The Undertaker
Everyone at North Hamilton High School knew Butch Gleason. He was undeniably the best quarterback that their football team ever had. In addition to being a fine athlete, Butch had a good sense of humor and was not above getting into a little mischief now and then. The male students looked up to him, and the females adored him. Furthermore, his teachers bent over backward to help him with his studies, gave him extra credit for completed assignments and rarely ever penalized him for not doing his homework or misbehaving in class.
The one exception to the rule was Miss Agnes Hitchcock, the high school principal. An old-school educator, she firmly believed educational institutions were meant solely for cultivating young minds and did not agree that Butch's ability to score touchdowns should excuse him from meeting the established requirements of the school's curriculum. Accordingly, she chastised the gym teacher who let Butch practice his passing while the rest of the class had to participate in coed square dancing and admonished the language arts teacher who let Butch take a multiple-choice exam on Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter while the other students had to struggle writing an essay.
"He's no better than anyone else," Agnes would often exclaim. "I don't see why everyone in this school feels he deserves special treatment just because he's on the football team."
When Butch was caught smoking in the boys' room at a school dance, Miss Hitchcock wanted to suspend him, as the school regulations clearly demanded. However, the board of education stepped in and interceded on Butch's behalf.
"You can't suspend him," the chairman declared. "He's our star quarterback, and there are three more weeks left in the season. If we win the remaining games, we'll be in the state finals."
"But he was caught smoking on school property," Agnes argued. "That's a serious infraction of the rules."
"I know, but it's not that bad. After all, half the teachers are smokers."
"Then are we to allow all the students to get away with smoking in the bathrooms? What's next? Do we let them drink alcohol in the cafeteria because some members of our faculty have a fondness for the bottle?"
The chairman frowned but ignored the principal's allusion to his drinking habit.
"Miss Hitchcock, I want you to go easy on Butch. Give him a couple of days of after-school detention if you must—on days when he doesn't have football practice, that is."
"Why don't I just take a ruler and smack him across the knuckles like the nuns at the Catholic school do?" she asked sarcastically. "Oh, no, I shouldn't do that. I might injure his passing hand."
"I realize you've been principal here for a long time, Agnes," the chairman said angrily. "I hope it won't be necessary for me to suggest to the board that we look for a younger, more open-minded person to replace you."
Miss Hitchcock bit her tongue to hold back a scathing retort.
"That won't be necessary. I'll give Butch a lecture on the dangers of smoking and send him to Coach McGuiness for detention."
So it was that Butch Gleason smoothly sailed through four years of high school despite his poor grades and less-than-exemplary conduct. Having led his team to three state championships, he was accepted at Notre Dame where, upon graduating high school, he would join the ranks of the famed Fighting Irish. Everyone in North Hamilton believed the town's favorite son would end up in the NFL, a hero not only to his hometown but to the entire country.
Then in May of his senior year, the young quarterback drove his Camaro into the rear of a parked car, while he was driving home from a late-night after-prom party. The local police were lenient. They didn't test his blood alcohol level even though it was fairly obvious he'd been drinking. Still, Butch did not walk away from the accident unscathed. He sustained a serious injury to his right leg that, although it eventually healed, left him with a pronounced limp and ended whatever chance he had of a career in professional football.
Understandably, he did not go to Notre Dame in the fall as he had planned. Instead, to the surprise of everyone who knew him, Butch Gleason, the fun-loving athlete and small-town hero, attended state college and then went to work for his grandfather who was, of all things, a mortician. The elder Mr. Gleason was nearing retirement age and was happy to have his grandson take over the business he had spent his lifetime building up.
"Despite what people think," the old man said, "it's a very rewarding profession. I get a lot of satisfaction knowing I can help the bereaved at such a difficult time in their lives."
Butch shrugged. He was not becoming a funeral director for humanitarian reasons; he was in it strictly for the money.
