F*ckload of Shorts Page 7

  She sits there with both hands in gloves that reach nearly to her elbows and pressed tightly between her thighs which are quivering just a little bit under the strain of composure and it reminds me of this oriental chick who had sat right there once, in the same spot and with exactly the same posture, except the gloves were the only thing she was wearing. It's spooky, really these little coincidences in life. It has me wondering if Mrs. Dross is leaving a damp spot on the chair like old Miss Saigon did. Somehow, I doubt it. What I don't doubt is that if there is anyone in St. Thomas who could pick up the acrid scent of the chair beneath the basic aroma of the house, and form a quick opinion as to origin, it's Susie Dross.

  She looks up finally, which if she were oriental I'd take to mean she'd finished peeing and says "You are the professional here, Mr. Wainscot. Herbert is only the first husband I have lost. I will take your opinion under advisement. I will insist, however on an open casket."

  Back in the late seventies, it seemed like a pretty good idea to buy out the Donnellys. It was not such a bummer, to live here then, especially if you knew a thing or two about textiles or construction. The population had grown steadily for ten years thanks to romantic notions of small communities surrounded by nature and outside the watchful eye of the government. Things were looking up. There were new businesses starting all the time. The Syam pet food factory opened up and created a lot of jobs, and by 1980 there were rumors we had a K-Mart coming too. But Reaganomics were right around the corner like a blue Monday and fuck if the whole town didn't go in the toilet.

  By the end of the eighties, the textile plant had closed. The union had had its ass handed to it by a bunch of ten year olds in Asia. Most of the mom and pop spots had gone tits up and the population had dwindled to an all time low. The baby boom that had been perched on the horizon, throwing off fierce fuck me vibes, like the class slut just dying to get it on with the whole death care industry, picked up and moved out of town. Those that were left, were them with deep roots, like Herb and Susie Dross or without the means or inclination to get out, like me.

  I was being quit by wife number two at the time. I had a receding hair line and just enough soft to me to seem comfortable, but underneath I was angry. Pissed off at the demise of the place and my marriage. Patty said I was a small time dreamer and a big time pervert and should stay here and rot. She wanted nothing to do with me, or St. Thomas. The blow of a second failed marriage made me determined to stick it out and make a go of it, with the business. Can't say as to why. I just hated to lose, I guess.

  There were a few other like minded business men in town. Hunter Malcomson who owned the Syam plant and Walt Grimaldi who had one of the best livestock farms in Hamilton County were friends of mine and comrades of sorts having served on local councils and committees together and frequenting the same bordellos. It was the three of us who struck the deal that kept the place from dying completely.

  Thanks to our determination and innovation, the town lived on and as the nineties were coming to a close, our little hamlet was experiencing growth again for the first time in twenty years. The new comers were hippies or burnouts ducking trouble created elsewhere, but young for the most part and some were starting families, eager to trade the sag and depression of urban poverty for the real thing out in the sticks.

  I got to the hospital later that night to pick up the body. The orderly helping me with the gurney says "Holy shit, he's a big son of a bitch." straining as we begin to ascend the ramp to the hearse. And he's right. Herb Dross is heavy. Not fat, but solid and really really tall. Like 6'7" or more. His humongous feet hang off the end of the gurney along with his ankles and a good four inches of leg and the muscles in my arms begin to ache a little in anticipation.

  "Show some respect for the dead." I say as a joke, but he doesn't get it. Must be new. Driving him back to the home, it strikes me I never realized how large he was. Somehow that little bit of a thing he was married to had shrunk him using only the voodoo of her glare and behavior. She'd nearly completely disappeared him, this giant of a man. I pictured him dissolving into the atmosphere like a seltzer tablet, just like I'd want to, every time she'd send back meals or return clothing, because nobody made them right. And I’d seen him dissipate before my eyes while she talked loudly to herself at the grocery store, disgusted by the magazines and concerned for the children forced to stand in front of them while mommy bought the food. I'm sure Herb caught shit from all sides any time after she'd attended public meetings or had a letter to the editor published in the Gazette bemoaning the crumbling pillars of society - chivalry, decency and patriotism.

