BURIAL PRACTICE

"I don't give a hang if it's rainin' ewe piss and haggis, boy! It just isna proper for a body to lie face down!" My father's kisser is all stretched out of shape like a WWI soldier who's just lost his entire platoon. Or perhaps he merely resembles the constipated Presbyterian Scotsman that he is. It's murder telling the difference, because he looks like that a lot.

Allow me to set the scene in this instance: rural southwestern Ontario graveyard in March, freezing rain, cold as a witch's... really friggin' cold. One very belligerent me down in the soupy grave, straddling the cement vault, gazing up into Pop's contorted and rapidly purpling countenance. That, in between bouts of seeing what I can do about righting the coffin we've just dumped in upside down. By the by, if you're not in the burying business, we have just accomplished the impossible. "You think maybe, Friseal," (that's pronounced FREE-shal, incidentally, some weird Gaelic mutation of the French word for strawberry), I yell up, glaring, eyes slitted against the icy cut glass pouring from the sky, "I was just a little bit right about that corroded hook—hmm?"

"Do na give me cheek, whelp! You insolent, self-serving, presum'shuss, fuzz-headed..." A knobby Scottish finger descends with this waterfall of invective, wagging violently near my left ear. It isn't quite close enough to bite, and is unappetizing enough anyway with its liberal infestation of red hairs.

Thing is, maintenance is everything in the memorials business. High maintenance. That's why the funeral director always slaps Friseal on the back and trots his designer ass in out of the rain: he figures all the bells and whistles are working. Technically he's supposed to stick around until the casket's sitting pretty on the bottom of the vault, but he trusts we have the situation well in hand. Oh, now and then he might stay and drop something expensive down the hole. But that's for the sheer novelty of seeing me on my belly, nearly nose to nose with a corpse, fishing in that inch and a quarter clearance between coffin and vault for his gold-plated pen. I expect the Old Scottish guy's glad Gucci Boy isn't hanging around today. But I digress.

"Until you fit new hooks, this thing is screwed," I observe neutrally, looking at the place where the straps are supposed to join the sidebar of the lowering device. The straps themselves, many feet of tough canvas fabric, are balled up somewhere at the bottom of the vault. Somewhere beneath the corpse's nose, I suspect, which is itself pointing toward China. As I await my father's response, I savour the creeping sensation of sleet congealing in my goatee.

Finally Friseal hands me down a shovel. Now that's high tech. I stare at him a second or two before accepting it. The shovel indicates one of two things to me: either he's been too busy to order new parts for the device (I've mentioned it a shitload of times), or he is fulfilling an ugly Scottish stereotype. Willing to believe the former, I poke dutifully around the edges of the coffin a bit to humour him and hand the shovel back up, shaking my head. That sucker took six good men to move it and one hell of a torque to drop it in here. It's going nowhere fast. A stray ice drop wends its way under my scarf and down my back.

I take another look at the man from whose loins I sprung. I'm none too comfortable thinking of him that way, since it touches on my awareness that he had sex with my mother at least once, probably still does, and... 'nuff said. Suffice it to say his cheeks are still ruddy from his 7 a.m. shot of rot gut whiskey, his old guy hat is pulled low over his eyes, and he's squinting at me with his head tilted to one side like a soggy red toucan. I imagine him in the stupid Bullwinkle slippers Mom got him for Christmas last year and try not to grit my teeth.

"Friseal?" He starts for the truck and I scramble out of the grave, noting wide fissures in the soil lining its sides. That makes me antsy. "Friseal? What in hell are you doing?"

He walks with a bit of an amble now, since his hips started going bad. He turns on me, arms akimbo. "We'll back the truck in and haul 'er up with the boom," he pronounces with a definitive nod.

"Uh huh," I say as I dance past him, not waiting for the hairy undulation of his upper lip which is sure to follow.

"What are you about, boy?" he demands, whipping round and narrowing his eyes as I pull open the door of the diesel half-ton and reach inside. Either Friseal McKellar is one canny bastard or he's dumb as a golf club, I can never decide which.

