Jasper C. Graf was far and away the best mortician we ever had in our town. At the time this all happened about the Arab woman and the uranium hunter, we had two, but he was far and away the best.<\/p>\n
If you live in a big town maybe you never think of morticians, or at least maybe you never think of one of them as better than any of the others. But in a little town like ours, it\u2019s different. When you only have two, the difference is bound to come out. Like I say, it\u2019s probably something peculiar to little towns, or maybe to little towns out west, where our town is, where there isn\u2019t an awful lot to take your mind off your life or your job or your wife. You know how it is? People out west are interested in morticians as a rule, I think.<\/p>\n
And Jasper C. Graf was a fine mortician. There\u2019s more to it, you know, than just the embalming or the services: A man can make a good living in a town if he\u2019s good at those things, of course, and if he knows how to sell the more expensive caskets, but that isn\u2019t what I mean when I say Jasper C. Graf was a fine mortician. It\u2019s more difficult for a mortician to be a part of the town, a real part, you know. What I mean is, he sort of stands off to one side, or at least people put him off to one side; and if he\u2019s an ordinary man, that\u2019s where it ends, like with a preacher. But Jasper C. Graf was just about as pleasant a fellow as you ever saw. He only had one enemy that I ever heard of in our town, and that was Howie Loveless, the other mortician. Howie kept all that talk about the Arab woman going; and as our coroner, he got all mixed up in the other business too.<\/p>\n
You could always feel a depth of something in Jasper C. that you couldn\u2019t feel in many men. You always felt like whatever he said or whatever he did, you were just hearing or seeing the ripples on the surface: The movement, the thing that was really happening, was deep down inside somewhere, like when a sunken tree will shift in a river, underwater, unseen, making a bulge, a ridge where the water meets the light and air.<\/p>\n
And Jasper C. Graf was such a big man, with such style to him, such a commanding man, that you always felt you were looking at somebody you knew was famous; but right that minute you couldn\u2019t remember exactly what it was he was famous for: straight and tall and above six feet, with a very thin grin crease around the corners of his mouth, as though someone was looking at him and he had to behave just so. He had a great depth to him.<\/p>\n
Now, Howie Loveless was about as depthless a man as you ever came across. You could wade around in him all day and never even get your shoes wet. He was little, and he had a bad limp that nobody ever knew the straight facts about, and he was a hypocrite and a bad mortician. I mean, really a bad mortician: His people all looked the same when he got through with them; everybody always said so, and I heard Mrs. Angelovic say at her husband\u2019s funeral in Howie\u2019s place that he looked just fine but it didn\u2019t look like him. If you\u2019d been to one of Howie\u2019s funerals, you\u2019d been to them all. He \u2014 well, the details are pretty bad, but the fact was he was careless. He just pumped everybody full of fluid until no more would go in and of course you can\u2019t do it that way: It makes for round faces on everybody. And a hypocrite: He was married and had three dark little children just like himself, but he used to sneak off to Big Mary\u2019s place all the time. That\u2019s the kind of mortician Howie Loveless was. I used to be scared to death I\u2019d get killed somehow or other while he was coroner.<\/p>\n
Because, of course, whoever is coroner has first chance at the accidentals. Or should have. The fact was, Jasper C. Graf\u2019s ambulance usually got there first, because he had such a good driver, Fat Jim. Fat Jim just worshiped Jasper C. He never said so but you could tell it, the way he followed him around and was always on call twenty-four hours a day, even though he was supposed to be the photographer on the paper. He used to get some wonderful accident pictures that way, and once Howie accused him at a coroner\u2019s inquest of moving a fellow\u2019s body in a car so it would make a better picture. It was just that Jasper C. Graf and Fat Jim paid more attention to their business, took it more seriously than Howie did. They were professionals; and Howie, in spite of his diploma from the school in San Francisco, wasn\u2019t, somehow. He was too much like everybody else and, of course, most of us are amateurs, as long as we live. You have to give yourself up pretty thoroughly to anything if you want to become professional at it, and most of us won\u2019t do it; we\u2019d rather please ourselves.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the way it was with Howie, if you want to be charitable. All he wanted was to make a living and enjoy himself, and at every turn he ran smack into those two professionals. It grated on Howie.<\/p>\n
