Last Rites at Dardanella

A story

by JOHN LINNEHAN

I WAS in the back yard polishing the pickup job when Mrs. Dean came to the door. “Where’s Pa?” she called.

“He was here a minute ago,” I said, knowing he wasn’t there now, but looking around the way you do. “Maybe in the chapel—”

“Tell him Rose Choukanna just stopped by. The old lady is passed on.”

“Who?”

“The old lady.”

“I know, I mean the name.”

“Choukanna.”

Behind the screen door Mrs. Dean had that photoplasmic look of a movie star filmed through cheesecloth. “They’re Saracens,” she said.

I found Mr. Dean dusting the Venetian blinds in the slumber room. “Rose Choukanna just called.”

Mr. Dean set the brush on the window sill and buttoned his collar. “The old lady?”

“Yes.”

“Well, well,” sighed Mr. Dean. “Another dogfight. Get that portable table out of the front closet.”

When I came back with the table, he was folding down his cuffs and linking them together. On a job Mr. Dean presented a becoming portliness, but in his shirt sleeves he was just another rumpled fat man.

“Awful superstitious people,” he complained. “Won’t let the body out of the house.”

“Then we won’t need the stretcher.”

I backed the pickup to the garage and loaded it. Mr. Dean got his panama and climbed in beside me, straddling a crated jug of embalming fluid.

“Let’s see—” he mused. “Better turn right.”

I headed toward the center of town and drove slowly along Main Street. It was too hot a day to be going out of our way like this, and I wrenched at the wheel and breathed audibly to show that I felt sorely put upon. Mr. Dean bobbed gravely at my side, acknowledging all greetings with a slow dip of hat brim to upraised finger.

Near the traffic circle he murmured, “Wait a minute now — is this the best way?”

“Not if you’re going to Willow Street.” I turned grimly down Craig Road, doubled back on Western Avenue, and swung south on Willow.

Mr. Dean chuckled. “Well, it don’t do no harm. It ain’t undignified. It’s just kind of an ad now, ain’t it? Shows ‘em we’re busy.” He nudged me. “Same way a new doc always hands out lots of prescriptions.”

I had to smile. “I’ll remember that,” I said.

The southern end of Willow Street was facetiously called Dardanella. Most of the Balkan races were represented, as well as a scattering from Asia Minor. They lived in big red-brick Georgian houses, dingy and bare-windowed now, and without much plumbing. Architecturally it was still the handsomest part of the town.

“What are these Choukannas anyway?” I asked.

“Oh, Lord!” said Mr. Dean. “Some kind of — take your next right — Syrians or Serberians or something.”

A long drive led up to Choukannas’. At one side of the house was a big, well-tended arbor of grapevines, strange under the elms. Beyond the barn I could see a slope of fruit trees. The front lawn was planted with cucumbers.

“Nice doorway,” said Mr. Dean.

It was a Mclntire doorway all jazzed up with purple paint and radiator gilt, but Mr. Dean meant that it would be easy to get a casket through.

Mr. Dean felt between the seats for his brief case and clambered out. “Now for the dogfight,” he said and went into the house, closing the door softly behind him.

2

I’D GOT the job through the Student Employment Council. It paid very well and a year at medical school had prepared me for the less pleasant features. In a way the work was interesting, but mostly it was carrying — lamps, biers, flower stands, rugs, chairs. Mostly chairs.

Before long, Mr. Dean came to the door and crooked a finger at me. “You can start bringing in the stuff.”

It was cool and shadowy in the hall. I rested the portable table and went quietly to an open door only to find some dozens of large, dark, liquid eyes turned upon me.

Men and women of all ages were ranked silently against the walls. Seated at a large table in the center of the room, Mr. Dean hauled folders and pamphlets and lists from his brief case, passing them out to half a dozen men with their hats over their eyes — apparently a committee of some sort.

