Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 20 - Burkett Methodist

Gordon Hewing sat in the front right pew aisle seat of the First Methodist Church of Burkett. At the moment, however, he had no idea he was there.

Just moments before, he was attacked behind the gas station down the street from his house. Before he passed out, he thought he heard his wife’s voice. But this memory, along with all others, was currently absent from Gordon’s mind.

He now wore a crisp black suit — newly purchased — with custom-altered cuffs, a buttoned-up vest, and a tapered suit coat. His black shoes — also new — were shining and squeaky, fresh from the box.

The worst part of his dapper ensemble was the ugly dark-blue paisley tie. The bottom of the tie was now pinched between his fingers as he absent-mindedly traced over the leaf-like embroidery with his thumbs. He never liked paisley anything, but it was one of Marie’s favorite designs.

“Paisley,” Gordon said aloud. It was the first word he spoke in this strange but familiar place.

“What?” someone responded in front of him.

Gordon looked up from the tie and saw a short pudgy man with swollen jowls and a white mustache that covered his lips entirely. He was standing behind a pale wooden pulpit on the chancel platform ten feet ahead of where Gordon now sat. The man who spoke to him wasn’t actually looking at Gordon, but instead seemed overly fascinated by his own hands, turning them over and over, deeply studying the wrinkles and crevices of his fingers and palms.  

“I…” Gordon stammered. Before he could respond to the man, something else caught Gordon’s attention.

To the man’s right — and Gordon’s left — at the bottom of the chancel’s stairs was a closed mahogany casket, resplendent and radiant. The faint smell of linseed-scented furniture polish still lingered in a cloud around it.  The lugs and handles were an equally shiny brass, wiped clean and gleaming.  A bounty of flowers — daisies, orchids, lilies, and roses in red and peach and white and yellow — encompassed the space on the floor directly in front of the casket, surrounding it in a blanket of colors.  

From the back of the nave, someone barked the wet rattling hack of a smoker’s cough.

“Where am I?” Gordon heard someone whisper from a few pews behind him.

Then, to his immediate right, a woman’s aged and timid voice spoke directly to him.

“Gordon?” she said.

Gordon turned his neck. It was stiff and aching and he winced at the sharpness of it. He turned more from his waist, then, and found himself staring directly into the eyes of his long-dead mother-in-law. 

“Delores,” Gordon gasped.

Delores Sebastian had passed away in a nursing home a little more than fifteen years after Marie died.  Yet here she was again as Gordon remembered her, a tiny black hat with an attached mesh veil pinned to her tidy silver hair. The veil partially covered mascara-laden eyes that were slightly smudged from tears. Her cheeks were colored a dark pink and her lips glimmered with sharp red lipstick.

“How did you get here?” Delores asked.

Gordon felt something catch in his throat and he thought he might start crying.

“It’s so good to see you, Delores,” he said.

“How did you get here?” his mother-in-law asked again.

“I suppose I should ask the same of you.”

Delores pointed at the casket in front of them.

“Oh my,” she said. “It seems someone has passed.”

“So it seems,” Gordon answered.

Around them, other voices chattered, at first in whispers and then at full volume. So many conversations happened at once that they all melted into barely decipherable white noise.

Gordon craned his neck, the tension he felt a moment before slowly loosening, and peered upon a sea of vaguely familiar faces. In the pews throughout the church were customers from decades past who once frequented Hewing Grocery many years and a lifetime ago, long before Walmart moved into Burkett.  Their names were faint memories, now, mostly forgotten and intangible, at least at the moment.  Townspeople who Gordon once remembered as typically friendly and smiling and welcoming now gathered in this place all clothed in dark dresses and suits with somber expressions upon their faces. 

An elderly man not wearing a suit but an oversized cardigan sweater that nearly swallowed his entire torso suddenly stood about halfway back in the small chapel. He looked at the people all around him and started to loudly swear.  

“I don’t want to be here!” he angrily said as he concluded his tirade.  

Gordon turned back to Delores, who also watched the bitter old man.  

“Do you know him?” Gordon asked.   

“Charles Skeeters,” she said.  “He had a stroke and died right after Marie passed.  How’s he here? He shouldn’t be here. He can’t be here. That’s not possible.”

“Delores,” Gordon said. “How did you get here?”

“Well, I suppose you drove me here, didn’t you?”

“Delores,” he said and reached out for her hand.  “Mother, you’re dead.”

Delores’ face twisted into an insulted scowl. She looked for a moment like Mr. Skeeters had when he first stood and prepared to curse.  

