The Funeral Makers (14 page)

Sicily began to cry. Chester put his arm around her shoulder. She leaned against him. He took the cup from her hand, just as he had Amy Joy's, and put it aside. He kissed her forehead, squeezed her hand. Sicily tried to remember why this was wrong. It was something worse than a McKinnon woman alone with a Gifford man. It had something to do with Reverend Ralph, with the Bible, with God.

“You're so soft,” he told her. Her mind was swimming with thoughts that kept moving, that didn't stay long enough to present themselves to her, to advise her what to do.

“You smell so nice.” He stroked her hair gently. If this had been Amy Joy, he told himself, he could have had her naked and hanging by one leg from the ceiling.

“The older ones take more pruning,” he reminded himself.

Each flat button of her blouse felt like coins in his hands as they slipped easily out of the holes and were freed. He pushed the blouse off her shoulders. Sicily did not help him by lifting her arms. Chester lifted one limp arm and pulled it through the sleeve. Then the other. She sat on the cot in the dark basement of the American Legion Hall. A room full of dust bunnies and mice droppings. Mildewed boxes of newspapers and pamphlets that had melded together gave off the aroma of basement living. Some old army uniforms, used mostly in parades, cascaded out of a trunk in the far corner. A pants leg hung here, a collar stuck out there, an empty sleeve dangled, its buttons catching the candlelight. It reminded Sicily of a trunkload of soldiers fighting to get out. Like the picture she saw at the movies in Watertown of all those American troops storming off the boats at Normandy. It became almost funny to her, the sleeves reaching out like drowning men. “We're
all
trying to get out of this town,” she thought. “The living
and
the dead.”

Chester Lee quickly undid her bra. He slowed his efforts once the two hooks came undone. He reminded himself this was not Amy Joy and that at any moment his subject might spring from the bed and dart home, dragging her clothes behind her.

“I don't want her shifting gears on me,” he thought.

Upstairs the wind had caught an open shutter and banged it shut. Two barn swallows that had flown inside to shake the rain from their feathers flew around the big upstairs, frantic until they found a window free of glass and escaped back into the drizzle. The old building held noises and sounds that Sicily did not care to hear. She let Chester Lee push her back against his cot and slide her skirt and half-slip up around her waist. When he stood up to undress, Sicily thought of the first time she had given in to Edward Elbert Lawler, on the scratchy sawdust behind the lumber mill. He, too, had pushed her skirt up about her waist and had pulled her panties down until they circled only her right ankle. “He should have taken them all the way off. Should have taken off my skirt. It should have been on clean, white sheets.”

Sicily unzipped her skirt and took it off. She slipped off her panties and folded them, as she did on laundry days. Ever since that first night with Ed, when he never completely undressed her, but left her like an unopened package, the bright paper torn back to expose the contents. Ever since then, she had felt violated. Like a Crackerjack box left behind on the ground after some greedy kid has run off with the prize. To Sicily, the irony was that Chester Lee thought that the prize was still there, at least that there was something to be won if he seduced Sicily McKinnon. And his eagerness for her made her feel that she was all wrapped up again. That she had the opportunity to redo an old mistake. She'd undo
herself
this time, rather than let another man leave her half undressed, half naked. It wasn't Chester Lee's fault. She guessed that many of the men in Mattagash made love to their wives in that manner, pushing flannel nightgowns up on cold winter nights, trying to arouse women whose feet were wrapped in warm woolen socks. Hair trussed up in pink foam-rubber curlers. Women groggy in their sleep. How many men in Mattagash turned their wives over in the night and, reaching a hand inside the crotch opening of their long johns, made love to them quickly. Because the alarm clock would ring rudely at five thirty. Because undressing was too much bother. How many women sleepily patted their husbands' shoulder, whispered good night, and then turned away to sleep, thankful it was finally over.

Surprised at Sicily's boldness, Chester Lee followed suit and stripped himself of all clothing. He hadn't counted on this. It was difficult to believe that Sicily was going to be almost as easy as Amy Joy. Easier, really, since he didn't have to court her. He had lost his favorite John Deere cap the night Sicily found him behind the garage with Amy Joy. That had been costly. And trying to peel off Amy Joy's tight pants was a part-time job in itself. He had even, once, painfully broken a fingernail. All the mother was going to cost him was a couple cups of wine-whiskey. He was pleased that Sicily's body didn't look that bad in the candlelight, but she was twenty, maybe twenty-five pounds overweight. She had wrinkled some around her mouth. He'd try not to look at the wrinkles. He would think of the brunette on page 437 of the Fall–Winter issue of the 1960 Sears and Roebuck catalog. He pushed one finger into Sicily and the unclipped fingernail caused her to wince.

