Cemetery Street, John Zunski [read any book TXT] 📗

continued, “James, please step into the hall.”
I rose from my seat. “James, sit down.” Turning back to Floyd. “He’s entitled to hear what you have to say. ”
“So be it,” Floyd reached for the baseball he kept atop his desk. “If you choose to view the remains, they won’t resemble your father. You’ll be better off -spiritually, emotionally- remembering his likeliness before the accident. What you see will be upsetting.”
“That would be for me to decide,” mother hissed.
“Of course it would.” Floyd ran his fingers over the seams of the baseball. “This would be a closed casket deal if Stanley wasn’t being cremated. His jumpsuit held his body together. He was crushed - like a grape, splat.” I jumped as Floyd banged his fist on the desktop.
“You’re out of line,” mother protested.
“Sometimes it’s the only way to get people to understand,” the minister retorted.
“He proves you don’t have to be a dork to be a minister,” I told Shannie over the phone that night. I called from the hospital.
“If I can’t talk you out this – it’s a bad idea - at least allow me to accompany you,” Floyd bargained with mother. She reluctantly agreed - on the condition she would have a few moments alone with grandfather. Floyd agreed. At the hospital, Floyd said, “she would have gone to the funeral parlor anyway.” After taking a long, nervous drag off his cigarette, he continued: “I had a gut feeling something would happen.”
“Don’t worry about it,’ father said. “You did us all a favor.” Later, father let it slip that Floyd would have done us a bigger favor by stuffing mother in a nearby coffin and locking the lid. “We could have got a two for one deal.”
“She’s been concussed,” the emergency room doctor told us. “As a precaution, I want to keep her over night.”
I stepped back from the doctor.
“We also stitched a laceration on the back of her head,” he continued in a professional monotone.
“He needs a Tic-Tac,” I complained when the doctor walked away.
“I knew it was a bad idea,” Floyd vexed. “I never imagined such a reaction.”
“You don’t know my wife,” father grinned.
“Her screams - horrifying,” he shook his head. “Seeing her like that, all that blood.” Floyd snuffed out another cigarette. He pushed ashes around with the cigarette butt.
“You had good intentions,” father said.
“We know where they lead.” Floyd lit another cigarette before recounting the story. “The funeral director and I were standing outside the viewing room, we heard Mary’s sobs. Didn’t think anything of it.” Floyd paused if viewing the scene. “Then we heard that thud. Her muffled screams. We ran inside. There she was,” Floyd said. He took another drag. “Her rear end up in the air and her head caught inside the casket. The lid had trapped your mother. She was stuck, her head against his chest. The horror. The blood, it was everywhere. He took another drag before asking: “Did they shave much of her hair?”
“Most of it,” my father said poker faced.
“Horrible,” Floyd paused. “Joe, I’ve seen and heard a lot, but Mary’s curses embarrassed me.” He took another drag off his cigarette, exhaled, took a deep breath and said: “Forgive me if this is an inappropriate question at an inappropriate time, but I need to ask, man to man. Will she make good on her threats?”
“What threats?” my father asked.
“She said she would sue me to hell and back. Joe, I have a small congregation, and even smaller treasury. If she sues, I’ll – the church will be ruined.”
“She’s venting. Don’t worry,” my father lied. “It’ll pass.”
“Thanks Joe,” Floyd said. I hung my head.
“That son of a bitch minister is out to get me,” mother claimed the morning of the memorial service. We were on the way to Shepherd of the Hills Non Denominational Church.
“How so?” father asked.
“What do you think? He’s Daddy’s patsy! He’s trying to stop me from doing what is just and moral! He’s trying to stop me from burying Daddy’s ashes.” Years later I learned she was on to something.
“You’re ridiculous,” father said.
“Ridiculous? I ended up in the hospital over this! Do you think it’s ridiculous that I have to walk around half bald?” Her spittle coated the windshield.
“Thinking Floyd tried to hurt you sounds as ridiculous as your bald spot looks,” Father said.
“Your mother’s an asshole,” Shannie railed during our nightly phone conversation. “I can’t believe she’s bringing his ashes back. Bury them in Fernwood? Geezus Pete, he never lived here! He didn’t even like it here! She’ll want to exhume them when your dad gets transferred.”
Shannie’s insight made me pause; I never thought we would move again.
“We’ll exhume the ashes and take them with us,” mother announced.
“Your being retarded!” father snapped.
“She lost touch with reality,” Shannie barked over the phone that night.
“You should reconsider,” Floyd protested before the memorial.
“Stay out of it,” Mother hissed at Floyd.
After the service, during the rest of our stay in Pleasanton, and even on the flight home, mother didn’t let grandfather’s urn out of her sight. “She kept it in her bedroom last night,” I told Shannie. “I think she’s afraid dad’s going to swipe them.”
“That’s it!” Shannie said tapping the side of her head. “You’re a genius Just James, Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Think of what?” I puzzled. “Oh no,” I protested catching on. “I’m not going there. I’m not stealing his ashes!”
“You promised your grandfather. Your integrity is at stake. All we need to do is get your mother out of the house for five lousy minutes. Five minutes,” she reiterated.
“She’ll notice he’s missing.”
“We’ll make a switch. We take your grandfather out and put phony ashes in. Your mom’s happy, your grandfather’s happy and you’re off the integrity hook. Get her out of the house and I’ll do the rest.”
“How?”
“Geezus Pete, do I have to think of everything?”

