Slow Funeral

by Rebecca Ore

  “How?” Maude felt both fascination and disgust, plus anger that he’d gotten so sloppy.

  “Like I was a dog who’d gotten chewed up going after a bitch in heat.”

  “Is that what John meant by cleaning your mouth out?”

  “It was the liquor.”

  “Right, it was the liquor. Do you know how human sacrifices are handled? They get to screw lots of people, they get drunk…”

  Doug turned even paler. “I thought this had something to do with magic.”

  “Damn right. Their magic.”

  “Why did you leave me here, then?”

  Why, indeed. “I’ve tried to warn you time and again.” Last night she couldn’t speak directly because of a word-ward. Now, perhaps speaking directly amused the entities. “You’ve never believed me when I’ve warned you. You preferred believing lying men to any woman. Luke had you charmed.”

  “John drew something on my back.”

  It was a target, red and black, about an inch and a half round, right over his spine between the shoulder blades. Maude went to the sink and wet paper towels, then tried to wash the target off.

  “Is Follette coming to the funeral?”

  “He said he’d try,” Doug said.

  “John put a target on you. I can’t get it off without soap.” The teakettle water was boiling now, so Maude fixed Doug instant coffee with lots of sugar and added some cold water from the tap so he could drink it immediately. She found dishwashing soup and squirted it on another towel. “Are you feeling any better?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t know what you’re up against. The wannabe witches at Karmachila had no powers. You had to want to fuck them to end up in bed with them. That’s why I lived there—folks like that repel most real witches. Here, Terry and John have power. They’re so used to it they aren’t conscious of it.”

  “Do you have power?”

  “I can’t even get this damn target off your back.”

  “Luke will help me.”

  “Why in God’s name do you listen to Luke? Listen to Follette. He’s at least been decent to you. Luke and Follette have been rivals since the early nineteenth century.”

  “Follette, then.”

  “No, listen to me. Get in your car, get back to California as fast as you can. Drive to an airport and fly back.”

  John and Terry came back in the house. Doug’s face changed. His magic lovers returned. Maude felt mocked. “Belle flew away,” Terry told them.

  “Hawks have no gratitude,” John said. His eyes on Maude, he moved behind Doug and pressed his finger against the target.

  “Doug, are you feeling better now?” Terry asked.

  “Not particularly, but I’ll live.”

  John ground his finger into the target. “We should change for the funeral. And we could go early, to see the corpse.”

  Maude thought, at least I won the fight over Partridge. Or they tricked her so thoroughly she’d never know the difference. “I came dressed.”

  Doug went over to the sink and rinsed his face with cold water. “I need a shower.”

  Maude asked, “John, why don’t you stay inside here if the black kid’s family is hunting you?”

  Terry said, “We need to stick together.”

  “I’d like to go early with Doug,” Maude said. “You guys can come in time for the funeral later.”

  “All right, Maude.”

  Doug went for a shower. Maude crossed her arms over her breasts and sat in the kitchen with Terry and John. None of them spoke until Doug came back dressed for the funeral.

  “We’ll see you there, then,” Terry said.

  Maude nodded and went to the car with Doug. She looked up and saw a redtail hawk, perhaps Belle, flying overhead. Her arms were stiff when she unfolded them. Doug said, “I’m sorry about last night.”

  “You had no defenses against them.”

  “I should have. I lived in the Bay Area for years.”

  “They’re witches, not just a kinky couple.”

  “I think you’re wrong about them. I think they are just a kinky couple. I’ve never seen anything magical in their house.”

  “Getting you to bed with John wasn’t weird?” Maude wondered what ink made the target on Doug’s spine. Just after he seemed to realize Luke had betrayed him, he began denying what was about to happen.

  “Well, yes, but I was drunk.”

  “Is Doug inside or am I talking to a flesh puppet?”

  The car lurched slightly, but Doug didn’t answer. The possessing entity didn’t answer either, not in words. Flesh puppet for real

  The funeral home director met them at the door. Doug slumped vacant-eyed in the family pew as though he’d been turned off. Maude went up to the coffin and looked at her grandmother’s corpse again. She reached into the coffin and felt the quilt. The funeral director nodded, then left her.

  Maude leaned on the coffin and began crying. She felt abandoned and trapped. Shouldn’t her mother have cheated a little and protected her family with magic? Shouldn’t Maude have learned to work her own powers better, well enough to have turned aside drunk pickups?

  “You’re feeling sorry for yourself,” Follette said. His face looked lumpy as though the cancer had metastasized overnight.

  “I feel trapped.”

  “The magicians want you to work with them. The benefits are considerable.”

  “Are you tempting me, too?”

  “I tried to be a good magician. But magicians don’t have as much say with the entities as we’d like to think.”

  “I am trapped, then.”

  Follette said, “Pity Doug doesn’t believe in his own universe.”

  “What about me? What about Julian Springer?”

  “Springer’s trying to stop the black men from throwing themselves against John.”

  “I tried to get the boy’s soul back. John was stronger.”

  “Maybe dithering is your strong suit.”

  “Dithering?”

