Tinker and Blue by Frank Macdonald

Author:Frank Macdonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cape Breton University Press
Published: 2014-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

37

The following evening, Blue and Tinker walked solemnly into the funeral home where, according to the information posted on the wall, the remains of William Joseph Rubble were available for viewing between the hours of seven and nine p.m.

“That’s the problem I have with these funeral homes,” Blue said. “They keep worse hours than the liquor store, the one back home, anyway. You barely have time to get comfortable at a wake and the undertaker is ushering you out and closing the door.”

—

Tinker and Blue had talked long into the night about the wake, and brought the subject up the following morning, carrying it into the afternoon. From Nathan they had found out where the funeral home was, and from the obituary in the newspaper they found out the times for viewing the remains. The Last Passage Funeral Home was open to the public from 2:00-4:00 in the afternoon, and from 7:00-9:00 in the evening.

“The evening’s when we want to go,” Blue advised. “That’s when things start to liven up, right, Tinker?”

Recruiting mourners for the evening visit presented Tinker and Blue with a few problems, most of them rooted in the fact that nobody else wanted to go. Most members of the commune, and the entire band along with its manager, had difficulty appreciating the social opportunity that had presented itself in the unfortunate death of a man no one had ever heard of, and whose wife had hired a hippie piper as a mean-spirited trick on him.

“What is it about this man’s death that appeals to you?” Peter? asked Tinker and Blue.

“Each man’s death diminishes me, as the other fellow says,” Blue replied.

“Donne.” Peter? stated.

“No, I’m not done, the dead guy is done,” Blue answered. “It’s just that there’s some things you don’t get around to thinking about, you know, because they don’t require any thinking. Like respect for the dead. A guy dies, you go to the wake. What’s to think about?”

“I’ve never been to a wake,” Karma said.

“I went to my grandmother’s funeral, but I was too small to go to her wake,” Kathy added, pooling her experience with Karma’s.

“I buried a friend once,” Capricorn told the table. “He died of cancer. His cancer was caused by living next door to a factory that spewed out poison. His own father went on working in that fucking place although his son was dying and so were half the children around there. When he died, the factory gave his father three days off with pay. Compassionate leave, they call it. That factory is gone now, burned down, but my friend is still dead.”

“My arm—” Gerry started, then suddenly withdrew.

“Your arm what?” Blue asked, and the others let his question float in the sea of their silence while they allowed Gerry time to continue, or room to withdraw.

“I hated the violin. Every week my parents drove me to my lessons, made me play, made me practice, and made my plans for me. I was going to be a great violinist. Like you can make anybody be great.

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