The cemetery, the morning we brought poor dead Mokes to it, was quiet. Very quiet. The Spring sun in the blue sky was quiet. The air was quiet. The birds were quiet. And the small group of mourners standing over by a gravesite in silent prayer, they were quiet too.
We approached the group with our engines off. Out of total respect. We moved the bikes forward in neutral, and in silence, just using our feet to advance the machines.
We stopped near the mourners. We got off our bikes. We went over to Sam’s trike, which was part of our funeral cortege. Mokes’ casket rested on the makeshift flatbed rigged to the back. We lifted the casket from the trike’s apparatus. Then we slowly carried it to the sorrowful mourners yonder. They did not look up. They were too lost in their sorrow and in their own thoughts.
Fallon, our leader, bowed his head politely and walked over to the clergyman in charge and spoke softly to him.
“Say, Holy Fucker Guy: you think we could share this hole with you people? We gut a dead loved one here too.”
It did not seem possible, but at this question, the mourning group became, somehow, even more silent.
“Find out if we can put Mokes on the bottom!” Blitzbreath called over to Fallon.
“Let’s see if we can use the fuckin’ hole at ALL first, asshole!” Fallon hollered back angrily.
“Mokes ain’t gonna WANNA use the hole if he ain’t on the BOTTOM!” Blitzbreath yelled.
“What the fuck DIFFERENCE could it make,” Fallon asked, getting annoyed.
“Well, it’s SAFER, for one thing!” Blitzbreath shouted.
Jennifer spat out a huge green logie in disgust. “ ‘Safer’!” she fumed. “Mokes is deader than my ol’ man’s two-inch cock and this lunatic’s worried about his fuckin’ safety.”
“Aww, hell, you know what I mean,” Blitzbreath said, lookin’ at her. “From dogs diggin’ up bones, and pigs rootin’ around for truffles, and shit.”
“How the fuck deep do you think pigs root around for truffles, asshole!” Jennifer inquired angrily. “To China? They dig just under the surface. They’re usin’ their noses, fa crise sake, not shovels! How the fuck far do you think you could dig with your nose!! You think you could dig up a buried body with your nose? Just try it sometime, asshole. Jesus Christ, you’re so fuckin’ goddamn stupid!”
“You’re both kinda not too bright,” Fallon intervened, getting annoyed. “This is a cemetery, not Ol’ MacDonald’s Farm. They don’t let dogs or pigs in here. And quit callin’ Blitzbreath stupid, Jennifer, you ain’t no fuckin’ scientist yourself.”
“Besides,” Analyzer observed helpfully, “it would actually be better if Mokes was a little closer to the surface ’cause if he’s farther down than the sowbugs and squids an’ stuff would get to him sooner ’cause that’s where the gooier life forms live, farther on down.”
“I think I’m going to faint,” one of the women in the original group of mourners said.
“Yeah, well, just don’t die,” Fallon said, looking over at the pit. “I don’t know if that hole will hold three people. Besides, there’s only two caskets available. After a week underground without a fuckin’ coffin you’d look like fucking hell. Not that you look so great right now, frankly.”
She was a thin frail woman, but when she fainted to the grass it sounded like a rhino had collapsed.
“I think you’d better leave!” one of the suited men said suddenly, shaking his fist – the seven guys and the two women standing nearhim now all tending to the fainted woman and saying things like, yes, and, mm-hmm, and, the sooner you all go the better.
Fallon just looked at them and blinked.
“I said I think you’d better leave!” the man said again.
“Do you mind if we bury our buddy first???” Fallon asked him. “I mean, sooner or later he’s gonna haffta be buried, ya know. I mean we just can’t cart him around with us like he still was … well, like he still was.”
The clergyman in attendance looked at Fallon and said, “Just what sort of mental illness has caused you people to imagine that you could bury someone in someone else’s grave just as easy as you please?”
Fallon looked all around the place. “Well, hell, it’s the only grave dug, for one thing,” he said, irritated.
The Prayer Guy looked at him for a second. Then he said, “Let me see if I have this straight: you have the impression that anyone who dies can be buried in any open grave in the cemetery?”
“How else would they do it,” Fallon asked, “dig the holes to order? Hell, they’d never catch up. That’s why I’m surprised to see only one place available. I expected to see the entire cemetery upside down. I’m surprised we’re the only two groups dickering for this place.”
“If it’s a chick they’re buryin’,” Murk called over, “Mokes is gonna wanna be buried on the top. Not on the bottom. Keep that in mind.”
“What do you mean ‘dickering for this place’?’” another suited man shouted. “This isn’t some goddamned swap meet! We purchased this plot!”
