Okay

old man alone

grows by two, his sad life.

They called him good, until it came –

a coarse sadness that would not let him go.

So it grew stronger and it kept him breathing hate,

then it began to subside – ninety years.

His name now dim: drunk and crazy.

The doctor no one knows

gave all his life

to you.

   The first step is to wash the body. The clothing is removed and any jewelry is placed in a manila envelope, noting a full inventory and the body part on which it was worn is recorded. If the deceased has eyeglasses anywhere on his or her person, they will be kept. At the family’s request, they may be placed on the face of the deceased during the viewing and funeral. Thick lenses, which would cause a magnifying effect on the closed eyelids, are removed and replaced with pieces of cut Plexiglas. Any debris left behind from the less than humble process of dying is washed away with soaking wet rags. These towels are discarded. A strong disinfectant spray, that would reel the living into a coughing fit, is sprayed all over the body, and it is then wiped down thoroughly, making sure not one square centimeter of the body is missed. The body begins to decay immediately and the disinfectant kills all the microbes colonizing on the skin and orifices of the deceased. Next, the body is massaged, if still in the grip of rigor mortis. The joints and muscles stiffen soon after death, and they must be moved and kneaded to make the dead flesh supple. This allows the body to be positioned and manipulated. Then the face is shaved; men and women alike. Children, too. Everyone has traces of hair on their faces, and, if not removed, the makeup can clump and become unsightly during the viewing and funeral.

   These first steps are to prepare the body for embalming, and, some professionals in the field assert they are as important as the funeral process itself. I complete these steps textbook and methodic each time a body is placed before me, breathing meditatively the whole time. I have to learn the dead, so I will know how to proceed with making them look alive again, reminding myself the entire time this used to be a human being. I permit myself to be sentimental, “Pretend you are the one who truly loved this person.”

   Now I am about my work.

   Sometimes I delay – I sit back and think of how many ways there are to die in a small town. I see new ones all the time. Bodies come in the door mangled and dismembered in new and unusual ways. Many people do die while having a great time. Those can be hard ones. I don’t know if it is the boredom or mundane nature of small town life. If life in a small town is mundane and boring, that is. I don’t know it to be. I have lived my life in a small town not too far from a medium sized city. Many people do. There is life between the coasts, some of it very exciting. Not mine: I sit on my stool in front of a table. On that table lies a dead body. This is my work.

   But it’s time to get on with it.

   Believe me: procrastination is not a quality you want if you work in the funeral industry.

   I have to start though, so I do as I always do, with the image of my mother. I see her sitting on the ground beside the Ohio River. Her head turned back to gaze at me. Pillars of gray breath steaming from her mouth in the cold morning air, and I wait for her to speak, just to say my name and acknowledge I am there. I hear her, “Horace?”

The image comes from a real event: the first time I found her there after I became an adult. I was eighteen years old, and my uncle Seth told me he had received a phone call from the institution where she was committed. She had wandered off again. He told me where to go, there was no doubt where she would be. She was to be my responsibility.

I found her there, kneeling by the tree growing on the bank. Its roots washed naked by the river, turned backward, desperately clinging to dry land. She had been there for hours I imagine, but I was yet to fully understand why this place was where she would go whenever the orderly or nurse looked away for too long.

   And once I leave there, I come back to this moment and to my work.

   “Horace?”

   “Yes, Seth?” I say, not bothering to look at him. He is standing in the doorway. For a funeral director he is peculiar about dealing with bodies. He doesn’t like them when they are fresh: the blood and fluids still oozing from the orifices pooling into little puddles and the gases still exiting in little squeaks and sighs. No, he prefers them after they have been embalmed and quieted. The one before me arrived late last night -- the coroner’s assistants wheeling in the gurney.

   “How does this one look?” he asks.

   “Not good,” I answer.

   “Elaborate.”

   “Most of the face has been chewed away. He’s old too. One of the oldest I have ever seen. The skin is hanging from the bone. The neighbors complained about the smell. He’s good and ripe.”

