Cemetery Street by John Zunski (free ebook reader for ipad .txt) 📕

in my bed, rousing myself from a light sleep. “Russell,” I said aloud. I forgot to tell him last night. I didn’t want him learning about Shannie through the grapevine. It never occurred to me that he already knew. He and Bradigan wasted many a night drinking coffee and eating donuts at 7-11. I threw clothes on, leashed Ellie and stepped out into the gray December day.
I needn’t travel far before finding the sage. As Ellie and I stepped onto the sidewalk in front of my father’s house, I noticed Russell crossing Bainbridge Street. I shivered in the absence of relief and reassurance I sought from his company. As his white cane danced back and forth in front of him a deeper more profound grief cloaked me. From the tips of his greasy, graying curls to the toes of his worn sneakers, everything about him spoke of Shannie.
My mind wandered back to that long ago summer day when Shannie introduced us, her excitement seeing the man behind the cloud of cigar smoke. Appearances never obfuscated Shannie’s vision. I’m sure that if I’d only had my vision to guide me, Russell would be just another derelict from Main Street and not a surrogate grandfather. Shannie saved me from seeing the world through my mother’s eyes. As I neared Russell, the smell of stale cigars and rotten eggs brought a smile to my face, one that I’m sure he would call bittersweet.


Chapter 21 Good Byes

On December 23rd, Shannie was laid to rest. Her funeral, a straightforward Episcopalian affair, was elegant in its simplicity. The minister’s voice, echoing through the half-empty church, eulogized her saying that “Shannie’s last actions would define her forever; they attest that she gave so willingly of herself in life, to the extreme of giving her life attempting to save another. God smiles brightly on those who follow in his son’s footsteps.”
Holy platitudes, I thought, groaning audibly. I turned my attention to Shannie’s casket, as I studied its brass handrail, a tear puddled and ran down my cheek. The image of Shannie lying inside, without breath, seemed so unfathomable; so foreign, so wrong! I remembered the night that we made love and afterwards how I laid awake, watching her chest rise and fall in peaceful sleep, each breath a wave on a summertime sea.
Under my breath, I whispered to the casket, “I love you Shannie, you know I really love you, but God knows I hope you’re wrong.” I was pondering our conversation about life after death - we had it after our near miss on the Atlantic City Expressway.
“Dead is dead, dead means you’re not alive, that all awareness ceases,” Shannie argued.
I glared at the casket, images of my own near-death experience consuming me. God, I regret not sharing them with her. She said a near-death experience was our body’s way of tricking ourselves, that “it’s kinda like the ultimate survival instinct, you know, like making us believe we’re going to survive even though we’re in the very act of dying.”
“God,” I again prayed turning my gaze from her casket. “For Shannie’s sake, make her wrong.” Studying the cross behind the altar, I couldn’t shake the idea that Shannie’s influence over me squeezed the validity out of my own experiences.
Around me the congregation stood. As I eyed the casket I noticed Krista peering at me. Her big brown eyes, warm and full of empathy, held mine for a moment. Uncomfortable with the attention I turned away. I focused on the giant cross behind the altar as the congregation burst into hymn signifying the end of the service.
As the hymn closed I joined the other pallbearers along Shannie’s casket.
Despite my father’s protestations I demanded on being a pallbearer. “Why is it so important James?” my father questioned the day before the service. “Why at the head of the casket?”
“You just don’t get it.”
“No, I don’t.”
I didn’t explain that this would be the last chance I’d have to be close Shannie. To be so close to her heart.

We carried Shannie from the church into a clear, crisp December afternoon. The sun shined brilliantly in the southern sky. Vehicles raced up and down Main Street, their occupants, lost in the bustle of normality, were oblivious to my grief. I took a deep breath as we paused to balance Shannie’s weight. I’d rather die before suffering Shannie the final indignity of dropping her down the church steps. Slowly we descended, I studied my shoes, intently watching every footfall. My throat tightened and I struggled catching my breath as we crossed the sidewalk to the waiting hearse. I gasped for air as the six of us slid Shannie inside. Tears clouded my vision as I backed away, closing my eyes as Steve Lucas closed the door. I winced as it latched shut.
An arm wrapped around my shoulder. “Ride with me,” Steve said. “I wouldn’t feel right if it was only Shannie and me.”
I smiled, albeit a weak one, but it was a smile. “Thanks,” I mumbled before dropping my head.
In a matter of moments, Shannie, Steve and I led the small caravan on the thirty-odd mile jaunt to Laurel Hill cemetery in Philadelphia. Silence kept us company as we drove past places named King of Prussia, Gulph Mills and Conshohocken. It wasn’t until we exited the Schuylkill Expressway at Manayunk that silence abandoned us. “I hate it here,” I said leaning my head against the passenger window.
“I don’t like the city myself,” Steve answered.
“No, I mean I hate Beyford, I hate Philly, I hate Pennsylvania, I hate it all.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Steve sighed.
The funeral procession passed over the Schuylkill River before entering the walled cemetery through its gatehouse. “I quit Steve,” I said breaking another growing silence. “I’ll give you two weeks, but that’s it. I’m done. I can’t take it anymore.”
It wasn’t like Steve to protest. He accepted events as they happened. Even so, I was surprised, when he shook my hand and wished me good luck and without a word of objection or discouragement told me not to worry about two weeks.

