Requiem

Jedidiah Smoothwater had gone to his reward if he was to have one, which I reckoned was doubtful. He had played his part in this grand comedy with such middling skill that spectators, if any, must have been snoring through his final act.

Now, he lay, decked out in a mahogany coffin, glass over his face like a lid on a jar of preserves, looking as if he was enjoying his first and last peace. The undertaker had done a fine job, I must say, turning Jedidiah into a silent partner in the business of death.

At two o’clock sharp, his so-called friends gathered, their mourning as sincere as a politician’s promise. They stood around, trying to look as if they’d lost something more than a drinking buddy. Jedidiah’s kin took turns sobbing over him.

The widow made her grand entrance, weeping copiously in the practiced manner of one who had rehearsed for such an event. She threw herself upon the casket, pressed her face to the cold glass, and, having thereby chilled her emotions, allowed herself to be seated near her daughter.

The minister soon appeared, making all others seem like mere shadows. His eulogy was beautiful if you’re fond of gloom. The minister’s voice wavered like a flag in a storm, driving everyone deeper into despair until even the heavens joined in with a sprinkle of rain as if to say, “I too have felt this man’s absence.”

The service ended, the mourners sang with the cheerlessness of a dirge, and the pallbearers stepped up, ready to remove Jedidiah into whatever eternity awaited him. But the widow, not to be outdone by the proceedings, made a final, grand gesture of sorrow, collapsing in a faint so theatrical it might have been the climax of a melodrama.

Everyone rushed to her aid. One poor soul bumped the coffin, sending it to the ground with a crash that shattered the glass into a thousand sparkles.

From the wreckage and with a furtive, nervous scamper, scurried a rat. It paused momentarily, whiskers twitching as if in some dark amusement before darting away.

The clock struck three.