As they pick up speed, bubbles float out of the caterpillar’s brass pipe, but the momentum quickly dies. There are not enough passengers to propel the caterpillar bus to go any faster. At this slow pace, Simon would almost be better off walking. Fortunately, the conductor does all the steering.
“We were moving along quite well before you came along,” a person behind him shouts.
“That funeral better be for someone important,” shouts another.
“It’s for my wife,” Simon shouts.
“He says it’s for his wife!”
“His wife? He’s riding a bicycle to his wife’s funeral?”
“What a disgrace!”
“An imbecile.”
“He’s a slow rider too.”
“Making us ride all the way up the damned mountain.”
“And filthy. Take a look at his clothes.”
“I’d looked forward to this ride.”
“The funeral boy has ruined it for us all.”
“A disgrace.”
The passengers of the caterpillar bus continue to berate him as they teeter out of the city and through a forest of plastic trees. They ascend a narrow mountain road so steep that Simon must hook his chin over his handlebars to prevent from falling backwards.
When the caterpillar bus halts to let him off, Simon realizes that all the other passengers have tumbled off their bikes. The caterpillar bus must contain reserves of hydrogen or some other fuel source. Simon thinks this is illegal but says nothing. He could never have propelled the bus up the mountain by himself.
“It’s not much further,” the conductor says.
Simon detaches his bike from the caterpillar bus and thanks the man. He continues on foot, thankful that the road has leveled off, as the caterpillar bus turns around and begins its slow crawl down the mountain.
THE FUNERAL
A sign on the side of the road proclaims WELCOME TO JOHNSTON FUNERAL SERVICES. An empty parking lot overtaken by plastic blackberry bushes comes into view. Be yond the field of bushes, a glass dome sparkles in the hot afternoon sun. Skinny blue strings protrude from the glass walls. The strings sway in a light breeze. Simon follows them with his eyes, but the sunlight obscures their endpoints. For all he knows, they continue into outer space, and perhaps even further.
Simon locks his bike to a FUNERAL PARKING ONLY sign and approaches the glass dome.
A path cut in the blackberry bushes leads up to the dome. The path is overgrown. He is cut by plastic thorns.
Simon remembers when he and Celia went to New-port Beach and the same jellyfish stung them both. At the memory, his mouth creases into a smile, sadness filling him like sand. That was their first vacation together. The weather was miser able, the motel had cockroaches and moldy sheets, and they got stung by a jellyfish, yet they had the most beautiful time together.
He approaches the doorway cut into the glass dome.
The dome seems fancy for a funeral home. The strings rising through it belong to trees. Real trees.
Amidst the tree strings, there are smaller strings attached to the fruit that hang from branches. Simon has not seen a fruit tree in almost a full year. He doesn’t recognize the purplish fruit growing on the trees. He thinks they are plums.
He follows a cluster of larger strings down to the person they are attached to. She is a skeletal old woman swathed in vibrant greens, yellows, and reds. She is not frightening to look at, nor is she pretty.
“Excuse me,” he says, rapping lightly on the glass.
The old woman looks up. Her lips have been eaten away by something black. Simon casts his eyes to his shoes.
“I’m here for the funeral.”
The pressure behind his face swells. He closes his eyes, afraid his eyeballs will pop out. His knees buckle. He steps in side the glass dome and leans against the wall for support.
The old woman limps toward him. She stops to pick some fruit off of a tree. When she gets close enough, she hands him a piece of fruit.
“What is it?” says Simon.
“Pluot.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s good.”
Simon looks at the smooth-fleshed, purple fruit. It fits perfectly in his right palm. As he holds the fruit, the blue string coiled around the stem disintegrates.
“Eat it,” the old woman says. “It’s good.”
Simon takes a bite. He chews slowly. He doesn’t know why he received this gift. He only accepted it to be kind.
He has never tasted a sweeter, juicier pluot.
“The ceremony is about to begin,” the old woman says.
“You can follow me over there.”
“Are you the groundskeeper?”
“I’m the accountant.”
“The accountant?”
“I settle the books of the dead. These days I bury the bodies and keep JFS running, what with budget cuts and layoffs they’ve even released the gardener, but officially, I’m just the accountant.”
“Is anyone else here… for Celia?” Simon asks.
“No one yet.”
“Maybe they’re running late,” Simon says.
“Did you expect anyone?”
“No one in particular.”
The accountant shakes her head sadly. “No one ever shows up late to these.”
The mustached one said the hospital would send a notice of death to everyone in Celia’s immediate family. However, Celia had been estranged from her family since before Simon met her. He has never even met her parents.
He intended to call his and Celia’s friends, and also his family.
He failed to call anyone.
The accountant walks past him out of the glass dome and says, “Follow me.”
“Where are we going?” Simon says.
He cannot feels his limbs. He thinks he must be going into shock. He’s out of breath. He cannot breathe.
He stares up at the glass dome pixilated by tears. A plane screams high above.
“We don’t do funerals in the garden. Come around to the parlor.”
“OK,” Simon says.
The accountant bustles away. Although she is barefoot, she walks at a fast clip. The patchwork fabric of her dress billows around her like a carnival tilt-a-whirl. Simon has to jog to stay by her side.
The accountant’s presence calms him a little bit, but uncertainty and shame gnaw at him. Uncertainty about the nature and regiment of funeral affairs. Shame over the absence of mourners, the absence of flowers. He failed to bring flowers.
“Do people still bring flowers to funerals?” he asks. “I know from reading articles that it used to be traditional, but what’s the tradition now? I’ve never been to a funeral.
I don’t know what’s expected. Are flowers normal? Am I doing some thing wrong?”
The accountant tilts her head and stares at him. Her eyes are cold and mean. Her blackened maw cracks into a smile.
They walk along a trail of stones that curves around the glass dome and zigzags through the fields beyond up to a trailer overtaken by flowering vines. The vines are blue and Simon initially mistakes them for strings.
“These vines are fake,” he says. He knows this because the vines do not possess strings. He has learned that living things have strings attached.
“No, they’re not,” the accountant says.
The accountant pulls a set of keys from beneath her dress and unlocks the door of the trailer. They go inside.
The trailer is the standard classroom type. Cheap variegated carpet on the floors, burlap curtains over the windows, pastel butcher paper stapled to the walls to hide the structural cheerlessness, and a sputtering heating/cooling unit in the corner. Simon has not set foot in one of these since his school days. Rows of black foldout chairs fill most of the room. In front, a podium and a coffin rest on a plywood riser.