well-versed in music and math. And how certain assholes had ridiculed her simply because of her skin color. All that reminded me, still again, how insane life was, how kind and cruel it could be, how short and unpredictable. Which then brought up Callie, Mom, my grandmother, and Jimmy’s dad. Which led me to wonder why I’d ever decided to work at Rainbow in the first place. At least at Exxon I could’ve spent my days floating along in a gas-huffing haze. With Rainbow, I had to deal with loss and death, sober. Once all those swirling thoughts reached critical mass, I could feel that I was a goner. Forget Mr. Delaney’s jokes, Mad Man’s wise words, or all the hours of reading I’d done. While I’d been able to draw upon those resources when dealing with strangers, they eluded me when dealing with Dawn and her family. That moment felt so surreal, like what it might’ve felt like to witness, firsthand, those Bo people in Southern China, and all their caskets hanging off sheer cliff walls. That’s when I totally shut down. Drifted through the Rainbow showroom like a numb, stupid cloud. Kept handing tissue after tissue to Dawn’s parents. I even used a few myself. Mumbled words I can barely recall saying. Somewhere in there, though, I think I said “Amazing Grace.” All I know for certain is that I must’ve possessed enough wits to steer the Dixons to the Starlight Slumber. I only know that to be true because that’s what the sales receipt said when I handed it over to Mr. Delaney the very next morning.
Chapter 22
As the red swamp maple leaves changed from vibrant blood red to shriveled, crunch
y brown, then gradually back to bloom, so changed the ways I dealt with customers at Rainbow. With Grandmother’s ring in one suit pocket, and Callie’s latest letter in the other, I continued absorbing and applying everything I learned from Mr. Delaney, Mad Man, and my own readings. Whenever I’d deal with customers of Jewish faith, I was sure to first suggest caskets and burial containers that were as simple and natural as possible, no metal. Whenever I’d deal with adult children purchasing a casket for a parent, I’d often share an Einstein quote: “‘Death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.’”
Time and again, all those broken-hearted customers made me realize how I truly missed certain people that had left me in some way or another. Those customers also made me appreciate the people still hanging strong, namely Jimmy’s dad.
It had been nearly two years since his lung cancer surgery. Things had been touch-and-go for a while. Good days consisted of no infection, easy breathing, minimal hair loss. Bad days: chest pain, puking, blood clots. With time, however, the chemo regimen and other drugs had begun working their magic. The cancer hadn’t returned. He was up and about a bit more every day. Was even doing some light taxidermy, small game like bass, pheasants, and foxes. The doctors said he was lucky. Said he might actually be around for a while.
In fact, there was that one weird phone call from him, just after I’d gotten home from Rainbow one day back in May of ’89. Hadn’t even yet changed out of my work clothes and was still reeking of Softiques and Stargazers. When I first heard Jimmy’s dad’s voice, I expected bad news. But then he surprised me by saying: “I got something for you.”
When I asked what it was, all he said was: “Meet me at Duffy’s at eight tonight.” Then, click.
I spent the next couple hours—whether showering, changing into my street clothes, cranking tunes, feeding my old man, or doing dishes—wondering about that mystery gift. Maybe it was some funky stuffed animal—a hedgehog or a skunk. Or maybe reading materials related to my job. Or some pain meds he didn’t need anymore. Once my Vega’s dashboard clock struck 7:45—8:00 p.m. in bar time—I crunched through the stone and dirt parking lot, into Duffy’s.
About Duffy’s.
It was nut jobs, dye jobs, and hand jobs in the alley behind the bar. The ding of a pinball machine, the clicking shut of lipstick, the crack of pool balls, and the clicking open of a lighter. Duffy’s was where 21A on the jukebox gave you Metallica wailing “Seek & Destroy,” while 17B was Louie Armstrong crooning “It’s a Wonderful World.” It was ragged flannel shirts and crisp button-ups. Tattoos and tears, come-fuck-me pumps, and a skanky girl becoming belle of the ball at last call. It was drinking elbow-to-elbow with the Chief of Police, his son, an ex-con, or a man who’d just lost his wife, child, or parent to cancer. Duffy’s was that 7:00 a.m. Budweiser on tap before heading off to work at the power plant. It was the lights down low, mistaking cigarette smoke for ghosts, and a cemetery worker with the dirt of freshly dug graves still on his shoes.
Mr. Gigliotti was seated beneath a neon Budweiser sign hanging from a dingy wood-paneled wall. Like other times I’d seen him out and about, he wasn’t carrying his portable oxygen tank. Kept it in the cab of his pick-up, where he’d take periodic blasts from it. He motioned toward the empty seat across from him, and the Rolling Rock already waiting for me. We clinked bottles, took great gulps, squinted from all that cold going down.
At first we discussed mundane stuff like the weather; how all the pines and oaks, along with the cranberry and bayberry shrubs were blooming. All the tree frogs, white-tailed deer, and swamp darters, well, darting. The whole time, Mr. Gigliotti and I remained huddled close so we could hear one another over the rowdy crowd, the jukebox, and the hard crack of pool balls. At one point, I asked: “How’re you feeling?”
He shrugged. “A little older every day.”
There was some truth to that. His sober face: lined, ravaged. Plowed by life’s heaviest machinery. What little was left of his once coal-black hair was now white and stuffed beneath a camouflage-colored Joe Camel baseball cap. The meds he was taking to ward off the cancer would sometimes make him puke and had even made him suffer some hearing loss. Despite his better sleep and eating habits, his trademark overalls and flannel shirt hung a little loose on him. Through it all, though, he still possessed his intense Dillinger-like gray eyes. Those eyes studied me intently. “How’s the death game, son?”