“If it’s a chick they’re buryin’,” Lopside said to Murk, “Mokes is gonna wanna be buried in the same coffin.”
“Isn’t there some way to shut these terrible people up?” one of the women asked desperately.
“No, ma’am,” Fallon said to her with the tired expression of one with firsthand knowledge. “Unfortunately, I’m the unlucky leader of the biggest collection of yapping goons in history. I’m surprised we haven’t heard something from Mokes yet.”
“Mokes is still dead, Fal,” Elaine called over.
“Thank you, Elaine,” Fallon said, not turning to her.
“Well howabout it,” he said then to the group. “We ready to get this project underway, or ain’t we?”
One man went red. “You madman! We’re not going to let you bury some foul carcass in with our Henry!”
“Well, I guess they ain’t buryin’ a chick!” Fallon called back to our group.
“In that case,” Sudzo said, “we’re gonna haffta bury ’em back- to-back. Just in case Henry is a faggot.”
Another woman fainted.
“Somebody get the police!” several of the men shouted.
“I found at least one cop!” Batterbrain shouted from somewhere.
“Bring him here!” one of the suited guys shouted, still glaring at us.
“OK!” Batterbrain called back. “Bring me a shovel!” The third woman fainted.
“All we gut is a trowel!” Mort called out, his face inside a duffel bag.
“I ain’t gonna dig no six feet down with no goddamn fuckin’ trowel,” Batterbrain shouted.
“Forget it,” Fallon yelled, annoyed, then said to the clergy guy,
“Listen, we’d like to get moving along on this thing. Now, if you would just cooperate…”
“Let me explain something to you people,” the reverend said.
“What the fuck’s the holdup on this thing anyway!!” Marsha yelled over.
“Relax, relax!” Fallon said. “They’re goin’ through the ‘let me explain something to you’ phase.”
“Well, tell ’em to hurry,” Marsha said.
“Hurry,” Fallon said.
“This grave belongs to this party here,” the reverend said. “It has been purchased by them, and can only be used by the deceased who is already lying in it.”
“I demand somebody get the police!” that same man said again.
“Shit,” Batterbrain said in slow exasperation. “Alright, gimmee the goddamn trowel.”
Francine brought it over to him.
Fallon had his fingertips to his chin and was deep in thought. Then he said, “Well … how much do these plots cost?”
“Oh, I think about a thousand dollars,” the reverend said.
“Fuck! I could buy a fuckin’ zoned acre for that!” Fallon said in disbelief. Then he said, “Ok, fuck it, what the hell – the law sez you gutta use a cemmiterry, you gutta use a cemmiterry.” He turned.
“Get the bail kitty, Raoul, and give these people five hundred bucks.”
Raoul lifted his jacket and started opening snaps on his money belt. “This is s’posed ta be for gettin’ people outa the hole, not puttin’ ’em in one.”
“Get the bail kitty, Raoul, and give these people five hundred…”
“I got it, I got it, don’t get fuckin’ uppity.” Raoul went over and gave the clergy guy five hundred dollars.
“Well,” Fallon said to the reverend, “that should about cover it. Can we get on now with makin’ Mokes ekilogically perfect?”
The reverend lifted the money out of one hand with the other and numbly looked at the red welt in his palm that Raoul made when he slammed the money into it. “Ummm … What?…” he said finally.
“Fuck this shit!!” Fallon suddenly hollered. “They’ve got the fuckin’ dough! Let’s get this thing over with! Maybe MOKES can stay here all fuckin’ day, but we gut other things ta do!”
“Now you’re makin’ some sense,” Murk said gruffly, breaking from the bunch, walking over to the grave and jumping down onto the lid of Henry’s coffin. He eased himself down the side of the coffin and worked his way to the base of the hole and then looked up at us and clapped his hands quickly and impatiently a couple of times. “Wanna just slide Mokes’ box right on in ’ere?” he directed, his arms out and waiting.
The three men who were on their knees patting the fainted women’s faces, they suddenly abandoned the women and ran over to where their buddies were watching what was going on.
“That biker creep is standing inside Henry’s grave!” one of them said to a gaping buddy. “What is he doing in Henry’s grave!”
“Tryin’ ta figure out how the motherfuck I’m gonna get outa here once Mokes’ coffin is put in here with me,” Murk said distantly,his hands suddenly on his hips, his head turning all around, hunting for future climbing routes.
Fallon walked over and stood at the edge. “I think we oughta put Mokes down first,” he said, scratching his head in continuing puzzlement. “This might be a rainy winter and I don’t want water seepin’ in on him, makin’ ’im moldy and havin’ ’im go sour.”
