Place of duty--6

Place of duty--6

“Anyway, my last one, six weeks ago, we were in this little town in Nebraska. Spring Hill, or something like that. I had the midnight til oh-two-hundred shift at the funeral home. The funeral home owner gave Sergeant Miller a key so we could get in and out. All the family had gone home about ten. It was around twelve-thirty when I heard a knock on the back door. I wasn’t supposed to leave the room, but I figured maybe it was somebody who needed in the funeral home. I went to the back and opened the door. A woman stood on the step. She was all in black. Black dress, black shoes, a little black hat and a black purse. She said her name was Verna, and she was an aunt of whoever it was in the casket. She said she knew visitation was over, but she had just got to town and would it be all right if she just stepped in for a minute or two. I said, yes, ma’am, that will be all right. I locked the door when she was in. I led her to the room. She stood there, looking at the casket. She asked if I would open the top part. I said I couldn’t do that. It was one of those remains not for viewing things. I said it in a nicer way than that. She said she understood. She started talking then, about how when she was growing up she didn’t like the town. Right after she graduated from high school, she went to Omaha, attended business school there. She got a job, met a man and got married. She said it didn’t work out, so she filed for divorce. She hadn’t been back to Spring Hill since the divorce. Her sister, Jimmy’s mother, frowned on divorce, she said. We talked a little longer, and then she took off her little black hat. She pulled a pin from her hair, and all this red hair fell over her shoulders. She didn’t say anything, just took my hand and led me from that room and to another room, an empty room. There were chairs and a long couch in the empty room. One thing led to another, and pretty soon we both were naked and on the couch, going after it like we didn’t have a care in the world.” Kincaid drank at his beer.