I took a blast of beer, then said: “Sold an oversize today.”
While regular caskets measured between twenty-four to twenty-seven inches, oversize caskets measured between twenty-eight to thirty-one inches and higher. The one I’d sold that day clocked in at the lower end—twenty-eight.
Once I mentioned that measurement, Mr. Gigliotti knew exactly whom it was for—a buddy of his, a mountain of a guy that worked as a power plant operator. The local paper had said he died of a heart attack. I, of course, had my own theories. For a change, I kept them to myself. Just took hit after hit off my Rolling Rock, waiting for Mr. Gigliotti to reveal his mystery gift.
He must’ve noted how I was doing my best to exercise self-control, because after sparking up a cigarette—the second of three he allowed himself in a day—he motioned toward the ten-point buck head hanging above Duffy’s entrance—a shoulder mount he’d created a good ten years ago. “Now there’s an exercise in patience,” he said.
While I hadn’t witnessed him create it, as I was only nine at the time—only months before meeting Jimmy—I’d later heard all about the process. First he’d skinned the deer, cut off its antlers. Sent out the hide for tanning. Then he created a Styrofoam mannequin of the deer’s bust. Mounted the antlers on it with Bondo and drywall screws. Cut tear duct slits and a lip slot into the mannequin. Created nostrils. Cleaned it all up with a file. When the tanned deer cape was ready, he trimmed the nostrils and eyes of excess skin and cartilage. Used a whipstitch to sew up any bullet holes or other holes. The process went on and on. Once the deer cape was stretched over the mold, he made sure the brisket was aligned. Made sure the upper and lower lip of the form lined up with the hide. “The skin will tell you everything you need to know,” Mr. Gigliotti would always say. “The secret is learning how to read it.” Once he’d stitched up the animal and allowed the hide glue to dry—which could take weeks—it was still another series of labor-intensive steps: apply the air-brushed colors, carefully blend the browns, whites, and blacks. Complete any final grooming and cleaning. The entire process was so time consuming. “If you can’t accept delayed gratification,” Mr. Gigliotti would say, “you can’t be a taxidermist.”
As he eyed that shoulder mount, I could practically see him reliving each and every step it had taken to create it. Could hear his mind working, wondering if he still had it in him to do it all again. “One of these days,” I said, “you’ll create an even bigger one.”
What was left of Mr. Gigliotti’s Camel bobbed up and down between his lips, as he said: “Not so sure about that, son. But it’s nice of you to say.” He squashed out the last bit of that cigarette, then said: “Let’s go.”
The magnolia-scented, cricket-singing night air was alive. It was the perfect accompaniment as we trudged to the far end of the lot, where Mr. Gigliotti’s pickup was parked well out of the reach of streetlights.
He popped open Bessie’s passenger-side door, pulled something out. In the shadowy dark, all it looked like was a big lump of nothing in his hands.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A lead vest.”
I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets. “Jimmy put you up to this?”
Mr. Gigliotti shook his head. “I got it from one of my buddies at the medical center.”
Hands still stuffed in pockets, I gave him the once over. His lips weren’t lifted at the edges. The laugh lines around his eyes and mouth, slack. He s
eemed sincere, but I still didn’t get it.
“Well?” he said, with a wheeze. “This ain’t getting any lighter.”
I took the vest off his hands.
He eased himself inside the pickup, turned the key in the ignition. Not to fire up the engine, but the tape player. He popped in a Bessie Smith mix-tape he’d put together. First up, “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” Over the low strains of piano and muted trumpet, Bessie sang such achingly beautiful blues—the aural equivalent of the heart’s most pained and precious honey. As she continued singing, Mr. Gigliotti held his oxygen mask to his face and took a few slushy pulls from the tank. Once done, he stepped out of the truck, but left Bessie singing. Gone, for the most part, was that wheeze in Jimmy’s dad’s voice. Only a throaty quality remained—like he was imitating that muted trumpet in Bessie’s band—when he said: “Let’s see you with it on.”
I figured any minute Jimmy would jump out from behind a parked car, and yell: “You’re on Candid Camera, dumbass!” I sat the lead vest down on the ground.
“Go ahead,” said Mr. Gigliotti. “There’s a method to the madness.”
The way he said those words—far more enticing than the vest itself. When I slipped the bulky mass over my head, it only covered my torso area down to my groin. Most of the back of my Springsteen T-shirt, with that pink Caddy on it, was exposed.
Mr. Gigliotti secured the Velcro straps over my shoulders, but had problems cinching up the ones around my back. “It’s kinda old,” he said. “The fasteners are a little messed up.” His patient taxidermy hands worked a bit longer. Finally, he wheezed: “Done.” He got back in the pickup, took a couple more hits off the tank.
I hopped in, alongside him. Bessie Smith was now singing “Graveyard Dream Blues.”
Mr. Gigliotti turned the stereo down. Over the low sounds of Bessie saying something about going to the graveyard and falling down on her knees, Jimmy’s dad said to me: “You’re spooked by the power plant. I don’t get it, but that’s fine.” He glanced down at his oxygen tank and mask sitting between us on the black leather bench seat. Keeping time with Bessie’s blues, he drummed lightly on that tank with his thumb. Every time he hit it, the tank made a dull, sick-sounding ding.
New Jersey Me Page 19