Burial to follow

by Scott Nicholson

  Burial to follow

  Scott Nicholson

  Scott Nicholson

  Burial to follow

  I

  The Ridgehorn kitchen was a mouth-watering shrine.

  The island counter, made of polished oak and topped with 1950’s Formica, the kind you couldn’t chip with a hatchet, was piled high with the fruits of condolence: a sweet potato pie, with pecan halves floating face-down in its burnt-orange sea; glazed ham, ringed with pineapple slices and brown sugar; green bean casserole, though beans were out of season so they must have come from some basement-stashed Mason jar; gallons of sweetened tea and diet Coke and banana pudding and gravy.

  Roby Snow looked around and made sure no one was watching. Not that anyone would care. At all the death sittings and watch-overs and grievings and gatherings he’d ever attended, food was usually the last thing on the minds of the bereaved but the first act of sympathy by acquaintances. He dipped a pinkie in the gravy, brought it to his mouth, licked the turkey drippings from his lips, and smiled.

  The marshmallows that dotted the sweet potato pie caught his fancy, and he plucked two, popped them in his mouth, then rearranged the remaining four so that no one would notice the gap in the pattern. The ham was growing cold, and gray-white grease congealed in the bottom of its tin foil container. Roby crossed the room to the cabinets, opened them.

  Crystal. Nice stuff, the kind that would hum if you put water in the glasses and rubbed your fingers around the rim. He’d seen a man on TV once who’d played a whole row of them at the same time, the glasses filled to varying depths, the performer wetting and wiping his fingers, raising a series of full notes that hung in the air like the blowing of lost whales. Crystal symphony, the man had called it.

  "Mr. Snow?"

  Roby looked away from the crystal. Anna Beth had entered the kitchen. She was the youngest of the Ridgehorn clan, and the prettiest. Years had a way of stealing beauty. Of stealing everything.

  Auburn hair. Her nose was all Ridgehorn, humped in the middle but not yet jagged, as it would be in a decade. She had her mother’s bone structure and, lucky for her, not her father’s eyes.

  Because her father’s eyes were glued shut in the back room of Clawson’s Funeral Home.

  "Hey, Anna Beth," he answered, turning his attention again to the cabinet shelves, the chinaware, the tea set, the chipped bowls in the back, the plastic fast food cups that the family probably used at the dinner table on weeknights.

  "Can I help you find something?"

  "I was looking for the Saran Wrap." He nodded toward the counter. "Flies are about to carry off the ham."

  "Next cabinet over."

  "Much obliged." He nodded, moved over, and rummaged through the shelves, behind the gelatin molds and paper grocery bags and cereal boxes. He found the wrap and brought it out. Anna Beth stared at him.

  "Sorry about your dad," he said. The wrap felt as if it weighed twenty pounds.

  "Well, we was kind of expecting it," she said.

  You never expect it, Roby Snow thought. We all know we’re bound for it, but none of us believe, deep down in our hearts, that it will ever happen to us. Or to the ones we love.

  Anna Beth’s eyes grew moist. They were as bright as the deviled eggs on the silver-plated tray. She was in her Saturday night dress, dark blue with white ruffles. Sunday best would be saved for the funeral. That was only proper. But this dress was plenty good enough for receiving callers.

  "It’s okay," Roby said. "You can cry if you want. Wouldn’t blame you a bit."

  She shrugged. "I’m about cried dry."

  "Reckon so. You folks have the sorrow round-the-clock. The rest of us get to come and go. And after it’s done, when your daddy, God bless him, is tucked in the ground, you all have to come back here and go at it some more. Grieving don’t let up its grip so easy when it comes to blood kin."

  From the living room, the widow Ridgehorn let out another long wail, this one a little tired and drawn out, as if her heart wasn’t really in it.

  "Poor Momma," Anna Beth said.

  Roby put the wrap on the counter, rolled out a couple of feet. When he yanked the clear film across the serrated blade, he caught his thumb on the sharp edges. The blade bit the thick meat above his nail.

  He put the thumb in his mouth. The blood tasted of gravy.

  "You okay?" Anna Beth asked.