One of them, a handsome, hook-nosed gentleman, glanced carelessly my way and turned back to Mr. Dean. “As for argument or recrimination of any sort whatsoever,” he said, “you may rest assured that no such unpleasant incidents shall occur.”

The encircling Boeotians looked upon the orator lovingly and murmured their admiration.

“If the various services which you shall perform be sincerely set forth in itemized order,” he continued, “you need have no grounds for trepidation concerning the remuneration.”

Mr. Dean dealt a fresh hand of pamphlets and stubbornly shook his head. “Maybe it ain’t very funeralistic,” he argued, “but this time I want it all down in black and white.”

He saw me standing at the door and pointed across the hall. “The departed is in there.”

A silent female looked up from her bedside vigil as I entered.

“Some things,” I said.

She rose and pushed me.

“Just some things!” I protested.

The woman backed away, moaning. I patted the portable table and smiled desperately.

She only moaned louder, and continued to moan as the assemblage came streaming across the hall. The women glared and the men panted in my face. All made awesome gestures.

The hook-nosed gentleman looked mildly around the door and inquired, “Everything all right?”

“I’m afraid I’ve disturbed this woman,” I pleaded. “I can’t seem to make her understand —”

“Not at all! Not at all, my dear fellow.”He flipped his hands disdainfully and the commoners crept from the room. Then he chucked the vigilante under the chin and laughed at her and kissed the part of her hair.

“I do not believe she will discommode you further,” he said, and patted my shoulder comfortingly.

I brought in the rest of the stuff, then unraveled the mystery of the portable table and set it up.

Mr. Dean didn’t look too happy when he joined me. “Unchristian thieves!” He scowled at the woman and jerked his thumb doorwards. To my amazement she rose meekly and left the room.

“Beset by robbers!” Mr. Dean nodded emphatically and tested the table. “Where’s my gloves?”

I was examining some faint blue scarifications on the old lady’s arms when the door swung open. It was the vigilante, grinning pathetically and bent double under a mountainous sack of salt. She heaved herself over the sill and staggered to Mr. Dean’s side. Mr. Dean turned her around and steered her out.

“Ain’t there no lock to the door?” he growled. There wasn’t. We could hear the woman panting outside. The door crashed back on its hinges and she was in again. “Take her out!” said Mr. Dean. But when I touched her she let the sack fall and closed her eyes and screamed.

“O glorify Thy name!” raged Mr. Dean. “Close that door and come here!”

It wasn’t any use. Choukannas came pounding in from the arbor. The woman dived into the crowd and dragged the hook-nosed gentleman to the fore. She screeched and kicked the bag of salt and spit at me and tore the front of her dress.

“Dear, dear,” said the hook-nosed gentleman. He touched a finger to his tongue and smoothed his eyebrows. “It seems that in the old country the method is to preserve in brine.”

Mr. Dean peeled off a glove and took a kick of his own at the salt. “Now what reputable embalmer ever had to listen to this disgustin’ stuff!”

“Oh, my dear Mr. Dean!” protested the hooknosed gentleman. “My good fellow! Such a display of temper is ill suited to the present occasion. I have explained it all to my auntie. She understands the incomparable superiority of your method to our crude ways.” And he kissed auntie’s ear and whispered into it and pinned up her dress. But she insisted on staying in the room with us.

“More of their heathenish superstitions,” grumbled Mr. Dean, but I noticed that he made a great flourishing mystery of the business for her benefit.

Auntie seemed to take Mr. Dean for granted, but she treated me with cold suspicion. Once when I went for hot water she rose dramatically, relieved me of the kettle, and made to pour it out the window.

“But it’s nothing!” Placatingly I fanned my hands at her. “Nothing. Only a shampoo.”

“Sure.” Mr. Dean looked up from the cosmetic case and revolved a finger over his head. " Wash the hair!” he shouted.

Auntie glowered and sat down.

“Funny people,” mused Mr. Dean. “Don’t like you to fix ‘em up too much.”