Murk said “Ok,” and hoisted up one end of Henry’s coffin and looked at a couple o’ Henry’s paralyzed friends. “One o’ you lazyass roadworkers wanna reach down here and give me a hand with this fuckin’ thing? I don’t know what’s in this box but this Henry dude musta been one fatass overweight motherfucker. It’s no wonder he’s dead.”
“Somebody get the police!” they both shouted.
“Hold yer goddamn horses!” Batterbrain said from somewhere. Some of us guys reached down into Henry’s grave and a minute later Henry’s casket was outside the grave, Mokes’ casket being inserted instead.
“Don’t forget to put him face down,” Fallon said, watching. “If ya put ’im face up, that puts Mokes’ cock in proximity with Henry’s ass, and he’s gonna be like that for maybe a thousand years. An’ horniness is a deceitful motherfucker. He might just yield ta perversion. I see no reason to encourage this.”
“Well Mokes ain’t no faggot!” Sudzo said. “If he’s face up under Henry I can guarantee ya he ain’t gonna be trying ta fuck the guy. An’ puttin’ Mokes face down is fucked up, believe me.”
“Ok, then, keep Mokes face up,” Fallon said, after a second. The three fainted women had by now brought themselves around, their attendants having a moment ago allowed them to reflop to the grass in order to scamper over to see what Murk was doing in Henry’s plot, and the first thing the three women did was to start screaming for the men to “do something about this.” The men were running all around, giving warnings to us about this and that, saying a lot of sentences with the word “outrage” in them, tugging and pulling at our clothes, and getting brushed away. They finally all settled on the tactic of all of them shouting all at once, “SOMEBODY GET THE POLICE!”
“Hold on, dammit, I’m workin’ on it !” Batterbrain said fromsomewhere. It began to dawn on everyone that Batterbrain only spoke when there was a call for the police.
And so it was that all our work – and all the efforts to stop our work – became stilled. For the first time since the instant before we showed up the cemetery was again in complete silence. Everyone turned toward the general direction of where Batterbrain’s voice had been coming from. All who looked saw a casket inch upward, end first, out of the ground. In a moment it was completely out of the hole, and in fact slid about ten feet down the sloping grass and then stopped.
Batterbrain then climbed out of the hole and went over and opened the coffin with a crowbar. He lifted something to a seated position by the “armpits” and held it up for view.
“His name’s Detective Fisher. He’s only been dead four years so he pro’bly ain’t forgot too much about his job. You’re gonna haffta come to him, though.”
“Typical cop,” Barbara said, polishing her nails. All three women, and two guys this time, fainted.
Fallon did not appreciate Batterbrain’s efforts. “Now, what the fuck did you do that for!” he said. “We can pro’bly all get in real trouble for that!”
“You’re all insane!” one of the still-unfainted guys roared, his eyes squeezed shut, his hands pulling at his own hair.
“Look at ’im,” Lopside said, shakin’ his head in disapproval. “We’re all actin’ real collected an’ calm: he’s havin’ a complete nervous breakdown, and he says we’re nuts.”
Mokes’ coffin was now in place at the bottom of Henry’s grave. Henry’s casket was being readied for re-lowering to its new position atop Mokes’.
“I sure don’t like the idea of someone bein’ on top of Mokes like that,” Sudzo said, shaking his head, standing at the edge of the gravesite and looking down. Sudzo turned and walked over to the Church Guy, who so far for the duration of this intermingling of Biker and Citizen had remained conscious, and Sudzo inquired, “Tell me, Roland,or Reverend, or whatever the fuck it is God calls you: about this ‘raisin’ o’ the dead’ on the Last Day, are they gonna take the time to see if there’s extra people under the main guys? By ‘main guys’ I mean the guys whose names is actually on the tombstones? I mean, Mokes’ name ain’t gonna be in evidence anywhere in this graveyard to the passin’ angels what come by to haul these people up. So they may just come by, yank Henry up, and then move on.” He didn’t bother to wait for an interpretation from the aghast clergyman. He walked quickly back over to Fallon. “I think we oughta put Mokes on top,” he said in an urgent tone. “He’s on the bottom, it’s likely he’s gonna get left here on the Last Day. Meanwhile the rest of us’ll be hangin’ out in Heaven with hot nuns who died as teenagers from sheer holiness, abstinence and chastity, and who’ll finally have the A-OK from God Almighty to start fuckin’ like hyperactive apes. Meanwhile ol’ Mokes’ll still be down here on Earth by himself jackin’ off all alone as usual.”
“All right, Murk, pull Mokes outa there and put Henry in first,” Fallon said boredly.
