Digging
I’m not sure what I expected when I took the grave digging job, but I definitely did not expect what eventually happened to me. I knew absolutely nothing about digging graves, but I figured it beat the hell out of sitting around doing nothing back in the clink.
As soon as I got out of the clink on parole I had to find a job. If I didn’t find a job right away that would constitute parole violation and I would find myself back in the clink. This job digging graves was the first one I saw and applied to and I got the job. I guess not a lot of people want to dig graves, so competition for the job seemed minimal. The next thing I knew I was holding a shovel and digging a grave. I worked for a grave digging company that dug graves for cemeteries all over Southern California.
The Company not only dug graves for burials, they also dug up coffins as well, like for instance when a cemetery was to be repurposed into apartment buildings or a strip mall or whatever. Last week my work partner and I were assigned to a crew contracted to dig up graves in a cemetery near San Bernardino. My grave digging partner for this job was an older guy named Charles. He was originally from Calexico, but he was now living in an age restricted, government subsidized 55 and older apartment building in downtown San Diego. Charles was only 49. He was getting away with something there.
The two of us made up only a small part of the operation to dig up that cemetery. But, I felt we were an important part. It’s good to feel that your work is important somehow. The work consisted of using a shovel and then a pitchfork to get the coffin out of the ground and into the bed of our pick up truck and then drive it over to a tent the company had set up as a temporary holding area for coffins, and urns, anything that held human remains.
Early on, I learned to pay special attention to the head stones. If the stones were older, they tended to break and split apart easily. You couldn’t just grab a hold of a stone and try to lift it straight up out of the ground without thinking about what you’re doing first. Special techniques had to be employed to maintain the stone’s integrity.
The first few stones I tried to dig up I botched pretty bad. One of them was going to have to be explained to the relatives as being lost in transit or something because I inadvertently pulverized the stone completely. Charles hadn’t been happy about that and neither had the Company.
Unless unforeseen challenges presented themselves during a coffin removal, the whole process only took about an hour. Maybe an hour and a half from start to finish. The Company had told us to remove four coffins a day. That was our quota. But we had to physically be onsite from 8am to 5pm with a half hour lunch. We usually finished our quota in about half a work day. That meant we had plenty of time doing nothing. So yeah, the job was boring. But it paid. Not much, but any money coming in was a good thing for me. I was dead broke when they let me out of the clink.
I hadn’t worked with Charles before, but with all the time we spent together not having much to do during the course of two weeks, I got to know him pretty well. It turned out that Charles was a big reader. That man knew anything and everything there was to know about literature and writers. I’ve only read a few books myself, including books I was supposed to read for high school. But I never got further than my first year in high school before I had been asked to leave permanently. I only read one book that whole year at school and I forget the name of it or what it was about.
But Charles told me that he read his first book on his own as a first grader and from that first book onward there was no looking back for him. Like I say, I was bored and the way Charles talked about some of the books he’d read made it interesting. Plus, what else was there to do during our many downtimes?
Charles wasn’t a grave digger because of some pressure like what I was under with my parole. Charles was a gravedigger because he wanted to be a gravedigger. When Charles came to work, he dressed for it. He wore white overalls over a collared shirt and white pants and expensive looking leather work boots. He told me he treated this job with respect. And he did. He took real pride in being a gravedigger. He said that despite what other people thought, there was absolutely nothing wrong with digging graves. He thought it was one of the best jobs he’d ever had, and Charles had worked at a lot of jobs in his life.
Charles had been digging graves for the company for about ten years, he told me. Before that he was one of the lead ground keepers for the La Costa Resort and Gold Club east of Carlsbad. I’d never been there, but I’d heard that Tiger Woods played there all the time. Charles told me he loved being a grounds keeper, especially when he became lead grounds keeper. “The whole La Costa property is like one huge garden.” he told me with delight. And Charles loved gardening. Then, who knows why, he figured that he wanted to plant something else, “something that mattered,” is how he put it. So he picked up a shovel and became a gravedigger planting human bodies instead of flowers. “But that is what all of us become eventually,” he informed me, “we die and we get planted and we become flowers and grass and all that we see around us.”
