Even in the cool of the night, the shop’s temperature was stifling. Most people would be sickened by the day-old diesel fumes circling in the air, but Harold was used to it. The four window-less walls stood guard, blank, except for the black metal lunchbox and white button-down that dangled from the nails. “You can’t fire me for what you don’t know, you sonofabitch,” Harold said when he removed his shirt, glad that Junior would be out of town all week.
“If he worked just eight good August hours with the oven roaring at 1,500 degrees, I bet he’d change his tune about a good image meaning long sleeves.” Hell, nobody worth impressing comes by anyway. It’s no use to try and change things now.
Come December Harold would retire. He’d just do his job and keep his mouth shut until then. Then he wouldn’t have to put up with any of this shit anymore.
A large pie-shaped fiberglass hutch was wedged in one corner of the shop. Its exterior offered no clues about its refrigerant capabilities. Across the room the opening to what Harold called the oven and Junior insisted be called the retort was perfectly square. Two substantial steel hinges hinted at its weight. Behind the door lay the grate, looking like a large piece of scorched honeycomb. A long Formica-topped table cut the room in half. It was littered not with scientific tools such as microscopes and chemicals but with hammers and nails of varying sizes. Harold breathed in the familiarity. He felt at ease until the cordless started squawking. He thought about ignoring it.
“Washburn.”
“Harold. It’s Joe. We’ve got a body that the next of kin authorized us to dispose of. She’s been here almost a week and we need her slab.”
Harold glanced toward Mrs. Walker in the cooler and thought of Mr. Carlisle’s cremains in the oven. The State Pen had one arriving any minute.
“Can you wait until tomorrow? I’m swamped.”
“We really need to empty a slab today.”
“All right. I’ll take her, but wait until around two.”
“Deal! Thanks. I owe you one.”
“Can’t you assholes count? You owe me three.”
Harold twisted the silver key into the lock of the cooler. He pulled up on the doorknob while turning the handle and the door came open. He’d told Junior somebody needed to be hired to help out part-time. Harold was good, but lately he’d been backed up three or four times and he didn’t like having bodies wait in the cooler for more than a day or two. Even after cremating thousands of bodies, he got the creeps if he felt outnumbered.
“I’m working on it,” was all Junior would say when pushed about hiring extra help.
“Good morning, Mrs. Walker. Sorry to have kept you waiting.” He spoke loudly to the corpse, as though she were sleeping. “Time now for the defrost cycle,” he said, enjoying his own joke. He laid her on the work table and unzipped her body bag. He’d discovered early in his vocation that bodies combusted slightly faster if they were at room temperature.
Much of what he knew about his job had come from trial and error. When he’d started twenty-two years earlier as a favor to Lloyd Sr., he was only going to help him out part-time until someone could be hired who was licensed. Harold had been a carpenter then and didn’t care to spend his days burning bodies.
What the two of them found out was that the state department didn’t really care about licenses as long as they could dump a few bodies every now and then with no questions asked. In fact, the nearby penitentiary had been a steady source of clientele from the beginning. Within six weeks, Harold had gone from twenty hours a week to fifty, and found himself enjoying the autonomy Lloyd allowed him, not to mention the money.
“Doesn’t it ever get to you?” Ellen, the only girl he’d ever dated, asked.
“I’m paid enough not to let it get to me. I do my job and that’s it.”
The relationship with Ellen had ended abruptly. He’d relived that evening over and over, night after night as he drifted off to sleep. Over dinner he’d asked her to marry him.
“Harold, this ring is exquisite. I didn’t know any jeweler around here carried a piece so unusual.”
“Do you really like it?”
“It’s perfect . . . well, almost,” she said as she tried to force the ring onto her finger. “It’ll just need to be re-sized. Which jeweler did it come from?”
Harold had not anticipated this. “I’m sure any jeweler can size it for you.”
She had stared at him, shrinking her green almond-shaped eyes into narrow slits. Her mouth had opened slowly, stretching a thin string of saliva until it popped. “Where did you get this ring, Harold? Tell me. I need to know.”
The hum of the restaurant ceased. The fat, white candle that sat between the two vases of single, pink carnations had flickered and gone out.
