right. Reno, Nevada’s gonna be prime oceanfront property—you mark my words.”
I looked over at Uncle Benny. He was lying in a gunmetal-gray casket, his favorite Garcia rod tucked into the satin padding beside him. His hat was listing drunkenly to one side, and there was a lipstick smear on his right cheek from where Aunt Lucy had kissed him goodbye. At the foot of the casket was a shiny red metal cooler loaded with gleaming cans of ice-cold Budweiser.
“We’re popping a top for Benny,” one of my eighteen-year-old cousins explained somberly. “Drinking’s legal in church—at least if you’re Catholic.”
In the background, Dean Martin sang “Amore” and Orlando Wilson floated across a big-screen TV, silently instructing his audience on proper casting techniques.
“You see the flowers, Stella?” Aunt Lucy asked, suddenly materializing by my side. She pointed to a huge funeral wreath shaped like a leaping bass and mounted on a tall wire frame. Gone Fishing, it read. “Ain’t they beautiful?” she breathed. “And them over there.” She gestured to a wreath of red, white and blue daisies that read Sleep With The Fishes, Big Guy! She smiled. “They’re from the boys down at the Saint Anthony’s Lodge.”
“It’s lovely, Aunt Lucy,” I said, but I was really thinking that I’d dropped into a bad day in a psychiatric unit.
Aunt Lucy took my arm and led me closer to the casket. “Look who’s here, honey,” she said to Uncle Benny. “It’s our Stella. Don’t she look pretty with her hair done blond? Of course the clothes belong to Nina, but that’s on account of Stella came sudden.”
I squirmed, tugging at Nina’s black pleated miniskirt. I tried my best not to topple over in the stilettos I’d been forced to drag out from my undercover equipment. Uncle Benny didn’t seem to mind. He appeared to be concentrating on nailing the big one. His eyes were closed and his mouth was frozen in a sewn-shut, lopsided grin. The body in the casket in no way resembled the uncle I loved.
“You couldn’t get them to put in the cigar?” I asked.
Aunt Lucy shrugged. “It was bad for his health, anyway.” She looked back at the crowd. “This is some turnout,” she said. “I think almost the entire town is here. It’s been like this since he died, people turning up with food or beer, all of them talking about the good turns he did for them or the ways he helped them out when times were tough. He done things I never knew about, Stel. The man was a saint.”
The pews in the funeral home chapel were filling up as people filed in for the service. In the background, Dean Martin had finished “Amore,” and was now replaced by Andy Williams singing “Moon River.”
“He don’t look so dead to me, Stella,” Aunt Lucy said. I gazed down at the tiny woman and saw tears begin to track across her withered cheeks. She reached behind me, pulled a can of beer from the cooler and opened it. With great care, she placed it beside Uncle Benny’s left hand, removing another untouched can that had grown warm. “I was kinda hoping maybe the beer would bring him back, you know?” She sounded like a little child, pleading for one more chance.
“I know, honey,” I said. “It’s hard to believe he’s really gone.”
Andy Williams stopped singing, and the soft strains of organ music signaled the start of the service. The big-screen TV went dark momentarily as Orlando Wilson’s fishing tips were replaced by a larger-than-life-size portrait of my uncle, out on his boat in the middle of Kerr Park Lake, reeling in a “big one.”
Aunt Lucy seemed to snap out of her melancholy reverie. “Let’s get this show on the road,” she said as the funeral director started walking purposefully toward us. She lifted her head, wiped her eyes and allowed herself to be led into the family pew that was located off to the side of the tiny chapel.
I trailed along behind her, filing into the box and settling myself next to my aunt. The organ swelled to a crescendo, cueing us all to stand. We opened our leaflets and began singing “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”
Nina nudged me. “Okay, you can’t possibly think this is normal,” she whispered.
I shrugged, irritated. So what if Aunt Lucy was a bit unconventional? It was Uncle Benny’s favorite song. Maybe singing it comforted her. Wasn’t that what funerals were supposed to do, comfort those left behind? Maybe everybody was jumping on the Aunt-Lucy’s-lost-it bandwagon just a little too quickly. Of course, that was before the service started and Jake Carpenter walked to the front of the chapel, looked right into my eyes and took my breath away.
Ten years, a river of bad memories, and the man still had the same intoxicating effect on me.
“Aunt Lucy, what’s he doing here? Where’s Father Mark?” I whispered.
Aunt Lucy frowned. Her eyes filled with tears as she stared up at me. “He wouldn’t come, Stella,” she said. “I thought you knew.”
I just looked at her, feeling crazy. “Knew what?”
The last strains of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” died away, and Aunt Lucy’s voice carried in hushed silence. “They said Benny killed himself, Stella, but he wouldn’t do that. Jake’s the one who found him down at the garage. If you ask me, someone did this to my Benny! That man wouldn’t kill himself. No way, and he wouldn’t up and die on me without a fight!”
The congregation reacted and the sound of their voices almost drowned out Aunt Lucy’s next bombshell. “I know you don’t like him, honey, but Jake’s the only one who listens to me.” She smiled. “It was just a lucky break for us—he’s an ordained minister.”
I looked up at Jake and saw him staring back at me, no doubt slack-jawed at the new and improved version of my former self. Blond hair, spiky stiletto heels and Nina’s miniskirt definitely wasn’t the old mousy me. No, I was a good ten pounds lighter and four inches taller in heels. Between the makeup and the attitude, I was surprised he recognized me at all.
I stared right back at him. He hadn’t changed in all the time I’d been gone. He had the same dark eyes, same killer good looks and probably the same smart-assed attitude. I watched as his gaze shifted to Aunt Lucy. When he smiled gently at her and then winked, I could’ve thrown up. He was wearing faded tight jeans, cowboy boots and a black leather Harley-Davidson jacket. Where was his respect for the dead? And for that matter, if Jake Carpenter had somehow found Jesus, which I seriously doubted, where were his robe and collar?
I leaned over and touched my aunt’s arm. “Aunt Lucy, the last time I checked, Jake was a bartender, not a priest.”
She smiled. “Well now, honey, except for those little two-day Christmas trips of yours, you’ve been gone almost eleven years. A lot happens, especially around here. Jake’s got his own auto body shop. He’s really changed, Stella. He settled down after he got out of the service. He’s found himself.
“He sent off for one of them mail-order certificates. He’s a minister in some nondenominational church, you know, the kind that doesn’t meet and doesn’t have a building.” She held up her hand to cut off my protest. “I know, it sounds funny but, well, he’s here and Father Mark isn’t.”
Aunt Lucy lifted her head defiantly, nodded toward Jake and the service began again.
“Brothers and sisters,” Jake said, his voice rising above the crowd’s murmuring, “let us pray!”
I
