Apr

Billy Strayhorn: A Short, Gay and Lush Life of Beauty

In December of 1938 a short, bespectacled young man of twenty-three persuaded a friend of a friend to arrange for him to meet Duke Ellington, the jazz pianist and composer whose orchestra was in Pittsburgh for a performance. After hearing the young man–Billy Strayhorn–play a few songs on the piano, Ellington offered him an undefined job on indefinite terms. “I don’t have any position for you,” Ellington said. “You’ll do whatever you feel like doing.”

Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington

With no more assurance than that–no written contract or verbal agreement as to pay–Strayhorn moved to New York and joined Ellington as arranger, composer, sometimes pinch-hit pianist and songwriting partner. Their relationship would continue for nearly three decades, an extended improvisation much like those they collaborated on.

Strayhorn was a piano prodigy who worked odd jobs while still in grade school to buy a used upright piano. His first love was classical music, but a combination of circumstances–there were few obvious ports of entry to European art music for a young black man in the thirties–and exposure to jazz pianists such as Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum persuaded him to put his skills to work in that vernacular idiom.

Joe Henderson: Lush Life, the Music of Billy Strayhorn

As far as I can tell, there are no memorials to Strayhorn in Pittsburgh, where he grew up, or in Dayton, Ohio, where he was born, but the case can be made that he is in a class of his own among American composers; his work is classical, and yet people listen to it with enjoyment, not to be improved, instructed or edified as is so often the case with modern classical music. You may know that Strayhorn wrote Ellington’s theme song–Take the A Train–but you have probably heard other songs, such as A Flower is a Lovesome Thing, After All and Lotus Blossom–without knowing they were his.

At his first meeting with Ellington Strayhorn probably played a tune that he then called “Life is Lonely,” but which we now know as “Lush Life.” The song has been interpreted by hundreds of jazz singers (and butchered by more than a few), and it provides some perspective on the man whose characteristic mode was the lament; sad, poignant melodies over rich chord changes interpreted best by those masters of blue moods, Johnny Hodges on alto and Ben Webster on tenor. Strayhorn began composing Lush Life when he was eighteen and finished it when he was twenty-one, and yet it tells a fatalistic, bitter tale of alcohol and fading youth that would seem more appropriate coming from a man four decades older.

Strayhorn was gay, and perhaps he saw that aspect of his being closing off many doors to him, just as his skin color effectively barred him from prizes and fellowships that might have fallen his way if he’d been a white classical composer. Throughout his life he drank too much for his own good, and he may have already realized at a relatively young age that alcohol would be a satisfying but embittering companion as he grew older. He describes the life of a lush with music that is also lush, in the other sense of the word; rich. What he may have seen as he looked ahead was a life that was limited by his race, sexual preference and the bottle, but full of possibilities nonetheless. As Dorothy Parker put it with resignation, you might as well live.

Strayhorn’s lifelong smoking and drinking probably contributed to the esophageal cancer from which he died on May 31, 1967, in the company of his partner, Bill Grove. As he lay dying in the hospital he submitted his final composition–Blood Count–to Ellington, which can be found on Ellington’s memorial album for Strayhorn …And His Mother Called Him Bill. The song is, like Strayhorn’s life, a brief thing that reaches its own melancholy resolution, but leaves you wanting more.

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Apr

The Dancers of Degas

Edgar Degas is known for his paintings of dancers, the best of which depict the female form doing everything but dancing; stretching, relaxing, tying on toe shoes, primping, aching from the rigors of the ballet. It is as if he were more interested in the idle moments of women who turned themselves into vehicles for the expression of beauty than their actual aesthetic product.

In Degas’ time the ballet was not yet the high art form that it is today. It was in fact somewhat disreputable, a near occasion of sin as the Act of Contrition of the Roman Catholic church would put it; with so much of dancers’ flesh exposed to public view, they were popular objects of affection for stagedoor Pierres–both unwed and married–who courted and kept dancers as mistresses.

Ballet and horseracing–another of his favorite subjects–were associated with the sporting life and the demimonde and not the high-minded classical arts and diversions, but he was conservative politically and not ambitious professionally; he refused to allow many of his works to be displayed during his lifetime, saying that he preferred to be “illustrious but obscure.” He came to detest the notoriety that large-scale exhibitions produced, and thus was no model for the publicity-hungry visual artists of the 20th century.

