Burning Favors
Joseph E. Redding
Pete nudged the lump, twice. Confident that it did not move on its own, he drew on the Winston cigarette. “You did the right thing by calling me.”
“I didn’t know what else to do.” Shawn came close to Pete and lowered his voice. “I was about to call it in; then I seen his T-shirt.”
Pete lit another cigarette off the first. “Pop your trunk.” He flicked the dying cigarette toward the squad car.
Shawn reached into the only police vehicle for the Town of Sellen, yanking the trunk-release button. “You’re not gonna put that in there, are you?”
“What are you, stupid?” Pete shoved the body off the gravel shoulder with foot. It rolled to the bottom of the six foot ditch, blending into the darkness and mosquito swarms. “You’d have some tough questions to answer when positive DNA turns up in your trunk. Now start putting stuff around that piece of crap down there.”
“Why the hell would I do that?”
With the grit on the side of his mouth, Pete raised his eyebrows - the look he used when Shawn asked too many questions. “Because it’s a bad idea for a disappearing man to be hanging out on the edge of Highway Seven.” Pete thrust a screwdriver into a cruiser’s tire; a prolonged hiss followed.
“Hey! What’d you do that for?” Shawn bent down to examine the tire. “We just got new tires for the old girl last month.”
“It’s a shame contractors don’t strap their tools down better, letting them fall on the highway.” Pete tossed the screwdriver back into his own trunk. “After you cover that thing up, change that tire.”
“It was an accident Pete, you know that. Right?” Shawn talked into the tire. “Blended right in with the blacktop.”
“Now’s not the time for police officers to be having accidents.” Pete walked a defibrillator and a couple of traffic cones down to the body. Upon his return, he found Shawn still inspecting the tire. “Unless you want every cable station calling Tomahawk County a bunch of racists, you better unload the trunk.”
“Shouldn’t we just report this to the authorities?”
“We are the authorities, dipshit.”
“I mean the State Police.”
“Right. You want that twit Attorney General involved? He’ll take the easy way out and charge you; let a jury sort it out.” Pete stopped to light a third cigarette. “Look, you called me. You want to call it in, fine. But wait until I’m a mile away.”
Shawn warmed his opposite arms in the cooling, humid August air, before asking. “Where you going now?”
“Geisler owes me one. Actually, more than one. But this type of favor you don’t cash in over the phone.” Pete shut the car door, but leaned out the open window. “So we good on this?”
“Shit, you know we are.” Shawn felt like as he had signed a third mortgage on his house. “Just don’t be too long. Everybody knows I can change a tire in less than fifteen minutes.”
~ ~ ~
Ron Geisler owned the only funeral parlor and crematorium in Tomahawk County. In the five county area that bordered Minnesota, he had but one competitor – owned by a second generation brat who had little empathy for the dead or their loved ones. Geisler, in contrast, knew to celebrate the life of a deceased. Even a spouse-beating drunk needed to be presented as the most relevant, extraordinary person in the history of the world. No collage or tribute could be too large. Harsh fasteners, even screws, could be used to secure homages to his parlor’s walls. After all, damage for such displays were fixed with spackle and paint and built into the cost of the wake - a small cost for a grandiose departure. His comforting skills, he reasoned, had created his success and wealth; Pete Copperud’s assistance only created opportunity.
Wheels crunching on parking lot gravel never brought good news on evenings with nothing on the schedule. Through parted blinds, Geisler spied Pete’s Ford LTD. He tossed on his suit coat and unlocked the thick, brass-lined doors before Pete could ring the bell. “What brings you out tonight, Pete?”
“Got a body for pick up.”
Geisler frowned. “A body? I didn’t get a call.”
“I’m bringing the message.” Pete ran his hand over the polished oak paneling in the front parlor before thumbing the sturdy couches purchased from Henredon. “These new?”
“Last week.” Geisler knew to be patient with Pete’s visits. They were like the yearly flu shot – painful but necessary.
“Sure are nice. You do good business out here.” Pete flashed a smile that would have been inappropriate in a funeral home at any time. “Course you’re the only one zoned to do this type business in the county.”
“So where’s the body, Pete?”
“Out on Seven, a couple miles outside of town.” Pete continued to wander the parlor. “Think you can get out there right away?”
“Nobody called anything in.”
“I told you, I came in person for this one, Ron.” Pete looked directly at Geisler. “When Shawn called, I left my office right away. It’s what friends do. I didn’t even get a chance to put away the Carson Company’s application for a crematorium in Tomahawk County.”
“Shawn?” Geisler loosened his Windsor knot. “Why didn’t he just call it in?”
“Don’t need a lot of radio chatter on this one.” Pete walked to a crystal lamp in the center of the room. “This new too? Must have cost a ton.” Pete gave a nod toward Geisler and went to the door. “Bring the most inconspicuous car you got; nothing out of the ordinary.”