“I took it off a body, okay, Ellen? Jesus, there was no use melting such a nice ring. The fiancée had wanted her cremated with it, but I didn’t see the point. He never knew any different and she sure as hell didn’t. She was dead, for Christ’s sake.” And that had been the last he’d seen of Ellen.
Aw, she was a cunt. A snobby little cunt. I’m just glad I realized it before it was too late, he’d explained to himself that night. I guess I’m lucky. “To luck,” he’d said, raising a bottle of Wild Turkey. He drank until it was empty. He passed out right on the very table where he had taken the ring from the body and where he now unzipped Mrs. Walker’s black, vinyl body bag.
He slid the back of the bag from underneath her and let out a whistle.
“Well, well, well, Mrs. Walker. I had no idea silicone was part of your chemical composition.”
Because Zion was mostly rural and breast augmentation was mostly urban, Harold had only cremated two other bodies with silicone implants and he was surprised by lack of effect death had on them. They remained firm, but not hard, even when the rest of the body began to stiffen. Harold had discovered by accident that, beneath the cold, dead skin, the packs still bounced. As he was placing the first body he’d ever handled with them into its cremation container, he’d flipped it from its side to its back and they’d jiggled up and down like bobbing apples.
Harold had felt guilty that it had excited him. He’d hurriedly placed her in the box and shoved her into the oven even before he had opened the gas valves. That was the only time he’d put a body in before igniting the flames. He’d heard most other furnace operators always did it this way—body first, then flames—but Harold liked to see the flames darting around before feeding the body to them.
The second body had only aroused pity. He’d hardly noticed her breasts for the bruises which had formed sad designs over her entire body. A deep, narrow slit had separated her right thigh into two separate halves. Small, circular scabs had created a symmetrical path from one shoulder to the other almost as if someone was creating a connect the dot puzzle. He’d seen lots of damaged corpses—after all, this was tractor country—but they were always men. Seeing a woman, and a tiny one at that, so badly abused had made him feel a little sick in the pit of his stomach.
“Who the hell tapes the ID and DC to the body?” He tugged at the pink forms but the tape resisted. He yanked harder and her breasts bobbled slightly before the tags came off. Must have been the new guy, Harold thought. Mrs. Walker’s eyes stared at the ceiling. “Do you want to go into this thing with your eyes open or not?” he asked, snickering at his own humor. Most of the time he closed them and the mouth, too, if necessary. For some reason he didn’t want to close Mrs. Walker’s eyes just yet. He leaned closer trying to find where the pupil ended and the chocolate iris began. There was something in the shape that intrigued him. The corners drooped slightly at the outside where her lashes clustered in long thick clumps. A trace of smudged mascara led back to her ear.
Harold studied her face. It appeared older than the body. The cheeks had grown puffy with fluid and then sagged, setting like concrete with rigor mortis. Death had obviously come prematurely but something in the eyes looked different. He could not put his finger on it, but the blank look of death that Harold thought of as a peaceful void was not there. Harold thought he felt a draft. The body still looked alive, especially her breasts. Normally he would cover the body with a white sheet while it warmed, but he could not bring himself to cover Mrs. Walker’s.
Collecting the ashes was Harold’s least favorite part of his job. Sifting the bone pieces out and then grinding them was tedious. If he thought he could get away with it, he skipped the grinding and inurned it all, bone chunks included. If he was running behind on time and he knew the gray concrete-like dust would be examined, he just tossed the chunks in the garbage. Most people had no idea what the weight of the cremains should be anyway. They’d probably been trying to lose a pound or two all their lives. I just lost it for them, he reasoned.
One time he had put the bone chunks to good use. An older couple from Atlanta had stopped by while investigating burial alternatives for her terminally ill mother. Harold had been delighted to give them a tour, complete with a hands-on demonstration.
“Feel this,” he’d told them offering them a bone remnant rescued from the industrial-sized black garbage can. They did. “This is how we hand-grind the leftover pieces of bone to match the consistency of the other ashes,” he’d said and proceeded to demonstrate, exaggerating the difficulty of turning the crank. The husband reacted as if someone had ice-picked his nuts.
“Is that an artificial material used for demonstration purposes?” the wife had asked, her red-enameled lips slightly quivering, her emerald eyes struggling to look calm.
“No, ma’am. This here’s the real thing. In fact it was probably Eloise Turner’s elbow. The elbow always has to be pulverized. It’s no good for burning.”
