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These things do happen. Now. This here Chinaman we got in here is dead. He’s a—”
    â€œI know that.”
    â€œHe’s a Chinaman without no family. Zack and Cobb Pittman got him up where they’re building that road. And we gone have to alter him a little bit after we practice embalming him. Or we got to see that he will become altered. We’re going to—”
    â€œBlow him up.”
    â€œExactly . . . How—how’d you know that?”
    â€œI saw that stick of dynamite.”
    â€œYes, well, it happens in the real world. Has happened. Corpses in hot weather blow up. It’s a sad fact of the business. Our mission is to prevent that kind of tragic accident—in this territory. That’s our mission. Understand?”
    â€œYessir.”
    â€œI don’t see no reason of you mentioning this to nobody.”
    â€œYessir . . . nosir.”
    We went back in and they unwrapped the Chinaman. He was younger than I thought he’d be and his eyes and mouth was open and he had a little blue hole in his right temple. He was staring straight ahead and his eyes was glazed like a dead deer’s. I was sorry he didn’t have no family.
    â€œShot hisself,” said Zack. “Derringer. Didn’t even go through.”
    Mr. Blankenship says, “I wouldn’t expect it to—with a derringer, Zack. And with a head as hard as a Chinaman’s. Now. P.J., pard? You want to do this first one?”
    â€œI bet he was right-handed,” said Zack.
    â€œYeah, I’ll do it,” said Mr. Copeland. “Which? All three?”
    â€œNo. I’d say just the arterial and the cavity.”
    They started doing stuff.
    â€œWhat’s the arterial and the cavity?” I asked.
    â€œGet the embalming liquid in his arteries so it’ll spread around—that’s arterial. And then in places like his stomach where there’s some cavities—cavity.” They were concentrating on their jobs.
    â€œWhat’s the third?—third way you’re talking about? You said ‘all three.’ ”
    â€œJust watch—and listen,” said Mr. Blankenship. “This is serious business. I’m going to have to . . . don’t you want me to read you how to do it, P.J.?”
    â€œI guess so. And when we finish I want to show Bumpy how to jump a tooth.”
    â€œThe needle,” said Mr. Blankenship, “is the third way and that’s when you go in through their nose and pump in fluid that fills up their head and seeps down in the body and preserves them that way. But you don’t necessarily need to do that one unless they been drowned for a long time or unless you’re just looking for something extra to do. If they’re in good shape the arteries will get the embalming fluid where all it’s needed.”
    â€œRead on the carotid artery,” said Mr. Copeland. “I about remember it. But just read on it.”
    Mr. Blankenship starts in reading about “along a line from the sterno-clavicular articulation” to something.
    â€œThe sterno what?”
    â€œDon’t you remember? Right there.”
    â€œI remember, I remember. I just didn’t get that word.”
    After Mr. Copeland cut two places, pumped in about two gallons of embalming liquid in one place, and got back about two and a half out of the other—the red getting lighter and lighter—and then sewed up the out hole and pumped in some more, and did some other stuff, he sent me out back with the tub and I poured it in the trench he had dug, and covered it up with the shoveled dirt. I was feeling a little funny but nobody else seemed to be. Course I’d seen some dead people before, but I hadn’t ever seen anybody get embalmed—or anybody that was shot in the head with a derringer.
    Back inside, Mr. Blankenship rubs his hands together and says, “Where is them cigarette papers, P.J.?”
    â€œThey’re right