We dressed the old lady and went in search of the hook-nosed gentleman. He was in the arbor, swinging a jump rope with a couple of wiry little girls.

“If you’re ready to make the selection now?” Mr. Dean suggested.

“To be sure,” said the hook-nosed gentleman. “ What selection ? ”

“The casket.”

“Oh, yes! Precisely. Shall we go in my car?”

“O.K.,” said Mr. Dean. “Where’s the cemetery deed?”

The hook-nosed gentleman shrugged and wandered off. He was back in a minute with the committee at his heels. “Rose had it. She thinks she left it with Mrs. Dean.”

The Committee began crowding into the hooknosed gentleman’s car. Mr. Dean turned to me.

“Pick up a load of chairs and get the deed. We can stop by the cemetery on the way home.”

I backed the pickup job to the road and pulled over, giving the hook-nosed gentleman the rightof-way. He stooped, and waved courteously across Mr. Dean’s stomach as he rocketed by. His was a very expensive car of the latest model, but already it had that broken-spring look that seems to go with Minor Asiatic driving.

3

MRS. DEAN was one of those who keep their homes hermetically sealed in the summer. “In here,” she called from the parlor as I entered the back door. Loading chairs was hot work. I could feel perspiration start between my shoulders as I crossed the hall.

Mrs. Dean patted her complicated lavender curls and smiled. “Nice and cool in here,” she said.

“Mr. Dean would like the cemetery deed,” I said.

“Oh, yes!” Her eyes sparkled, she glanced vivaciously from one unlikely repository to another. Hers was the loveliest, most cameo-like profile I have ever seen. Concentrating, she dabbed at her brows and held her dress daintily away from her bosom. “Cemetery deed,” she murmured.

I finally found it on the mantel, propped against an easel-framed, hand-colored enlargement of Mr. Dean. “Here it is,” I said.

Mrs. Dean glanced up from her magazine. “Those darn cemetery deeds,” she said and laughed lightly.

At the Choukannas’ I would have brought the chairs to the house but the hook-nosed gentleman stayed me. “Out here,” he said, indicating the arbor. “So much nicer.” He teetered on his heels and smiled.

I opened bundle after bundle of chairs and set them in circles under the vines — the heavy oak chairs reserved for excitable races. And where each circle was, there sprouted a little tabouret complete with glasses and wine bottle and six Choukannas. It was twilight when I had finished.

The hook-nosed gentleman took my sleeve and, half tug, half appraisal, “Come with me,” he said. He led me to a primitive bathroom, pointed out a towel, and sat on the edge of an ornate cast-iron tub while I pumped water into the bowl and washed.

“I once worked much with undertakers,” said the hook-nosed gentleman. He laughed tolerantly and shook his head. “In Pillsbury. You know that pesthole? Yes.”

I rinsed the soap from my face and smiled. “You enjoyed the work?”

“Ennobling!” He laughed again. “Through it I laid the foundation of my modest fortune.”

“That’s nice.”

“Yes. I was a florist. I sold the good people pickled roses at exorbitant profit. Such wiring! Each individual petal was wired, believe me! I was a master at getting the beautiful cut-price floral tributes into the house before they fell apart. Ah, well — ”

He sighed for the good old days, then stuck his head under the tub faucet and pulled the pump handle. He came up gasping, with his hair in his eyes and the fixative in little daubs on his face.

“Do you know why I do that?” I admitted my ignorance. “Because I am drunk,” he said. But as we walked to the arbor, “No one,” he added, “no one would ever know it. I defy anyone! Only me.”

We sat in the cool of the arbor drinking wine and eating little fat-fried cakes studded with onions. Mr. Dean was at the door talking to some of the late arrivals, his white crest bobbing as he made notes on the carriage list. His Palm Beach suit was pink in the sunset and his stomach holy with halation.

