Ashes (13 page)

Damnedest of all was having to witness it and not being able to do a thing about it. You think it’s bad enough when your pecker’s gone South for the winter, try failing somebody when they need you most. Try helping when you’re helpless yourself. Even dead, even ground to government pork beneath the freight cars of B & O’s Silver Runner Engine #52, it stings a little.

Ah, hell, at least self-pity is a feeling. At least I got that.

“Don’t fret over it,” I say. “What’s done is done.”

“I think he’ll take me with him tonight,” she says, and outside the punkin sky has gone all bruised and purple, rags of clouds sopping up the last daylight.

I check my watch again, wondering for the hundredth time or so why we take our watches and clothes and wounds with us when we cross over. But maybe all we are is scars, the rip we cut in the fabric of the world, and we’re lucky to even do that, when you consider how big the universe must be. Like a bucket that spills over from being too full. Maybe me and her is some of the slop.

I want to tell her not to get her hopes up again, but see no reason to be mean. I’ve had my chances at that, but it ain’t my way. She does a good enough job beating herself up the way it is. Instead, I say, “The Good Book says there’s a time for every purpose under heaven.”

She nods, and her head shifts just a little, and her throat gapes, then a line blacker than shadow creases her neck. Her head falls plumb off, just like it did when her gentleman caller confessed his undying love. It’s laying there in the rock bed, jutting between two mossy crossties. She rolls her eyes up at me and smiles the way you do when you’re making the best of a bad situation.

“Things happen for a reason,” I say. “And things don’t happen for the same reason. Or maybe a different reason.”

I have no idea what that means. It just sounds like something a wise old coot will say when he’s trying to comfort the afflicted.

She stoops down, picks up her head gentle as a kitten, fixes it back in place, then goes through the shenanigans of checking her curls. “I can’t do a thing with it,” she says.

I gave up praying long ago, figuring providence is best kept to them that have hope, but I’m tempted to offer up a whopper right about now. I figure maybe she’s due to move on, maybe she’ll catch a caboose one night and just roll on down the line. That ain’t the way the legend ought to go, though, because I’m the train fellow. I’m the one they talk about when they walk through here and
 
whisper like they’re in church or something.

At least, I used to be. Until The Jilted Lady came along.

“I hear them,” she says, giving her hair one more little touch with those slender, pale fingers.

Beyond the tunnel come footsteps, bunches of them, shoe leather kicking up gravel and dead leaves. They usually come in groups, especially at night. More fun that way, I figure. Most times they’re giggling, the boys putting on a brave face, the girls acting like they want to be held close and protected. From cradle to grave, and even beyond, females are smart enough to act weak and dumb and vulnerable.

I can’t do much about it, since for some reason I’m bound to this little stretch of abandoned rail bed, while The Jilted Lady gets to rove the tunnel from end to end. Best I can do is bite my tongue, hold in my guts, and wait. I’m a right fair hand at waiting.

“Hey,” she yells, trying to get their attention.

Lights sweep the tunnel, cast out by what they call “flashlights,” a kind of lantern that burns without fire. Their voices are loud enough to shake the masonry with echoes, but I can’t understand a word they say. I like to think they’ve come looking for The Engineer, but my day is past. Time slides on down the track, spewing sparks from its smoke stack like the vomiting mouth of hell, rolling and rolling on until the conductor’s lantern is little more than a wink of starlight against the deep, endless night, and then even that is gone, the rumble fading, the dust settling, and the last whisper of its passing lost in the wind.

“I love you,” she says to one of them, and it could be any of them. These days, she’s none too choosy. And when you get down to it, I reckon one man’s as good as another for a woman’s purposes. Don’t matter what you’re like, as long as you’re willing to be owned. Hop whatever boxcar you can when the weather’s bad, that’s what I always say. Worry about the destination later.

But whichever man she’s talking to doesn’t hear, or walks faster, or pulls one of the young ladies closer. Their breaths plume from their mouths like the ghosts of
 
locomotive smoke, and none of them mention The Engineer. They hurry on, and by the time they’re all the way through the tunnel, it’s full dark. Both inside and out.

“He’ll be back,” she says.

“He’d be crazy not to,” I say, adjusting my entrails so I don’t look so shabby. “Any man would be lucky to earn your charms.”

Sooner or later the eastern mouth of the tunnel is filled with the light of a rising sun and the glory of birdsong.

“Almost time?” she asks.

“Pretty soon now.” I check my watch and try not to grin. Things happen for a reason, and they don’t happen for the same reason. Or maybe a different one.

She fusses with her hair. The Jilted Lady. I like the way that sounds. I’m only half a man, depending on which end we’re speaking of, but I still got my pride. All a woman’s got is vanity. There ain’t no shame in letting a lady have her way. Not a lot worth fighting over, the way I see it.

Me and her, all we got is Silver Run and time.

And each other, I reckon.