  “It’s what you’ve been doing for a long time, isn’t it? Even now.”

  Maude felt anger jangle her body. “I tried to be good.”

  “No, you tried to not be a witch.”

  Maude felt humiliated, and mad at Follette for doing it to her. “So I’m useless.”

  Follette said, “I won’t ever know. I’ve got to leave now.” He looked like he was in considerable pain. A thought inserted, it’s what you get trying to break the deals.

  As Follette walked away, Maude resisted an urge to open her purse and touch the revolver. She turned and watched Follette pause where Doug was sitting. Follette touched him on the shoulder and whispered in his ear, something between men, perhaps.

  Maude went to the ladies’ restroom, closed herself in a toilet stall, and opened her purse. She held the gun between her two flat hands, barrel pointed at the ceiling, and touched the hammer to her lips. Technological object. Magic object Technological object Magic object

  Was the God of the Christians something different, Maude wondered, or just another entity looking to be entertained during eternity’s long boredom?

  Maude noticed she was rocking back and forth, hands and the gun between them raised before her face, thumbs twitching over the hammer. No, this couldn’t be just up to her and a schizophrenic religious painter. Up to her, helped by a schizophrenic minister.

  “Poor Bracken County,” she said out loud. She slid the gun back in her purse, went to the sink and washed her face, then went back to use the toilet and washed her face again.

  Back in the chapel, kinsmen from her father’s side filled the front pews.

  Showtime. Maude joined Doug. He reached over and touched her hand. Who’s inside now? She looked at his eyes and saw a human man looking back, no glamour.

  Aunt Betty and Uncle Luke came in with Terry and John. John looked excited. As Betty slid into the pew beside Maude, she said, “You can relax, dear. Nothing’s going to happen here.”

&nbs
p; Luke said, “The Christians get to preach over her corpse, then we’ll take it back.”

  The first minister stood. He didn’t seem to know whether Partridge might be in heaven or sleeping in the grave until final judgment.

  “Theological confusion,” Luke said.

  Then Elehu, her father’s uncle, stood up in ministerial black. He read:

  In the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows shall be darkened,

  And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up and the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low;

  Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets.

  As Elehu explained the text, comparing stilled grinders to teeth rotted out, Maude sensed his terror of death, her fear of aging. Betty whispered, “He’s misinterpreting the text. It’s about the sack of a city.”

  Maude said, “I’m relieved they can read the Bible allegorically.” She felt Elehu was taking over the funeral service with his own concerns, his craving for recognition. He reminded her of Lower Eastside poets. Both the minor poets and the little preachers connected themselves to big myths to be superior to their day job.

  Luke asked, “Doug, you think souls are real or doesn’t science cover that?”

  Doug answered, “Science had no opinion.”

  Maude knew souls were real, but doubted anything made could be immortal. She felt betrayed by Elehu, as though she’d been expecting him to preach powerfully enough to convert her. All he’d done was expose his own anxieties. The great male lust to make a mark on the world infected him, too.

  “Now they’ve spoken their little sermons, we can go on to the real funeral,” Luke said. But they still had to stand to sing another hymn.

  21

  * * *

  FINALITIES BESIDE THE GRAVE

  The pallbearers were old white men who muttered as they shouldered the coffin. Maude followed them out to see four black horses hitched to a black hearse. The black plumes at the tops of the harness bridles swayed as the horses jerked their heads against the check reins. The hearse body was lacquered black, its metal parts silver. Maude hadn’t heard about using a horsedrawn hearse. She wondered if the cars would follow or if the mourners had to walk. The funeral home director opened the back of the hearse so the pallbearers could slide the coffin in.

  All the vehicles behind the hearse were horsedrawn. Another team of four, without the black plumes over their heads, pulled an open carriage up to Maude. Doug, Luke, and Betty came up behind her and they all got into the coach.

  “Where did you get all the horses?” Maude asked. Behind them were four carriages, drawn by pairs of black horses.

  “They belong to the mortuary,” Betty said.

  “I’ve never seen a horsedrawn hearse before.”

  “Funerals like this were quite common when I was a boy,” Luke told her.

  Betty said, “Maude, I’ve been fair with you on this. I hope you’ll finish this our way.”

  “Customs from time immemorial,” Luke said.

  “Or from 1856,” Maude said.

  Luke held out his hand, “Give me the gun.”

  “No.”

  “Who’s it for?” Betty asked.

  “It just wanted to be with me,” Maude said. She looked at Doug but he didn’t seem to hear.

  “I want the gun now,” Luke said.

  Maude gripped her purse harder.

  “If you shoot Doug,” Betty said, “his soul will be wasted.”

  “I’m not planning to shoot Doug.”

  “You’ve thought about it,” Luke said. “He’s not faithful to you. Killing the unfaithful is an honored custom here.”

  Maude wondered if they really wanted to have the gun. They could have grabbed her purse and taken it away, probably with the help of those troopers down at the highway stopping traffic for the funeral horses. “The gun wants to be with me. It’s too small a caliber to really stop people, isn’t it?”

  “The cartridges are long for the diameter,” Luke said. “Doug should be killed with a stone knife.”