“FUCK!” a very tired Murk said from inside the hole. It was at this point that even the Reverend started to buckle under the strain, and dropping to the grass he began to roll and writhe about, shaking his arms and legs, and screaming in a high- pitched voice, like he’d become possessed: “Strike down these heathen sacrilegious monsters from this holy ground, O Lord! Destroy their bodies with fire and lightnings! Make their flesh to fall from their bones! Cause their children to die of torment and pain, and make their women like unto the slaughterhouse: their parts and pieces flayed and stripped raw; their bodies hacked and butchered and flung into the mouths of demons!!”
“That is one cool fucking prayer,” Lopside said in hushed and awestruck tones, writing the homily quickly into a notepad before he forgot it. “I’m gonna say this next year at Thanksgivin’ at my fuckin’ family’s house, at my parents’ wake if they ever fuckin’ die, and every night before I go to sleep.” There were almost tears in his eyes. “You are one fucking goddamn holy genius motherfucker,” he said a lot louder, looking over at the still-writhing pilgrim.
“You gut Henry all straightened out down there yet, Murk?” Fallon asked down into the hole.
“Fuck you!” Murk said from the hole. “There ain’t no room for me and all this fucking contraption coffin junk! I’m takin’ Henry outa the box and buryin’ ’im raw!”
“Oh, shit, yer not takin’ off his clothes!”
“No, goddammit, I ain’t takin’ off his clothes, you fag, I’m just gettin’ ridda this fucking box he’s in. Like, he’s gonna need to stay in a fucking drawer for eternity? I don’t fucking think so.”
A minute later Henry came flyin’ outa the hole and landed in the dirt on his face.
Everybody in Henry’s group, except for the Reverend and one other guy, fainted. Then one guy ran over and rolled Henry over, held him in a sitting position with one arm and frantically slapped him on the face. “Are you alright, Henry?” he kept asking desperately, over and over.
Sudzo stood there and looked at him. “ ‘Are you alright, Henry’,” Sudzo said, quoting the guy and shaking his own head real slow. “That’s what Henry oughta be askin’ you – doin’ what yer doin’.”
It was then that the real nature of what he really was doing hit him, and he sprang to his feet, sickened, clutched his own face in both his own hands, ran straight out across the cemetery, screaming, and then collapsed at about the fifty-yard mark.
Henry’s casket was then hauled out, and a minute later Murk’s hand emerged from the edge of the hole with the fingers open and slightly curled. “Lemmee have Henry back,” his voice was heard to say.
Henry’s ankle was placed into Murk’s palm, and Henry slid out of sight.
“Ok, gimmee Mokes’ box,” Murk was heard to say.
“You’re gonna lay Mokes’ coffin right on top of Henry’s body?” Fallon called down.
“Look, there’s no room for two coffins in this hole,” Murk reminded.
“So, you’re gonna put Mokes’ coffin right on Henry’s corpse?” Fallon repeated.
Murk’s head eventually emerged from the hole into visibility. Then he said, patiently, “Yeah, I am. What, yer afraid Henry’s gonna have trouble breathin’ there’s a coffin on top of ’im?”
“How come I ain’t been able to see you before while you were down there?” Fallon inquired.
“’Cause I ain’t had nuthin’ ta stand on before,” Murk replied.
The final holdout, the reverend, finally fainted.
“But Henry’s only about 6 inches thick,” Fallon said. “Whattaya, got him rolled up into a fuckin’ ball?”
Murk looked down at his own feet in the darkness. “It’s more of a triangle,” he said eventually.
Barbara kneeled down and looked in, peering real hard. “Actually it’s more of an inclined plane,” she said.
Murk’s head was suddenly seen to rise and fall, rise and fall, in and out of view a few times, and then he came springing up out of the hole, to the sound of some loud crunching, kind of like branches snapping.
He scrambled up from his knees, outside the grave now, got to his feet, and walked quickly over to Fallon.
“Ya know,” he said, “I ain’t never felt right about this business o’ Mokes sharin’ a grave, an’ all. Even if he is on top.”
“Well this is a fine time to tell me that,” Fallon said tiredly. “Hell, we been makin’ funeral arrangements for three weeks. Mokes won’t need no buryin’ if we wait much longer.”
Murk paced around and scratched his head. “Ya know, I just don’t know,” he said, perplexed. “I mean, this Henry guy ain’t even a club member, ya know? I mean, I been lookin’ at this guy, this Henry guy, and he don’t look like the kind of fucker that Mokes would wanna be spendin’ the rest of forever with, ya know?”
“Well, we sure can’t bury him with Fisher,” Fallon said, putting his hands in his pockets and sighing wearily at all the delays.
