Skulldoggery

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It was, all in all, quite a pleasant funeral. At the cemetery, the sun was shining but it was cool under the elms beside the family mausoleum, and you could smell the red clover that grew wild in the field beyond. Uncle Homer was there, and Aunt Madge, and Junior, and Flo, and Flo’s twins, Hester and Lester. And, of course Grandfather Hunter. As a matter of statistics, it was Grandfather’s funeral. He was, in a manner of speaking, the host.

Everyone was grateful to Grandfather for dying, and was, consequently, in a good humor. Uncle Homer was sober for a change, even though it was already three o’clock in the afternoon, and Aunt Madge and Flo kept scraps of cambric pressed to dry eyes in a decent pretense of sorrow that was proper and convincing even when Flo, at the church, caught a short nap. Junior and Lester, being young men with expensive tastes and meager funds, amused themselves by anticipating the fruits of Grandfather’s will, which would be all the sweeter for coming to them in the natural course of events, the old man having departed, however reluctantly without the slightest nudge. Of all the mourners, though, the most impeccably impressive by far was Hester. Throughout the brief ceremony, her eyes were lifted to a cotton cloud drifting slowly across a pale blue sky, as if Grandfather were riding it bareback into heaven, and her face was so serene and lovely that Uncle Homer, observing it, felt a faint twinge in his leathery heart and was diverted for a few seconds from his dream of a five-to-one martini.

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