   “Give him the full treatment,” he says.

   “Really?” I ask. “He has an estate to pay for it?”

   “No, Horace, he has a benefactor. I just got the call. He is going to get the full touch. Do you know who he is?”

   “I remember him,” I answer. I have the memory of him. I remember walking down the street with my hand being held by my mother. We crossed the street as he approached. I can remember him screaming into the air, waving his fists wildly at no one. Shouting accusations at names I had never heard.

   “I know what you are remembering, but he wasn’t always like that. He was respected when I was young. A doctor. A good one. I thought he died years ago.”

   “I just remember him wandering the streets and screaming and yelling. A crazy man,” I say.

   “And you’re right, he was that. But that happened when he got old. He was my doctor when I was a child. Your mother’s and father’s too.”

   I am always shocked when I hear Seth refer to my father.

   “My father’s?”

   “Yes, all of us. He was the only doctor in Always who saw children. I remember him well.”

   “Do you want to see him now?” I ask, wanting him to leave.

   “Maybe.”

   “Really,” I say, “that’s not like you.”

   I hear his feet step into the room. I still haven’t bothered to turn around and look at him. I had thrown the sheet back over the body when I first heard my uncle’s voice, knowing his weakness when it comes to the fresh corpses. “It’s really not good. He’s been dead for a while --long enough for rigor mortis to pass and decomposition to really settle in. Can’t you smell it?”

   “I can,” he says, “I can, but I think I want to see this one. Like I said, he has a benefactor, and I am rather curious as to why he does. I have to call this man back, and I want some sort of idea how bad it is, so I can say how much I am going to charge.”

   “Then take a look,” I say, as I pull back the sheet. Thin as it was, it was holding back some of the smell that wafts in the wind the sheet produces. I hear the retch in Seth’s throat. He begins to cough. I know he is seeing the full mess of cobweb flesh nibbled to scraps.

   I turn to look at him. He is standing still, eyes locked on the body. “You’ll be able to fix that, you think? I doubt there are any pictures of him, but I can ask when I call. Like I said, I thought he died years ago. It’s been a decade at least since I saw him last or heard anything about him.”

   “I haven’t seen him prowling the streets lately either, but I don’t get out much.”

   “You’ll be able to fix this?” he repeats.

   “Yeah, there is enough of the face left to get an idea how what is missing should look.”

   “Good, good,” he says, “Cover him back up.”

   “No, I am going to go ahead and get started. You may want to leave,” I answer.

   “You’re going to need to cover him up,” he reiterates. “The new man is upstairs. He is starting today. I want you to meet him.”

   “I met him at the interview,” I respond.

   “I know that. What was his name?”

   “I don’t remember,” I answer, though I remember it clearly.

   “Come on,” he says. “We need to get him started.”

   I throw the sheet back over the corpse. My uncle has already exited the room and managed the stairs to the ground floor. I wait till I know he is upstairs before I follow. The funeral home we work out of was built with intention, but it was built in a different age. By that, I mean though it was constructed as a funeral parlor, it has nothing in common with the funeral homes being built now. It is ancient and somewhat Victorian. Air conditioning and central heating unnaturally thrust into its bones. Sound carries. We are only set up for one funeral at a time.

   He’ll be talking about the flowers. I am sure. That is his standard lecture to all the new people. As you may imagine, it can be difficult to keep good help at a funeral home. If you are the one embalming and preparing the bodies or the one directing the funeral, chances are you are going to stay. You see death every day and you see mourning every day. You have a skilled position within the establishment, but when you bring in an employee for general help it is a different story. They are not accustomed to the sound of constant crying. I would say wailing, but there is not much of that at your average funeral these days. People aim for dignity in silence.

   For the new people just looking for something to pay the bills, it is a different thing completely -- the constant stream of people always at their lowest moods. The quiet and calm of the place can be unsettling as well. Also, the bodies. Seeing them. Smelling them. Knowing they are in the place is too much for some people. For others it is the mourners. The crying faces and the soft moans of grief. It gets to some people. We’ve basically given up on keeping anyone on staff to work upstairs, so we hire people to work the grounds and other less glamorous work.

