Inside the Lychgate

Envy? Was that what he felt? Maybe. If you were petty enough to envy someone because of the weather at their funeral. And Garret definitely was.

But I have to agree. It was definitely funeral weather. In fact, if you could choose the weather at your funeral, you would without a doubt pick a day like that, a day in late winter, cold and windy, the sky the color of ash, roiling and growing darker at the edges. It was a day meant for a funeral.

Garret was Sara’s first husband. He stood off to the side watching the mourners draw up before the grave. He tried to blend in, and it appeared to be working. No one in the two dozen or so people gathered under the green tent paid any attention to him, but he never really expected them to. After all, he was still wearing the same nondescript blue suit Sara had buried him in six years before.

The lychgate stood tall over the wrought iron fencing. Its wooden rail-grade beams were weathered and gray with age. Green algae and rot clung to the tiny ridges and crevices in the wood. The thick beams stood as sentaries at the gate, covered with a steep pitched shaker roof with cedar shingles that overlapped and dripped moisture onto the wooden trestle. A portal between what is and what was.

Inside, Garret watched patiently. He knew she would wait in the long, black sedan, watching through the dark glass until everyone was situated and there was nothing to distract them from the show. Her show. Perfectly choreographed.

The door to the Lincoln swung open and she emerged, first her thin ankle in black heels and black hose, then the long legs, short skirt and low cut blouse. Dark glasses with large round lens. Blonde hair freshly highlighted. Perfectly coiffed. The grieving widow indeed.

She clutched a handkerchief and held it to her breast, heaving and sobbing silently. The preacher took her hand as she stood from the car and smoothed the front of her dress. The man ushered her through the lychgate and across the uneven ground to the row of chairs set out before the mound of upturned earth.

She was still a looker. It was the first time Garret had laid eyes on her since his own funeral. She had hardly aged a day. Neither had he, come to think of it. But not once in six years had she come to visit. Not even to pretend. No. After he was in the ground, she didn’t give him a second thought. This time would be no different, Garret thought. And then he saw him.

He was shorter than Garret had expected, soft and pudgy. He didn’t really seem her type, but Garret wasn’t really in a position to judge. He wasn’t around long enough to learn what sort of men had come before him. Still, he was pretty certain he was the first she had put in the ground.

And the second, waddling along behind her, pleading and crying, his arms flailing about wildly. Of course she couldn’t hear him, He wailed alone, screamed and called out to the abyss, to her, to God, to all the angels and devils in between, but no one was listening. He cried and howled and gnashed his teeth, but no one was listening.

It usually takes the new ones some time to figure it out. It had taken Garret a full day and a half to realize he was really dead. It had taken him even longer to accept it. But once the dirt was backfilled over the hole and the mourners had filed out of the gate leaving him trapped inside for an eternity, Levon would figure it out soon enough.

“So you must be the new husband,” Garret said, leaning back against a stone marker and inspecting the dirt under his nails.

Levon eyed Garret up and down. He looked across at Sara. The casket. The preacher and the words he couldn’t understand. And he watched helplessly as the procession filed through the lychgate and disappeared from view. “I was … ,” Levon’s voice quivered and trailed off. Even dead, the tears felt real. “I was driving. The brake pedal just went to the floor. Nothing.”

It was no longer envy. Garret wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but it was definitely not envy. Maybe it was sympathy, but if that was it, he wouldn’t let it show.

“Welcome to the other side. You’ll get used to it eventually,” Garret said. “Imagine being me. Now I have to spend eternity with my widow’s next husband. Last husband. Whatever it is. What did I do to deserve that?”

Garret knew the answer before the words left his mouth. He asked it anyway, but he never answered. Never aloud. Garret had carried the secrets with him for a long time. They were his and his alone. He kept them and nourished them in the dark places where they festered like a boil and drew him inward with malignant thoughts that he tried to tame with Jesus and whiskey. But they always came back, images of children, dancing and creeping like shadows on the ground, fading and falling and devouring all the light left within him.

A part of him cherished the day he fell from the bluff. It was a welcome relief from the daily battle to suppress the thoughts, the urges, the memories and the secrets, the guilt that he knew would always live with him. But here, wherever here is, he was no longer tired; no longer fragile; no longer on the verge of madness. He no longer trudged through with this albatross he had hung upon himself. But here he was and here he will remain. Inside the lychgate. And he would never be totally free.