Two years after Butch began working at the funeral home, his grandfather retired and left the business in his grandson's hands. Surprisingly, he did quite well in his new profession. Most of his customers remembered him from his high school days. The men still envied him—although now it was for his six-figure income rather than his athletic ability—and the women still adored him.
Unlike his grandfather, however, Butch had expensive tastes, and the family business was not as profitable as he would have liked. To increase his income, he began to pad the bills he presented to the tearful mourners, who, after losing their loved ones, did not wish to quibble over expenses. Not only did the prices go up substantially when Butch took over, but the former football hero also began to cut corners on the services he offered. For instance, just before he lowered the dearly departed into the grave, he usually substituted a cheap coffin for the more expensive one the deceased's loved ones had paid for.
"Shame to put such a beautiful casket in the ground," he laughed, rubbing his hand appreciatively over a $7,000 mahogany model with velvet lining. "These people are dead. They won't care if they have to spend eternity in an $800 steel coffin with taffeta lining."
Yet no matter how much money Butch made, he always seemed to spend more than he took in. This was understandable since he had a weakness for expensive cars, gourmet foods, fine wines and beautiful women. To afford his champagne tastes, he eventually resorted to theft. All the dearly departed from Gleason's Funeral Home were lowered into the ground only after Butch had relieved them of their wedding rings, watches, necklaces, earrings and, in some cases, gold teeth.
* * *
Just prior to his forty-second birthday, Butch received a phone call that, to him, brought welcome news. Agnes Hitchcock, the former principal of North Hamilton High School, had passed on to her much-deserved reward.
"You old battleaxe," he said, recalling all the hours of detention she assigned him when he was in school. "It will be an absolute pleasure to put you in the ground."
Miss Hitchcock's funeral was a well-attended one. For three days, the citizens of North Hamilton visited the funeral home to pay their respects to the deceased educator. When the mourners filed out of the room on the last day of viewing, most headed for Laurel Grove Cemetery to attend the graveside ceremony that was to follow.
Butch shut the door behind the last mourner, walked over to the open casket and looked down at the body.
"You sour-faced old witch," he laughed, "no wonder you never married."
With a sneer he reached down and removed from her Battenberg collar the only piece of jewelry Agnes Hitchcock had ever worn: her grandmother's cameo broach.
"Ugly thing," Butch pronounced, examining the ivory profile of a young Greek woman. "Still, it might be worth a few bucks."
After slipping the broach into his jacket pocket, he closed the lid of the casket and called for the men who would serve as pallbearers.
"You can load her into the hearse now."
Butch then went to his private office and opened a small wall safe behind his diploma from the state university. Inside were a dozen wedding rings, four diamond engagement rings, five pairs of earrings, two wristwatches and a gold nose ring he removed from a tattooed young woman who was killed in a motorcycle accident. He tossed the broach onto the pile of loot, closed and locked the safe and then went out to the hearse. He wanted to personally oversee the burial of Agnes Hitchcock.
* * *
During the subsequent months, Butch's secret cache of stolen goods grew. Soon, it was time to make a trip to New York, where he would sell the goods to a reliable fence who always paid a fair price for what the undertaker had to sell. Hoping to combine business with pleasure, he picked up the phone and dialed Yvonne Dakin, his latest girlfriend.
"Hey, beautiful," he said to the curvaceous redhead who worked at the town registrar's office. "How would you like to go to the city with me next weekend? We can drive down Friday night and come home on Sunday."
"Only if we stay at the Plaza."
Butch frowned. He really ought to find a woman with less expensive tastes.
When Friday evening arrived, Yvonne turned up at the funeral parlor earlier than expected, anxious to spend the weekend with the old high school football hero, a man she often fantasized about when she was a shy, overweight, unpopular teenager.
"Wait a minute, Babe," Butch said after putting her suitcase in the trunk of his Lexus. "I have to get something out of my office, and then you and I are off to the Big Apple."
The undertaker went to the wall safe and noticed, after opening it, that the contents were gone. Butch bent over and peered inside, just to make sure it was empty.
