The Pallbearer by Jordan Farmer

Author:Jordan Farmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510736511
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2018-01-16T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

AT HOME, JASON listened to the cats. The strays climbed the steps to sleep beneath the swing on his patio or curled up into vibrating piles atop the plush cushions. He could hear them meowing from hunger most nights, sometimes hissing and fighting until he felt the urge to go kick them over the balcony. Whenever he went outside in the early morning, he caught only glances of the slowest slinking away. Mother cats swollen with the weight of kittens ready to be born or decrepit toms missing patches of fur, their scarred faces occasionally absent an eye from duels. The cats had been coming since he was a child. The current pride were the incestuous descendants of a brood that first appeared when Uncle Henry owned the funeral home. As much as Jason hated their racket, there was something reassuring in the idea that a generation of felines would remain long after he was gone.

Anyway, it wasn’t the cats keeping him awake. It was the thought of Ferris Gilbert snatching the tie from his throat.

It had rained enough that evening to extinguish the heat. The soft drizzle making its rhythm on the roof sounded pleasant when Jason closed his eyes. In his loneliest times before Sharon, Jason needed things like rain or the cats to fall asleep. In the quiet of the small apartment above the mortuary, his mind would fill with doubts about the future unless he could focus on monotonous noise. He usually slept better now, but Terry’s note taxed him until he rose from bed to retrieve the map, tracing fingers over the indentations made by a pencil in the cheap construction paper. The words begged to be read aloud. The please at the bottom of the page more urgent than anything ever asked of him. Eventually, Jason got dressed.

He opened the nightstand and took out his grandfather’s pistol. As far as he knew, the gun had ended three lives. Uncle Henry liked to recite a story about a night when a few of the stray cats snuck into the back lot where the children kept ducklings they’d received as Easter presents. Jason’s father woke to the sound of frantic screams, grabbed the revolver and came outside in time to see the strays dragging the ducks down. He killed a fat calico with the first shot, missed with the second and third before chasing the fleeing cats around the side of the building. One of the animals hid under a neighbor’s porch, but Jason’s father shot the cat between its glowing yellow eyes. The final bullets were reserved for their wounded ducks. Uncle Henry had to pull the trigger. Jason’s father couldn’t manage. He’d only been ten years old.

It was one of the few stories Jason knew about his father, and somehow it remained more vivid than his actual memories. Jason couldn’t recall much other than the old man’s anger. He was kind, but always seething under the surface. Even an odd philosophical musing, the

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