On our little Team Charles was definitely the boss. He got on me a couple of times about what I wore to work. I typically showed up wearing old beat up jeans, t -shirt and the oldest, most wrecked sneakers I owned. I mean c’mon, I’m digging graves here, I’m not getting dressed up for that. Plus I was just out of the clink, I didn’t have nice clothes to wear to work, or anywhere else for that matter.
No matter how hard I tried to get to the cemetery early, Charles was already there way before me. So this one morning was no different. I got to the site and walked across the graveyard to get to where we were supposed to be working and sure enough there was Charles, leaning against his car, drinking coffee and eating a raisin bran muffin with a crumbly top. He smiled and waved at me as I set my thermos and backpack down on grass still wet from the overnight sprinklers. After I set my stuff down I walked over to Charles.
“Hey man, what’s up Charles? Enjoying your muffin?”
“Hey there Eddie. Yeah, good old muffin. You should eat bran muffins in the morning Eddie. Fiber is good for you. You know, helps keep you regular.”
Charles was always in a cheerful mood at work. Charles was a pretty straightforward guy and I appreciated that about him. He liked his work, he liked his muffins and any other food that contained tons of fiber, he liked golfing, and he liked his books. As long as he had those things in his life, Chuck was good. He didn’t have a family that I knew of, he never mentioned a wife or kids, but the way he talked about books, like maybe those books were his family or something.
“Yeah I know, Charles. I’m pretty regular though. It’s already hot out here. Damn, I thought things were supposed to cool down today.”
“Eddie, weather people are some of the worst, most ignorant, laziest pieces of shit that exist in this whole world. Take it from me, bud.”
This was late August in San Bernardino County so yeah, it was hot out. Today was supposed to be over 90 degrees. Luckily, this particular cemetery had plenty of trees that provided some shade. I guess that’s why they called it Rowan Oaks. Charles and I had found a tree that provided enough shade for two people and that’s where we spent all our time when we weren’t digging.
I sat down under the shade tree and so did Charles. He finished his muffin and his coffee and exhaled loudly and stretched his back a little bit and then he laid back resting on his elbows and looked up at the foliage above him.
“Eddie, I love trees. You know? Sometimes I think trees are the best thing to exist. How do you feel about trees, bud?”
“Trees are cool Charles. I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about whether or not I like them. I guess I do. I mean, doesn’t everybody like trees, whether they think about it or not? How could someone possibly not like trees? I’d like to know.”
“Yeah Eddie, but what about loggers? Do they love trees? Do they appreciate trees like we do?”
“Maybe in their own way. To them trees are a way of putting food on the table so maybe they’re more grateful to ‘em than anything.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right, bud. Alright, want to get to work?”
“Not really Charles.”
“C’mon bud, up and at ‘em. We need to make our quota.”
“Alright Charles.”
Because of the heat and the many breaks we had to take to escape it, we finished up late that day. It was past 6pm before Charles and I had delivered our fourth and final coffin to the Company. Dusk was already setting in. This was my favorite time to be in the graveyard, the sun set nice over the headstones and the trees and all the birds chirping and the whole place glowed orange.
During our time together, Charles and I had become friends. And after work we liked to go to a bar ten minutes away from the graveyard and have a couple beers before heading home for the night. So after packing up we walked over to my toyota pick up and I drove us over to the bar.
By the time we got there happy hour was ending and the place was emptying out the day drinkers and getting ready for the evening crowd. This was only a Tuesday evening and it was pretty empty as we grabbed a few stools at the bar and ordered two Miller Drafts. A tv behind the bar was turned to an Angels baseball game. The Angels were playing the Astros at Houston and they were down by 2 runs in the bottom of the 5th.
Charles couldn’t care less about baseball. As soon as we got our beers Charles raised a toast to “A great day in the bone yard” and we both drank deep.
“Hey Eddie? Did you ever take a look at that book I borrowed you the other day?”
“Hmmm, the one with the skinny knight on the cover?”
“Yes. Don Quixote, the greatest of Knights.”
“I read a little of the beginning. I got to where the Knight sees windmills and thinks they’re giants and the other little fat guy with him tries to get him to see that they are just windmills. The Knight guy seems like a nut. But I liked the little fat guy, Sanzo or something. There’s this one part where the nut is going on about these giants he sees and orders Sanzo to mount up and fight the giants and Sanzo just asks, What Giants? I guess that was pretty funny. Not like South Park funny, but it was OK.”