"Damn it!" he swore bitterly and slammed the safe door shut.
He picked up the phone to call the police and then realized the foolishness of such an action.
"What am I going to tell them? That someone robbed my stolen goods?"
"Are you almost ready, Butch, honey?" Yvonne called.
"Change of plans, sweetie," he growled. "We're not going to the city after all. I have to go see someone about installing a security system in here."
"Tonight?" she replied, annoyed at having her weekend plans fall through. "What's the rush? Are you afraid the dead are going to rise and walk off with the place while you're gone?"
"No, but I'm not so sure about some of my employees. I want a security camera installed in my office ASAP."
Yvonne sulked.
"But why don't we go out to dinner first?" Butch asked, trying to console her. "Afterward, we can stop by the mall, and I'll buy you that slinky little black dress you like so much."
The bribe of a new outfit did the trick; the redhead's pout became a smile.
* * *
The following week, several mourners who had come to pay their respects to former mayor William Harcourt were sitting in the smoking room of Gleason's Funeral Home. A few were puffing on cigarettes while others were simply trying to get away from the widow's hysterics. As one of the mourners put her Marlboro out in the ashtray, she saw a gold wedding band lying on the coffee table, half hidden by a back issue of Good Housekeeping magazine. She picked it up and read the inscription inside: Luke and Laura 6-16-54.
"This must be Luke Wainwright's wedding ring," she told her husband. "He was laid out here last year. I'll take it and give it to Laura when I see her at church on Sunday."
"If I were you, I'd just give it to Butch and let him take care of it."
"I suppose you're right," his wife reasoned. "Laura might get upset when she sees the ring, and I wouldn't want to cause a scene at church."
After the viewing came to an end, the woman knocked on Butch's office door. The undertaker's face lost its usual rosy color when she gave him Robert Wainwright's gold wedding band.
"How the hell did this get here?" he stammered.
Then he regained some of his composure.
"Thank you for giving it to me. I'll see that it's returned to the widow."
After the mourners left, he locked the ring in his safe. Chances were no one would mention its discovery to Laura Wainwright. And if they did, he would claim he hadn't had the chance to return it yet or that he'd simply forgotten.
During the next few days, several other wedding rings turned up as did one of the wristwatches and the golden nose ring.
It was obvious that the theft of the jewelry from his safe was no ordinary robbery. The perpetrator did not steal the pieces for their monetary value. Perhaps some disgruntled former or current employee wanted to discredit Butch by deliberately leaving the jewelry where others would find it. Butch examined the newly installed security system's videotapes, but they revealed nothing.
Then, two months after Butch's wall safe had been broken into, Laura Wainwright came to the funeral parlor and angrily demanded the return of her husband's wedding band. Nearly thirty shocked mourners overheard the widow's tearful accusations of theft. Afterward, the people of North Hamilton began to look at Butch with distrust in their eyes. A few suspicious families even had their loved ones sent to another funeral home rather than entrust them to Gleason's.
Business declined and Butch began to drink more heavily. He then made the mistake of appearing at several memorial services with a strong smell of alcohol on his breath. This led to more gossip, and Butch fell further from grace.
"My life is going to hell," he complained to the four walls of his office above the funeral parlor, after attempting to drown his sorrows in a bottle of whiskey. "If it weren't for that damned car accident, I would probably be living in Miami right now. I'd be a professional football player instead of an undertaker."
The following day, an attractive young college student, who went by the name of Lilith, showed up at Gleason's for her aunt's funeral. Dressed in gothic attire, she seductively batted her heavily made-up eyes at Butch. The undertaker was definitely interested despite the girl's somewhat morbid appearance. When the other mourners left, the student stayed behind.
"Nice place you've got here," Lilith declared in a sultry voice.
"How about a guided tour?" Butch asked, dredging up what remained of his boyish charm.
"I'd love one."
The mortician led the young woman downstairs and showed her the embalming room.
"Here is where I drain the blood from the corpses."