\u201cDamn it,\u201d he said to me on the street one day before all the trouble, \u201cwhy don\u2019t them two relax for a while?\u201d<\/p>\n
That was another thing: Jasper C. Graf never swore. And Fat Jim, why he never even smoked or drank or anything. You could tell Jasper C. just didn\u2019t think it was fitting, but that was the kind of thing that was lost on Howie. Still, he was an easygoing fellow, content with the leftovers, like the runt of the litter always is, but he knew people expected him to be upset every time Fat Jim beat him to a case on the highway and so he acted upset. And I think it might have gone on that way for years, maybe forever, if it hadn\u2019t been for the uranium hunter.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what we thought he was at first. He came in on the 4 a.m. train from Denver. We don\u2019t get any tourists in our town, except a few buying gas over on the highway, so somebody noticed him right away, and they told somebody else and then everybody heard he was in the hardware store buying a scintillometer.<\/p>\n
Well, we all went up there, because we\u2019d never heard of anything like that. Out in our part of the country, people from town and a few ranchers are our only uranium hunters. They don\u2019t find much, and outsiders aren\u2019t attracted to it. And now here was this skinny little man standing in the store and reading out a long list in a whiny voice, laughing every once in a while.<\/p>\n
There must have been 20 of us in there watching, and not one of us could believe it.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy God,\u201d somebody near me said, \u201cthat fellow\u2019s crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just said he didn\u2019t need no compass,\u201d somebody else said. \u201cDid you hear that? They tried to sell him a compass, a azimuth compass, and he said he didn\u2019t need one.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was the skinniest little man, with a skinny voice and a skinny laugh, and his clothes were all wrong. They\u2019d started out right, somewhere, in some war-surplus or Army and Navy store in Denver, maybe, but now they were all wrong. He had on a pair of jeans, but they looked like they were made out of blue plastic, they were so thickly new and shiny \u2014 the copper rivets glittered in points in the store. And the back of his canvas hunting jacket had a fold in it so deep it looked like the two halves had not yet been stitched together but hung there on each shoulder, the edges lapped together waiting for the needle. The seams where the sleeves joined the jacket were outlined with white tacking thread, and the stitching around the soles of his jack boots was fresh and clean and glaring.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe must\u2019ve put all that on in the train,\u201d somebody said, and we turned and went out the door and across the street to the town\u2019s bar. I could see that little man in the tiny toilet room on the chair car, struggling silently into those clothes while the sweat burst out on his forehead and back and chest, struggling into the stiff, unwieldy clothes behind the locked door of the room no bigger than a telephone booth.<\/p>\n
We all had a drink without anybody saying anything for a minute.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere the hell,\u201d somebody finally said, \u201cdid that fellow ever get such a damn-fool idea as that? Can anybody here tell me that? I don\u2019t want to hear another damn thing but that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI tell you he\u2019s crazy,\u201d Bye Jenkins said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat about the railroad?\u201d somebody said. \u201cYou think the railroad ain\u2019t crazy for selling him a ticket?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, what beats me,\u201d Bye said, \u201cis his color. I wouldn\u2019t worry about it if he was some damn fool from Denver. But he\u2019s so pale-looking. I bet the fellow\u2019s a tourist.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was what upset us, of course, As I say, there aren\u2019t any tourists in our town, I don\u2019t know why, and this fellow arriving on the four a.m. train to hunt uranium was impossible, strange, unnatural. We don\u2019t dislike tourists as tourists: That wasn\u2019t it at all.<\/p>\n
We sat there talking about it and thinking and worrying about it, and I was thinking I\u2019d ask Jasper C. Graf what he thought about it when next I saw him, when all of a sudden Charley Harper the druggist came running in.<\/p>\n