“Fisher’s a cop. They’d fuckin’ kill each other.”
“That’s why I think what we oughta do is – now listen carefully to this – bury Henry and Fisher together; and give Mokes a place that’s all his own.”
“Ya know,” Fallon said, “I actually like that idea. That actually makes some sense to me.
“Batterbrain!” he called out, looking over toward Fisher’s grave, where Batterbrain still was. “Bring Fisher over here! We’re gonna put ’im in with Henry!”
“Ok, no problem! Who’s Henry?”
“Mokes ain’t gonna like bein’ in no fuckin’ cop’s grave,” Blitzbreath said.
“Batterbrain? … Come over here and get Henry! Leave Fisher there! Take Henry from here to back over there and put Henry and Fisher in together!”
“Ok! Who’s Henry?”
“I think that’s the sensible thing,” Blitzbreath said. “The sensible thing? The sensible thing?”
We looked to see who was talking now. Apparently everyone had regained consciousness unnoticed, except for the guy still lying way the fuck out there on the lawn, and they had formed a semicircle around Fallon and Murk. Most of them were still pretty shaky and kept weaving around in place, like they all had no blood pressure, or something, or were on a moving bus with no handholds. One of them was talking. Screaming, actually.
“I’ll tell you what the ‘sensible’ thing will be! We’re going to get in our cars. And then we’re going to drive back to the gate-office. And then we’re going to report you! And then we’re going to come back with as many policemen as we can find!”
“What the fuck am I! A human fucking backhoe??” Batterbrain shouted. “I ain’t diggin’ up no more cops!”
“…and then we’re going to have you all arrested for desecration of the dead,” the guy went on. “Do you know what they will do to you for that?”
Fallon turned to Murk. “What do the dead do to people: haunt them?”
“I think so,” Murk said.
Fallon turned to the guy. “Haunt us?” he asked him. “AAAAAHH!” One of the suited guys had just looked in on Henry, who Murk was once again standing on, and who Batterbrain had not yet removed to Fisher’s grave because he still did not know who Henry was.
“My God! His whole body is jumbled! He’s piled into the corner like a blanket in a kid’s room!”
“Is he … is he dead?” Batterbrain asked, shocked, having now come over from Fisher’s grave, and looking in.
All of Henry’s group rushed to the grave to see. The man already there turned and held them back, like a security guard.
“Don’t look! For God’s sake, don’t look in there!” he warned.
“Oh, Henry!” one woman shrieked desperately, her arms reaching achingly forward toward the grave. Probably his wife.
“I’ll get ’im for ya,” Batterbrain said, leaping in enthusiastically.
“No!!” one of the men shouted.
“He’s got to, buddy,” Fallon explained. “We’re movin’ ’im to another hole.”
“You’re what??” most of them gasped simultaneously. Their commotion now erupted into riotous bedlam. All were turning to each other and shouting at each other, the women caught in the throes of some great panic, the men transforming in their expressions into a snarling-faced primate collective prepared to defend their fallen Henry, all of them informing us of some great calamity that was going to befall us immediately. They were, in short, getting really really rowdy.
Fallon lost his patience. “EVERYONE SHUTTUP!” he hollered as loud as he could, which was very very loud.
Everyone actually shut up.
“Ok, now,” Fallon instructed, “I’m gonna explain alla this just once, and then I ain’t gonna explain it again: we’re movin’ Henry over to Detective Fisher’s grave – that’s him over there for those of you who might have been fainted when he got involved in this.”
Fisher was more or less seated in his coffin, the upper half of his loosely-dressed, mossy-looking skeleton hanging over the sideof the container, his head bent into some preposterous sideways configuration cheek down against the ground, his thin, dried-out, badly-attired arms kind of radiating out through the grass like tan, dirty snakes.
“And we’re gonna bury Mokes, here – Mokes is our man – in Henry’s grave. Henry I believe most of you already know.”
“Well, shit,” Murk angrily informed, “That’s gonna cost us another five hundred fucking bucks, if Mokes ain’t gonna share a grave,” he said to Fallon.
“Oh, fuck, that’s right,” Fallon said, grabbing his chin.
“Ok, quiet everyone for a second,” Fallon then said, pressing his temples with his fingers, one hand on each side, and squeezing his eyes shut. “Lemmee think here, lemmee think…”
“Ok!” he said abruptly, looking outward in sort of a trance. “Here, I gut it now: you people here, you fucking apeshit strangers, who I will now designate as Group One – you people paid a Grand for Henry’s grave. But we – Group Two – we paid you five hundred bucks to go sharezeez with Mokes; so in fact you have only paid five hundred; just like us. And that’s what you’ll be gettin’; a shared grave. Only you’ll be sharin’ it – Henry will be sharin’ it – with Detective Fisher. Not with Mokes.”
