I was wrong. He backed off from me same as if I'd just told him I was a leper. Why, it was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard, he said. I must be deranged to put stock in such an evil notion. Drive her out of town? Take a rope or a gun to her? "You go around urging such violence against a poor spinster, George Cranmer," he said, "and you'll be the one driven out of town."
He was nearly right, too. The ministers of our three churches wouldn't listen, nor would the mayor or the town council or anyone else in Little River. The truth was too dreadful for them to credit; they shut their minds to it. Folks stopped trading at my store, commenced to shunning me on the street. Wasn't anything I could do or say to turn even one person to my way of thinking.
Finally I quit trying and put pen to paper and wrote it all out here. I pray someone will read it later on, someone outside Little River, and believe it for the pure gospel truth it is. I have no other hope left than that.
She calls herself Grace Selkirk but that isn't her name. She has no name, Christian or otherwise. She isn't a mortal woman. And coffin-trimming isn't just work she's good at—it's her true work, it's what she is. The Coffin Trimmer.
The Angel of Death.
I don't know if she's after the whole town, every last soul in Little River, but I suspect she is. Might get them too. One other fact I do know: This isn't the first town she's come to and it won't be the last. Makes a body tremble to think how many must have come before, all over the country, all over the world, and how many will come after.
But that is not the real reason I'm so scared. No, not even that. Last night I worked late and walked home by way of Oak Street. Couldn't help myself, any more than I could help glancing through Abe Bedford's show window. And there she was in a fresh-trimmed coffin, the silk and satin draped just so around her, face all pale and waxy and dead. But the face wasn't hers; I looked at it close to make sure.
It was mine. A shadow vision of my own fresh corpse waiting to be put into the ground.
I'm next.
This little tale of psychosexual obsession brought yelps of protest from more than one faithful reader when it first appeared. The story seems to push some people's buttons, and not because of the act referred to in the final sentence; the phrase containing reference to said act was left out of the originally published version. The yelps pleased me. I hope there'll be more from readers who catch "Funeral Day" here for the first time. Pushing buttons, after all, is what fiction is all about—from the writer's point of view, anyway.
Funeral Day
It was a nice funeral. And easier to get through than he'd imagined it would be, thanks to Margo and Reverend Baxter. They had kept it small, just a few friends; Katy had had no siblings others than Margo, no other living relatives. And the casket had been closed, of course. A fall from a two-hundred-foot cliff . . . it made him shudder to think what poor Katy must have looked like when they found her. He hadn't had to view the body, thank God. Margo had attended to the formal identification.
The flowers were the worst part of the service. Gardenias, Katy's favorite. Dozens and dozens of gardenias, their petals like dead white flesh, their cloyingly sweet perfume filling the chapel and making him a little dizzy after a while, so that he couldn't concentrate on Reverend Baxter's mercifully brief eulogy.
At least he hadn't been pressed to stand up next to the bier and speak. He couldn't have done it. And besides, what could he have said about a woman he had been married to for six years and stopped loving—if he had ever really loved her—after two? It wasn't that he'd grown to hate or even dislike her. No, it was just that he had stopped caring, that she had become a stranger. Because she was so weak . . . that was the crux of it. A weak, helpless stranger.
Afterward, he couldn't remember much of the ride to the cemetery. Tearful words of comfort from Jane Riley, who had been Katy's closest friend; someone patting his hand—Margo?—and urging him to bear up. And later, at the gravesite . . . "We therefore commit her body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust . . ." and Reverend Baxter sprinkling a handful of dirt onto the coffin while intoning something about subduing all things unto Himself, amen. He had cried then, not for the first time, surely not for the last.
The ride home, to the small, two-story house he had shared with Katy a half mile from the college, was a complete blank to him. One moment he was at the gravesite, crying; the next, it seemed, he was in his living room, surrounded by his books and the specimen cases full of the insects he had collected during his entomological researches. Odd, he realized then, how little of Katy had gone into this room, into any of the rooms in the house. Even the furniture was to his taste. The only contributions of hers that he could remember were frilly bits of lace and a bright seascape she had bought at a crafts fair. And those were gone now, along with her clothing and personal effects; Margo had already boxed them up so that he wouldn't have to suffer the task, and had had them taken away for charity.
Nine or ten people were there, Katy's and his friends, mostly from the college. Mourners who had attended the funeral and also been to the cemetery. Jane Riley and Evelyn Something—Dawson? Rawson? a woman he didn't know well that Katy had met at some benefit or other—had provided food, and there were liquor and wine and hot beverages. Margo and the Reverend had referred to the gathering as a "final tribute"; he called it a wake. But Katy wouldn't have minded. Knowing that, he hadn't objected.
Katy. Poor, weak, sentimental Katy . . .
The mourners ate and drank, they talked, they comforted and consoled. He ate and drank nothing; his stomach would have disgorged it immediately. And he talked little, and listened only when it seemed an answer was required.
"You are taking a few more days off, aren't you, George?" Alvin Corliss, another professor at the college. English Lit.
"Yes."
"Take a couple of weeks. Longer, if you need it. Go on a trip, someplace you've always wanted to visit. It'll do you a world of good."
"Yes. I think I might . . ."
"Is Margo staying on awhile longer, George?" Helen Vernon, another of Katy's friends. They had gone walking together often, along the cliffs and elsewhere. But she hadn't been with Katy on the day of her fall. No, not on that day.
"Yes, Helen, she is."
"Good. You shouldn't be alone at a time like this."
"I don't mind being alone."
"A man needs a woman to do for him in his time of grief. Believe me, I know . . ."
On and on, on and on. Why didn't they leave? Couldn't they see how much he wanted them to go? He felt that if they stayed much longer he would break down—but of course he didn't break down. He endured. When his legs grew weak and his head began to throb, he sank into a chair and stared out through a window at his garden. And waited. And endured.
Dusk came, then full dark. And finally—but slowly, so damned slowly—they began to leave by ones and twos. It was necessary that he stand by the door and see them out. Somehow, he managed it.
"You've held up so well, George . . ."
"You're so brave, George . . ."
"If you need anything, George, don't hesitate to call . . ."