The undertakers razor

The Undertakers Razor1

The Technician slid out the steel drawer with a creak and peeled back the sheet covering the lifeless form inside. 2

'Well Jim?' He asked slowly3

James caught his breath suddenly and lowered his head and gave a silent nod. 4

'Jim, I can call somebody else if you want.' He said, kindly. 5

'No Ian, If its all the same I'd rather take care of it myself, it'll be kind of like taking him home.' 6

'Suit yourself Jim.' He said as he pulled the tag that read 'Taggert, James Richard Jr. ' from the drawer. 'Jim, I'm really sorry, if you need anything, let me know. ' 7

'I'm fine, I don't need anything but to get him home.' He resisted. 8

Jim and Ian lifted the body onto a Gurney that read 'Taggert's Mortuary' and wheeled the young man to the waiting hearse. 9

Jim had taken many men for their last ride, he had been in the same building and the same business for thirty two years. As he made the six block journey to the mortuary from the county morgue he thought about how before there were morticians, god he hated that title, (he called himself an undertaker), people washed, dressed, and laid out their own. Many times they had already built a coffin years before, and had it stored somewhere. It was supposed to be comforting to the family that they could attend to the final needs of their loved ones. Somewhere along the line it came into vogue to have someone else do your work for you. Jim would be god damned if some shitass was going to handle his  son. He pulled into the garage and opened the hearse. When he picked  his son up off of the gurney he was amazed how light he was, just like the first time he had ever held him. Jimmy had been long gone way before he was dead. He had been strung out forever it seemed. Jim had always feared he would bury his son one day. 10

He laid his son in the sink made for the purpose of washing the body. Jim worked feverishly washing from foot to head. He had last washed his son when he was three years old. He saw the scar on the inside of his knee where he had torn all of the ligaments on that side of his knee chasing a fox across a field ,  he had beat him all the way to the hospital for being so careless. As he worked his way up he saw all of the roadmarks of time on the body of his only son. For a man so young he left a battered corpse. Motorcycle wrecks, barroom brawls, and tattoo parlors had taken their toll. He worked up a lather in the thick  curls of his sons shoulder length red hair, remembering how he hated him for growing it out, how he had called him a pussy,  a fag, a little girl. After he rinsed out all of the soap and shampoo he set at drying him with a towel. When he lifted him up to put him on the table he felt like Abraham laying  Isaac  upon an altar, an altar of shame and failure. Jim laid him down and began to shake like a broken machine vibrating itself to destruction. He screamed a deep and resonant wail that would have peeled paint, if there had been any. He focused all of his love, his labor, his hate, and his sorrow in one bitter ball that swung wide to come to a dull thud on the lifeless chest of James  Jr.  11

'God damn you boy! I gave you my name, my love, and my time and all you've ever been is  sorrow.' He screamed, with the tears dropping from his nose and onto the face of his first, last, and only child. The child he had held in the dark softly singing  the sweet, melodic notes of James Taylor's 'Sweet Baby James', the child he had held in sickness, the child he had held in love,  the child he now held in death.  12

Jim dried his hands, threw down the towel, picked up the phone and dialed the number of his only competitor. 13

'Fred, I need a favor.' He whispered into the phone14

' Sure thing Jim, what can I do for you?' He replied 15

'I need you to lay Jimmy out, I can't do it, I tried, but I just fucking can't.' He wept 16

'No problem, you want me to come get him or will you bring him over?' He asked17

'Please come and get him, I can't look at him again till he's ready to go in the ground.'18

'Be there in a minute.' Fred hung up the phone. 19

The chapel was full to capacity, there were the old friends, the stoners, the bikers, the old ladies who 'Knew him back when...'. His wild red hair was sheared short and parted on the side. His face was smooth shaven, the muttonchop sideburns forever lifted, the wispy red goatee just so much residue in the sink.  The undertakers razor had done what the undertaker could not, it made Jimmy just like his dad. 20