A Good Funeral Director

First published in Murder Park After Dark, Volume I

The sky threatened rain. Pewter clouds swirled in the sky like a bubbling cauldron, stirred by the deep autumn wind. On the ground, dead leaves moved with the spinning clouds above, mesmerizing vortexes of orange and red and yellow that danced across the cemetery. I tried to focus on the memorial service, the reason I was hunched in a crowd around a black, shiny casket. Nature teased me in the casket’s reflection, threatening to distract me again. I had to force myself to ignore the beauty around me and focus on the morose, like a good funeral director.

I gripped the handle of the black umbrella in my hands. My eyes drifted to the rows of gravestones around me, stretching out in every direction. Crosses, angels, obelisks. Marble, granite, fieldstone. Moss. Dead flowers. I looked at the squat stone of granite in front of the black casket. The man’s name. “Father and Husband”. The years he lived, forty seven of them.

I focused on the silent tears that fell around me. Friends and family of the deceased man, shocked by his sudden death, saddened by his passing. I could see the questions in their eyes, their frustrations with the world, the universe, their higher powers. I could practically hear their thoughts. He had been so young, so full of life. What a tragedy.

I focused on the wail of the widow being held up by her daughter. She was trembling. The white handkerchief in her hand fluttered, a contrast to the black ensemble her daughter had chosen for her. Her back couldn’t have been more rigid if she had her spine stapled to a wall. I could see her face partially covered by the veil; she’d been beautiful, once, but age and tragedy weighed heavily on her. She’d been crying when she thanked me at my funeral parlor, too. She didn’t know, wouldn’t understand, that it was a ritual for me. I take my work very seriously and my process is nearly perfect.

I focused on the daughter. She looked angry. Angry that her father had been taken from her so unexpectedly. Angry that her mother had devolved into such a blubbering mess. Angry about her job or love life or whatever other oh-so-important thing that was affecting her. I could see the tightness around her blue eyes, the same blue eyes she shared with her late father. Not that you’d know from the closed-casket service.

I focused on the words of the pastor.

“On this mountain he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death forever. The Lord God will wipe the tears from all faces.”

This preacher had real gravitas, and a genuine solemnity to him that worked well for the funeral. I had already decided I would use him again.

I looked back to the casket, blanking out the reflection of the beautiful dead leaves, focusing instead on the widow’s choice of construction. Solid wood, well-polished. It had been too easy to convince the widow to choose the casket with the understated elegance—befitting of her husband, of course—along with its high price tag. The daughter had argued, briefly and almost out of earshot, but I’ve been doing this a long time and my pitch is well-rehearsed. My words carry weight during devastating, confusing, and unfamiliar times. One widow to another. That bitch hadn’t stood a chance.

I could see in her reaction that I was right to be proud of my work. The wide eyes, the fear, the sorrow. The soft sobs, barely audible over the voice of the preacher. I might not have noticed, had I not been staring at her from behind my dark glasses.

The pastor finished speaking and the widow led her daughter to the elegant coffin. I would have to lower it soon, but not before the wife and daughter had their last moments with the deceased. Soon, the body of their father would descend into the ground, and neither they nor I nor anyone else would see him again.

Finally, I focused on him.

I remembered the way the hammer felt as it penetrated the bones just above his left eye. It had been a surprise, a gift I gave as I rode him, his erection still in me. The metal had cracked through his eyebrow and entered his cranial cavity and gotten stuck. The metallic odor of blood had sprayed up at me as I pulled the hammer loose from the mess of grey-matter and chipped bone. It had felt like cracking open a crab, searching for the sweet meat hidden inside. He went limp shortly thereafter.

The hammer was the centerpiece of my ritual. Each time it rose and fell, the sounds of the brutal damage washed over me. I worked the ritual until my right arm tired and I had to continue with my left. When that, too, had grown weak, I plunged my bare hands into the mince of flesh and skin and bone and brain. I felt for the shattered teeth and the pockets of eye jelly. I squeezed the warm mixture of gray matter with the sections of the tough tongue muscle. I destroyed everything that made that man what he was.

And then, a few days later, I built him up again, when his family brought him back to me at my funeral home. Closed-casket had been a wise decision for the service. No mortician in the world could have fixed that face.

Fat drops of rain fell from the tumultuous skies above. The pastor closed his book. It was time. I pressed the button and lowered the coffin into the ground.

It was only right for me to have attended his funeral. It was some of my best work yet.