  “I’m not going to shoot Doug.” Maude wondered who she could give the gun to.

  “But you have thought about it. After all, he’s thrown away advantages you would have killed to have had. Perhaps you could kill to have them,” Betty said. “If you ate Doug’s soul. You could be a good witch.”

  “Follette said no one could be a good witch,” Maude told her.

  Luke scoffed. “Follette has an odd definition of good.”

  “You wanted someone to bring technology to the county. Doug won’t do it. He hates empowering stupid people. You could do it,” Betty said. “You’d know what Doug knows after you ate him.”

  “What, I should eat him to empower stupid people?”

  Betty and Luke smiled. The hearse seemed to be moving faster than horses could go. Maude wondered if the horses and hearse was an illusion, the reality the motorized vehicles of the 1970s.

  Doug said, “Maude, can’t you hear me?”

  They were in an Oldsmobile limousine driven by a chauffeur. Maude felt her purse. The gun, or something as heavy, was still in it. “What were you saying?” she asked Doug.

  “I wanted to know if Follette said anything about meeting him later today.”

  “He seemed to be in pain,” Maude said. “He had to leave.” She wondered if the heavy object that felt like a gun in the purse was still a gun. “Uncle Luke, why don’t you like Follette?”

  “He always played like he wanted to destroy the old ways but he couldn’t quite throw away his powers. Made a mess. Ambivalence does that.”

  Maude opened her purse and looked in. It still looked like a gun.

  “You know that’s illegal to carry if you don’t have a permit,” Luke said. “You ought to give it to me until the graveside service is over.”

  For some reason, obviously magical, she had to give them the gun willingly. Maude said, “I don’t think anyone’s going to search my purse unless you tip them off, Uncle.”

  “It’s your problem,” Luke said. He smiled.

  Maybe it wasn’t a gun. If Betty and Luke could bespell her to see horsedrawn funeral vehicles, then they could have bespelled her to give them her gun.

  “You’re carrying a gun?” Doug asked.

  “Yes, the revolver my grandfather’s cousin confiscated off a murderer.”

  “Cousin on her father’s side,” Luke said to Betty.

  “Maude, I wish you’d left that at home,” Doug said.

  “Why? Because guns empower weak people?”

  “You’re not trained to use them. You could just get yourself killed pulling it. Anyone who attacked you could take it away. I shot myself, remember.”

  “Doug doesn’t like to think that he might make a pass at a girl and get blown away for a misunderstanding,” Luke said. “Give me the gun.”

  Maude shook her head.

  “Well, see if it still works,” Luke said. He leaned back against the seat.

  The hearse turned down the road to the old homeplace on the lower ridges of Wart Mountain. The limousine Maude rode in followed the hearse.

  “You’re confused,” Luke said. “You can be tricked.”

  Maude almost told Luke that Follette thought dithering was her strong suit. She folded her arms over her purse and leaned away from him.

  “Damn nigger,” Luke said, staring out the window.

  Maude looked to the right, across Luke’s body, and saw the Reverend Julian Springer, with a Bible in his hands, standing in the road’s right-of-way, just off the pavement. She said, “I don’t think so.”

  “He’s a fool,”
Betty said.

  Luke cast out a search spell so powerful it jolted Maude. “I feel two of them out there anyway.”

  “Who?” Maude asked.

  “Kin of the thief John killed. Coming to die for us.”

  “Didn’t John tempt the boy?” Maude asked.

  “John’s your cousin.”

  “Blood kin? Or by marriage?”

  “Both,” Luke said.

  Maude asked, “What are you trying to do, breed a super crazy witch?”

  Neither her aunt nor her uncle answered. The Reverend Springer began walking with the procession, falling behind little by little, but still coming on. Maude wondered if he’d disapprove of her gun. She thought, just a little farther to the grave.

  The horses stopped. No, the hearse stopped rolling forward as the driver calculated how to approach the private cemetery, whether to drive in straight or turn and back in. Behind the wrought iron fence, four gravediggers leaned against their shovels watching. The open grave, surrounded by red clay, looked like an inflamed wound.

  As she got out of the limousine, Maude didn’t see any of her father’s people in the cars pulling up along the side of the road. The Reverend Springer kept walking toward them.

  My only ally is a madman. I don’t know if my gun is real. Is saving Doug worth it?

  The Reverend Springer came up to her and said, “Work something up under that despair.”

  “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  “Rare’s the chance for a man like me to fight true evil.” He kept walking as though he planned to walk all the way to the top of Wart Mountain. Maude wondered what he meant by a man like me. A preacher? An insane man?

  John and Terry got out of their car, glowing like gods. Doug, ephemeral and glamoured, stood by Luke. They gathered together while the funeral attendants moved the coffin.

  “How’s your head?” John asked Doug.

  “I can hardly feel it,” Doug answered. “Luke gave me a special painkiller.”

  Then the world slipped sideways. A giant black man appeared striding down Wart Mountain, broken chains dangling from wrist manacles, an ex-slave bent on revenge. Maude knew the real man inside the illusion was one of the murdered thief’s uncles.