Hauling Ash Read online

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “I wasn’t either.”

  Walter grunted again while he stared at the tabletop, deep in thought. The kitchen clock ticked and tocked, doing its best to fill the growing silence between the men. The pair sat like that for some time, the corpse staring at the table while Otto wondered what to say next.

  “Seems I left you with a bit of a mess,” Walter said at length.

  “It’s okay,” Otto said. “You didn’t know you were going to… you know.”

  “Be murdered in a dark alley?”

  “Yeah. I guess death has a way of sneaking up on a guy.”

  “Sometimes with a switchblade.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So where is it?”

  “Where is what?”

  “Me.”

  “You? Aren’t you here with me?”

  “Stop fooling around, kiddo. Where are my ashes?”

  Otto looked away. Once again, the next bit was going to be tricky.

  Walter got to his feet in another slow rise and shuffled to the living room. “Where is it?”

  Otto stayed behind at the kitchen table, wondering how to explain the way of things. He was never good at lying, and despised sharing uncomfortable truth even more.

  “Where is the urn?” Walter said from the living room.

  “Well,” Otto started, then paused as he struggled to finish it.

  A deep seated moan rose from the living room, followed by, “Ah, shit.”

  Closing his eyes, Otto braced himself for a classic, Waldorf meltdown.

  “It ain’t this fancy thing on the mantel is it?” Walter said. “I don’t think I can deal with a frou-frou urn for all eternity. Wait, why are there two? I wasn’t that big of a man.”

  “Neither of them are you,” Otto said, finally joining his uncle. He tapped the matching ceramic containers on the mantelpiece in turn as he explained, “That’s Mom. The one beside it is Pop.”

  “Ah, sorry, son. I forgot about them.” Walter scanned the living room, shifting his attention to a flower vase on the end table. He picked up the delicate work of art and held it out to Otto. “It ain’t this, is it?”

  “No, and be careful with that. It’s hand blown.”

  “It blows, alright. What are you doing with a thing this pink? Isn’t it kind of prissy for a single guy?”

  “It used to belong to Muriel.”

  “The ex-wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “That ball busting bitch?”

  Otto sighed. “That’s the one.”

  “Why in the hell do you have anything from her? I would’ve set fire to anything she had the nerve to leave behind. After I smashed it to a million pieces first.”

  Finster barked.

  “Sorry, Finny,” Walter said. “Present company accepted.”

  The dog barked again.

  “I know,” Walter said. “That’s what I said. Why would he keep it?”

  “I kept it because I like it,” Otto said.

  Unimpressed, Walter stared at Otto. “You should smash it. It would be good for you. It’ll bring you … what’s the word?”

  Finster gave a sharp yip.

  Walter snapped and pointed to the dog. “Closure. That’s it. Thanks, Fin.”

  “I’ll do no such thing.” Otto snatched the vase from his uncle—which if he were forced to admit, always was a bit pink for his tastes—and placed it carefully back on the end table.

  “I can see I’m not the only lifeless, cold, heartless stiff haunting you.”

  Otto sighed again. It was an ageless argument, one neither of them were going to win any time soon. “Can we please not go over the unpleasant details of my divorce? Again?”

  “Fine with me. You think I like reminding you that she left you with a broken down home, a mountain of debt, and an animal that couldn’t pass for a dog even if it tried?”

  Whimpering, Finster lay down and covered his snout with his paws.

  “You’re only proving my point,” Walter said as he nodded to the dog.

  “Here we go,” Otto said and dropped onto the couch.

  “I’m just saying that she left you with this mess, this poor excuse of a life.”

  Otto pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned. “I’m having a hard enough time dealing with you being here at all, can we not add this to it?”

  “I’m not trying to judge.”

  “You could’ve fooled me. You’ve only been back fifteen minutes and you’ve already started on her. Again.”

  “Sixteen hours.”