  Why he never left her, is beyond me.

  "Nobody will say you took the coward's way if you killed yourself, Herb." I toast him with a shot of Jameson from my flask, driving past the dog food plant, now. I picture him spreading peanut butter on his throat and going for a walk in the woods or wearing t-bone steaks strapped underneath his clothes all the time, just waiting for his lucky day, and it all reminds me of a joke. "Stop me if you've heard this one, Herb. You know how to make a dog stop humping your leg?"

  He has no idea.

  "Suck his dick." I say and crack myself up nearly sending whiskey through my nostrils, which burns like the clap.

  Never did attend a business class in my life. In my day it wasn't always the way to get a tinfoil stamp to vouch for your competence any damn time you wanted to do any damn thing. Kids these days, I don't know how they do it, spending half their life in schooling, all blue balled until they've got a certificate for the permission to finally go ahead and try something maybe they're not all that hot to anymore. All to say, maybe if I had, I could explain the economics of my reasoning to you better, if I'd been to some fancy pants school with the stamps and all, but the easiest I know how is: burying people costs money. For the coffin, for the plot and for the digging for starters. Displaying a dead body in a box is really where you make your margin in my game.

  When they started snooping around last year and that first batch of corpses they found in the basement, neatly stacked behind the curtain, was getting all the media attention, you were maybe shocked. But I'd bet there were more than a few of you later, when they opened all the storage units and found some of the others, who said to yourself, "There's a shrewd business man.", with something like a smile in your tone.

  Trust me, the dead don't care whether they're hot or cold, in the dark or light, bone in or nugget style. That's one of the main perks of death. You get one complaint out of any corpse ever entrusted to me, and I'll refund every nickel I ever made. And as far as the living are concerned, what they don't know is what they pay me for. Everybody was much better off before Susie Dross noticed that the legs of her dear departed husband didn't terminate in feet any longer and threatened to go make such a high holy stink of it all.

  The orderly had been right. The son of a bitch was big. Too big in fact for my coffins. Either of them. Now before you get all indignant over this point, let me just ask if you've ever slept a night in a hotel? My friend, I'm not sure exactly what you did in yours, but there's some people, called everybody else in the whole damn world, who went ahead and got their freak on.

  Patty used to enjoy hotels. Big ones, little ones, rattraps and luxury suites. If it had mini bar and a porno box, all the better, but really any spot she could go and let down her hair, away from the familiarity of home, with all the baggage and responsibility of it soaked in to the atmosphere, she became a wild one. I hope they boil the sheets. I saw a TV show, not long back where they took some of that CSI equipment into a bunch of different hotels of differing cost to the consumer, to see what evidence had collected in each room over the years. To a one, they looked like Jackson Pollack had jizzed all over the ceiling and walls and bedspread, when they turned on that infrared light. Just shot some world record size loads with stupefying trajectories at mysterious targets.

  And that's where you stayed.

  So, yeah I re-used my coffins. Big deal. Not like my
bodies are lining the walls with fluids and even if they were, it's not like the next one would mind. Again, what the living don't know, all the details of body draining and dressing and disposing? That's what they pay me for. So just pay me already and don't go micro-managing every little thing.

  Susie Dross, at the service, goes up to the coffin and it is open casket, just like she insisted upon. I've put the poor bastard's face and throat back together with glue and given him make up to look like a real life wooden doll. And everybody says how peaceful he looks, how at peace he seems and all manner of bullshit about peace. Everyone, that is, except the widow.

