The Coffin Maker: Part 3

A crow was perched on a sign, whose letters had faded from the blistering sun that no one knew anymore what it read. Except Gerry, who had come to bury Oxhorn’s fallen in this field for thirty years; "Bailey's Ale & Winery." It was a vineyard once, but the unfortunate optimists that planted the grapes realized quickly that the weather was far too intense and scorched their crops. It rarely rained in Oxhorn, so the ground had caked into a hard protective surface like an exoskeleton. Gerry sat on a horse drawn buggy with the reins loosely held in his left hand. In the buggy was the short man’s coffin, occupied.

Gerry lightly tugged on the reins and his horse trotted to a halt. He let the reins drop to the floor of the cart and hopped off the side. He opened a swinging door to the buggy with the coffin lying on the floor. Gerry had removed the seats long ago to make better space for transporting the dead.

Gerry circled around the buggy to the left side and opened the other door. He took a shovel off the coffin and came around the other side once more. He lifted his shovel high in the air and swung it down, penetrating the hardened earth.

An hour passed. Sweat had soaked itself into the armpits of his grey sleeves and his short white hair was matted to his skull. He dug a hole in the field that was approximately six-feet long, three-and-a-half feet wide, and six-feet deep. Gerry pulled himself up out of the hole, which became increasingly harder with age – he often worried himself by wondering if he didn’t have the strength one day to pull himself up; or if he was hurt and couldn’t get up, who would come? Regardless, Gerry climbed out and walked towards the buggy.

He pushed the door against the side of the buggy to open it as wide as possible and then walked to the back. He lifted a plank of wood off small hooks and swung it over to the open door. He laid the plank against the door so that the end of the plank met the bottom of the buggy and the other end was firmly cut into the ground inside the grave. Back around the buggy Gerry stepped inside and clasped his coarse hands around the top of the coffin and pushed hard. Slowly the coffin slid off the buggy, tipped onto the wooden ramp, and slid down into the grave; a cloud of dust exploded under the coffin from the impact. Gerry pulled the ramp out of the grave and returned it back on the hooks.

Once more Gerry took the shovel and re-piled the dirt on top of the coffin, laying to rest the short man. Gerry looked out amongst the field and saw his years of burying measured, like counting rings in a tree to determine its age – the dirt to his left was still soft like soil; but as it went further down the line and then going in rows, eventually one couldn’t tell where any grave was. But Gerry knew where every coffin lay. He never bothered to make a tombstone or epitaph because no one requested one. More importantly he didn’t have time to make any. The dead were amassing too quickly in Oxhorn.

Gerry returned to Oxhorn on his buggy and went inside his shop for a moment to change shirts, the grey one having soaked in pints of sweat. He kept raggedy clothes and spare briefs in various piles around the shop. There was even toothpaste and a toothbrush in the drawer of his desk; he spent almost all his waking hours in his shop that his home acted more like a display room for his own personal coffin.

Gerry exited the shop and locked it up – he wasn’t adamant on maintaining a work-life balance but he never wanted to work after burying someone, he was often too tired. As he locked the door he looked to his right and saw a peculiar man traveling on a gypsy caravan.

The caravan was ornate and gaudy, with golden strands coiled around the top in a decorative lace. As it got closer Gerry realized the caravan itself wasn’t laced with golden strands but a massive cloak was draped over the entire caravan. And as it got closer still, Gerry saw the peculiar man was even more peculiar. He wore a button down shirt that was split in half by two colors: the left half was red and the right half was dark grey. The man wearing it was bouncing and nodding to himself like a child dancing alone. He was feeble and small and took up hardly any space. Closer he came and Gerry could hear the peculiar man humming to himself, tunelessly and to no rhythm. He simply hummed notes in a high pitch with each breath as if he was panting a song. Gerry remembered the man in black was expecting a caravan.

Gerry stepped onto the road and approached the peculiar man. “Excuse me, sir.” The peculiar man waved viciously, like an excited boy, but without a smile and without stopping. “Excuse me,” Gerry persisted. “Are you meeting someone?”

“I’m here, I’m here,” the peculiar man spoke. His voice was falsetto but sounded broken, like he shouldn’t be speaking that high.

“Who knows you’re here?” Gerry asked.

“He knows I’m here! He said he’s here, too.” The peculiar man began to laugh excitedly, which sounded like whimpering. He forced himself into a laughing fit that became almost inaudible; his laughing sounded like something sticky being yanked off a surface rapidly. “Ha ha ha ha ha! Oooh, yes, we will do our show now!”

“What show?”

“The circus! The circus show!” The peculiar man kept going into town on his caravan. Gerry caught up and stepped in front of the horse to stop them. The horse stopped, but the peculiar man lunged forward in his seat and yelled at Gerry. “Stop it!” he growled in an entirely different voice. “Maurice can’t take me if you’re in his way, you ass! Move!”

The confrontation didn’t alarm Gerry. “Take you to where?”

“I’ll be late!” the peculiar man confessed in his broken falsetto. “Please, please move so he doesn’t hurt me!”

“He won’t hurt you. Look, I know him, too.”

“You know Master?” the peculiar man asked giddy.

“Master?” Gerry repeatedly slowly.

“Yes?!”

“Yes, I know him. Can you take me to him? I want to ask him a question.”

“No, no… No! I cannot take you to him,” the peculiar man declared.

“Why not?”

“Because I am going to him, not you.”

“But I want to talk to him. So I’ll go with you.”

