by Kyp Harness
…IGA Grocery and Hank’s Restaurant…
The man and woman in white aprons behind the glaze of the bleary, drenched window stand by the cash register and watch the procession pass.
…the seesaw and the swings dangling in the little playground, Wigford Variety and Sundries, Joe’s Garage, Massey-Ferguson…
And the procession turns and snakes around the corner, up the side street, past the little yards and houses of the town, to the gates of the cemetery at the end of the street.
The cars enter and park among the grassy knolls, all festooned with tombstones and memorials. The people crawl out of the cars, bending their heads and hunching their shoulders a bit beneath the rain as they stride in pairs and in clusters amongst and around the slanting tombstones and the waist-high monuments of the graveyard. Like pilgrims in a new and unexplored country, they make their way over to where the coffin is being removed ritualistically from the hearse and placed carefully upon the rubber straps stretched across the freshly dug grave. All come to stand at the side of the grave in an amorphous black and grey cluster, all staring down at the coffin with the rain now beating down against its lid, bubbling and beading, and Aunt Maxine beneath the undertaker’s black umbrella holds a bouquet of red roses. She stands gasping down at the coffin, her eyes wide with shock and disbelief, her sobs shaking her as they catch in her throat causing her to make a constant, liquid, moaning sound, barely audible, as her sons and her daughter at either side of her hold her supported by the arms, their faces grim and tortured. She detaches herself from their support and leans slightly toward the grave, bending slowly in the rain with everyone watching her cautiously as with frail determination, her trembling, age-spotted hands lay the bouquet of bright red roses on the lid of the coffin.
She draws back and straightens, back into the solace of her family. Her eyes take in the coffin with one long, last, despairing look, and she turns away, her hand over her mouth. Her sons and daughter hold her and they begin to move away.
All the people begin dispersing slowly, walking away from the grave silently beneath the sheets of rain now gaining velocity. The wind starts gusting, causing the neckties of the men to flicker back over their shoulders, brushing the dampened clumps of hair back across their foreheads, rustling the skirts of the women and the drenched petals of the roses. The people separate into groups and pairs and return to their cars; elderly women solicitously aided as they bow and step into the automobiles, car doors slam and motors start again. They pull out slowly and inch down the little lane of the cemetery, and looking back through the fog on the rear window, you can see the lonely coffin left behind lying on the grassy knoll, the rain driving down on it.
Later on, back at Elmer’s house, Buzz will step into the workshop in the garage, pick up the pieces of wood lying with the hammer and screwdrivers on the table. “Looks like Elmer was gettin’ ready to put new shutters on,” he’ll say. “Won’t get ’round to doin’ it now, I guess.”
The coffin shrinks away slowly beneath the heavy, grey and purple sky, fading back dimly, seen through the foggy window and the stark sheets of rain slashing down, and just as it recedes, almost disappearing from sight, a silent gust comes up and the bouquet of roses tumbles violently from its lid, turns end over end and falls to rest on the ground beside the coffin, motionless, almost as if…
But, no. The coffin shrinks away. A man in overalls comes loping from the far end of the cemetery towards the grave, and the past becomes the dream it always was.
Photo Credit: Ava Harness
About the Author
Kyp Harness is a critically acclaimed singer-songwriter who has written and recorded 200 songs on over a dozen independent recordings. He is also the author of two non-fiction books on Laurel & Hardy and Charlie Chaplin, and is the creator of the web comic Mortimer the Slug. Wigford Rememberies is his debut novel. He lives in Toronto.
www.kypharness.net