As the wheels crushed out of the parking lot, Geisler ran a rag over Pete’s greasy prints then retrieved the keys for the Mercedes-Benz V class van.
~ ~ ~
Shawn turned into the van’s lights, holding the spare with a look of concern that far exceeded a flat tire. Pete emerged into the beam and gave a circular motion with his hands. Geisler swung the van around in front of the cruiser.
“Hey Ron,” Shawn said. Gone from his voice was the confidence that Geisler had heard him use to stop barroom brawls. “Thanks for coming out.”
“So where’s the body?” Shawn shined his torch deep into the ditch. Tarps, cones, flares and a “road closed” sign hid all but a pair of timberland boots, toes facing up. “Did he fall into all that stuff?” Shawn and Pete said nothing. Geisler pushed aside the trunk contents to find a cool wrist without a pulse. He returned to the road and asked, “Any idea how he got there?”
“That’s not important right now.” Pete held a cigarette on the side of his mouth, eye squinting to keep out the smoke. “The important thing is that this body gets gone - and soon.”
“So dig a ditch. Throw him in the river.” Geisler ran his finger over the crease in the passenger side panel of the cruiser. “I don’t need to be involved in whatever is going on here.”
“We don’t need this body resurfacing.”
“I didn’t mean to do it Ron, I didn’t.” Shawn’s swollen eyes were rimmed with redness.
“Shut it, Shawn.” Pete turned to Geisler. “You can burn this thing and nobody will be any the wiser.”
“You don’t just turn the furnace on like a light switch. It takes time. Plus there are forms. People want to know when I fire it up.”
“So toss it in with another one. With all the business you got, there’s got to be another funeral coming up.”
A cremation for a bitter old man, a Chicago transplant who had no friends and little family, was scheduled for the next day. “That’s not how we’re supposed to do things.”
“You’re the only funeral home in the county, aren’t you?” Pete blew smoke straight up. “Who’s gonna question it?”
Shawn went back to changing the tire. Geisler returned to the body using his cell phone flashlight. He saw the long, black-sleeved shirt that hid lanky arms, but with inadequate lighting, Geisler couldn’t gage the full size of the body. He turned when he heard Pete arrived into the ditch.
“We’ve known Shawn a long time. A solid guy all his life. He doesn’t deserve this.”
Geisler nodded at the corpse intertwined in police equipment. “Doesn’t he deserve a proper funeral?”
“We’re not feeding him to the dogs.” Pete flicked the dying ember toward the cruiser. “He’s getting a proper burial with you.”
“But what about his family? Don’t they have a right to know?”
“Where was the family when he’s over in Minneapolis, raising all hell?” Pete lowered his voice, but took a step toward Geisler. “And nobody asked him to come walking through our town.”
“The protests were twenty miles away; he wasn’t bothering anybody here.”
“This body turns up on the news, you think nobody will be bothering Sellen? You think your funeral home won’t get set on fire?”
Geisler snorted. “Protesters don’t target funeral homes.”
“No, not normal funeral homes - like the ones run by Carson.” Pete handled his pack of Winstons. “But the ones that give big contributions to Trump? I don’t know. Protestors don’t seem to like those types of businesses.”
“I contribute to plenty of democratic candidates, too.”
Pete increased the volume of his voice. “Ron, I get it. You can spend your money where you want. Donations. Charity. Bail money for your children.”
“Com’on Pete,” Shawn yelled from the top of the ditch. He dropped the jack, the cruiser tilting its weight onto the spare. “His boys just like to fight.”
“All boys like to fight. Just seems Rick and Ron Junior seem to find more tussles with black men than most.”
His boys had been in several scrapes at the dance club that catered to the three universities within a 30 mile radius of Sellen. One black student suffered a broken jaw, though nobody could say with certainty that Geislers’ boys had kicked it loose. At the time, Pete soothed things over and only the Star Tribune ran a story, a snippet on the back page. Given the current political climate, it wasn’t unthinkable that such a story could resurface.
“Alright, I’ll take it,” Geisler said. “But I’m not hauling it from the ditch. You two want it gone, you’re carrying it.”
~ ~ ~
Geisler instructed Pete and Shawn to place the body in the Chicago man’s coffin. Both men turned away as the body tumbled over the wooden side, Pete holding the lid down as if may pop open.
“Don’t hold it down too tight.” Geisler smiled at the two. “You’re gonna have to throw your clothes into that casket.”
“Why we gotta do that?” asked Shawn.
“DNA is all over you.” Geisler walked into a booth behind the room and flipped some switches. The fan of the crematorium whirled. “Wash down in there. I got to start filling out paperwork for the legitimate procedure.” He disappeared up the steps.
Pete tossed his clothing into the casket as the room began to warm. He strutted into an area that resembled a butcher’s shop with dark green tiled walls and a large hose attachment. Shawn followed him in.
