The Undertaker

They stopped near a large green-and-white striped canopy on a low rise near the rear corner of the cemetery. I pulled behind a low hedge about two hundred yards away and parked. Moving on foot, I cut the distance in half and slipped behind a tree where I could see what they were doing. The men in the black suits already had the rear doors of the hearses open and were pulling out the first coffin. The four men carried it over to the tent and set it on the ground on one side of the hole. They went back and got the second coffin and placed it on the other side. Two cemetery workers in blue denim overalls stood waiting next to a large open grave with a wheeled A-frame hoist. No crowds. No preachers. No grieving next-of-kin. No standing on ceremony. They hooked up the first casket to the frame and quickly rolled it over the grave. As the deputy watched, they turned the crank and the casket slowly disappeared into the hole and out of sight. In a matter of minutes, the second one followed next to it. Terri would love this. Her mother always said that if she married a bum like me she'd end up in a doublewide sooner or later. If she only knew.

Finally, I saw the cemetery workers pick up their long-handled spades and set to work shoveling the loose dirt back into the big grave. Clods rained down on the wooden boxes with a muffled “Thump.” Ashes to ashes, I thought, dust to dust. A “private internment?” Was that what undertaker Greene called it? “Limited to the immediate family?” They have such odd ways of describing things here in Ohio. What a crock. Unless this Mr. Peter Talbott came from a long line of Teamsters or gravediggers, none of these characters were in the family tree.

As the dirt continued to fly, the black suits finally relaxed. Their job done, they gathered around the deputy. I saw puffs of smoke from freshly lit cigarettes and heard loud laughter. Obviously, they knew each other and weren't worried about the graveside humor. As the cemetery workers finished and patted down the low mound with their spades, one of the attendants looked at his watch. He motioned to the others as he ground his cigarette butt into the bare dirt and waved good-bye. The four attendants got back in their hearses and slowly drove away and I figured it was time for me to do the same.

I hurried back to the Bronco and headed for the main gate, hoping to make it around the circle before they did. I beat the hearses back, but not the deputy sheriff. His big brown cruiser lay across the road blocking the exit. The sheriff was leaning against its fender with his arms crossed, the sun glinting off the silver lenses of his sunglasses, watching me as I drove up and stopped a few feet away. Cocky and self-sure, he paused for a moment before he finally pushed his large frame off the side of the car and sauntered over to me. He looked to be around fifty years old, big and beefy with graying hair around the temples. He had colonel's eagles on his shirt collar, a sizable beer gut, and a black nine-millimeter Glock automatic riding on his hip, just what your average hick county sheriff needs to hold back the invading criminal hordes from the city and to bring down the occasional rogue elephant.

Slowly he took off his sunglasses as he stepped next to the Bronco. I rolled the window down and he leaned-in, resting his meaty forearms on the Bronco's window frame. He scanned the SUV's interior then focused his eyes on me, narrow and hard. “You got some kinda problem here, Mister?” he asked.

I looked the plastic nameplate on his shirt. It said Dannmeyer. I smiled my most polite and innocent smile. “Nope, everything's just fine, Deputy Dannmeyer.”

His expression turned even harder. “That's Sheriff Dannmeyer, not deputy.”

“Oh, excuse me there, Sheriff.”

“I know I saw you and this vehicle back at the Funeral Home, and I know you heard Mr. Greene say this here was a private service. He said immediate family only.” He held out his hand. “Now, lemme see some ID.”

I pulled out my wallet and handed him my driver's license.

He stared down at the card and said, “Talbott, Peter Emerson.” He frowned, peered in at my face again, down at the card, then back at me. “Talbott?” he asked suspiciously. “That's the same name as the deceased. You related?”

“In a round-about-kind-of-sort-of-way.”

He stared at the driver's license again, his face more troubled now. “This here license says you're from California,” he said.

I tried hard to look just as serious. “That's because I'm from California, or I was. I moved to Boston recently, but the license hasn't caught up.”

“Hasn't, huh?” He kept looking at the license. “So whadaya do out there in California or Boston, or wherever the hell it is you're from, Mr. Talbott?”

“Me? I'm an aeronautical systems engineer, a computer programmer. I evolve mathematical constructs for computer simulations.”

He gave me a blank stare. “Sounds interesting.”

“It isn't. What about you, sheriff? Whadaya do?”