An exhibit of his works last summer in Portland, Maine thus referred to him as “The Private Impressionist,” but he rejected the term “impressionism” for “realism.” Just as some men are described in England as “unclubbable” because you wouldn’t want to have them as a fellow member, Degas was “unschoolable” among artists, who stand to benefit if they can create a critical mass of fellow travelers that will attract more critical and popular attention the way a school of fish will draw more boats than a single sea bass.

While his paintings are filled with images of women, his life was not, at least on the surface; he was a lifelong bachelor who cultivated his well-deserved reputation as a curmudgeon. If his interest in the ponies and ballerinas is any indication, he inhabited a world of sensuality that probably made domestic life seem dull by comparison.

If there is a lesson in the sidelong glances that Degas cast at dancers as they labored at the raw material of ballet and not the finished product, it is perhaps that art can be found in the homeliest exercise, or back stage, or in those idle moments when a woman stares off into the middle distance, wondering why she’s going to so much trouble to create a thing of beauty that will exist for a moment, then disappear forever.

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Dance Fever.”

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Apr

Madd About Tadd

Tadley Ewing Peake “Tadd” Dameron once described himself as “the most misplaced musician in the business,” and one needn’t call the missing persons bureau of the jazz precincts to determine that he may have been right.

Tadd Dameron

An unabashed romantic in a guild that, like the butcher’s union, isn’t supposed to sample the marbled inventory that it handles on the job, Dameron tried to marry the sentimental products of Tin Pan Alley with the hard-edged experiments of be-bop. He synthesized the two schools under the higher principle of beauty. “There’s enough ugliness in the world,” he told Metronome magazine in 1947. “I’m interested in beauty.”

Harlan Leonard

Dameron was a passable pianist, but he found his calling first as an arranger, then as a composer who crafted not just melodies and chords but fully-instrumented charts for Harlan Leonard’s Kansas City Orchestra, then Jimmie Lunceford, Count Basie, Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie. If your only exposure to big band jazz has been to the white “sweet” orchestras that took the music of black arrangers such as Fletcher Henderson and cooled it down and straightened it out, check out Lunceford, whose motto (and hit song) was “Rhythm is Our Business.”

Jimmie Lunceford

You have probably heard Dameron’s music even if you don’t know it; he wrote jazz standards such as “Good Bait,” “Hot House,” “Lady Bird” and “If You Could See Me Now,” a tune inspired by a riff of Gillespie’s that became a hit for Sarah Vaughan.

While Dameron is known for his lush and yet surprising harmonies, he was no mere effete aesthete. He played and arranged for Bull Moose Jackson, the honking R&B tenor, his bop credentials include a nonet with Clifford Brown and he collaborated with John Coltrane on Mating Call in 1958.

Bull Moose Jackson

Dameron’s principal interpreter was Fats Navarro and while the association produced memorable music, it may also have contributed to his downfall. Navarro was an explosive trumpeter who epitomized the “hard” bop style, but he eventually priced himself out of gigs because he needed to support the heroin habit that contributed to his early death at 26. Dameron became a user of the drug, which has filled the long, lonely and boring stretches between gigs for many jazz musicians, and he eventually ended up going to jail for it in 1959.

Fats Navarro

When he was released Dameron was still highly-regarded, and he wrote for Sonny Stitt, Milt Jackson and Benny Goodman, among others, but he would die of cancer within four years at the age of 48.

Much of Dameron’s music is still in print, including his complete Blue Note sessions, and there have been both tribute bands (Dameronia) and recordings of his music by all-star groups (Continuum, “Mad About Tadd”). The quality that will keep his music alive, however, is something that is often overlooked these days by artists who think their first priority should be to shock, offend or irritate: “It has to swing, sure,” Tadd told jazz critic Ira Gitler, “but it has to be beautiful.”

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Apr

Chinchillas

Ray was chief of police and Sue Ellen was his wife; Duane was their only son and Sandra their only daughter. When he was younger Duane had learned how to keep himself company while his dad worked for long stretches of time. He took up hobbies that didn’t require a playmate, such as coin collecting and building model cars, which he pursued while he waited for his dad’s day off. When that day came, Duane hoped they could play catch or, better yet, that his dad would pitch to him. If the latter was the case, they would drive over to Veterans Park and his dad, in his undershirt and smoking a cigar, would throw batting practice until his right shoulder was stiff. Those were the best days, but there weren’t that many of them.

When Duane became a teenager, his mother worried that he wasn’t social enough and encouraged him to join a club at school or go out for a sport so that he’d meet new people and make some friends. Duane said no, he was fine.

“You oughta get a job, you’re old enough,” his dad said, but Duane had a different idea.