   I can hear Seth’s voice echoing through the hallway, so I go to join my uncle and the new employee. I slowly ascend the steps, wondering how long this one will last.

I approach him with my hand out and he takes it saying, “Mason Beel. It’s nice to see you again.”

   “Yes, it is. And it’s Horace Carver. I understand if you don’t remember,” I say.

   “No, I remember,” he says. “You’re the Carver in Parsons and Carver Funeral Home.”

   “Sort of,” I say, as my uncle interrupts me.

   “Again, Mason, welcome to Parsons and Carver Funeral Home. We’re glad to have you on board. Horace is going to be doing most of the training with you, since he’s done all the work you will be doing at some point in his time here, but I wanted to give you an introduction to the place,” Seth says and motions for us to follow him.

   He speaks as he is walking, “Horace’s mother is my sister, and his father and I opened this funeral home about two years before Horace was born. We have been in business well over thirty years. Horace began learning the trade as a child, but there will be more time for that sort of information later. Like I said, my nephew will help you acclimate to this place. Also, you need to understand your duties. As I explained, you will have many.”

   “Right. We talked about it on the phone and in the interview,” Mason offers.

   “Good. You remember. I, also, hope you remember I said it would be labor intensive. You said you were up for the job though, so we’ll see what you are made of.”

   He opens the door and holds it for us, “Outside. Let’s go.”

   We follow, squinting against the sunlight.

   “Oh, and you are to call me Mr. Parsons. You may call my nephew Horace if he so chooses, but you need to call me Mr. Parsons.”

   “Okay, I understand,” Mason answers.

   “Don’t take that the wrong way,” Seth continues. “We just have a lot of people in and out of here. People who have lost their loved ones. You won’t interact with them much at all, but, if they hear you talking, it needs to be formal. No joking around. You may see people standing outside smoking cigarettes and slapping each other on the backs and having a good laugh, but you are not to join them. Horace and I will deal with the customers, which we would never call them to their faces. You only speak to them if they speak to you, and then only to answer their questions as succinctly as possible.”

   “Sure, they’re sad. Only speak when spoken to,” Mason states. “Got it.”

   Every new employee gets the same sermon. Mason would be tending the flowers, my uncle starts. It is explained to him, as his duties are being described by my uncle, that he was to perform this first thing in the morning after the sun rises, but before it’s shedding its full heat.

   We walk around the building and Seth points to each and every type of flower that decorating the building. There is a flower box nestled under every window and the vast parking lot is dotted and decorated with many islands – all filled with blooming flowers. At the end of the building, there are two spigots and a couple of long water hoses wound up and hanging from long flat hooks.

   “If one is going to die, Mason, it is best that they do it during this time of year: the spring. Summer is okay as well and early fall, but once the leaves turn the place becomes different. It loses its vibrant appearance. And, in all honesty, to hell with anyone who dies during the winter.”

   Mason and I both have a little laugh at this, “Oh, I’m not joking, gentlemen,” Seth snaps. “Remember, keep it serious.”

   He continues:

   “It’s very important you get this done early. I don’t want this being done while a funeral is in service. I want these flowers soaked. Drench them. The petals need to be wet before the light really gets to them, and the soil has to be saturated with water. This isn’t just decoration. This isn’t my hobby, and I have no interest in them. I am not a botanist or a gardener. I am a funeral director.”

   Mason nods his head, indicating he understands. Seth has already shown him where the hoses, watering cans, and sprinklers are located.

   “Take this sprinkler, hook it to the hose, and point it at one of the flower beds in the parking lot. While you have that going, take the can and hit the beds underneath the windows and the flower boxes. Then, move the sprinkler and start watering the beds by the house. You have to really pay attention to the ones at the entrance. I want them to be pretty. Gorgeous. People meander by the doorway, so it needs to be especially nice.”

