Redeye

by Edgerton, Clyde

  Anyway, first I heard of the explosion plan, I’d been helping one of the Mexicans repair Mr. Copeland’s windmill. On the way back to the house I saw Mr. Blankenship get out of his buggy and go in the saddle shop. Instead of taking the path in front of the saddle shop I took the one behind it and stopped and sat down at my spot right up against where the boards don’t meet the ground. I heard a match strike on the anvil.

  “The first move,” said Mr. Blankenship.

  . . . Others making up the cast of the drama leading to the killings of ’92 include ZACK PAULSON, cowboy, and WILLIAM BLANKENSHIP, community leader and developer of the scenic, natural, cultural, anthropological, and touristic resources of Mumford Rock and her region. Copeland and Blankenship (and vigorous and farsighted organizations such as the Denver and Santa Fe Railroad Coopany) figured in the modernization of the West in the latter part of the last century through their contributions to the “civil” in civilization. Without Blankenship’s leadership surely our territory would “lag” in the march out of the old century into the new . . .

  “The first move,” said Mr. Blankenship, blowing out, “is to get a dead man to explode. It’s already happened in Arizona. One exploded down there.”

  “That’s Arizona,” says Mr. Copeland. “It ain’t happened around here.”

  “Well, it will now. If you serious about all this. And if we’ve come this far, then we ought to do it up right . . . I say. Do it up right, pard—at the train station.”

  Then Mr. Blankenship says that when somebody’s husband dies they can say something like: “Now, Mrs. Brown, we can certainly preserve Mr. Brown the tried and true way, on ice. There is no problem there, as far as it goes. But there is one potential drawback. There is one thing that can happen on the funeral day if the weather is real hot and you got a real fine, airtight coffin like P.J. Copeland builds. I don’t want to upset you, Mrs. Brown, but this has happened in the past, in Arizona, and recently right here in Mumford Rock as you recall, at the train station. The prevention for that, Mrs. Brown, is a kind of drying out, called embalming. And now Mr. Copeland and I have studied the procedure in mortuary college in Denver. It’s called ‘the modern method.’”

  Mr. Copeland says, “But it ain’t drying out.”

  “It is in a way.”

  “It don’t seem like drying out to me.”

  “Well, you get rid of the blood—that’s what I mean by drying out.”

  “I guess if you stopped there it would be drying out, but you—”

  “You don’t want to tell Mrs. Brown every damned step of all the procedures, P.J. You got to get some business sense.”

  They were quiet for a while.

  “That’d be right much trouble—exploding somebody,” said Mr. Copeland.

  “Naw, it wouldn’t,” said Mr. Blankenship. “We can get Zack to do it.”

  Zack Paulson is a cowboy everybody knows.

  ———

  I was at my spot behind the saddle shop again Saturday when they was all three in there. Mr. Blankenship, Mr. Copeland, and Zack. Zack’s hair is curly black and gray mixed in together and you can tell he’s reached the end of his journey upward in life. He’s a good cowboy and all, and he’s a Mormon, but I don’t think he’s a strict Mormon. When he walks, he’s kind of leaning forward with one shoulder lower than the other one, and he’s got this real loose way about him. He’ll be talking about something and kind of fling his arm out this way or the other. He’s a Mormon like I said, but he cusses.

  “I can get a Chinaman,” said Zack. Flinging his arm probably. “Pittman is in town and he’ll help me.” The other thing Zack does when he’s standing still is lean forward and to the side like he’s about to fall over. I think it has to do with falling off horses. He’s got hurt a bunch of times. He got his pelvis crushed.

  Mr. Blankenship says, “See, P.J. and I can arrange to have him shipped. We’ll hold him on ice for a couple of days there at the train station. Get the word out. Winslow won’t mind. He’s done way more than that for me. Is Pittman the one with that one-eyed dog?”

  “Yeah. I used to drive cattle with him. Working for the government now.”

  Mr. Blankenship had brung me and Sister and Brother all a orange apiece. He’s good about bringing us stuff from town. But he don’t spend no time on one thing before he’s on to something else. Like he’ll give me, Brother, and Sister a orange, then he’ll be doing something else—talking to Mr. Copeland or something. One time he give Brother a nickel. Brother and Sister belong to Mr. and Mrs. Copeland. They lost some others. They go to church most Sundays, and they treat me good.