###

IN THE FAMILY

"How could you even think of selling it?" Gaines breathed on a brass rail and polished it with his jacket sleeve.

Mother should be proud, Gaines thought. But her pride was in a new luxury sedan, twice-yearly trips to the Mediterranean, face-lifts. All fleeting, mortal things. If only she had more of the Wadell blood in her. Then she would find joy in the only things that truly last: a proper memorial, a professional embalming job, a final show of respect.

"I put up with it long enough because of your father. And now that he's gone, there's no reason to hang around this—this
mausoleum
." Mother's hair was stiff from a forty-dollar frosting job at her hairdresser's. It didn't shift as she wrung her hands and rolled her eyes in another of her classic "spells."

"We've invested so much in the Home," Gaines said. "But this isn't about money. This is about tradition."

"Tradition, my foot. Your grandfather was a drunkard and a fool. He started the business because this was the only one that couldn't possibly fail. And your father was just like him. Only he had the sense to marry somebody with a good head for business."

"And business has never been better," Gaines said. "So why sell now?"

"Why? Because I've given enough of my life to the Wadell Funeral Home. I've had it up to
here
—" she put a hand to her surgically-tucked and shiny chin,"—with death and dying. And there you go, wasting a quarter grand on remodeling."

Gaines looked around the parlor. The brooding red pine paneling was gone, the walls now covered with clear-varnished oak. Strip spotlights hung in place of the fluorescent tubes that had once vomited their weak green light. Purple velvet drapes hung from the windows, in thick folds of the regal splendor that the guests of honor so richly deserved. On a raised platform at the rear of the room, soft light bathed the bier where the guests received their final tribute.

The sinking sun pried its way through the front glass, suffusing the bleached woodwork of the dais with a red-golden light. No dust gathered on the plush cushioning he had added to the straight-backed pews. The room smelled of wax and rosewater, incense and carnations. Not the slightest aroma of decaying flesh was allowed in the parlor area.

This had been a place of peace. But lately it was a place for the same argument again and again.

"Mother, please be reasonable," Gaines said. "I know Father left you the Home in his will, but he told both of us a hundred times that he wanted me to carry on the business. It’s the only thing he really felt passion for."

“That’s the truth.” She shook her head slowly, and in the soft light, she looked about half of her sixty-eight years. "I’m not doing this just for me. Though, Lord knows, I'm ready for a change. It's mostly for you."

"Me?"

"You think I want my only son to spend his life up to his elbows in the guts of corpses? Do you want to go home every night and take two long showers, but no matter how hard you scrub, the smell stays with you? It's in the food you eat, the air you breathe, it's in the water you drink, it's in your blood. And I want to save you from that."

In your blood
. That's what Mother didn't understand. The funeral parlor was more than a family business. It was a duty, a sacred trust. "You can't sell it," he said.

"Oh, I can't? You just watch." Mother stamped her two-inch heel onto the parquet floor and bustled from the room.

Gaines heard the side door slam as Mother left the parlor. Warmth crept up his face, a rush of emotion that no good interment man should allow to show. He couldn't lose his temper. Not with Stony
Hampton
's viewing a half-hour away.

He could be angry at Mother, but not at Stony's expense. Stony was a much-beloved member of the community and a top-notch mechanic. Sure, he'd had a fondness for moonshine and the cigarettes that had eventually stifled his lungs, and maybe he'd slapped his kids around a little, but all that was forgiven now, at least until the man was in the ground. For a few days, from the hour of death to service to burial, even the lowest scoundrel was a saint.

Gaines went through a curtained passage off one wing of the dais. The back room always calmed him. This, too, was a place of peace, but a peace of a different kind. This was where Gaines was alone with his art.

The sweet aroma of formaldehyde embraced him as he opened a second door. Faint decay and medicinal smells clung like a second skin to the fixtures: a stainless steel table, sloped with a drain at one end; shelves of chemicals in thick glass jars; rows of silent metal gurneys, eager to offer a final ride; garbage bins gaping in anticipation of offal and excrescence.

Here, Gaines practiced the craft of memory-polishing. Each guest had loved ones counting on Gaines' skill. The sewing shut of eyelids and lips with the thin, almost-invisible thread. The removal of uncooperative intestines, kidneys, and spleens. The draining of viscid blood, that fluid so vital in life but a sluggish, unsightly mess when settled in death. The infusing of embalming fluid, siphoned through thin hoses. Anything that suffered the sin of decay must be cut out and removed. Otherwise, it would be an affront to the solemn and still temple of flesh that the loved ones worshipped prior to burial.

After the eviscerating came the makeup. Gaines prided himself on the makeup. Of the three generations of Wadells that had worked in the business, Gaines had been most praised for his delicate touch. Just a tinge of blush here, some foundation there, a bit of powder under the eyes to blend out that depressing black. The right shade of rouge on the lips, so a loved one might imagine the wan face breaking into a smile.