Garret remembered the day the secrets left him, a glimpse of her face as he fell away. The earth crumbled beneath his feet. Or did he feel it crumble at all? Did he imagine that only afterward? After the moment the ground was there, terra firma, and after the next moment, when it was only panic and fear and flailing arms and space, reaching out with clumsy hands, fumbling for her jacket. It had been light denim, bleached evenly save the small white spot on the left shoulder. My left or her left? He couldn’t be certain, but the image was vivid now. The brass buttons, one shinier than the others. And her arms, and the way she stepped back, his hands pawing foolishly. And the look on her face as he fell away. Complacent and calm. And for a split second, he thought he remembered her smile.

He shuddered involuntary, and he did what he has always done. He pushed it down and tried to forget.

“That woman’s got the damndest luck, don’t she?” Garret asked, suddenly uncomfortable with the silence. “Her first husband falls off a cliff and you - what happened to you? Brakes went out? Yep, that woman’s got the damndest luck.”

Garret watched him close, looking for signs that maybe he suspected. No. He didn’t. Not immediately anyway. He was preoccupied with the here and now. He had been expecting pearly gates and streets of gold. This was clearly not that kind of place, and Levon was getting worked up about it.

“Why are you thinking on that? That don’t matter,” Garret said. But Levon wasn’t listening. He paced back and forth across the fresh turned earth mumbling to himself about St. Peter and a host of trumpets.

“I went to church near ‘bout every Sunday. I prayed forgiveness and even went to Sunday school sometimes. I asked forgiveness and I meant it too,” Levon pleaded. “And don’t go thinking that little girl was innocent in all this. She knew what she was doing. And I asked forgiveness. Honest, I did. But this ain’t heaven.”

“Well, it ain’t hell either,” Garret said. “Least there’s no fire and brimstone and whatnot. It don’t really matter what you call it. It’s here and this is it.”

Levon was beginning to get frantic, He spread his short, fat fingers wide and ran them through his thinning hair. He paced back and forth, moaning softly. Garret chuckled to himself and leaned back on the marble slab, watching.

“You know I had her first, right? When she was younger? When she was still firm and her breasts were taut.”

“Really?! That’s what you want to talk about? Her breasts?” Levon moaned again. “Oh boy. You know she hated you, right? You should have heard the way she talked about you. Said you had a temper. Said you got what you deserved in the end.”

As much as Garret refused to admit it, as much as he remembered the look on Sara’s face, the words still cut him.

“When was your car in the shop,” Garret asked.

“What do you mean?” Levon froze, his mind reeling back. He hadn’t even thought about it until now. That Sara had borrowed his truck to pick up a new bedroom suit. She had even cleaned it out. Put gas in it. Vacuumed and wiped it down. After all, nobody wants to die in a dirty car.

The realization spread slowly across Levon’s face and his mouth fell open. He turned to face Garret who was already shaking his head.

* * *

Sara stood in her kitchen staring at the stacks of casserole dishes - lasagna, baked macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole, and sliced vegetables that would never fit in her refrigerator. She covered and packed what she could fit and scraped the rest into the trash. Some mac and cheese she spooned out for the cat.

She slowly and methodically washed the dishes, one-by-one, packing them away and wiping down the counter. She dried her hands on the towel hanging from the oven door. She picked up the white envelope addressed to her from Hornady Insurance & Trust. She worked her finger under the flap and pulled it down the envelope ripping the paper neatly along the edge. She spread the flaps apart and peeked inside.She knew it already. A check for $20,000, made out to Mrs. Sara Jean Wycutt.

She smiled as she flattened the envelope neatly and set it aside. She poured herself a glass of wine and climbed the long curved staircase that led to her bedroom. She slipped into her new bed, turned on the TV and flipped mindlessly through a fashion magazine. The news was on. The cat, still licking the cheese sauce from its lips and pawing its whiskers, curled up next to her on the bed. The weather was cold and damp. The forecast called for more of the same.

And the newscaster was talking about a school teacher, 7th grade, Science, I think, recently fired and under investigation for inappropriate contact with a student. Harold Frank Wharton’s attorney adamantly denied the allegations.

Sara pushed the cat aside and went to her closet. She stepped on a small wooden stool to reach the uppermost back corner of the shelf. She reached back, feeling blindly until her fingers touched it and closed around a small book, black with a leather cover, embossed but worn smooth.

She opened to the marked page, and with a black felt pen, she struck a line through the name Levon Robinson Wycutt. Then underneath, she wrote in a neat, bold script: Harold Frank Wharton.

She closed the book and returned it to the closet. She passed by the mirror. Dropped her robe to the floor and admired her figure in the reflection. She clutched her breasts, pushed them upward, shrugged and looked closely at the lines forming beneath her eyes. She dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a tissue, climbed back in bed and turned off the light. The cat purred somewhere in the darkness.