A load of straw and hay has been delivered to the Paradise and is already spread on the floor and benches of the dry room when we deliver Baby. Shimmy Dugan's got the sign up already with another one that says DANGER-KEEP OUT.

  Barker Jefferson's there, grinning at me.

  Princess Grace screams with joy when she sees the gorilla. "Look at those eyes. Couldn't you just kill for those eyes?"

  Baby screams too. I don't know if it's out of fright when she sees Grace in pink satin toreador pants and a purple fandango blouse, or because she thinks Grace wants to hold a conversation.

  No-Nose takes Baby's hand and she lets him lead her into the dry room, what smells like eucalyptus and is nice and warm. She goes over to the middle of the room and takes a crap like she's feeling right at home. Princess Grace don't say a word.

  Jefferson says, "Okay, Flannery, I'll do the rest."

  Shimmy Dugan asks me when the television cameras are going to arrive. I tell him I don't know that's up to Jefferson.

  SEVEN

  It's late but Mrs. Bilina and all her friends and relatives are sitting the dead. I can hear the mumble of voices on the other side of the wall where her kitchen is.

  Sitting on the steps between the first and second floor is Stanley Recore, this little kid what lives across the hall from me on the third floor with his mother and father and four brothers and sisters. The kid used to like to pound on my door and wake me up all hours of the morning until Mary Ellen comes to live with me, that's when he falls in love.

  "What are you sitting on the steps for this time of night, Stanley?" I ask him.

  "Jimbly," he says in the funny way he's got of talking, "Mr. Blindi's layin' dere in his libbin room as dead as a trout and I'm afwaid to walk pass da door. I been sittin' here since eight o'clock."

  "Your mother know you're here?"

  "Sure, she brung me supper."

  I sit down on the step with Stanley and put my hand on his shoulder, which he lets me.

  "What is it you're afraid of, Stanley?"

  "Tree weeks ago, I pound on Blini's door like I do for everybody, an' the ole lady sticks her head out and tells me if I don' be quiet aroun' a sick man, old man Blini will haunt me from his grave." The kid looks up at me and I see there's tears in his eyes.

  "Hey, she didn't mean it."

  "Sure she did."

  "It's just a way of keeping kids quiet. Anyway, Mr. Bilina can't come back."

  "Sure, he can."

  "Who told you that?"

  "He did. He tole me hisself. He pats my head one day and tells me I'm a good boy and he would look after me from hebben when he left this whale of tears."

  "Well, I think he liked you a lot and wanted you to feel safe. You know, like he'd be your guardian angel."

  "So, if he can do me good, he can do me bad."

  "He can't do you good or bad like he can reach out and touch you. Mrs. Bilina was just trying to scare you a little because her heart hurt for her husband and she wanted him to rest and you was making noise. And Mr. Bilina was trying to let you know you wasn't alone in the world."

  "Hell, I got four brothers and sisters. Bein' alone is sometimes my dearest wish."

  "Someday, maybe they'll go away like Mr. Bilina went away. And when that someday comes, maybe you'll feel lonesome for them. Mr. Bilina was saying that the people what love you and like you will always have these good thoughts for you no matter what they find on the other side."

  "The other side of what?"

  "This whale of tears. Come on. You say good-bye to Mr. Bilina yet?"

  "No."

  "You want to?"

  We stand up and he takes my hand.

  "Only if he don't say good-bye back," Stanley says.

  Mrs. Bilina opens the door before I can even knock and she bows us in, smiling sadly at Stanley as she lays her old hand on his head.

  "Have you come to see your friend, Stanley? I didn't mean what I said the other day. My Stefan would never scare a bug, let alone a child."

  Stanley walks down the hall in front of us and turns right, through the dining room and into the parlor, where Mr. Bilina is laying in his coffin the way it was done fifty years ago. Joe and Pearl Pakula, what run the grocery store on the corner, is there. Also Myron Shapiro, the teacher from across the hall, and his wife, Shirley, the librarian. Also Mary Ellen.