“This is madness,” one of the men said, starting to vibrate.
“Shuttup,” Fallon said. “I gotta concentrate. Ok. Now: Mokes: he’s paid five hundred. But he’s gettin’ a one-thousand-dollar grave. ’Cause he’ll be in there alone. So basically, Mokes has ripped somebody off for five hundred bucks. The question is Who. And the answer is … lemmee see. The answer is … Detective Fisher!! Because Fisher’s paid a thousand dollars for a solitary unit with no roommates but he’s only gonna end up with a five-hundred-dollar duplex, havin’ ta go through Armageddon and the Rapture and the Last Judgment and the Particular Judgment and the Judgment of the Unbaptised Limbo-Dancing Babies and the 144 thousand Final Lottery Winners … with Henry! So, Fisher’s out five hundred bucks. On the other hand, bein’ a cop, Fisher probably got his fuckin’ grave for free. Especially if he died in the line o’ duty, which would be: running away while eating a jelly donut. So right at this moment, all of us standing here are five hundred dollars in the black!” He turned to Murk. “Is that right?”
“I think so,” Murk said, nodding, thinking.
“Well then, there’s no problem!” Fallon said, turning back to the group. “The way I see it, right at this moment at least, things are as good as they could possibly be.” He said this with something of a look of satisfaction. “I can see that you still have some doubt on your faces,” he said, after not getting quite the Hooray that he had expected.
“I think,” Murk offered, “that they figure that since Fisher’s grave was probably paid for with tax money, we’re all probably five hundred dollars in the red.”
“Oh. Sorry,” Fallon said to them all.
They just stared.
“Any questions?”
There were no questions.
“Ok, let’s make everything that’s wrong here right. Or as the dipshits say, let’s get some closure on this cratered landscape,” Fallon ordered.
All of us bikers filled both holes with all their reconfigured contents, and all the coffin debris we collected and smashed and threw in and, an instant later it seemed, all of the deceased were all covered up, and the ground smoothed off, and the grass- replacement sod all put back all nice and proper. Just like that.
Batterbrain, standing solemnly over the grave where Fisher and Henry were now interred in tandem, Henry facing heaven and Fisher facing hell, he looked down, and with hands touchingly folded against his chest, prayed piously, “Asses to asses. Dust to dust.”
Our own troops meandered away from the graves, dusting themselves off and rolling their sleeves back down.
“Ok, let’s go home!” was the general decision.
“Wanna come to our place?” Fallon asked Henry’s group. “We’re gonna kinda reminisce on Mokes. Maybe have a few cold ones. Then we’ll pro’bly clusterfuck Irene. You folks can too, o’ course. She’d pro’bly actually like that, you folks bein’ bathed, an’ all. She’s kind of a picayune, uppity sorta bitch, always complainin’ about our stenches and crotch-goo and little tiny shitballs in our asshairs. You folks’d be a welcome change to our little hoity-toity princess, especially you broads. In fact she prefers pussy ta cock, I gotta behonest. Whattaya say.”
“We’re going for the authorities!” they all said, heading quickly for their cars.
“Wait up, we’ll go with ya,” Fallon said, tucking in his shirt and chasing after them.
They all stopped and turned. “With us?…” one said weakly.
“Ta kinda give our side of it,” Fallon said, dusting his vest off.
“I’m getting scared,” one of the women said to one of the men.
“Hush, he’s trying to confuse us,” the man said back to her. “We haven’t done anything wrong … I’m pretty sure.”
“Stop talking like that!” another man shouted. “Can’t you see what he’s trying to do??”
“Juss tryin’ ta give our side of it,” Fallon said, hitching up his pants. “C’mon, let’s go.”
“Your side of it!” a man cried. “You don’t have a ‘side of it’! You’re the ones who have been digging up graves! … transferring bodies! … pirating tombs!”
“Yeah, and we paid good cash money, too,” Fallon said bitterly. “Besides, we’re gonna say you did most of it.”
“But you did it all!!”
“We’re gonna lie, asshole!”
“It just gets more horrible all the time,” a man said. “It’s like we’ve all gone to Hell. Maybe Henry’s alive. Maybe we’re the ones who are dead.” He broke from the group and began to wander in small circles. “The fool might actually do it: he raises a fuss; it goes to court; it hits the papers; … of course the idiot can’t win, but what becomes of us in the meantime? Between these maniacs, the court system and the papers, we’ll become debased and befouled, just like these people. Poor Henry, he becomes an eternally embalmed joke … our names, our businesses, our friends, they become forever associated with some motorcycle gang…”
“…and they don’t even ride!” Mort called over to Fallon with some concern.