“Shit, that’s cold,” Shawn yelled as Pete hit him with a spurt from the hose. Shawn, trained to restrain people, worked his way behind Pete and applied a choke hold. Pete surrendered the hose and Shawn repaid the favor.
“It gets warmer,” Geisler said in a calm voice, as if naked men often wrestled in his crematorium. “Just give it a minute.”
When it did warm, each man held the hose for the other while they scrubbed down with the solution Geisler provided. They dried dressed in clothes abandoned by families uninterested in the return of funeral dressings. Pete put on a tuxedo coat that stretched tight on his shoulders and clashed with the powder blue velour pants. The plaid, woolen trousers fit Shawn as if tailored for him and he kind of liked the satin shirt. “You two look like you could be off to get married,” Geisler said.
“Watch it now,” Pete said, a bit tense. “We got enough scandals going on around here.”
Geisler checked the temperature after they left, making note of when the furnace would be cool enough to sweep metal fillings or surgical screws out of the ashes. He figured that one extra body wouldn’t significantly increase the burn time or amount of ashes to put in the urn.
~ ~ ~
In the weeks that followed, Pete scanned the Minneapolis Star Tribune each morning for news of a missing protestor. A fifty word column appeared in October, asking the public to contact the editor with any information regarding a missing adjunct sociology professor from UW- Eau Claire who had written two obscure books on civil rights and environmentalism. By November, a weekly column on the matter had moved to the front page. On three consecutive Sundays in January, the paper ran an exposé, tracing the man’s path from the George Floyd rallies in Minneapolis to his final known meal at the Dew Drop Inn in Spring Valley, ten miles west of Sellen on Highway Seven. Talk grew around town. When questioned by his constituents, Pete opined that the nutty professor probably traveled further north toward Menomonee and I-90 to increase the odds of finding a ride back home.
The snow began to recede in April, spawning a reporter in Sellen. Pete found a message from him when he returned from lunch at the Two Bucks Café. Rather than call the reporter, he called Geisler.
“How’s it going?” Pete asked, trying to sound chipper. “Everything okay by you?”
“Why wouldn’t it be, right? Business is good, well, at least for me.” Pete rolled his eyes at the gallows humor and asked if he had any out-of-state visitors. “You mean the reporter? He drove by, but he hasn’t been in here. Probably doesn’t need my services.” Pete told Geisler to call if the reporter showed up.
Pete walked to the police station. He passed by without looking into the large station window when he saw the reporter’s car in the lot. He returned an hour later. Before Shawn shut his office door, Pete demanded to know what the reporter wanted.
“An open records request for all dispatch reports from August 15th until Labor Day.”
Pete responded before Shawn finished: “Did you give it to him?”
“We did what we normally do. Request a down payment, which includes three hours of research time at $140 an hour.”
“Good.” Pete nodded. “Good.”
“But he whipped out some Attorney General decision. Said it prohibits us from charging research fees, but the paper would gladly pay the statutory copy fees.”
Pete took out his Winstons. “Did you make any dispatches that night - other than to me?”
Shawn reminded Pete that he couldn’t smoke inside. “I used my cell phone to call you. What do you think, I’m dumb?” Pete relaxed his chest and sat back in the wicker chair that was in need of re-weaving. “The only official calls were a couple of traffic tickets and the cruiser’s flat tire.”
Pete lit a cigarette on the walk back to his office. He fired up a second one while pacing the courtyard, surveying Chestnut Street and fighting off a sensation that he was under surveillance. He tossed the half smoked cigarette into the grass and went into his office.
By week’s end the reporter picked up the dispatch records. Shawn provided Pete with a copy of the request - 111 pages of documents, detailing speeding tickets issued to tourists who failed to slow to 25 mph as they entered town. The six page report on the flat tire didn’t seem to be out of the ordinary, yet Pete went out for a cigarette after reading it.
“Nice day, isn’t it?” A man with a three-day growth of a beard gave a toothy grin.
“Smoking’s better when it’s not so cold. Mind if I bum one?” Pete shook the pack; a single cigarette arose. He tilted the box toward the man. “Winston, huh. Not many people smoke these nowadays. Thought Marlboro had the market cornered.” The man thanked Pete and walked on without lighting up. Pete returned to his office to find a note that Shawn had called with “something urgent.”
“The reporter’s been sniffing around Highway Seven.” He cleared his throat several times, false starts to new sentences.
“Highway Seven runs a long way, Shawn.”
“I seen him looking around where you flattened my tire.”
“I didn’t flatten any tire. From your report it looks like you hit something.” Pete looked out the window, examining both north and south down Chestnut. “Any idea why he’s out there? Odd place to be looking for a missing person, just because an officer had a flat tire.”
“Whatever, Pete. I’m just letting you know that he’s been out there.” The phone went dead.