The couple had suddenly remembered an appointment they were forgetting and left. That was for you, Junior, and your fucking new pay scale, he’d thought.
Mostly, in Harold’s opinion, cleaning the retort between bodies was unnecessary. “What does it matter if an ash or two of Mr. Smith’s gets re-burned with Mrs. Lowell?” he’d argued with Junior. “No one’s gonna know it.” Occasionally, he did vacuum the oven out. Tiny particles of grayish-white ash would swirl about, air-dancing with the tempo of the sucking roar. When the vacuum was turned off and the remaining flakes settled, Harold would emerge looking like his chest hair had dandruff.
Harold remembered Mr. Carlisle’s cremains were waiting. They’d cooled all night and were ready. He quickly packed them in the translucent plastic bag, bone pieces and all. The instructions Mr. Carlisle had left in his living will were to send his cremains to the NEA and allow them whatever artistic license they needed to utilize his ashes for art. As a result, Francis A. Carlisle would be Fed Ex’ed that very afternoon and possibly be part of an exhibit by the end of the month.
Probably some fruitcake actor, thought Harold. I hope he winds up in a Mason jar full of piss.
As he labeled the box, he stole a glance at Mrs. Walker. He blushed as he felt himself stiffen against his zipper. Next he would need to assemble a container for her. Stapling the cardboard to the plywood frame never took very long. He could have that finished and the furnace going by lunchtime. What a shame to burn that body, he couldn’t help thinking. He had seen hundreds of bodies, young and old, large and small, but never had he found himself so drawn to one.
He removed her death certificate from his file. Rebecca Ann Walker. DOB-9-05-59. Cause of death: internal organ failure induced by drug overdose. Suicide? Harold wondered as he looked for the instructions. Maybe that was the reason for the expression still in her eyes. He was certain she’d been lonely. The instruction page was missing. Dammit! He’d have to call Joe.
“Joe? This is Harold. The body that you sent over yesterday came without instructions. What the hell am I supposed to do with her cremains?”
“It figures. A new kid brought her over and I heard him throwing up after he zipped the bag. Did he even attach the death certificate and I.D.?”
“Yeah, he attached them, but you’re not gonna believe how.”
“He didn’t put them in the window?”
“Hell, no, he didn’t put them in the window. He taped them above her bush. With masking tape.”
“Masking tape?”
“Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. It stuck, too. Must be some industrial strength masking tape you guys use. Don’t say anything to this kid yet. I want to see where he tapes the next one.”
“Harold Washburn. You’re one sick sonofabitch.” Joe laughed. “I’ll bring the instructions by after work . . . as long as there’s beer.” Good ol’ Joe. Always ready for a beer. Harold had rarely seen him without one. It was beginning to show in his gut, too.
“Tell you what. You bring me a couple rolls of that tape and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Like I said, you’re a sick sonofabitch, Washburn.”
“Well, Mrs. Walker, it must be your lucky day. You’ve just won an extra night with me.” Harold could actually get started on her without the instructions. He rarely paid much attention to them anyway. The families never knew if the bodies were cremated with their favorite book or clutching the Bible. Mostly there weren’t a lot of instructions but this time it was a good excuse to wait.
Harold heard the beeping of the State van as it began to back up to the door. He pulled his shirt on and fumbled with the buttons. Junior was friends with some of the guys at the pen so Harold thought it best not to take any chances. He started to open the door but walked back over to Mrs. Walker. He pulled the white sheet just over her head.
“Morning, Harold.” It was Zeke. Harold had put his shirt on for nothing. “Got a big one for you.”
“A big one, huh? Is that the line you feed your whores?” Zeke’s mole-like face twisted into a grin. He was beginning to gray prematurely.
“What women? You know Betty won’t put up with none of that shit.” Harold had only seen Betty twice and both times he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. It wasn’t that she was pretty or sexy or even ugly. She was just big. Much bigger than Zeke. Harold couldn’t help but imagine how they looked when they fucked. “Hell,” he’d joked with Joe, “I bet it takes Zeke all day to satisfy that much woman.”
“Ain’t no way one of Zeke could take care of a woman Betty’s size. I doubt two of him would be enough.”