  She's so distracted, she can't cry, can't let all that emotion go. These services are for the living to experience catharsis in communal demonstrations of grief and, just like an orgy, if one person's not committed it can throw off everyone else. It's a group effort. Without complete cooperation, when just one person is holding back, you become self-conscious, notice maybe how silly you look and it all goes to shit. And Susie - how could you cut off my dead husband's feet with a hack saw? - Dross is not getting the ball rolling with a little sniffle.

  It's awkward. She just keeps shooting glances over at the coffin, like it had spoken to her. The minister goes on about dust to dust and I say amen in my mind to that, and Mrs. Dross, had she a squeak in her neck, could not have been more conspicuous, turning her head back and forth between the preacher and the casket.

  When the service finally closes and nobody has said a thing and everyone else has left, Susie comes marching back in, as I'm lowering the lid. My balls trade places as I anticipate whatever unpleasant pleasantry she's about to loose on me.

  "A lovely service." I offer reflexively.

  She doesn't acknowledge that I've said anything. "Open it." she says plainly, like she knows I'll do whatever she asks.

  "Maam?" I say. She is probably ten years younger than me, but has been a maam in my book since I've known her.

  "Open the casket. I want to see my husband."

  "Please excuse me for saying so, Mrs. Dross, but the body in there is no longer your husband. He doesn't really look like the man you were married to because, he's dead and no amount of concealer or rouge is going to-"

  "Open the casket or I will call the police."

  "Of course." So, I do. Herb Dross, made up like a Ziggy Stardust harlequin doll, looks up at heaven only to see Susie standing over him, grim and disapproving once again. Give the poor guy a break I think, and I'm not sure if I'm referring to the departed or myself.

  "Open the other end."

  "I'm sorry, Mrs. Dross, but the other end doesn't-"

  "I want to see his feet."

  Here it comes. That was not the first time I'd had to trim some off the stems to get the deceased to fit. What can I say? It makes better sense than buying a brand new casket for every single body. You have any idea how much that would cost? There was of course the one I had to replace after Barb, my third wife, broke it. She had a thing for doing it in tight spaces. When the broom closets became too cavernous, we quickly graduated to coffins, most of them empty. Again we come back to that quality and craftsmanship issue. I think the spill had heightened the experience for her because we finished before collecting what’s-his-nuts off the floor and propping him up in the corner where he would be out of the way. He looked as if he were a night watchman, drunk on the job. Of course, after that, it was like he was watching and she had to have another go. Then that became a new thing.

  Herb Dross's feet were still in the freezer. I think.

  So, I quit stalling and open the other end. His slacks are hemmed to not bunch around his shoes, which are fastened to the stumps beneath the pants. She stares at them a few interminable seconds before grabbing a shoe.

  It comes off, empty in her hand.

  Nobody missed her for a couple of days. She was an intensely solitary person, an irony considering her insistence at knowing everyone else's business and printing it in the news paper. She had many informational sources, but none could really be called friends. There had been a small turn out for the funeral service, but no one was invited to the burial. It was to be private.

  No heads turned when she missed the school board meeting. Everyone was probably relieved by her absence, though her failure to notify the board in advance, must've sat uneasily on a few minds. It was her conspicuous missing of First Lutheran's nine a.m. service and subsequent truancy at the eleven o’clock, which raised eyebrows.

  When the sheriff finally put out a missing person's report, she'd been dead nearly a week. The sheriff came by to speak to me. I was expecting that. He said no one had seen Susie Dross since the funeral and I nodded my head solemnly and said I'd heard that too.

  "Far as I can figure it, you'd be the last person to see her around these parts." There was no accusation in his voice, so I was relaxed.

  "Really? She have family anywhere?"

  "Looking in to that, but we haven't found any yet. She and Herb grew up here, had no kids or siblings and parents are deceased on both sides, but we're looking for uncles aunts and cousins. Did she seem unusually upset to you, Mr. Wainscot?"

  "No, not that I noticed, sheriff. Of course she was upset, but I wouldn't say unusually so."

  "Some folks have said she seemed distressed during the service. Did she mention anything that may have been bothering her?"

