public conveyance, but is it equally perverted to lie on your bunk in the mountain silence and fantasize to the point of holographic hallucination?
While working on the Bucky books, I often dream about sex with Samantha Lindell. We do it the normal way—crotch to crotch. She lifts her feet onto my shoulders like the women in Chinese erotica. She whispers “
Since Halloween, I was no longer part of my own dreams. Emma Bovary did it with some hairy-backed geek I never saw before. Or pioneers fought off waves of attacking Cubans. Guys in white suits murdered children. But I wasn’t the murderer or the one being murdered. I was a movie audience with access to varied camera angles and hidden microphones. What I couldn’t do was touch or be heard or influence actions. The effect was disassociative.
The night Pete died I dreamed about Gilia Saunders, which is abnormal for me because I never dream about people I know. Maybe it’s normal for others. Gilia stood next to an Appomattox Courthouse, barefoot, wearing an old-time Cattle Kate dress. Her hair was clean, her eyes bright. She chose a five iron from the leather bag in the cart. She approached the ball and pulled her dress sleeves up above her wrists.
Gilia swung and the ball soared into a faultless Wyoming sky. I kept the camera on her face a moment as she shaded her eyes with one hand, then I swung around to follow the ball. An osprey suddenly swooped down and snatched the ball in mid-flight. The osprey rose on an air current, flapped its wings three times, and, from a great altitude, dropped the golf ball on Gilia’s head. Gilia pitched forward onto the ladies’ tee and died.
I awoke with an erection.
In the morning, Chet, Maurey, and I went to Mountain Mortuary to make what are called the final arrangements: Chet, as partner; Maurey, as next of kin; me, as the one paying the bill. Mountain Mortuary is a ranch-style log cabin with heavy double doors and abandoned swallow nests in the eaves. Abandoned for the winter, anyway, they hang like lairs of mutant wasps. Inside, the floor is oak, a right-hand door leads into the chapel and a left-hand door into an office, where a young man about Gilia’s age in a blue sweater, slacks, and sandals stood looking out the window with his hands clasped behind his back.
At the sound of me setting the suitcase full of Pete’s clothes on the floor, the young man turned to face us and shake hands.
“Ron Mildren,” he said. “You must be the family and friends of Pete Pierce.”
Maurey and I nodded.
“Have a seat. You’ll find us more informal and personal than your city funeral homes. Can I bring anyone coffee?”
Maurey said “No,” I said “Yes,” and Chet didn’t say anything. While Ron went for coffee, Maurey and I flipped through a three-spiral binder marked Cremation Options. It was divided into “Showing and Service,” “Service Only,” and “No Showing, No Service,” with two more chapters at the back filled with photographs of special-order caskets and urns.
The urns were mostly either boxes or vases, but they had a few ceramic statues—leaping dolphins and a Greek woman without arms. One was five books that looked real but were hollow, so you could hide your loved one on a shelf. I studied an urn shaped like Cowboy Joe, the squatty University of Wyoming mascot I always thought was ripped off from Yosemite Sam.
Ron put my coffee on a coaster. “Did Peter go to UW?” he asked.
I said, “No.”
Maurey said, “Pete. Not Peter.”
“Sorry.” He handed her a clipboard with a questionnaire on birthdate, parents’ names, length of time in the armed forces, that sort of thing. As Ron outlined our options, his hands touched his earlobes and hair, nervously, and his left dimple twitched. We told him no showing, services at the Episcopal Church in Jackson, and Chet was to receive the ashes.
Maurey looked up from the form. “Why does it want to know if Pete had a pacemaker?”
A cloud crossed Ron’s face. “They run on a nuclear battery. You cremate a pacemaker and
Chet spoke for the first time. “Is it just me, or does this strike anyone else as bizarre?”
Ron cracked. He’d held it together while everyone played their parts, but as soon as Chet vocalized the ironic weirdness of death, Ron’s face collapsed and his shoulders dropped as if he’d taken a blow in the back from a baseball bat.
His voice shook. “My wife was raised in the funeral business. She loves it, but I married in.”
Maurey glanced at me. I shrugged.
“It’s not the cadavers,” Ron went on. “I don’t want you thinking I’m squeamish over dead bodies.” His eyes begged us to believe him.
“I don’t think you’re squeamish,” I said.
“It’s dealing with the bereaved. I can’t help feeling what they feel.”
“You’re in the wrong job,” Maurey said.
“People come to me at the saddest moment of their lives and, instead of offering comfort, I’m expected to make retail sales. ‘That’ll be ten thousand dollars, ma’am. I know you’re penniless and your husband left you all alone, but we do take Visa and MasterCard.’” Tears dribbled down his cheeks. He made no move to stop the flow.
“We’re not penniless,” I said.
“And I’m not really alone,” Chet said. “I have friends.”
Ron sniffed. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”
Maurey stood and went to a Kleenex box on the desk. She handed him a tissue and said, “Buck up. You don’t want your wife to see you like this.”
He stared at her. “How did you know?”
We met Gloria Mildren herself downstairs in the showroom. Urns filled a shelf on the left with caskets in the middle of the room and on the right. Each casket had a card giving the price and number of years on the warranty. Naturally, I drifted right over to the children’s casket. They only had one on hand, sized for about a six-year-old. It sold for eighteen hundred dollars and had a twelve-year warranty. I was afraid to ask what the warranty covered. I immediately imagined the child in the box, her little arms crossed over her chest, her hair brushed till it glowed. I could see the expression on her mother’s face. I knew her father’s helplessness. Sometimes being a novelist is a curse.
Chet and Maurey chose a bois d’arc box with ivory inlay for the ashes and a simple pine cremation casket. Cremation caskets are much like the burial kind, only they don’t have handles.
A woman’s voice came from a back hallway. “Orifices plugged up
We pretty much looked at the floor on that one.
Gloria’s eyes traveled the circle from us to her husband’s face. “Has Ronny been crying in front of the mourners again?”
I said, “No.”
“He cried in front of some folks from Pennsylvania last week. Their son skied into a tree and, if that wasn’t enough, when they came to view the body their funeral director bawled like a baby.” She turned to me. “How would you like it if that happened to you?”
“Ron was totally professional with us.” I looked to Chet and Maurey for confirmation.
Maurey nodded and said, “Totally,” but I don’t think Chet heard.