  "I’ll live," he said.

  Someone had been thoughtful enough to bring paper napkins, which lay in a sterile pile near the desserts. He pulled one free and wrapped his thumb. The bleeding stopped. He ripped the piece of wrap, fluffed it in the air so the corners wouldn’t stick, then draped the clear film over the ham.

  "Can’t have all this going to waste," he said. "I know you don’t feel much up to it now, but comes a time when hunger helps feed the grief."

  "Yeah. It’s been a long time since Aunt Iva Dean passed. That was the last one in the immediate family."

  "You were seven then. I remember, because you were in the second grade, and some boy had kicked you in the shin and you had a big bruise."

  Anna Beth’s face grew thoughtful and far away, the sadness momentarily gone. "Yeah. Funny how things like that come back. I’d forgotten all about it."

  "It’s the smell," Roby said.

  "Huh?"

  "Smell. See this sweet potato pie? That’s Beverly Parsons’s favorite recipe. But she changes ingredients a little for a bereavement. Uses molasses instead of brown sugar. So the smell of molasses is a little sad to me."

  "I never noticed. I probably ate dozens of her pies, her being a neighbor and all, and she makes one for every homecoming at the church."

  "It’s not how many you eat, it’s when you eat them."

  The talk in the next room had heated up, and Anna Beth’s second cousin on her mother’s side was asking when the burial would be. The cousin was Cindy Parsons, Beverly’s daughter, maybe a future in-law since she was sweet on Alfred, the sole surviving son.

  Roby shook his head, weary. What had happened to manners? You didn’t come right out and ask the burial time, especially of the immediate family. You looked in the local newspaper and read the obituary like everybody else, or, in a pinch, you called the attending funeral home and asked. Unless you were a professional, you never spoke of the burial when you were calling on the home of the deceased. It was practically like spitting on the grave. Or spitting in the face of the survivors.

  "Anna Beth," someone called from the sitting room. Sounded like the oldest sister, Marlene. The one who liked chocolate. Roby shot a glance at the bundt cake, saw the swirl of yellow that was exposed inside the crumbling brown wedge. Marlene was clumsy with a knife.

  "I’d best go," Anna Beth said to Roby. "That’s real nice of you to take care of things out here. Most men consider that sort of thing to be women’s work."

  "I ain’t most men," he said. "And it’s the least I can do."

  "Well, you got that stubborn Ridgehorn blood in you. Just like me. I guess I’m more like Daddy than I ever like to let on."

  She waved a small good-bye and left the kitchen.

  Roby looked at the sweet potato pie. If only someone had the nerve to mention to Beverly Parsons about the molasses. Maybe it was some old Appalachian tradition. He’d never heard of it, and he was big on tradition himself. He made sure the lid was secure on the bowl of Cole slaw and slipped it into the refrigerator before the mayonnaise turned.

  That Anna Beth was a silly girl for being in her late teens. She wasn’t like her daddy at all. She was still breathing, for one thing. And she and Roby didn’t have anything in common except this house and this wake and this monumental tribute of food. They certainly didn’t share any Ridgehorn blood.

  Roby
took a knife from his pocket, eased out a sliver of Beverly Parsons’s pie, and slid it into his mouth. As good as her other death pies, molasses and all.

  He swallowed, wiped his hands, put away the Saran Wrap, and went into the sitting room to hear tales of the late Jacob Davis Ridgehorn’s honorable and God-fearing life. Every sinner got to be a saint, at least for the three days between departure and burial. Yet every saint rotted just the same.

  From the inside out.

  From the heart first.

  Roby would offer what comfort he could. He knew there were worse things than losing a loved one, and there were worse things than dying. His knowledge of those things made him swallow again. The bite of pie went down like a stone.

  II

  Widow Ridgehorn sat stiff and unyielding by the television. It was a big boxy RCA, a relic from the era of vacuum tubes. A fine layer of dust lay on it like loose skin. The decedent’s photograph leaned backward on the top of the television, framed by a corroded gilt rectangle. Jacob’s celluloid eyes were hard and dull, the face severe, like a mortician’s handiwork done twenty years too early.