  Four old women dressed all in black, with babushkas covering their gray-and-white heads, are sitting in a row on folding chairs beside the bier. One of them is reading from the Bible in a language which I'm pretty sure is Czech-Slovak. They've been reading from the Bible, taking turns, all night. and they'll keep it up right till the moment we plant Mr. Bilina.

  I go up to stand alongside Stanley, who is looking at Mr. Bilina's face, which from Stanley's angle is rising up like a small mountain range above the edge of the plain pine coffin. I bow my head and Stanley does the same.

  Mr. Bilina is dressed in a nice fresh shirt, striped tie, and blue suit. I can't see the shoes because the plain pine coffin is built so only the top half of Mr. Bilina shows.

  Stanley tugs on my sleeve and I bend over so he can whisper in my ear.

  "Will you say good-bye for me, too, Jimbly? I don't know da words."

  So I bow my head again. Then Stanley leaves the flat and I sit down next to Mary Ellen.

  We won't be attending many more of these," she says to me real soft.

  "What are you talking about? We're only kids, and besides, ain't we going to live forever?"

  "I mean there aren't many old people with old-country ways left in the neighborhood. Practically everybody buries out of funeral homes."

  We sit there, Mary Ellen thinking about changing burial customs, I guess, and me thinking about the box the mayor and his friends have put me, Devlin, and maybe Dunleavy, the head of Streets and Sanitation, in.

  I come to when Mary Ellen taps my knee and I look up into Mrs. Bilina's face, which is bending over me like one of them ugly beasts on the rain spouts of old European churches.

  "Seven o'clock," she says.

  "I'll be here. Mrs. Bilina."

  "With a black ribbon on your sleeve."

  EIGHT

  Next morning, there's a crowd in the Bilina flat when I go downstairs in my blue serge suit with a black band on the sleeve. She's talking to one old priest in gorgeous robes and two young ones dressed in black with bread-loaf hats on their heads.

  I tell Mrs. Bilina that Mary wanted to come to the cemetery, but Mr. Bilina's death caught her unawares and she had no chance to get another nurse to take her shift. Even so, her thoughts and prayers will be with us over to the cemetery and back. Mrs. Bilina pats my hand and tells me I should go into the kitchen, where the men are gathered, and have a glass of whiskey so I shouldn't get cold in case I sweat from carrying her Stefan.

  In the kitchen, it's all you can do to get a foot in the door. I never see so many big hunkies in one place—except on a construction site—in my life. I get introduced around to several men, especially the other pallbearers, three men from Bilina's church, two from the boiler shop where he used to work, this lawyer, Hodonin, and his nephew, Jan Dunica, who grins like somebody gives him a medal when his uncle mentions he's the one what built the coffin.

  "So, you're a carpenter?" I say.

  "Well, he's learning," Hodonin answers for him. "The boy has just come from the old country not five years and he's still shy about his English when talking to someone who speaks the language so good as you or me."

  "To be a carpenter is a wonderful trade," I say.

  "Better than roasting a bull's nuts," Hodonin says, which I don't ask him what he means since he's probably relating some old-country words of wisdom.

  A little man in a rusty black suit, with a red paper rose in the buttonhole, a bald spot like a saucer on top of his head, and a wire coming from behind his ear, starts going around slapping all these big men in the middle of the hack like we're choosing sides for a soccer game. He don't slap me in the middle of the back, but shakes my hand like I'm some visiting dignitary and tells me he is Miroslav the Undertaker.

  "It's ready. We should go," he says.

  I go over to take my place by the coffin, which Dunica has supplied with two long wooden handles, one on either side. For a couple of minutes we mill around figuring out who's going to be in front, in back, and in the middle. It's decided, because I'm the only small man in the bunch, that I should take the foot end of the box, which is not so all right with me because it means I got to carry the weight going down the steps. Dunica, because he made the box gets the honor of carrying from the head.

  We wait until Mrs. Bilina, the priests, and the guests leave the flat, then Dunica takes a little hammer and some nails from the pocket of his coat and nails down the whole lid.