“I'm going to make the best of this,” she thought. She pulled his hands away and playing with the hairs on his chest said softly, in a voice young enough to be Amy Joy's, “Kiss me first. Let's don't rush.”

Chester Lee was always a man who understood that a little knowledge was a wonderful thing if you didn't have to go to school to get it. The girls from Watertown who occasionally let him lead them up the backstairs of the Watertown Hotel were too drunk to care. One had even fallen asleep, which was much to the advantage of the forever experimenting Chester Lee Gifford. She awoke the next morning with a hangover and complaints that she was “sore everywhere.” To Chester Lee it was simple: What she didn't know had hurt her.

As for the other women in his life, the prostitutes in Bangor just did what a man told them he wanted done. Amy Joy had squeezed her eyes shut and scrunched up her face. Looking down at her, she looked like Shirley Temple getting a polio shot. But it didn't particularly matter to Chester Lee. If you separated the women from the girls, they all had the same thing between their legs. But here was a woman wanting him to change his style, to do things her way. And he was smart enough to let her.

“If you milk the cow right the first time, it'll stand still for you the second time,” he thought and kissed Sicily's neck and lips. Outside the rain was falling, a trickle coming through a leak in the roof and pattering, a drop at a time, onto the bar upstairs. The swallows had returned and perched atop the door leading into a small cubicle that had been the toilet and still held parts of the porcelain tank and commode. They tilted their heads, eavesdropping on the words between Sicily and Chester Lee, ready to fly if the lovemaking seemed a danger to them.

Darkness fell over Mattagash with the rain that had dropped steadily all day. Plates were being laid out on tables inside all the warm houses that lined each side of the narrow twisting road that followed the river. Forks and knives were clinking. Women dished up bowls of cabbage and ham. Took biscuits from the oven. Slapped the hands of children that reached for them too soon, saying, “Don't spoil your supper now.” Sweaty men who could not wash the spruce gum stains from their hands sat at the heads of tables all over Mattagash and said, “Dear Lord, We thank you for this food. Amen.” When Sicily kissed Chester Lee back, as though his mouth was something good to eat, all of Mattagash was eating, seated at different tables up and down the road, inside warm houses that had blinked on yellow lights in the gathering dusk. Like different pictures of the Last Supper.

“I wonder what Ed will do for supper,” she thought, but felt no guilt. “Let him have what I'm having. Like he has for years. He's grown fat on these kinds of suppers.”

It occurred to Chester Lee how unfortunate it was that Marge was in a coma. It would have been quite an accomplishment to hang on his belt: the youngest McKinnon, the middle-aged McKinnon, and the old McKinnon. “Just like the Three Bears,” he thought.

Sicily closed her eyes. “I'd like to live in a town where the road is straight,” she said to Chester Lee. “Where it don't follow the river. Just goes where you can look straight ahead of you and see what's there.”

When she felt Chester enter her, she thought, “Every woman in Mattagash has owned a blue dress at one time in her life or another.”

“That was the fall Pearl McKinnon's son and his family camped out on the flat by the bridge. I remember that puny wife of his going around with a book with bird pictures in it. Did I know, she asked, that the wrens had gone south for the winter all the way to the Gulf of Mexico? I said to her, ‘Ma'am,' I said, ‘I lived up here all my life. When the birds go south I'm satisfied they winter somewhere down around Bangor.' I don't like the way some city folks carry on. I don't like it. And what's more, the birds don't like it.”

—Old Man Gardner, Pseudo-Taxi Driver, 1961

By early evening, the rain was still falling, covering the valley in a fine mist with fog filling each dip in the road and settling beneath the trees along the river. The yellow headlights of passing cars were swallowed up by it, indiscernible from a short distance. The autumn leaves that had earlier caught the sun so spectacularly sagged under the weight of the raindrops, their colors lost in the moist film. By nightfall, the drizzle was still coming down with no promise of stopping. Water gathered in a large puddle in the middle of the dirt road that crossed the field by the bridge. It built up into a small reservoir that burst at three a.m. and cascaded down the hill in a muddy inch-wide stream. Finding the indented path made by campers on their way to the river, it changed its course to the pathway and followed it down into the tent of Junior and Thelma.

Regina, afraid to sleep in the camper because of Randy and the dark, in that order, snuggled in sleep between them, mouth open and teddy bear in her arms. The water pushed beneath the tent's flap and quickly saturated the blankets. Within minutes the entire sleeping equipment of the Ivys, including Junior's new sleeping bag, were sopping with cold September rain. Junior twitched in his sleep, telling himself to wake up, that the Packard's radiator had sprung a leak. Thelma dreamed of her new Kenmore Wringer Washer flooding over and drenching her basement floor. She squirmed, trying to rescue her cardboard boxes of Christmas decorations that she had always meant to put up on a high shelf, in case the Kenmore ever did spill its guts. Regina dreamed she had peed the bed.

