The Mortician’s Tale
On our last night visiting the mortician and her husband in old gold country, Nevada City, the snow shone like crescent moons around the trunks of trees, and their pond lay flat as paper in a film of moonlight. The past few nights, we had been drinking whiskey from coffee mugs, abiding an early winter storm with card games; and though the blizzard had abated, this night was no different. Anteing up for seven card stud, the mortician turned to me and asked how many times they’d fucked behind our backs: her man, my girl.
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Our first night, we watched the mouth of an abandoned mine fill with snow just beyond the backyard. The mortician said that kids occasionally drowned during spring thaw, falling into open shafts buried by leafy bracken.
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The mortician’s man said, Shit. He tossed his hand, ruffled his beard. It didn’t matter; he was betting with her money. The amber circles in our hands rippled as my girl knocked her mug twice on the table. The freckle in the white of her eye stood still as she gulped. I’ve long given up trying to understand love.
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Our first night, the mortician told us about a recent funeral: a man had drowned in human shit under an outhouse because the secret perch he used to watch people shitting had collapsed, and he’d cracked his head on a beam, and then sunk into the waste. The smell of his body finally sent someone to the authorities. It seemed funny at the time.
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By the time of our last night, all that remained of the storm were rags of filthy snow. We sat in silence at the table, waiting for something to happen. Beyond us, the moon struck the pond like a fleck of silver in a pan of silt.