“Neva? I just wanted to alert you that you’re going to get a call from Norma Warren, probably later on today, we just got the word a little while ago, Elner Shimfissle just died at the hospital.”
“Oh no! What happened?”
“Stung to death by wasps.”
“Oh no…poor old thing.”
“Yes, she hit a nest in her tree and fell clear off the ladder. She was out cold by the time Ruby and I went over. The nurse at the hospital said she never regained consciousness, probably didn’t know what hit her.”
“Oh no,” said Neva again. “But I guess if you have to go, that’s the best way…fast.”
“I suppose so…if you have to go.”
“Yes, well, thanks for the heads-up, Tot. I’ll go ahead and get her file out, but as I recall I think it’s pretty much ready to go, Norma did everything in advance.”
“I’m sure she did, you have to admire her for that, she’s always ahead of the game. I guess with everybody dropping like flies, I better get my own file in order. God knows what will happen to me if I leave my funeral details up to Darlene and Dwayne Junior.”
After she hung up, Tot thought about just how much she was going to miss her neighbor. Elner had always seemed happy, always in a good mood, but she had never had children. Tot’s children had been nothing but trouble from the beginning, even more so after they hit puberty. If there was a fool within fifty miles, they had either married it or had numerous offspring with it. Tot had begged her children to please stop breeding. “There’s a serious genetic flaw on the Whooten side, not one of them has a lick of sense. Just because I married beneath my station is no reason you have to,” she had said to her children on many occasions, but her warning had done no good. Darlene, at thirty-two, had five children and more ex-husbands than Elizabeth Taylor, and not a cent of alimony from a one of them. And God knows how many children Dwayne Jr. had roaming around out there. Six that she knew of, and with the women he had picked, it was no telling how those kids would turn out. Whenever he had said of his girlfriends “We think alike, Mama,” she knew she was in big trouble. Her hopes of one of her kids bettering themselves by meeting someone a step above had been dashed time and time again. And now, her sixteen-year-old granddaughter, Faye Dawn, was already pregnant by some fifteen-year-old who wore a dog chain around his neck, black fingernail polish, a nose ring, and had no chin. “Why do birds of a feather have to flock together?” she wondered. “Water seeks its own level” was not a good thing in their case. She was already attending a bipolar prayer group, and Al-Anon meetings twice a week. “What next?” she wondered. What fresh hell was in store for her down the line?
Last year when Dwayne Jr. had asked her what he could get her for Christmas, she had requested “a vasectomy” and told him that she would even pay for it, but he had taken the money and bought himself an off-road vehicle instead. He was a lost cause. She was now working on Darlene to have her tubes tied, but that was going nowhere, because she said she was scared of anesthesia. When Linda Warren had adopted that little Chinese girl, Norma had come into the beauty shop wearing a sweatshirt with the girl’s picture on it, and under the picture it said “Someone Wonderful Calls Me Grandma.” Tot figured she would wind up wearing one that said “A Lot of Potential Criminals and Misfits Call Me Grandma,” and she was supporting almost every one of them. Tot got in her bed and pulled the covers over her head and cried about Elner, and herself as well, while she was at it.
A Surprise
11:59 AM
After Tot had gone home, Ruby stayed at Elner’s house to answer the phone in case anyone called. While she waited, she decided to just go ahead and wash the sheets and towels and all the dirty clothes in Elner’s dirty-clothes basket, so Norma wouldn’t have to be bothered, and it was when she opened it and started pulling all the clothes out that she made a startling discovery.
Hidden at the very bottom of the clothes basket was a .38 revolver handgun, large enough to blow someone’s head off. Ruby stood there with her arms full of clothes, staring at it and wondering why in the blazes Elner Shimfissle would be hiding a gun at the bottom of her clothes basket. Ruby assumed there was probably a perfectly good explanation for its being there, but on the other hand, she also was aware that even though you may think you know someone, you can never really be sure about people, it’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for. They can surprise you.