   There is a long, thick brick fence lining the parking lot and separating it from the street. From the top of it, flowers are sprouting in one long bed, continuous and about a foot in width.

   “This one I would do last, but don’t skimp on it,” Seth says. “It takes forever. You just don’t want to mist this one but get it really good with the hose. These get the most sun and the soil in the bed dries out quickly, so do those dead last that way they are good and soaked right before it starts to get hot. After you’re done watering, you need to do a walk-through. This is when you will check your work. Make sure you didn’t miss any of the flowers. Also, when you are doing this, you need to look for weeds. I have a barrier down for them, but some may work their way through. You need to get them and get them quick, so they don’t take over. Weeds are decay, and we pretend that decay doesn’t happen here. Got it?”

   “Yes, I understand, Mr. Parsons,” Mason says. I’m standing quietly by my uncle, watching Mason. I am trying to see if he is getting nervous listening to my uncle. He doesn’t seem to be, but maybe he is just hiding it. Most of the men that have worked for us are shaking by this part of Seth’s lecture.

   “Also, look the parking lot over really well. Let me know if you see anything out of place. If someone leaves a beer bottle tonight, it needs to be gone tomorrow morning. I had the asphalt resurfaced last year, but if you start to see any cracks let me know. You need to look for weeds in the blacktop too. Make sure the lines in the parking spots are bright white. There is paint, tape, and rollers if they start to fade. My nephew will show you where. We get a lot of old people here, and they will complain if they are the least bit faded.”

   “Make it look perfect,” Mason says. “Be your eyes out here.”

   “Exactly. It has to look perfect. No one comes here happy. This is where they come to send off their dead, so the place has to look alive. It can’t be festive, but it has to have a certain appearance about it. People have to feel comforted by looking at it, just pulling into the parking lot. There can be no distractions and no frustrations, just tranquility. They have to see beautiful flowers and clean lines. They have to think about how flowers bloom and then how the petals die, but it is all reborn. It makes them feel better. That is what this business is about. Does that make sense?”

   “Absolutely,” Mason answers. “It’s about aesthetics, I got it.”

   Seth pauses for a moment, looking at Mason.

   “You can make it about philosophy if you want, but it is not. People are simple. This is basic psychology. When people are mourning, they want it to be over, so they will look for anything to make them feel better. Psychology. You tell them what to think, and they think it. They will look at the pretty flowers and think about how they will die and come back again. Now, again, does that make sense?”

   “It does,” Mason says.

   “Do you have any questions so far, Mason?” I ask.

   “The apartment?”

   “We’ll get to that,” Seth says. “I think I was pretty upfront when I interviewed you. I’ve had problems keeping this position filled. It is a bit of a, shall we say, diversified job. But this is what it hinges on. If you can do this, that’s a big part of it, and I can forgive other shortcomings. If I see dead flowers and weeds, I can’t deal with that, and I’ll be placing another ad in the paper.”

   “No, I understand. Every morning. Make sure the flowers are impeccable.”

   “Well said, well said, Mason,” Seth says and taps him on the shoulder. “That is it. There is no grass here, just flowers and asphalt. This is the face of my business, and it must be maintained meticulously. If you can do it, fine, but, if not, there is the street.”

   “I think he gets it,” I chime in.

   “I do, Mr. Parsons, I understand.”

   “That’s right, Mason, it’s Mr. Parsons. Always Mr. Parsons. I never want you to call me by my first name like my nephew does.”

   “He even tried to get me to call him Mr. Parsons. Not happening.”

   “There will be a family arriving soon to make some arrangements, so I want you both out of sight. Horace, you see, does not like to get involved with the business aspect of what we do. He prefers his embalming chamber. I’m the licensed funeral director; he is the licensed embalmer. He does join us among the living from time to time, but he’s not always presentable, and, as we’ve discussed, appearances are of importance here. That is what we do here.”