I emerge with a couple lengths of half-inch nylon rope in one hand, and the keys in the other. I dangle the keys in his face briefly before pocketing them. "Can you say cave-in, Friseal?"

"Acch—" (He makes that sound, I think, just to remind himself he still has duel citizenship)—"the ground is frozen, ya skinny-arsed young bugger!"

"It's March," I retort pointedly, jumping down toes first to straddle the vault again. "Hold this, willya?" I thrust one bundle of blinding yellow rope at him. It's the only bright spot in the day. Well, excluding Friseal's hair.

"You do na think, after nigh forty years in the business," he glowers, snatching the rope, "that your father knows the earth?"

I kneel, trying not to fall, on the rain-slick slab of oak beneath me, playing out the free end of the rope. I sigh, tugging a little. "Have you got a good hold of that?" Out of the corner of my eye I can see him move closer to the edge. I know if I look up at him, he'll start cussing a blue streak. Besides, I'm trying to keep my balance as the coffin rocks back and forth on its convex lid. After a second he starts to swear anyway. You can count on Friseal, like clockwork or a bad appendix.

I'm laid out along the base of the coffin now, shifting my weight side to side, trying to feed the rope round the end of the thing. There's precious little room to manoeuvre, and my nose must be about even with the dead guy's medulla oblongata, I figure. AUM.

I get the rope in position God knows how, and I'm nearly ready to get back on my knees when a great clammy clod of mud lands on my shoulder. I shoot from the grave in the prescribed bat-out-of-hell manner, dragging Friseal back with me. "It's frozen? My royal Canadian ass! Holy jumpin' Jeeeeeezus, Dad!" I indulge briefly in testosterone-laden hysterics, and I think the old Scottish guy learns a few new expletives. Friseal's hands come up in a quelling motion; he knows I'm freaked. "That's it," I declare, back a-twitch, fingers sweeping neurotically at stray clumps of soil on my coveralls. "We're done." I stalk towards the truck, bent on calling the dirt guy back to fill in. As far as I'm concerned, even the ornate lid of the vault can stay right where it is, laid out on planks for the eternal viewing pleasure of passers-by.

My fingers are just closing on the cell phone when I glance back at Friseal. Damned if the stubborn old bastard's not standing on top of the coffin, pulling out his Swiss Army knife, of all things. I imagine the show I missed: him lowering himself down in the hole, inch by arthritic inch. In my mind's eye I see the headlines: ASSHOLE SON LEAVES OLD SCOTTISH GUY TO DIE IN GRAVESIDE CAVE-IN, SAYS ASTONISHED DUMP-TRUCK DRIVER. Phone discarded but not forgotten, I storm over, as gingerly as possible.

I end up ass over teakettle on the capsized coffin. My father is fine. Meanwhile I'm soaked through with sleet water and the Mother of All Bruises is forming up on my right hipbone. Ah, the wages of filial piety. If I could stand and get decent leverage, I'd take the old toucan by his baggy coveralls and...

I look up, brushing pointlessly at my frozen forelock. High beyond Friseal and me, there's a small break in the clouds. It's still pelting rain, but the sky's having one of those cathedral moments, where a few fingers of sun poke through. Just like God's reaching down, groping around, maybe thinking about rapturing someone. Probably the dead guy, but maybe Friseal. His craggy face has gone all beatific, the fickle sun accentuating veins in his ears as it shines through their thin, faintly pink skin from behind. My father is suddenly Owen Meanie with Translucent Ear Syndrome, and I can refuse him nothing. I curse John Irving, English literature in general, and all those Mormon TV commercials, throwing Donny and Marie Osmond in for good measure.

