Dead Irish

Chapter Eight

THE TOWN of Colma is tucked into a pocket behind Daly City and Brisbane, its corpses far outnumbering its citizens. It was normally shrouded in fog, which seemed appropriate, but this day, for Eddie’s funeral, it basked in sunlight, bright and warm.

The Mass had been scheduled for ten, so Hardy timed his arrival at the cemetery for quarter to eleven, but no one else had made it yet.

Another group of mourners were gathered in a knot out over across the sloping lawn. A brace of eucalyptus at the front gate provided a feeble shade and a distinctive scent. Not at all deathlike. The sky was purplish blue. A warm breeze ruffled the high leaves.

Another hearse and its party appeared down the road, and Hardy, sitting on the fender of his Suzuki, waiched the line approach. He put his hands in his pockets and walked out to the street. McGuire’s pickup was visible midway down the line of cars.

It was a substantial group, which he had expected. Eddie Cochran, of course, had been well liked.

Hardy got into his car, waited, then pulled in behind McGuire. They went quite a ways back. Here the eucalyptus grew a bit thicker. Under the trees it was cool and pleasant. Picnic weather.

Father James Cavanaugh leaned down and glanced casually at his reflection in the car window. With his hair, still all black, flopping Kennedy-like over an unlined forehead and piercing gray-blue eyes, he was uncomfortably aware that he could be a walking advertisement for the glory of the priesthood. His body was trim, his movements graceful. The cleft in his chin was a constant temptation to vanity.

It was a glance, that’s all. He didn’t study himself, make any corrections to the look. He was, he knew, unworthy-of his gifts as well as his role, especially here, today.

And now here came Erin, Eddie’s mother. And again, the temptations, the haunting realization of his sinfulness. What a beauty she was.

And so strong. In spite of losing her eldest son, she seemed not to need his support, though as she stepped into his arms and he held her, he felt for a moment the pent-up grief as she sighed once deeply into the shoulder of his cassock.

Her hand lifted to his face. “Are you all right, James?”

He nodded. “How’s Big Ed?”

“He didn’t sleep much last night. I can’t say any of us did.”

Unbidden again, the thought came. What if we had married? What if, when they’d both been eighteen, he’d pushed just a little harder? He had never met anyone else with her joy in life, her sense of balance, her wisdom, her brain. And, as if that weren’t enough, even now, after four children, her body was rich, the perfect combination of curve and plane, of softness and tone. Her face was still smooth as a girl’s, the skin cream white. A touch of light coral lipstick highlighted the bow-shaped, sensuous mouth.

“You’re all right, though?” he asked gently.

She stared up at him, her eyes going dull. “I don’t think I’ll ever be all right again.”

She turned, planning to go join her husband.

But she couldn’t go to the grave just yet. She knew she should walk with Big Ed, be there for him, but the strength simply wasn’t there. Her husband was walking with Jodie, trying to comfort her. God, this was impossibly hard.

And Frannie, poor Frannie, so small in black, stumbling over roots, held up by her brother Moses. She looked over to see her own two sons, Mick and Steven, pallbearers, waiting patiently by the hearse. They were good boys. Of course, they weren’t Eddie. There wasn’t any more Eddie.

She looked up at the blue sky, struggling for control-biting her tongue inside her mouth, digging fingernails into her palms. She stared up at the sky, took a deep breath. A strong hand gripped her right arm just above the elbow.

“Ma’am?”

She was nearly as tall as the man. He hadn’t been at the funeral Mass. Perhaps he was, had been, a friend of Ed’s, though he was older. His face looked lived in-loaded with laugh lines. He wasn’t laughing now, though.

“Are you all right?” he said.

The hand on her arm didn’t bother her. She reached over and put her own hand over it. “Just tired,” she said, “very tired.”

Then she gently shook him off and started walking toward the gravesite, slowly. The man walked alongside.

“Did you know Eddie?” she asked.

“Pretty well. Both him and Frannie.” Then, “I’m very sorry.”

She nodded.

“I’m here because of Frannie, mostly. Her brother.”

She stopped now and looked at him again, their eyes on a level. “Were you at the wedding? Should I know you?”

He shook his head. “Weddings aren’t my thing. I, uh, got called out of town, couldn’t make it.”

“But now you’re…?” Letting it hang. Her eyes wouldn’t let him go.

“Moses doesn’t believe…” He paused, started again. “I guess I don’t either, that it was a suicide.”

She looked toward the gravesite. The bearers hadn’t yet moved the coffin from the hearse. She found herself gripping Hardy by the arm, talking through clenched teeth. “There is no way in the world that my Eddie killed himself. None at all.”

Suddenly it was essential to tell someone what she knew in her heart. “Here’s Eddie… he’d bring in a stray cat or a bird that had fallen out of its nest in a storm. He was almost… I don’t know how to say it… but almost feminine in being sensitive that way. He hated football. Hated ice hockey. They were too brutal. His father and Mick used to tease him about it, but he was just a soft man. If you knew him at all, you know that.”

Hardy thought a moment, did not meet her eyes.

“It’s inconceivable he even owned a gun,” she said. “What use would he have for it?”

“The gun is definitely one of my questions.”