“There’s an ad in Model Car Science where you can send away and learn how to raise chinchillas in your basement. I’d like to try that.”

His mother didn’t like the idea of a bunch of rodents in the house, even if they were locked in cages.

“We never go down there anymore,” Ray said in support of the boy’s idea.

“Maybe you don’t. I have to do laundry every day.”

“We could move the washer up into the room off the kitchen.”

It had been one of Sue Ellen’s hopes for a long time that they could eventually afford to move the laundry upstairs so she wouldn’t have to walk up and down the basement steps everyday, so she agreed that Duane could turn the basement into his chinchilla farm.

Duane sent off the money to the address in the ad, which read “RAISE CHINCHILLAS AS A HOBBY. Fabulous profits. Small space in your basement, garage, or extra room is all you need.” Two weeks later he received a male and a female in a cardboard box with airholes in the sides, and put them in the pen he had built in the basement.

“I figure I can keep up with them,” Duane said when his dad would come down into the basement to see how he was doing with the cages. “I can swing a hammer pretty good,” and his dad thought, yes he can, unlike some of the guys he had worked with when he was a line manager out at the recreational vehicle plant before he became chief of police. He had to let a lot of them go after a week or two.

Sandra didn’t like the smell from the very first. She complained to her mother that she couldn’t have friends over for cheerleaders’ practice or yearbook meetings. “It stinks up the whole house,” she complained, and her mother had to agree, it certainly didn’t stop at the basement door.

“Maybe he could open up the windows down there,” Ray would say when his schedule gave him a chance to have dinner with Sue Ellen.

“They’re little basement windows. I don’t think that’s going to get the smell out of there.”

“Then he just needs to clean the cages more often.”

“You talk to him.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s down there now.”

Ray went down the stairs and found Duane building cages. “Hey there,” he said.

“Hey,” Duane answered.

“How’s it going?” his dad asked.

“Pretty good. I’m up to 12.”

“Wow—that’s great.” He didn’t know whether it was good, bad or indifferent.

“I want to get up to 200.”

“And then what?”

“Sell ‘em and make a bunch of money.”

“Sure—that’d be terrific.” He paused, then asked “What are you saving up for?”

“I want to buy more.”

Ray considered this for a moment. “I don’t know that we’ve got that much room down here.”

“I can put a wall of cages in the furnace room, too,” Duane said.

“We could do that, I guess.”

“I need some more plywood and screen wire. Can I charge it down at Cash Hardware?”

“How much is it gonna be?”

“I figger forty dollars.”

“All right. But let’s set that as your limit.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t want you getting in over your head.”

“I understand.”

“Okay.”

His dad walked back upstairs and said he’d talked to Duane.

“And he understands?” his mother said.

“Yep,” his dad said, and settled down to read the paper.

Two weeks later there were nine more “chins,” and the new cages that Duane had built were full.

“It smells worse,” Sandra said to her mother.

“I know.”

“Can’t you just go down and yell at him? I want to have Cindy and Donna Lee over for a slumber party Friday.”

“That’s fine. I’ll talk to your father.”

When Ray got home Sue Ellen lit into him before he even took his jacket off, asking him what his deal was with Duane.

“We set a limit. He was gonna build some more cages then sell them off.”

“Well take a whiff, would you?”

Ray sniffed and admitted that the smell couldn’t be ignored.

“I’ll talk to him,” he said.

He picked through the mail, looked out the window over the sink, and headed down the basement steps.

“Hello there,” he announced when he was about halfway down and could see under the basement ceiling.

“Hi,” Duane called back as he continued hammering.

“What’s the update?”

“I’ve got 28, and I’m making a maternity cage to keep the males out after the babies are born.”

“Why do you do that?”

“Otherwise the males get the females pregnant again and wear ‘em out.”

“Oh.” Your mother would appreciate that, he thought, but now wasn’t the time to tell her an amusing anecdote about the sex life of chinchillas. “So who you gonna sell these things to?”

“I sent away for a list of places.”

Ray was silent; that didn’t sound too promising. “Are they pet stores or what?”

“I don’t know—I don’t have the list yet.”

“Well, you’d better get busy on it. The idea was you were gonna sell ‘em.”

“I know.”

Ray went back upstairs. He knew he’d have to start pushing harder, but he felt guilty that the chinchillas were all Duane had. Ray decided he’d do some research on his own. The town library was only two blocks from the police station. Maybe he’d walk over there on his lunch hour—the exercise would do him good.