Friseal offers me his Swiss Army knife, corkscrew extended. I experience passing visions of us superimposed on a Michelangelo painting but I don't share them, as I know he wouldn't be amused. Instead I roll over and squeeze my arm down inside the vault, applying the corkscrew to the errant rope end. I stick it like a Yorkshire pudding on a fork and draw it up. Oddly enough everything goes fine and we're able to slip ropes under both ends of the coffin. An hour or so more of hoisting, clever spatial manipulation and the sort of language never heard in the Sistine Chapel or any other respectable establishment, and we're in business. I won't bore you with all the trade secrets, but suffice it to say we've got that puppy back in position. The gleaming oak finish is scratched and riddled with divets, but I really doubt either God or the dead guy gives two toots. Main thing is, I've got Friseal back on solid ground again, and we'll live to fight another day.

Not that there isn't still a small problem. Seems the coffin's locking mechanism got totalled on its less than leisurely descent. We managed to keep old Buddy Formaldehyde mostly inside, but right now one of his arms is peeking out like he's waving goodbye. Exposed limbs loom large in Friseal's burial cosmos, I guess—he’s irked. I myself am more inclined to an agnostic, que sera, sera approach, but the Old Scottish Guy lowers the finger and the eyeball, both distinctly hairy.

Down I go one last time, making sure I don't forget my gloves. Taking those waxen digits in mine, I'm very tempted to send the fine gent off with a vigourous and encouraging handshake. I sneak a sly look at Friseal.

"Geraint Ewen McKellar! Do na you dare, ya cocky little mongrel, or by God I'll see your testes bronzed on the mantelpiece by morning!"

When it comes down to Christian names, I know I'm busted. I settle for a comforting pat, consigning the dead guy's wrist to the dark nebulous interior of his room without a view.

All that's left now is tossing the lid on. It's gone so freaking frigid in the past hour and a half, I can no longer feel most of my vital extremities. Consequently I've no problem throwing plywood down, backing up the hoist, and dropping that baby in there. That, too, goes without a hitch, much to my astonishment. We get the dirt guy back, fill in, and Friseal and I tamp down the sod.

We lean on our shovels a minute, surveying the neat strips of grass that roll out from the headstone. Everything's all in order now, just like the Old Scottish Guy wanted. In a couple weeks you'll hardly be able to tell there's a fresh dead guy under here. I steal a look at my dad. He's gazing off toward the West, and his face has gone all dreamy and un-Friseal-like. I turn and follow the line of his vision. It has finally stopped raining and it looks like there's a high-pressure front coming in. The clouds have parted in a long horizontal line. Blue sky threatens at the breach, and that rare creature, a March rainbow, is spread across the horizon like a good-time Irish fairy on a piano top waiting for leprechauns. It's nice, I'll admit—it'd make a dandy pan-out for some melodramatic chick film starring Pierce Brosnan and say, Laura Dern.

Friseal does something really odd then, considering I was just imagining Brosnan laying a big mushy one on Dern. He grabs me from behind in a rib-crunching bear hug. "Yeer a good boy, Geraint, I ken—an' I luv ya!"

I feel a lot like the object of a caber toss, and he probably finds me twice as stiff. "Aww, go on, Friseal!" I grunt, squirming to disengage myself. "You're weirding me out!" At least he waited 'til the dirt guy was gone. It doesn't seem to bother him and he stares at me a few seconds longer, face crumpled up in a strange fey smile. "Yeer a good boy," he murmurs again, shaking his head and jamming his hands on his hips as he turns back to the truck. "Ya wee bastard."

I watch him climb in the passenger side, 'cause he knows I've got the keys. His coveralls are every bit as sodden as mine, and they sag from his scrawny old fart frame like a wet paper bag. Maybe someday his nose will be pointing at China. I sigh. "I'll give you a spin, Friseal," I promise, nodding to myself as I start for the truck.

"Eh?" he says as I slide in behind the wheel.

I swivel an uncertain eye on my dad, but he's just the Old Scottish Guy again, all prune-faced and crusty-looking. "Nothing, Friseal," I assure him, throwing the half-ton into gear. "Don't get your bagpipes in a knot."