been at the start of the evening. We had shared a powerfully formative
experience-and we sensed that this event was more profound than it
seemed to be on the surface, more profound than boys our age could
grasp. In my eyes, Bobby had acquired a new mystique, as I had
acquired in his eyes, because we had done this daring thing.
Subsequently, I would discover that this moment was merely prelude.
Our real bonding came the second week of Decemberwhen we saw something
infinitely more disturbing than the corpse with the blood-red eye.
Now, fifteen years later, I would have thought that I was too old for
these adventures and too ridden by conscience to prowl other people’s
property as casually as thirteen-year-old boys seem able to do.
Yet here I was, treading cautiously on layers of dead eucalyptus
leaves, putting my face to the fateful window one more time.
The Levolor blind, though yellowed with age, appeared to be the same
one through which Bobby and I had peered so long ago. The slats were
adjusted at an angle, but the gaps between them were wide enough to
allow a view of the entire crematorium-into which I was tall enough to
see without the aid of a patio bench.
Sandy Kirk and an assistant were at work near the Power Pak Cremation
System. They wore surgeons’ masks, latex gloves, and disposable
plastic aprons.
On the gurney near the window was one of the opaque vinyl body bags,
unzipped, split like a ripe pod, with a dead man nestled inside.
Evidently this was the hitchhiker who would be cremated in my father’s
name.
He was about five ten, a hundred sixty pounds. Because of the beating
that he had taken, I could not estimate his age. His face was
grotesquely battered.
At first I thought that his eyes were hidden by black crusts of
blood.
Then I realized that both eyes were gone. I was staring into empty
sockets.
I thought of the old man with the starburst hemorrhage and how fearsome
he had seemed to Bobby and me. That was nothing compared to this.
That had been only nature’s impersonal work, while this was human
viciousness.
During that long-ago October and November, Bobby Halloway and I
periodically returned to the crematorium window. Creeping through the
darkness, trying not to trip in the ground ivy, we saturated our lungs
with air redolent of the surrounding eucalyptuses, a scent that to this
day I identify with death.
During those two months, Frank Kirk conducted fourteen funerals, but
only three of those deceased were cremated. The others were embalmed
for traditional burials.
Bobby and I lamented that the embalming room offered no windows for our
use. That sanctum sanctorum-“where they do the wet work,” as Bobby put
it-was in the basement, secure against ghoulish spies like us.
Secretly, I was relieved that our snooping would be restricted to Frank
Kirk’s dry work. I believe that Bobby was relieved as well, although
he pretended to be sorely disappointed.
On the positive side, I suppose, Frank performed most embalmings during
the day while restricting cremations to the night hours. This made it
possible for me to be in attendance.
Although the hulking cremator-cruder than the Power Pak that Sandy uses
these days-disposed of human remains at a very high temperature and
featured emission-control devices, thin smoke escaped the chimney.
Frank conducted only nocturnal cremations out of respect for bereaved
family members or friends who might, in daylight, glance at the hilltop
mortuary from lower in town and see the last of their loved ones
slipping skyward in wispy gray curls.
Conveniently for us, Bobby’s father, Anson, was the editor in chief of
the Moonlight Bay Gazette. Bobby used his connections and his
familiarity with the newspaper offices to get us the most current
information about deaths by accident and by natural causes.
We always knew when Frank Kirk had a fresh one, but we couldn’t be sure
whether he was going to embalm it or cremate it.
Immediately after sunset, we would ride our bikes to the vicinity of
the mortuary and then creep onto the property, waiting at the
crematorium window either until the action began or until we had to