Hearing the faint gurgle, Thelma was the first to face the truth, coming suddenly awake and shouting to her husband, “There's a flood! The river has flooded!”

Junior was granted, for the second time in two days, an opportunity to save his entire family. He struggled to unzip the sleeping bag, managing to get one leg out, but catching the other pants leg in the sharp teeth of the zipper. Trying to leave the tent by means of one leg in a sleeping bag proved more difficult than vaulting drunkenly from the backseat of the Packard.

Thelma continued to scream, accompanied by Regina, who was now convinced that she had indeed peed the bed and was embarrassed at her mother's overreaction.

“We'll drown!” Thelma prophesied. Regina covered her eyes and wept. She knew she had a bed-wetting problem but had never thought of it as a danger to her family.

Junior stood, hoping it would free his leg. But Thelma, overcome with hydrophobia, lurched for the flap and plowed into her husband instead.

Junior pitched forward, pulling up the pegs of the tent and taking the structure with him into the blackness until he felt the ground stop him. Pain flickered in his right wrist, which had positioned itself in an unnatural angle in hopes of releasing the pants leg from the zipper and was not prepared for breaking a fall. The wrist snapped. Junior heard it. Knew what it meant. A broken right wrist to accompany his sprained left ankle. He held the right arm across his stomach to protect it as he worked clumsily with the left arm to free himself of the tent. Everyone was wide awake now and dealing with the situation with honesty.

Regina, who had checked her panties and found them to be reasonably dry, felt an apology was in order. She skulked off to the camper, where Randy and Cynthia stood sleepy but round-eyed in the door.

Because her husband had uprooted the tent, Thelma found herself on the open ground. The bedding was now being bombarded by rain, as well as the water running down the pathway. But there was no flood. She was quite sure of that now. She heard Junior moaning. The pole light the town had erected near the campsite provided little light in the downpour. Thelma could see what looked like a living mountain of canvas swaying to and fro in the wet night.

“Junior? Are you under there, honey?”

“Oh, my wrist,” Junior moaned.

“You look so funny.” Thelma giggled when she realized Junior was wearing the tent. She was seized with laughter, uncommon in Thelma.

A crude syllogism surfaced in Junior's mind.
Major
premise:
He had broken his wrist when Thelma had stupidly shoved him in the dark and sent him sprawling with the tent.
Minor
premise:
He went sprawling because of his imbalance created by one pants leg being caught in the zipper, which happened because Thelma had shouted, “Flood!”
Conclusion:
Kill Thelma.

Junior lunged, tent and all, in the direction of Thelma's laughter, which had moved nearer to him. Thelma, who could see, stepped aside and let the bulky form hurl past her. She stopped laughing.

“What are you trying to do?” she asked her husband. “Don't you want me to help you?”

“I'm trying to kill you, Thelma,” Junior shouted. “You can help if you want to.”

Thelma ran for the camper, shoving the children back inside and locking the door. Junior shed the tent and ran after her, forgetting about the symbiotic sleeping bag that still clung to him. He fell face-first into the remains of what had been, before the rain, a pleasant morning campfire. Now it was wet ashes and charred remnants of wood. By instinct he had thrust both hands to break his fall, forgetting one hand had a broken wrist. Messages of pain were quickly sent to his brain, along with flashes of Thelma in her wedding gown, Thelma with their firstborn, Thelma decorating their Christmas tree. These images were sent by the civilized part of Junior's psyche, which was trying to tell the primitive part not to murder his wife and the Christmas-loving mother of his children. They were not received.

“I'm going to kill that woman,” he said, wiping the rain from his eyes with his good hand and leaving his face smeared with black soot. There was soot about his neck, a smell of it in his nose, a taste of it in his mouth. He quickly realized that the only way to discard the sleeping bag was to take off his pants. He unzipped them and slipped out of them. The ashes had blackened his beige shirt, a Father's Day present from Thelma and the children. But Junior had forgotten anything Thelma had given him except a sprained ankle and a broken wrist. He tore the shirt off, popping the buttons.

In his white T-shirt, blue boxer shorts, and Thelma's red woolen knee socks he had donned to ward off a chilly night, Marvin Randall Ivy Jr., wearing the colors of the American flag, lunged for the camper.

Thelma saw him coming, but it was difficult to see his face under the dim light.

“Give me the flashlight, Randy! Quick!”

Cynthia had thrown herself on the bunk that was hers and wept loudly as Atlanta burned all around her. Regina was holding her breath. Randy handed his mother the flashlight.

“Do you think he'll really kill you?” He was excited. This vacation was turning into more than he'd expected. Better than
Flash Gordon
. Thelma shined the light out the door's window in time to illuminate what looked like a deranged member of a minstrel show.

