“Come on,” said Mrs. Higgler. “Don’t dawdle. Bad enough you missing your own father’s funeral.”
Fat Charlie suppressed the urge to say something about having come four thousand miles already that day, and having rented a car and driven down from Orlando, and how he had got off at the wrong exit, and whose idea was it anyway to tuck a garden of rest behind a Wal-Mart on the very edge of town? They kept walking, past a large concrete building that smelled of formaldehyde, until they reached an open grave at the very farthest reaches of the property. There was nothing beyond this but a high fence, and, beyond that, a wilderness of trees and palms and greenery. In the grave was a modest wooden coffin. It had several mounds of dirt on it already. Beside the grave was a pile of earth and a shovel.
Mrs. Higgler picked up the shovel and handed it to Fat Charlie.
“It was a pretty service,” she said. “Some of your daddy’s old drinkin‘ buddies were there, and all the ladies from our street. Even after he moved down the road we still kept in touch. He would have liked it. Of course, he would have liked it more if you’d been there.” She shook her head. “Now, shovel,” she said. “And if you got any good-byes, you can say them while you’re shovelin’ down the dirt.”
“I thought I was just meant to do one or two spadefuls of dirt,” he said. “To show willing.”
“I give the man thirty bucks to go away,” said Mrs. Higgler. “I tell him that the departed’s son is flying in all the way from Hingland, and that he would want to do right by his father. Do the right thing. Not just ‘show willing.’”
“Right,” said Fat Charlie. “Absolutely. Got it.” He took off his suit jacket and hung it on the fence. He loosened his tie, pulled it over his head, and put it into the jacket pocket. He shoveled the black dirt into the open grave, in Florida air as thick as soup.
After a while it sort of began to rain, which is to say that it was the kind of rain that never comes to a decision about whether it’s actually raining or not. Driving in it, you would never have been certain whether or not to turn on your wipers. Standing in it, shoveling in it, you simply got sweatier, damper, more uncomfortable. Fat Charlie continued to shovel, and Mrs. Higgler stood there with her arms folded across her gargantuan bosom, with the almost-rain misting her black dress and her straw hat with one black silk rose on it, watching him as he filled in the hole.
The earth became mud, and became, if anything, heavier.
After what seemed like a lifetime, and a very uncomfortable one at that, Fat Charlie patted down the final shovelful of dirt.
Mrs. Higgler walked over to him. She took his jacket off the fence and handed it to him.
“You’re soaked to the skin and covered in dirt and sweat, but you grew up. Welcome home, Fat Charlie,” she said, and she smiled, and she held him to her vast breast.
“I’m not crying,” said Fat Charlie.
“Hush now,” said Mrs. Higgler.
“It’s the rain on my face,” said Fat Charlie.
Mrs. Higgler didn’t say anything. She just held him, and swayed backward and forward, and after a while Fat Charlie said, “It’s okay. I’m better now.”
“There’s food back at my house,” said Mrs. Higgler. “Let’s get you fed.”
He wiped the mud from his shoes in the parking lot, then he got into his gray rental car, and he followed Mrs. Higgler in her maroon station wagon down streets that had not existed twenty years earlier. Mrs. Higgler drove like a woman who h
ad just discovered an enormous and much-needed mug of coffee and whose primary mission was to drink as much coffee as she was able to while driving as fast as possible; and Fat Charlie drove along behind her, keeping up as best he could, racing from traffic light to traffic light while trying to figure out more or less where they were.
And then they turned down a street, and, with mounting apprehension, he realized he recognized it. This was the street he had lived on as a boy. Even the houses looked more or less the same, although most of them had now grown impressive wire-mesh fences around their front yards.
There were several cars already parked in front of Mrs. Higgler’s house. He pulled up behind an elderly gray Ford. Mrs. Higgler walked up to the front door, opened it with her key.
Fat Charlie looked down at himself, muddy and sweat-soaked. “I can’t go in looking like this,” he said.
“I seen worse,” said Mrs. Higgler. Then she sniffed. “I tell you what, you go in there, go straight into the bathroom, you can wash off your hands and face, clean yourself up, and when you’re ready we’ll all be in the kitchen.”
He went into the bathroom. Everything smelled like jasmine. He took off his muddy shirt, and washed his face and hands with jasmine-scented soap, in a tiny washbasin. He took a washcloth and wiped down his chest, and scrubbed at the muddiest lumps on his suit trousers. He looked at the shirt, which had been white when he put it on this morning and was now a particularly grubby brown, and decided not to put it back on. He had more shirts in his bag, in the backseat of the rental car. He would slip back out of the house, put on a clean shirt, then face the people in the house.
He unlocked the bathroom door, and opened it.
Four elderly ladies were standing in the corridor, staring at him. He knew them. He knew all of them.
“What you doing now?” asked Mrs. Higgler.
“Changing shirt,” said Fat Charlie. “Shirt in car. Yes. Back soon.”
He raised his chin high, and strode down the corridor and out of the front door.
“What kind of language was that he was talkin?” asked little Mrs. Dunwiddy, behind his back, loudly.