by Jerome Pearson
1992
Brother Jake Walker ran the only funeral home in the town of Summerton, South Carolina. It was called “Jake Walker Mortuary”. Every time you went past that funeral home you would see the old black hearse parked in the opened garage. It was never clear why Big Jake wouldn’t close the garage door. I guess it was considered some form of advertisement to have that big ugly hearse parked up in there with those big ugly fins just smiling at everyone, as if to say, “that’s right, I’m gon get you next!”
Everyone says Big Jake doesn’t know what he is doing no way! There was that time when Jake dressed a fellah for a funeral and forgot to put a necktie on him. But folks didn’t complain much. It was thought that if God wanted Leroy to have a tie on his final day, then he would have instructed Jake to do it.
Jake was a serious businessman, but he was also a crook! He was known to take advantage of gullible souls. As example, one lady didn’t have the money to pay for her husband’s funeral. Jake asked her to give him what she had, and the rest would be paid on installments. And these installments did not always occur in the form of money. She had to come by once a week and these transactions would occur in one of the back rooms. Jake and the widower were the only people present; all other potential witnesses in the place remained silent!
One Friday night, me and a few of my buddies decided we would to try to slip around back of the funeral home and see what Big Jake and Reverend Paul Gibson were doing to those bodies. Paul Gibson was Jake’s helper and he was also a part time preacher because he didn’t have his own church. My grandmother said that God never called Paul to preach in the first place, and that’s why he doesn’t have a church. He had probably run across some hard luck awhile back; because whenever things aren’t going right in people’s lives, next thing you know is that they become a preacher. The ministry is filled with former sinners. Of course, it has a few current sinners too.
But anyway, we decided that the Friday prior to Halloween would be a good time for us to try sneaking in the back of the funeral home because Mrs. Lena Johnson passed on Wednesday, and they would more than likely be working on her body.
Around eight pm that Friday evening, I along with my three friends, Leroy, Billy, and Daniel, gathered up enough courage to take the stroll down Main Street in the direction of the funeral home. We decided we would walk past first and scout the place out like they do on the TV westerns. Well, none of us wanted to scout alone, so we decided to all go together.
It was the month of October, and it was getting cold and getting dark early. I heard that some crazy fools changed the time and we had to move our clocks back one hour the previous Sunday. Some folks don’t have nothing better to do than play with clocks; next thing you know they will try changing the seasons, like switching Christmas to summer and having the Fourth of July in the winter.
As we walked past the front of the building, we could see a light on in the front room. We decided if we could slip behind the building, then perhaps we could find an entrance and maybe sneak a peak at them working. After walking nearly three hundred yards past the funeral home we turned and walked across an old field which allowed us to approach the building from the rear. Throughout our journey we were laughing and teasing one another about who was scared and who wasn’t, but as we got closer, we all put up a more serious tone.
We had never seen the building from the rear and were surprised to see how mysterious it looked back there. There were several old black cars parked side by side. They were old Cadillac’s; probably cars that Jake used to transport the families of the deceased during a funeral. And all those cars had those big, ugly, 1960 something fins.
When we got within ten feet of the funeral home, we noticed a small stairway that led down towards the basement. At this time Daniel decided that maybe we should turn around and go back, but we started calling him a chicken and a scary cat, so he had to change his mind again. As the leader decided to take the initiative to start walking down the stairs first. The other guys followed me.
The steps descending to the basement were very narrow and squeaky, so we had to walk real softly and slow. When we made it to the bottom of the steps, we stopped in a small foyer which led to a hallway in the basement.
The hallway was very dark, but I could see light coming from an adjacent room. I then tipped-toed in the direction of the light, as the others followed. I stopped about ten feet from the doorway leading into the room with the light.
Suddenly,
I heard some noise, sounded like conversation, so I got on my knees and crawled
closer. When I got within five feet, I
could see diagonally into the room. I
could then see Reverend Paul Gibson sitting at a table with bottle of whisky
and a big pistol lying beside the bottle.
He had a crooked smile on his face, as if he had done something wrong.
It appeared that he was busy counting money, because he had a stack of bills in his left hand and he was moving them to the table with his right hand. Every now and then, he would lick his fingers like people do when they’re counting lots of bills. I then heard another voice, which appeared to be that of a woman. The woman walked over to where Rev. Gibson was sitting and kissed him on the lips. It was the strangest thing, because I could swear that woman looked just like Mrs. Lena Johnson, who was supposed to be dead.
Then Big Jake walked over to Rev. Gibson, and as he did so, he sort of glanced out into the hallway. My heart skipped a beat because I thought he saw me, but it was probably that crossed eye of his. Sometimes his right eye would be pointed in one direction, but he would be looking straight ahead. He handed Reverend Paul some more bills, and the Reverend began counting those as well.
Jake then turned towards the woman and said: “Now Lena, when the family and friends file past you at that funeral this coming Sunday, don’t you bust out laughing at those silly fools who think you’re dead and in heaven!”
JP
1992