The Undertaking Read Online Free

slipped irretrievably out of our reach, beyond Mrs. Hornsby and the children, beyond the women at the laundromat he owned, beyond his comrades at the Legion Hall, the Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge, his pastor at First Baptist, beyond the mailman, zoning board, town council,and Chamber of Commerce; beyond us all, and any treachery or any kindness we had in mind for him.
    Milo is dead.
    X’s on his eyes, lights out, curtains.
    Helpless, harmless.
    Milo’s dead.
    Which is why I do not haul to my senses, coffee and quick shave, Homburg and great coat, warm up the Dead Wagon, and make for the freeway in the early o’clock for Milo’s sake. Milo doesn’t have any sake anymore.I go for her—for she who has become, in the same moment and the same twinkling, like water to ice, the Widow Hornsby. I go for her—because she still can cry and care and pray and pay my bill.
    T he hospital that Milo died in is state-of-the-art. There are signs on every door declaring a part or a process or bodily function. I like to think that, taken together, the words wouldadd up to The HumanCondition, but they never do. What’s left of Milo, the remains, are in the basement, between SHIPPING & RECEIVING and LAUNDRY ROOM. Milo would like that if he were still liking things. Milo’s room is called PATHOLOGY.
    The medical-technical parlance of death emphasizes disorder.
    We are forever dying of failures, of anomalies, of insufficiencies, of dysfunctions, arrests, accidents. These areeither chronic or acute. The language of death certificates—Milo’s says “Cardiopulmonary Failure”—is like the language of weakness. Likewise, Mrs. Hornsby, in her grief, will be said to be breaking down or falling apart or going to pieces, as if there were something structurally awry with her. It is as if death and grief were not part of The Order of Things, as if Milo’s failure and his widow’s weepingwere, or ought to be, sources of embarrassment. “Doing well” for Mrs. Hornsby would mean that she is bearing up, weathering the storm, or being strong for the children. We have willing pharmacists to help her with this. Of course, for Milo, doing well would mean he was back upstairs, holding his own, keeping the meters and monitors bleeping.
    But Milo is downstairs, between SHIPPING & RECEIVINGand LAUNDRY ROOM, in a stainless-steel drawer, wrapped in white plastic top to toe, and—because of his small head, wide shoulders, ponderous belly, and skinny legs, and the trailing white binding cord from his ankles and toe tag—he looks, for all the world, like a larger than life-size sperm.
    I sign for him and get him out of there. At some level, I am still thinking Milo gives a shit, whichby now, of course, we all know he doesn’t—because the dead don’t care.
    Back at the funeral home, upstairs in the embalming room, behind a door marked PRIVATE, Milo Hornsby is floating on a porcelain table under florescent lights. Unwrapped, outstretched, Milo is beginning to look a little more like himself—eyes wide open, mouth agape, returning to our gravity. I shave him, close his eyes, hismouth. We call this setting the features. These are the features—eyes and mouth—that will never look the way they would have looked in life when they were always opening, closing, focusing, signaling, telling us something. In death, what they tell us is that they will not be doing anything anymore. The last detail to be managed is Milo’s hands—one folded over the other, over the umbilicus, inan attitude of ease, of repose, of retirement.
    They will not be doing anything anymore, either.
    I wash his hands before positioning them.
    When my wife moved out some years ago, the children stayed here, as did the dirty laundry. It was big news in a small town. There was the gossip and the goodwill that places like this are famous for. And while there was plenty of talk, no one knew exactlywhat to say to me. They felt helpless, I suppose. So they brought casseroles and beef