Everybody Knows The Mortician

Everybody Knows The Mortician

Matt Dyer

Everybody Knows The Mortician

As Barry Morton backed his hearse up to the door, he found out he was completely incapable of whistling the low, somber notes of his normal funereal melody while smiling. For Barry, this marked the first death call he had received for the fading month of April. He threw his black leather driving gloves on top of the modest stack of bills in the passenger seat and checked his face in the rear view mirror. A cool, evening breeze brushed against what Barry believed to be a sufficiently somber look upon his face. He left the hearse and headed for the door. On the way, he mentally prepared himself for the experience of entering someone’s home and collecting their dead relative: the expressions of condolences; the way he would extract himself from conversations about the dead person’s life; the best way to ask: “So, where’s the body?” without sounding heartless, like a man without feelings doing a menial job. Barry knocked twice on the door, not a pounding knock, but solid enough that he felt it should have been heard by anyone expecting him. After waiting a brief moment, he just let himself in. The door opened into the kitchen. Light from florescent bulbs bounced off white oak cabinets causing the room to glow. Handles jutted out from the suds in the sink, and a woman knelt with her back to him, putting something in a cupboard. Barry cleared his throat. The woman jumped slightly, stood up, and faced Barry. The lines on her face and her shoulder length gray hair caused him to guess she was in her sixties. She wore a blue dress with a white apron, the sort of outfit he imagined June Cleaver might have wore. Barry recognized her in that same fleeting way that everyone recognizes each other in a small town. The woman’s eyes widened at Barry because most people in Robbersville, he knew, recognized the mortician. “Well, uh, hey Barry. It’s nice to see you,” she said. “No it isn’t,” Barry replied. He was terse and somber, the sort of way he felt might keep him out of a conversation about the deceased while still being respectful. “Oh. Well, he’s in the basement,” she said, pointing toward a door. People deal with grief differently, Barry thought. Maybe she’s a cleaner. She’s probably putting on a brave face and making the house spotless for the rest of her family when they arrive to help her grieve. Going down the steps into the basement, Barry wondered if the doorway would be wide enough for the cot he would use to remove the body. He hadn’t anticipated stairs, and hoped he might be able to get the body out without having to call for help. The basement was warm, almost stuffy, but not damp like most basements Barry had been in. The carpet was thick and looked like it would be soft on bare feet. He

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Everybody Knows The Mortician

Matt Dyer

looked around for the body. It wasn’t on the floor or on the couch, and it wasn’t in the white, hospital bed against the far wall. Directly in front of him, Barry saw the top of the body’s head sticking out over the back of a wide, leather office chair. He stepped around to see the body, to see if it would be possible to remove it on his own. He looks small enough, Barry thought. The old man’s face was lit by the glow of a computer’s monitor. He wore a comfortable looking white robe. His eyes were sunken into his face and closed, and his head was slumped down, adding an extra chin. He was completely bald and very wrinkled, which made him look much too old to be the lady upstair’s husband; probably her father. Looking at the monitor, Barry saw the last website the old man had visited: granny porn. Barry shuddered–something he was unaccustomed to doing when answering a death call. I’ll bet it killed him, too much for his old heart, he thought. He reached down to the yellowing computer tower and pressed the power button, causing the old man’s glowing face to fade with the monitor. His daughter probably hadn’t noticed what was on the screen when she found her elderly father dead, and there was no need for anyone else to see it either, Barry thought. On the stairs, heading out to the hearse to retrieve his cot, Barry heard something snort. He stopped, knuckles turning white as he gripped the stairs’ safety rail. “Breathe,” Barry said quietly. “In twenty-three years, a body hasn’t risen on me, surely they won’t start now.” Barry went back down the steps with the bravest of intentions. If the dead are coming to life, he thought, I’ll face it like a man. He spun the chair and stopped it when the dead old man faced him. The dead old man sat in his wide, leather office chair with his brow furrowed and his mouth open, looking very alive. He stared at Barry, and Barry felt the same twinge of recognition he felt when he met the old lady upstairs. A gold plaque on the wall from the Jewelers Association of America bore the name “Herbert Penn Argendy.” Barry remembered Argendy’s name from the last Rotary Club meeting–something about his health taking a turn for the worse–and he was sure he had met the old man before, though he didn’t remember when. He had been the proprietor of Argendy’s Fine Jewelry on Market Street in downtown Robbersville, and though Barry had never been in the establishment, it was old and well-respected. Barry’s late mother, he remembered, talked about how she always stopped on her way to school to admire the necklaces in the jewelry store’s window. “Barry? Am I… dead?” Argendy asked. Barry fished around in his pocket and pulled out a waded up, yellow sheet of paper onto which he had scribbled the name and address of the body he was meant to pick up. It said: “Edward Cuff, 6418 Washington Ferry Road.” “What’s your address?” Barry asked. “6421 Washington Ferry,” Argendy said. http://www.storymatt.com