   Seth pauses and clears his throat, looking around the parking lot and stopping to look at the funeral home, “I’ve spent my adulthood building this place’s reputation, and I won’t have it compromised. I am glad you understand about the flowers. You will have other responsibilities, and this is not even close to being the most physically demanding.”

   “What would that one be? The most physically demanding one?” Mason asks.

   “It’s the graves, Mason. Hand tools only. You can use shovels, picks, post hole diggers. It doesn’t matter. But, in compliance with local ordinance here in Always, all graves must be dug by hand.”

Just another regulation

A second handle you must hold

My Gadsden flag tricks some duct tape

Then something gets stuck to the side

An awful grate that I must fix

I tilt it back; I am so smart

The dulled blade is invisible

I fall forward then I struggle

   I wonder how long he will last. The last few gravediggers have been older men, most of them carpenters or plumbers who are out of work. Men who believe in making money by sweating and sore muscles. Others had been drunks: desperate and willing to do anything for money. They all managed to get it done, but even the most hardened of them didn’t last long. I have turned the spade on many graves. Grave digging was my first job – my uncle forcing me to do it through my teens, so I know first-hand just how hard the work is. I hope the new man will last. He’s not very tall. Neither am I, but from what I can observe, he seems to be in decent shape. That will help him. If the first grave doesn’t cause him to turn in his resignation, then he may be around a while. Normally I don’t help at the cemetery. I don’t typically like the other men my uncle hires; they always look at me suspiciously -- especially the old grizzled ones. I can tell they don’t know what to make of me, and they looked at me with a bit of old-fashioned distrust.

   “So you mean to tell me, you’ve seen weirder than this?” Mason asks.

   “I have. Several times. This one is more violent than most, but not stranger.”

   “What was the weirdest?”

   “It’s hard to say, really. I’ve seen so many over the years.”

   “Okay,” Mason protests. “This guy grinds his face off in a lawnmower, and you’re telling me that it is hard to say what you have seen that is weirder than that.”

   “It’s weird you are not running out of this room. That is strange to me. I’ve been doing this for years. Is this your first job where you had to be around dead bodies?” I ask.

   “It is,” he says. “But I have seen dead bodies before and not just at funerals.”

   “Where then?”

   “I witnessed an accident once. This guy was on a scooter and a car hit him. He went flying. The driver of the car came through the windshield. Both of them died within a few minutes. So what happens now?”

   “What do you mean?”

   “With the body? What do you do with it?”

   “Most people who do what I do just follow the process you learn in mortuary school.”

   “Well, aren’t we the cryptic one? I asked what you do.”

   “Have you ever been to a funeral here before?” I ask.

   “No, I haven’t but I heard about them. I heard they are different here. I heard there are people that come just to see the bodies, not knowing the family or the person who died. You know anything about that?”

   I see my reputation precedes me. None of the other people we have employed here gave a damn about me or what I did. Mason seems to be another story.

   “It’s just something that happened over time. I studied, I guess you can say: cosmetology, anatomy, sculpture. I even took some dancing classes just to get an idea of how the body moves. But, I guess it was something more than that. It’s not about just picking out the right shade of lipstick, so grandma doesn’t look too slutty. It’s about getting inside the bone structure. Really seeing what is there. But you don’t want it to look like Claymation. It has to be real. When I embalm a body that’s what happens. They look real. Most bodies are easy, peaceful deaths, but not this guy. The one we have here, he is going to be more of a challenge.”

   “I would imagine,” Mason says.

   “It’s because some of the facial bones are damaged, but it won’t be too bad.”

   “In all honesty, I knew some people who used to come here, just to see your handiwork. Of course, they didn’t know it was your handiwork at the time. I didn’t until just now. I just knew there was the little funeral home across the river where the bodies looked like they were going to get up and walk away at any second,” Mason says. “I mean, I know when I’ve gone to funerals for people in my family. Grandmothers, grandfathers, uncles, others, well, they just didn’t look right. Uneven makeup smeared on their faces – their hands awkwardly folded.”