This unexpected and sudden discovery of a handgun in Elner Shimfissle’s dirty-clothes basket presented a major dilemma for Ruby. What should she do? After running the thing around in her mind for a few minutes and considering the situation from every angle, she made a decision. “Oh well,” she thought. A neighbor is a neighbor, and Ruby would have wanted Elner to do the same for her if the situation were reversed. So she reached down and picked the gun up, and wiped it off with one of Elner’s nightgowns, in case there were incriminating prints. She then wrapped it up in a pillowcase, took it into the kitchen and looked under the sink for a paper bag, carried it back over to her house, and hid it in her cedar chest in the hall. Norma was going to be upset enough, without having to find a loaded .38 in her dead aunt’s clothes basket.
When she walked back over to do the washing, she noticed Elner’s birdbath and thought, “Somebody’s going to have to keep that filled with water.” And then she suddenly remembered something else. “Who’s going to feed that blind raccoon his dish of ice cream and vanilla wafers every night?” Then she remembered something else. Every afternoon Elner had fixed an old black Labrador named Buster a cheese sandwich. “Lord,” Ruby thought, she would do the sandwich, but Merle was going to have to feed the raccoon. She was scared the thing might bite. Elner had not been scared of anything and had let those squirrels come into her kitchen and jump right up on her counter where she kept food. As her friend and as a health professional Ruby had warned her, “Elner, squirrels are nothing but big rats with furry tails and carry all kinds of diseases,” but Elner never seemed to worry about germs. “Come to think of it,” thought Ruby, “right up until this morning when she was killed by wasps, she had never been sick a day in her life.”
The Cause of Death
10:55 AM
Norma, who was being tended to by several nurses, was now sitting up and talking but still having a hard time. She kept repeating over and over, “I knew it was going to happen someday, but I just can’t believe it.” The hospital chaplain on call, a Baptist with a bad haircut, in a brown polyester suit, stopped in and offered his card and his condolences. A short time later Macky walked back into the room, after having called their daughter, Linda.
Norma looked up. “Did you reach her?”
He nodded. “She’s coming. She said she would get here as soon as she could.”
“Was she upset?”
“Yes, of course, but she’s worried about you and she said to tell you she loves you.” Just then the doctor came back with a chart and sat down beside Norma and Macky and continued giving them all the information he had. He said that it seemed that as far as they could count, her aunt had received over seventeen wasp stings and must have gone into immediate cardiac arrest caused by anaphylactic shock, and then he added that the fall could have caused some brain trauma, but not enough to kill her, and so as of this moment, the official report read: “Cause of death: cardiac arrest due to severe anaphylactic shock.”
“Did she suffer?” asked a tearful Norma.
“No, Mrs. Warren, I can guarantee you she most probably never knew what hit her.”
Norma wailed, “Poor Aunt Elner, she always said she wanted to die at home, but I don’t think she meant out in the yard, not like this and in that awful old robe….” Macky put his arm around her as she blew her nose.
The doctor continued. “Now, Mrs. Warren, just so you know, you have the official cause of death, but if you are not satisfied, we can still do an autopsy.”
Norma looked at Macky. “Do we need an autopsy? I don’t know, should we? Just
to be sure?”
Macky, who knew the details of what was involved, said, “Norma, it’s up to you but I don’t think so, it’s not going to make any difference one way or another.”
“Well, I want to do the right thing. Let’s at least wait until Linda gets here.” She looked at the doctor.
“Can we do that, Doctor, wait until our daughter gets here?”
“When would that be?”
“It should only be a couple of hours…maybe less, right, Macky?”
The doctor looked at the clock. “All right, Mrs. Warren, I suppose we can do that, and in the meantime, if you and Mr. Warren care to see her, I can take you back.”
Norma quickly said, “No, I want to wait until Linda gets here.”
The doctor nodded. “That’s fine, whatever you decide, just tell the nurse if and when you want to go in.”