I was fretting away the afternoon when a brown UPS truck stopped at the Ortolan’s. The driver knocked on their front door. Diane exchanged a few words, signed for a decent sized brown box and the brown clad driver hoped in the brown truck and drove away. Shit, that’s it! “MOM,” I yelled bounding down the steps.
“What?” she asked with bloodshot eyes. She was taking Stan’s death hard. She dealt with her grief by spending an inordinate amount of time in the kitchen, she hated the kitchen. She looked pitiful with flour smudged on her face and her remaining hair wrapped in a bandana.
“I was thinking. You’ve always wanted to eat at Brownback’s.” Brownback’s was a restaurant mother always talked about, but could never get my father to take her. “Lets go tonight. On me.”
She smiled despite herself. “What a sweet offer,” she set down her rolling pin and hugged me. I coughed from the cloud of flour. “How are you going to pay?"
“My birthday money; I didn’t spend it yet.”
“Do you know how much it will cost?”
“I have two hundred bucks."
“It might cost that.”
I swallowed hard: “You deserve it."
“We have reservations for seven-thirty,” I told Shannie.
“Brownback’s Huh? When are you going to take me?” Shannie teased.
“As soon as I can drive,” I replied.

After dinner I bolted ahead of my parent’s into the house. There was no sign of Shannie. Damn, she’s good, I thought. Everything seemed untouched. My parent’s bedroom door slightly ajar - as always. A quick peek inside their room told me that she hadn’t any problems switching ashes. Grandfather’s urn sat on my mother’s dresser.
I phoned Shannie. “I couldn’t slip out of the house,” she replied.
“WHAT?” I cried.
“Serious. Diane was being a bitch. I couldn’t get out of the house."
“Ah shit. A hundred-fifty bucks shot to hell. What are we going to do? She’s burying them tomorrow. What are we going to do?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Shannie assured me.
“Don’t worry about it? Stan’s being committed to the kingdom of the worms and you’re telling me not to worry. Jesus H. Christ, what are we going to do?” My thirty-dollar entrée protested in my stomach.
“I don’t know about you but I have to make a mud pie,” Shannie said.
“A mud pie? How can you be worried about a mud pie when, when… when your integrity is at stake?”
“My integrity is intact.”
“Bullshit!” I cried. “You made a promise you couldn’t keep.”
“If you quit jumping to conclusions – I’ll tell you what happened.”
“I’m not jumping to conclusions,” I protested.
“Geezus Pete, shut up and listen. I was going to say, I couldn’t get out of the house. I called Count and he made the switch for us.”
“Yes,” I said. I tingled with relief.

Outside the weekday church regulars and my immediate family, the only other people who attended my Grandfather’s mass were the Ortolan’s and the Lightmans. The Miller’s who were retired, were out of town.
Besides the priest, only brilliant sunshine and blustery wind accompanied my parent’s and myself in Fernwood. After the graveside service, I told my parent’s I’d walk home. I watched their car slip out of the cemetery before climbing a tree. Bear emerged from the converted church and piloted the backhoe towards Grandfather’s grave. After filling it, Bear saluted Grandfather’s tombstone and hopped on the front-loader.
Like clockwork, Shannie appeared with grandfather’s mud pie. This time, she was dressed in a black dress. “Why are you making a mud pie?” I asked her the previous night. “We’re not burying him.”
“I’m paying respect,” she answered.
Under my weight the limb swayed in the wind. As she knelt in front of Grandfather’s grave, her right hand battled to keep her face free of her blowing hair. “That’s my last pie,” she told me later. “I don’t feel the need anymore.”
“Now that we have Stan’s ashes, what do we do with them?” Shannie asked as we passed a Sunday afternoon in the maple tree. She had taken it upon herself to be their caretaker. She kept them in her jewelry box atop her dresser under a wallet size picture of my grandfather.
“Ain’t it obvious?” Count launched an empty coke bottle into a towering trajectory. The three of us watched its flight in silence, anticipating the crash and Duke Nukem’s response. The bottle exploded; the dog erupted.
“Is it?” Shannie asked.
“Take him skydiving,” Count said.
“That’s tacky, he was killed skydiving.”
“Count’s right. It’s what he wanted. He told me so. He wanted one last jump.”
“There’s our problem, you have to be eighteen,” Count said.
“We wait until James is eighteen,” Shannie said. “Then James gets the honor.”
“I’m sixteen. We’ll only have to wait two years. I’ll take the course and dump ‘em,” Count said.
“He’s James Grandfather! James gets the honor,” Shannie repeated.
“That’s four years!” Count argued. “His ashes will decompose by then.”
“Ashes don’t decompose dumb ass,” Shannie said.
Over the following weeks, the three of us became obsessed with everything airborne. We spent weekends at Squaw Valley airport watching parachutists. The jumpers got to know us. An instructor approached us asking why we were so interested. He offered to scatter Stan’s ashes. We politely denied. Word spread and soon we were unofficial mascots of the Squaw Jumper’s Parachute Club.
We spent the rest of the summer doing odds and ends around the club in exchange for getting our first jump free. The head rigger –whom to this day I know as Beetle, introduced us to the art of parachute rigging. She was a leftover flower child with a penchant for exotic dew rags and unshaven armpits. “She’s cool,” I told Count. “But her armpits make me sick.” I found myself sneaking