“Why Eddie, that’s no way to speak of the Knight with the Sorrowful Face! Just keep reading my boy, and you’ll change your opinion about that nut, as you call him.”
“I don’t know about finishing that thing, Charles. It’s like almost a thousand pages long! I doubt any book can keep my attention for longer than an hour, maybe an hour and a half and that’s only if the book is a graphic novel or something with a bunch of pictures in it.”
“Ahhh, kids these days,” Charles sighed. “A whole generation of kids losing their souls, click by godforsaken click.”
“I’m sure there’s people my age who read Charles. I’m just not one of them.”
“What do you like to do Eddie? I mean, what do you like to do outside of the job?”
“Not much really. There’s this fifteen year old Yamaha Road Star motorcycle I bought last year before the clink got me and I work on that sometimes. Parts for something that old are hard to find though.”
“What did you do in the pokey? Did you read or study?”
“Nah. I didn’t really do much in there. I worked out a little bit, and they had a tv in the Rec. Room and I watched that a lot. There’s not much to do in the clink to be honest.”
“I wouldn’t think so. How long were you in?”
“Ten months for aggravated assault on a supposed friend of mine who was fucking my girlfriend.”
“Was she pretty?”
“Yeah, she was real pretty.”
“There’s your problem, right there son.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Hey kid, want to play a little night golf? Tonight’s a full moon.”
Charles had been teaching me how to golf and there was a golf course that was laid out right next to the cemetery. Charles and I had been getting on the course at night and playing in the light of the moon. Charles said he’s been playing night golf for years for free. It was just a matter of waiting for the twilight players to get through the course and then for the clubhouse to shut down for the night.
“Sure Charles. I need some food first though. And a six pack.”
“We’ll stop by the liquor store on our way over and get some beer and some peanuts. Sound good?”
“Sure Charles, that sounds alright.”
We finished our second beers, left the bar, got back into my truck, stopped at a liquor store for beer and snacks, and I parked us on the street that separated the cemetery and the golf course. I didn’t have my own clubs so Charles let me use his 3, 6, and 8 irons, and an extra putter he had in his bag.
By the time we walked on the course the moon lit up the course nicely and we could see our balls fine. I don’t really like golf that much, especially since I don’t know what I am doing and that can get frustrating. But, even so, I enjoyed being out on the course at night with nobody around to notice how bad I was. And, it’s peaceful and nice out there at night.
Charles was real good at golf. He told me he’d been playing golf since his Dad taught him how to play when he was a youngster. Charles told me that his Dad taught him that if a person could play a round of golf once a week, that person was living a good life.
Charles was basically an expert golfer and he cheerfully took time to teach me how to strike the ball, and what my body should be doing when I swing the club, and how to putt. There were many rules of golf too that don’t get mentioned when you watch the pros on TV. Like who gets to hit the ball first, and how to treat out of bounds lies, and how to make sure you use the rake if you have to hit out of a sand trap.
While Charles taught me how to play golf, he also was teaching me about literature. He basically had a running monologue about writers, and books, and which books were best by each author he liked, and that reading and studying great literature is the only worthwhile activity in this world. Like I say, I don’t know shit about literature, but Charles made it seem interesting.
That night I played worse than usual, but Charles stayed in his usual good mood, telling me that it just takes time and practice and he’d make me an ace golfer soon. We played around for about an hour, mostly putting and pitching the ball onto various greens until Charles looked at his watch and told me he had to make it home, back to San Diego, so that he could rest up for work tomorrow. We threw away our empty beer cans and an empty can of assorted nuts at the clubhouse and then we got in the pickup and I drove Charles back to his car at the cemetery parking lot.
As soon as I parked in the lot and Charles had gotten out, I looked around my truck and I couldn’t see my backpack anywhere. In my backpack there was my canteen, my Oakley sunglasses and most importantly quite a bit of cash, so I had to find it. Charles helped me look around in the truck and it was nowhere.
“Hey Eddie, maybe you left it back at that tree we were sitting under today?”
