Cadillac Cathedral Read Online Free Page A

rough-sawn yellow cedar. Part of the roof was overlaid by a sheet of black plasticheld in place by a heap of rocks at each corner. Whoever lived here could be squatters, or they could have a license for salvage. A half-ton Ford pickup without fenders or wheels rested on stacks of wood blocks, most of its yellow paint eaten up by rust. A dog house sat at a slant, a limp chain lying out across dirt as though a dog had taken a good hard run and broken free. A pair of speckled hens pecked at a scraggly patch of grass.
    And, just as he had hoped, when he’d moved the Fargo slowly forward he could see the old hearse parked at an angle at the base of a clothesline pole off the far back corner of the house. It was almost certainly the one Joe Hudson had used to deliver his butchered meat after Thomas Birdsong had bought a newer model for his funerals. No one else had owned one of these, so far as he knew. A Cadillac — the Cathedral Hearse . He recognized the open-air driver’s cab, the long hood and longer running board with the encased side-mounted spare wheel, the row of windows and elaborately carved frame of the carriage. As he drove slowly closer he could see that its lower half was caked with hardened mud.
    This was disgusting: the mud, no garage to protect the hearse from weather, this isolated dusty location, and, worst of all the evidence that the hearse had been employed in some way for a private salvage operation, even for hauling poles down out of the bush.
    He climbed down from the Fargo for a closer look, slowly circling the long black vehicle that made him think of a nineteenth-century stagecoach trying to convert itself into a modern limousine. Having no roof to protect it, the driver’s seat was strewn with fallen twigs and rotting leaves, and had obviously suffered from weather. Aside from this and a shallow dent to the left rear corner, the hearse appeared to be in fairly good shape. He ran a hand down the long hood and the large chrome-plated headlamps, then twisted the cap off the radiator. The water was up. He raised the long engine cover to check themotor: it was clean, obviously cared-for, probably in good working order.
    Since there was no question in his mind that this was the same hearse he’d tuned up for old man Hudson’s meat deliveries, he already knew some things about it — that the body was designed by “Fletcher” for instance; that the synchro-mesh transmission allowed for three speeds forward. The clutch was a twin-disc version. For its time, it was definitely a luxury model. It still was, for that matter. A beauty.
    He crouched to examine the tires. The rubber was firm, the tread on three of them worn but still safe enough, but the fourth — rear left — was dangerously close to bald.
    Returning to the cab, he opened the backwards-opening half-door, brushed leaves and twigs from the seat, then slipped in behind the wheel. The engine turned over once, twice, a third time — then rumbled and ticked, sputtered a bit, and finally idled into a comfortable hum.
    This was not just someone’s tractor or Hudson’s old butcher wagon; it was the hearse that Thomas Birdsong had driven at the head of any number of parades from church to cemetery through the city of Arvo’s childhood. Before his family moved north to Portuguese Creek, he’d seen those funeral processions moving down the street — probably quite often, since he had such a vivid memory of Birdsong’s daughter sitting where her father ought to be. She’d waved to those she passed by as though she believed herself to be driving a float in the First of July parade. Her father beamed with pride, or possibly with the pleasure of defying the police. But if the police had noticed this flouting of the law they’d done nothing about it. Maybe they were unwilling to interfere with a funeral. Even as a ten- or eleven- or twelve-year-old boy, he had been aware that he was seeing something astonishing, a vehicle more beautiful than any