X. Atkins - Richmond Noir

I wish the place weren’t named Hollywood, though. That makes it sound too phony, fake, like it’s a hangout for dead movie stars. But Hollywood Cemetery was a landmark in Richmond long before the first silent films ever came out of that other Hollywood. Maybe that Hollywood was named for this one. In any case, our Hollywood is the greatest Confederate cemetery in the country. Maybe even in the whole world.

As you can probably tell, I’m highly educated. I might have been a renowned scholar but for my accident. Apparently — and I say apparently because I have no memory of the event — I was struck by a car while riding my motor scooter without a helmet. Why a scholar would be on a motor scooter, I haven’t a clue. Motor scooters are undignified — scholars should drive used Volvos. In any case, they say I suffered significant head trauma — something I believe because I do get terrible headaches almost daily.

There was another side effect of the accident that’s been a slight problem. When I came out of the coma, I developed a compulsion to keep talking, even when no one is around, like those people I’ve heard about on the subway trains in New York City. It’s like the accident turned on a faucet in my head and words just keep pouring out all the time, except when I’m on medication. I can’t explain it. As soon as I get a thought, it comes right out of my mouth. So they give me pills to stop the leak. Of course, the bad thing is that whenever I stop taking the pills they find out right away because I can’t keep myself from telling everybody about it. That’s one reason the police know every detail of what I did in the cemetery. I might as well have given them documentary footage.

So, anyway, I know there was an accident, and I know there were consequences.

Much of what they tell me about my condition, however, is untrue. They say I’m given to violent outbursts, but that’s all a matter of perspective. They say I’ve lost certain social skills, that I no longer comprehend the subtleties of human interaction. Yet who among us comprehends our neighbor? They say I don’t make logical connections the way normal people do.

By they , of course, I mean my therapist, Dr. Myles, and sometimes my Uncle Morty. Uncle Morty is a good man, but he’s been duped by Dr. Myles. He believes everything the doctor tells him about me, almost as if he were the doctor’s apprentice. Though Uncle Morty isn’t an apprentice, he’s a general contractor.

I know about apprentices because that’s one field in which I have truly excelled. When I first came to work for my Uncle Morty two years ago — no, wait, it’s been longer than that. Let me think. Seventeen. Yes, that’s it, seventeen years. And in the seventeen years I’ve worked for my Uncle Morty, I’ve been every kind of apprentice you can think of. It was Uncle Morty and Aunt Eileen who took me in after I lost my fellowship at the university. They say they’re my parents, and that’s sweet of them, but I don’t feel comfortable enough to allow them that level of intimacy. Still, Uncle Morty figured out the perfect job for me. He said I could be the company apprentice. It’s almost the same thing as being a student, except you don’t have to write papers or study for tests.

“All you have to do is watch,” he told me. “Watch and learn.” I think we both thought it would help me regain my focus. And we were right.

I started off as a janitor’s apprentice and I stayed at the main building all day. Uncle Morty owns a big construction company, and he has a sheet-metal warehouse where he keeps his heavy equipment. As you might imagine, floors have to be kept clean in a place like that, and my job was to watch Arby the janitor keep everything in order. Just watch and stay out of the way — that was my entire job description, and it came straight from Uncle Morty. I did that job pretty well, and after a while I got promoted to groundskeeper’s apprentice. In that job, I had to watch Miguel ride the lawn tractor and patch the driveway and fertilize the grounds. That’s what we called the yard around the building — the grounds. I don’t know why we didn’t call it a yard, because it sure looked like one. I thought about asking Miguel about it once, but I didn’t. Asking questions wasn’t part of my job.

I was an excellent groundskeeper’s apprentice. I stared at Miguel all day long, even on our breaks, which probably made him feel important. Pretty soon Miguel talked to Uncle Morty and the next thing I knew, I was promoted to plumber’s apprentice, watching Big Dan. I watched him like a hawk, or like an owl, maybe, until he went to Uncle Morty and got me another promotion, this time to carpenter’s apprentice with Wilber. I liked working with Wilber because he had the same name as the guy on Mr. Ed , which was a TV show about a talking horse. I liked that show a lot. It proved that anything was possible.

After Wilber I became an electrician’s apprentice for Gus, which I also liked because Gus sounded like a proper name for an electrician. Then I was a mason’s apprentice for a guy whose name I can never remember because I keep thinking his name ought to be Mason, which it isn’t. Then I began to move through my apprenticeships on all the pieces of heavy equipment — the forklift, the backhoe, the grader, and finally, all the way to the top of the apprenticeship mountain, the bulldozer. Basically, they’re all excavators. My favorite is the Cat 312CL because it has an enclosed cab and a mechanical thumb. The enclosed cab makes it less noisy, plus you can keep away from bad weather. But the best part is the mechanical thumb, which is what separates it from an ordinary backhoe. A normal backhoe claws and scoops, but an excavator with a mechanical thumb can actually grab things. The dredger bucket clamps tight around whatever you’re trying to pull up. I don’t know why they call the extra part a thumb, though. To me it’s more like the bottom half of a set of jaws, like on a giant dinosaur. There’s true power in an excavator with jaws like that. It’s a dangerous piece of machinery.

But just because I got shifted around through so many positions in the company, don’t think I couldn’t hold a job. The job was pretty much the same whatever it was, because whatever it was, I was still the apprentice. I watched and I learned, and I stayed out of the way. But at the same time, I was moving up through the ranks. I think Uncle Morty was trying to familiarize me with the whole operation — you know, grooming me to take over the business when he retires. I could do it too. After so many years of apprenticing there, I know how everything works.

Eddie knew how everything worked too. He was site foreman on the cemetery project. I know that was a tough job because I used to be a foreman’s apprentice and I’ve seen how busy things can get.

Uncle Morty was real happy when he first got the cemetery contract, but it turned out to be a nightmare. That’s what I heard him say, that the cemetery project had been a nightmare. One nightmare after another, he said, starting with the retaining wall and ending with Eddie and Aunt Eileen. I don’t know what Aunt Eileen had to do with any of it. She’s not really on the payroll. But she was sure there a lot. She used to come out to watch us on the days Uncle Morty had to be away at other projects, I guess to report back to him on what kind of progress we were making. She and Eddie would eat lunch together behind the chapel, I guess so he could fill her in. It’s not the best spot in the cemetery, as far as getting a good view is concerned. It’s way too overgrown with bushes. I prefer the spot just across from President Tyler. That’s where you get the most picturesque view, and when I look out at the broad stretch of the James below — where it’s too rocky and shallow for boats to navigate — I can almost forget I’m in a cemetery surrounded by skeletons and who knows what other bad things.