“A most impressive person,” said the hook-nosed gentleman. “And Mrs. Dean —!” He raised his glass and made a wonderfully evil noise with his lips.

I was sampling a platter of grape leaves smeared with raw spiced hamburger when Mr. Dean joined us. A jovial neighbor rose to press a glass on him but the hook-nosed gentleman would not permit it.

“Not that!” he piously exclaimed. “A glass of claret, yes,” touching his own bottle, “but not that. Not for Mr. Dean.”

“What’s the matter with it?” Mr. Dean divided his horror between the platter and the proffered glass. “What’s the feller tryin’ to give me?”

“My countrymen,” said the hook-nosed gentleman. “Such a depraved people. If you can imagine polluting good wine with resin —

“Oh, sure,” said Mr. Dean. Seating himself, he whispered, “What’s he talkin’ about?”

“ Rosin.”

Mr. Dean raised his glass and his eyebrows, making the little mouth that signified Oh. “Just the same,” whispered Mr. Dean, “he speaks it pretty good for a foreigner.”

During the next two days I made many trips to Dardanella, answering garbled appeals for more chairs or flower stands. By this time there must have been close to a hundred people camped around the house. Whole families, young and old; and myriads of lovely girls; and the arbor sounding like a Well Baby Clinic gone for an airing on the roller coaster.

Flowers had overflowed the parlor into the hall. New positions for stands were decided upon by the hook-nosed gentleman. And each new offering underwent a professional examination — though, as he remarked, he “had little time for the shop now,” implying a background of more lucrative interests.

But it was heart-warming the way his face lighted up when he spotted a wreath of the pickled variety. He dug among the ferns, smiling like a Byzantine cherub, and held the card for me to see. “Uncle Hakim!” he crowed. “Uncle Hakim got stung!”

And I could never resist the invitations pressed upon me by the bereaved to join them in a brandy or a mint-caked basin of salad or a scoop of pilaf. This despite Mrs. Dean’s solemn warning that Dardanella was one stark festering lazaretto. It was probably the sight of food unmarred by any rash of paprika that made me daring.

4

AT seven o’clock of the funeral Sunday the thermometer stood at eighty-eight. I went down the stairs through a solid bank of heat blued with a fog of beef drippings. Mrs. Dean heard me start for the hall closet and called, “I got ‘em.”

“The gloves?”

“Uh-huh.”

In the parlor I glanced at the headlines and bowed to the announcement that it was a nice and cool room. Mr. Dean came down, apoplectic in stiff shirt and black cutaway.

“It’s nice and cool in here, Pa,” Mrs. Dean pointed out, “but I think you’re crazy to wear them hot clothes in the sun.”

“People expect it. Part of the job.” Mr. Dean looked miserable. “Let’s go.”

The Choukannas were very grave and quiet when we drove in. I parked the pickup near the barn to leave the driveway free for the hearse and cars.

Inside, a wilted young divine in a pink soutane circled the casket dipping a pestle in a silver bowl and strewing water impartially over the quick and the dead. Six men of varying ages stood grouped at the head of the casket. I handed each a pair of gloves. They received them in a stunned embarrassment that was not unusual.

The ranks of Choukannas swayed from one foot to the other and the women wept behind their veils as Mr. Dean raised the sides of the half-couch and began lowering the lid.

“Now if the pallbearers will take their places?” he called.

The hook-nosed gentleman summoned five shuffling mutes to his side and herded them forward.

“Where are your gloves?” said Mr. Dean. The mutes looked at one another and the hook-nosed gentleman tartly inquired if that were not Mr. Dean’s responsibility.

I joined the party reluctantly. “I’m afraid I’ve given them to the wrong people,” I confessed. What people? Where were they? I didn’t know.

Mr. Dean took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “What have you done?” he groaned. “These people won’t touch a casket with their bare hands!” The pallbearers nodded vigorously and the hook-nosed gentleman said, “Oh, fine!”

