Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers Spill the Dirt

There was at least a foot of snow on the ground and the two boys were out in the front lawn just swinging away. The clean, white snow was dotted with little crimson drops of blood. They were still going strong; I had never seen men take such hits before and still be able to stand. I rushed in to break it up but was intercepted by the burly arm of one of the men who had carried them outside. “Let them fight,” was all he said to me.

I decided to listen to the giant, and stood and watched as Brian and James beat the—for lack of a better word—shit out of each other. Brian was wearing a black shirt but I could tell it was covered in blood by the way the sunlight reflected off the wetness saturating it. James was wearing a white shirt that looked like he had worn it while slaughtering a pig. They slowed down until, at the end, they were just taking wild swings at each other.

Finally, James landed a solid blow to Brian’s jaw. Brian dropped into the snow and lay there motionless. James turned away from his conquest, tripped, and face-planted into the snow where he, too, remained motionless.

There they lay, two brothers, motionless in the bloody snow. The burly men carried them back into the parlor and propped them up on chairs; the crowd took their seats and the service resumed with someone saying prayers. The priest had left when the fight broke out.

At the end of the service, I had the casket bearers help me load the casket into the hearse for the ride over to the vault. It was a comical sight, the two brothers, side by side, dried blood covering their faces, James with his one eye swollen shut, and Brian with his broken nose carrying their father’s casket. They looked like two whipped dogs.

I was glad to see the McSomethings go and decided that next time they called upon my services I would be too busy to accommodate them. Unfortunately, I still had to be around them when we buried their father after the spring thaw. I didn’t relish that day, and in fact, dreaded it the rest of the winter.

On the day of the interment Brian and James showed up in the same car, smelling as they usually did, of booze, but strangely enough, the best of friends. They called each other “brother” during the short committal service and boasted of their drinking exploits the night before. I couldn’t believe they were the same two people I had watched duke it out in front of my funeral home not four months prior.

I just couldn’t resist. Before I left I asked Brian, “How did you get that scar over your eye?”

He grinned, revealing several missing teeth. “Fightin’ James.”

CHAPTER 33. Lucky

Contributed by a Texas Hold ’Em player

I remember the first funeral I was given to direct on my own after I graduated from mortuary school. It was a disaster…almost. But I’m Lucky. My real name is some God-awful albatross my parents shackled upon me, Chester. So you can see why I prefer my nickname to my real name. I got the name because, whether it be playing poker or nearly ruining a funeral, I can step into a dung pile and still come out smelling like a daisy.

I did my internship at McDaniel-Walsh. It is a prestigious old firm with the physical plant housed in a big old Victorian mansion. I lived on the third floor in a small dorm-type room. It’s the type of room that’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter, but I was just glad for a place to stay. My rent? The phone for the funeral home rang up in my room from 6:00 P.M. to 7:30 A.M. six nights a week; that’s how I paid rent.

The funeral directors who worked for McDaniel-Walsh were considerably older than me and thought I was just a stupid kid. They couldn’t be bothered with explaining anything to me. I think they thought I should instinctively know it all. Or maybe they thought that just by merely being in their presence I’d pick up their knowledge through osmosis. Either way, they didn’t give me much responsibility at first. In fact, I was like their live-in janitor when I started, and I also had the pleasure of hearing them speak to me like I was retarded—loud and slow. “Chet”—they refused to call me Lucky because it was an “unprofessional” name—“can you wax the cars today?”

So I kept my head down and worked hard, and slowly, very slowly, they began giving me more responsibility.

One morning after I’d been at McD and W for about six months, the phone rang up in my attic apartment. It was Mark, one of the directors. He told me his wife had been rushed to the hospital during the night and he wouldn’t be in to work that day. Could I take the funeral he had planned?

Could I? “Of course I can,” I told him, excited at the prospect of actually doing some funeral directing.

He gave me directions to the church and cemetery and told me the pallbearers would meet me at the church to help me in.

“Do you know what to do?” Mark asked me.

“Yes, I know what to do.”

“Chet, are you sure?” he repeated.

“Don’t worry. Everything will be fine,” I assured him.