  Roby sat across the room on the sofa, where Alfred had eased over. Alfred’s polite gesture not only gave Roby room, but it also moved Alfred closer to Cindy, daughter of the famed pie-maker. Alfred’s eyes were suitably haunted, edged with dark lavender, but something about the lines on his forehead gave the impression that he was unsure of his emotions.

  The widow wiped at her nose with a tattered handkerchief. "Shame about the timing of it, but I reckon there’s no good time to meet the Maker," she said. "When the Lord calls, and all."

  "Late harvest was coming up," Alfred said. "Corn first. Daddy always looked at home up there in the seat of the Massey Ferguson, his hat pressed down to his ears."

  "What about the tractor?" Marlene said. She had taken the chore of sorting things out, scheduling arrangements, seeing to the practical matters. "You going to sell it, Momma?"

  The widow looked at the photograph on the television as if seeking advice. "Don’t hardly know yet."

  Sarah, the middle sister, stood with a rustle of her patterned dress, a sleeveless rayon thing from off the rack at Rose’s Discount. It was a spring dress, really, not fit for early September, all light blue and yellow and pink. Roby felt sorrow for the family. In these parts, people couldn’t afford to go out and invest in an entire wardrobe of black just for a short period of use. They mourned in their best. How come their best was never good enough?

  He supposed that maybe all that really mattered was how you felt inside your heart.

  "Let’s not worry about that kind of thing," Sarah said. "It’s like grave-robbing, to start splitting up the goods before Daddy’s even in the ground."

  Buck, her husband, nodded in agreement. Buck had twenty acres on the back side of Elk Knob, four of it cleared for crops. He could use a tractor. He’d been making do with a walk-behind tiller, the kind that fought you when the tines hit a rock.

  Buck had asked Roby about the procedure for getting a tobacco allotment. All Roby knew about it was that the government was involved, told you how much to grow and how much not to grow, and the allotment could be passed on down as an inheritance. It was the same government that had sued the cigarette companies for millions. Damned if Roby wanted any piece of such nonsense, and had shared that opinion with Buck.

  "Reckon the will spells all that out," Alfred said. "Who gets what, and all."

  "If you don’t mind a lawyer getting a big fat chunk of it," Marlene said.

  The air in the room was heavy with perspiration and cheap perfume. Marlene’s blonde hair clung to her neck in damp strings. She was a natural blonde, all over, Roby had been told. She didn’t meet his eyes, as if she were somehow aware of his secret knowledge.

  "Well, there’s the whole funeral thing to pay for," the widow said, wringing her leathery hands.

  "Bet that thing there cost a hundred bucks to rent." Alfred pointed at the maple lectern at the room’s entrance. It had a brass-plated lamp and on its slanted surface was a notebook filled with thick, creamy paper. The guests had signed their names, a keepsake book. As if this were a time to be remembered, picked over at some future date to share laughs and what-could-have-beens.

  Roby had signed it himself, in his looping, swirling death hand, the florid signature reserved for these special times. He had almost written "good pie" after his name, but he didn’t know the widow well enough. He thought of all the lonely nights waiting ahead, an empty space beside her in the bed where Jacob Davis Ridgehorn’s shape had pressed a hollow over the years.

  He knew all about lonely. In life, you had to give your heart to somebody. When you died, all you left behind was the love you thought you had given. And when you died, that was all you got back.

  Roby had nobody, no family. Except, for the next few days, these Ridgehorns. And he wanted them to appreciate what they had lost, and what they were gaining. "Now, your pa deserves nothing but the best, so don’t skimp on the arrangements."

  "They ain’t much money," Sarah said. "Daddy worked for himself all his life, pretty much hand to mouth."

  "We’ll work it out." He nodded to the widow. "I’ll help you straighten out the papers, ma’am. And I know old Barnaby real well. I’ll make sure he does you right."

  Barnaby Clawson had been the county’s sole undertaker for forty years until a corporate chain had set up shop five years back. But Clawson still got the local trade based on brand loyalty. In the tradition of morticians everywhere, he’d found a woman who could put up with hands that caressed the dead. He had two sons by her before she decided she could no longer bear the smell of formaldehyde. She up and moved to California, some said with a Bible salesman, others said with nothing but a suitcase and a scalpel.