  “Then on the first real hot day,” said Mr. Blankenship, “I’ll have Spencer from the newspaper there in the train station to meet somebody at the afternoon stop—I don’t know who. I’ll figure it out. Ain’t one of your nieces coming, P.J.?”

  “Yeah, but I’d just soon not do this on the day she comes in.”

  “I’ll have Spencer down there for something and all you got to do, Zack, is be sure ain’t nobody close to the coffin and we’ll get a stick of dynamite up his ass and the fuse run out the coffin and . . . and you just light it. Keep it simple. I wouldn’t want nobody to get hurt.”

  “I just soon this not be going on when my niece comes in.”

  “This is going to be real simple. Then all we want is word to get out. Spencer’ll put it in the newspaper. And let’s see, on the charge we’ll need . . . ah, why don’t you make a couple of coffins, P.J., just rough—sheep size.”

  “Billy, I said I’d—”

  “I heard what you said, P.J., but you start letting family get in the way of normal business and you end up with a hungry family. I’d rather have a happy, well-fed family than a sick, poor family. Hadn’t you?”

  “Well, yes, but she’s just buried her mama—”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. In fact that’s what I’m about. That’s what this whole business is about, P.J. Zack can get two sheep, go out north of the mesa or somewheres and get the charge figured. That’s the only way I know to do it, P.J. You ain’t never seen figures on the charge it would take to explode a Chinaman, have you?”

  “No, I can’t say as I have.”

  “Same as anybody else,” said Zack.

  “I know that, but you ain’t never seen no figures, have you?”

  “Naw. I ain’t never seen no figures on it. On that. But you don’t have to, say, explode a Chinaman any different from, say, an Egyptian.”

  “Well, that’s what I meant. I know that, Zack. God Almighty. I weren’t born yesterday. There ain’t no Egyptians around here and there’s whole goddamn road companies of Chinamen. But we’ll have to figure it with sheep, see. You’ll have to get two big sheep.”

  “It ought to be more than a little muffle,” said Mr. Copeland.

  “Yeah, but we knock out the whole damn train station, P.J.,” said Mr. Blankenship, “somebody’s gone get suspicious, don’t you think? Just a kind, gentle little explosion is what I imagine happens in these cases.”

  “I ain’t gone stick no dynamite up no Chinaman’s ass,” said Zack.

  “Try it on the sheep first, pard.”

  “We can get Cobb. He’ll do it,” said Zack. “Or Bumpy.”

  “I don’t want Bumpy in on this,” said Mr. Copeland.

  “Good gracious, P.J., we ain’t doing nothing but blowing up a Chinaman. Bumpy is what?—sixteen year old?”

  ———

  Mr. Blankenship brought the Chinaman in a wagon three days later. He was wrapped in a Union blanket. They put him in one of the coffins Mr. Copeland made, so they could haul him inside easier. Mr. Copeland’s coffins have leather on the corners. When somebody pays him enough, he uses solid silver doorplate and one time he used gold when the man that owned the Dear Vein Mines died.

  At the kitchen door—the summer kitchen, outside—Mr. Blankenship turned around and backed in, holding the end handle with two hands.

  Mr. Copeland shouted ou
t, “Sister, you take Brother and get on back to the house. I don’t want nobody coming in the kitchen while we’re in here. Bumpy, finish that hoeing you started yesterday.” He was talking about some corn down behind the feed barn. He thought I’d started on it, but I hadn’t.

  They got inside about the time Zack came trotting up on Handsome. He just drops the reins and Handsome stands there. He’s got him trained. He was to the kitchen door but had to stop when Mr. Copeland came pushing Grandma Copeland out, down the ramp in her rolling chair, and into the yard. She stays in the room built onto the kitchen, but her room ain’t got no doors so you have to go in through the kitchen. She’s the one her cheek he sewed up. She feeds Brother biscuits and plays like he’s a dog. Brother is spoilt but they don’t nobody admit it.