\u201cHave you seen her?\u201d he said, hanging onto the bar and staring at us with his mouth twitching at one corner the way it always does. \u201cHave any of you seen her?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHer?\u201d Bye Jenkins said. \u201cYou mean him? The little tourist over at the hardware store?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d Harper said. He drank down a whole glass of beer and took out his handkerchief to wipe his mouth. \u201cThe Arab woman,\u201d he said. \u201cI just seen Jasper C. Graf going around the corner in his Cadillac, and there was a Arab woman in a white sheet sitting next to him,\u201d he said, and a big bubble of gas burst in his throat before he could say any more, and we just sat, looking at him.<\/p>\n
I went up to see Jasper C. Graf right after Charley Harper told us that. He was sitting in the mortuary office, just sitting in his big leather chair with his legs crossed so neatly for a big man, smoking a cigar and looking at the wall.<\/p>\n
\u201cSam,\u201d he said, and motioned me to take a chair.<\/p>\n
I did, and just sat looking at him for a minute. I wasn\u2019t thinking about how I was going to ask him about the Arab woman: Jasper C. wasn\u2019t the sort of man you asked a question like that. You asked his advice, but you didn\u2019t ask him anything personal. No, I was thinking about that tourist fellow, and I thought, now why should Jasper C. Graf even care about such a thing? He goes away to conventions; he knows more about the country than the rest of us. Probably it won\u2019t concern him at all, I thought.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe darnedest thing has happened,\u201d I said. I started to say, \u201cYou won\u2019t believe it,\u201d but I knew he would believe it, because it struck me that back over south, where he came from, they must be used to such unusual things.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d he said, looking at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a fellow getting ready to go uranium hunting,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
Jasper C. just kept looking at me for a minute, and then he looked down at his desk and picked up a nail file he kept there and started cleaning his nails, although there wasn\u2019t a speck of dirt under them I could see.<\/p>\n
\u201cKind of late in the year, isn\u2019t it?\u201d he said, looking at his nails.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sure is,\u201d I said. \u201cThey had thirty-two degrees at the post office yesterday morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOut-of-town fellow?\u201d Jasper C. said, and I nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not from around here,\u201d I said. \u201cHis clothes are all brand new and he\u2019s not from out west.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou fellows try to stop him?\u201d Jasper C. said, still watching the nail file go along under his nails.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cHe\u2019s not the sort of fellow you can say something like that to, I guess. He\u2019s a skinny little tourist fellow with a city kind of a laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jasper C. stopped moving the nail file, and a bright little bubble of red appeared at the tip of his little finger, where the file was.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow look at that,\u201d I said. \u201cYou\u2019ve dug into yourself with that thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jasper C. Graf was always going to conventions. In that business you have to keep up with the latest, I guess, and you have to make yourself known to other morticians from around the country so that when they have a person to ship to our town for burial, you know. That way you can be put in charge of local arrangements. Howie Loveless used to say Jasper C. went to those conventions just to \u201cget a workout,\u201d because Howie never went to any conventions and that\u2019s what he called going down to Big Mary\u2019s, \u201cgetting a workout.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe pussyfoots around here and then goes off to those conventions and has himself a big fat time,\u201d Howie used to say. \u201cHe gets on that big Pullman and sleeps all the way back out here, and butter wouldn\u2019t melt in his mouth. That\u2019s the kind of a man I just can\u2019t stand.\u201d<\/p>\n
But that was all a lie, of course, just Howie\u2019s jealousy. Jasper C. Graf didn\u2019t fool around with women like that. It seemed he just didn\u2019t need to or something \u2014 he was busy looking at whatever it was that was down inside of him, I always thought.<\/p>\n