“Could be Charles. I need that thing. It has over a five hundred dollars in cash and my two hundred dollar Oakleys in there. I’m going to walk over and see if I can find it.”
“I’ll go with you Eddie.”
We walked down a narrow paved walkway that led to the area of the cemetery we had been working in earlier that day. The full moon was right above us and lit everything up quite well. As soon as we got near the shade tree, we immediately noticed voices coming from our work area.
Charles didn’t like it. “What the hell is that Eddie? What are those people doing out here? The cemetery is closed to visitors now,” he said, his voice suspicious.
“Well, we were just at the golf course and that was closed too Charles. These are probably just some kids drinking and partying.”
“Yeah, but it’s dangerous out here Eddie. We haven’t filled in any of the holes yet. Sounds like a crowd of people alright.”
“I just hope they haven’t stolen my cash or my Oakleys.”
“Let’s go take a look Eddie. Find out what’s going on.”
We walked closer to where the voices were coming from and I could hear them plain now. I looked over at Charles.
“That doesn’t sound like kids partying Charles. These people sound pissed off.”
I heard a lady’s crying voice rise above the rest. “What have they done? Why are they doing this to us?”
We turned a corner and suddenly we came upon them. I heard the same lady voice yell out, “There they are, get them!”
Charles and I looked at each other. “What the fuck,” I asked, astonished. The group of people were lit up not just by the moon, but also by some light in them. They glowed.
“Charles, what are these people? My god! Are these ghosts? Really?”
“I have no idea bud but here they come,” and now Charles sounded apprehensive.
The crowd rushed over to us. One older looking ghost in the lead pointed his bony, angry finger at me.
“What the hell do you two think you two are doing? Do you like destroying people’s homes, is that it?”
Charles looked perplexed. I tried to answer the creature.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about sir. Who are you? What is this? We just work here. We just came back here to find my backpack, that’s all.”
My response seemed to make the ghost even angrier.
“What did you just say to me, you sorry son of a bitch? Our homes you idiot! Look!”
The angry ghost pointed around at the empty holes in the earth we had left digging up the coffins. “Look you moron! People live here, in these coffins! This is our neighborhood for christ’s sake! What the hell do you think you’re doing? Who gave you permission to do this?”
One of the lady ghosts started to cry out, “Look, they took the Petersons, and the Templetons, and look, the Bannings are gone too. All of our friends! Where did they go?”
“Live here?” I asked, more confused than ever.
Charles took stock of the situation and collected himself. “Sirs, and madams, I can assure you we have been given full authority to dig up graves here at this cemetery. This authority was granted to us by the Alcott Grave Digging syndicate out of Los Angeles. We are just workers here. The company told us to dig up these graves, and so that’s what we are getting paid to do. I apologize for any inconvenience this all may cause you, but we still have to do our job.”
The angry ghost got up in Charles’ face. “You are not digging up my grave, you sack of shit. You get me? And you’re not digging up any more of my friend’s graves. either. Do you understand me? This is our resting place. We like it here. We paid for our plots. And we’re not moving an inch. Now go tell that to your boss you asshole.”
This ghost was starting to piss me off now. “Look sir, why don’t you just stand back and take it easy? Let’s just have a conversation about this, OK? I mean, I can’t speak for my friend Charles here, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen a ghost, like in person, so I need to get used to that for a minute. Got me? So just relax. Please.”
The ghost stepped back, crossed his arms and looked around at the other ghosts.
“Fine,” he said in a cold tone of voice. “I suppose I can understand that. But we still need answers, and we have some demands as well.”
Charles nodded agreeably at him. “Of course my friend. And we would be happy to provide any information we can. But let’s just take a seat and we can get to know each other and then we can see how my co-worker Eddie and I can be of help to you.”
Charles sat down cross legged under the shade tree and so did I. One by one, the four ghosts sat down across from us on the grass. I noticed they were dressed very formally, and then I realized these were the clothes they wore when they were buried.
There was no sign of decomposing or really any way to tell that they had just literally risen from the grave. The two women were both older, maybe in their eighties, and they looked prim and proper in their dresses and their jewelry and their hair looking like they had just left the parlor.
The two men also were older and both of them wore suits and dress shoes. Both of them had short cropped grey hair.