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Everybody Knows The Mortician

Matt Dyer

Barry thought about Mr. Argendy, his illness, and all the suffering that would come from it. He thought about Mr. Argendy’s daughter upstairs, forced to care for him, to sit and watch him come closer to dying each day. And he thought about the bills beneath his leather driving gloves in the front seat of his hearse; the modest stack weighed on him like a mountain. Barry pulled a pen out of his coat pocket and made a tick on the paper. “6421 Washington Ferry. Argendy, right?” “Yes,” the old man said feebly. “Then yes, you are dead,” Barry said. “B-but, I don’t feel dead.” Mr. Argendy said. “Of course you’re dead. Why else would I be here?” Barry asked. “What? I’ve never heard of it, such a thing,” Mr. Argendy said. “Are you God or something?” “No,” Barry said, “but I’m here to help.” Barry spun Herbert Argendy’s wide, leather office chair around and looked down at him over its back. The old man wasn’t shaking or struggling or moving like he wanted to try to get away. Barry wasn’t even sure if this pitiful old man could walk. When Mr. Argendy turned his head a bit to the right, Barry placed his left hand on top of the old man’s wrinkled head and made it face forward again. He put his right hand over the old man’s wrinkled mouth, and pinched his wrinkled nose with his thumb and index finger. “Wait,” Barry whispered. “You’re almost home.” The old man didn’t struggle, but in the computer monitor, Barry could see his eyes were wide and moving from side to side. When the old man’s eyes met Barry’s in the reflection, their frantic movement stopped, and his look softened. After a minute and a half, the old man’s eyes teared up, then closed. For another two minutes, Barry and Mr. Argendy waited on death together. In the kitchen, Barry asked Ms. Argendy how long her father had been dead. “Dead!” she said. “He couldn’t be dead, I just took him his dinner a little while ago, and he looked fine.” “He appears to have passed away quietly in his chair,” Barry said. Ms. Argendy began to cry. “But how did you know? Who called you?” Prepared, Barry said: “I got a call a few hours ago that your neighbor, Mr. Cuff, had passed away. They were talking about Herb last week at Rotary, so I thought I’d stop in and say ‘hello’ since I was in the neighborhood. Everybody at the club misses him, so I thought it might do him some good to tell him so.”

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Everybody Knows The Mortician

Matt Dyer

Ms. Argendy turned and put her hands back into the sink and moved some dishes around while crying. She is a cleaner, Barry thought as he put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m truly sorry for your loss,” he said, then cleared his throat. “Tell me, did he make his final wishes known to you before this… unfortunate day?” he asked. She turned toward Barry without looking him in the eye and said: “Yes. Daddy wanted to be cremated.” Barry squeezed her shoulder and said: “I would be honored to take care of that for you.” When the hearse reached the bottom of the driveway, its headlights pointed toward the house across the street. Beside its front door, Barry noticed the metallic numbers “6418” in the same way a sailor notices a lighthouse. He drove his hearse straight across the street and into the houses’ driveway. After Barry knocked on the front door, he was greeted by a man he almost recognized. The man said he was Eddie Cuff, the late Mr. Cuff’s son. “It’s nice to see you again, Barry,” Eddie Cuff said. “No it isn’t,” Barry replied, walking inside.

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