"Awesome!"
"These are the chemicals I use to preserve the body for viewing. And here are the cosmetics."
"You mean makeup?"
"Yes. My assistants and I like to make the deceased look as natural as possible. We clean them up, dress them and add some makeup. There's even a woman from the cosmetology school who comes in and does the hair."
"I don't suppose you'd let me come over sometime and watch you work," Lilith said hopefully.
Butch eyed her shapely legs, thin waist and full breasts appreciatively.
"We might be able to work something out."
He then took the girl back upstairs into a somberly decorated room with one glass wall.
"That," he explained, pointing through the glass, "is the cremation chamber. Some of the families elect to watch their loved ones' remains ...."
"They can actually watch the body burn?" Lilith interrupted excitedly.
"No, I place the body in a wooden casket, and the family watches the coffin being loaded into the chamber. Once the door closes, the mourners usually leave. Then I turn on the burners. Oddly enough, some people actually prefer pushing the button themselves. Come on, I'll show you the controls."
When they entered the control room, however, Butch noticed that the girl was more interested in a nearby wooden casket than in the cremation chamber.
"Is there someone in there?" she asked.
"No."
The young student stroked the top of the coffin with her hand.
"I always had a burning desire to make it in a coffin."
Her eyes held a clear invitation.
Butch loosened his necktie and said, "It's a tight fit, but I think we can manage."
After their awkward and uncomfortable tumble in the cramped casket, Lilith opened her purse, took out a joint and offered to share it with Butch.
"Marijuana isn't normally my thing," he said, inhaling deeply. "I used to smoke a little in college, but I always preferred alcohol."
The student, who wanted only to get dressed and leave, shrugged her shoulders.
"To each his own."
"What's the rush?" Butch asked, nonchalantly lying back in the coffin.
"It's getting late," Lilith lied, "and I've got an early class tomorrow."
The truth was she had been disappointed in her sexual encounter with the undertaker and wanted to leave as soon as possible.
"Thanks for the tour," she said, still buttoning the front of her dress as she hurried from the room.
"Crazy kid!" Butch exclaimed.
He took another long drag from the joint and closed his eyes.
"I always knew you'd end up like this," a voice echoed in the room.
Butch's eyes flew open. No one was there.
"Is that you, Lilith?"
There was no reply, but Butch hadn't really expected one. The voice didn't sound like that of a young girl. Rather, it was the voice of a much older woman, one that seemed vaguely familiar.
"You were a failure as a student," the voice taunted him, "and you're an even bigger failure as a man."
"Who are you? And where are you hiding? Are you the one who's been stealing the jewelry out of my safe?"
Suddenly the lid of the wooden coffin slammed shut with incredible force, crushing Butch's fingers. He howled with pain and pushed on the lid with his injured hands, but it wouldn't open.
"Let me out!" he cried.
"Not this time, Butch. There's no one to save you now. You're no longer the star quarterback."
"I know that voice!" he said as recognition hit him. "No, it can't be. You're dead."
"You should know, Butch; you embalmed me. Then you had the audacity to rob my dead body."
The wooden coffin then began to move.
"What are you doing, you old bitch?"
"I hope you can take the heat. Think of it as a taste of the eternity that is waiting for you. After all, the fires of hell burn hot for people like you, Butch Gleason."
The mortician trembled with fear as he heard the door of the cremation chamber slide open.
"You can't do this!"
The coffin stopped moving, and Butch heard the chamber door slide shut. A few moments later came the horrifying sound of the burners being turned on. Soon his shrieks of terror were intermingled with screams of agony.
In the control room, the spirit of Agnes Hitchcock patiently watched for close to three hours as the temperature inside the cremation chamber steadily climbed to over two thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Butch Gleason's screams had long since been silenced.
"Ashes to ashes," the former high school principal laughed.
Then she pinned her grandmother's cameo broach on her Battenberg collar and faded away.
No, Salem, that's not a satin-lined litter box!