These raw references fueled each other’s laughter, sustaining them for years. Being in the body business for as long as they had been had a way of affecting their entire perspective on the physical in a way few could appreciate. One night when Joe stopped in to pick up some cremains, he crossed their imaginary boundary of black humor. He ventured into the sober. For September, it had been unseasonably chilly. The moon had been low and slightly yellowed around the edge as it began its ascent.
“Does it ever get to you?” Joe had asked gazing up at the deepening blue.
“The moon?” Harold had been caught off guard by the philosophical tone in the question.
“No, the burning.” Joe was silent for a moment. “And the bodies.”
With anybody else Harold would’ve instantly said no, or cracked a smart-ass joke, but there was a naked flatness in Joe’s voice that seemed too sincere to make light of.
“I don’t know, Joe. I don’t know.” And that was all Harold could say because he really didn’t know. Joe had taken the thick plastic package and left.
“Who you got over there?” Zeke asked, pointing to Mrs. Walker. Harold’s first impulse was to pull the sheet back and let him look. Zeke probably would have liked to see an average-sized body. Something held Harold back, though.
“Number 3124.”
“Female?” Zeke asked walking toward the table.
“Look, I’m too busy to play show-and-tell right now.”
Zeke shrugged his shoulders, slightly taken aback. “This one’s anonymous.” To the penitentiary guys, that meant there were no nosy family members to ask questions. To Harold it meant he could do what he wanted with the body. They wrestled the bag into the cooler and placed Mr. Anonymous right beside the two six packs.
“Which one’s next?” Zeke asked. He was walking directly toward Mrs. Walker.
“I don’t know yet. I’ve still got cremains to collect in the oven.”
“You need some help putting her back in the cooler?”
“No,” Harold said. “I’ve still got to measure her and get her box built.”
“Mind if I take a look at her?” Harold did, but he couldn’t say so. It would sound odd. It felt odd even to him. Normally, Harold would have shown Zeke her breasts and tried to deliberately embarrass him. For some reason, though, he didn’t want to share Mrs. Walker with Zeke.
“I don’t mind. Go ahead.” He paused. “Let me warn you, though, she has hair as red as Betty’s.”
Zeke stopped in his tracks. “You know, I probably better get a move on after all. I didn’t realize it’s already after ten.”
Harold had counted on Zeke not wanting to ogle someone who reminded him of Betty. For all the joking they did, Harold knew Zeke really loved Betty. Harold envied it in a way. He knew it was something he probably wouldn’t ever have.
Harold lit up a Pall Mall and wished for a drink. The furnace wasn’t even on, but the temperature was increasing with the climbing of the August sun. He sat on his round three-legged stool that he’d built himself and took a long drag. He flicked the ashes onto the floor. A thin mustache of perspiration began to form on his upper lip.
“Rebecca,” he said out loud. “Re-bec-ca Wal-ker.” He whispered her name, tasting each syllable with his tongue. “And how would you like to be cooked? Medium? Rare? Well-done?” He grinned again. It was an old joke but he still enjoyed it. He let himself look over at her again. She would have liked me, he thought, and took another drag from the cigarette.
“I guess I’ll get started on your container, Mrs. Walker. I’ll fix it up especially nice for you.” There had been occasions when the body was small enough he could put it directly into the oven. The box was really just to make the body manageable, and normally he didn’t mind building one. He rather liked it. He’d always been good with a hammer.
Harold never volunteered to explain the whole cremation process to anyone unless he was forced to. Most people didn’t want to know the details. They didn’t want to know that cardboard and plywood ash made up about half of a pound of the cremains. They just wanted to avoid a burial for whatever reasons. Most people didn’t need to know that he crawled on his belly under the oven with a lit broomstick held at his side until he reached the gas valves. He would slowly aim the lit end of the broomstick at the diesel gas opening and boom! the furnace would be lit. Next he would inch back out and insert the container with the body through the square door. During the first hour a thick, black smoke would rise from the chimney, gradually turning into the pale gray of a hearth fire. If the person had been extremely fat, the smoke would stay black for hours because the fatty tissue burned slower than all other parts except for the brain.
He liked knowing he played a part in spinning life’s circle. The Bible even said it—ashes to ashes, dust to dust. He just helped speed up the process. And this way didn’t waste a good six feet of ground.
