Nightlife in the House of the Dead

It is not easy living among the dead. Before they go in the ground, they spend some time in a funeral parlor and use the occasion to get you, if you are the Night Man, the guy who runs the place from 5:00P.M. to 7:00A.M. When they come at you, they are always smiling, unless their face was botched by the person who makes a living making them smile. They rarely move, while you're watching. They hide their actions to fool the living, but not me. I was always on my guard.

We had a fat woman with red hair who looked like Betty Davis in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" When she came rolling in, I could tell she wasn't happy in her new condition. Her right hand was clenched into a fist, right there on the gurney. I could see it. When they wheeled her into the sink room, where the stainless steel tables drain into a huge sink, she was frowning and still had a tight fist. They hoisted her onto a table and gave her the tube for two full hours, until her fluids were sucked out. She wasn't as fat when they were done with her, and her fist was gone, but it was hard to make her smile. The fat on her face kept falling, like the jowls of a hound dog. They made her smile by wiring the inside of her mouth, and I knew she didn't like it, and I might be blamed for it.

There's a lot of touching and kissing when the living are saying goodbye, so after they leave, you have to look at dead people to make sure they look okay. Betty was in the Chapel, and after the first party cleared out, I went in for an inspection. When I saw the stupid yellow dress they put on her, I thought she might open her mouth and start singing, "I've written a letter to Daddy, " just like in the movie. You're always thinking that they want to contact you, so you listen for a thump from inside the coffin, and look at the eyes for the slightest twitch. On this occasion, when I approached just close enough to do my job, I saw that Betty had broken the wire in her mouth, and the right side of her face was hanging down, and the right side of her mouth was open, and she was drooling, and I sould see her teeth, her brown cracked teeth. I was out of there in a flash.

I called the boss, he made repairs, and she was okay until about nine on the following night. I go in there and she's popped both sides of her mouth. I can see all her lower teeth, brown and rotting, and fluid is flowing over them and down her chin to her stupid dress. And as I'm standing there, I hear a snap, like a bone breaking, and her chin drops, and her mouth comes wide open, and her tongue comes out on the right side--not on the left side away from me--but on the right side, where I am. It shoots out all at once and just lays there, three inches of white, with fluid running off, not a little but a stream. Goddamn her. I knocked over a rack of flowers on the way out and didn't go back to stand them up. I gave myself five full minutes to calm down before calling the boss.

On the third night, after my first inspection, I couldn't look at her face. They rewired her good and put a smile on her like a circus clown, and to me, it was worse than seeing her mouth open. It took her hours to bring the smile down to where I could look at her and not be afraid. She looked a little more at peace, but I kept watching to see if she had anything left--a murmur, a rush of air from her nose.

Fortunately, some of the people who came to see her had red hair, and this made it a little easier. What do I mean by this? I had one woman who had red hair and none of her visitors had red hair, not her children, relatives or friends. Do you see what I mean? You have to watch for things like this. I think Betty wanted me to see that she still possessed power, and when I saw that she did, she backed off.