D. Gilles - Colder Than Death

Ray’s comment haunted me for the entire drive back to the Home. I wanted Perry to solve this case, if for no other reason than Quilla’s peace of mind.

It was my nature not to get even remotely involved in situations where the stakes were high. It was part apathy, part not wanting to be bothered and partly being petrified of getting too close to people. I was very good at watching life go by. If it didn’t touch me in any way I was thankful. Let it ram into everyone else. Had it been anyone other than Quilla, I would’ve steered far and wide from this mess, but there was something about her that sucked me into it with a ferocity that scared the hell out of me.

I beeped the horn as I pulled up to the rear entrance of the Home. Within thirty seconds Nolan appeared, a warm smile on his pink face. He was wearing a T-shirt — black with the following words in Gothic lettering:

Nolan enjoyed going to industry conventions to learn of new advances and exchange embalming tricks. Three or four times a year he would take off for two or three days. A couple of years back he’d gone to a Seminar in Chicago on the latest tricks on restoring mangled bodies and come back with four T-shirts. One for me, Lew, Clint and himself. He’d done it as a gag, but one morning I saw him walking along Dankworth’s main business district wearing it.

I’d given him permission to wear the T-shirt only at the Home and only when the public wasn’t around. Most people are fairly ignorant about what goes on behind the closed doors of a Funeral Home. Embalmers engender mystery. Many people are aware of their existence and that he, or she, does something to the bodies once they’ve been brought to the Funeral Home, but they’re not sure what.

Other than friends and families, a good-sized number of embalmers go through life without revealing the truth of how they earn a living. I’d say with great certainty that most people in Dankworth under forty who pass Nolan on the street, sit near him in church or stand behind him in line at the supermarket don’t know that he embalmed the bulk of the bodies buried from Henderson’s Funeral Home for the last thirty-plus years.

If they did, it might be extremely unsettling. Not because of any monstrous physical appearance. Nolan was actually quite nice-looking or could have been if he stopped wearing his hair long like an aging rock star. Plus he had a goofy-looking goatee that gave him an almost satanic aura. Not like the classical interpretation of the devil, but more like a cartoon caricature.

Nolan was cranky because his trocar wasn’t working properly. The trocar, one of the most important tools for an embalmer, is a long, hollow needle attached to a tube that comes into play near the conclusion of the embalming process. What most people don’t know is that embalming consists simply of draining blood from the veins and replacing it with fluid pumped in through the arteries. Between three to six gallons of a dyed and perfumed solution of formaldehyde, glycerin, borax, phenol, alcohol and water is injected into the body, primarily for disinfecting and preservative purposes.

The next step involves the trocar, which is jabbed into the abdomen and poked around the entrails and chest cavity, the contents of which are pumped out and replaced with cavity fluid. Once this is done, the hole in the stomach made by the trocar is sewn up, the body’s face is heavily creamed to protect the skin from burns which may be caused by leakage of the chemicals and the corpse is ready for restoration.

If a lip or lips, a nose or an ear is missing, the embalmer possesses a variety of restorative waxes with which to model replacements. Pores and skin texture are simulated by speckling with a little brush, and over this cosmetics are applied. If the mouth is swollen the embalmer cuts out tissue as needed from inside the lips. If too much is removed the surface contour is restored by padding with cotton. Swollen necks and cheeks are reduced by removing tissue through vertical incision made down each side of the neck. In instances of emaciation, a hypodermic syringe loaded with massage cream is injected into the hollowed and sunken areas.

Once the body has been properly restored, it’s washed, dressed and shaved if it’s a male. Cream-based cosmetics available in pink, flesh, suntan, brunette and blond are applied to the hands and face. Hair is shampooed, combed and, if necessary, set and the fingernails are manicured. Then the body is placed in the coffin and wheeled to the Viewing Room.

I’d known Nolan since the first day I began working at Henderson’s Funeral Home, and I liked him. He was kind to me, but I couldn’t stand to hear him talk. His voice was the most grating sound I’d ever heard. A tad high pitched with a slight scratchiness to it, almost as if he were talking through the speaker in a drive-thru restaurant. And he loved to talk.

He spent so much time alone with bodies that he cried out for human contact. Because I was always around, I was usually it. And before I came along, Lew was his primary target. Or Lew’s wife. Since I’d hired Clint two-and-a-half years ago, he took on a large chunk of Nolan’s yakking as well. I’d learned long ago that the best way to avoid spending too much time with Nolan was to act as if I were in a rush or very pre-occupied.

“Good to have all this business, eh, Del?” He opened the back door of the hearse and waited for me to join him. “You just missed Clint. He took the silver hearse for a lube job.”

We each grabbed an end of the body bag containing Brandy Parker and, as we made our way to the Embalming Room, Nolan tried to get at least five conversations going about different topics. Each time I interrupted him or pretended not to hear or feigned ignorance of the subject. After all these years I still felt guilty about not being friendlier with Nolan. In the beginning, though, it was much harder. Nolan was forty-three. I was a Senior in high school. I didn’t view him as a father figure, but I viewed him as an older man and therefore felt I owed him enough respect to listen to his non-stop rambling.

He sent me a Christmas card every year, gave me a present, always something nice. He never missed my birthday. Always sent me postcards from his travels to trade conventions. When I was in the hospital having my appendix removed he came to visit me. Because I spent so much time avoiding him, I never got to learn much about him. And I never gave him the benefit of finding out much about me.

We shared no secrets. I knew more about Perry Cobb’s personal life than Nolan’s. I’d never been invited to his home. I knew that he was married once, when he was in his Twenties, and that his wife had walked out on him, and that he had never remarried. Lew told me that in all the years he’d known Nolan since his wife left, he’d never gotten serious with another woman. I got the implication from Lew that Nolan’s wife had broken his heart.

For that reason alone I felt an odd kinship with Nolan. The woman he loved had walked out on him. And my first love had pretty much walked out on me.

Glancing at Nolan, I could see he was anxious to get to work so I started for the door and mumbled a “Good-bye.”

Nolan said, “See ya, Del,” then, as I closed the door, I heard him unzip the body bag and immediately start talking to what was left of Brandy Parker.

While Nolan did his part in the burial of Brandy Parker, I continued to do mine, which consisted of a handful of tasks that could be taken care of over the phone. Getting the obituary to the newspaper. Contacting the crematorium. Ordering flowers. Because the coffin wouldn’t be leaving the Home for a church service and as I would be bringing the remains directly to the crematorium, pallbearers wouldn’t be an issue. And there was also the issue of whether or not the body would be wearing any clothes.