Macky, who had said little, now said, “Doctor, I’d like to see her now, if that’s OK?”
“Sure, Mr. Warren, I’ll take you down if you want.”
Macky looked at Norma. “Will you be all right?”
“Yes, you go on, Macky, I just can’t right now.”
The nurse said, “I’ll stay right here with her, Mr. Warren.”
The truth was, Macky did not really want to see Aunt Elner dead. He wanted to remember her as she was when she was alive, but the thought of that sweet woman lying somewhere in a room all by herself upset him even more. As they walked down the hall, the doctor said, “Your wife seems to be pretty shook up, they must have been pretty close.”
Macky said, “Yes they were, very close.”
As a male orderly passed by, the doctor called out, “Hey, Burnsie, you owe me ten bucks, I told you the Cards would take it in five,” and acted as if it were just another day.
Macky wanted to grab him and choke the living daylights out of him, and out of everybody in the world, for that matter, but nothing he could do would bring her back. So he kept walking.
A Sad Business
11:48 AM
Down at the funeral parlor, after the call from Tot, Neva stood up and walked into the back office and pulled out the “Decedent, Elner Shimfissle” file and then walked around the corner to where her husband, Arvis, was applying the finishing touches on the hairpiece for Ernest Koonitz, a recent arrival. She stuck her head in. “Hon, Tot just called. Elner Shimfissle is probably coming in late tonight or first thing in the morning, stung to death by wasps.”
He looked up. “Huh. Two decedents within twenty-four hours. Not bad for April.”
It was true, considering April was always their slow month, but Neva hated it when Arvis said things like that. Granted they were in the funeral business, but she had a heart. Lately it seemed all he cared about was numbers. If a plague hit town and took out a hundred people, he would probably dance a jig. She was aware that every passing meant money in their pocket; still, she hated to see the last of the old-timers leaving, but the Warrens were her regulars, and it was a job that needed to be done. They had handled all their decedents in the past, both Norma’s and Macky’s parents, various aunts and uncles, and an occasional cousin here and there. Neva knew she should not play favorites, but she couldn’t help but have a soft spot for them. The entire family had been loyal to them throughout the years, and Neva always took special care with their decedents, treated them as she would one of her own.
Besides just plain liking them, she appreciated their business. Times had changed. Their business was no longer the only game in town; Costco out on the interstate was now selling coffins at a cut rate, and they had lost an awful lot of their customers when they moved into the building where the catfish restaurant used to be. A lot of people said that they did not feel comfortable viewing the body of their loved ones where they used to eat catfish and fries, and had switched over to the new mortuary in town. The new people did a nice job and they were fine, she supposed, for fast and impersonal services. She was not one to badmouth the competition, but theirs was a longtime local family-run full-service business and offered the follow-through that was so important. She and Arvis were there to serve their customers from the first pickup, on through internment. They prepared the body, arranged the viewing, ordered the flowers, provided free sign-in books, had a minister, a soprano, and an organist on twenty-four-hour call. They offered a His and Her two-for-one burial package and had a large selection of caskets and cremation urns at reasonable prices. They supplied a 10 percent discount on extra rooms at the local Days Inn for out-of-town relatives and friends, including a free continental breakfast on the day of the funeral and complimentary wine and cheese in the lobby that afternoon. They even arranged transportation to and from the cemetery and helped order and measure and place the headstones when they arrived. “What more could you want in a funeral package?” she wondered. Other than not having your loved one die in the first place, of course. Short of that, they did everything that was possible to have done. In fact, their ad in the telephone book, which she had spent weeks creating, reflected her sentiments exactly.
THE REST ASSURED FUNERAL HOME
Come to us in your time of need.
And be rest assured of receiving
The very best in funeral care
Because we care about you.
The phone in the mortuary office rang again. This time it was Merle’s wife, Verbena Wheeler, calling from the cleaners two blocks away.