   “We run those people out when we figure out why they are here, just so you know,” I say.

   “What’s that like?”

   “What’s that?” I ask.

   “Having a skill like that? I don’t think that I have anything like that. Well, not think, I know I don’t have any abilities like that.”

   “I’ve seen your resume,” I say to him.

   “Yeah, I know. I have a Master’s degree.”

   “In Humanities, I believe.”

   “Yeah, in the Humanities,” he says. “So go ahead with the obvious question.”

   “Why did you accept a job digging graves?”

   “I’ve accepted all kinds of jobs. I’ve bounced around a bit -- a job hopper. I don’t tend to stay at jobs very long either, so don’t get too attached to me.”

   “I don’t know if that answers my question,” I reply.

   “I’m sure it doesn’t. We’ll just say I was always one to question contentment, and my education just reinforced that. Get to know me better and I may tell you more. Now let me ask you something?”

   “Sure.”

   “You can make corpses look like they are back from the dead, but you’re still going to show me how to dig a grave?”

   “Yes. They are specifications you have to follow. You also know you are going to be driving the hearse as well?”

   “Yeah, your uncle mentioned that. Mr. Parsons, I mean.”

I snicker a little.

   “Yeah, Mr. Parsons. You’ll need keys for it, and you’ll need keys to the truck too. While we’re on it, we should get to it.”

   Mason looks back at the body with the nearly severed head, “What about him?”

   “I’ll get back to him later. Cover him up for me.”

   The cemetery isn’t far from the funeral home. Mason asks me to drive. He knows Louisville well, but he’s spent little time in Always. Not that Always is a confusing place to navigate, but I don’t mind driving. The bed of the truck is loaded with shovels, pick-axes, posthole diggers – almost anything you can imagine to dig a hole. Also, stakes and rope for measuring it out. I’ll have to show him the way around the cemetery too. The old part of the graveyard is a nightmare, with no rhyme or reason to it, but since the 1950’s it has been a grid.

   “So, Horace, all graves have to be dug by hand,” he says as he exits the truck. He begins pulling shovels and stakes out of the bed. “Why, in the name of hell, do you have to dig them all by hand?”

   “From what I understand, that rule went into place when I was a kid. The mayor’s wife died and was buried here at this cemetery. While the gravesite ceremony was going on, there was a backhoe digging a grave the whole time. So the family is here trying to have a peaceful moment, and they are hearing the gears and hydraulics in a clunky machine the whole time. The mayor went to the council and began ranting and raving about it. Not long after, there was a new ordinance in place. It’s been that way over twenty years,” I say and extract some tools from the truck bed myself.

   “You said there were specifications?” he asks.

   “They are simple too. Three feet wide, eight feet long, and guess how deep?”

   “Hmm? Six feet,” he replies with a smile.

   “You guessed it.”

   “Okay,” he says. “Where do we start?”

   Where do we start indeed? I can still remember the first grave I dug. The whole time I was thinking about what it was: a hole someone was going to be shoved into until the end of the earth. Unless a road or a new strip mall needed to be built, that is. I remember my mother protesting. That was before she was committed. She never wanted me to go into the family business, I guess. She never fully stated it, but, in the only way she could, she protested every step I took in my progress.

   “I don’t want you to end up like Owen,” she said every time.

   “First, we need to measure and stake. I’ll be honest; you may or may not do that every time. You get a couple dozen of these under your belt and you may not need to,” I say.        “It’s also important you have it lined up with the graves around it. That comes more into play when the stone is set, but you want to make sure there are nothing but straight lines.”

   He begins to put on thick, leather gloves and motions to me, “What do those markings mean?”

   “That’s showing you the grid. It’s simple. If you look at that tree you’ll see a letter, and if you look at the corner of the road, you’ll see a number. Like this one Q18. Then, that is the section on the grid. I’ll explain it more later. But you want to make sure you are in the right place. It won’t take you long to figure it out.”