But thinking like he did, Howie Loveless started talking up that Arab woman business as soon as he heard about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy, sure,\u201d he said. \u201cHe brought her back with him from that convention in San Francisco. They got any kind of woman you can think of out there. I bet he give her a big bunch of money to come back here with him, and now he\u2019ll hide her out and act like nothing was going on at all and laugh at us. That\u2019s just the kind of a fellow he is, that\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut why?\u201d Bye Jenkins wanted to know. \u201cWhy\u2019d he bring back a Arab woman? It just don\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy, sure it does,\u201d Howie said, and his eyes got beady and he looked back over his shoulder, to see if his wife was coming up to the corner, I guess. \u201cIt\u2019d be different, wouldn\u2019t it? I wouldn\u2019t mind a Arab myself. Come on,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019ll show you something,\u201d and he took us across the street into the depot and pointed at the wall. \u201cLook at there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
There was a big poster on the wall next to the one of the Western Union boy coming up to the door with the message for Mother, and it showed a dark-skinned woman in a big white veil looking away off somewhere. She had a white cloth draped over her head too, so all you saw was her eyes, as big as Jordan almonds and black as night. Back in the distance was some kind of a little town, and down below in big letters it said, ALG\u00c9RIE, PAYS DE LUMI\u00c8RE.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I\u2019ll be damned,\u201d said Bye.<\/p>\n
It was a new poster. \u201cNow that,\u201d said Howie, \u201cis a Arab woman.\u201d<\/p>\n
You couldn\u2019t argue with him: The face on the poster had the most female-looking eyes I\u2019ve ever seen, and you wanted to see the rest of her, but of course you couldn\u2019t, because of the robe and veil, and that just made you that much surer that what was under there was a beautiful woman, like one you\u2019d never seen in your life before.<\/p>\n
We were just standing there looking and not saying anything, when I\u2019ll be darned if Charley Harper didn\u2019t come loping into the depot all lathered up and puffing.<\/p>\n
He grabbed Bye Jenkins by the arm and shook him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just saw all three of them,\u201d he said. \u201cThey went around the corner just when I came out of the store.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d Bye said, and he pulled his arm away. \u201cWhat the hell\u2019s the matter with you, Charley?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tourist and the Arab woman,\u201d Charley said, looking around at us. \u201cThey were sitting on the seat right next to Jasper C. Graf, and the tourist was laughing with his head throwed back. I could see his teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n
We all looked at Bye. He\u2019s an old man and he has quite a story behind him, and we all looked at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was Jasper C. doing?\u201d Bye said to Charley.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing,\u201d Charley said. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t doing nothing but driving the car and looking straight ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bye looked around at us but nobody said anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, damn it,\u201d he said to Charley, \u201cwas he<\/i> laughing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d Charley said. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t laughing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tourist walked out of town the next morning, in plain sight of everybody, walking straight and unswerving toward some point on the horizon the rest of us couldn\u2019t see, climbing the first hill and disappearing into the desert.<\/p>\n
That was about nine o\u2019clock. There was a stiff northwest wind blowing, and you could feel snow coming, and every once in a while a tumbleweed would appear around the corner from nowhere and go rolling and bumping across the street and out of sight.<\/p>\n
