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with an expanding point just behind his ear. There wasn't enough left of his head to fill a plastic bag. You
could raise him as a zombie, but he couldn't talk. Even the dead need mouths.
Manny stood beside me, uncomfortable in his dark suit. Rosita, his wife, stood spine absolutely straight.
Thick brown hands gripping her black patent leather purse. She is what my stepmother used to call
large-boned. Her black hair was cut just below the ears and loosely permed. The hair needed to be
longer. It emphasized how perfectly round her face was.
Charles Montgomery stood just behind me like a tall dark mountain. Charles looks like he played
football somewhere. He has the ability to frown and make people run for cover. He just looks like a hard
ass. Truth is, Charles faints at the sight of anything but animal blood. It's lucky for him he looks like such
a big black dude. He has almost no tolerance for pain. He cries at Walt Disney movies, like when
Bambi's mother dies. It's endearing as hell.
His wife, Caroline, was working. She hadn't been able to switch shifts with anyone. I wondered how
hard she had tried. Caroline is okay but she sort of looks down on what we do. Mumbo jumbo she calls
it. She's a registered nurse. I guess after dealing with doctors all day, she has to look down on someone.
Up near the front of the crowd was Jamison Clarke. He was tall; thin, and the only red-haired,
green-eyed black man I've ever met. He nodded at me across the grave. I nodded back.
We were all here; the animators of Animators, Incorporated. Bert and Mary, our daytime secretary,
were holding down the fort. I hoped Bert didn't book us in anything we couldn't handle. Or would refuse
to handle. He did that if you didn't watch him.
The sun slapped my back like a hot metal hand. The men kept pulling at their ties and high collars. The
smell of chrysanthemums was thick like wax at the back of my throat. No one ever gives you football
mums unless you die. Carnations, roses, snapdragons, they all have happier lives, but mums, and glads -
they're the funeral flowers. At least the tall spires of gladiolus had no scent.
A woman sat in the front line of chairs under the canopy. She was leaning over her knees like a broken
doll. Her sobs were loud enough to drown out the words of the priest. Only his quiet, soothing rhythm
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reached me as I stood near the back.
Two small children were gripping the hands of an older man. Grampa? The children were pale,
hollow-eyed. Fear vied with tears on their faces. They watched their mother break down completely,
useless to them. Her grief was more important than theirs. Her loss greater. Bullshit.
My own mother had died when I was eight. You never really filled in the hole. It was like a piece of you
gone missing. An ache that never quite goes away. You deal with it. You go on, but it's there.
A man sat beside her, rubbing her back in endless circles. His hair was nearly black, cut short and neat.
Broad shouldered. From the back he looked eerily like Peter Burke. Ghosts in sunlight.
The cemetery was dotted with trees. The shade rustled and flickered pale grey in the sunlight. On the
other side of the gravel driveway that twined through the cemetery were two men. They stood quietly,
waiting. Grave diggers. Waiting to finish the job.
I looked back at the coffin under its blanket of pink carnations. There was a bulky mound just behind it,
covered in bright green fake grass. Underneath was the fresh dug earth waiting to go back in the hole.
Mustn't let the loved ones think about red-clay soil pouring down on the gleaming coffin. Clods of dirt
hitting the wood, covering your husband, father. Trapping them forever inside a lead-lined box. A good
coffin will keep the water and worms out, but it doesn't stop decay.
I knew what would be happening to Peter Burke's body. Cover it in satin, wrap a tie round its neck,
rouge the cheeks, close the eyes; it's still a corpse.
The funeral ended while I wasn't looking. The people rose gratefully in one mass movement. The
dark-haired man helped the grieving widow to stand. She nearly fell. Another man rushed forward and
supported her other side. She sagged between them, feet dragging on the ground.
She looked back over her shoulder, head almost lolling on her neck. She screamed, loud and ragged,
then flung herself on the coffin. The woman collapsed against the flowers, digging at the wood. Fingers
scrambling for the locks on the coffin. The ones that held the lid down.
Everyone just froze for a moment, staring. I saw the two children through the crowd still standing,
wide-eyed. Shit. "Stop her," I said it too loud. People turned to stare. I didn't care.
I pushed my way through the vanishing crowd and the aisles of chairs. The dark-haired man was holding
the widow's hands while she screamed and struggled. She had collapsed to the ground, and her black
dress had worked up high on her thighs.
She was wearing a white slip. Her mascara had run like black blood down her face.
I stood in front of the man and the two children. He was staring at the woman like he would never move
again. "Sir," I said. He didn't react. "Sir?"
He blinked, staring down at me like I had just appeared in front of him. "Sir, do you really think the
children need to see all this?"
"She's my daughter," he said. His voice was deep and thick..
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Drugged or just grief?
"I sympathize, sir, but the children should go to the car now."
The widow had begun to wail, loud and wordless, raw pain. The girl was beginning to shake. "You're
her father, but you're their grandfather. Act like it. Get them out of here."
Anger flickered in his eyes then. "How dare you?"
He wasn't going to listen to me. I was just an intrusion on their grief. The oldest, a boy of about five, was
staring up at me. His brown eyes were huge, his thin face so pale it looked ghostly.
"I think it is you who should go," the grandfather said.
"You're right. You are so right," I said. I walked around them out into the grass and the summer heat. I
couldn't help the children. I couldn't help them, just as no one had been there to help me. I had survived.
So would they, maybe.
Manny and Rosita were waiting for me. Rosita hugged me. "You must come to Sunday dinner after
church."
I smiled. "I don't think I can make it, but thanks for asking."
"My cousin Albert will be there," she said. "He is an engineer. He will be a good provider."
"I don't need a good provider, Rosita."
She sighed. "You make too much money for a woman. It makes you not need a man."
I shrugged. If I ever did marry, which I'd begun to doubt, a it wouldn't be for money. Love. Shit, was I
waiting for love? Naw, not me.
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