Craig Smith - Cold Rain

The funeral home offered a large reception area at the front door, but the majority of people stood in the chapel where the two open caskets offered a last look.

There was, finally, a small room for the family just off the chapel. In the thirty minutes or so I had been there, Roger had retreated to it a couple of times, coming back out after a minute or so. Smoking dope?

Taking swigs? I didn’t know, but I was curious. Three young women at different points had gone into that room. They stayed quite a bit longer than Roger, and since these girls looked a little ragged around the edges I began paying attention to the anteroom, wondering just what was going on in there. The last of them left the room when it was apparently empty and went over to Roger and said something. Roger reacted immediately, walking directly to the room. I followed him, stepping through the door only seconds behind him.

Denise Conway looked stricken at the sight of me.

A moment later, she scanned the room for an exit. By a happy coincidence I happened to be standing at the only one. ‘Denise,’ I said, as if finding her at Walt’s and Barbara’s funeral was only to be expected, ‘nice to see you again.’ Denise retreated behind Roger’s heavy shoulder without speaking. Actually, I think she swore.

Her lips moved at any rate. I turned my attention to Roger, who was glaring at me angrily. ‘I can see why you wanted to keep your love life secret, Roger.’

Roger told me to leave. His request was delivered a bit roughly, however, and to be contrary I didn’t move. ‘You might want to get a lawyer to explain to you what a deposition is, Denise. You’re first on my lawyer’s list to be deposed. You lie to her and you’re lying under oath.’

Roger spoke for Denise. ‘Go screw yourself, Dave.’

‘Did Denise happen to tell you what was going on with her and your old man, Roger?’

It probably wasn’t the nicest thing to say under the circumstances. Then again it’s not real nice listening to a creep tell you to go screw yourself. Roger came at me fast, slamming me into the wall. While I was recovering, he opened the door and shoved me into the chapel. I got my feet under me and turned around, but he was on me again, pushing me back into a small clutch of mourners. Roger was not particularly athletic, but he got his weight behind his arms and rattled my bones. Trying not to fall down, I stumbled back and hit an old woman. We went down together. Several people stepped between Roger and me, ending the attack. The old woman was shaken, but it seemed to be the only damage. By the time I stood up several more individuals had stepped between us. Stabbing his finger in my direction for emphasis, Roger shouted,

‘You’re not welcome here, Dave!’ To the men holding me he said, ‘Get him out of here. If he comes back, call the police!’

Denise stepped cautiously out of the anteroom. She looked at me fearfully. ‘It’s called perjury,’ I said to her. The men pushed me back angrily. ‘People go to jail when they commit perjury, Denise!’

Randy Winston materialized in front of me as the men physically escorted me to the front door. ‘Nice going, David. A real class act.’

Outside, the men let go of me. Including Randy, there were six of them. Their faces were tense, anxious.

They did not want trouble, but they were committed: I was not coming back inside. I knew each one of them. What’s more, they knew me. My sole pleasure at that moment was the fact that every one of them looked terrified when I feinted a charge at them.

I told Randy I needed my coat. He huddled with his fellow bouncers briefly, but before they could decide on how to handle the matter, Molly and Lucy came outside, my coat in Molly’s arms.

‘Ready to go, dear?’ she called to me cheerfully.

In the car, Lucy asked what had happened. Molly answered for me. ‘You’re stepfather just got eight-sixed from a funeral home.’

Lucy was quiet, afraid of a fight between us, I expect.

Finally, I laughed. ‘Walt would have loved it!’

While I still laughed, the tears came. Such is the nature of grief.

We went off separately when we got home.

In my room, looking out the lone window into the darkness of the pasture, I tried to understand my friendship with Walt Beery. I knew there had been a time when he had been very proper, very brilliant, very young.

We were all young once, I suppose, but with people you meet in their late middle age it’s hard to imagine sometimes just what they were like. With Walt, it was practically impossible. What I knew I had picked up in various places. Walt had never been one to dwell on the past. Partly, he didn’t remember it very well, and partly, as with a number of people in their early sixties, the past was a mixed bag of fresh pain and stale laughter.

According to other Olympians, including Dean Lintz, there had been a time when Walt rarely indulged in more than a single drink at faculty parties. In time it became two or three, then four or five. From the occasional happy hour at the faculty club, it started to be two or three nights a week at local bars, far from the observation of other university types. Then came his forays into campus bars. His classroom demeanour began to change, his interests to broaden.

There had been a serious affair with one of his grad students several years before I joined the faculty. I had heard about it from various sources. Walt himself referred to it as ‘problems with Barbara,’ but people who knew told me it was the real thing, the once-in-a-lifetime.

I never really understood how it had ended or how the marriage survived it. My impression was the student had taken the whole thing less seriously than Walt.

Her thesis finished, she moved on. Maybe that isn’t the way it was. I don’t know. I do know that Walt began a radical descent from that point forward. He had flings, one night stands, barroom and classroom flirtations. He drank every night. His classes were nominally rigorous, but there were too many hangovers, then too many classes conducted after long liquid lunches.

By the time I met him, Walt was a dangerous commodity at the university. Just being in his company could get an untenured professor in trouble. He was also brilliant and funny and passionate about literature and, at the beginning, I paid no heed to the warning looks and Machiavellian whispers. Only later, as I became ambitious, did I learn to keep my distance.

Such behaviour had seemed only sensible at the time.

Now, at the hour of my friend’s passing, it felt less than noble. Walt was a good soul, a great intellect, and certainly worth more than the limited friendship I had been willing to extend to him.

Or, as I told the black fields beyond my window that evening, ‘

…worth more than the whole damn bunch of us.’

I served Molly breakfast in bed the next morning. She was in good spirits, and the smell of her, the wild tangle of her blonde hair, the gentle outlines of her breasts stirred me.

We talked about Walt and Barbara. I thought about David and Molly. When she had finished her breakfast, I took the tray from her and sat down on the bed, our hips touching in casual intimacy. Taking her hands, I said, ‘Do you know how long it’s been since we’ve been on this bed together?’

‘About a month,’ she answered. Then thinking about it, she added, ‘More like a couple, I guess.’

‘If you want some help fixing up a house in Florida, all you have to do is ask. I’ll resign and move down to join you. Whatever you want, Molly.’

Molly considered the offer without much seriousness. ‘Strictly business?’

‘If that’s what it takes.’

‘I can’t do strictly business with you, David.’