“No, no, no. You are not meeting him, I am meeting him. Yes, ha ha ha ha, we’ll do our show!”

“The circus show…” Gerry gave up.

The peculiar man began clapping in agreement and laughing hysterically. Gerry reasoned with himself that he would simply follow the caravan instead of sitting next to the peculiar man, which seemed a great deal better. But while he had the peculiar man’s attention, he wanted to know more. “Um, what is your master’s name?”

“He is Master, yes, he is,” the peculiar man nodded his head once in affirmation.

“Okay, what is his real name?” Gerry pressed further.

“He is Master.”

Gerry sighed, trying to find the right phrasing for his questioning. “What is your name?”

“I am Cicero,” Cicero smiled as wide as his cheeks would stretch. He squealed a little when his smiled reached its maximum.

“Cicero. What is the circus show you and… Master... are doing?”

“The circus show! Oooh, money, money, money!” Cicero exclaimed. “Master has a special shirt, yes. Hard! His shirt is metal—” Just then the caravan shook violently, and a scream howled from inside. Gerry jumped back in fright. Cicero began punching the front of the caravan with the back of his fist. “No, you idiot! Loki! Loki! Shut up!”

As Gerry tried to move – he was too surprised to, at first – the man in black called out from in front of the caravan down the road. “Cicero! You’ve made it!” Gerry turned around and saw the man dawned in his short black poncho with the white diamond on his left breast and the rest of his black attire. The man smiled proudly upon seeing his peculiar friend. “Cicero, you haven’t been spoiling our surprise to my friend, have you?”

“Never, Master. The circus is a secret,” Cicero cackled knowingly.

The man in black faced Gerry. “Gerry,” he bowed cordially. “You know, my friend, it dawned on me I never gave you my name. My name is Darwin.” He stuck out his hand and opened his fingers for a handshake. Gerry met him halfway and shook, eyeing him more carefully than yesterday. He sincerely doubted his name was Darwin, but it was better than calling him “Master.”

“Darwin. Are you putting on... a circus?”

“Hmm, yes,” Darwin admitted. “Although that’s what we like to call it. It’s a bit more than that, you’ll see.”

“Frankly, Darwin, I don’t know what’s going on and I’m starting to think you’re up to something,” Gerry said.

“I know it’s odd, but it’s the truth. You’ll see.”

Darwin walked up to Cicero and waved for him to scoot to the other side of the seat for him to climb up and take the reins, but Gerry grabbed Darwin by the shoulder before he could. Darwin froze and looked at Gerry’s calloused hand.

Gerry pointed at the caravan. “Who’s in there?”

Darwin didn’t speak; he just stared at Gerry in the eyes for what felt like several minutes. Finally, a smiled formed over his gaunt cheeks. “Come.”

Darwin stepped over to the caravan and grabbed the corner of the cloak closest to him. He lifted the corner. It wasn’t a carriage but a cage, with bronze bars that locked the darkness inside. Gerry slowly approached the cloak and peered through the bars. As his pupils adjusted to the darkness, he saw a figure close to him. It was hunched over and looking near Gerry, but hadn’t noticed him yet. It breathed deeply, deeper than any man. Then it turned and spotted Gerry watching it. Gerry saw the hair, the ears, and the eyes. It dragged its knuckles along the floor and took two large steps towards Gerry and stood right up against him by the bronze bars. Gerry was face to face with a chimpanzee.

“This is Loki,” Darwin stated. “I suppose he caught your attention in some manner. I hope he didn’t frighten you.”

“I don’t think people here are going to appreciate your… show the way you think.”

“Perhaps, but that’s why we keep it a secret behind this.” Darwin dropped the corner of the cloak to enclose the chimpanzee. Suddenly, in an energetic tone, Darwin began a new topic. “Gerry, I woke up this morning wondering all day about that coffin on your workbench. You told me it was occupied, wasn’t it?”

Gerry was confused from the sudden change of subject, but felt there was no reason he couldn’t answer the simple question. “There was a duel before you came into town, and I buried him this morning.”

“That’s right, you bury the fallen as well. My friend, you certainly can’t lower the dead into their graves alone. Who helps you?”

“No, I do it alone. I’ve made a system that works.”

“A coffin is heavy, isn’t it?”

“The coffin itself isn’t terribly weighty, but it’s what goes in there that makes it hard to lift.”

Darwin paused and stared at Gerry. “Yes. The dead do weigh more.” Darwin walked past Gerry and climbed up the caravan to sit next to Cicero. He grabbed the reins and looked down at Gerry. “Death seems to loom over Oxhorn,” he began, once more in a different tone. “When I am murdered, the man that kills me will be imprisoned, correct?”

Though it was another odd segue, Gerry didn’t find the new question imposing, so he answered once again. “If it’s a duel, yes. Though our sheriff doesn’t exactly care too much about punishment, so he’d only be locked up for a night or two.”

“If it’s not a duel?” inquired Darwin.

“Well, more likely than not, he’d get away. Sheriff isn’t too keen on chasing criminals either.”

Darwin chuckled to himself. “My friend, no one ever gets away with crime. You’ve heard the old saying, haven’t you? You’re either caught or you die a criminal, but you never outlive a chase.” Cicero laughed quietly, then his laugh grew louder and louder until it was hysterical – laughing like a boy who knew a secret he couldn’t wait to tell.

Darwin took two fingers to his brow and gestured a tipping-of-the-hat to Gerry as he cracked the reins down on the horse and sent them further into town, Cicero laughing maniacally.