It turned out the group of four consisted of two couples.
Once we were all seated, Charles was the first to speak. “Well, this is very interesting, I must admit,” he said, a warm grin on his face like he was having a great old time meeting new friends.
“Friends, I have been a gravedigger for over ten years now, and I have known hundreds of other gravediggers, and I can honestly say that I have never seen or heard of anything like this happening before. Do you mind if I ask you some questions before we get to your concerns?”
The two couples looked at each and said sure, go ahead.
“First, can you tell me your names and how and when you died?”
The older lady sitting directly opposite Charles cleared her throat and responded.
“My name is Aubrey Bradley and sitting here to my right is my husband Richard Bradley. Richard is 76 years old and I am 79. That’s how old we were when we died. Once you die you don’t age, of course. Richard died two years before I did of lung cancer. I died of a brain clot. We lived in Huntington Beach our whole marriage. We have two daughters who still live there with our grand kids.”
Charles nodded politely. “Well, it is great to meet you both. I look forward to getting to know you.”
Then, the other older lady spoke up. Her husband was the angry ghost from before.
“My name is Pam Steiner and this is my husband Earl. Earl died of a heart attack in 1979 when he was 69 years old, and I died of cancer in 1984 when I was 74 years old. Nice to meet you.”
Her husband, who had calmed down by this point, nodded in our direction.
Charles politely nodded back. “Thank you all and very nice to meet you. My name is Charles, I am 49 years old and I live in San Diego. Eddie?”
Charles looked at me in encouragement. “Uhhm, well hi everybody. My name is Eddie, I am 26 years old and I live in Temecula. I was just released from prison on parole and I have only been a gravedigger for a month or so, and I can tell you honestly that I never expected in a million years that anything like this would ever happen to me.”
Earl seemed to be getting impatient. “Well, great, now that we have that over with, I’d like you to answer some questions for us. First, please tell us why you are digging up these graves? If I remember correctly, we have a contract with this cemetery, the Rowan Oak cemetery, and that contract states that we are to be interred here for perpetuity. That means forever.”
Charles thought about this for a minute, stroking his chin. “Well first off, forever is a long time. Second, neither Eddie nor myself are aware of this contract you speak of. Let me be clear. We do not work for this cemetery. We work for a grave digging company that has been contracted by the Rowan Oak Cemetery, or whoever bought them, to dig up this graveyard, remove all coffins, headstones, urns, monuments, mausoleums, and whatever else. This land has been sold to a developer and they are going to use it for something other than as a graveyard. That is all we know.”
“I for one would like you to tell us where you have taken our friends and neighbors,” Pam chimed in. “Where are they now?”
Charles responded, “The only thing I can tell you Pam is that if your friends were buried in one of these holes close to us now, chances are Eddie and I dug them up today and deposited their coffins a couple of hundred yards away where they are waiting for transport to their new home.”
“I could give two shits about the others,” Earl remarked. “I’d like to know what they are turning Rowan Oak into, and I would really like to know where they are taking my wife and I. Those are the important questions Pam. The others will have to deal with things on their own. I want answers now goddamit!”
Charles looked indignant. “Please Earl, calm down! I’m telling you I DON”T KNOW, and neither does Eddie, anything about this cemetery or who they sold it to or why they sold it or where all these coffins will be taken. I apologize, but I have no answers for you. Believe me, I wish I did bud.”
“We were going to play bridge with the Templetons tonight. I love playing bridge with the Templetons,” Pam said despairingly.
“I don’t,” added Earl, shaking his head sternly. “They cheat.”
“They don’t cheat Earl, and even if they do cheat, who cares? What does it matter?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean, Pam? Bridge is a game of competition for godsakes! We play so that we might win, that’s the whole goddam point!”
“We’re dead Earl! OK? It doesn’t matter because all of us are dead.” Aubrey added.
“That’s just bullshit Aubrey, and you know it.” Earl crossed his arms.
“So what’s it like, you know, being dead?” I suddenly asked. “Is this what happens when we die? We just end up ghosts living in our tombs, playing cards and bickering with our neighbors and all that? Can you all come out here whenever you want? What goes on when you are in the coffin?”