“Gordon, how dare you talk to me that way,” she admonished. She pulled her hand away from his.

Tears welled up in her eyes and she instinctively dabbed at them with a handkerchief that happened to be in her hands.  She looked back at Gordon again, her anger dissipated as quickly as it appeared. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just very perplexed all of the sudden.”

“Me too,” Gordon said.

“My head’s all fuzzy.”

“Yes.”

Delores took in more of the room, the sparse stained glass windows with patterns nearly as ugly as the paisley on Gordon’s tie, the bare wooden altar and matching hymn board to the side of it. The dark red carpet and pews without kneelers. Finally, she turned her gaze to the pudgy man still staring at his hands from behind the pulpit.  

“That’s Reverend James,” Delores said.  “He’s dead, too.”

“Reverend James,” Gordon repeated. “That’s right. I remember hearing that.”

Delores’s lower lip began to quiver and a fat tear rolled down her cheek.  Gordon scooted closer to her, moving her purse aside, and gingerly wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

As he did, the sudden memory of the woman crying out for help behind the gas station near his house came into sudden focus. Why was he there at night? He remembered the oil-stained blackened surface of the alley behind the gas station.  A movie, right? He was walking home after watching a movie when he heard the woman scream and those four teens attacked him.  He was knocked to the ground, gripped with the worst physical pain of his life, a pain that intensified with every senseless kick.  

And then there was a blackness followed by an all-encompassing quiet. In that quiet, he was certain he heard Marie call out to him. Yes, absolutely certain of it.

But now he was here, with his dead mother-in-law, and the dead pastor who had presided over Marie’s funeral.  Just then, from the back of the room, someone started to laugh.  

“This is impossible!” the person cackled joyfully.  

Gordon stood from his seat and turned to look once more at the congregation of a hundred people or more. They continued chattering to each other and touching their faces and their hands.  Several other people stood and seemed to bounce around like they were trying on old clothes that hadn’t been worn in a while. Others sat motionless. Mr. Skeeters started swearing again.

“Aren’t you listening to me?” Mr. Skeeters screamed again at the top of his lungs. “I don’t want to be here!”

The gabbling congregation quieted instantly, though just for a moment, as Mr. Skeeters broke into sobs and sat down again.  Then the chattering picked up once more.

“Well, hey there, Gordon,” someone said from a few pews behind him. 

The voice came from a plump young woman with a kind face and bright blue eyes. She wore a dark red dress that seemed to match the carpet on the floor. She stood and smiled brightly at Gordon, waving.

“Hello,” Gordon answered, but didn’t at all recognize her face.

“It’s Peggy Newsome,” she said, reading his confused countenance.  But even with a name, Gordon still couldn’t place her.

“I’m sorry,” Gordon said, shaking his head.  The room quieted as they spoke. Gordon heard several people whisper his name.

“That’s Gordon Hewing, isn’t it?”

“Hewing Grocery.”

“Such a shame when Marie passed. She was just so lovely.”

“I was Marie’s roommate in college,” Peggy said.  “I was at your wedding. Remember?”

“Oh, right,” Gordon said, but in truth, he didn’t. Confusion wracked his brain.  This woman was too young to have been there when he married Marie. For that matter, she wouldn’t have even been born when Marie was in college.  

Gordon sat down next to Delores again and put his hands on his lap. Delores continued dabbing tears from her eyes.

“Mr. Skeeters is dead,” Delores said. “Reverend James is dead. That one, too, but I don’t remember her name.”

“I don’t know, either,” Gordon said.

“And who’s in the casket, then?” Delores asked, pointing at the box just feet away from where they sat.

“Marie,” Gordon answered.

“What?”

“Marie,” Gordon said. “Marie’s in the casket.”

“What?” Delores asked again.

“I just now remembered this day,” Gordon said. “We’ve been here before.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This is Marie’s funeral.”

“Gordon, stop talking like that.”

“It’s true, Delores,” Gordon said. “It makes no sense, but it’s true. Reverend James. Mr. Skeeters. You. All of you are gone now, but all of you were there that day.”

“My daughter’s funeral?”

“Yes.”

“I must be losing my mind,” Delores said. “Or I must be dreaming, then.”

“I don’t believe so,” Gordon said and turned to face his mother-in-law again.

“Well, this just makes no sense.”

“No, Delores, it doesn’t,” Gordon responded. “And the only reason I can think of for all this happening is that I must be dead, too. I think perhaps we’re all dead now.”