  “I mean, don’t you get bored berating me about her? I thought death was supposed to …” Otto lost his retort when he realized what Walter said. “What do you mean sixteen hours?”

  “I mean I’ve been here since last night.”

  “Where?”

  “Here.”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?” Otto touched his chin in thought. “Maybe it was because I wasn’t ready to see you yet. I bet that’s it. I probably had to be in the right frame of mind to see your spirit. Or maybe it’s the coffee that lets you manifest?”

  “No,” Walter moaned, “you didn’t see me because I hid.”

  Otto shuddered at the thought of the corpse of his dead uncle hiding anywhere for any length of time. Which left one question.

  “Why?” Otto said.

  “I told you,” Walter said, “I don’t know why I came back.”

  “No, I mean why did you hide? Why didn’t you show yourself sooner?”

  All at once, Walter appeared uncomfortable. He shifted in his stance, keeping his eyes to the floor and worrying his pale hands. “I didn’t know how you would take it. Plus, you seemed awful tired at the service last night.”

  “You were there?”

  “For a bit of it. I didn’t think it was the right time to spring myself on you. Thought you could use a good night’s sleep first.”

  “You’re right about that. That service took everything out of me. We aren’t usually permitted to prep our relations, but Mr. Gerald took pity on me and allowed it. That way I wouldn’t have to pay another mortician for the work.”

  “How kind of him,” Walter said, his voice dripping with enough sarcasm to make even Finster snort in agreement.

  “Mr. Gerald is not a bad boss. Most people just don’t understand him.”

  “Oh I understand him, all right.” Walter joined Otto on the couch, lowering himself with a protracted grunt. “You forget, I wasted a lifetime being a greedy son of a bitch too.”

  “Sixteen hours, huh? It seems awful specific.” Otto glanced at his watch, then did the math of sixteen hours in his head. “Okay, you were cremated at about four in the afternoon yesterday. So you sort of arrived right after that.”

  The corpse touched the gash in his neck, as if made uncomfortable by all the talk of his demise and return. “I’ll admit I was good and confused when I woke up at the funeral home. It was kind of a shock. The last thing I remember was those hooligans kicking the shit out of me. That and my windpipe flapping in the breeze.”

  Otto stuck a tongue out in disgust. “I’ll bet.”

  “I tried to talk to that cleanup kid, wassis name?”

  “Jimmy?”

  “That’s the one. I tried to get his attention, but he ignored me. It’s like I wasn’t even there. I tried to get a couple of other folks’ attention. It was no good. I don’t think anyone else can see me. When I spotted you leaving out, I guess I panicked and hid.”

  “Hid where?”

  “In the back alley behind the funeral parlor.”

  “Ah.”

  “Then in the trunk of your clunker.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “And then in that closet until you went to bed.” Walter pointed across the living room, to a small closet by the front door.

  Otto winced. “You were here all night?”

  “Most of it.”

  “
Which means you—”

  “Watched you bawl like a baby about me being dead and all?” Walter chuckled. “I sure did, Eightball.”

  Otto covered his face with his hands and leaned onto his side, away from his dead uncle. Of all the people Otto didn’t want to see him crying over the death of his late uncle, against all possible logic, Walter was the one soul that witnessed it anyways.

  “I don’t think I have ever seen a full grown man cry like that,” Walter said. “It was like staring into Niagara Falls.”

  “I was grieving for you,” Otto said between his fingers. “It’s perfectly natural to weep when someone close to you dies.”

  “Sure, sure. Whatever gets you through the night. I hear ya.” The corpse continued to laugh softly. “So, where is it?”

  “Where is what?”

  “You know perfectly well what, goddamn it. Where in the hell is my urn?”

  Otto coiled tighter into a full on fetal position, and mumbled his response into his palms.

  “What was that?” Walter said.

  Otto mumbled again.

  “I’m a bit deaf,” Walter said. “Can you speak up?”

  “It isn’t here,” Otto confessed.