The next day he went over to the Carnegie Library and asked the librarian for some materials on chinchillas. She picked a few books out of the pets section, showed him the Index to Periodical Literature, then showed him how to do a search on the computer. To get him started, she typed “chinchilla” into a little white slot on the screen, then clicked on a green “go” button, and a list popped up. Ray said thanks to the woman, put his reading glasses on and went to work.

It didn’t take him long to figure out that Duane had been duped. The first article he read was by a state agency in Minnesota that warned people about buying animals to raise for a profit. The attorney general got a cease and desist against one company, and they had to pay a pretty big fine.

So Duane was never going to be able to sell his chinchillas, and Ray would have to come up with a way out of the mess Duane had got himself into. He knew better than to try and press charges against the company that sold the animals; it wasn’t like a breaking and entering case, where the guy was in jail and all he had was a court-appointed lawyer for free. He checked–the company was a long way away, and would have lawyers they paid for. They would wear Ray down, and he didn’t need that at this point in his life.

When he got home that night Ray told Duane he needed to talk to him, upstairs in his room. He sat down in Duane’s desk chair and Duane sat on his bed.

“I did a little research on chinchillas today, which you probably shoulda done before you got started.”

Duane just sat there, taking it in.

“You’re never going to be able to sell those things. I checked into it today.”

“Dad I can sell them . . .”

“I went to the library and read up on ‘em. It’s a scam.”

“A what?” Duane asked.

“They take your money but they don’t come through on their promises.”

“What promises?”

“You’re not going to be able to sell them for a lot of money.”

Duane was silent. “I don’t need to sell them. I’d just as soon keep them.”

“We can’t keep thirty critters in the basement. They’ll eat us out of house and home. Plus they’re breeding all the time.”

“I’ll get a job.”

“You should be saving your money for college, not to feed a bunch of rodents.”

Duane said nothing for a moment.

“I’ll work with you to get rid of ‘em,” Ray said. “I don’t know how the hell we’re gonna do it, but we’ll figure out something.” Ray got up and as he moved past Duane into the hall, patted him on the shoulder and said “Live and learn, son—live and learn.”

Ray didn’t see it but Duane started crying once he was gone. Duane felt bad that he was crying—he was too old and his dad hadn’t yelled at him. He didn’t do anything dramatic, like throwing himself on his pillow or slamming his door shut, but he couldn’t stop crying, and it showed on his face, so he couldn’t deny it when Sandra walked out of her room, stopped, and asked why he was crying.

“None of your business,” he said.

“Dad told you to get rid of those stupid rats, didn’t he?”

“They’re not rats.”

“I told you so.”

“You didn’t tell me anything.”

“I told you to get rid of them—same difference,” Sandra said as she walked off.

Duane got on his computer after he had calmed down and started searching for people who would buy chinchillas. After ten minutes he gave up and began to write down the addresses of places that would adopt them. He didn’t know what he was going to do if he had any left over; maybe he could sell them at school.

He decided to take a card table to school and set it up in the cafeteria at noon time for a week. One girl was interested—she took the chin out of its portable cage and held it up close to her face—but the next day she told Duane her mother wouldn’t let her. There was one kid dressed all in black who said he might be interested, but Duane didn’t want him to have one—he thought he’d kill it for fun.

By Friday the curiosity of Duane’s chinchilla enterprise had worn off and no one even stopped to talk to him. When his dad got home he greeted Duane with a “Howdy, partner,” as if he was expecting to hear great news. “How’d it go today?”

“Not so great. Still didn’t sell any.”

Stay positive, his dad thought. “Well, you might offer to give a few away, just to drum up some interest. Lots of stores do that.”

“I don’t think it’s gonna help. The kids go home and ask their parents and they say no.”

Ray had known for a while that it was going to end this way. “Let’s go down in the cellar,” he said as he got up, and the boy went ahead of him. Ray reached under the sink and took a trash bag out of the box and followed.

It would be a hard lesson to learn, but it was one he had to teach, he thought.

“We won’t do this all at once, but we’re gonna have to start getting rid of these little fellas,” he said. “Empty out a couple of cages into this bag.”

Duane’s eyes misted up, but he did what he was told, lifting eight chins out of their cages one by one and dropping them into the bag. When his dad said “That’s enough” they went upstairs and into the garage, where his dad took a spare brick, put it in the sack, tied the top in a knot and put it in the back of his pickup truck.

They drove in silence a few miles to a bridge over a man-made lake, out beyond where the houses ended. Ray turned on his emergency flasher, stopped his truck, got out and walked around to Duane’s side. “Get out,” he said as he pulled the trash bag over the side of the truck.

