STRAY SON
CHAPTER 1: -- PERSONAL EFFECTS
I’M TRYING TO HOLD off an eviction notice and pay my shrink’s bill by picking up dead bodies at night for Mission Memorial Cemetery and Crematory in Santa Barbara. One night, I’m waiting on a suicide at a hospital morgue, killing time reading an article called “Reasons To Kill Yourself” in the local weekly entertainment rag. Reason number thirty-four is, “You pick up bodies for a cemetery.” Needless to say, the article put a damper on the rest of the night.
TWO NIGHTS LATER, the cordless phone ringing rouses me. I reach over and grab it from the floor beside the bed, not wanting to wake my dutiful wife, after routine sex that failed to burn down our seedy, aluminum-sided doublewide at the Santa Barbara Arms Mobile Home Park.
I press a button and say, “Hello.”
“Patrick Jaworsky,” mispronounces the familiar voice of our cemetery answering service’s female dispatcher.
“It’s Ya-woor’-skee. If you’re gonna wake me up at whatever the hell time it is, at least get my name right.”
“Okay Patrick,” she answers, her voice both dismissive and unapologetic. “Anyway, I have a death call at a private residence. Can you take the assignment?”
“What time is it?”
“Two oh six.”
I feel an achy resentment. I just wanna go back to sleep. I’m tempted to use the ol’ “I-have-diarrhea” excuse, but I’ve used it before with this woman and a removal’s worth a hundred dollars cash under the table. Our landlord just sent a thirty-day eviction notice. Since I got run out of the sewage treatment plant job six months ago, we can’t pay all our bills with just my unemployment and my wife’s paycheck. Now, after three months of body-snatching, we’re only a month behind on rent. And last night our six- and sixteen-year olds were asking for new clothes and their own computers.
I finally convince myself: “I’ll do it.”
She asserts she’ll put me through to voicemail.
“Hold it one ever-loving minute,” I protest as I walk out to the kitchen, naked, turn on the light, find the cemetery clipboard and a pen, drop into a chair at the kitchen table.
“Okay, now.”
After a click, the recording starts; male voice soaked with alcohol says his partner just died of AIDS. I listen to the answering-service woman ask the standard questions and scribble the information on my form: Was the coroner called? Yes. Was the death expected? Yes. Then, name: Mr. Clark; next of kin: Mr. Geis; address: a condominium on West Cabrillo Boulevard; date of birth: 3/30/1964; date of death: 6/1/2000; the details of pre-need arrangements; the phone number.
I call the phone number. The same male voice on the recording answers, and I say, “I’m Patrick Yaworsky from Mission Memorial Cemetery. I understand your partner has died at home.” I confirm the directions to the residence, and tell him that two of us will be there in twenty to thirty minutes.
I consult the June-on-call list. I’m paired with Gino and I call him. After a minute a very groggy Gino says, “No problem, let’s roll.”
DEATH IS FUNNY TO THINK ABOUT because, although my job is all about death, it’s not my “issue.” I try to empathize and I try to comfort, but I feel disconnected. I’m not the age, on average, that people die, and right now me and my wife and kids are doing well.
Then, last week I got a scare when my boss called me into the office. He invited me to sit down.
I stayed standing and said, “What’s this all about?”
“Patrick, you need to improve your ‘customer satisfaction scores’ with the bereaved.”
“There’s been no complaints from the dead,” I said.
“Don’t be so sure.”
“So, I’m cold with stiffs.”
“Cold with the living, too.” He pointed at a chair, “Sit down.”
I turned and walked out.
He called after me. “It won’t work. You’re not fired.”
I grinned and kept walking. It must be hard to find employees in this line of work.
My shrink told me last session I’m not “in touch” with a whole range of things I’m afraid of. My family life has gone so well for me since I was kicked out of my original family back in Iowa ten years ago. Fact is, I have no way of knowing if my parents are living or dead, unless I get a call from one of them. Fat chance, which is fine with me. Saves the trouble of acting like I care.