friend I have ever had. Take care of yourself. Make a point of *. If I don't come back, what you should do is move aboard the Flush, peddle your crock boat and the Munequita and the Rolls, and throw a party they will never never forget around here.
I put it in a heavy brown envelope and left it unsealed. It was dark. I tools a walk around my weather decks. The night smelled like diesel fuel. A nearby drunk was singing "Jingle Bells," never getting past the sleigh, starting again and again and again. The boulevard hummed and rustled with cars, and there was no sound at all from the sea. A woman laughed, a jet went over, and I went back inside. Somebody working his way into his slip
The Green Ripper made a small wake, and the Flush shifted, sighed, and settled back into stillness.
On the following Saturday morning I found the same man at the Petaluma cemetery, the one Gretel and I had dealt with when we had flown out with John Tuckerman's ashes. He was cultivating and reseeding two parallel curving scars in the soft green turf. He was a broad muscular old man with a bald head and thick black eyebrows. He wore sneakers and crisp khakis. He dropped the tool, dusted his hands, and tilted his head to one side as he looked up at me.
'weren't you here way last spring? With the Tuckerman girl?"
"With Gretel Howard. Her married name."
"What you got there?"
'QVell... she died. Gretel died. This is her ashes."
He mopped his face and turned slightly away and looked upward into a tree. He sighed. "Sorry to hear it. Even if it was a sad time for her, bringing her brother's ashes here, it wasn't hard to see you and she were real close, real happy with each other."
"Yes, we were."
"Too bad. Nice size on that girl. Great smile. What did she die from? Automobile? That is what takes most of the young ones."
"Some kind of flu with a high fever and kidney failure."
"I tell people it's the bugs striking back. Those laboratories go after the bugs with powerful new poisons and it stands to reason that the ones that live through it, they get twice and nasty as they ever were before. Of course, John and Gretel's folks, they died premature, but it wasn't sickness. I suppose you want her in the family plot. Dumb-ass question. You wouldn't be here if you didn't."
"Can we go right ahead with it?"
"Don't you remember how it was before? There's got to be the permit, and they've got to have vital statistics for the records, and there's the fee."
"The office is closed."
'A know. They used to stay open Saturday morning, but not lately."
'Eve got a copy of the death certificate here, and I've got her birth certificate, marriage certificate, and final decree of divorce. Here, you can have them."
He tools them and then tried to give them back to me, saying, 'I don't have anything to do with the office part."
"And if the permit hasn't gone up since last time, here's the fifty dollars."
He hesitated and finally took it. '] guess we could do it now and I could give them this stuff Monday. But don't you want any words said? She said the words for her brother."
The Green Ripper
"As I will for her."
The Tuckerman plot was in that part of the cemetery where the stones were flush with the ground which, as he had mentioned when I had seen him before, made mowing a lot easier. While he went to get the post-hole digger from his shed, I opened the carton. The urn was shinier than I had expected it to be, and more ornate. It looked like a large gold goblet with a lid.
She had owned a small worn book of the collected poems of Emily Dickinson. She had read two of them over her brother's grave. She had marked the ones she liked best. There were three short ones I wanted to read.
I could just make out the place where the old man had dug the hole before, for John Tuckerman's urn. He
I put it in a heavy brown envelope and left it unsealed. It was dark. I tools a walk around my weather decks. The night smelled like diesel fuel. A nearby drunk was singing "Jingle Bells," never getting past the sleigh, starting again and again and again. The boulevard hummed and rustled with cars, and there was no sound at all from the sea. A woman laughed, a jet went over, and I went back inside. Somebody working his way into his slip
The Green Ripper made a small wake, and the Flush shifted, sighed, and settled back into stillness.
On the following Saturday morning I found the same man at the Petaluma cemetery, the one Gretel and I had dealt with when we had flown out with John Tuckerman's ashes. He was cultivating and reseeding two parallel curving scars in the soft green turf. He was a broad muscular old man with a bald head and thick black eyebrows. He wore sneakers and crisp khakis. He dropped the tool, dusted his hands, and tilted his head to one side as he looked up at me.
'weren't you here way last spring? With the Tuckerman girl?"
"With Gretel Howard. Her married name."
"What you got there?"
'QVell... she died. Gretel died. This is her ashes."
He mopped his face and turned slightly away and looked upward into a tree. He sighed. "Sorry to hear it. Even if it was a sad time for her, bringing her brother's ashes here, it wasn't hard to see you and she were real close, real happy with each other."
"Yes, we were."
"Too bad. Nice size on that girl. Great smile. What did she die from? Automobile? That is what takes most of the young ones."
"Some kind of flu with a high fever and kidney failure."
"I tell people it's the bugs striking back. Those laboratories go after the bugs with powerful new poisons and it stands to reason that the ones that live through it, they get twice and nasty as they ever were before. Of course, John and Gretel's folks, they died premature, but it wasn't sickness. I suppose you want her in the family plot. Dumb-ass question. You wouldn't be here if you didn't."
"Can we go right ahead with it?"
"Don't you remember how it was before? There's got to be the permit, and they've got to have vital statistics for the records, and there's the fee."
"The office is closed."
'A know. They used to stay open Saturday morning, but not lately."
'Eve got a copy of the death certificate here, and I've got her birth certificate, marriage certificate, and final decree of divorce. Here, you can have them."
He tools them and then tried to give them back to me, saying, 'I don't have anything to do with the office part."
"And if the permit hasn't gone up since last time, here's the fifty dollars."
He hesitated and finally took it. '] guess we could do it now and I could give them this stuff Monday. But don't you want any words said? She said the words for her brother."
The Green Ripper
"As I will for her."
The Tuckerman plot was in that part of the cemetery where the stones were flush with the ground which, as he had mentioned when I had seen him before, made mowing a lot easier. While he went to get the post-hole digger from his shed, I opened the carton. The urn was shinier than I had expected it to be, and more ornate. It looked like a large gold goblet with a lid.
She had owned a small worn book of the collected poems of Emily Dickinson. She had read two of them over her brother's grave. She had marked the ones she liked best. There were three short ones I wanted to read.
I could just make out the place where the old man had dug the hole before, for John Tuckerman's urn. He
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