  I followed Zack right on in through the kitchen door, him kind of leaning, like he’s leaning into a wind.

  The Chinaman had been took out of the casket. He was still in the blanket and laying on this table that Mr. Copeland had made according to instructions in the book he brought back from mortuary school. The top was made out of tin and had a ridge around it and a stopped-up hole in one corner and you could tilt the top or the bottom up in the air—like a seesaw. You can ride it up and down when Mr. Copeland ain’t around.

  The things that Mr. Copeland and Mr. Blankenship brought back from Denver in a big grip was listed on a piece of paper that had this real fancy writing at the top. He’s got the list stuck up on the kitchen wall over the wash basin:

  The F. B. Darless Mortuary Science College, Incorporated,

  Founded 1870.

  Twenty years of dedicated service to humanity.

  On the list is: “a hard rubber pump (with check valve), tubes, trocar, needles, forceps, scalpel, scissors, eye caps, razor,” and about fifty other things, ending up with “surgeon’s silk, a dozen collar buttons, cotton sheet, six jars Higgins Glo-Tex skin coloring, two jars Form-All, six jars of plaster of Paris mix, twenty-four gills of Higgins Concentrated Embalming Liquid, and four bottles of Remove-All.”

  The grip of instruments was open and these operating things was laid out on a white cloth. Beside all that was a red stick of dynamite with a five-foot fuse.

  Mr. Copeland unbuttoned his cuffs and started rolling up his sleeves. Then he looked at me. “I thought I told you to hoe.” He started outside. “Come here a minute, Bumpy.”

  The summer kitchen has a little side porch without no chairs. Mr. Copeland sat down on the floor with his feet on the ground. “Sit down,” he said. He got that look like he does, serious look, with his eyebrow going up, when he’s going to teach me something.

  Mrs. Copeland came from around the corner. “You got a dead man in there?” she said.

  “Yes, I do. And I’m fixing to explain it all to Bumpy. How about doing something with Mama.” That’s Grandma Copeland.

  “Your mama ain’t going to like living with no corpses, P.J.”

  “Trees. We’re going to call them trees. And I ain’t heard her complain.”

  “She can’t talk, P.J. That’s why you ain’t heard her complain.”

  “I ain’t seen her complain then.”

  “Well, I don’t understand somebody moving corpses into the very kitchen they just built a room onto for their own mama.” She put her hand up in her hair like she does when she’s mad about something.

  “We ain’t going to have no trees in there but one at the time, Ann. And I’m going to show Bumpy how to jump a tooth on this Chinaman. He’s got a loose tooth.”

  “For heaven’s sakes, P.J.” She turned around and left. Mr. Copeland has got this way of going on and on until the conversation turns out on his side. I pretty much learned not to get in it with him.

  “Now listen here,” he says to me. He gets that look back on his face. “We’re getting into this whole new business which is going to help people out, and make us some money, and we’re going to practice embalming on this here Chinaman. We’re going to spice him up, more or less preserve him, so he’ll smell good and be sanitary, and in the process I’ll show you how to jump a tooth. But there is a promotion or a sort of advertising part of it all that Blankenship says we ought to do. It’ll be a kind of trick, but it’s based on di-rect fact. These things do happen. Now. This here Chinaman we got in here is dead. He’s a—”

  “I know that.”

  “He’s a Chinaman without no family. Zack and Cobb Pittman got him up where they’re building that road. And we gone have to alter him a little bit after we practice embalming him. Or we got to see that he will become altered. We’re going to—”

  “Blow him up.”

  “Exactly . . . How—how’d you know that?”

  “I saw that stick of dynamite.”

  “Yes, well, it happens in the real world. Has happened. Corpses in hot weather blow up. It’s a sad fact of the business. Our mission is to prevent that kind of tragic accident—in this territory. That’s our mission. Understand?”

  “Yessir.”

  “I don’t see no reason of you mentioning this to nobody.”

  “Yessir . . . nosir.”

  We went back in and they unwrapped the Chinaman. He was younger than I thought he’d be and his eyes and mouth was open and he had a little blue hole in his right temple. He was staring straight ahead and his eyes was glazed like a dead deer’s. I was sorry he didn’t have no family.

