I finally looked away and took a seat in a middle row, left. At precisely 2:00 PM, the organ music faded to silence and a tall, silver-haired man in a superbly tailored black suit materialized through a side curtain in one of the front alcoves. He wore an expensive blue silk tie with a matching handkerchief and his suit jacket remained buttoned. Very formal. Very proper. His crisp, white shirt had large, gold cuff links and he wore a sapphire ring on his pinkie finger. Tanned and fit, his mane of silver hair looked so stiff and lacquered, you could drop him on his head from a third floor window and he'd bounce. This couldn't be some junior assistant. This had to be Greene himself. With his head slightly bowed, he glided silently to the center of the room in front of the caskets. Ah, he seemed to be saying, life was indeed good, but if you play it right, death could be even better. The man paused there for a moment between the two coffins, his hands clasped in front of him, looking down, serious, contemplative, and very well practiced. When he finally looked up and saw me and the big gumba in the rear corner, I saw the slightest flicker of surprise in those soft-brown cow eyes, but Greene's expression never changed. Clearly, he didn't expect to see either one of us. Probably didn't expect to see anybody. Surprise? Annoyance? Yes, but oddly detached. And curious.
With a soft cough, he began to speak in a thick, baritone voice. “My friends, it was the wish of Peter and Theresa, as conveyed to me through their executor, that no memorial service be held at this time.” Great ad-libbing, I had to concede. “They knew how sad their untimely passing would be to their many friends,” Greene continued on autopilot without a hint of doubt or shame. “And Peter and Theresa very much wanted to spare them any further grief. Naturally, we will respect their wishes today. So, let us now bow our heads for a moment of silent prayer in their memory.”
After a brief pause, I heard another soft cough and had to stifle a laugh. If a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, I guess a mortician in Ohio measures a silent prayer as the shortest time between two coughs.
“On behalf of the family of Peter and Theresa, we truly appreciate your coming,” he continued as he looked up and studied me for a moment. “A private internment will follow, but at the request of the deceased, it is limited to the immediate family. Thank you and have a safe drive home.” Appropriate, I thought, as I stared at him and he stared back at me. No, not at me, more through me than anything else. Then the eyes swung away. They looked past me toward the back of the room where the guy in the blue shirt and gold chains was sitting. Greene's eyes paused again, as if he saw something there that bothered him a whole lot more than I did. Finally, he turned away and glided back into his alcove as silently as he had come.
It only took a minute or two for the empty, oppressiveness of the room to wrap itself around me again and start to squeeze. If I sat there much longer, it would crush the life out of me. Besides, there was nothing more to be gained here and I wanted to talk to the grease-ball in the beige suit before he disappeared on me again. I stood and turned, but he must have slipped out the aisle into the corridor and he was already gone.
My knees were weak and trembling, but I hurried after him through the lobby and out the front doors into the parking lot, but he was too fast. He jumped into the white Lincoln Town Car, started it up, floored it, and roared past me, kicking up a billowing cloud of dust as he bounced his way out onto Larkin Road. Tires screaming, the Lincoln turned east and disappeared down the road, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the hot, sun-drenched parking lot. Well, not completely alone. The deputy sheriff continued to sit there in the shade in his big brown police car, watching and waiting. For what, I wondered? Obviously not for reckless drivers in Lincolns. Great. Other than a silent prayer and some quality time with two caskets in an air conditioned chapel, my foray into the world of Buckeye mortuary science had accomplished absolutely nothing. I had scratched all the new itches that had bothered me since I read the obituaries the night before and got that out of my system, but in the end, all I found were the same old sores festering underneath.
I turned and walked back to the Bronco, tossed my blazer across the passenger seat, and got inside. The mid-day sun had turned the interior into a sauna, so I rolled down the windows and turned the air conditioning up to Max, waiting for the big SUV to cool down. That morning I found a good rock station in Columbus, QFM-96, and this afternoon they were featuring some back-to-back-to-back Mariah Carey. She was one of Terri's favorites, so I leaned against the headrest and closed my eyes as her music filled the car. There are some things you can never get too much of, and chocolate, a good Napa cabernet, and Mariah are near the top the list. With the car finally cooled down, I dropped it in gear and took a slow loop around the parking lot, past the deputy sitting in his cruiser. I smiled at him as I drove out of the lot and turned west on Larkin. The deputy didn't smile back. I didn't expect him to.
There was a Sunoco gas station a few doors down at the corner. I pulled in and drove around to the rear of the building where I found some shade under a big poplar. The area was mostly open cornfield. From my vantage point, I could see the Greene Funeral Home, its side portico, and the two black hearses parked at the back of the lot. That's where I decided to wait.
Twenty minutes later, two men in dark suits emerged from the side entrance, strode back to the hearses, and drove them under the portico and parked them side-by-side. They got out, walked back to the side doors and held them open as two more dark-suited men came out pushing two gurneys that were carrying the coffins. They opened the rear door of the hearses, pushed the coffins inside, and I heard the doors slam shut. The drivers and their helpers got inside and the two long, black cars drove out to the street with the brown sheriff's car finally stirring and taking up the rear of their short convoy. They exited the lot and turned west. After they passed the Sunoco station, I waited a decent interval, put the Bronco in gear, and followed from a safe distance, keeping a couple of hills or a line of trees between us, not that they were hard to follow.
Two miles and a handful of stop signs later, they turned north and passed through the tall, wrought-iron gates of Oak Hill. It was one of those modern cemeteries that put an emphasis on open space. I held back as the two hearses and the sheriff turned in and followed the main road as it curved off to the right. Once they were around the bend, I turned in and took an inside track, keeping the procession in sight. Except for a scattering of tall cedars, some evergreen hedges, and a lot of flowerbeds, there was nothing to break the view across the rolling green lawns. No tombstones. No big gaudy mausoleums. No tall marble spires. No winged angels or miniature Pietas looking down on the graves in perpetual grief. What it had was row after row of small bronze plaques mounted flush to the ground and very little cover to hide a Bronco.
They stopped near a large green-and-white striped canopy on a low rise near the rear corner of the cemetery. I pulled behind a low hedge about two hundred yards away and parked. Moving on foot, I cut the distance in half and slipped behind a tree where I could see what they were doing. The men in the black suits already had the rear doors of the hearses open and were pulling out the first coffin. The four men carried it over to the tent and set it on the ground on one side of the hole. They went back and got the second coffin and placed it on the other side. Two cemetery workers in blue denim overalls stood waiting next to a large open grave with a wheeled A-frame hoist. No crowds. No preachers. No grieving next-of-kin. No standing on ceremony. They hooked up the first casket to the frame and quickly rolled it over the grave. As the deputy watched, they turned the crank and the casket slowly disappeared into the hole and out of sight. In a matter of minutes, the second one followed next to it. Terri would love this. Her mother always said that if she married a bum like me she'd end up in a doublewide sooner or later. If she only knew.