  Did she ever not? seemed like the appropriate response, but I let it go unsaid.

  "Yes. She didn't like the job I'd done putting old Herb's face back together. I tried to convince her to have a closed casket, but you know how she was, sheriff, when she got an idea. I told her I wasn't a miracle worker, but she insisted and I thought I did a remarkable job, myself. Probably most others in attendance would say I had too, but, and not to speak ill of the grieving, you know what she was like."

  He took it all in, considered it and looked as if he was satisfied. "Alright, then, you have a good day."

  "You too, sheriff."

  Any type of business you run creates waste. It's just the nature of things. The trick to success is managing it so that it doesn't devour your profits. If you're really good, sometimes you can turn that waste into a byproduct that can be used.

  Syam pet food didn't compete with the big boys, but they did have a good little regional game. Hunter bought all of the meats from local farmers. Walt Grimaldi's farm was his main source. Everyone had felt the pinch of the times and those with pride in local products and services held Hunter, Walt and myself in high regard. We'd made a go of it in the face of big business and globalization. Success like ours came from smarts, commitment and innovation.

  Because of our small size, the mechanics of it was simpler than you'd think. I have no staff. I'm a one man show, so there were no unwanted eyes seeing things they'd rather not, when I'd bring a delivery Walt's way. Likewise, Walt was a small business man and did his own slaughtering, always had. I wont lie to you and say the first time wasn't weird. There was a sort of distance created between the three of us that night that remained to the end, but our arrangement stood and though I didn't see the two of them outside of town business anymore, I can't say I'd take it back.

  Like I mentioned before, I've always thought that any sort of self knowledge you can gain is good. I feel it’s important to know your own capabilities and limitations and embrace your true identity, to make the most of this life, but some folks just aren't happy when they meet the real them, as if life were some meddlesome friend setting them up on a blind date with themselves. Some people just go for the appetizers, but I wanted desert, coffee and a night cap. By then I'd been working with the dead more than fifteen years, so the sight of them didn't bother me, but Walt and Hunter had to get pretty drunk to start carving.

  The first was Mrs. Dunlevy, a batty old broad who'd passed on in her sleep at the retirement home. She'd outlived the last of her progeny and had no one to claim her, so we agreed she was a perfect first attempt. As per our agreement, all three of us had to
be present for the inaugural run. We all had to get our hands dirty together, so to speak. I'd already fractured several laws just by bringing the body as had Walt by welcoming me on to his property with Edith Dunlevy in tow, so it was Hunter who had first go at her.

  Walt strung her up by her ankles over the drain in his slaughterhouse. It was cold in there by necessity, but we were, all three, sweating profusely. She swung there for a few moments, wrinkled and purple like a five foot, eighty pound vulva. Her skin had a tough, leathery look to it, but proved to be more like paper when Hunter drew the blade across her gullet, like Walt had demonstrated. He'd done so and then promptly puked. It set off a chain reaction of vomiting that ended with the two of them emptied, on all fours in the gore, heaving globs of spit on to the floor and mixing with the blood, but like I said, the dead don't bother me. A few slugs of whiskey later, all that pansy shit was behind us.

  Walt had taken the next cut himself. While she was still suspended, he used a curved carver to open her from the top of her privates all the way to the opening that Hunter had made. It took a bit of tugging, but that knife was a sharp fucker and he'd completed the cut in about thirty seconds. There was a rush of organs and her bowels slipped out like a can of fishing worms. Little pieces of this or that amateurs like to think they can identify, because they passed a high school class, dropped out around our feet.

  After Walt cut all that away and took the hose to the floor good, she hung there halved, her shoulders were near touching in the back, and I thought the protrusion of her dark nipples looked something like the far set eyes of a hammer head shark. When she'd dripped out and Walt hoisted her over the table and let her down, that thin skin of hers had torn off where the chains had held her and there was exposed bone most of the way around, when the shackles were removed.