Counted Corpse by ACF Bookens

Author:ACF Bookens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andi Cumbo-Floyd

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The next morning, I woke from a deep sleep and lovely dreams where I was wearing vintage clothes while driving a Model A car. Sawyer was still sound asleep beside me, and I snuck downstairs with Beauregard padding behind me. It was a rare morning when I got to sip my coffee alone, and I was going to try to take advantage of the time.

Also, something else had bubbled up while I dreamed, and I really wanted to dig into the newspaper archives and see what I could find about Demetrius Cleveland the second, the man who had married into the Morris family and who had been the informant on Earnestine Greene’s death certificate.

I fixed my coffee and slipped out onto the front porch, where the morning was unseasonably cool and dry for August. I tucked my laptop onto my legs and pulled up the online newspaper archive of which I was a member. Quickly, I searched for the names “Earnestine Greene” and “Demetrius Cleveland,” and I saw the local articles about Bethel Church that Mary had shown me as well as a couple other articles talking about church functions where both of them had been in attendance.

I scanned the headlines for a few minutes and didn’t see anything new. So I switched tacks and searched each name individually. That search yielded mostly the same results for Earnestine, a fact I found sad since it seemed most of her life was tied to the church. I hoped she had liked being a pastor’s wife.

But the search for Demetrius Cleveland pulled up a lot more. Apparently, he owned the local funeral home that served the black community. His name and Cleveland Funeral Home came up in dozens and dozens of listings. Most of them were obituaries listing Cleveland’s as the funeral home handling services, but a few also focused on the man himself.

According to two records, he had been a very generous man who had given a lot of money to location organizations, including two schools for black children in the area. He had also helped found a local soup kitchen that provided meals for families who fell on hard times, and he served as the Worshipful Master of the local Masons here in Octonia.

One article included a photo of him, and he looked stoic and staid in his dark suit with a simple bowtie and side parted hair. Nothing I read about him made me think anything other of him than that he was a good community member, a person his great-grandson and namesake could be proud of.

But I did have one question that was brought up by his profession. So I went back to the genealogy site and searched his name to see if he came up on anyone else’s death certificates. I wondered if he might have been the informant on a number of deaths as a funeral director. But it was only Earnestine Greene’s record that showed his name, so clearly, he had indeed reported her death because he had some personal connection to it or to the victim.

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