inappropriate to Junior.
Nothing he could do about it now. Having Naomi's body moved to another grave, in a cemetery without Negroes, would cause a lot of talk. He didn't want to draw more attention to himself.
He decided, however, to see an attorney about a will-and soon. He wanted to specify that he was to be cremated and that his ashes were to be entombed in one of those memorial walls, well above ground level, where nothing was likely to seep into them.
Only one member of the distant funeral party did not disperse toward the line of cars on the service road. A man in a dark suit headed downhill, between the headstones and the monuments, directly toward Naomi's grave.
Junior couldn't imagine why some Negro stranger would want to intrude. He hoped there wouldn't be trouble.
The minister had finished. The service was over. No one came to Junior with condolences, because they would see him again shortly, at the Ford dealership buffet.
By now he recognized that the man approaching from the other graveside service was neither a Negro nor a stranger. Detective Thomas Vanadium was annoying enough to be an honorary Hackachak.
Junior considered leaving before Vanadium-still seventy-five yards away-arrived. He was afraid he would appear to be fleeing.
The funeral director and his assistant were the only people, other than Junior, remaining at the grave. They asked if they might lower the casket or if he would rather that they wait until he was gone.
Junior gave them permission to proceed.
The two men detached and rolled up the pleated green skirt that hung from the rectangular frame of the graveyard winch on which the casket was suspended. Green, rather than black, because Naomi loved nature: Junior had been thoughtful about the details of the service.
Now the hole was revealed. Damp earthen walls. In the shadow of the casket, the bottom of the grave was dark and hidden from view.
Vanadium arrived and stood beside Junior. His black suit was cheap, but it fit better than Rudy's.
The detective carried a single long-stemmed white rose.
Two cranks operated the winch.. The mortician and his assistant turned the handles in unison, and as the mechanism creaked softly, the casket slowly descended into the hole.
Finally Vanadium said, 'According to the lab report, the baby she was carrying was almost certainly yours.'
Junior said nothing. He was still upset with Naomi for hiding the pregnancy from him, but he was delighted that the baby would have been his. Now Vanadium couldn't claim that Naomi's infidelity and the resultant bastard had been the motive for murder.
Even as this news pleased Junior, it also saddened him. He was not merely interring a lovely wife, but also his first child. He was burying his family.
Refusing to give the cop the satisfaction of a reply to the news of the unborn baby's paternity, Junior stared unwaveringly into the grave and said, 'Whose funeral were you attending?'
'A friend's daughter. They say she died in a traffic accident down in San Francisco. She was even younger than Naomi.'
'Tragic. Her string's been cut too soon. Her music's ended prematurely,' Junior said, feeling confident enough to dish a serving of the maniac cop's half-baked theory of life back to him. 'There's a discord in he universe now, Detective. No one can know how the vibrations of that discord will come to affect you, me, all of us.'
Repressing a smirk, feigning a respectful solemnity, he dared to glance at Vanadium, but the detective stared into Naomi's grave as though he hadn't heard the mockery-or, having heard it, didn't recognize it for what it was.
Then Junior saw the blood on the right cuff of Vanadium's shirt. Blood dripping from his hand, too.
The thorns had not been stripped from the long stem of the white rose. Vanadium clutched it so tightly that the sharp points punctured his meaty palm. He seemed to be unaware of his wounds.
Suddenly and seriously creeped out, Junior wanted to get away from this nut case. Yet he was frozen by morbid fascination.
'This momentous day,' Thomas Vanadium said quietly, stiff gazing into the grave, 'seems full of terrible endings. But like every day, it's actually full of nothing but beginnings.'
With a solid thump, Naomi's fine casket reached the bottom of the hole.
This sure looked like an ending to Junior.
'This momentous day,' the detective murmured.
Deciding that he didn't need an exit line, Junior headed toward the service road and his Suburban.
The pendulous bellies of the rain-swollen clouds were no darker than when he had first come to the cemetery, yet they appeared more ominous now than earlier.
When he reached the Suburban, he looked back toward the grave.
The mortician and his assistant had nearly finished dismantling the frame of the winch. Soon a worker would close the hole.
While Junior watched, Vanadium extended his right arm over the open grave. In his hand: the white rose, its thorns slick with his blood. He dropped the bloom, and it fell out of sight, into the gaping earth, atop Naomi's casket.
On this Monday evening, with both Phimie and the sun having traveled into darkness, Celestina sat down to dinner with her mother and her father in the dining room of the parsonage.
Other members of the family, friends, and parishioners were all gone. Uncanny quiet filled the house.
Always before, this home had been full of love and warmth; and still it was, although from time to time, Celestina felt a fleeting chill that couldn't be attributed to a draft. Never previously had this house seemed in the least empty, but an emptiness invaded it now-the void left by her lost sister.
In the morning she would return to San Francisco with her mom.
She was reluctant to leave Daddy to adapt to this emptiness alone.
Nevertheless, they must leave without delay. The baby would be released from the hospital as soon as a minor infection cleared up. Now that Grace and the reverend had been granted temporary custody pending adoption, preparations had to be made for Celestina to be able to fulfill her commitment to raise the child.
As usual, dinner was by candlelight. Celestina's parents were romatics.
Also, they believed that gracious dining has a civilizing effect on children, even if the fare is frequently simple meat loaf.
They were not among those Baptists who forsook drink, but they served wine only on special occasions. At the first dinner following a funeral, after the prayers and the tears, family tradition required a toast to the dearly departed. A single glass. Merlot.
On this occasion, the flickering candlelight contributed not to a romantic mood, not to merely a civilizing ambience, but to a reverential hush.
With slow, ceremonial grace, her father opened the bottle and served three portions. His hands trembled.
Reflections of lambent candle flames gilded the curved bowls of the long-stemmed glasses.
They gathered at one end of the dining table. The dark purple wine shimmered with ruby highlights when Celestina raised her glass.
The reverend made the first toast, speaking so softly that his tremulous words seemed to bloom in Celestina's mind and heart rather than to fall upon her ears. 'To gentle Phimie, who is with God.'
Grace said, 'To my sweet Phimie? who will never die.'
The toast now came to Celestina. 'To Phimie, who will be with me in memory every hour of every day for the rest of my life, until she is with me again for real. And to? to this most momentous day.'
'To this momentous day,' her father and mother repeated.
The wine tasted bitter, but Celestina knew that it was sweet. The bitterness was in her, not in the legacy of the grape.
She felt that she had failed her sister. She didn't know what more she could have done, but if she'd been wiser and more insightful and more attentive, surely this terrible loss would not have come to pass.
