Josh Emmons - The Loss of Leon Meed

Shane was a changed man. He knew Jim would be expecting the old Shane: the Shane with skinhead leanings who sometimes beat up middle-aged men with families just because they were middle-aged men with families, the Shane who’d once dropped seven hits of acid and baseball-batted his way into a Rolls-Royce parked implausibly in downtown Eureka in order to defecate on its virgin-calf leather upholstery before being arrested. But eight transformational years had passed since they’d seen each other, during which Shane had embraced his family’s Mormonism, the Larson faith for three generations already, and become an upstanding citizen.

“I didn’t know that,” said Jim, smiling mechanically. “Congratulations.”

He has no idea how far I’ve come, thought Shane, who dispensed with the small talk by saying, “I’ve stopped drinking and smoking and extramarital sex.” He stared penetratingly at his old friend. “Those were a fool’s paradise.”

“I see,” Jim said.

But did Jim see? Could he comprehend the metamorphosis? He’d never been as ultraviolent and antisocial as Shane, and in fact he’d been something of a wet blanket about fighting and unprovoked cruelty back in high school, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been a sinner. Because he had. Jim had fornicated with abandon. He’d drunk alcohol to the point of bodily harm. He’d had godless ways. And although time could also have changed him, Shane didn’t think it had. No, Shane didn’t see salvation in Jim’s tired, distracted face.

Shane said, “I’m working now for Morland Memorial Services. It’s customer relations, some floor sales. I’m selling caskets mainly, but recently I’ve been getting contracts to do land plots. It’s a growth industry. The baby boomers are nearing their time. What’d you say you’re doing?”

Jim got his towel from the putty-chinned receptionist and gave it a quick inspection. “I’m in Los Angeles. Just home visiting for a while.”

Shane tried not to think about Jim’s inability to appreciate how far he’d come since they’d known each other in high school—because it was a major failure of imagination—and instead he thought about the business opportunity presenting itself. Let the past be the past. His great insight was: friends and acquaintances could be customers, and vice versa. “I know what you’re probably thinking in LA,” he said. “You’re probably worried because you have no idea where to be buried in such a huge city, right? I mean, down there where you don’t know anybody and everything’s so anonymous. It’d scare me to death if I was you.”

Jim stared in the direction of the change room and said, “Honestly I haven’t thought about it.”

Shane tucked his towel under his arm. “That’s what I’m saying. Why would you when the thought’s so scary? Being buried in some big city all alone? Jim, you’re going to want to come back to Eureka when you die, where your roots are. I think we should talk about this; I think it could be good for us. How long are you in town?”

Jim pivoted on one foot, his body aching toward the showers. “Not long,” he said.

“Let me give you my card.” Shane pulled out a buttermilk business card with blue embossed lettering: Shane Larson, Associate Sales Representative, Morland Memorial Services, 555-2432. “What’s your number in town? I’ll call you.”

“Actually I’m busy for the rest of my visit, so I’ll have to get ahold of you later.”

Shane, knowing that Jim hadn’t a clue how to conduct himself righteously in the eyes of God, that he was, spiritually speaking, a directionless person in need of guidance, said, “I have a better idea. We’ll talk it over in the shower. I can get you a great price on a site right now. You like the Humboldt Overview Cemetery? Who doesn’t, right? Imagine a place on the hill there, overlooking the bay, in a gorgeous casket made of beautifully contrasting white pine and mahogany, and with a crisp gold satin lining. Think solid mahogany swing-bar handles and sliding lid supports. Jim, I could take you down to the store after we shower and show you the displays and we could settle this today. Can you imagine how good you’d feel?”

Shane was really in the zone now, was in one of his total empathic mind melds, for despite his religious advantage over his erstwhile friend, he was Jim Sturges at that moment, seeing what he saw, anticipating the relief of putting the whole burial question to rest and maybe opening himself up to a higher power.

“Thanks,” Jim said, “but I really don’t have time.”

“It isn’t for me that I’m asking this. It’s for you.”

“I’m sure it is, but seriously. I’m not interested.”

Shane closed the gap between them by six inches and spoke quietly, confidentially, importantly, as sports commentators droned in the background, “Jim, death isn’t one of those things you can afford not to think about. You may want to, and you may get away with it in the short term, but it’s there waiting for you. I don’t know if you know this but I’ve become a Mormon, and that’s because I had a big realization a few years ago that we’re not here forever. I know what you’re thinking, news flash, right?” Brief chuckle and then po-face. “But it had never really come home to me before I was in my car driving along and I heard on the radio about a guy down in Matole who ran out into the street to get his son’s basketball and was hit by a car. Died on the spot. And I got to thinking, I don’t know why, it was just pressing on my mind, but I began to think about what it meant to run into the street to get a basketball, a reflex motion, your mind on what’s for dinner and how it’s time to mow the lawn again and a new soreness in your left knee, when wham! you’re dead. You don’t see it coming even though you know it has to eventually. Death is an invisible speeding train and you’re standing on the track somewhere, you don’t know where exactly, could be far down by the river or could be two feet away. It comes back to we all have to go sometime. And where we go depends on what we choose to do while we’re on this planet. You need to ask yourself. The soul and the body. Have you planned for them? You can either take out insurance—and we’re talking a tiny premium, month by month you won’t even feel it except as a feeling of comfort and security—so that you know you’re covered, or you can be a miser and end up rotting in the ground in some anonymous city with your soul burning forever.”

Shane had never expressed it so eloquently. He’d linked—pull the metal chain, feel its strength—his own personal epiphany with burial services and the afterlife. This matter of supreme importance—this primary undergirding—made him both vulnerable to scorn—people always sneered at the truth tellers, for guilty consciences are drowned out by nothing so well as jeers and ridicule—and strangely confident. After all, Shane was only human, he was an insignificant mortal, but the magnitude of God and of his duty to Him were commensurate. Shane was conjuring the infinite, evoking the ineffable. He felt measurable in joules. To decorate His crown.

Jim draped the towel around his neck and crossed his arms—what a tell! what a giveaway that he took this seriously and felt implicated!—and said, “I don’t want to offend you, and I’m sure your death episode was the real thing, but monotheism doesn’t resonate for me. When I die I’m going to donate all my organs and be cremated. But I appreciate what you’ve said and I’m going to leave now. Good to see you again.”

Jim walked away and Shane stared after him. How can anyone be so tone deaf? Obstinacy is what it is. Denial. People’s hearts get hard. They refuse to see anything but their own version of things. Sad, really. Sad.