“Here—take this,” Ray said as he handed the bag to Duane.

Duane took the bag and held it in his hand.

“Drop it in.”

“Do I have to?”

“You brought ‘em into this world—you’re gonna have to put ‘em under.”

Duane took the bag and walked over to the rail. He looked down into the brown-green water, felt the life within the bag, lifted it over the rail–and let it drop.

The bag hit the water with a softer sound than he expected, then sank out of sight as the brick pulled it down. Duane watched it for a few seconds, then turned around and looked his dad in the eyes.

“Better get used to it,” his dad said. “We got quite a few to go.”

They got in the car but before they could get started another truck pulled up beside them and the driver rolled down his passenger-side window.

“Hey Ray,” the driver yelled. “Whatcha got there—a cat that needs an operation?”

“Hey Vern. Naw–something more exotic.”

“What?”

“Chinchillas,” he replied, with an emphasis that made Duane sink down in his seat.

“Oh—can’t you make your wife a coat out of ‘em?”

“Naw—I’m no good at sewin’. This here’s my boy, Duane. He raised ‘em but we got too many now.”

“Oh—okay. Well, I can’t use ‘em neither,” the driver said with a smile. “See ya.”

“See ya,” Ray said as the man pulled away from them.

Ray turned the ignition, put the car in gear and, after checking his rear view mirror out of habit, drove off.

“We’ll come out here every night after I get off work until we’re rid of them,” Ray said.

“All of ‘em?” Duane asked.

“You can keep a couple of males if you want, but you better make sure ‘cause I don’t want no procreatin’ once we’re done.”

When they got home Ray went to the living room to watch the news and Duane went down into the basement. He looked at the stacked cages, and counted the chins that remained—twenty of them. He watched their little cheeks chewing away, and thought of them sinking into the water, which they never would have felt before.

He started at the top left-hand cage–unhooking the latch and opening the door. He moved his hand to the right, undid the hook that secured the door, and continued until all of the cage doors were open. He walked into the furnace room, banged the metal bolt of the bulkhead door to the right, and opened it up. Some of the chins were out of their cages by now, scurrying around without any sense of which way to go. He took them one by one and walked them up the steps to the back yard, where he put them down on the ground and watched as they ran off.

From “The Flight of the Wicked.”

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Mar

He’d Risen Up

Dewey Myers had been working at Forest Lawn Cemetery since he was in high school, twenty years before. He had started out cutting grass on weekends and after school; it was easy since he lived right across the street. He had been the youngest on the crew but now everybody was under him but Bill Cassing, the sexton.

There was a newer, nicer cemetery on the southwest side of town, where the new housing developments were going up. Forest Lawn had been laid out shortly after the town was founded in the 1800s; it had been on the outskirts to the north and the east, then the town grew out to where it was and surrounded it.

The little houses that lined the streets running away from the cemetery had been built for the families of the men who worked in the railroad shops. The people who lived in the neighborhood kept their properties up, with a few exceptions. Still, if you wanted a nice home you would buy one on the southwest side of town, and if you wanted a nice funeral when you died, you didn’t think of Forest Lawn.

There was only one synagogue in town, over on the west side, but the Jewish families tended to have their plots in Forest Lawn. Anybody could be buried in either cemetery, but the country club wouldn’t admit Jews for a long time, and people thought of the southwest area, where all the new homes were going up, as “the country club district.”

When Bill Cassing got the call from Mr. Greenblatt to say that his son Stephen had died in a car crash driving back to college Saturday night it had already been raining hard for two days. “He needs to be buried within twenty-four hours,” Mr. Greenblatt had told the sexton, who was more a manager than a gravedigger. “I understand,” Cassing had said, although he hadn’t until it was explained to him. As soon as he was off the phone with the father Cassing called Dewey. “Mr. Greenblatt from the department store, his son was in a car wreck. We need to get him buried by the end of the day under Jewish law.”

“We can’t bury him now,” Dewey said.

“Why not?” the sexton asked.

“Ground’s too wet. The casket will float right back up.”

Cassing was silent for a moment as he thought about this. “Can’t you just bury him deeper?” he asked.

“Same difference,” Dewey said. “When the ground’s sopping wet like this it don’t matter how deep you put them down.”

“Well, these people own a family plot and they’re entitled to bury their son according to their religion. You’ll just have to start digging and hope the rain stops,” Cassing said.

“All right,” Dewey said, and hung up.