A raw breeze skimmed off the Schuylkill River as we gathered around Shannie’s grave. I glanced past Shannie’s casket at the monuments where she and I once frolicked. Gone was their appeal – no longer were they the innocuous art forms that Shannie taught me to appreciate, instead they were cranky reminders of foregone pain, their former splendor eroded by the ghosts of mourners who forever stand shedding tears.
Nestled above and behind a small thicket of cherry and laurel trees, Shannie’s grave overlooked the Schuylkill River. Unlike the grand monuments that dominated the hillside, Shannie’s grave was simple, eventually to be marked by a granite headstone. “I always planned on using the plot for myself,” Diane commented in a composed moment. “I always loved that part of the cemetery. I never thought I’d need it for my little girl.”
I sat next to my father, who draped an arm around Diane who in turn Shanniesquely rested her head upon his shoulder. I turned away with the comparison. I thought about my mother, wondering if she was still incapable of the compassion that my father and Diane shared.
As the minister began prayer, I peered at my father and Diane. They were a good couple. They deserved each other; they deserved the best. With Shannie gone they didn’t need me lumbering around like a real life vampire, sucking the energy from whatever good feelings life had in store for them. They deserved a fresh start, not a reminder of what’s missing.
As if hearing my thoughts, Russell, who sat adjacent to Diane, faced me before turning his attention back to the minister. Fucking Russell, I thought. The things that man has been through. He was a perfect example of the resiliency of the human spirit.
“The way I look at it…” Russell said putting his arm around me the day after Shannie’s accident. We were walking down Main Street towards the railroad tracks. “…is that you gots this choice. Ya see life goes and serves you up this plate. If ya don’t wanna starve ya gotta eat what’s on yo plate. Who wants to go hungry? You don’t go and starve yourself just ‘cause someone went and put some liver on yo plate instead of ice cream. That’s what Butterfly’s little friend did. She didn’t want no liver, she had herself there a sweet tooth. Liver wasn’t gonna cut it for her, no sir. She’d rather starve and she did, she went hungry. Now Butterfly,” Russell went on as we continued towards the railroad crossing, “well she ate what be on her plate, she always cleaned her plate. Just a shame someone gone and poisoned her food.”
We stood in silence at the crossing where mere hours ago a wounded dragon languished, a wounded dragon that consumed my soul mate. In daylight this hallowed ground looked nothing like the nightmare in which I stumbled over Shannie’s body. “All that is transitory is temporary,” Shannie once told me.
“Hell boy,” Russell said breaking the silence, “when I die, I’m gonna die with a full stomach. You can bet yo ass on that. Yeah, I done see too many people go and die from hunger. And I don’t wanna see you be one. Eat up, boy,” he said patting my back. “Eat it up and never look back!”
I swallowed hard as a distant freight’s horn blew, startling me from my thoughts. Next to me, Diane gripped my father. From somewhere behind me, a groan escaped a mourner. Next to Diane, Russell again cleared his plate.
Russell, Diane, my father and I sat silently as each mourner filed past, laying a rose atop Shannie’s casket. When the last passed, Russell and my father stood and paid their final respects. My heart pounded as they stepped aside. My legs felt like led as I struggled to my feet. I stepped forward, my throat tightening around itself. There, in front of me, under dozens of roses rested a symbol of how coldly indifferent nature is. No amount of love, prayers, wishes would ever change that fact that Shannie is dead. No amount of good deeds would ever change the fact that she’ll eternally rest here, forever banished from our lives. Even if I wanted, I couldn’t cry; I was too angry to cry. As if watching myself from far away, my hand placed a rose atop Shannie’s casket. I watched my hand slide under the flowers and rest atop the cold metal. “I love you Bug,” I heard my voice utter before stepping away.
I stood with my back to the casket as Diane shared her last moment with her daughter. When Diane joined Russell, my father and myself, the four of us walked arm in arm up the narrow path to the cadence of Diane’s sobs. Atop the hill, I peered over my shoulder, between the monuments I saw the ground crew lower Shannie to her final resting spot. Russell would have been disappointed if he’d known I looked back.
After the internment, Diane said in a composed manner, “I’d forgotten that there are railroad tracks so close.” We had gathered in the cemetery’s gatehouse for the obligatory reception.
“Irony is alive and well,” a stuffy cohort of Diane’s responded. He was a double chinned, slender shouldered, potbellied pear of a man, his soft doughy hands and sharp tongue capable of only terrorizing students half his age within the halls of academia. The man was incapable of changing a flat tire and admitted so like a badge of honor; any type of manual labor was the duty of the ‘menial class,’ he pontificated.
“The guy is a walking suppository,” Shannie once complained. She suffered through a semester under his tutelage.