The next day Pete took a drive out on Highway Seven. Two dozen people with large black garbage bags in hand surveyed the saturated roadside. If Pete didn’t know better, he would have mistaken the group for the Sellen Rotary Club, assigned to this stretch of road for beautification purposes - something that should have been done in March. He made a mental note to contact the leader about its tardiness.
Two weeks later, a man leaned against a planter outside the county building and nodded at Pete. “Pete Copperud, County Executive?”
“Sure am.” Pete flashed a smile, a political reflect. “And to whom do I have the pleasure of talking to?”
“Derrick Drews of the Star Tribune.” Pete scrunched his face, trying to place the man. “I borrowed a smoke from you the other day.”
“Right. You come to return the favor?” Pete lit one up and offered Drews the same.
Drews declined, nodding at the “No Smoking” sign fixed to the building. “But I do have some questions about your cigarettes.”
“I know. I know. Why do I keep smoking when it’s horrible for my health.” He blew smoke straight up. “Hell of a nervous habit to break.”
“Flat tires make you nervous?” Pete stiffened. “I guess they do. I’m trying to figure out why.”
“Now why would a big city reporter care a lick about the nice people in Sellen.”
“The people sure are nice; very talkative.”
“Glad you’ve been treated well.” Pete took a long drag. “But don’t be too kind in the paper. We like things small and quiet around here. We don’t need a bunch of big city folks coming over, clogging it up.”
“You may get a lot of people.” He showed Pete a photo of eight Winston butts lying in the grass.
“I’ll have to get Officer Grambling on that. Looks like we have serial litter bug on our hands.”
“Mr. County Executive, I know your cigarette butts are connected to the disappearance of Edward Rutherford. I’m just trying to figure out how.” Pete wanted to smack the smirk off the reporter’s face. “Where were you on August 20th when Officer Grambling was changing his tire?”
“Oh, you need to talk to Corporation Counsel about official business.” He threw the dying smoke at the reporter’s feet and walked back into the building. When the Star Tribune car moved on, Pete left out the back.
~ ~ ~
Geisler had not heard Pete walk in, but the aroma of cigarette smoke revealed the visitor. He only looked up when Pete tapped the mahogany desk.
“Do you remember when we were playing cribbage and drinking a twelve pack of Old Style?” Pete had an unhealthy, ashen look to him. “Right here, just the two of us at this desk.”
“I don’t even own a cribbage board.” Geisler wanted to add that he wouldn’t drink one Old Style, much less a half dozen, and certainly not at his desk.
“Sure you do.” Pete tossed a dark stained board across Geisler’s desk; the side door opened and blue, red and green pegs scattered. “I seem to remember that you wanted to keep playing until you won a game. But because of my skill, it took a while.”
Geisler picked up the board and swept his hand over the desk, checking for chips. “What are you doing Pete?”
“You remember. Last August?” Pete sat, leaned forward. “About the time that protester went missing.”
“I told you then, Pete. That has nothing to do with me.”
“No, I suppose not. You were probably too busy trying to fix the code violations around here.” Pete looked at the ceiling then around the rest of the room. “Wasn’t this an addition? I’m not sure the County building committee met on a permit request.”
“You really want to do this, Pete?” Geisler dropped the cribbage board in the garbage.
“I just need you to verify, should anyone ask, that I was here that night.”
“I seem to remember you hanging out with Shawn that night.”
“Without me, all this goes away. You know that, right?” Pete swept his arm across the room. “You have no idea how many funeral homes from the Twin Cities have been trying to get a foot into this county. How many favors I called in with execs from the neighboring counties to keep your monopoly.”
“Well, maybe I do remember you here that night.” They both forced smiles. Geisler unlocked a cabinet on the hutch behind his desk. He removed a letter-sized manila envelope. “Course I don’t remember the cribbage.”
“Whatever you remember, as long as I wasn’t out on Seven with Shawn.” Pete walked toward the exit.
“Oh, you were here.” Geisler nodded. “With Shawn.”
Pete stopped and took six rapid steps back into the center of the room. “Shawn wasn’t here. He was changing a tire on Seven.”
“Not all night.” Geisler withdrew photos from the envelope. Fifty pictures, most catching Pete and Shawn in a laugh while wrestling in the crematorium shower. Geisler held one with Shawn up tight against Pete’s naked back, struggling for the hose. “Camera don’t lie.”
“You trying to blackmail me?”
“Nope.” Geisler didn’t remove eye contact from Pete, his voice friendly, as if speaking to a clerk at the grocery. “Just seems to me that I’m done owing you favors.”
Pete stared as Geisler. Neither man said anything. The phone rang.
“So, we’re good?” Geisler asked.
“We’re good,” said Pete.
“Alright, well maybe we can get a cribbage game going this weekend.”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
Geisler turned his back and picked up the phone. “Geisler’s Funeral Parlor, the exclusive funeral and crematory service provider for Tomahawk County. How can I help you?”