“Don’t they ever stop?” a man shrieked, falling to his knees and pressing his palms tight against his ears.
“That does it, they win!” another man said suddenly, pulling people by the elbows and herding them toward their cars. “It’sover! Henry is buried and now that’s the end of it! We’re going to return to our own lives and we’re all just going to forget that any of this ever happened!”
“How can we forget this?” another man said in disbelief.
“Never mind!” the first man said, pulling him along while directing someone else to go over and revive the man who was still unconscious way out on the grass. “It’s over and we’re leaving. The dead are dead, and we will go on. And that’s the end of it.” And he prodded everyone, even though they were all objecting, into their vehicles, and in a little while all the cars were disappearing over the nearby hillocks of the cemetery grounds.
And then they were all gone. The only thing remaining, the sounds of birds warbling their songs of Springtime-nestbuilding to all the world. Kinda pleasant, it seemed to us. Kinda movin’. A sorta feathered symphony of hope and promise.
We listened to the birds and stared at the far-off empty knolls where the cars had vanished.
“Somehow I don’t think this is really over yet,” Fallon said, staring outward, his hands in his pockets. Then he said to Murk, “Murk, does Henry look anything like Mokes?”
“Henry don’t even look anything like Henry anymore,” Murk said. “Well, then, what exactly have we gut goin’ on here with this body situation?”
“Basically,” Murk said, “Mokes is buried in Henry’s plot. Henry and Fisher are both in Fisher’s plot.”
“Ok,” Fallon said, his eyes squeezed shut in very hard thought.
“Dig everybody up again. Put Mokes’ dirty filthy biker duds on Henry. Put Henry’s tux on Mokes. Put Henry back in his own plot, and put Mokes in with Fisher.”
“Mokes ain’t gonna like that,” Murk reminded.
“It’ll just be until things cool off. Then we’ll put him back into Henry’s plot. ’Cause that’ll be empty, I gut a feelin’. Pro’bly tomorrow. I gut a feelin’ they’re gonna slink back here like common criminals and pull who they think is Mokes outa Henry’s grave. Even though it will actually be Henry in Henry’s grave wearin’ Mokes’ clothes.”
“What I mean is, Mokes ain’t gonna like not bein’ buried in his biker’s clothes.”
“Well, do you think Henry’s tux will fit you?”
“Pro’bly.”
“Well, then, since your clothes look every bit as bad, if not worse, as Mokes’, how’s about we just put your clothes on Henry?” “And I just go ridin’ around fa the rest of my life in a dead man’s tux?”
“Correct.”
“Bitchin’!”
Sharon, who we all consider to be actually retarded because she hates beer, said, “If they come back and dig up Henry, thinking he’s Mokes, aren’t they going to want to bury whoever they think is Henry back inside his own grave?”
“What exactly do you mean by that…” Fallon said, with a look of genuine worry on his face, as though his universe suddenly went polkadot for a minute.
“What I mean is, they’re going to want to put someone they think is Henry in Henry’s grave. Their only candidates are Mokes and Fisher, who by then will both be residing in Fisher’s grave.”
Eventually Fallon said, “Well, they may do that, they might switch ’em, but not tonight. That will be too much for them. They’d haffta hang around in here too long for their sensitive comfort zones. They’re mad at Mokes right now. Who is basically innocent, for once in his life. I’ll come by in the morning to see if Henry’s been dug up. If he is, and I’m pretty sure he will be, I’ll get a phone number of one of ’em, the Pastor, or somethin’, from the front office, and call and tell ’em that they dug up Henry, not Mokes. I hope they don’t do anything really awful to the fucker, thinkin’ Henry to be Filthy Biker Scum. It would kill them once I wised ’em up. Besides, Henry’s been through enough.”
“Why would you tell them at all?” Sharon inquired. “Then they’ll just come back and dig up everyone in Fisher’s grave just to get even. And commit terrible sacrilege on them besides just for the hope of including Mokes into the mess, ’cuz they’ll know at least one of the occupants is Mokes. It’s Mokes they’ll be after.”
“They’ll get caught, they try to sneak in here twice. They’d have to be crazy.”
“They didn’t exactly leave here sedated,” Sharon observed.
“They left here crazy.”