Everybody was in the bar.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll tell you what it is,\u201d Bye Jenkins was saying as I walked in. \u201cIt\u2019s thoughtless, just plain thoughtless.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bye is an old, old man, and his story reaches clear back to the Wild Gang, and the Brown\u2019s Park crowd, to Butch Cassidy and a lot of those other fellows. They were outlaws, and Bye started riding with them when he was fourteen, back in the \u201890\u2019s. He\u2019s the only one that didn\u2019t get hanged or shot, I guess, and they say he killed a lot of men: You can find stories about him in the old copies of the paper, they say, but nobody ever bothers to look them up. If we have a first citizen, I guess Bye\u2019s it.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere it\u2019s going to snow,\u201d Bye was saying, \u201cand that fellow just walks off out there into the brush like he knowed what he was doing and where he was going, and none of you even asked him where he was headed or if he even knew himself where he was headed. Now, how\u2019re we ever going to find him?\u201d<\/p>\n
Because Bye knew that: We\u2019d have to go out and find him. We knew he wasn\u2019t going to come walking back, because his clothes were so new and because he was different. Can you understand that? It\u2019s not that you have<\/i> to look a certain way to handle this country: That\u2019s the mistake dudes always make. It\u2019s just that if you\u2019ve learned this country, you look a certain way; learning it gives you that look of belonging to it, the look the tourist didn\u2019t have.<\/p>\n
So we knew we\u2019d have to go and find him, and most of the fellows got pretty mad about it: The whole thing was so crazy. Me, I didn\u2019t mind: I wanted to see him again, maybe to find out what it was that had moved him out here into our town, an alien in the rock and brush and wind.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou might as well all go home and get ready,\u201d Bye said. \u201cIf we start this afternoon, he won\u2019t have such a head start on us,\u201d telling us to start now to save the man who\u2019d just left town, because Bye was that certain of the fellow\u2019s mistake.<\/p>\n
And then Howie Loveless came limping in the door all rigged up like he was going on a hunting trip: boots, Mackinaw and hunting knife, and a big water bag slung over his shoulder, and so mad I thought he\u2019d start crying any minute.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, listen!\u201d he said. \u201cI want you all to be witnesses that I said it and by God I\u2019ll make it stick. I\u2019m telling you, there ain\u2019t nobody to move that body when it\u2019s found until I get there and declare it dead, you hear me? I\u2019ve had just about enough of this, now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHold on,\u201d Bye said. \u201cYou ain\u2019t neither one of you got him yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, I tell you, it\u2019s me that\u2019s coroner,\u201d Howie said, and he cut a big glare around at everybody.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Howie,\u201d I said, \u201cJasper C. doesn\u2019t even know about it yet. We haven\u2019t told him yet.\u201d And I thought: And you don\u2019t know about it yet, either, not really; so what makes you so sure?<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, no?\u201d Howie said. \u201cOh, no? Well, how\u2019d you like it if I told you I just seen Jasper C. Graf and that fat boy scooting out of town about 150 miles an hour right on that fellow\u2019s trail?\u201d<\/p>\n
After a minute Bye cleared his throat. \u201cWell, now,\u201d he said. \u201cOld Jasper didn\u2019t try to stop him either, and now he\u2019s really humping, ain\u2019t he?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWas there anybody with them?\u201d Charley Harper said to Howie. \u201cDid you see anybody else?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d Howie said, and he frowned. \u201cOf course not. They were in the jeep, and they\u2019ve got the sides on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh,\u201d Charley said, his mouth twitching, and he looked back down into his beer.<\/p>\n
It all happened so fast after that I didn\u2019t get a chance to say goodbye to Jasper C. Graf or anything. None of us did. We had to get it all from Fat Jim, because by the time we found the place where they were in the desert, he was the only one. Nobody knew where Jasper C. Graf was.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was terrible,\u201d Fat Jim said to us after we got some dry clothes on him. He was sitting by the fire trying to drink some hot coffee, but he couldn\u2019t seem to get his lips to come down on the cup edge; they kept skittering away from it.