   “Have you ever dug a grave in the wrong plot?” he asks.

   “No, Seth would go ballistic.”

   “Do you and your uncle get along, if I can ask?”

   “Somewhat,” I say and pause. “Well, no, not really.”

   “I can leave it at that, I suppose. Who is going to be buried here?”

   The old man, I think. As a boy, he was our local mad man. He roamed the streets of Always, shouting at the top of his lungs. I was horrified of him. Like my uncle said, he used to be a doctor, but those days were well and over. By the time I was old enough to understand anything, he was just a raving lunatic. They say he lived all over. That he nearly haunted a place when he was there, dead inside and waiting for the rest to go. When he was found it was in one of two tiny apartments above a rather terrible restaurant. The health department had shut the place down more than once, and the old man had fallen victim to the rats. I’ve seen that happen numerous times.

   People die all sorts of ways. I think I have said that already. I have seen people burned and frozen. It’s odd but a frozen body will often come to me naked. Paradoxical undressing, they call it. Something about freezing and nearing the death-point of it makes people feel like they are burning up. They shed their clothes. On the other side, people who have been burned will often feel cold, as the heat is escaping their bodies through their wounds. I’ve seen people who have jumped off buildings in Indianapolis and Louisville. Their organs spill out into the body bags they arrive in.

   Oh, and it is not just rats. Dogs and cats too. I remember one occasion when a mother and daughter lived together. They took in any stray dog that passed by their home. The daughter became bed-ridden and the mother took care of her. Until the mother had a heart attack, that is. They lived outside of town and they didn’t have a phone. Once the dead woman began to smell, the dogs started to feed off of her. The saddest part was that the daughter and the mother slept in the same room. The daughter got to witness the whole thing. She died a few days after they were discovered. She had been drinking her own urine to stay alive, but she had also gone without her medicine. We took their case out of charity.

   In a town like Always, we mainly get old men and ladies. But my uncle has been building his business since I came into my own in the embalming chamber, now he’s built a cottage industry. You’ve heard of destination weddings and vacations, why not a destination funeral? Don’t think it will sell? I didn’t at first. You go to Hawaii or Paris for a destination wedding. You go to a little town in the middle of America for a destination funeral. But my work had become known. Now, we receive the most disfigured bodies, and I am to make them look whole again.

   “Just some old man,” I tell him.

   It is time to start digging and it is time to see what Mason is made of. With a name like Mason you would expect him to be made of stone, but he doesn’t appear to be. He seems kind and approachable. I assume there could be a certain acerbic quality that he is not letting out yet. My first few graves were terrible. I thought about running away. I remember being down to my waist in the thing, wishing it was my own grave I was digging -- the smell of the dirt and the worms I found in the soil. I would think how the vaults would someday rust and they would make their way to the coffins outer edge, then they would keep digging.

   Doing this for a living makes me want to be cremated.

   There were times I would imagine it was Seth’s grave I was digging. I would get enthusiastic and have to stop myself before I dug too deep.

   “I recommend you go around the perimeter first. Make the rectangle and start digging.    The grave should be a few inches taller than you and don’t forget the sides need to be as close to a right angle as you can make it all the way down, and the bottom needs to be flat. Don’t dig it out concave, keep it flat.”

   We work together for a few hours until it is done. Dirty and stinking, we load the tools back into the truck and then get into it ourselves. We head back to the funeral home.

   “Makes me want a cigarette,” he says.

   “You smoke?”

   “No. I quit a little over a year ago.”

   “Ah,” I say. “Never took to them myself.”

   “I want to watch you work. I want to see you embalm that poor bastard back at the funeral home.”

   “Always refer to them as ‘the deceased’ around my uncle.”

   “I should probably do that all the time.”

   “My apartment is in the back of the funeral home. I assume you are moving into the one over the garage?”

   “Yeah, your uncle said it was ready to go, whenever I was.”

   “He always makes that offer to people he hires. You realize it puts you at his beckon call. People die all times of the night, and he’ll want you to drive the hearse.”

