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12/30/2004: "Mr. Creakle"

Yesterday I saw Mr. Creakle, the funeral man, at the post office. He has the look of a prosperous small-town businessman and that is what he is; his face is flushed, his figure stout, his manner irritable. Dark-suited, visitant, he pauses, and tells of this week's deaths. A young man fell through the ice and drowned. A childhood friend came to a natural, but no happier or less permanent, end. Creakle grew up here and inherited the family business, and his adult son works with him now. There are almost no other family businesses any more, but in every town there is a family that specializes in death. The funeral home is impeccably maintained, a fine house from the nineteenth century, with white siding, bright green lawn, and flowers abed in the spring. The coffins they keep in an old barn out back, a saltbox-style remnant. Last week I went to a viewing there. Greeting the cars were the professional ushers, three old men who look like praying mantises, Creakle the younger, and his wife. Inside it was dim and smelled funny. I went into the room where he lay, the same room where I last saw the face of my mother. I glanced at him and gestured toward the corpse as I spoke to the widow. She kept thinking, I'll have to tell that to him, she said, not remembering he was gone. I left as soon as I could, waved to the mantises, got in the car. I turned the key and the stereo came on. Anita O'Day.