Nancy Bartholomew - Stella, Get Your Gun

“Uncle Benny?” I whispered, tears flooding my eyes. “He’s dead?”

Nina stared at me, frowning. “Stella, hello? Yes, Uncle Benny’s dead. What did you think?” She frowned harder. “How come you’re dressed like that?” she asked. “I mean, even I knew it was cold. And what’s wrong with your foot? Why’s it wrapped up like that?” She looked past me, her eyes lighting on Lloyd. “You brought your dog with you? You couldn’t find somebody to watch him?”

The questions came, rapid-fire, one after another, without a pause to hear the answers. I couldn’t have answered her, though; I was too overwhelmed to speak.

“You’d better get your suitcase and come on,” she said. “We’ve got to leave for the funeral parlor in an hour. They’re sending limos for the family.”

She turned and started to open the door, realized I wasn’t moving and turned back around.

“Are you coming?”

“I didn’t bring…” I began. “I didn’t know…”

Nina closed the door again. She turned and descended the steps slowly, opening her arms to me as she approached.

“Oh, my God! You didn’t know! What did they tell you?”

“Nothing,” I whispered. “I didn’t know.”

It was a lovely funeral. Strange, but nonetheless beautiful. The only hint of a hitch came when Aunt Lucy said she wanted Uncle Benny propped up in the casket for the viewing, but between the more sensible cousins and the funeral home director, calmer heads had prevailed.

The funeral director explained that they couldn’t prop Uncle Benny up in the casket, that certain natural events would occur to make this impossible, so Aunt Lucy gave in and went standard on the visitation. But she did manage to insist that Uncle Benny be dressed in his fishing vest and lure hat.

“I want people to remember him like he was, not like he is,” she said, and her voice cracked just slightly, letting us all know that if we pushed it, she’d lose it.

Nina leaned over and muttered in my ear. “Too bad you couldn’t get here any sooner,” she said. “Aunt Lucy actually wanted to bury Uncle Benny in his Jon boat. It took some doing to talk her out of that one, I’ll tell you!” She looked over at Aunt Lucy and smiled innocently, then turned back to me. “She’s lost it, Stella. Ever since the stroke, she’s been loopy.”

I looked at my aunt, trying to do an assessment of her mental capacities. She looked just as she always had, only older. She had always been a small butterball of energy and enthusiasm. Uncle Benny’s death had stifled that, but had a stroke made her crazy? I was reluctant to believe that.

“She’s got some strange ideas, Stella,” Nina continued. “I mean, sure, she’s always had strange ideas, but I mean really weird stuff. She thinks she’s the next Einstein or something. I don’t know what we’re going to do. I mean, she can’t live on her own—she’s too nuts to handle the bills, let alone drive or take care of herself!”

Aunt Lucy stopped talking to the funeral director, glared at Nina and said, “I heard that, young lady! I don’t think anybody who runs off with a rock musician and gets certain intimate portions of her anatomy pierced has much room to be calling the kettle black.”

The room fell silent as everyone turned their attention toward the object of Aunt Lucy’s displeasure. Nina’s face turned scarlet, her chin inched up a defiant two inches and she stalked off, her spiky pink-and-blond hair waving like a midsummer wheat field in Iowa.

“You know what her problem is?” Aunt Lucy said. “She moved to California. Them people out there just ain’t right. One day that entire part of the continent is gonna fall right off into the ocean. Then where will they be, huh? That’s right. Reno, Nevada’s gonna be prime oceanfront property—you mark my words.”

I looked over at Uncle Benny. He was lying in a gunmetal-gray casket, his favorite Garcia rod tucked into the satin padding beside him. His hat was listing drunkenly to one side, and there was a lipstick smear on his right cheek from where Aunt Lucy had kissed him goodbye. At the foot of the casket was a shiny red metal cooler loaded with gleaming cans of ice-cold Budweiser.

“We’re popping a top for Benny,” one of my eighteen-year-old cousins explained somberly. “Drinking’s legal in church—at least if you’re Catholic.”

In the background, Dean Martin sang “Amore” and Orlando Wilson floated across a big-screen TV, silently instructing his audience on proper casting techniques.

“You see the flowers, Stella?” Aunt Lucy asked, suddenly materializing by my side. She pointed to a huge funeral wreath shaped like a leaping bass and mounted on a tall wire frame. Gone Fishing, it read. “Ain’t they beautiful?” she breathed. “And them over there.” She gestured to a wreath of red, white and blue daisies that read Sleep With The Fishes, Big Guy! She smiled. “They’re from the boys down at the Saint Anthony’s Lodge.”

“It’s lovely, Aunt Lucy,” I said, but I was really thinking that I’d dropped into a bad day in a psychiatric unit.

Aunt Lucy took my arm and led me closer to the casket. “Look who’s here, honey,” she said to Uncle Benny. “It’s our Stella. Don’t she look pretty with her hair done blond? Of course the clothes belong to Nina, but that’s on account of Stella came sudden.”

I squirmed, tugging at Nina’s black pleated miniskirt. I tried my best not to topple over in the stilettos I’d been forced to drag out from my undercover equipment. Uncle Benny didn’t seem to mind. He appeared to be concentrating on nailing the big one. His eyes were closed and his mouth was frozen in a sewn-shut, lopsided grin. The body in the casket in no way resembled the uncle I loved.

“You couldn’t get them to put in the cigar?” I asked.

Aunt Lucy shrugged. “It was bad for his health, anyway.” She looked back at the crowd. “This is some turnout,” she said. “I think almost the entire town is here. It’s been like this since he died, people turning up with food or beer, all of them talking about the good turns he did for them or the ways he helped them out when times were tough. He done things I never knew about, Stel. The man was a saint.”

The pews in the funeral home chapel were filling up as people filed in for the service. In the background, Dean Martin had finished “Amore,” and was now replaced by Andy Williams singing “Moon River.”

“He don’t look so dead to me, Stella,” Aunt Lucy said. I gazed down at the tiny woman and saw tears begin to track across her withered cheeks. She reached behind me, pulled a can of beer from the cooler and opened it. With great care, she placed it beside Uncle Benny’s left hand, removing another untouched can that had grown warm. “I was kinda hoping maybe the beer would bring him back, you know?” She sounded like a little child, pleading for one more chance.

“I know, honey,” I said. “It’s hard to believe he’s really gone.”

Andy Williams stopped singing, and the soft strains of organ music signaled the start of the service. The big-screen TV went dark momentarily as Orlando Wilson’s fishing tips were replaced by a larger-than-life-size portrait of my uncle, out on his boat in the middle of Kerr Park Lake, reeling in a “big one.”

Aunt Lucy seemed to snap out of her melancholy reverie. “Let’s get this show on the road,” she said as the funeral director started walking purposefully toward us. She lifted her head, wiped her eyes and allowed herself to be led into the family pew that was located off to the side of the tiny chapel.

I trailed along behind her, filing into the box and settling myself next to my aunt. The organ swelled to a crescendo, cueing us all to stand. We opened our leaflets and began singing “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”