Dewey called Bird Dog, a lanky black man, to see if he wanted some overtime.

“It’s Sunday and it’s raining,” Bird Dog said.

“Sexton’s in a hurry cause the boy’s Jewish and has to be buried quick. You’d get time-and-a-half.”

“I don’t see why I got to do it,” Bird Dog said.

“You don’t have to, Dog,” Dewey said, a little irritated. “I just thought you might like the extra money.”

“Not this morning,” Bird Dog said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“All right,” Dewey said. After he hung up he put on his rain gear, got in his truck and drove to the cemetery maintenance shed.

He looked up the Greenblatts’ plot number, opened the garage door, and drove the backhoe down to where it was located. The digging took longer than usual because the ground was wet and heavy, and the sides and corners weren’t as sharp as he usually made them. When he was done he stood over the grave and looked down into it as it filled up with rain. “Nobody listens to me,” he said to himself, before driving the backhoe to the shed.

He made himself a pot of coffee and called the sexton. “The grave’s all set,” he said. “I suppose you want me to stick around.”

“If you could. I don’t know what time they’re gonna get there. I’ll come over once I hear from them.”

“Okay, I’ll sit tight.” Dewey had a television set in the shed, and he turned on a baseball game. It was getting close to noon, and he took a sandwich he had brought from home out of the refrigerator. He turned on the space heater to burn the chill out of the shed. Might as well get comfortable, he thought.

After he finished the sandwich he fell asleep, and didn’t wake up until the sexton called close to one thirty.

“I just heard from Mr. Greenblatt,” Cassing said. “They should be there shortly. I’ll head on over.”

“Okay,” Dewey said. He was still a little groggy as he spoke. “Is there anything I can do?”

“You can get down to the gate and wait for them,” Cassing said sharply.

No need to snap at me, Dewey thought. He poured the rest of the coffee into his thermos, opened up the door to the garage bay where the pickup truck was parked, backed it out and headed down to the main gate. He parked the truck and left the engine running with the heater and the radio on. Every now and then he had to roll down his window because the windshield would get fogged up. The third time he did it he saw the funeral procession winding its way up from the stop light at Lamine to the entrance, and he got out to unlock the gate.

“We’re the Greenblatt funeral,” a short man with a beard and a hat, dressed in black and holding an umbrella, said to Dewey through the gate after getting out of the passenger side of the hearse.

“Okay,” Dewey said. “Let me get this gate back then y’all can come on in.”

Dewey opened the gates, the hearse drove in, and Dewey came around to the driver’s side. “You know where you goin’?” he asked the driver, who was also wearing a hat.

“Mr. Greenblatt says he does.”

“Okay, go on ahead.”

Dewey got in the cab of the truck and waited until the cars had passed through the gate. He was about to put the truck in gear when he saw Cassing drive up. “I’ll follow them down to the grave site,” he said, and Dewey drove behind him.

Dewey didn’t know what everybody was in such a hurry for. If the boy was buried right away he would sure as hell float up to the surface. There were ways around it; you could put bricks or stones on the coffin, but he figured the family wouldn’t like that. Since Cassing seemed to want to be in charge, he figured he’d just leave it up to him.

After the eulogies, the family sat while some of the mourners came forward to fill in the grave. They seemed superstitious to Dewey, each one holding the shovel in a certain way, throwing in three shovelfuls of dirt, then sticking the shovel in the ground instead of handing it off to the next person. The way they went about it meant he couldn’t have loaded down the coffin if he had tried.

After the people left Dewey set to work, and the rain turned to a drizzle. Bird Dog showed up when he was almost done.

“You got good timing,” Dewey said.

“I figured I’d come on over since the rain slowed down.”

“I ‘bout got him covered.”

“I’ll finish him off,” picking up a shovel.

“I bet Cassing don’t pay you the minimum.”

“How’s he gonna know ‘less you tell him?”

“He was here for the service.”

The two men finished filling in the grave and built up a little mound on top to allow for settling.

“That oughta do it,” Bird Dog said.

“Good for now. Unless I miss my guess, we’ll be back here soon enough.”

“Don’t say that. I don’t mind burying ‘em but I don’t like to think about ‘em comin’ back up.”

Dewey went home and fell asleep on his couch, then woke up around eight o’clock not knowing at first what time it was or why he wasn’t in bed. He had a hard on, and when he got up to go to the bathroom he had to bend forward to piss.

He fixed himself a dinner of fish cakes and beans and had a bottle of beer with it, then watched TV for awhile. He felt like he should try and go back to sleep rather than stay up late, and so he had another beer and went to bed.

