Le garçon aux funérailles

 “Hey, Henry.” Henry looked up from his shoes to see a young girl walking up to him. She wore a black gown, with a small necklace of white pearls; her hair was done up as fancy as he’d ever seen it.

“Hey, Cecilia.” He glanced at her eyes, then sheepishly looked away. She wrung her hands together for a moment—it was oddly adult and juvenile at the same time.

“I’m sorry about your grandpa.” He’d died a week ago, in his sleep, at the ripe old age of 94. Henry, of course, didn’t realize quite how long 94 years was, and in his youth only knew that his grandpa was gone forever, before they even really got a chance to know each other. Of course, that feeling had as much chance of intensifying with age as it did of diminishing.

“Thanks.” She didn’t seem genuinely sorry, really, to Henry; but he appreciated the words even if there was no sentiment behind them. Cecilia leaned onto her front foot, tapping her left toe on the ground a couple of times.

“Everybody’s so sad. I don’t like it.” She did mean that.

“Well…maybe we can cheer them up.”

Cecilia shook her head. “How?”

“I don’t know. When I play a prank on somebody it cheers me up.” Cecilia punched him in the shoulder.

“You always play them on me, and they never cheer me up.”

Henry shrugged. “Grownups are weird. Maybe they’ll like it. They like it when kids do stuff, anyway.”

“You’re weird,” she said, shaking her head, but he already knew she was on board with the idea. “What are you gonna do?” He pointed toward the building at the top of a small hill within the graveyard.

“I was looking around in there earlier. Somebody left some buttermilk on the counter inside. It smells really bad, I think it expired.” Cecilia looked baffled.

“What can you do with that?”

“I heard my mom talking; she said the car that carried grandpa’s coffin is leaving for another funeral at a different church soon. I’m gonna put it under one of the wheels, so it gets run over when the car leaves, and goes everywhere.” He mimed a large splash in the air with his hands.

“That’s not funny!” Cecilia shoved him. “That’s gross!”

“It’s funny because it’s gross. None of it’ll get on you anyway.” Henry certainly didn’t understand the potential for a release of all the nervousness and negative feelings that had accumulated around the funeral as a result of just enough unpleasant things happening to be absurd, inciting laughter—or perhaps he understood it intuitively.

“I’ll sneak in and get it,” Henry said. “You stay out here and make sure nobody comes in and catches me.” Before she could reply, he’d disappeared behind some shrubbery.

Cecilia started walking toward the hill. The building was isolated in the middle of several large sections of the graveyard filled with tombstones and other memorials; a single gravel road ran to it up the hill, but she couldn’t see anyone else in that direction. All of the adults and the other children were gathered further away, near where Henry’s grandfather had been interred, talking to family and friends.

As she began to climb the hill, walking between the rows of tombstones, she noticed that none of them were particularly interested in her, although one person would occasionally steal a glance in her direction. Most likely they thought she was off wandering, as children of any age are wont to do; but it was not really a concern to anyone until she threatened to disappear from their line of sight.

She reached the top of the hill and waited. The leisurely pace she’d taken meant that Henry’d had a few minutes already to get the carton of buttermilk, so she simply stood in place, shoved her hands in her pockets, and made sure that no one was approaching the building. Her wait was uneventful; eventually she saw Henry sneaking back down to the bottom of the hill with the carton in hand. She took a slightly quicker pace to meet him.

He whispered around the bush when she’d reached the bottom: “I got it, it was easy. Somebody moved it though, but they didn’t throw it away.” He shook the carton; she heard the buttermilk sloshing around inside.

“What do we do now?”

“You stay here.” He pointed at another row of bushes on the other side of the road. “I’m going to sneak along behind those, and then put the milk underneath the hearse.” The bushes would take him all the way there.

“What about me?”

“I don’t know. Hide by the bushes, but make sure you can watch me.” He headed off again. Cecilia crouched where she was, next to the bushes, and watched silently.

Henry carried the expired milk carton in one hand, sneaking stealthily (or so he thought) up to the parked hearse. The smell of rancid buttermilk would almost certainly disgust everyone in attendance at the outdoor reception when the hearse pulled away and smashed the carton.

He was almost there when Cecilia noticed Henry’s mother strolling over. It had been her father-in-law that had passed; her husband was managing the rest of the family at the moment, and providing directions to the reception. She saw a man in a flat cap smoking a cigarette; he tossed it on the ground and ground it out, beginning to walk toward the hearse.

“Hi, Cecilia,” Henry’s mother said, and crouched next to her, pushing a stray bang away from her face. “Are you OK?” Cecilia nodded. “Listen—why don’t you stand up, and I’ll take you back to your parents,” she said, and Cecilia complied, still tracking Henry’s progress.

He had reached the car now. He looked back at Cecilia, standing near the bushes now, next to his mother—despite herself, she gave him a thumbs up and grinned.

His mother saw Cecilia’s gesture, and followed her line of sight to Henry, crouched in front of the automobile. He met her eyes for a moment; she stretched her arm out toward her son and cried out: “Henry! Don’t put the quart before the hearse!”