  “What do you mean it isn’t here?”

  Otto buried his head into his knees, curling ever tighter, trying to shut out the assured anger of his dead uncle.

  “Octavious?” Walter said, in an unconvincingly gentle voice. “What do you mean it isn’t here?”

  Doing his best to ignore his uncle, Otto began mentally reciting the techniques for breaking rigor mortis out of a fresh corpse.

  “Otto?” Walter said after a full minute of silence.

  Otto had already moved on to the different methods of embalming. Dealing with the dead always calmed him, because the dead usually didn’t talk back. And they certainly didn’t argue. Or ask for bad news.

  “Listen,” Walter said. “I can sit here all day and wait if I have to. I ain’t got nowhere to go. You, on the other hand, have to get up sometime. You’ll get hungry. Need to take a leak. Feed that mutt of yours.”

  Finster yipped.

  “Not right now,” Walter said. “I just gave you a can.” Walter leaned in closer to the curled up form of Otto, his dead breath cold on Otto’s back. “Me? I’m fine. Comfy even. So, tell me what I want to know and we can get this over with. Where is my urn?”

  Otto considered this a moment, and decided Walter was probably right. That and his bladder reminded him that he had yet to visit the little boy’s room this morning.

  “It isn’t here,” Otto said, unfurling himself.

  “Why not?” Walter said.

  Otto sat up again and faced Walter with the truth. “Because while I could barely afford the service, I certainly couldn’t afford to retain your ashes.”

  “Son of a …”

  “I spent my last dime on you, Walter. Thankfully they waived the two hundred dollar fine to claim your body, on account of your death being the result of a crime. I had to put up five hundred dollars as a deposit on the service. I will have to come up with another five hundred before I can take your remains home. It took everything I had for the first five hundred. I don’t know where I will get the second.”

  Walter grunted once more. “So, if I ain’t here, where am I?”

  “At the funeral home.”

  “For Pete’s sake! You can’t just leave me there.”

  “Mr. Gerald says he will hold them until I can pay them off. I have two years, according to state law. God knows it’s probably going to take me that long to come up with the money.”

  “Bastard,” Walter growled.

  Finster growled as if agreeing.

  “After all you’ve done for him,” Walter said. “He’s paid you peanuts all these years, and in your hour of need, he robs you blind.”

  “I think he was rather generous,” Otto said.

  “Rather generous?” Walter said. “You work for the man, least he could do was cut you a deal. A grand? For a lousy cremation that you did all the work on?”

  “You don’t understand, uncle. That was a deal. Our cremations usually start at fifteen hundred.”

  “Highway robbery!”

  “It’s funny how no one thinks about these things until they have to deal with them.” Otto grinned as he added, “Though, you’re probably the first client to complain from beyond the grave.”

  Walter ranted and raved regardless of Otto’s observation. “What kind of world are we living in when a decent man can’t get a decent funeral for a decent price? When a man spends his whole life a slave of the system, only to have his final wishes denied because of corporate greed? I ask you, boy, what kind of world is this?”

  “The real world?

  “Good point.” Walter settled back down, easing onto the couch once more in silence.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, and now is as good a time as any I suppose, what were your final wishes?”

  “They were in my will.”

  “Which Aunt Betty destroyed.”

  “Right. I suppose it’s good I came back then. At least I can have my desires honored.”

  “Which were?”

  “Easy enough, I wanted to be cremated and—”

  “That’s a bit of luck then,” Otto said over him, pleased by this turn of events.

  Pleased, that was, until Walter finished with, “And have my ashes spread near the Bahamas.” Walter leaned in to add, “Can you guess who was supposed to do the spreadin’?”

  Otto swallowed hard and said, “Me?”

  “You always were a clever boy.”

  “You must be joking.”

  “What? I think of you as clever. Isn’t that how you described yourself on those dating sites? An intellectual?”

  “That’s not it.”