A large man in blue serge shambled out of the crowd. He had the gloves bunched limply in one hand like a boy forced to carry flowers through the public streets. Then followed a disjointed attempt at explanation which involved much pointing at his companions, but each time Mr. Dean would seize the hand and pump it affectionately.

“I thought he was wrong,” said the man, smiling at me with rare good-fellowship. “We’re only the delegation from the bowling club.”

Mr. Dean kept the pallbearers together long enough to get the casket into the hearse. Then the hearse rolled down the driveway and pulled up across the street.

The family car drew up to the steps. Choukannas swarmed over it, tugging at the doors and shouting for precedence.

“Family!” howled Mr. Dean. “Only family!”

“Sure!” screamed the baffled Choukannas. “Family!” Some of the men turned on Mr. Dean, swinging their shoulders belligerently

The hook-nosed gentleman restored order with an upraised hand. He took the carriage list from Mr. Dean.

“Uncle Hakim?”

A thin, swarthy man in mauve trousers and a Prince Albert led forth his lady.

“No,” said the hook-nosed gentleman. “Not Hanum Anya. Just family.”

Uncle Hakim looked stolidly at Hanum Anya, touched the back of his hand to her neck, and nodded. A child promptly burst into tears and clutched Hanum Anya’s skirts.

The hook-nosed gentleman leaned his elbow against the limousine and rested his head in the crook of his arm. “Family,” he murmured. “ Grandmama’s own sons and daughters. Aunt Iskuhi, Uncle Rifaat, Uncle Sarkis —”

The Choukannas muttered darkly against this injustice.

“Sure!” Mr. Dean retrieved the carriage list and waved it. “You’re Hakim Choukanna, ain’t you?”

Uncle Hakim batted his eyes doubtfully.

Mr. Dean opened the limousine door invitingly. “Just family,” he urged.

Uncle Hakim clucked his tongue and turned away.

“I told you it wouldn’t work,” groaned the hooknosed gentleman.

A nobly mustached zealot began elbowing a passage in the crowd. Uncle Hakim grabbed his Anya by the wrist and herded his brood before him through the breach. They ran across the drive and scrambled into the second limousine, which was parked in the barnyard.

The children rolled down the windows and crowed derisively at Mr. Dean. They tipped the protesting chauffeur’s cap over his eyes and threw jelly beans at the hook-nosed gentleman. Amid this bedlam, Uncle Hakim and Hanum Anya preserved a regal dignity.

“So that’s the way you want it!” roared Mr. Dean. He tore the carriage list across and across. “Well, that’s the way you’ll get it!” He nodded grimly and marched off toward the hearse.

The hook-nosed gentleman gave over his vain pleading. He assisted the young divine into the limousine and slowly climbed in after him. A brisk salute of jelly beans spattered around me as the second limousine fell into line. The last of the hired cars went by empty, the driver’s eye dubious as he glanced my way.

Meanwhile the Choukannas had marched across the lawns and clambered into their private cars. Clashing and clattering, raising a fierce dust, they lit out after the hearse; every make and model, bumpers awry, windows taped, and all jammed tight with mourners.

A venerable Stearns Knight rattled past. The gaffer at the wheel made a remark about my light coloring to the dark-eyed girls in the tonneau. They laughed and waved, and were gone.

Lastly the hook-nosed gentleman’s sedan, with mudguards scraping the wheels and a youth in the driver’s seat who didn’t look as if he could be trusted with a pair of scissors.

When the cavalcade had passed from sight, I brought the pickup to the door and went inside. I took it easy. They’d be half an hour getting to the church, the service lasted an hour, and another half hour from church to cemetery.

First I cleared the parlor of flowers, packing them in the pickup. Then I cased the stands, folded the bier, rolled up the lamps in the rug, dismantled the prie-dieu and the candlesticks, and stacked everything on the porch.