Richard, who looked like a retired college professor, spoke up for the first time. “You two of the living, all I can tell you is to enjoy your time being alive. Being dead is very boring. And the worst part is we are forced to know that this boredom will last forever. What do we do in the coffins, you ask? I’ll tell you what we do. We do nothing. Have either of you ever been put under by anesthesia for a medical procedure?”
Charles nodded yes. I nodded no.
“Well, it’s like that. They let us out of our coffins for two hours every Tuesday night, and when that time is over it all fades to black and then we are back in the void, filled with absolute nothingness. Until we are able to rise again the following Tuesday.”
I thought about that. “Wow. You guys have it worse than I did in the clink.”
Richard smiled. “It is a little like that, but worse. In jail at least you’re alive.”
I could tell from his body language that Earl was getting impatient. He stood up and looked down at Charles and I. “Let’s go Pam. These idiots don’t know anything and they can’t help us. C’mon Pam, let’s leave these retards in their idiot land.”
Pam stood up and joined Earl. “Well, I think we are a little upset this evening. We usually have such a good time together on Tuesday nights.”
Earl took his wife’s hand. “That’s bullshit Pam and you know it. If any good can come of this, at least we may get some new neighbors.”
“Good riddance to you Earl,” Aubrey said as she stood up to face Earl and Pam. “For decades now we’ve had to listen to your anger and your bitterness. You’re an asshole Earl, and the whole cemetery knows it. So just shove off.”
Charles and I stood up, and then so did Richard. We formed a circle around Earl. Earl didn’t like this. “You know Richard,” Earl hissed, “I’ve heard that nobody here at the graveyard can give skull like Aubrey. Isn’t that right Aubrey baby? Her expertise is legendary around these parts. What do you think about that?”
Richard got in Earl’s face. “I’m only going to tell you this once, Earl. Don’t talk to us, don’t visit us, don’t think about us, and the next time you see me coming you’d better run.”
“I think it’s time for you to leave now Earl,” Charles added. “You are an angry, mean spirited ghost and you’re not welcome here in our company. So just slither off to your hole.”
“Oh yeah, what are you going to do if I don’t leave? Didja think about that? I’m dead, you moron!”
Charles looked bemused as he responded, “Well, let’s put it this way Earl. You are going back in your hole in about an hour whether you like it or not and you won’t be back for a whole week. I can think of a whole lot of things I would like to do to your grave. I can think of doing things that you won’t like. Got it?”
Earl was enraged to the point of speechlessness. Pam patted him on the back. “Let’s go dear. Let’s enjoy the time we have left. Look, it’s a full moon tonight! How nice! Let’s just go over to our grave site and sit for a while.”
And with that, they walked off in the direction of their grave sites, leaving me, Charles, Richard and Aubrey standing under the shade tree.
Charles, watching them leave, said, “Jesus Christ, that guy is ridiculous.”
Richard walked over to the trunk of the shade tree and leaned against it. “That guy’s always been a horse’s ass. And his wife is actually a very nice, gentle woman. And to think, she has to stay married to him even in the afterlife. Poor woman.”
Aubrey nodded. “She really is a good person. I just don’t understand how she ended up with that monster. She has told me some strange and horrible things about her husband when he wasn’t around.”
“Really?” Charles asked. “Like what?”
Aubrey lowered her voice to a whisper. “Well for one thing he was gay before he met her, and after they got married he wanted her to have gay sex with him.”
I was perplexed by this. “Huh?” I asked. “What does that mean? Like, how does that happen, you know, physically?”
“Well, Pam told me that while they were having normal sex, he had her push, you know, an artificial penis, a dildo, inside his bum.” Aubrey tittered at this.
Charles’ look of puzzlement disappeared and was replaced by a wide grin, and then he guffawed. “Can you imagine? A tight ass like him? Pun intended! HAHAHA!”
We all had a good laugh over that one.
“What else did she tell you, Aubrey?” I asked.
“Well, let’s see. Oh yeah, well, I guess this isn’t all that weird after that Brando movie came out, but another thing he liked in the bedroom was to lay down plastic sheets on the bed and have her let him pee on her.”
We all grew silent after hearing this. I knew I was trying to keep myself from visualizing what Aubrey had just told me.