Joseph E. Redding
Pete nudged the lump, twice. Confident that it did not move on its own, he drew on the Winston cigarette. “You did the right thing by calling me.”
“I didn’t know what else to do.” Shawn came close to Pete and lowered his voice. “I was about to call it in; then I seen his T-shirt.”
Pete lit another cigarette off the first. “Pop your trunk.” He flicked the dying cigarette toward the squad car.
Shawn reached into the only police vehicle for the Town of Sellen, yanking the trunk-release button. “You’re not gonna put that in there, are you?”
“What are you, stupid?” Pete shoved the body off the gravel shoulder with foot. It rolled to the bottom of the six foot ditch, blending into the darkness and mosquito swarms. “You’d have some tough questions to answer when positive DNA turns up in your trunk. Now start putting stuff around that piece of crap down there.”
“Why the hell would I do that?”
With the grit on the side of his mouth, Pete raised his eyebrows - the look he used when Shawn asked too many questions. “Because it’s a bad idea for a disappearing man to be hanging out on the edge of Highway Seven.” Pete thrust a screwdriver into a cruiser’s tire; a prolonged hiss followed.
“Hey! What’d you do that for?” Shawn bent down to examine the tire. “We just got new tires for the old girl last month.”
“It’s a shame contractors don’t strap their tools down better, letting them fall on the highway.” Pete tossed the screwdriver back into his own trunk. “After you cover that thing up, change that tire.”
“It was an accident Pete, you know that. Right?” Shawn talked into the tire. “Blended right in with the blacktop.”
“Now’s not the time for police officers to be having accidents.” Pete walked a defibrillator and a couple of traffic cones down to the body. Upon his return, he found Shawn still inspecting the tire. “Unless you want every cable station calling Tomahawk County a bunch of racists, you better unload the trunk.”
“Shouldn’t we just report this to the authorities?”
“We are the authorities, dipshit.”
“I mean the State Police.”
“Right. You want that twit Attorney General involved? He’ll take the easy way out and charge you; let a jury sort it out.” Pete stopped to light a third cigarette. “Look, you called me. You want to call it in, fine. But wait until I’m a mile away.”
Shawn warmed his opposite arms in the cooling, humid August air, before asking. “Where you going now?”
“Geisler owes me one. Actually, more than one. But this type of favor you don’t cash in over the phone.” Pete shut the car door, but leaned out the open window. “So we good on this?”
“Shit, you know we are.” Shawn felt like as he had signed a third mortgage on his house. “Just don’t be too long. Everybody knows I can change a tire in less than fifteen minutes.”
~ ~ ~
Ron Geisler owned the only funeral parlor and crematorium in Tomahawk County. In the five county area that bordered Minnesota, he had but one competitor – owned by a second generation brat who had little empathy for the dead or their loved ones. Geisler, in contrast, knew to celebrate the life of a deceased. Even a spouse-beating drunk needed to be presented as the most relevant, extraordinary person in the history of the world. No collage or tribute could be too large. Harsh fasteners, even screws, could be used to secure homages to his parlor’s walls. After all, damage for such displays were fixed with spackle and paint and built into the cost of the wake - a small cost for a grandiose departure. His comforting skills, he reasoned, had created his success and wealth; Pete Copperud’s assistance only created opportunity.
Wheels crunching on parking lot gravel never brought good news on evenings with nothing on the schedule. Through parted blinds, Geisler spied Pete’s Ford LTD. He tossed on his suit coat and unlocked the thick, brass-lined doors before Pete could ring the bell. “What brings you out tonight, Pete?”
“Got a body for pick up.”
Geisler frowned. “A body? I didn’t get a call.”
“I’m bringing the message.” Pete ran his hand over the polished oak paneling in the front parlor before thumbing the sturdy couches purchased from Henredon. “These new?”
“Last week.” Geisler knew to be patient with Pete’s visits. They were like the yearly flu shot – painful but necessary.
“Sure are nice. You do good business out here.” Pete flashed a smile that would have been inappropriate in a funeral home at any time. “Course you’re the only one zoned to do this type business in the county.”
“So where’s the body, Pete?”
“Out on Seven, a couple miles outside of town.” Pete continued to wander the parlor. “Think you can get out there right away?”
“Nobody called anything in.”
“I told you, I came in person for this one, Ron.” Pete looked directly at Geisler. “When Shawn called, I left my office right away. It’s what friends do. I didn’t even get a chance to put away the Carson Company’s application for a crematorium in Tomahawk County.”
“Shawn?” Geisler loosened his Windsor knot. “Why didn’t he just call it in?”
“Don’t need a lot of radio chatter on this one.” Pete walked to a crystal lamp in the center of the room. “This new too? Must have cost a ton.” Pete gave a nod toward Geisler and went to the door. “Bring the most inconspicuous car you got; nothing out of the ordinary.”
