Then Garp, had to check with the organist at the Steering chapel so that the same music would not be played for Ernie that, in the morning, would be played for Fat Stew. This mattered to Helen; she was upset, so Garp didn't question the seeming meaninglessness, to him, of his errand.
The Steering chapel was a squat Tudor attempt at a building; the church was so wreathed in ivy that it appeared to have thrust itself up out of the ground and was struggling to break through the matted vines. The pantlegs of John Wolf's dark, pin-striped suit dragged under Garp's heels as he peered into the musty chapel—he had never delivered the suit to a proper tailor, but had attempted to take up the pants himself. The first wave of gray organ music drifted over Garp like smoke. He thought he had come early enough, but to his dread he saw that Fat Stew's funeral had already begun. The audience was old and hardly recognizable—those ancients of the Steering School community who would attend anyone's death, as if, in double sympathy, they were anticipating their own. This death, Garp thought, was chiefly attended because Midge was a Steering; Stewart Percy had made few friends. The pews were pockmarked with widows; their little black hats with veils were like dark cobwebs that had fallen on the heads of these old women.
“I'm glad you're here, Jack,” a man in black said to Garp. Garp had slipped almost unnoticed into a back pew; he was going to wait out the ordeal and then speak to the organist. “We're short some muscle for the casket,” the man said, and Garp recognized him—he was the hearse driver from the funeral home.
“I'm not a pallbearer,” Garp whispered.
“You've got to be,” the driver said, “or we'll never get him out of here. He's a big one.”
The hearse driver smelled of cigars, but Garp had only to glance about the sun-dappled pews of the Steering chapel to see that the man was right. White hair and baldness winked at him from the occasional male heads; there must have been thirteen or fourteen canes hooked on the pews. There were two wheelchairs.
Garp let the driver take his arm.
“They said there'd be more men,” the driver complained, “but nobody healthy showed up.”
Garp was led to the pew up front, across from the family pew. To his horror an old man lay stretched out in the pew Garp was supposed to sit in and Garp was waved, instead, into the Percy pew, where he found himself seated next to Midge. Garp briefly wondered if the old man stretched out in the pew was another body waiting his turn.
“That's Uncle Harris Stanfull,” Midge whispered to Garp, nodding her head to the sleeper, who looked like a dead man across the aisle.
“Uncle Horace Salter, Mother,” said the man on Midge's other side. Garp recognized Stewie Two, red-faced with corpulence—the eldest Percy child and sole surviving son. He had something to do with aluminum in Pittsburgh. Stewie Two hadn't seen Garp since Garp was five; he showed no signs of knowing who Garp was. Neither did Midge indicate that she knew anybody, anymore. Wizened and white, with brown blotches on her face the size and complexity of unshelled peanuts, Midge had a jitter in her head that made her bob in her pew like a chicken trying to make up its mind what to peck.
At a glance Garp saw that the pallbearing would be handled by Stewie Two, the hearse driver, and himself. He doubted that they could manage it. How awful to be this unloved! he thought, looking at the gray ship that was Stewart Percy's casket—fortunately closed.
“I'm sorry, young man,” Midge whispered to Garp; her gloved hand rested as lightly on his arm as one of the Percy family parakeets. “I don't recall your name,” she said, gracious into senility.
“Uh,” Garp said. And somewhere between the names “Smith” and “Jones,” Garp stumbled on a word that escaped him. “Smoans,” he said, surprising both Midge and himself. Stewie Two did not appear to notice.
“Mr. Smoans?” Midge said.
“Yes, Smoans,” Garp said. “Smoans, class of '61. I had Mr. Percy in history.” My Part of the Pacific.
“Oh, yes, Mr. Smoans! How thoughtful of you to come,” Midge said.
“I was sorry to hear of it,” Mr. Smoans said.
“Yes, we all were,” Midge said, looking cautiously around the half-empty chapel. A convulsion of some kind made her whole face shake, and the loose skin on her cheeks made a soft slapping noise.
“Mother,” Stewie Two cautioned her.
“Yes, yes, Stewart,” she said. To Mr. Smoans, she said, “It's a pity not all of our children could be here.”
Garp, of course, knew that Dopey's strained heart had already quit him, that William was lost in a war, that Cushie was a victim of making babies. Garp guessed he knew, vaguely, where poor Pooh was. To his relief, Bainbridge Percy was not in the family pew.
It was there in the pew of remaining Percys that Garp remembered another day.
“Where do we go after we die?” Cushie Percy once asked her mother. Fat Stew belched and left the kitchen. All the Percy children were there: William, whom a war was waiting for; Dopey, whose heart was gathering fat; Cushie, who could not reproduce, whose vital tubes would tangle; Stewie Two, who turned into aluminum. And only God knows what happened to Pooh. Little Garp was there, too—in the sumptuous country kitchen of the vast, grand Steering family house.
“Well, after death,” Midge Steering Percy told the children—little Garp, too—"we all go to a big house, sort of like this one.”
“But bigger,” Stewie Two said, seriously.
“I hope so,” said William, worriedly.
Dopey didn't get what was meant. Pooh was not old enough to talk. Cushie said she didn't believe it—only God knows where she went.
Garp thought of the vast, grand Steering family house—now for sale. He realized that he wanted to buy it.
“Mr. Smoans?” Midge nudged him.
“Uh,” Garp said.
“The coffin, Jack,” whispered the hearse driver. Stewie Two, bulging beside him, looked seriously toward the enormous casket that now housed the debris of his father.
“We need four,” the driver said. “At least four.”
“No, I can take one side myself,” Garp said.
“Mr. Smoans looks very strong,” Midge said. “Not very large, but strong.”
“Mother,” Stewie Two said.
“Yes, yes, Stewart,” she said.
“We need four. That's all there is to it,” the driver said.
Garp didn't believe it. He could lift it.
“You two on the other side,” he said, “and up she goes.”
A frail mutter reached Garp from the mourners at Fat Stew's funeral, aghast at the apparently unmovable casket. But Garp believed in himself. It was just death in there; of course it would be heavy—the weight of his mother, Jenny Fields, the weight of Ernie Holm, and of little Walt (who was the heaviest of all). God knows what they all weighed together, but Garp planted himself on one side of Fat Stew's gray gunboat of a coffin. He was ready.
It was Dean Bodger who volunteered to be the necessary fourth.
“I never thought you'd be here,” Bodger whispered to Garp.
“Do you know Mr. Smoans?” Midge asked the dean.
“Smoans, ’61,” Garp said.
“Oh yes, Smoans, of course,” Bodger said. And the catcher of pigeons, the bandy-legged sheriff of the Steering School, lifted his share of the coffin with Garp and the others. Thus they launched Fat Stew into another life. Or into another house, hopefully bigger.