  “Shot hisself,” said Zack. “Derringer. Didn’t even go through.”

  Mr. Blankenship says, “I wouldn’t expect it to—with a derringer, Zack. And with a head as hard as a Chinaman’s. Now. P.J., pard? You want to do this first one?”

  “I bet he was right-handed,” said Zack.

  “Yeah, I’ll do it,” said Mr. Copeland. “Which? All three?”

  “No. I’d say just the arterial and the cavity.”

  They started doing stuff.

  “What’s the arterial and the cavity?” I asked.

  “Get the embalming liquid in his arteries so it’ll spread around—that’s arterial. And then in places like his stomach where there’s some cavities—cavity.” They were concentrating on their jobs.

  “What’s the third?—third way you’re talking about? You said ‘all three.’ ”

  “Just watch—and listen,” said Mr. Blankenship. “This is serious business. I’m going to have to . . . don’t you want me to read you how to do it, P.J.?”

  “I guess so. And when we finish I want to show Bumpy how to jump a tooth.”

  “The needle,” said Mr. Blankenship, “is the third way and that’s when you go in through their nose and pump in fluid that fills up their head and seeps down in the body and preserves them that way. But you don’t necessarily need to do that one unless they been drowned for a long time or unless you’re just looking for something extra to do. If they’re in good shape the arteries will get the embalming fluid where all it’s needed.”

  “Read on the carotid artery,” said Mr. Copeland. “I about remember it. But just read on it.”

  Mr. Blankenship starts in reading about “along a line from the sterno-clavicular articulation” to something.

  “The sterno what?”

  “Don’t you remember? Right there.”

  “I remember, I remember. I just didn’t get that word.”

  After Mr. Copeland cut two places, pumped in about two gallons of embalming liquid in one place, and got back about two and a half out of the other—the red getting lighter and lighter—and then sewed up the out hole and pumped in some more, and did some other stuff, he sent me out back with the tub and I poured it in the trench he had dug, and covered it up with the shoveled dirt. I was feeling a little funny but nobody else seemed to be. Course I’d seen some dead people before, but I hadn’t ever seen anybody get embalmed—or anybody that was shot in the head with a derringer.

  Back inside, Mr. Blankenship rubs his hands together and says, “Where is them cigarette papers, P.J.?”

  “They’re right there.”

/>   “Yes. Okay. Watch this, Zack, Bumpy.” He tears off a little piece of cigarette paper and places it right on the Chinaman’s eyeball and pulls his eyelid down over it and the eyelid sticks—stays down right in place. “Another thing, boys,” he says while he works on the other eye, “little trick Mr. Darless taught us. If you ever need what they call a internal cosmetic to give a healthy lifelike glow, then just brew up a pot of coffee and pour that into your arterial mixture.”

  “Who said that?” said Mr. Copeland.

  “Darless. Falton Darless. The one running the school. That was not in the book. But he did say it. I heard him.” He took a step back from the body. “Now see, boys, you start with this form, in our case, Mr. Ching Chung here, once a young man of promise who got in with the wrong crowd, a crowd of opium fiends. Mr. Chung was out of his element, and penniless, and nothing to look forward to but more hot seasons and freezing seasons swinging that pick, and he had no way to escape except by the tried and true method. And at the point the soul left the body”—Mr. Blankenship stepped back up to the corpse, hooked his thumbs together, and fluttered his hands up from the body like a bird—“you have left here then a mere form, void of all life. You have a sack of clay and your job as master artisan of mortuary science is to make what you have—that is dead, and appears dead—into something so lifelike that you can’t help but remember the days when life was there, thriving. You form. You color. You create. You do unto this piece of mere clay. You become a artist. Artiste. Of the deceased. Artiste of the deceased. You do this for the friends and relatives of those whose time has come. This is our calling!”

  One of the Chinaman’s eyes had come back open.

  “One of his eyes is open,” says Zack.

  Mr. Blankenship started fishing through the grip. “This is our calling,” he said, “to ease bereavement, to help transform the Wild West into the new tame west.”

  “One of his eyes is open.”