  At the word from Miroslav the Undertaker, we lift the coffin off the chairs they use for the bier. It tilts a little my way and I feel a little give in the boards. . .and I think I hear the creak of a nail.

  "Miroslav," I whisper as soft as I can. "I think there could some difficulty with this box. It don't feel too strong to me."

  "What's that you say, Mr. Flannery? You'll have to speak up." He taps the paper rose and I understand that he's got the mike for his hearing aid hidden behind it.

  "This coffin ain't too sturdy," I say a little louder.

  All these bohunks glare at me as though I've insulted them.

  "I tried it out and it'll do," Miroslav the Undertaker says.

  So, what do I know about making coffins?

  It's a long drive out to the cemetery in Skokie. I'm worried that the limousines and hearse rented for the occasion might not make it to the gates. This is not a first-class send-off, but I know it's the best that Mrs. Bilina can afford. It's a matter of first things first. Three priests, incense, a new suit for the corpse, and whiskey for the pallbearers come ahead of the quality of the transportation.

  The snow has stopped falling when we reach Saint Ignatius in the Meadow. The saints and angels on the tombs are standing around with their feet in snow and wearing snow hats on their heads. Here and there is something more dramatic, like an eagle fighting a snake or two bears wrestling. In the middle of a little forest of granite and marble there's this hole in the snow waiting for Mr. Bilina. I start feeling very sad.

  We manhandle the coffin out of the hearse. I hear the squeak of nails like little mice again, and I feel the boards on my end give way. But I don't say nothing. I just lift my end a little, so if Bilina's going to slide, he'll slide the other way.

  The priests are swinging censors, which are giving off clouds of smoke, up at the head of the grave. Mrs. Bilina is standing on the left side—the heart side—with her few relatives and many friends stacked up around her. And two gravediggers are leaning on their shovels in back as we buggy-lug the coffin up the slope.

  This is not a cemetery that has such modern devices like those little motors what let the canvas web holding the coffin down into the grave. In Saint Ignatius in the Meadow the lowering's still done by hand.

  Four of the bystanders, men as big as the pallbearers, step up and take the ends of the canvas straps laid across the mouth of the grave. They get a grip like they're going to have a tug-of-war and we set the coffin down on the webbing. I figure we're almost there and everything's going to turn out all right in spite of the lousy Job Dunica done on the box. Then I see the gravediggers done a lousier job on the hole. The grave is about six inches too short.

  One of the young priests waves me over to join a conference which includes Dunica the Coffin Maker, Hodonin the Lawyer, the black robed priests, and the two gravediggers. They've taken off their caps and are bowing and scraping as if they expect the tip to be handed over right then and there.

  "We consider you a neutral party," the priest says. "Will you talk to these workmen on our behalf and on behalf of the family?"

  "I don't see there should be any trouble . . ." I start to say.

  "We was told to dig the hole for a man six feet long and that's what we dug," this one grave digger says. "Is it our fault this man was a giant?"

  I step back two feet otherwise I'll fall, down drunk from the fumes what comes out of his mouth. The other one is just as drunk, having what my father used to call eyes like two pee holes in the snow.

  "Just dig the hole six inches longer," I say.

  Nobody hears me because the priests, the nephew, the family lawyer, and the gravediggers start shouting at one another in Czech-Slovak. And there is also loud discussion in the crowd waiting to plant Bilina.

  The priest turns to me. "These fools claim the ground is now too hard for them to scrape away another six inches. They say they will guide the coffin down into the hole."

  "What?"

  "It is only to tip it at the slightest angle so it should fit."

  "Well, I want to tell you that I'm not sure that box is built all that good. If I was you. . ."

  "Are you saying that Jan Dunica, my nephew, is a lousy workman?" Hodonin says in a voice which I don't like because I know it means trouble. Dunica is glaring at me, so I know he's been told what I said about his workmanship back at the flat.

  I'm saying it might not be a bad idea for anyone who wants to, should pick up a shovel and dig that grave a little longer," I say. "Gravediggers have a union. You want to break their union?"

  "I only want the best for Mrs. Bilina," I say.

