David Ohle - The Devil in Kansas

“No fucking way, man. I want you in the room with me. That’s part of the price. It’s factored in. This stuff isn’t legal yet, so you hold my hand when I turn off the machine. That way, if I take a fall, you do, too.”

Junior grasps Ray’s elbow and leads him upstairs.

I was asleep in the basement when they did it. Junior and me had been watching Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein on TV and I fell asleep. I thought Junior had, too. But I guess he got up and went upstairs. He did that pretty often with his sleeping problems. I think one of the things that made him so mean was not enough sleep. So I didn’t hear anything going on up there that night. And Mickey and Vickie, they both snore so loud, they probably didn’t hear anything either.

Junior and Ray hesitate outside Wendy’s door.

“We got a deal, right? No turning back. Once I open this door, we go for it.”

“We got a deal.”

They shake on it. Junior opens the door. They tiptoe in. Ray shines a flashlight beam on the ventilator. “There it is. Turn off the batteries first. It’s got emergency batteries. Then unplug it.”

Holding Ray’s hand, Junior turns off the emergency switch and unplugs the machine. They wait. If anything, Wendy’s breathing improves.

Ray watches the Shopping Channel where a super deal is being offered on fishing gear. “That’s nice stuff. I wish I had a rig like that.”

“Fuck the fishing, man. Focus on this. She’s not giving it up.”

“How long can she go, you think?”

“What time is it?”

“Twelve thirty-one.”

Three hours later, by the light of the Shopping Channel, Ray has nodded off in a chair and Junior stands over Wendy shaking his head. “We’re gonna hafta take this up a notch.”

Ray awakens to see Junior place a pillow over Wendy’s face and press hard. “Time this, Ray. Give me your hand and time this. Nobody can last more than five minutes.”

After Ray signals five minutes, Junior lifts the pillow. “Okay, feel her heart. Is it beating?”

“You feel it. I don’t want to touch her if she’s dead.”

“Shit, man, you been married to her for forty years. You can’t feel her fucking heart and see if it’s beating?”

Ray feels for her chest with his eyes closed. “Yeah. It’s still beating.”

Ray watches Junior start the smothering over again, this time laying his full weight on the pillow. “We’ll give it six minutes this time.”

When the interval has passed, Junior lifts the pillow, and with his eyes closed, Ray feels the heart. “Good. No heartbeat. She’s at peace.”

Junior pulls the covers up to Wendy’s neck, replaces the pillow. “Let’s go. Vickie’ll find her in the morning.”

Ray turns the machine back on, plugs it back in.

In the kitchen-dining area a few minutes later. Junior and Ray enter, a little shaken over what has just occurred. Ray grabs a fifth of Four Roses from the cabinet. “I need some of the brown stuff.” He pours himself a stiff one, neat, slugs it, pours another, sits down, bows his head. “I thought she would just go…like that!” He snaps his fingers.

“Shhh, man. Don’t wake Vickie up.”

“It was for the best I guess.”

“Yeah, win-win all the way. Everybody benefits, even your wife. Think about it. People anxious to get to their policy money, people who can’t stand seeing their loved ones suffer. They need a service like this. Or depressed people too chickenshit to kill themselves. They need it, too. There’s money in this, Ray.”

“Maybe so. Hey…shouldn’t we call somebody? Like the coroner or the police or somebody? Get the ball rolling.”

“No, man. Don’t be a fool. Vickie’ll find her in the morning. It’ll look natural.”

Wendy’s room the next morning. The ventilator is working fine and Wendy appears to be breathing as usual. Her hair is mussed, her lipstick smeared all over her face and the pillow case.

Vickie enters in her robe, yawning. She opens the curtains, sits on the edge of the bed. “What in the world happened to you?”

She lifts Wendy’s hand, recoils from the cold flesh, drops the hand, backs away.

A crematory waiting room the next day. Mickey, Vickie, Ray, Lorna and Junior wait in the sparsely furnished room. Ray paces, deep in thought. “I sure hope Wendy is on her way to a better place, somewhere with good weather and friendly people. No war, no death, no pain, no nothing. Free transportation and nobody works. I don’t like cremation. It’s extreme. It’s real extreme. On the other hand, I couldn’t stand thinking about her down there in the dirt, rotting away. It would haunt me.”

Mickey stirs from his torpor for a moment. “How do you know they’re her ashes? You could be getting anybody’s.”

Vickie says it wasn’t the peaceful death she’d been hoping for. “She must have struggled at the end. Her hair was messed up, her makeup smeared all over. It was weird.”

“It’s over and done with,” Lorna concludes. “No more suffering, no more pain, no more money down the drain.… Jesus God, I’m so hungry I could eat cotton.” She takes a handkerchief from her purse, ties the end in a knot and sucks on it.

Vickie cautions Lorna to have a little respect.

“Why. This isn’t a church. They burn people up here. And you just shut up. Look at me. I’m sucking on a knot. I’m starving. I wish they would hurry.”

A pale, grey-suited crematory attendant steps through a curtain with an urn of cremains. “Zo…uh…Zoo…uh.”

Mickey delivers the familiar refrain. “It’s Zook, like hook.”

Junior drives Lorna, Ray, Mickey and Vickie home from the crematorium in the Monte Carlo. Lorna’s stomach growls, then Ray’s, then Vickie’s.

Mickey wants to know what it is about funerals and food. “Why do people get so hungry at funerals? Even though this isn’t really a funeral.”

They pass a step-van parked at the curb with a long line of people behind it. The van is bright red and painted with chili peppers. Black lettering on the side says: TAMALES.

Lorna shouts, “Wait. Stop. Look. Tamales!”

Ray, uncharacteristically, offers to pay for the meal. “I’ll buy. It’s on me.”

Junior parks. The Asian dumpster diver, seen earlier, passes by on his bicycle. He tows a small trailer heavily laden with dumpster yield and whistles the tune to “God Bless America.” At the rear of the tamale van a Latino collects money from famished customers as his wife bundles tamales in butcher’s paper. Two of their kids sell Cokes, Pepsis, Lays potato chips, Rold Gold pretzels and other brand name crunch.

“Look at ‘em,” Ray says, “raking it in.”

One thing me and Junior used to talk about a lot was immigration. It was like everywhere we went, you know, there was some Arab, or some Hondurian taking our jobs away. And what were we gonna do about it? Junior thought we’d hafta get radical, you know, the final solution… whatever it is, or was, you know. But here’s this family of Mexicans, not a pot to piss in, and look at them. They’re getting nuvo rich. It’s a major puzzle to me.

People hop into cars and drive away with their tamales. Others linger in small groups, eating and talking.

The Zook kitchen-dining area. Mickey, Vickie, Ray, Junior and Lorna enter. Ray carries the crematory urn without reverence, as if it were a bowling pin. Lorna flops a bundle of tamales onto the table.

Lorna salivates. “Let’s eat.”

The group eats tamales, using their hands. Ray sets Wendy’s urn in the middle of the table to get it out of his way. No one pays the urn any attention at first, until Vickie picks it up. “We shouldn’t be eating with this on the table.” She puts it on top of the refrigerator.