  “You sure? Because I’m pretty sure it was. It’s also probably why you never got any responses.”

  “No, I mean why on earth would you want something so… so… extravagant?”

  “I’ve got my reasons.” Walter went suspiciously quiet, set his jaw and turned away.

  That turn, that sudden silence, that setting of the jaw suggested there was a story there, somewhere. A story that, knowing Uncle Walter, promised intrigue and lust and betrayal and a fast car. Uncle Walter’s stories always involved a fast car, for some reason. On any other day, Otto would’ve sat at Walter’s feet and begged to hear the tale. But not today. Today, Otto wasn’t up for a Walter tale, interesting or otherwise.

  “Walter,” Otto said, “as much as I would love to sit here all day and hear those reasons, I would like to point out that the idea of me taking your ashes to the tropics and dumping them across the Bahamas is, well, preposterous.”

  “Why not? You could use a vacation anyways.”

  “That’s the point. I don’t have time for a vacation, much less the money. I have responsibilities and obligations. I have bills to pay. Unless you’ve been ignoring me for the last five minutes, you are one of those bills now. How do you expect me to claim your ashes from the funeral home, much less afford to take them to the tropics?”

  Walter grinned wide again. “My boy, I thought you would never ask.”

  Chapter Two

  If I Had a Million

  A few minutes later

  Otto stared at Walter in disbelief.

  “Are you joking?” said he asked.

  “You know I never kid about money, boy,” Walter said.

  The corpse had Otto on that one. Once, when Otto was seven, he told his uncle a rather mature joke that included the mention of an aquatic fowl, a sexual act, and a dollar bill in the punch line. Walter responded by washing Otto’s mouth out with soap. Young Otto thought his uncle liked dirty jokes. Uncle Walter explained the soap wasn’t for dropping the f-bomb. It was rather for dragging money into the equation. No, Walter Waldorf had never joked about money a day in his life.

  Yet the man wasn’t alive now, which left Otto to wonder if the same r
ules applied.

  “There’s enough to keep you comfortable for the rest of your days,” Walter said.

  Otto considered this idea. “I am not trying to offend you, but by comfortable, do you mean your kind of comfortable, or a normal person’s idea of comfortable?”

  The edges of Walter’s blue lips curved downward, dragging the dead man’s mouth into a nasty frown. Otto found it an unbearable thing to witness; like looking at the behind of a baboon that had a particularly bad case of diarrhea and also happened to be on fire. A flaming, diarrheic baboon’s behind. Yes, that about summed it up. Otto held his hand to his eyes, trying to peer at that dreadful frown between his fingers.

  “Could you please put that scowl away?” Otto said. “It’s disturbing.”

  “Only if you apologize for criticizing my lifestyle,” Walter said.

  “I’m sorry, Uncle Walter.”

  “A lifestyle, I might add, that stands to make you filthy rich.”

  Otto perked up at that. He had never been filthy rich. As far as he could remember, he had never been filthy anything. If was going to start being filthy, then rich was definitely one of the best filthy things to become. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

  “Sure. I reckon I ain’t got nothing to hide now.” The corpse shifted in his seat. “I mean, you done seen everything down there.”

  “Yes, sorry about that. I did have to clean you up first.” Otto tried to push the image of a naked Uncle Walter from his mind, and focused on the question at hand. “If you had so much money, why didn’t you spend more of it on yourself while you were alive?”

  Walter contemplated this question for a moment, rolling his sallow eyes about as he hummed to himself. “I guess I thought I could take it with me. Boy was I wrong about that.”

  “You really didn’t believe that. Did you?”

  “Of course not. I kept it hidden so the vultures would leave me alone. Trust me son, money don’t bring nothing but trouble. I spent a whole lifetime learning that little lesson. Now, here is what you need to do to get the money I spent a whole lifetime saving. Go to the—”

  “Why would I want your money if it caused you nothing but trouble?”