As the wheels crushed out of the parking lot, Geisler ran a rag over Pete’s greasy prints then retrieved the keys for the Mercedes-Benz V class van.
~ ~ ~
Shawn turned into the van’s lights, holding the spare with a look of concern that far exceeded a flat tire. Pete emerged into the beam and gave a circular motion with his hands. Geisler swung the van around in front of the cruiser.
“Hey Ron,” Shawn said. Gone from his voice was the confidence that Geisler had heard him use to stop barroom brawls. “Thanks for coming out.”
“So where’s the body?” Shawn shined his torch deep into the ditch. Tarps, cones, flares and a “road closed” sign hid all but a pair of timberland boots, toes facing up. “Did he fall into all that stuff?” Shawn and Pete said nothing. Geisler pushed aside the trunk contents to find a cool wrist without a pulse. He returned to the road and asked, “Any idea how he got there?”
“That’s not important right now.” Pete held a cigarette on the side of his mouth, eye squinting to keep out the smoke. “The important thing is that this body gets gone - and soon.”
“So dig a ditch. Throw him in the river.” Geisler ran his finger over the crease in the passenger side panel of the cruiser. “I don’t need to be involved in whatever is going on here.”
“We don’t need this body resurfacing.”
“I didn’t mean to do it Ron, I didn’t.” Shawn’s swollen eyes were rimmed with redness.
“Shut it, Shawn.” Pete turned to Geisler. “You can burn this thing and nobody will be any the wiser.”
“You don’t just turn the furnace on like a light switch. It takes time. Plus there are forms. People want to know when I fire it up.”
“So toss it in with another one. With all the business you got, there’s got to be another funeral coming up.”
A cremation for a bitter old man, a Chicago transplant who had no friends and little family, was scheduled for the next day. “That’s not how we’re supposed to do things.”
“You’re the only funeral home in the county, aren’t you?” Pete blew smoke straight up. “Who’s gonna question it?”
Shawn went back to changing the tire. Geisler returned to the body using his cell phone flashlight. He saw the long, black-sleeved shirt that hid lanky arms, but with inadequate lighting, Geisler couldn’t gage the full size of the body. He turned when he heard Pete arrived into the ditch.
“We’ve known Shawn a long time. A solid guy all his life. He doesn’t deserve this.”
Geisler nodded at the corpse intertwined in police equipment. “Doesn’t he deserve a proper funeral?”
“We’re not feeding him to the dogs.” Pete flicked the dying ember toward the cruiser. “He’s getting a proper burial with you.”
“But what about his family? Don’t they have a right to know?”
“Where was the family when he’s over in Minneapolis, raising all hell?” Pete lowered his voice, but took a step toward Geisler. “And nobody asked him to come walking through our town.”
“The protests were twenty miles away; he wasn’t bothering anybody here.”
“This body turns up on the news, you think nobody will be bothering Sellen? You think your funeral home won’t get set on fire?”
Geisler snorted. “Protesters don’t target funeral homes.”
“No, not normal funeral homes - like the ones run by Carson.” Pete handled his pack of Winstons. “But the ones that give big contributions to Trump? I don’t know. Protestors don’t seem to like those types of businesses.”
“I contribute to plenty of democratic candidates, too.”
Pete increased the volume of his voice. “Ron, I get it. You can spend your money where you want. Donations. Charity. Bail money for your children.”
“Com’on Pete,” Shawn yelled from the top of the ditch. He dropped the jack, the cruiser tilting its weight onto the spare. “His boys just like to fight.”
“All boys like to fight. Just seems Rick and Ron Junior seem to find more tussles with black men than most.”
His boys had been in several scrapes at the dance club that catered to the three universities within a 30 mile radius of Sellen. One black student suffered a broken jaw, though nobody could say with certainty that Geislers’ boys had kicked it loose. At the time, Pete soothed things over and only the Star Tribune ran a story, a snippet on the back page. Given the current political climate, it wasn’t unthinkable that such a story could resurface.
“Alright, I’ll take it,” Geisler said. “But I’m not hauling it from the ditch. You two want it gone, you’re carrying it.”
~ ~ ~
Geisler instructed Pete and Shawn to place the body in the Chicago man’s coffin. Both men turned away as the body tumbled over the wooden side, Pete holding the lid down as if may pop open.
“Don’t hold it down too tight.” Geisler smiled at the two. “You’re gonna have to throw your clothes into that casket.”
“Why we gotta do that?” asked Shawn.
“DNA is all over you.” Geisler walked into a booth behind the room and flipped some switches. The fan of the crematorium whirled. “Wash down in there. I got to start filling out paperwork for the legitimate procedure.” He disappeared up the steps.
Pete tossed his clothing into the casket as the room began to warm. He strutted into an area that resembled a butcher’s shop with dark green tiled walls and a large hose attachment. Shawn followed him in.
