Verses for the Dead

16

P​ickett was as good as his word. “At the earliest opportunity,” to Coldmoon’s amusement, turned out to be in the middle of that very night. Coldmoon was pretty sure Pickett had arranged things that way to make it as inconvenient as possible. But if Pendergast was annoyed, he did not show it. In fact, just the opposite: he appeared pleased, if you could call a man as sphinx-like as Pendergast “pleased.” On the other hand, the cemetery staff were deeply put out, and as they gathered at the mausoleum Coldmoon could feel a chill that had little to do with the night air.

“A lovely evening,” said Pendergast. “What an impressive array of stars. This is not the first time I’ve noticed that the empyrean seems closer here than it does in New York.”

This rapture-in-miniature surprised Coldmoon. The sky had cleared and, despite the moon and the city that surrounded them, a vast river of midnight stars did in fact arch overhead. Even as Coldmoon glanced at them, a shooting star flashed across the darkness. When he was a boy, his grandmother had explained that at birth a person received the life-breath from Wakan Tanka, which at death flew back to the spirit world in a flash of light. Perhaps this wichahpi streaking across the heavens was Jennifer Rosen, her breath of life returning to the eternal.

The cemetery director himself was on hand to supervise, a roly-poly man with dimpled cheeks and pursed lips framed by jowls. His name Coldmoon hadn’t quite caught, but it sounded something like Fatterhead. A machine for transporting coffins had been driven to the door of the mausoleum, but because of the granite steps it couldn’t enter. A total of four laborers with canvas slings would extract the coffin from the niche, carry it out, and slide it onto the transport cart. An ambulance waited in the lane to take the remains to the morgue in the medical examiner’s building. The vehicle’s headlights threw long shadows among the burial niches.

“All right,” said Fatterhead, “let’s get going.”

The workmen crowded into the mausoleum, arranging themselves around the dark slot, while Coldmoon and Pendergast stood outside. The pendulum heart had been removed. The brass handle of the coffin, visible on the end, was not used; instead, they employed a long pole to arrange one of the canvas straps around the end of the coffin. The men gave a gentle heave, and the coffin slid partway out. A second canvas strap was slung beneath it, the coffin edged out another few feet, another strap added, and so on until only the far end of the coffin remained in the niche.

“Looks like these guys have done this before,” murmured Coldmoon.

As the far end of the coffin slid out, all four laborers, two on each side, strained under the weight, muscles popping beneath their T-shirts. Now that it was fully in view, Coldmoon could see that the coffin, despite being relatively new, was nevertheless a wreck — the leaking roof had evidently dripped on it continuously and the wood had expanded, popping off the hinges and brass fittings and causing significant rot along the rear side.

In a practiced motion, the four men swung the coffin around. After a pause, all took a step at once, and then another, slow-marching the coffin toward the door as if participating in a funeral cortege.

As the coffin passed through the door, the workers prepared to descend the stone steps to ground level. When the lead men took the first step, there was a sound like paper being crumpled, and a vertical crack suddenly appeared in the coffin’s rotten section. It began to sag in the middle.

“Easy now!” the director shouted. “Hold on!”

The men halted, faces covered with sweat. But ominously, with a crumbling sound, the crack continued to work its way along the bottom and up around the other side.

“Quickly! Another sling around the middle!” the man cried as more workmen came rushing up. But it was too late: the two halves of the coffin separated down the center, and then something inside began peeping out through the widening gap — the midsection of a corpse.

“Close up the gap!” Fatterhead screamed.

But the two halves of the coffin appeared to have taken on lives of their own. They now swung open sideways, like a candy bar broken in half — and the body, itself cracking into two pieces, slid out in a cloud of rotten silk and decayed clothing, landing on the damp ground with a hollow sound. The corpse, pickled from a decade of water leaks, belonged to a woman with a mass of brown hair, wearing what might have been a black dress and pearls.

Coldmoon was deeply shocked. He had been raised to have the utmost respect for the dead.

“Son of a bitch!” Fatterhead shouted as everyone else stared in horrified fascination.

Silence. Then the director recovered himself and spoke more calmly. “Please get the body shroud and transfer the remains of the deceased into it.”

The workmen took the body bag that had been lying on the cart, laid it out parallel to the corpse, and together, hands under the remains, shifted the two pieces into the bag, zipped it up, and placed it on the coffin transport.

“What about the coffin?” asked one of the workers.

“We’ll get that on the next trip,” said Fatterhead. He turned to Pendergast. “I am so sorry, sir. This is the very first time... exceptional circumstances... ” He wrung his hands, words failing him.

“I wouldn’t worry,” said Pendergast, laying a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I doubt if either half of Ms. Flayley will bear you any grudge.”