He woke up at five a.m., earlier than usual, and saw that the rain had stopped and the sun was burning off clouds to the west, like it was blowing them away. He made himself breakfast, then drove over to the cemetery. Rather than stop and make a pot of coffee, he went straight down to the Greenblatts’ plot to check things out.

As he drove down the hill and got closer to the plot he saw what he expected but still felt a shiver when he realized he’d been right; the casket had floated up; the mound of dirt had expanded like a bubble, and the end where the boy’s feet lay was sticking out.

“Goddammit to hell,” he said as he stopped the truck and got out.

He went over to the grave site and gave the coffin a little push with his foot; there was too much water in the grave, and it didn’t give more than about an inch.

He drove back to the maintenance shed and called Cassing’s number.

“You got to get down here, the boy’s floated back up,” he said when Cassing answered.

“What?”

“I told you he wouldn’t stay down with all this rain. Now he’s floated back up and one end of the casket is sticking out.”

“I never heard of such a thing.”

“Well, you heard about it now. I told you it was gonna happen.”

“I can’t get down there for a couple hours, I got to take my wife to the eye doctor.”

“Well what do you want me to do?”

“Call the family. The number’s on my desk. Somebody’s got to look at it and say the corpse wasn’t disinterred—otherwise we got to report it to the police. Tell ‘em as soon as the ground dries out we’ll bury him again.”

“All right,” Dewey said, and Cassing hung up.

Dewey called the number on the family’s forms and a girl answered.

“Hello?”

“Is this the Greenblatt residence?”

“Yes.”

“This is Dewey Myers—out to the cemetery?”

“Oh—hello.”

“Who am I speaking to?”

“This is Debbie—I’m Stephen’s sister.”

“Is your mom or dad there?”

“No—they’ve gone over to Columbia to get my brother’s things.”

“Oh. When do you expect ‘em back?”

“Not till late tonight. They have to do the paperwork to get a tuition refund.”

Dewey hesitated for a moment. “Well, uh, because of all the rain, your brother’s casket floated back up.”

“Floated back up? What do you mean?”

“When you try to bury people too soon after it’s been raining the water gets in the grave and the air in the coffin makes it float back up.”

“Oh God!”

“It’s okay—we just have to wait ‘til the ground dries out a little.”

The girl was silent.

“I need somebody to come out here today and inspect it. Are you old enough to drive?”

“Yes.”

Dewey got the impression the girl was proud that she was there to take responsibility. “How soon can you get out here?”

“Fifteen minutes maybe.”

“Okay. My boss should be here pretty soon. I think he wants you to sign something.”

“All right. I’ll be there in a little while.”

Dewey walked down to the gate to wait for the girl. She drove up in a little yellow car that hadn’t been in the funeral procession. “Hi,” Dewey said after she rolled down her window. “You know where it is, right?”

“Right.”

“I’ll ride down with you and then we’ll go over to the office after you take a look at it.”

He got in the car and they drove to the grave site. “This wouldn’ta happened if he was buried up on a hill,” Dewey said. He thought if he made conversation the girl might not start crying.

“It’s a little late for that, I guess,” the girl said.

They reached the gravesite and got out on the asphalt path. “Can you see it okay?” Dewey asked.

“How much do I have to see?”

“I guess enough to say nobody dug it up.”

“Well, I can’t see that from here. And I don’t want to get my shoes muddy.”

Dewey thought for a moment. The girl was short, and didn’t look like she weighed much. She had on corduroy pants and a coat that came down to her hips. “I could carry you down there—piggyback.”

The girl looked at him, then looked down into the little hollow where the newly-dug grave was located.

“Can’t you drive your truck down there?”

“No–it’d get stuck.”

The girl considered the situation for a moment, then said “All right.”

Dewey turned his back to her, and she jumped on. He grabbed her legs and she threw her arms around his shoulders. Dewey started walking, and the ground was firm enough to hold them as they headed down to the grave.

“I could’ve kept your brother from coming back up,” Dewey said as they walked down.

“How?”

“You put stones on top of the coffin, that holds it down,” he said.

“I don’t think my parents would have liked that.”

“I know, but when you get as much rain as we’ve had here the past few days, it’s what you gotta do.”

Dewey’s pace slowed the nearer they got to the coffin as the ground got softer.

“See there,” Dewey said as he stopped, afraid to go further.

“It just looks like a mound of dirt.”

“See there the corner of the coffin’s stickin’ up higher.” He walked a little closer.