Richard didn’t seem surprised by any of this. He had stories of his own about Earl.
“Earl’s a sick twist, I can tell you that,” Richard mentioned as he put his hands in his pockets. “You can’t imagine some of the things he told me about in private. Not just about his wife, but about things that he did in his life. He told me once that when he was a young man he came to the conclusion that the southern slave owners really did have a good thing going in the pre-civil war days, so he decided to get himself one.”
“One what?” Charles asked.
“A slave. He wanted to buy a slave for himself. He even went to the Philippines and tried to buy one. Told me he spent a week over there trying to buy a child but he was unsuccessful. He didn’t want the slave for sex, or anything like that, he wanted a slave to keep his house for him and wash his car, mow his yard, cook. Basically to do chores he didn’t like to do himself. This was before he got married and started treating Pam like a slave.”
Richard slumped his shoulders and looked down at the ground and slowly shook his head. “God, I just want out of here. Out of this place. Away from that maniac. Look, I don’t like Earl, but one of the many things that suck about being a corpse in a box is that you can’t choose your neighbors. However, I think I speak for both Aubrey and I when I say I can sympathize with his anger to a degree. I mean, you guys will find out soon enough, but this afterlife deal sucks pretty bad. And then on top of the overall disappointment of being dead, now we get the news that they are moving our corpses someplace that we have no idea about and no control over.”
“I can understand that,” I said. “I mean just having been in the clink I can sympathize about being angry, about not being in control of things, but still, that guy is a grade a asshole.”
“Hey Richard, what were you expecting to happen when you died? You mentioned feeling disappointed about the afterlife,” Charles asked.
Richard paused thinking for a moment. “Well Charles, when I was alive I believed in the philosophy of Materialism, basically Epicureanism. Do either of you know about Epicurus, the ancient greek philosopher? No? Well he believed that every single thing was made up of atoms, and that the atoms form things like humans and animals and trees and really the entire Universe. He thought humans should have no fear or anxiety about death. Individuals are just a collection of atoms joined momentarily in a human shape and will dissolve at one point and will then form a new shape. So, I naturally expected complete non-being upon my demise. Imagine my surprise, and yes, anger, when I woke up dead, living in this crappy cemetery, and only let out of the box for a couple hours a week. See my point? Not only do we not completely disappear when we die, we are also forced to go on and on like this. And to know that this crap goes on forever, for eternity…yeah, you could say that was a hard pill for me to swallow.”
Aubrey stroked Richard’s back and told us, “that’s why we say to you to enjoy your life knowing that whatever hardship and stress you experience while you’re alive, that’s all peanuts compared to what’s waiting for you on this side.”
Charles and I had just been standing there listening. I had a lot of thoughts rolling around my head. I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Richard and Aubrey seemed so, I don’t know, alive, I mean the kind of people who had visits from their grand kids and went to their little league games. They didn’t seem like people dead in a coffin, that’s for sure.
Aubrey looked over at Richard. “Well, shall we? It’s getting near the time…”
“Yeah, we should get back to the graves. Sorry Eddie and Charles, but we like to spend part of our times together on Tuesdays enjoying each other’s company before the void. It was great meeting you two.” Richard winked at us as he started walking away.
“Yes, very nice meeting you both. Sorry about that idiot Earl, not all of us ghosts are like that.” Aubrey said, adjusting her hair as she turned toward her grave.
And then he and Aubrey walked back to their graves and suddenly vanished into thin air.
Charles and I looked at each other in shock. “Wow. Wow bud, that was some strange shit Eddie. Really very strange indeed.”
“Wow is right Charles. I mean what just happened? Was that real? Is this some sort of dream, or joke or something?”
“I don’t know bud, but I’m a little bit shaken up by all this. I think I’m just going to head home now Eddie and think about this. I suggest you do the same.”
I looked over at Charles and he looked pale and old in the moonlight. “You OK Charles?” I asked him.
“I’m OK bud. I’ll be alright. You know, I’m closer to where those folks are than you are, you know, maybe hits me a little bit harder.”
As for myself, I wasn’t surprised by what I’d learned, about what we have to go through after we die. The way I figured it, we all end up in the clink, one way or another.