“Don’t look so sad, Mrs. Walker. I’m going to have to close your eyes if you keep looking so sad.” He brushed a hair off her forehead and picked up the claw hammer lying beside her wrist. He quickly finished up the box and went out to eat his bologna sandwich in the shade of the pecan tree.
He kept thinking about Mrs. Walker and her breasts. He tried to fight it but it was as if there was a magnetic force he could not resist. He was sure she had been sad when she died. Not scared or shocked or hurt. Just sad. Harold wondered if she had been lonely when she died. It seemed impossible that such a beautiful woman could be lonely. Sure, he spent most of his time alone, but he liked it that way.
High white clouds floated overhead interrupting the expanse of clear blue with patches of white. He closed his eyes and imagined how her voice had sounded. It was smooth and low, he was sure, not squeaky and high. He imagined she had enjoyed cigarettes by the breathiness he imagined in her words.
“Don’t worry, Re-bec-ca Wal-ker. I’ll take good care of you.” He decided no one had ever taken good enough care of her. Today he would take care of her.
Harold wadded up the foil from his sandwich and stuck it in the lunchbox next to his uneaten Little Debbie cake. Mrs Walker shouldn’t be kept waiting any longer.
Harold removed his shirt from the nail and carried it to Mrs. Walker. He rolled her onto her side and placed her arms in one at the time. He pushed each button through the buttonhole except for the top one. Her round, pink nipples showed through the thin material, as if they were eyes, veiled, but watching. He had no brush or comb, so he ran a screwdriver through the sides of her syrup-colored hair, separating the strands into smooth lines.
“Now that’s much better, Mrs. Wal-ker,” he said. “You really are lovely.” He studied the gentle curve of her chin as it led to her thin neck. He leaned down and let his lips brush the little mole that jutted out just below her ear. The chill from the cooler was gone.
Harold placed one hand beneath her neck and his forearm behind her knees. He lifted her off of the Formica and placed her into the box. It smelled of plywood and was rough with splinters.
“Now this just won’t do. Wait right here. I’ll be back, Rebecca.” He grabbed an old quilt that he used to cover the ripped cloth on the passenger side of his truck and worked it beneath her body. He rolled her shoulders to one side and pulled the quilt. He rolled her to the other side and did the same. It was just after two when he was satisfied with his job.
He knew it was early but he wanted a beer. “Did you like to drink, Rebecca?” he asked her. He pulled her chin down, parting her lips. He rubbed his fingers along the bottom of the top teeth. She’d worn braces, he thought. They were too perfect to have happened naturally. Her incisors were whiter than the rest of her teeth. “I bet you liked coffee, too.”
Mouths were so different after death. No warmth. No wetness. The tongue felt similar to a snake and Harold almost never touched either. They both looked as though they should be slippery and warm but a touch always revealed them to be dry and cold. He poured some beer onto his fingertip and let it drip onto her lips. The drops lay still as if congealed. Still her eyes stared upward. “What was your last drink, Becca?’ Did you eat good before you died?”
Harold knew it was time to get her started. He wanted to be finished by the time Joe arrived. He removed the broom but then put it back. He didn’t want to see the flames spiraling through her white shirt seeking her flesh for fuel. The thought stirred him emotionally, physically. It would be a release from whatever had haunted her he knew, but he didn’t want to give her up yet. He lifted up the box and was surprised at its light weight. He put it back down. He took her face in both hands and looked again at her pitiful eyes.
He wanted to hold her just once before he freed her to the fire. He unbuttoned the white shirt and spread it open. He lifted her up by her underarms and pressed her to his bare chest. Her coolness felt soothing. He braced her lower back and held her head to his shoulder. She fit perfectly against his body.
“Oh, Becca, it’s such a shame we didn’t get to know each other sooner.” He rocked from side to side, dragging her feet against the floor.
“One . . . two . . . three . . . four,” he whispered heavily, beginning to move his feet up and back in what he thought was a waltz. The only sounds were the scratching of her toenails against the concrete and his breathing. He closed his eyes and kept moving, swirling in larger and larger circles until his arms burned from her weight. And then, as though the song had ended, he stopped.
“Thank you,” he whispered and placed her back in the box on top of the quilt. He buttoned each button and pulled the shirt hem to below her knees. He wiped the mascara from the corner of her eye and closed both lids. “You’re free now, Mrs. Walker,” he said and closed the box, then took up the broom.