“Well then, we all gut a good thing to make some book on: whether they’ll come back twice or whether they’ll come back just once. If we read about ’em all goin’ ta jail this week, we’ll know that they tried it twice. One good thing about all this,” Fallon said, lightin’ a smoke and listenin’ to the birds, “at least we don’t have to hurry putting Henry back in his own grave. I don’t think Henry’s friends are gonna come back here to dig ‘Mokes’ up until way after midnight. But once they find out in the morning that they dug up Henry and threw him off a bridge, I’ll bet they hurry back tomorrow night to try and get Mokes this time. And just to really frost their nuts, soon as this place closes tomorrow we’re gonna come back and disturb the topsoil on all the graves near these two, an’ – suddenly seein’ that a hundred graves have been fucked with – they’ll dig up everybody in here, furious to get even with Mokes.
Typical Straight Citizens: first they get blue-in-the-face infuriated over nothing, and then they threaten anyone and everyone who can’t hurt them. It’s us they oughta be comin’ after. Not Mokes and a buncha other dead bodies.” Everyone stood quietly and motionless looking at Fallon, all of us stupefied by his thinking and astounded at his logic. “I think I’m akchully gettin’ a boner,” Lopside said.
A couple of days later, Henry was found at the city dump. There was a picture of him in the paper, lying against a gigantic gray heap of refuse. The caption under the picture read,
Next to that was another picture of some people that said, but in much smaller letters, “Boston Bluebloods arrested in cemetery during suspected ghoulfest.” It went on to mention, along with the “shock,” and “horror,” and “disgust,” and “outrage,” and “blasphemies,” and “unholy,” and “deranged,” and “psychotic,” and “unforgivable,” and, well, most of the other interesting social milieu epithets that the journalist considered appropriate for the occasion, that all the disinterred bodies would be housed, at cemetery expenseand with no concern for the bottom line, in a beautiful new marble mausoleum, with eternal flames and perpetual flowers and a signed waiver of all lawsuits, with special ultra lush facilities added for the two bodies found in the same grave in flagrant violation of decency laws and burial statues by a “callous and avaricious cemetery staff and heirarchy.”
“Looks like a buncha dead folks just hit the boneyard-lottery jackpot,” Murk said, readin’ the paper with somethin’ like envy in his voice. “Brand new marble sepple-curz fa evvybuddy! With special facilities for Mokes and Fisher!!”
“Mokes always was one lucky motherfucker,” Batterbrain observed. “At least till that 14-year-old cheerleader’s dad came home unexpected.”
Fallon reacted with a little bit more of stunned surprise, sitting there, readin’ his own paper. “I’ll be damned. Looks like they actchully did come back twice. The first time ta throw their beloved Henry into the city dump. The second time to ransack half the entire cemetery in an effort to commit sacrilege on Mokes.”
Murk, in his dead man’s tux, threw his copy of the paper down onto the floor, disgusted. “Man, callin’ Henry a biker. Just because he’s wearin’ the clothes. That is irresponsible reporting, big time.”
“Aah, what the hell, look at the bright side,” Fallon told him. “If Henry’s pals had just left well-enough alone, Henry’d still be resting in peace. But, no. They gotta go dig him up and toss ’im into the trash. Now some bum’s gonna sell ’im to a medical center. Then he’ll wind up bein’ an experimental skin graft on some laboratory rat’s bunghole. Which is good. Teach ’im a good lesson. He’ll think twice about ridin’ into eternity in Mokes’ clothes a second time.”
“You’re a fuckin’ idiot, Fallon,” Lopside said. “The dump ain’t gonna just leave Henry in the fuckin’ dump.”
“Well, they might,” Fallon suggested. “Everyone thinks Henry’s a biker. In fact we oughta go and get ’im ourselves. Make ’im a member. He’s been through a lot and I ain’t heard one fuckin’ snivel outa the guy. Tomorrow we’ll go to the dump, or the morgue, or to whatever government organization has him under their careand protection, and we’ll claim him as one of our own, bring ’im back here, skin the dude and bleach his skeleton and have him ride forever behind Eleanor. She’s always complainin’ no one has the balls to ride behind her. She’ll finally have a passenger. And he’ll be already one step ahead of ’er in the dead department at collision time when some asshole turns left in front of ’em!”
Murk went over and put his hand on Fallon’s shoulder. “You always say the right thing, buddy. I guess that’s why yer in charge.”
“Fuck you,” Fallon said. “I ain’t in charge. You fucks are just too lazy to take the job away from me.”
“Hey, I’ll drink to that,” Lopside said.
They all three went out to the refrigerator and got themselves some beers.
JJ is working on a book. It should be finished soon, if he ever approves of the printer's ink. We'll let you know when the first sordid copies roll off the presses. Here's a shot of JJ after he was fired from the Mouseketeers, trying out for another Hollywood gig. He was almost human before he went to work for Easyriders.–Bandit
