A Sibling in Always

Part 1 Chapter 2

2

Just another regulation

A second handle you must hold

My Gadsden flag tricks some duct tape

Then something gets stuck to the side

An awful grate that I must fix

I tilt it back; I am so smart

The dulled blade is invisible

I fall forward then I struggle

I wonder how long he will last. The last few gravediggers have been older men, most of them carpenters or plumbers who are out of work. Men who believe in making money by sweating and sore muscles. Others had been drunks: desperate and willing to do anything for money. They all managed to get it done, but even the most hardened of them didn't last long. I have turned the spade on many graves. Grave digging was my first job – my uncle forcing me to do it through my teens, so I know first-hand just how hard the work is. I hope the new man will last. He's not very tall. Neither am I, but from what I can observe, he seems to be in decent shape. That will help him. If the first grave doesn't cause him to turn in his resignation, then he may be around a while. Normally I don't help at the cemetery. I don't typically like the other men my uncle hires; they always look at me suspiciously -- especially the old grizzled ones. I can tell they don't know what to make of me, and they looked at me with a bit of old-fashioned distrust.

"So you mean to tell me, you've seen weirder than this?" Mason asks.

"I have. Several times. This one is more violent than most, but not stranger."

"What was the weirdest?"

"It's hard to say, really. I've seen so many over the years."

"Okay," Mason protests. "This guy grinds his face off in a lawnmower, and you're telling me that it is hard to say what you have seen that is weirder than that."

"It's weird you are not running out of this room. That is strange to me. I've been doing this for years. Is this your first job where you had to be around dead bodies?" I ask.

"It is," he says. "But I have seen dead bodies before and not just at funerals."

"Where then?"

"I witnessed an accident once. This guy was on a scooter and a car hit him. He went flying. The driver of the car came through the windshield. Both of them died within a few minutes. So what happens now?"

"What do you mean?"

"With the body? What do you do with it?"

"Most people who do what I do just follow the process you learn in mortuary school."

"Well, aren't we the cryptic one? I asked what you do."

"Have you ever been to a funeral here before?" I ask.

"No, I haven't but I heard about them. I heard they are different here. I heard there are people that come just to see the bodies, not knowing the family or the person who died. You know anything about that?"

I see my reputation precedes me. None of the other people we have employed here gave a damn about me or what I did. Mason seems to be another story.

"It's just something that happened over time. I studied, I guess you can say: cosmetology, anatomy, sculpture. I even took some dancing classes just to get an idea of how the body moves. But, I guess it was something more than that. It's not about just picking out the right shade of lipstick, so grandma doesn't look too slutty. It's about getting inside the bone structure. Really seeing what is there. But you don't want it to look like Claymation. It has to be real. When I embalm a body that's what happens. They look real. Most bodies are easy, peaceful deaths, but not this guy. The one we have here, he is going to be more of a challenge."