“Open this door, Thelma!” the man in blackface shouted and rattled the knob. Thelma was reminded of what Junior had told her about his mother's breakdown. She decided that he had gone crazy. She always thought he took after Pearl.

“Junior, for God's sake. It's me!”

“I know it's you!” He rattled the knob again and this time pounded on the door. Cynthia howled. Randy squealed and clapped his hands.

“Do you want your little children to be scarred for life?” Thelma cried.

“I want
you
to be scarred for life,” Junior said and went around to the same window that had held Regina's sign declaring fire. He tried in vain to open it, but Thelma had had the foresight to lock it.

“Do you think he'll drown you or beat you with a stick?” Randy asked his mother. Thelma shined the light out the window and into Junior's eyes again, hoping the brightness of it would bring him back to his senses.

“Are we all going to die?!” Cynthia wailed and clutched to her chest the new Ginger, who was not as pretty as her predecessor, but was the best that Watertown's J. C. Penney could offer.

“No, just Mama,” Randy reassured her and received a slap on the head from Thelma.

“Stop scaring your sisters, Randy. You're as bad as your father.” She kept the light in Junior's eyes. He was still trying to open the window.

“Maybe he'll strangle you,” said Randy, putting his two hands around his own neck and squeezing. “Like thith,” he lisped, tongue hanging out. Thelma grabbed him by the neck of his shirt, and checking to make sure Junior was still at the other window, she unlocked the door and pushed her only son out into the night.

Junior rushed around to the door, expecting to find it open. He found Marvin Randall Ivy III standing on the steps.

“How are you going to kill her?” he asked his father, and spit theatrically onto the ground. “Are you going to put her feet in cement and sink her?” Randy gestured with his head toward the river. This was even better than
The Untouchables
.

Lights stronger than a flashlight flooded the camper and campground. It was a car.

“What's going on?” Pearl shouted, sticking her head out the passenger window.

“Daddy's going to kill Mama!” Randy shouted back to her.

“Be careful,” Pearl said to Marvin Sr. as they opened their doors and got out of the car. “There's a colored man with little Randy. He must be a burglar.”

“There's no coloreds in Mattagash, is there?” whispered Marvin Sr.

“You can never be too sure,” said Pearl as they inched their way cautiously toward the camper.

When Pearl realized that the man in blackface was her own Junior, she ran to him and put her plump, motherly arms around him. Thelma's flashlight hit her squarely in the face. Squinting to see who was behind the beam of light, Pearl kicked the door and said, “Turn that off, you nitwit.”

“He's trying to kill me,” Thelma shouted.

“I'm not surprised,” Pearl told her only daughter-in-law. Junior, finally realizing what he had tried to do, began to sob on Pearl's shoulder.

“There, there,” soothed Pearl. “What did she do to you?” Hearing this prejudiced lullaby, Thelma burst into tears herself. Marvin Sr. knocked on the camper door.

“Please don't kill us!” screamed Cynthia.

“Come in,” said Regina.

Thelma unlocked the door and let her father-in-law inside.

“What happened?” he asked her. She fell into his arms and he patted her back. He
almost
liked Thelma. Or at least didn't
dislike
Thelma.

“He just went crazy,” she told him.

“Well, it's OK now. We'll go get dry at the motel. Get the kids ready. I'll drive you and the children over in the Packard. We'll have to pick up the camper tomorrow.”

Thelma selected some dry clothing for herself and the children.

“Let Pearl get Junior's clothes,” she thought.

Outside, Pearl was questioning Junior.

“I figured you'd get rained out. Marvin borrowed Pinkham's car so we could come check up on you. We figured you'd get rained out, all right, but we never figured on this mess.”

“Mama, I wanted to kill her,” Junior sobbed.

“Of course you did,” Pearl said, remembering the trip up to Mattagash in the Packard. She led her son over to Albert Pinkham's blue Ford.

“We'll cramp up for the night in our motel room,” Pearl said.

“I could only see red.”

“Me and Thelma and Regina will sleep in the bed.”

“I could hear the kids crying and I still wanted to kill her.”

“The rest of you will have to sleep on the floor around the bed, but at least you'll be dry.”

“I wonder if I'd have really done it if you hadn't come when you did,” Junior sobbed.

“Tomorrow we'll get Sicily to put us up between her place and Marge's. Don't think about it anymore, darling. Tomorrow's a new day.” Junior allowed his mother to settle him in the backseat of the car, her coat around him.

“I'll be right back, honey. You stay right there.”

“I just heard this awful roar inside my head. This real strange noise,” Junior said as Pearl closed the car door. Pearl opened the door again.

“Did it sound like a swarm of bees?” she asked.