  "I think we know what is best for our own," he says.

  So, I step back, letting him know that I've given my advice and now he knows what he can do with it.

  We go back to our places. The gravediggers grab the ends of the webbing at the foot of the coffin. Dunica and Hodonin take over from the other two mourners at the head. They start letting the webbing slip through their hands, the bottom strap a little faster than the other, so the coffin should tip just a little and squeak into the hole.

  The old priest in the gorgeous robes is making gestures and reading from his book of the dead. The priests in black are making with the smoke pots. The four old women are reading all together from the Bible. Mrs. Bilina is crying and she ain't the only one.

  I hear the squeak of nails being pulled out of wood again. I open my mouth to shout a warning, but I'm too late. The bottom of the coffin falls out. Mr. Bilina slides. Miroslav the Undertaker was saving time and trouble, too. He hasn't put Mr. Bilina into his trousers, but has only draped them around his naked legs. Mr. Bilina hits the bottom of the grave and jackknifes. Mrs. Bilina screams and faints. A half a dozen women follow her lead. The priests lift their skirts and start running away. Hodonin points his fingers at everybody, including me, yelling he's going to sue each and every one of us for the shame and dishonor we've brought down on Mrs. Bilina's head.

  And I'm looking down at Mr. Bilina mooning the mourners.

  NINE

  My foot's not through the door when the phone rings.

  It's Delvin. "Where the hell you been?" he says.

  "I been to a funeral."

  "Maybe you should start thinking about your own."

  "You should pardon me," I say, "but would you mind telling me what that means?"

  "You go down to the Paradise Baths and find out. Then you call me right back."

  I start toward the bathroom to take care of private matters. Mr. Bilina's swan dive having give me a scare, when the phone rings again. It's my father.

  "There you are," he says. "Everything go all right?"

  "No. Everything didn't go all right. Mr. Bilina fell out of his coffin and caused a scandal."

  "Putting that aside," Mike says as though corpses falling out of coffins is an everyday affair, "you better get down to the Paradise Baths."

  "I been told."

  "Then I don't have to tell you that you got troubles."

  "Wait a minute. I don't know . . ." But he hangs up on me.

  I take care of the necessary, and I'm ready to leave the flat when the phone goes off still another time.

  "Before you tell me to go down to the Paradise Baths, you better tell me what for," I say before I even say hello.

  Barker Jefferson rumbles over the phone at me. "We been calling you all over town, Flannery. Are you on the run? The mayor gives you twenty minutes. You ain't here at the Paradise we send Jarwolski in person to come and get you."

  There's one cop standing in front of the Paradise Baths checking the shine on his shoes. He sees me drive up and gives me the wave into the alley. There's a mob of official cars crowding it. They got everything from Fire to Sanitation. I see Barker Jefferson's Cadillac stretch limousine, which you can't miss because it's got a white pinstripe, and zebra stripe seat covers behind the smoked windows, with his driver, Huron, standing beside it.

  There's two more cops at the side door. I walk down the corridor to the big hall in front of the dry room. The traveling cage is in the middle of the floor with Baby in it. No-Nose Riley is sitting on a stool beside it, his arm through the bars holding her hand.

  No-Nose sees me and says, "There's the son of a bitch."

  Everybody turns around and I know what it's like to be the main attraction at a hanging.

  "Oh, you pussy," Princess Grace screams, "you've ruined us."

  Shimmy Dugan puts his arms around Grace's shoulders and makes dirty eyes at me.

  Barker Jefferson puts his arms out to his sides with the hams he's got for hands spread out like he's waiting to crush and strangle me.

  I keep walking anyway.

  I hear this funny squeaking sound. I see that it's Baby what is whimpering. She's got these two welts across the middle of her face. The skin is broken. Dried blood is caked in her fur and the creases of her mask. She looks like a kid what's been beaten for the first time in its life, innocence betrayed.

  I stand right in front of her and look into her face. I want her to know I'm sorry for what somebody done to her.

  "What done that?" I say.

  "Some gazoony lashed a chain across her face between the eyes," Jefferson says.

 

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