  Roby had felt neither sorrow nor joy for the undertaker’s luck. Barnaby was under the impression that Roby had a solid streak of Clawson in him, maybe a cousin twice removed, and had even offered Roby a job. But Roby didn’t enjoy that end of the aftercare process, the closed-door operations, the mutilation, the obvious deception. He didn’t have the heart for such casual treatment of the departed. Besides, he was spoken for.

  "Barnaby called this afternoon, wanted to bring the rest of the flowers over," Anna Beth said.

  "Probably just wanted to eat again," Alfred said. Roby could tell the boy was trying to act like the man of the house to make his mother feel more secure. Or maybe Alfred was ashamed of having wept when he heard the news and now was making sure everyone knew he was tough and suspicious.

  "I don’t think you ought to sell the tractor right off," Buck said. "You ought to think it over some."

  "We might keep it," Alfred said. "Somebody’s got to get the crops in, and there’s always next year. ‘Course, if old Barnaby Boneyard takes us for every penny, we might be selling the farm, too."

  A warmth rushed through Roby, not anger exactly, but a tiny trill of nerves. "I said I’d talk to him. He’s a fine Christian gentleman. You ought to be grateful somebody knows how to tend to all the little details. What would you have done without him?"

  Alfred sat forward, a hand on Cindy Parsons’s knee. She looked at his hand as if it were a spider crawling up her skirt.

  "Daddy always said, ‘Just toss me in the pond and let the sunfish nibble on me,’" Alfred said. "If he was done and buried, he’d be rolling over in his grave at all the waste of it. How much was that coffin? Two thousand? Two-and-a-half?"

  Widow Ridgehorn’s face collapsed, shriveled. The first sob came like a giggle, dry and nasal.

  Go to her, Roby silently commanded. For the Good Lord’s sake, comfort the poor woman.

  He would have done it himself, but some things were best left to family. Even though they thought he was part Ridgehorn, it wasn’t his place. Marlene was the one for the job. Not only was she the oldest, she was female, and Alfred had shown he wasn’t going to suffer any more uncontrolled outbursts of sensitivity. Anna Beth sat with her mout
h hanging open, and Sarah was busy picking stray threads from the hem of her dress.

  "When did you say the burial was?" Cindy Parsons said.

  "Day after tomorrow," Alfred said.

  Roby searched inside himself, found room to forgive Cindy. She’d not had many funerals herself. The Parsons clan was long-lived and didn’t breed much, so the losses were few and far between. Maybe after the sitting was over, he’d take her aside and advise her to listen to the daily obituaries on the local A.M. station.

  The widow coughed a few times, swallowed her sobs, and wiped her eyes again. "Flowers need watering," she said.

  White chrysanthemums. They were one of Barnaby’s specialties. He ran a floral arrangement on the side. One of his boys had turned out gay, but that was just the run of statistics and had nothing to do with growing up in the aftercare industry. The other boy was the one who ran the floral shop. Weddings, anniversaries, births, deaths, Barnaby took a cut from just about every memorable occasion, sad or joyful. He even had his ordaining papers and could perform a marriage if necessary.

  "I’ll get the pitcher," Anna Beth said, trying to be useful.

  "Here," the widow said. She picked up a glass and held it out.

  Everybody froze. It was Jacob’s denture glass. When he drank beer at night, too worn to chew tobacco, he’d take his teeth out of his mouth and plop them in the jar, plant the heels of his dirty socks on the hearth and gaze into the fire.

  The glass was as holy a relic as Jacob’s fishing pole and pocketknife. Far holier than a tractor. You don’t just go and insult a dead man by abusing his intimate worldly possessions. Roby chalked that one up to the widow’s distraught nature.

  "I’ll get some fresh from the kitchen," Anna Beth said, taking the glass from her mother’s shaking hand.

  "I’ll help you," Roby said, and followed her out of the room. Behind him, Buck was asking Alfred about the condition of the Massey Ferguson’s tires.