“Neva, did you hear?”
“Yes, Tot just called. I just pulled her file.”
“Isn’t it horrible?”
“Terrible.”
“She was the sweetest thing.”
“She was.”
“It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Ruby said she probably never knew what hit her.”
“That’s what Tot told me. At least she didn’t suffer.”
“That’s right.”
“We can be thankful for that at least.”
“Yes we can.”
“Anyhow, I thought I’d go ahead and get my flower order in early and beat the rush.”
“That’s probably a good idea.” Neva reached over for her floral order pad. “What do you want to send?”
“The usual, I guess.”
Neva wrote down “One medium azalea plant in ceramic pot.”
Verbena always sent a plant rather than flowers. She felt it could work at the viewing and again at the funeral, or be planted at the grave later on. She liked to give people options, like starch or no starch, or hangers or boxed.
“Same message?” asked Neva. “‘With our deepest sympathy, Merle and Verbena’?”
“Yes, might as well, I can never think of anything else to say other than that, can you?”
“No, that says it all.”
“I know Norma is sure going to miss her.”
“You know she will.”
“No matter how old they are when they go, or what shape they’re in, you always miss them. I remember how it was for me when we lost Momma Ditty, and then poor old Daddy Ditty in the same year.”
“Yes.”
“And then Aunt Dottie Ditty went the year after that, do you remember?”
“I do,” Neva said.
“We lost all three Dittys in less than two years, and I don’t think there is a day that goes by that I don’t miss them.”
“I’m sure.”
“When is the viewing?”
“I don’t know. Norma hasn’t called us yet, I don’t know when the body will be released. It could be as early as tonight or it could be tomorrow.”
Verbena sighed. “Well, I’ll see you over there…I just hate to have to get out that old funeral dress again, but that’s life, isn’t it?”
Neva hung up. She certainly remembered Verbena Wheeler’s aunt Dottie Ditty. How could she not? Dottie Ditty had been their most difficult decedent, and she and Arvis were still living with the consequences to this day. Aunt Dottie Ditty had weighed in at 328 pound
s at the time of death, and had presented a challenge right from the get-go. Aside from having to special order a casket large enough, during pickup Arvis had suffered a ruptured hernia, plus a slipped disk in his lower back that was still giving him trouble. Although the general public might not be aware of it, the funeral business has its share of injuries, just like any other line of work that requires heavy lifting.
Neva walked over and opened the Elner Shimfissle file and read that at one time the “Lily of the Valley” style casket had been ordered, but had been canceled in 1987 when Elner had changed her mind about burial and had suddenly switched to cremation. Neva cringed. Not because they’d lost a casket sale, but she hated having to deal with the uproar cremation caused, particularly among the older Baptists and Methodists. They became extremely upset, almost unruly, when they were told that there was no body to view. A few had even demanded that the money for the flowers they had sent be returned. She remembered now that at the time, Elner had said she hadn’t switched to cremation to save money, she just loved the idea of disappearing in a flash of hot white light. She had said it seemed like a lot more fun than being embalmed.
Neva read on just to refresh her memory about the other details.
Service: Methodist
Rev. William Jenkins presiding
Hymn to be sung: “Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven”
Interlude: “Just Over the Stars”
Since she was the soprano and also the organist on twenty-four-hour call, Neva figured she’d better go into the chapel and brush up on the numbers. They didn’t get much call for the old gospel tunes anymore. People’s taste in funeral music had changed drastically over the years. Just last month, there had been a request for “Fly Me to the Moon.” Neva got up and walked across the hall through the slumber room to the chapel and sat down at the small organ. She flipped through her stack of sheet music until she found her copy of “Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven,” a hymn that had been written and made famous by Minnie Oatman and the Oatman Family Gospel Singers, whose picture appeared on the cover of the sheet music. Neva removed all her rings, wiggled her fingers, turned the organ on, hit the first three chords, and started singing softly in a thin little reedy voice.