“Shit, that’s cold,” Shawn yelled as Pete hit him with a spurt from the hose. Shawn, trained to restrain people, worked his way behind Pete and applied a choke hold. Pete surrendered the hose and Shawn repaid the favor.
“It gets warmer,” Geisler said in a calm voice, as if naked men often wrestled in his crematorium. “Just give it a minute.”
When it did warm, each man held the hose for the other while they scrubbed down with the solution Geisler provided. They dried dressed in clothes abandoned by families uninterested in the return of funeral dressings. Pete put on a tuxedo coat that stretched tight on his shoulders and clashed with the powder blue velour pants. The plaid, woolen trousers fit Shawn as if tailored for him and he kind of liked the satin shirt. “You two look like you could be off to get married,” Geisler said.
“Watch it now,” Pete said, a bit tense. “We got enough scandals going on around here.”
Geisler checked the temperature after they left, making note of when the furnace would be cool enough to sweep metal fillings or surgical screws out of the ashes. He figured that one extra body wouldn’t significantly increase the burn time or amount of ashes to put in the urn.
~ ~ ~
In the weeks that followed, Pete scanned the Minneapolis Star Tribune each morning for news of a missing protestor. A fifty word column appeared in October, asking the public to contact the editor with any information regarding a missing adjunct sociology professor from UW- Eau Claire who had written two obscure books on civil rights and environmentalism. By November, a weekly column on the matter had moved to the front page. On three consecutive Sundays in January, the paper ran an exposé, tracing the man’s path from the George Floyd rallies in Minneapolis to his final known meal at the Dew Drop Inn in Spring Valley, ten miles west of Sellen on Highway Seven. Talk grew around town. When questioned by his constituents, Pete opined that the nutty professor probably traveled further north toward Menomonee and I-90 to increase the odds of finding a ride back home.
The snow began to recede in April, spawning a reporter in Sellen. Pete found a message from him when he returned from lunch at the Two Bucks Café. Rather than call the reporter, he called Geisler.
“How’s it going?” Pete asked, trying to sound chipper. “Everything okay by you?”
“Why wouldn’t it be, right? Business is good, well, at least for me.” Pete rolled his eyes at the gallows humor and asked if he had any out-of-state visitors. “You mean the reporter? He drove by, but he hasn’t been in here. Probably doesn’t need my services.” Pete told Geisler to call if the reporter showed up.
Pete walked to the police station. He passed by without looking into the large station window when he saw the reporter’s car in the lot. He returned an hour later. Before Shawn shut his office door, Pete demanded to know what the reporter wanted.
“An open records request for all dispatch reports from August 15th until Labor Day.”
Pete responded before Shawn finished: “Did you give it to him?”
“We did what we normally do. Request a down payment, which includes three hours of research time at $140 an hour.”
“Good.” Pete nodded. “Good.”
“But he whipped out some Attorney General decision. Said it prohibits us from charging research fees, but the paper would gladly pay the statutory copy fees.”
Pete took out his Winstons. “Did you make any dispatches that night - other than to me?”
Shawn reminded Pete that he couldn’t smoke inside. “I used my cell phone to call you. What do you think, I’m dumb?” Pete relaxed his chest and sat back in the wicker chair that was in need of re-weaving. “The only official calls were a couple of traffic tickets and the cruiser’s flat tire.”
Pete lit a cigarette on the walk back to his office. He fired up a second one while pacing the courtyard, surveying Chestnut Street and fighting off a sensation that he was under surveillance. He tossed the half smoked cigarette into the grass and went into his office.
By week’s end the reporter picked up the dispatch records. Shawn provided Pete with a copy of the request - 111 pages of documents, detailing speeding tickets issued to tourists who failed to slow to 25 mph as they entered town. The six page report on the flat tire didn’t seem to be out of the ordinary, yet Pete went out for a cigarette after reading it.
“Nice day, isn’t it?” A man with a three-day growth of a beard gave a toothy grin.
“Smoking’s better when it’s not so cold. Mind if I bum one?” Pete shook the pack; a single cigarette arose. He tilted the box toward the man. “Winston, huh. Not many people smoke these nowadays. Thought Marlboro had the market cornered.” The man thanked Pete and walked on without lighting up. Pete returned to his office to find a note that Shawn had called with “something urgent.”
“The reporter’s been sniffing around Highway Seven.” He cleared his throat several times, false starts to new sentences.
“Highway Seven runs a long way, Shawn.”
“I seen him looking around where you flattened my tire.”
“I didn’t flatten any tire. From your report it looks like you hit something.” Pete looked out the window, examining both north and south down Chestnut. “Any idea why he’s out there? Odd place to be looking for a missing person, just because an officer had a flat tire.”
“Whatever, Pete. I’m just letting you know that he’s been out there.” The phone went dead.
