her to be bold and to make every moment count, but he would have frowned on her recent recklessness. Flaunting fate was no way to cope with his death.
“Show me the way home,” she whispered into the roiling darkness. “Dad, please help me.”
NINE
THE DAY WAS GRAY AS GRANITE, AND THE GROUND WAS soggy from a night of hard rain. The storm had blown a riot of leaves and branches all over the lawns. Charlie hid under his yellow hood and looked into the hole where one of his gravediggers was shoveling. It was backbreaking work on a normal day, but when the ground was drenched and the backhoe couldn’t maneuver in the muck, it was especially miserable. Now, compounding the gloom, Elihu Swett, the cemetery commissioner, had stopped by for a spot inspection.
“The Ferrente funeral party will be here any minute,” Elihu was saying beneath his great umbrella. He was an elfin man in a tan trench coat, royal-blue corduroy suit, and rubber galoshes, and his entire wardrobe appeared to come from the boy’s department at Filene’s. “How much longer till you’re done?” he asked, taking a sip from a Mountain Dew bottle that seemed half his size.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be ready,” Charlie said, kneeling down and looking into the opening. “How you doing, Joe?”
“Just fine,” Joe Carabino said from the bottom of the grave. “But it’s Elihu that I’m worried about.” He winked.
“What’s the matter?” Elihu asked, stepping gingerly toward the hole.
“A lethal dose of caffeine is ten grams,” Joe said, leaning on his shovel. “A few more of those Mountain Dews and you’ll be pushing up daisies.” He paused for dramatic effect. “You feel all right? You seem a little pale.” Before Joe could even razz him about his bloodshot eyes, Elihu stuffed the bottle in his coat pocket and took off for his Lincoln Continental. A bona fide hypochondriac, he had been treated by the best doctors in Boston, and every one had urged him to find a new line of work. He refused and insisted on slathering himself with disinfectant and even wearing latex gloves to staff meetings. After all, a good town job was hard to find.
With a swift movement, Joe jumped up from the grave and high-fived Charlie with a muddy hand. “The old lethal-dose-of-caffeine trick,” he said. “Poor Elihu, works every time.”
Joe was in his early thirties and built like a bull. His blunt face was darkened by the sun, and his thinning hair was teased into a few proud, well-gelled spikes. Male-pattern baldness, he liked to say, was caused by an excess of testosterone, and he had the scientific journals to prove it.
Joe was one of the great rascals of the North Shore. By day, he worked with dirt and the dead. By night, he chased women up and down Cape Ann with a shameless repertoire of strategies and tactics. He had been known to hunt for young widows in the obituaries of the Marblehead Reporter, but he wasn’t a total rake. He had a code. He steered clear of the bereaved for a minimum of six months—that was the amount of time he heard Oprah say it took to grieve.
Joe’s only other great devotion was to his own brand of evangelical atheism. It wasn’t enough that he didn’t believe in God. He also felt it was his duty to proselytize. That was just fine as long as he kept his missionary work outside the iron gates, but once or twice Charlie caught him grumbling “There is no heaven!” at a graveside service or griping “What a waste!” when a gilded ten-foot cross was brought in by crane to stand atop a mausoleum. Joe the Atheist was duly reprimanded, but it only increased his ardor.
“What’s your story tonight?” Joe was asking as they finished dressing the job. “How about coming out with me to happy hour? I’m taking the Horny Toad up to Rockport. I know these gals who run a bar there. The things they do, man, you wouldn’t believe.”
“Give me a hand with the lowering device,” Charlie said, walking toward the panel truck on the service road.
“The Dempsey sisters. You ever heard of them?”
“No, never.”
“You’d like Nina and Tina. Trust me.”
“Let’s see how it goes today,” Charlie said.
“Yeah, yeah. ‘Let’s see how it goes.’ But when it’s quitting time, you’ll disappear. Same old story. You know, you should live a little.”
Charlie pulled the lowering device from the truck, and the two men carried it across the grass toward the grave.