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe acted like he was crazy or something,\u201d Fat Jim said. \u201cWe found the tourist fellow without any trouble at all, but we had to walk in the last four or five miles and cross the river. He was lying on his back just as peaceful as anything, and the snow had banked up along one side of him like he was a log or a piece of driftwood, and a tumbleweed was caught around his head like a mess of bob wire. I thought he was dead, but Mr. Graf knew right away he wasn\u2019t. I guess he knew even before we left town the fellow wouldn\u2019t be dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d Howie said. \u201cWhat are you trying to tell me? You trying to \u2014 \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat tourist started cackling at us as soon as he saw us,\u201d Fat Jim said, looking up at us. \u201cHe like to scared me to death. Mr. Graf just stood there looking down at him for a minute and then he said, \u2018Get up.\u2019 Just like that. \u2018Get up.\u2019 But the tourist just lay there looking up and laughing, and Mr. Graf finally bent over and picked him up and slung him over his shoulder. \u2018I\u2019m going to ruin you, Jasper,\u2019 the tourist said, laughing right into Mr. Graf\u2019s face with all them big yellow teeth. Mr. Graf, he just set his face a little and said to me, \u2018We got to get this man out of here before he freezes to death.\u2019 \u2018Oh, no,\u2019 says the tourist, \u2018I won\u2019t never freeze, Jasper, not while I got you to keep me warm. You ain\u2019t never going to let me freeze, are you, Jasper?\u2019 he says to Mr. Graf, but Mr. Graf just started walking, with me trotting along behind begging him to let me help.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most high-handed thing I ever heard of in my entire life,\u201d Howie said. \u201cA criminal act, you all hear that? Moving that fellow before we \u2014 \u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then the tourist fellow started bragging about all the things he could do, and Mr. Graf couldn\u2019t touch him for them because of what had happened,\u201d Jim said, shaking his head. \u201cHe said he\u2019d follow Mr. Graf forever just like he\u2019d followed him for twenty years now, and he\u2019d ruin him every time. \u2018No matter where you go,\u2019 he says, laughing into Mr. Graf\u2019s face, right into his ear, with his feet dangling down behind. \u2018I\u2019ll keep on following you, Jasper, and I\u2019ll keep on making you pay for what you done.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDone?\u201d Howie said, bending down over Jim. \u201cDone what? What did old Jasper do?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFinally we come to the river,\u201d Jim said. \u201cMr. Graf never even slowed down. He missed the ford and just started walking out into it with that tourist cackling on his back and saying, \u2018Now, don\u2019t you get my feet wet, Jasper,\u2019 and me splashing along behind hollering for Mr. Graf to look out. But he just kept walking. He didn\u2019t even look back and all of a sudden he went under. I started really yelling at him then. I\u2019m surprised you fellows didn\u2019t hear me in town. Then Mr. Graf bobbed back up and he commenced to fight that water like a crazy man, with that tourist still on his back. Only now that fellow was upset. \u2018You\u2019re trying to drown me!\u2019 he was hollering, and all the time Mr. Graf was fighting for both their lives. It was terrible. \u2018You\u2019re going to add murder to your list, are you!\u2019 that fellow screamed in Mr. Graf\u2019s ear, and then they went under again, Mr. Graf pumping his legs up and down and kicking and flaying at the water with his elbows and never letting out a sound or even changing expression. It was awful. And they went under, and this time the tourist come up first, shooting half out of the water like a dynamited snag and yelling his head off the minute he broke out, still yelling while he flew up in the air and flopped back. It was terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was he yelling?\u201d Howie said. \u201cI got a right to know, you hear?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMostly it seemed like he was yelling \u2018Murderer,\u2019\u201d Jim said, looking into his coffee cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cAh, ha!\u201d cried Howie. \u201cI told you! I told you there was something sneaky about that Jasper C. Graf! I been telling you that for years, and you wouldn\u2019t listen. Goes a-running off out here and kills a man by drowning \u2014 \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d Jim said. \u201cAfter he shot up, the tourist fellow splashed back in the water and went spinning downstream a way, then he banged up against the other bank and climbed out. He just sat there yelling at us, but he was so far away I couldn\u2019t understand a word he was saying.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd what about Jasper C., Jim?