Recapitulation: Barry and Jenna, in preparation for a lucrative grave job, attend the funeral of a young child afflicted with progeria, a rapid aging disease. Jenna has demonstrated a fear of the unfamiliar at this funeral, while Barry continues to hope that this perverse trick he is playing will dissuade Jenna from tomorrow’s run.
Funerals celebrate the dead. Funerals are meant for the living. Introspection, reflection, delving into one’s inner self and confronting basic fears of the unknown, all these things trace the pattern of a funeral, the bass and treble lines to a slow song, weaving into one unified melody. That we sing such sad songs to ourselves over and over is no surprise, for it is never the joy and happiness that capture our imagination, but the sorrow and loss.
Though Barry moved the earth to reveal someone’s final resting places, he never felt any connection to them. A last act of kindness, even if bought with life insurance, never meant anything to him. These codas to lives not his paid the bills, and not much else. There were many reasons he wanted to run this plan with Jenna. He really did believe that for something on this order of seriousness, they needed to ensure some practice would keep them out of trouble. He hoped and prayed this would dissuade Jenna from this mad path. But most of all, he didn’t want to go to his first funeral alone.
So it was that, thrown out of his element and submerged into a new one, Barry could keep his charade going for so long. Kept rising when he should have stayed seated. Kept singing a beat too long. Kept on wiping tears away for a person he disrespected by making a mockery of this funeral. When they rose to follow the train off to the burial site, he could not have been any more pleased.
Upon their departure, Jenna scooped a handful of the orange stickers into her bag. The funeral home director gave her a questioning look. She looked up at him with wet eyes. “It’s been a long year.” He nodded at her with a practiced compassion, gathered up a few more of the orange sheets, passing them to her.
Barry waited at the passenger side of Jenna’s Volvo. Dirt clung to its dull white paint job, like iron filings to a magnet. Both the backseat and the trunk she stuffed full of clothing and various accoutrements, most of it black or some similar hue. The steering wheel lacked a small cross-section at four o’clock position, where some wag had cut through in an attempt to de-club the car. He’d then noticed the utter lack of anything within the car of saleable value and left taking the one thing he could sell: the club itself. It smelled like old french fries, consignment stores and grandmothers.
Jenna returned to the car, ready to set forth. They queued up, awaiting the minivans and SUVs, the drivers making a final count to ensure no child was left behind. Their caravan ride ran silent, save the incessant crackling and popping of the ancient engine, much like a sap-filled log thrown into a fire. Barry watched pedestrians grab buttons as they passed.
They descended upon the graveyard, a cast of mourners ready and willing to draw to a close this performance.
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