   “Yeah, I got that part. We talked about it. I am on call five nights a week and he will take the other two. Seemed reasonable enough. He said most of the bodies are delivered by the coroner’s assistants anyway.”

   “Okay,” I say. “When we get back I am going to shower and change clothes then I will get to work. Do you want to run home and do the same?”

   “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to get your embalming room filthy or anything. It looked like you keep it pristine.”

   Soon I am about my work. Mason sits on a stool watching the whole time. He is quiet and respectful. I need the quiet. When I first start, I am nearly bothered by a piercing noise in my ears. I actually had my ears checked for Tinnitus once out of paranoia. When it subsides I am able to resume. Sometimes, like with the old man, I have nothing to go on. But for this man I do. His parents had brought pictures of him. In most of them he was alone, holding a political sign or wearing a goofy hat. They brought in dozens. In a few, there were like-dressed individuals, but mostly it was just this gentleman -- never a woman or a man who may be a lover or friend. Never any children. Just him smiling heartily and waving his sign.

   He had crooked teeth and dimly-lit gray eyes. His hair was salt and pepper and he looked to be in his late forties. All of that was gone now. Just the raw, red meat and gnawed bone is left. I begin by building the bones back. Mouths are always closed.

Now I am about it, and I am not sure what my hands are doing. I will just know when they are done.

   I don’t look at Mason the whole time and had almost forgotten he was there until I heard him speak, “That’s amazing, Horace. I am truly amazed.”

   “Thank you,” I reply.

   “No really, I am amazed. I don’t use that word lightly.”

   “Again, I appreciate it.”

   “I had a friend in grad school named Elliott. He was sort of like me, and he used to say he wished he could get paid to just appreciate things. He would appreciate this, I’m sure of that.”

   “What does he do now?”

   “I’m not sure, but I think he has a job in Louisville at an insurance company.”

   “I see,” I say.

   “I can’t do anything like what you just did. I sort of piddle at things, but I don’t have a skill like that.”

   “You’re educated,” I assure him.

   “That doesn’t make me able to do anything though. Education isn’t about doing things, per se. You did something there. Were you taught that in school?”

   “No.”

   “The worst part of education is people don’t understand it. They don’t know what it is about.”

   “Okay,” I say, pretty sure I know what he means.

   “But what you just did there, the way you just recreated a man’s face. That is something they can’t teach. You just have a gift for that, and you were lucky to find it. It’s like an art.”

   “A dead body for a canvas?”

   “We don’t always get to pick our medium.”

   “I appreciate everything you are saying, Mason, but I don’t know that I chose this.”

   “It seems to have chosen you.”

   I’ve heard this before. In some shape or another, I have heard this before. I have had bereft ask to meet me. They want to shake my hand or give me a hug, and they thank me, and I wonder what they are thanking me for. I want to ask them why they needed to see the body at all, but I know the answer. I know there are bodies I would have liked to see.

There are bodies I wish I could have embalmed. There are bodies I wish I could have seen into the grave. There are bodies I wish I could have seen just once, and in the meeting had the chance to say “hello” and “goodbye” in the same breath. And wouldn’t we all like to know who will be the last to see our bodies before we are laid to rest?

   “It’s time to go, Mason; it’s been a long day. The family should be bringing his clothes tomorrow. I am surprised they haven’t already. I know Seth talked to them about the coffin today, so things will be moving quickly. His viewing will start tomorrow. We have to be ready.”

   “Okay, Horace, okay. Good night, and again that was impressive.”

   I wait for him to leave and I close the door behind us. I walk slowly with him to the exit and wave good night.

   “Let me know if you need help moving,” I say. “I’m willing to help.”

   “I plan on doing it soon,” he says, “so I am going to take you up on that.”

   “Okay,” I say.

   “Good night again, Horace. One day I am going to figure something I can do that is as good as what you did tonight.”

   “If I can help you figure it out, I will.”