THURSDAY
Here in the Midwest, we're acutely aware of our reputation for extending a friendly hand, lending assistance without being asked, and pitching together to ease one another's burdens.
And with very little prodding, we usually meet our own and the country's inflated expectations of proper behavior. We build barns, bake cakes, shovel sidewalks, and curb our natural tendency to talk about one another when propriety demands.
One place you generally will not hear anything bad about a person is at his own funeral. And certainly everyone puts a great deal of effort into conversation appropriate for a standing-room-only memorial service.
But after the Reverend Clay Deibert's uplifting eulogy; after Stu, Ron, Neil, Hugh, and a couple of late-arriving out-of-town relatives had carried Doug Fischbach to his final resting place; after we had all trooped back to the dining room in the Lutheran Hall to sample the repast laid out by Junior and the church ladies, it was a different story.
Not that anyone was blatantly muddying the name of our late football coach. It's just that, try as we might, no one could think of anything good to say about him.
It had been like that after Butchie Pendergast's funeral too. While there was a great deal of commiserating with, and for, the family over the loss, and the usual lament about the deceased being so young, and having so much left to accomplish, there was little said about anyone actually missing the dear departed.
"I feel kinda weird," Rhonda whispered to me, nibbling from her Styrofoam plate filled with the usual funeral fare—thinly sliced ham on dinner rolls, Jell-O salad, sliced dill pickles, carrot sticks, and chocolate cake baked by the Lutheran Women's Guild. "I mean the service was sad and all, and I could cry whenever I look at those poor kids, especially Cameron. But otherwise, I'm sorta relieved I don't have to wait on him anymore. Or worry if he's gonna blow up in public and start calling names and punching and stuff."
"I know how you feel," Presley agreed, slurping down another cup of fruit punch. He'd already devoured two plates of food. I'd had to remind him that this was not an all-you-can-eat buffet. "I wasn't even gonna come, but they let school out and everything, and it seemed chicken not to." He lowered his voice and said, "I was worried that he was gonna look like he did at the river. But I saw him in the coffin, and it wasn't so bad. He looked sorta calm. Peaceful-like."
"Something he never seemed to manage when he alive," I said.
I felt only marginally guilty about my own additions to the whispered, but persistent, Doug-bashing. After all, I had been charged, by the widow herself, to spread her version of the last few months of their marriage.
"Maybe he's coaching in heaven now," Rhonda said wistfully.
Del crunched a pickle spear. "There's a thought: Doug sitting on a cloud, calling the angels fags for not hitting the devils hard enough."
"Too bad for her, though," Aphrodite said, pointing across the room at an impeccably groomed and properly sorrowful Debbie.
Debbie seemed to have weathered the service well and was stoically enduring the obligatory feeding of the mourners. Wearing a simple tasteful dress adorned with no jewelry except the gold rhinestone circle pin, she made a point to speak to everyone.
"She looks better than I would have expected," Rhonda said, watching Debbie work the room.
"She's doing all right," I said. Even with Debbie's blessing, I couldn't bring myself to say, at the man's own funeral, that his wife was probably better off without him.
Someone had cranked the heat up in the Lutheran Hall. I was hot and thirsty, and it was too soon to pay our last condolences and leave. "I'm going to get some more punch. Anyone want anything while I'm up?" I asked.
Once a waitress, always a waitress.
"Sure." Aphrodite handed me empty cup with a bright red lipstick imprint on the rim.
Junior, who had been directing operations out of sight in the kitchen, now stood behind the loaded trestle table. Almost everyone had been served at least once, and those gathered around her were intent on seconds and more hot coffee.
"Where's Stu?" Junior asked me.
"He had to go back to work right after the service," I lied. I actually had no idea what Stu was doing, but I didn't want to get into that with Junior. Or anyone else.
"You know, this reminds me more and more of long ago," Ron Adler said quietly, behind me. He'd been picking over the sandwiches and the last of the cake. "Everyone was at Butchie's funeral too, except Janelle."
"And Doug," I reminded him. "They were both gone right after the party at the river, remember? Neither one was here for the memorial service."
Something about that statement, something that had to do with Ron, almost danced into view, and then disappeared. I narrowed my eyes at him, concentrating.
"Uh-huh." He nodded, blinking. He was watching Del in the corner, not really paying attention. Then he shook his head and turned back to me. "You know, we still have that blue tarp of Stu's. We brought it home with us after the wingding at the river on Friday night. What with all this going on"—he blinked, mouth full, indicating the room with a finger—"it kinda slipped my mind, but it's in the back of my pickup whenever Stu wants it. You tell him, okay?"
He didn't wait for my answer, but ambled off to talk to Neil, who was standing in the corner, observing the crowd for the still-hiding Janelle. Unless, of course, she was in the room, wearing one of her blend-into-the-wallpaper disguises.
"That's not all that slipped his mind," Junior said darkly, watching Ron's back.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know who this 'we' is that he talks about, taking things home last Friday night, but it certainly wasn't Gina."
"Sure it was," I said. "Ron and Gina left not too long after the fight broke up."
"Well, Ron might have left then, but he forgot Gina," Junior said, still scowling.
"Huh?"
"Ron left the river on Friday night without his wife," Junior said slowly, so even an idiot like me could understand. "He forgot to take her, and he forgot to tell her he was leaving. Poor Gina wandered around for twenty minutes looking for him, like a forlorn puppy. We finally persuaded her to ride home with Clay and me."
"But I'm sure Ron said..." I trailed off, trying to remember exactly what Ron had said.
Debbie stepped up to the table and handed an empty cup to Junior, which she refilled with a perfect preacher's wife smile.
Junior held the cup out, momentarily dropping her eyes to the pin on Debbie's dress, and froze. She stood, stock-still, hand extended, not breathing. The color drained from her face. "That's a nice piece of jewelry." She swallowed, striving to keep a small waver out of her voice. "Where did you get it?"
Debbie, perhaps fortified by a couple of glasses of Kamchatka ice water, looked down at the pin, then directly into Junior's eyes, and said, "Doug picked it up somewhere. Do you like it?"