motionless.
There they lay, two brothers, motionless in the bloody snow. The burly men carried them back into the parlor and propped them up on chairs; the crowd took their seats and the service resumed with someone saying prayers. The priest had left when the fight broke out.
At the end of the service, I had the casket bearers help me load the casket into the hearse for the ride over to the vault. It was a comical sight, the two brothers, side by side, dried blood covering their faces, James with his one eye swollen shut, and Brian with his broken nose carrying their father’s casket. They looked like two whipped dogs.
I was glad to see the McSomethings go and decided that next time they called upon my services I would be too busy to accommodate them. Unfortunately, I still had to be around them when we buried their father after the spring thaw. I didn’t relish that day, and in fact, dreaded it the rest of the winter.
On the day of the interment Brian and James showed up in the same car, smelling as they usually did, of booze, but strangely enough, the best of friends. They called each other “brother” during the short committal service and boasted of their drinking exploits the night before. I couldn’t believe they were the same two people I had watched duke it out in front of my funeral home not four months prior.
I just couldn’t resist. Before I left I asked Brian, “How did you get that scar over your eye?”
He grinned, revealing several missing teeth. “Fightin’ James.”
CHAPTER 33
Lucky
I remember the first funeral I was given to direct on my own after I graduated from mortuary school. It was a disaster… almost. But I’m Lucky. My real name is some God-awful albatross my parents shackled upon me, Chester. So you can see why I prefer my nickname to my real name. I got the name because, whether it be playing poker or nearly ruining a funeral, I can step into a dung pile and still come out smelling like a daisy.
I did my internship at McDaniel-Walsh. It is a prestigious old firm with the physical plant housed in a big old Victorian mansion. I lived on the third floor in a small dorm-type room. It’s the type of room that’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter, but I was just glad for a place to stay. My rent? The phone for the funeral home rang up in my room from 6:00 P.M. to 7:30 A.M. six nights a week; that’s how I paid rent.
The funeral directors who worked for McDaniel-Walsh were considerably older than me and thought I was just a stupid kid. They couldn’t be bothered with explaining anything to me. I think they thought I should instinctively know it all. Or maybe they thought that just by merely being in their presence I’d pick up their knowledge through osmosis. Either way, they didn’t give me much responsibility at first. In fact, I was like their live-in janitor when I started, and I also had the pleasure of hearing them speak to me like I was retarded—loud and slow. “Chet”—they refused to call me Lucky because it was an “unprofessional” name—“can you
So I kept my head down and worked hard, and slowly, very slowly, they began giving me more responsibility.
One morning after I’d been at McD and W for about six months, the phone rang up in my attic apartment. It was Mark, one of the directors. He told me his wife had been rushed to the hospital during the night and he wouldn’t be in to work that day. Could I take the funeral he had planned?
Could I? “Of course I can,” I told him, excited at the prospect of actually doing some funeral directing.
He gave me directions to the church and cemetery and told me the pallbearers would meet me at the church to help me in.
“Do you know what to do?” Mark asked me.
“Yes, I know what to do.”
“Chet, are you sure?” he repeated.
“Don’t worry. Everything will be fine,” I assured him.
He thanked me and hung up. I was ecstatic. This was my big chance to really prove myself and move up from my current custodial duties of polishing the brass ashtrays and replacing the urinal cakes. I ran out and loaded the funeral coach with everything I would need for church: floral stands, sign-in book, pedestals, makeup grip, automobile funeral tags, and the like. I left with plenty of time, but because I was relatively new to the area, and didn’t travel very much outside the immediate area of the funeral home except to go to the grocery store or the occasional movie, I got on the freeway going in the wrong direction.
I didn’t realize my mistake at first, because the exits on this particular freeway are so far and few between, but I finally noticed the exit numbers kept getting bigger. I was looking for an exit number that was supposed to be lower.
I drove and drove. At one point I contemplated driving over the grass median and getting in the southbound lanes, but it appeared there was a slight ditch and I had visions of getting the funeral coach stuck in the median and making the nightly news. I gripped the steering wheel and willed the next exit to come. It came and I took it. I drove up to the top of the off-ramp, hooked a left turn, and discovered there was no access to the southbound lanes of the freeway. That’s when I began to panic. These were the days before cell phones or GPS navigation devices, and the exit I had gotten off at was for farm country. There weren’t any gas stations I could inquire at, just fields. I had a choice. I could continue northbound on the freeway, or I could try to backtrack through the back roads until I linked up again with the freeway.
I gritted my teeth and kept driving, straight into farm country.
Twenty-five minutes after the funeral service was supposed to start I pulled up to the curb; my face was flushed and my nerves were frayed. I felt like my body would snap, I was so agitated. I had blown it. I had ruined my one big chance to prove myself. When this got back to Mark I was finished!
Forty-five people with arms folded glared at me as I threw the coach in park and killed the engine. I thought the knot in my stomach would jump right out my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut and bit my lower lip so hard I could taste blood inside my mouth, and then I took a deep breath and got ready for the reaming I was sure to receive. I threw open the door and was totally un-prepared for what came.
The daughter of the deceased flew down the church stairs, pushing through the throng of furious faces. “My mother always said she’d be late to her own funeral! Oh, this is just perfect!” She stopped short and looked at me. “Who are you?”
“I’m Lucky. Mark’s wife was rushed to the hospital last night so he sent me.”
“Oh my, I hope his wife is all right!”
I assured her she was.
“And to think, his wife is in the hospital and Mark is still thinking of my family, and having you arrive late so mother would be late. We laughed about her tardiness for a good while when I was in making the funeral arrangements. What a sweet man! He really did think of everything!”
“He’s always thinking of others,” I agreed.
“This just made the funeral
I just smiled.
We proceeded with the funeral, and the daughter couldn’t thank me enough.
I accepted the praise with as much grace as I could muster that day. I couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that I had dodged a bullet.
Two days after the funeral Mark approached me while I was painting the eaves of the portico. “The daughter of that funeral you took the other day called me.”
“Oh?” I said, putting my paintbrush down.
He had a funny look on his face. “Thanked me for having you show up late because, I quote, ‘Mother always said she’d be late to her own funeral.’”
“So she’s happy then, I take it?”