She stopped. She didn’t want to press, didn’t know why it was so important to make this point to this man. Eddie was gone. What difference could it make?

“I’m sorry,” she said, walking again toward the grave. “I’m afraid I’m not being myself, but he didn’t own the gun. I know that.”

“Do you know where it came from? Where he might have gotten it?”

“No.”

She stopped again and touched his arm, not knowing exactly what she wanted to say. But they had begun moving the coffin to the gravesite-the coffin that held Eddie’s body-and her emotion choked her so she couldn’t speak.

Steven didn’t realize the coffin would be so heavy. His brother hadn’t been that big a guy, but with the wood and the handles and all it was a lot of weight, and his arms started hurting as soon as they got it out of the car.

He wasn’t going to show it, though, give anybody the satisfaction. It was only about a hundred feet, he guessed, over to the gravesite. Beside him at the back of the coffin was his brother Mick, two-letter jock, to whom the weight of the coffin would be nothing. But to him, little wimpy brother Steve, just standing here holding the thing was a challenge.

“Who’s talking to Mom?” Mick whispered. Mick was a junior at USF, there on an ROTC scholarship. As far as Steven was concerned, they lived on different planets.

Steven just shrugged. He’d seen the guy with his mother and was sure he’d met him somewhere, maybe over at Eddie’s one time, but it didn’t matter, he didn’t know who he was. No big deal, it wasn’t his business. He wasn’t going to waste breath speculating to Mick about it.

Father Jim motioned from the gravesite, and they started moving. The priest was okay when he wasn’t acting holy, when he was just being a regular guy, having a drink at the house, or joyriding out along Highway One at the beach.

Yeah, the priest could be okay, he guessed. At least everybody else liked him. Grown-ups were a bunch of sheep that way anyway, herding up and following along. You want to be honest, the guy could be a little much, flipping between holy and funny, or getting that look at Mom, or when he was alone with him, trying to act like a kid, swearing and goofing. Who needed that shit? Be yourself, Steven wanted to tell him. If they don’t like you, fuck ’em.

Like now, there he was being official holy, standing next to Frannie, talking quietly to her. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Father Cavanaugh-Eddie had loved him and that was almost enough for Steven right there-but it was like the man wasn’t being himself. People should be themselves… Yeah, but even Eddie had been like that lately. That’s the way adults got-always smiling and playing games. But Eddie, he saw things. He was hurting, bummed about his work, what he was going to do with his life. Why else do they think he’d come around to the house so much the last couple of weeks?

His mom now was going over to the hole in the ground, the dug-up earth covered with green tarp. What, did they think they could take your mind off the dirt, off Ed being buried under it, if they camouflaged it?

Finally his arms got to relax as they put the coffin on the stand that would lower it. The last half of the walk had been real tough. Maybe he should work out once in a while, he thought, except he didn’t want to wind up in ROTC like Mick.

His mom was standing now next to his dad. The other guy she’d been talking to was a little behind her, almost like a bodyguard. He’d seemed to be watching everything at once, but not being obvious about it.

Steven checked around. Eddie had taken him down to his work a couple of times-making sure Steven was included in his life- and introduced him to some of the people there. He was surprised to see Ed’s boss, Mr. Polk, big ears bookending the saddest face in the crowd, standing behind Frannie with a young woman who was so pretty Steven couldn’t look at her for long. Thick brown hair, olive skin, serious tits. He saw the guy who’d talked to his mother look at her, saw her look back at him with half a smile, which caused him to study his shoes. What was Ed’s boss doing with a killer like that? He’d never understand adults. Who wanted to, anyway?

Overhead, birds kept chirping in the trees. He focused on that, rather than on Father Jim’s words, which were bullshit. If Eddie had really killed himself, which Father Jim seemed to have reason to believe, then he was in hell.

Steven didn’t think Ed was in hell. He thought he was nowhere, the same place everybody was going-in fact, many of the living were already there. He looked up, trying not to think about where Ed might be. Eddie and he had been friends, even with the age thing, in spite of being brothers.

Then, all of a sudden, the guy behind his mother was pushing at the crowd, nearly jumping over the coffin. He got to Frannie just as she lost it and started to go down.

Frannie seemed to weigh nothing, less than nothing. Her mass of red hair, the green of the lawn under her, only threw into greater contrast the stark pallor of her face.

Moses was at Hardy’s side. He touched Frannie’s face, rubbing it gently, trying to bring some color around the mouth. “She breathing?”

Hardy nodded. “Just fainted.”

The priest came and knelt between them. He felt for a pulse in her neck, seemed satisfied, stood up. “She’ll be all right,” he announced to the mourners.

The color in Frannie’s face was returning. Her eyes opened, then closed, then opened and stayed open. Moses said something to her, got her up on his arm and followed Hardy through the crowd back to where the cars were parked.

Hardy heard a muffled sob into Moses’s shoulder, suddenly couldn’t deal with it anymore, put his hands in his pockets and moved out of vision, out of earshot, down the drive back toward the entrance gate. Finally, he stopped and cleared a space under a eucalyptus tree, then sat down, trying to face away from any tombstones, which in Colma is not an easy thing to do.