Cannot Wait to Get to Heaven - Fannie Flagg [33]
The truth was, Macky did not really want to see Aunt Elner dead. He wanted to remember her as she was when she was alive, but the thought of that sweet woman lying somewhere in a room all by herself upset him even more. As they walked down the hall, the doctor said, “Your wife seems to be pretty shook up, they must have been pretty close.”
Macky said, “Yes they were, very close.”
As a male orderly passed by, the doctor called out, “Hey, Burnsie, you owe me ten bucks, I told you the Cards would take it in five,” and acted as if it were just another day.
Macky wanted to grab him and choke the living daylights out of him, and out of everybody in the world, for that matter, but nothing he could do would bring her back. So he kept walking.
A Sad Business
11:48 AM
Down at the funeral parlor, after the call from Tot, Neva stood up and walked into the back office and pulled out the “Decedent, Elner Shimfissle” file and then walked around the corner to where her husband, Arvis, was applying the finishing touches on the hairpiece for Ernest Koonitz, a recent arrival. She stuck her head in. “Hon, Tot just called. Elner Shimfissle is probably coming in late tonight or first thing in the morning, stung to death by wasps.”
He looked up. “Huh. Two decedents within twenty-four hours. Not bad for April.”
It was true, considering April was always their slow month, but Neva hated it when Arvis said things like that. Granted they were in the funeral business, but she had a heart. Lately it seemed all he cared about was numbers. If a plague hit town and took out a hundred people, he would probably dance a jig. She was aware that every passing meant money in their pocket; still, she hated to see the last of the old-timers leaving, but the Warrens were her regulars, and it was a job that needed to be done. They had handled all their decedents in the past, both Norma’s and Macky’s parents, various aunts and uncles, and an occasional cousin here and there. Neva knew she should not play favorites, but she couldn’t help but have a soft spot for them. The entire family had been loyal to them throughout the years, and Neva always took special care with their decedents, treated them as she would one of her own.
Besides just plain liking them, she appreciated their business. Times had changed. Their business was no longer the only game in town; Costco out on the interstate was now selling coffins at a cut rate, and they had lost an awful lot of their customers when they moved into the building where the catfish restaurant used to be. A lot of people said that they did not feel comfortable viewing the body of their loved ones where they used to eat catfish and fries, and had switched over to the new mortuary in town. The new people did a nice job and they were fine, she supposed, for fast and impersonal services. She was not one to badmouth the competition, but theirs was a longtime local family-run full-service business and offered the follow-through that was so important. She and Arvis were there to serve their customers from the first pickup, on through internment. They prepared the body, arranged the viewing, ordered the flowers, provided free sign-in books, had a minister, a soprano, and an organist on twenty-four-hour call. They offered a His and Her two-for-one burial package and had a large selection of caskets and cremation urns at reasonable prices. They supplied a 10 percent discount on extra rooms at the local Days Inn for out-of-town relatives and friends, including a free continental breakfast on the day of the funeral and complimentary wine and cheese in the lobby that afternoon. They even arranged transportation to and from the cemetery and helped order and measure and place the headstones when they arrived. “What more could you want in a funeral package?” she wondered. Other than not having your loved one die in the first place, of course. Short of that, they did everything that was possible to have done. In fact, their ad in the telephone book, which she had spent weeks creating, reflected her sentiments exactly.