The next day Pete took a drive out on Highway Seven. Two dozen people with large black garbage bags in hand surveyed the saturated roadside. If Pete didn’t know better, he would have mistaken the group for the Sellen Rotary Club, assigned to this stretch of road for beautification purposes - something that should have been done in March. He made a mental note to contact the leader about its tardiness.
Two weeks later, a man leaned against a planter outside the county building and nodded at Pete. “Pete Copperud, County Executive?”
“Sure am.” Pete flashed a smile, a political reflect. “And to whom do I have the pleasure of talking to?”
“Derrick Drews of the Star Tribune.” Pete scrunched his face, trying to place the man. “I borrowed a smoke from you the other day.”
“Right. You come to return the favor?” Pete lit one up and offered Drews the same.
Drews declined, nodding at the “No Smoking” sign fixed to the building. “But I do have some questions about your cigarettes.”
“I know. I know. Why do I keep smoking when it’s horrible for my health.” He blew smoke straight up. “Hell of a nervous habit to break.”
“Flat tires make you nervous?” Pete stiffened. “I guess they do. I’m trying to figure out why.”
“Now why would a big city reporter care a lick about the nice people in Sellen.”
“The people sure are nice; very talkative.”
“Glad you’ve been treated well.” Pete took a long drag. “But don’t be too kind in the paper. We like things small and quiet around here. We don’t need a bunch of big city folks coming over, clogging it up.”
“You may get a lot of people.” He showed Pete a photo of eight Winston butts lying in the grass.
“I’ll have to get Officer Grambling on that. Looks like we have serial litter bug on our hands.”
“Mr. County Executive, I know your cigarette butts are connected to the disappearance of Edward Rutherford. I’m just trying to figure out how.” Pete wanted to smack the smirk off the reporter’s face. “Where were you on August 20th when Officer Grambling was changing his tire?”
“Oh, you need to talk to Corporation Counsel about official business.” He threw the dying smoke at the reporter’s feet and walked back into the building. When the Star Tribune car moved on, Pete left out the back.
~ ~ ~
Geisler had not heard Pete walk in, but the aroma of cigarette smoke revealed the visitor. He only looked up when Pete tapped the mahogany desk.
“Do you remember when we were playing cribbage and drinking a twelve pack of Old Style?” Pete had an unhealthy, ashen look to him. “Right here, just the two of us at this desk.”
“I don’t even own a cribbage board.” Geisler wanted to add that he wouldn’t drink one Old Style, much less a half dozen, and certainly not at his desk.
“Sure you do.” Pete tossed a dark stained board across Geisler’s desk; the side door opened and blue, red and green pegs scattered. “I seem to remember that you wanted to keep playing until you won a game. But because of my skill, it took a while.”
Geisler picked up the board and swept his hand over the desk, checking for chips. “What are you doing Pete?”
“You remember. Last August?” Pete sat, leaned forward. “About the time that protester went missing.”
“I told you then, Pete. That has nothing to do with me.”
“No, I suppose not. You were probably too busy trying to fix the code violations around here.” Pete looked at the ceiling then around the rest of the room. “Wasn’t this an addition? I’m not sure the County building committee met on a permit request.”
“You really want to do this, Pete?” Geisler dropped the cribbage board in the garbage.
“I just need you to verify, should anyone ask, that I was here that night.”
“I seem to remember you hanging out with Shawn that night.”
“Without me, all this goes away. You know that, right?” Pete swept his arm across the room. “You have no idea how many funeral homes from the Twin Cities have been trying to get a foot into this county. How many favors I called in with execs from the neighboring counties to keep your monopoly.”
“Well, maybe I do remember you here that night.” They both forced smiles. Geisler unlocked a cabinet on the hutch behind his desk. He removed a letter-sized manila envelope. “Course I don’t remember the cribbage.”
“Whatever you remember, as long as I wasn’t out on Seven with Shawn.” Pete walked toward the exit.
“Oh, you were here.” Geisler nodded. “With Shawn.”
Pete stopped and took six rapid steps back into the center of the room. “Shawn wasn’t here. He was changing a tire on Seven.”
“Not all night.” Geisler withdrew photos from the envelope. Fifty pictures, most catching Pete and Shawn in a laugh while wrestling in the crematorium shower. Geisler held one with Shawn up tight against Pete’s naked back, struggling for the hose. “Camera don’t lie.”
“You trying to blackmail me?”
“Nope.” Geisler didn’t remove eye contact from Pete, his voice friendly, as if speaking to a clerk at the grocery. “Just seems to me that I’m done owing you favors.”
Pete stared as Geisler. Neither man said anything. The phone rang.
“So, we’re good?” Geisler asked.
“We’re good,” said Pete.
“Alright, well maybe we can get a cribbage game going this weekend.”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
Geisler turned his back and picked up the phone. “Geisler’s Funeral Parlor, the exclusive funeral and crematory service provider for Tomahawk County. How can I help you?”