When I went out to tackle the hall a hovering voice said, “Gone?” Halfway up the stairs sat an old man in a suit of Shantung silk. He was sipping moodily at a glass of strawberry soda.

“Yes, all gone,” I said.

He frowned and set the glass aside. “Raki,” he said, tapping his stomach. “Oh, raki-raki-raki.” He pressed his hands to his ears and held his breath. “Look.” His face grew alarmingly red; he moved his tensed hands slowly outward and then jerked them violently to indicate the bursting of his head.

“That’s right,” I laughed, and on each return nodded knowingly until all the flowers were loaded.

He came to the foot of the stairs and watched as I cased the remaining stands, followed as I returned to the parlor and began sweeping up. Finally he wandered off to the dining room.

After I had replaced the furniture I got my hat and went to the dining-room door. The old man was seated at the table turning the pages of a comic book. He’d refreshed his glass and provided himself with a plate of cakes frosted with methylene blue.

When he saw me he politely extended the plate and murmured, “Berazik?”

I declined and countered with the suggestion that he might like to accompany me.

“Go?”

I nodded. “To the cemetery.”

He raised a hand in delicate refusal and lowered his eyes to the adventures of Toluene, the Torpedo Girl.

5

I WAS in the arbor enjoying a quiet smoke when the cars returned. One limousine had been placed at the disposal of the officiating priests at the committal. The other two looked awfully empty.

Mr. Dean got out of the front seat of the first one and waved it on. I trotted off to drive the pickup to the house. The limousine circled up through the barnyard and headed back. “Old man’s pretty mad,” said the chauffeur as he passed me.

The second limousine deposited the hook-nosed gentleman on the doorstep and then the two rolled down the drive squeezing past the incoming cars.

I pulled up to the steps and opened the door for Air. Dean. He shook his head. The men who had sat at table with him that first day were grouped in the doorway. The hook-nosed gentleman seemed upset but the others smiled openly.

“Wait,” said Mr. Dean. The committee opened a path for him, gathering him into the house, and I waited.

Cars were still arriving. The Choukannas ran them into the barnyard, parking anywhere, and straggled off to the arbor listless with weeping.

For some time they sprawled in their chairs staring moodily through the vine leaves at the sky. Then a youngster went to the house, to reappear walking carefully with a trayload of glasses and wine and a bottle of orange soda. The Choukannas shifted in their chairs and looked about. Some women rose and made their way to the kitchen. The men began feeling their pockets for tobacco. It wasn’t long before the children were laughing and running and wine flowed again in the cool arbor.

My status, I could see, was under question. The wine-bearers avoided me, and none of the mourners rattled an empty chair. The sun poured down on the pickup and I sat at the wheel baking conspicuously. Pretending to blow my nose, I would wipe off what sweat I could; an unconcerned death’shead.

It was noon before Mr. Dean came out, hot and disheveled, and I could tell from the bland smiles of the committee that he had lost. But his calmness surprised me.

“We’re all straight now?” he asked.

Uncle Hakim snickered and held up the bill. The item of hired limousines had been penned over.

“All satisfied?” Mr. Dean persisted. “No more complaints?”

The committeemen shifted their feet warily and sought one another’s eyes.

“O.K.,” said Mr. Dean. He stepped triumphantly to the drive and beckoned me forth,

“Sack them chairs!”

The committee screamed as one man. Monday, . Mr. Dean! Monday was day for get chairs, not Sunday! Chairs must stay!

“Oh, yuh?” Mr. Dean hooked a portentous finger in Uncle Hakim’s Prince Albert. “Show me on the paper. Show me in black and white!”

“But — the feast!” wailed Uncle Hakim. “Our big feast! Where we sit?”

“Ah-ha!” Mr. Dean smacked his hands together and beamed vindictively. “Sit on the grass!” he roared. “ Go sit on your grass, you thieving infidels!” And he waved me to work.