“Oh God.”

“It’s okay. I just need for you to see it ain’t dug up.”

“I can tell you didn’t.”

“Not just me—anybody.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“All right. Let’s head on back.”

Dewey lifted his right foot and tried to turn, but the girl’s weight made his left foot sink lower, and he nearly fell forward before regaining his balance.

“Don’t drop me,” the girl said.

“I’m okay, it’s just sloppy down here is all.”

They made their way up to the asphalt road, Dewey’s footing improving as they struggled to increasingly higher ground. As they reached the road, Dewey turned around and allowed the girl to climb down on the asphalt. When he turned around, he saw Cassing driving up in the truck.

“Hello,” Cassing said evenly, although Dewey could tell he was angry and would have yelled at him if the girl hadn’t been there. “I’m Bill Cassing, the caretaker here,” he said.

“I’m Debbie Greenblatt, Stephen’s brother—I mean sister,” the girl said.

“I’m awful sorry about what happened,” Cassing said, taking his hat off as he spoke. “We’ll fix things just as soon as we can.”

“My mom and dad will be back tonight. You’d better talk to them. I just came out because Mr., uh, Dewey here said you wanted me to sign something.”

“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like you to just write out a statement saying you examined the grave site and it appears it was disturbed by natural causes and not any human that you know of.”

“I guess I can do that.”

“Why don’t you follow me back to the office.”

Dewey got in the truck on the passenger’s side and Cassing made a three-point turn and headed back towards the gate.

“What in the hell were you doing with that girl?” he asked Dewey.

“She couldn’t see the grave, and she didn’t want to walk down to it, and I didn’t want to get her car stuck, and the truck sure as hell wouldn’t have made it down there.”

Cassing noticed that Dewey was breathing heavily. “So what did you do?” he asked.

“I took her down piggyback, she saw what she needed to see and we came back.”

“Jesus H. Christ.” Cassing drove on in silence, then stopped the car at the wooden office building next to the shed. “Just let me handle this from here on out, all right?”

“Suit yourself,” Dewey said. “This never would’ve happened if you’d listened to me.”

Dewey got out of the truck, went into the shed, took off his coat and started the coffee maker. Fuck him, he said under his breath. He saw the girl pull up to the office and get out. The only thing that was muddy was her short boots, the kind with the colored uppers that the kids were wearing. Cassing didn’t have to treat him like he was stupid, Dewey thought. His idea had worked.

Once the coffee was ready Dewey filled his mug and took it outside to drink it in the first sunshine he’d seen in a week. Cassing was talking to the girl over by her car, then shook her hand and said goodbye. Once the sexton went back inside the office the girl came over to Dewey.

“Thank you for taking me down there,” she said. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

“That’s okay. That’s how he gets his daily exercise—yelling at me.”

The girl laughed. “Kind of like Lazarus, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

The girl put her head down as if embarrassed. “Except Stephen isn’t coming back to life, is he?” As she said this her voice fluttered, and Dewey noticed she was crying.

“No, miss, I don’t believe so.”

“Well, thank you anyway.” She looked up at him, her lips pursed together in resignation. She walked to her car and drove away.

The next day Mr. Greenblatt drove into the cemetery as Dewey was collecting the larger branches that had fallen from the rain and the wind and throwing them into the bucket of a front-end loader. Mr. Greenblatt stopped his car and got out, his face compressed like a spring, crossed by tight lines ready to uncoil.

“Howdy,” Dewey said as Greenblatt approached.

“Are you the fellow who carried my daughter piggy-back down to my son’s grave without informing me or asking my permission, or having the common decency . . .”

“Wait a minute,” Dewey said. “The sexton told me we had to do it right away, or else call the police.”

“I’m the one who should be calling the police!” Greenblatt yelled. “And then she comes home telling tales of miracles!”

“It warn’t no miracle,” Dewey said. “It’s a natural thing any time it rains like that. You get too much water in the grave.”

“Where did she learn about Lazarus and Jesus then?”

“She mentioned Lazarus, but we didn’t talk about Jesus.”

“Then where did this come from?” Greenblatt snapped as he pulled a pamphlet from his coat pocket. It had cartoon drawings and words on it. On the back it said “Jews for Jesus.”

“I never seen that before,” Dewey said.

“My daughter came back from here that day and said she’d seen a sign. Must I banish her from our table because of what you have done?”

“I didn’t do nothing,” Dewey said. “I just took her down to the grave and showed her what happened. He’d risen up, just like I said he would.”

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