\u201d Bye said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe told me all about it,\u201d Jim said. \u201cHe clawed his way back to where I was. He didn\u2019t swim. He just clawed at that water, and I helped him out. We sat there a minute, and then he said, \u2018Jim, I might as well tell you. You can tell everybody in town and it don\u2019t make no difference anymore, anyway. If you don\u2019t tell them, he will, and at least you can tell them straight. I made a mistake once, back in Missouri,\u2019 he said. \u2018There was this woman; she was this fellow\u2019s wife, and I made a mistake.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, there you are!\u201d Howie said, looking around at us. \u201cButter wouldn\u2019t melt in his mouth and here he was, messing with \u2014 \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d Jim said. \u201cNot like that. He thought she was dead. They didn\u2019t have no doctor in that town, and they brought her to Mr. Graf after she\u2019d fell in a pond in the wintertime. She was drunk, Mr. Graf said, and everybody thought she\u2019d fallen into the pond while she was drunk and had died, and her husband wanted to ship the body out right away to St. Louis before the roads got too bad, so Mr. Graf started to embalm her. But she wasn\u2019t dead, she was just almost dead. It must have been a terrible thing,\u201d Jim said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNegligence!\u201d said Howie. \u201cProfessional negligence, that<\/i>\u2019<\/i>s<\/i> what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Graf was a young mortician then,\u201d Jim said. \u201cHe found out right away what was wrong and he stopped everything and saved her life, but it didn\u2019t do no good. Ever after that she tells folks Mr. Graf resurrected her from the dead; and her husband, he says Mr. Graf has damaged his reputation for life because Mr. Graf had his wife lying there in the mortuary without her clothes on. And they follow him wherever he goes, they won\u2019t never stop it, Mr. Graf said. And he has to run off every few years when they find him. It\u2019s terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I\u2019ll be damned,\u201d Bye said. \u201cYou mean we got to lose a good mortician because of something like that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s why she wears them Arab clothes,\u201d Jim said. \u201cBecause she was resurrected, she says. She thinks she\u2019s somebody out of Scripture, Mr. Graf said.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut why?\u201d Howie said, sitting down next to Jim. \u201cWhy did that fellow buy that stuff and come walking way out here? And why did Jasper C. Graf bother to come after him? Why?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust to devil Mr. Graf,\u201d Jim said, closing his eyes. \u201cHe knew Mr. Graf would come get him. It was just his devilish way of announcing he was here, of showing Mr. Graf how mean he was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut why go get him?\u201d Howie said, looking around at us. \u201cWhy didn\u2019t he let that fellow just lay out there and freeze?\u201d<\/p>\n
Bye Jenkins looked down at Howie. \u201cBecause he ain\u2019t that kind of a man,\u201d Bye said. \u201cIf he\u2019d been that kind of a man, that fellow never could have bothered and hounded him at all. He couldn\u2019t have hounded you, could he, Howie?\u201d<\/p>\n
Howie didn\u2019t say anything.<\/p>\n
When we got back to town, Jasper C. Graf\u2019s office with the big leather chair was there, with a dead cigar in the ashtray and the nail file lying on the desk, but Jasper C. Graf and his Cadillac were gone. That afternoon the tourist and the woman came around a corner and into the depot, and when the 6 p.m. train for Denver came in, they got on board, the man looking angrier than a tornado and the woman so wrapped up in sheets you couldn\u2019t see what she looked like.<\/p>\n
And that was how we lost the best mortician our town ever had. Charley Harper must have had his eye on the mortuary business for a long time, because it wasn\u2019t two weeks later that he opened up a funeral parlor himself, on an apprentice license he says he\u2019s had for years, and nobody\u2019s surprised by it anymore: It sort of goes with the drugstore business in a town like ours, and Howie Loveless is altogether too careless, and of course his reputation is just terrible: It seems to get worse all the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jasper C. Graf was far and away the best mortician we ever had in our town. At the time this all happened about the Arab woman and the uranium hunter, we had two, but he was far and away the best. If you live in a big town maybe you never think of morticians, or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}