I pulled the sacks from the back of the pickup, dumping them deliberately in small lots on the grass, hoping for a reprieve — but none came. Sack in hand, I approached the nearest table.

I couldn’t make them understand. They were a middle-aged couple sitting quietly with their children and they spoke no English. The oldest child, a boy of twelve, translated. His parents answered mildly but they looked concerned.

“ We don’t — ” The boy paused as his father added something else, and nodded. “Why should the undertaker want the chairs?”

I misunderstood. I couldn’t tell them Mr. Dean wanted the chairs because he felt he had been cheated, and I stammered around trying to find a plausible excuse for the action. I missed their meaning completely. They thought the chairs had been hired from one of the companies in that business. They could not connect the chairs with Mr. Dean.

As usual it was the hook-nosed gentleman who came to the rescue. He spoke to the people at the table, pointing to Mr. Dean and me, shrugging scornfully when he had finished. The couple spoke to their children and rose, explaining to me through the boy how sorry they were for their mistake. I didn’t know what to say.

“I told that ass his carriage list was contrary to our customs but oh, no — he knew best.” The hook-nosed gentleman laid his fingers gingerly across his forehead. “I told him last Thursday — you were there, you heard me — that I’d be responsible for the bill. Wasn’t that enough? What the devil, did he expect me to post a bond? I’d have sent him a check for the limousine.”

I held the chairs balanced against my knee while I wrestled them into the sack. It’s a clumsy job for one man.

“Why didn’t you tell him again?”

“With the uncles there?” The hook-nosed gentleman smiled pityingly at my innocence. “They’d have left me holding the bag on the whole funeral.”

There were ninety-six chairs spread around that arbor; sixteen sacks; the heavy oak chairs.

“I could tell him now,” I suggested.

“Perish the thought,” said the hook-nosed gentleman. “We can sit on peach baskets.”

I sacked the chairs. Mr. Dean stood by the pickup and watched as I loaded, elaborately checking off each sack. He was making the most of his triumph, but my part in it made me angry. Once, upending a sack to buckle it, I lost control and all the chairs slid out. It made a sickening clatter in that silence. By then I was too hot and tired to care.

And yet I couldn’t help damning the uncles and Mr. Dean, and wishing that the rest of the Choukannas knew how I felt about it. The trouble was I’d had a good time at Dardanella. A summer job in a small town is never much fun for a stranger, but if you’re working for an undertaker you’re doomed to a lot of loneliness. The funeral at Choukannas’ had been like a vacation to me.

On the ride home Mr. Dean didn’t have much to say. He did some crowing; not much though, and not too happily. Taking the chairs had disrupted the feast but he’d rather have had the eight dollars.

“I ought to be getting used to it,” he sighed. “They pull it every time.”

“Then why didn’t you fix the carriage list the way they wanted it?” I said.

“What are you talkin’ about?” snorted Mr. Dean. “With only three limousines? And all them relations?”

Mrs. Dean waved gayly from the kitchen window as we drove in.

“Soup’s on!” she called.

“Get this stuff unloaded,” said Mr. Dean. “Then come in and get your dinner.” He stamped off.

By the time I’d finished unloading I wasn’t interested in any dinner. It’s the only time I can remember that I ever sweated through my shoes. I was soaked.

Near the house I could hear Mrs. Dean talking. “I’d a done!” she screeched. “I’d a done! I’d a swore out a warrant on ‘em, that’s what I’d a done!”

I sneaked past the dining room and went upstairs. I took a shower, then put in the plug, let the tub fill, and stretched out in the water.

Lying there I thought about school and how it would be a pleasant novelty to go back just once without having to worry about money for a while. But I couldn’t kid myself. I kept wondering about the Choukannas; the kids, the dark-eyed girls, my date with one of them, which probably wouldn’t be kept now, after what happened; the hook-nosed gentleman, Uncle Hakim and the vigilante, and the old man with the hangover. I kept worrying over the feast, and wondering how they made out with the peach baskets.